Metro Vancouver estimates that its regional parks and greenways received a total of 10.8 million visits in 2014.

That’s up 4.4 percent from the previous year, according to a staff report headed to Metro’s regional parks committee.

Pacific Spirit Regional Park garnered the most visits at 2.1 million, a gain of 13.3 percent over 2013.

Surrey Bend Regional Park received the least visits, at 3,882, but it’s only expected to officially open to the public this year.

The report, which covers 21 regional parks and four greenways, says 11 of these experienced record numbers of visits.

It suggests the increases in visits were due to favourable weather, the popularity of the outdoors, an “increasing localized population”, and “increasingly accurate counting techniques”.

Visits peaked in August.

“When sunshine hours and dry days increase, visitor use generally will rise (regardless of precipitation),” the report states.

After Pacific Spirit, the most popular regional parks in 2014 were Capilano River (1.4 million visits) and Boundary Bay (1.1 million visits).

Meanwhile, 23,977 volunteer-hours were logged in regional parks.

The report notes that 53 percent of stewardship work in regional parks involves removing invasive plants.