Nature Parks and Other Similar Institutions (U.S., NAICS 712190)

1. Overview

This industry is the business of preserving a piece of nature and letting the public experience it: bird and wildlife sanctuaries, nature centers and preserves, conservation areas, and "natural wonder" attractions such as caverns and waterfalls, as well as national parks.[1] It is a small, fragmented, and unusual corner of the economy, because the people who own and run America's nature parks are mostly not conventional businesses. The dominant owners are governments (national, state, and local park systems) and nonprofits (land trusts and conservation groups), with a thin layer of family-owned, for-profit attractions — chiefly commercial show caves and roadside natural wonders — plus private companies that operate lodging, food, and tours on public land under contract.[1][14][18]

There is no clean "nature-parks stock." Public-market exposure is minimal and indirect — you reach it through concession and hospitality operators, wildlife attractions, and experiential real estate rather than a pure play. Private participation is real but non-standard: owning or financing a cash-generating natural attraction, running a park concession, holding conservation-grade land as a real asset, or funding conservation through philanthropy and tax-advantaged easements. The useful frame is less "buy the sector" and more "understand how nature land actually pays." The best positions combine scarce site access, durable visitor demand, ancillary spending, and long operating rights; high visitation by itself does not guarantee good returns, because concessions, maintenance, labor, environmental obligations, and capital spending drive the economics.

2. What it is and how it is structured

Official scope. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 712190 covers establishments "primarily engaged in the preservation and exhibition of natural areas or settings." The 2022 definition names bird and wildlife sanctuaries, natural-wonder tourist attractions (for example a cavern or a waterfall), conservation areas, nature centers and preserves, and national parks.[1]

Two layers. A typical operation separates the asset from its operator:

• Asset owner — federal, state, or local government; a nonprofit conservancy; or a private landowner.
• Operator — a government agency, a nonprofit, a private concessioner, a hospitality company, or an attraction operator.

The operator may earn money from admissions, parking, camping, tours, lodging, food, retail, memberships, donations, or grants, all under conservation and capacity constraints. Our federal statistics do not include a legal-form ownership split, so no ownership percentages are asserted; qualitatively the mix is public parks and protected areas, nonprofit preserves, private concessioners on public land, and privately owned attractions and gateway properties.[1]

What it excludes (and where those activities live). The code sits inside industry group 7121, "Museums, Historical Sites, and Similar Institutions." Its close — and often confused — neighbors are separate codes:[1]

• 712110 Museums — indoor collections of objects (art, science, history).
• 712120 Historical Sites — preserved buildings, forts, battlefields, historic ships.
• 712130 Zoos and Botanical Gardens — live plant and animal displays (zoos, aquariums, arboreta, wild animal parks). A managed collection of live specimens is here, not in 712190.
• 713110 Amusement and Theme Parks — mechanical rides, water rides, games, and themed attractions.[32]
• 114210 Hunting and Trapping — commercial hunting or fishing preserves and game farms (without lodging as the primary activity).[1]
• 7211 Traveler Accommodation — nature, hunting, or fishing preserves where lodging is the primary activity.[1]
• 924120 Administration of Conservation Programs — government administration and regulation of conservation, not park operation.[1]

The line that matters: 712190 is about land and natural settings shown largely as they are; a curated collection of captive animals or plants is 712130.

Ownership mix. Three very different owner types share this activity:

1. Government — the National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuges, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and state and local park systems operate the overwhelming majority of protected natural acreage and visitation. "National parks" appears in the definition, but the actual parks are government establishments (see the undercount note in Section 3).[1]
2. Nonprofits — land trusts and conservation organizations hold and steward land and run nature centers. There were about 1,281 land trusts in the U.S. as of the 2020 National Land Trust Census, having conserved roughly 61 million acres.[14] The Nature Conservancy alone reports more than 800 publicly accessible U.S. nature preserves.[16]
3. For-profit private operators — family-owned commercial attractions (the classic example is a privately owned show cave, such as Luray Caverns in Virginia, held by the Graves family since the 1870s, or Meramec Caverns in Missouri), plus private concessioners and hospitality companies that run services on public land.[18][19] These are the establishments that make 712190 look like a "business" in federal statistics.

