Pennsylvania is a beautiful state — and the state has done a wonderful job over its history in preserving that natural beauty by establishing state parks.

The state has 121 state parks encompassing more than 300,000 acres of public land. That beautiful land is available for all to use and enjoy, free of charge. The ability to enjoy the great outdoors and the outdoors’ natural beauty really is one of Pennsylvania’s greatest selling points. Rivers, mountains, trails, forests are accessible in every county.

But one has to wonder if now is the time to add to that roster of 121 state parks. Gov. Tom Wolf wants to do just that. Wolf announced last week plans to build three new state parks — Susquehanna Riverlands in York County, Vosburg Neck in Wyoming County, and Big Elk Creek in Chester County — at a cost of $45 million. The Vosburg Neck site will be Wyoming County’s first state park, while the Big Elk Creek location is under significant pressure from residential and commercial development. In York County, the Susquehanna Riverlands site adjoins and builds on large tracts of already preserved open space. Also, each site is within a half-hour of heavily populated areas where land for recreation use is often at a premium.

But that $45 million number is a big pill to swallow when one considers a report released last year by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. For a state with so many state parks, Pennsylvania ranked pretty low nationally for its economic dependency on outdoor recreation. Outdoor recreation as a percentage of the state’s gross domestic product was 1.5%, more than New York’s 1.2% but a far cry from states like Indiana (2.6%), Wyoming (3.4%) or Montana (4.3%).

State officials like to cite a 2012 Penn State study, The Economic Impact of Pennsylvania’s State Parks, that showed visitors to state parks and forests generated $1.145 billion in sales to the PA economy, which supported more than 12,000 jobs. Another study of state forest use in 2011 showed that most visitors spend money within 50 miles of the state forest they visit, with average expenditures ranging from $80 to $200 per trip. That seems like a huge number until one compares Pennsylvania to other states that truly make their state parks a part of their economy. While the state has a lot of parkland, it’s not adding much to the state’s economy compared to other states. Perhaps the $45 million investment would have been better served on the state’s existing parkland.

As we noted earlier, Pennsylvania has done an outstanding job of preserving much of its natural beauty for the public. In fact, nearly 1% of all the land in Pennsylvania is preserved by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Are taxpayers and visitors getting all they should from that investment?

That’s a question that deserves some real thought.