3. How big it is

Federal business statistics measure only the private, employer slice of this industry. Our ground-truth figures below combine County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023, 2022 Economic Census concentration data, and the Small Business Administration (SBA) 2023 size standard — different surveys and years, not a same-year growth series.[2][3][4]

That works out to roughly $1.5 million of receipts per establishment (mixing the 2022 receipts base with the 2023 establishment count) and about $47,000 in average annual pay per worker — small operations. First-quarter payroll runs below one-quarter of the annual figure, consistent with a seasonal, warm-weather visitor business. Against the $19.5 million SBA threshold, effectively the entire private industry is "small business."[2][3][4]

The undercount — this is essential. CBP and the Economic Census count private-sector employer establishments (for-profit firms plus nonprofits with paid staff). They exclude government establishments and most non-employer/self-employed operators.[5][6] For most industries that is a minor gap. For nature parks it is enormous, because the two largest owner groups fall outside the counts:

• Government parks are not in these figures. National, state, and local parks — by far the biggest "nature parks" by land and visitation — are government establishments and are excluded, even though "national parks" is a textbook example of the code.[1][5]
• Volunteer-run land trusts are largely invisible. The nonprofit conservation world is backed by an estimated 234,000 volunteers and 6.4 million supporters and welcomed 16.7 million visitors in 2020, but many small land trusts have no paid payroll and never appear as employers.[14]

So the $1.21 billion of receipts and roughly 8,900 employees describe the commercial nature-attraction business, not the far larger public and philanthropic enterprise of American nature preservation. To see the scale of what is excluded: the NPS recorded about 323 million recreation visits and 13.0 million overnight stays in 2025, and estimated that visitors to its sites spent $29.0 billion in gateway regions in 2024, supporting 340,000 jobs and $56.3 billion of national economic output.[8][9] More broadly, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) puts the entire U.S. outdoor-recreation economy at $639.5 billion of value added, or 2.3% of gross domestic product (GDP), in 2023.[7] Those numbers describe a visitor economy that flows through hotels, gear, travel, and government far more than through this narrow NAICS line.

4. The investable universe

There is no meaningful pure-play public company in NAICS 712190; the industry is structurally private, nonprofit, and government. The public routes below are all adjacent or indirect — clearly labeled as such. (Tickers and share economics are reserved for this section and Section 10.)

Public companies (adjacent / indirect):

Private and nonprofit owners and operators (mostly not investable):

• Xanterra Travel Collection (owned by The Anschutz Corporation) — a private national-park hospitality and concession platform running lodges, restaurants, tours, and activities at destinations including Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Glacier, and Rocky Mountain.[28]
• Delaware North (the Jacobs family) — a private hospitality company with parks, resorts, lodging, food, retail, and concession operations.[29]
• Herschend — a family-owned attractions group with some wildlife and nature-themed assets, though much of its portfolio is amusement/theme-park/zoological rather than 712190.[30]
• The Nature Conservancy (TNC) — a nonprofit landowner with 800+ publicly accessible U.S. preserves; fiscal-year 2024 support and revenue of about $1.8 billion and roughly $8 billion of net assets, reporting protection of 11 million-plus U.S. acres.[15][16]
• National Audubon Society — about 161 locations and roughly 106,679 acres of centers and sanctuaries.[17]
• Land trusts (about 1,281) — roughly 61 million acres conserved nationwide.[14]
• Family-owned show caves and natural wonders — the National Caves Association (NCA) is a trade body of about 100 independent members; e.g., Meramec Caverns draws around 150,000 visitors a year.[18][19]
• National, state, and local park systems — the largest operators by land and visitation, funded by appropriations and fees.[1][8]

Takeaways: public-market investors have no direct way in — the listed names above are concession/hospitality, wildlife/amusement, or experiential-real-estate proxies, not nature-preserve exposure. Private investors can reach the genuine assets — individual attractions (rarely for sale; mostly multi-generational family businesses), park concessions won by contract, and conservation-grade land itself. There is no roll-up, no franchisor, and no scaled pure-play operating company to buy. Private concessioners operate public land; they do not own the underlying park.

5. How the money works

Because several owner types coexist, so do several economic models.

Commercial attractions (the for-profit core). A show cave or natural wonder is essentially a local monopoly on a unique physical feature. Owners make money on:

• Admissions / gate — the primary line; economics turn on annual visitor count × ticket price and are highly seasonal and weather-sensitive.
• Ancillary spend — parking, gift shop, food, guided or premium tours, on-site lodging, and add-on attractions (many caverns bolt on mazes, museums, or mini-golf to lift per-visitor spend).[19]
• Cost structure — largely fixed: land, the physical site, insurance, and a seasonal labor force. Once developed, incremental visitors are high-margin, so profitability is driven by volume and length of season — with heavy operating leverage, so a bad-weather year or a road closure hits hard.

Unit economics resemble a small, single-site tourist attraction: no same-store-sales network, no scale purchasing, value tied to a specific location and its highway traffic.

Concessions on public land. Private operators (Pursuit, Aramark, Xanterra, Delaware North) run lodging, food, retail, and tours inside public parks under contract. The NPS approves rates, and contracts specify the facilities and services the operator must provide; the operator pays a concession fee, typically a percentage of gross receipts.[12][24] Here the key metrics look like hospitality: lodging occupancy, average daily rate (ADR), and revenue per available room (RevPAR), plus contract tenure, renewal probability, and required capital investment. The central trade-off is yield versus capacity — ecosystem protection, infrastructure, and permits cap volume, so pricing, ancillary conversion, and lodging integration often matter more than adding visitors.

Nonprofits and conservation land. Land trusts, Audubon, and TNC do not earn an equity return. Their "revenue" is donations, grants, membership, endowment income, and occasional program or admission fees — TNC's roughly $1.8 billion fiscal-2024 total was overwhelmingly private gifts — and their "profit" is acres protected and stewarded.[15] For private investors the relevance is the tax and land angle:

• Conservation easements — a landowner donates development rights in perpetuity to a qualified charity or government body and may claim a federal income-tax deduction equal to the drop in the land's appraised value; the land stays privately owned.[20]
• Ecosystem-service monetization — carbon-offset credits from preserved or reforested land, wetland and endangered-species mitigation banking (selling credits to developers who must offset impacts elsewhere), and payments for watershed or habitat services. These turn holding land into cash flow and are a growing reason institutional capital buys conservation-grade acreage.

Government sites run on appropriations plus entrance and concession fees, outside private economics entirely.

Useful operating metrics across the space: visits and paid attendance, revenue per visitor, admission revenue per visitor, in-park food/retail/premium spending, labor cost per visitor, lodging RevPAR, and concession fee as a percentage of gross receipts.

6. What drives demand

• Leisure travel and disposable income. Attraction visits and premium lodging are discretionary; they track consumer confidence, employment, and domestic road-trip tourism.[7]
• Gas prices and drive-to tourism. Many commercial natural wonders are roadside, highway-dependent stops; fuel costs and travel patterns move their traffic.[19]
• Weather and seasonality. Warm months and good weather concentrate visitation, as the payroll seasonality in the federal data shows.[2]
• Outdoor-recreation interest. A broad, multi-year rise in hiking, birding, and nature tourism supports both attractions and nonprofit visitation; U.S. outdoor recreation is a $639.5 billion economy.[7] NPS visitation stayed substantial in 2025, with 26 park units setting records even as total visits eased from the prior year.[8]
• Population and gateway growth. Growth near park gateways feeds school, group, family, and repeat visitation, and spending that extends well beyond the entrance gate.[9]
• Philanthropy and giving cycles. Donations, grants, and endowment returns — the lifeblood of land trusts and conservation groups — rise and fall with wealth, markets, and tax policy.[14][15]
• Government budgets. Public-park capacity depends on federal and state appropriations and staffing, which are politically cyclical.

Forward-looking judgment: mature sites are more likely to create value through pricing, longer stays, and higher ancillary spending than through unlimited volume growth. Crowding and conservation rules can make scarcity economically valuable while capping physical expansion.

7. Regulation

Regulation is part of the business model here, not a side issue.

• Public-land mandate and concession contracts. For NPS properties, the Organic Act requires conservation and visitor enjoyment without impairing resources for future generations; commercial services must be "necessary and appropriate," environmentally responsible, and consistent with park objectives.[11] Concession contracts generally run 10 years or less (some up to 20); the NPS Commercial Services Program oversees nearly 500 contracts that together generate more than $1 billion a year and employ more than 25,000 people at peak season.[10][12] Contract terms shape capacity, prices, hours, renewal, and required capital spending.
• Cave and karst protection. Federally significant caves are protected under the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act (1988); commercial cave operators also face tour-safety, lighting, and structural rules.
• Land use and environmental law. Operating and stewarding natural land intersects with zoning, wetlands and the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, which can constrain development and shape mitigation-banking opportunities.
• Accessibility, safety, and liability. Sites must address Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) access where feasible; visitor-safety liability is material, though many states' recreational-use statutes limit landowner liability for public access. Where captive wildlife is displayed, the Animal Welfare Act and related U.S. Department of Agriculture rules apply.[31]
• Nonprofit and easement tax law — an active enforcement zone. Most conservation owners are 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations. A donated easement must be perpetual, go to a qualified organization, and rest on a qualified appraisal.[20] After widespread abuse of syndicated easements (promoters selling inflated deductions), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Treasury in October 2024 finalized rules treating certain syndicated deals as "listed transactions" with mandatory disclosure and steep penalties; the agency estimates roughly $36 billion in questionable deductions since 2010 and has won criminal convictions of major promoters. Legitimate landowner easements remain fully deductible, but the compliance and audit environment is now strict.[21]

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

• Local monopolies, local competition. A cavern, spring, or waterfall is one of a kind; direct head-to-head competition is limited. The real pressure comes from substitutes — nearby free or low-cost public lands (national forests, state parks) and other leisure options competing for the same day and dollar. Scenery, wildlife, access, permits, interpretation, brand, and lodging matter more than national advertising scale.
• Highly fragmented, no roll-up of the core. For-profit attractions are overwhelmingly small, single-site, family-owned businesses; there is no dominant operator or acquirer consolidating them (the NCA is a trade body of about 100 independent members, not a parent). The concentration data confirm a fragmented long tail: the largest 4 firms account for 23.4% of receipts, the top 8 for 31.1%, the top 20 for 43.7%, and the top 50 for 59.5%. The HHI is suppressed, so no precise concentration figure should be substituted.[3]
• Where consolidation happens. It is visible not in the preserves themselves but in the adjacent businesses — concession platforms, gateway hotels and resorts, wildlife and safari attractions, outdoor-tour operators, and experiential real estate. Among nonprofits, small land trusts have merged into stronger regional ones, and TNC is the dominant force by balance sheet and acreage.[14][18]
• Contracts, not ownership. Public land is rarely privatized. Private companies instead compete for operating contracts, leases, and commercial-use authorizations — attractive site scarcity, but with real renewal and contract-loss risk.

9. Risks

• Weather, climate, and degradation. Revenue is weather-exposed, and the underlying asset (a cave, spring, forest, or wetland) can be damaged by drought, flood, fire, smoke, storms, or over-visitation. NPS documents climate impacts on resources, operations, infrastructure, and visitation.[13]
• Thin margins, seasonality, operating leverage. High fixed costs plus a short season make a single bad year or access disruption painful.[2]
• Contract risk. For concessioners, loss of a concession, unfavorable renewal terms, rate controls, or required capital improvements can impair returns.
• Conservation limits. Carrying-capacity rules may block the volume growth an investment case assumes.
• Succession risk. For-profit sites are aging family businesses; generational transfer and loss of an owner-operator threaten continuity.
• Donation dependence. Nonprofits live and die on giving and endowment returns; a market or philanthropy downturn cuts stewardship capacity.[15]
• Tax-policy risk. Conservation-easement economics depend on IRS rules that are tightening; the crackdown on syndicated deals raises audit and reputational risk around land-based tax strategies.[21]
• Labor and remote operations. Seasonal hiring, employee housing, transport, and supply chains are difficult and costly at remote sites.
• Safety and reputation. Cave tours, trails, water features, and any captive-animal displays carry injury risk, insurance cost, and controversy exposure.
• Capital intensity. Trails, utilities, lodges, roads, and habitat work require recurring investment.
• Competition from free public lands. Government parks offer similar experiences at low or no cost, capping private pricing.
• Measurement and scalability. Federal statistics undercount government, nonprofit, and non-employer activity, and public companies rarely disclose park exposure cleanly — and the structural absence of a large pure-play operator means no efficient public-market entry and illiquid, one-off private assets.

10. How to invest and the outlook

Public-market routes (no pure play). The listed options are proxies, and share prices, dividend yields, and valuation multiples should be judged company by company because segment disclosure is incomplete:

• PRSU — the closest listed destination owner/operator.
• ARMK — diversified concession and hospitality, with nature-park economics buried inside a much larger company.
• PRKA, PRKS, FUN — small-cap or adjacent wildlife and amusement comparables, useful for attendance and per-capita-spend benchmarks, not exact 712190 representations.
• EPR — an experiential-real-estate (REIT) lens on attractions and lodging.

For any of these, analyze attendance, revenue per visitor, lodging RevPAR, contract tenure, capital spending, leverage, free cash flow, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA). Broad outdoor-recreation exposure (gear, travel, lodging) is a different, much larger trade and does not specifically capture 712190.[7]

Private-market routes.

• Own an attraction. Buying a profitable show cave or natural-wonder site is possible but rare; value hinges on visitor volume, highway access, and the ability to raise per-visitor spend.[19]
• Own or finance a concession. Acquire or lend against a park concession operator, or buy gateway lodging, campgrounds, or attractions — underwriting contract renewal and required maintenance carefully.
• Own conservation-grade land. Timberland, ranchland, and habitat acreage function as real assets with appreciation potential, income options (recreation leases, sustainable harvest), and tax benefits from a properly documented conservation easement.[20]
• Ecosystem-service and conservation finance. Carbon-credit and mitigation-banking strategies are the fastest-evolving way to earn cash flow from preserved land — genuine, if still-maturing, and best suited to patient capital.
• Philanthropic / impact vehicles. For those whose goal is conservation outcomes rather than returns, gifts and easements to land trusts and groups like TNC are the established path.[14][15]

Diligence should center on land and operating rights, contract renewal, required maintenance, environmental liabilities, insurance, labor availability, visitor concentration, weather exposure, and — crucially — the difference between owning an asset and merely holding an operating concession.

Near-term outlook (forward-looking). Demand for natural destinations should stay durable, but the investable opportunity is selective rather than broad. The commercial attraction business should remain steady but structurally low-margin — durable demand, offset by seasonality, weather risk, and no path to scale. Expect continued consolidation in concession platforms, gateway lodging, and small attractions, while government ownership, nonprofit participation, and conservation rules keep the industry structurally different from a conventional commercial sector. The more dynamic frontier is the land-and-conservation side, where carbon and mitigation markets are turning preserved nature into a cash-flowing asset class — even as a stricter IRS regime reshapes the tax-driven end of that market.[21] Bottom line: nature parks are an important economic and cultural sector, but for investors they are a private, real-asset and philanthropic play far more than a public-equity one.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. "2022 NAICS Definition — 712190 Nature Parks and Other Similar Institutions" (with cross-references). https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=712&input=712&year=2022
2. U.S. Census Bureau. "County Business Patterns: 2023," NAICS 712190. https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2023/econ/cbp/2023-cbp.html
3. U.S. Census Bureau. "2022 Economic Census — Concentration of Largest Firms / Receipts, NAICS 712190." https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN
4. U.S. Small Business Administration. "Table of Size Standards," NAICS 712190. 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
5. U.S. Census Bureau. "County Business Patterns — Coverage and Methodology." https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
6. U.S. Census Bureau. "Economic Census — Coverage and Methods." https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
7. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. "Outdoor Recreation Satellite Account, U.S. and States, 2023." 2024. https://www.bea.gov/news/2024/outdoor-recreation-satellite-account-us-and-states-2023
8. National Park Service. "Visitor Use Statistics — 2025 Visitation At-a-Glance." https://www.nps.gov/subjects/socialscience/visitor-use-statistics-dashboard.htm
9. National Park Service. "2024 Visitor Spending Effects." 2025. https://www.nps.gov/nature/customcf/NPS_Data_Visualization/national-index.html
10. National Park Service. "Concessions (Commercial Services Program)." https://www.nps.gov/subjects/concessions/index.htm
11. National Park Service. "Management Policies, Chapter 10: Commercial Visitor Services." https://www.nps.gov/subjects/policy/mp-10-commercial-services.htm
12. National Park Service. "Concessions Management" (contract terms; Yosemite). https://home.nps.gov/yose/learn/management/concessions.htm
13. National Park Service. "Climate Change Vulnerability (NPVuln)." https://www.nps.gov/subjects/climatechange/npvuln.htm
14. Land Trust Alliance. "2020 National Land Trust Census — 61 Million Acres Voluntarily Conserved." 2021. https://landtrustalliance.org/newsroom/press-releases/61-million-acres-voluntarily-conserved-in-america-2020-national-land-trust-census-report-reveals
15. The Nature Conservancy. "2024 Annual Report and Consolidated Financial Statements (FY2024)." https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/who-we-are/accountability/annual-report/
16. The Nature Conservancy. "Discover Nature Preserves Near You." https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/find-your-connection/
17. National Audubon Society. "About / Reports & Financials." https://www.audubon.org/about/reports-financials
18. National Caves Association. "About the NCA — America's Best Show Caves." https://cavern.com/about-the-nca/
19. Wikipedia. "Luray Caverns" and "Meramec Caverns." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meramec_Caverns
20. Internal Revenue Service. "Conservation Easements." https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/conservation-easements
21. IRS / U.S. Treasury (Federal Register). "Syndicated Conservation Easement Transactions as Listed Transactions (Final Regulations)." Oct. 8, 2024. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/10/08/2024-22963/syndicated-conservation-easement-transactions-as-listed-transactions
22. Pursuit Attractions & Hospitality (NYSE: PRSU). "Company Overview." https://investors.pursuit.com/overview/default.aspx
23. Aramark (NYSE: ARMK). "Form 10-K, Fiscal Year 2025." https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1584509/000158450925000219/0001584509-25-000219-index.htm
24. Parks! America (OTCQX: PRKA). "Form 10-Q, Quarter Ended March 29, 2026." https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1297937/000149315226022265/form10-q.htm
25. United Parks & Resorts (NYSE: PRKS). "Form 10-K for 2025." https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1564902/000119312526088288/prks-20251231.htm
26. Six Flags Entertainment (NYSE: FUN). "Form 10-K for 2025." https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1999001/000199900126000048/fun-20251231.htm
27. EPR Properties (NYSE: EPR). "Form 10-K for 2025." https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1045450/000104545026000007/epr-20251231.htm
28. Xanterra Travel Collection (The Anschutz Corporation). "Grand Canyon Hotel & Suites Acquisition." 2025. https://www.xanterra.com/stories/grand-canyon-hotel-suites-acquisition/
29. Delaware North. "Who We Are." https://www.delawarenorth.com/who-we-are/
30. Herschend. "About Herschend." https://www.hfecorp.com/about/
31. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. "Animal Welfare Resources." https://direct.aphis.usda.gov/animal-care/animal-welfare-resources
32. U.S. Census Bureau. "2022 NAICS Definition — 713110 Amusement and Theme Parks." https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=713&input=713&year=2022