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Fee Creep In the Parks

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    Last week I told you about the new, $80 America the Beautiful pass the federal government will be selling beginning New Year's Day. It will gain you access to national parks, U.S. Forest Service lands, the vast Bureau of Land Management empire, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Refuges, and, phew, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation properties.
    What I haven't been able to decipher just yet is, in response to this pass, whether we'll see some hike in daily, weekly or annual entrance fees to parks around the nation.
    But would that really be surprising? I mean, this new pass effectively raises the ceiling for national park entrance fees, since the outgoing National Parks Pass cost $50 and the new ATB pass represents a whopping 60 percent increase.
    The ATB pass also represents a 25 percent increase from the currently available $65 Golden Eagle Pass that gets you into all the same lands as the newly minted ATB pass.
    (In fact, shrewd folks might want to go out the last week of the year to their nearest federal lands agency office and buy a Golden Eagle Pass for $65. That'd put off for at least a year spending that extra $15.)
    Anyway, let me tell you about another case of fee creep in the national park system: If you want to reserve in advance a backcountry campsite in Grand Teton National Park, it will cost you $25 in 2007, up from, $15 this year.
    So, if you wait until 2007 to buy an ATB pass, and then make an advance reservation for a backcountry trip to Grand Teton, the cost will be $105 before you set out down the trail. That's a 66.5 percent increase from current levels. In one year.

    Now, Grand Teton routinely makes one-third of its backcountry sites available for advance reservation. The other two-thirds are held back for walk-up traffic, for which there is no reservation fee.
    I'm told the higher fee for reserving a site stems from the paperwork one person must handle. (Ironically, that one person in Grand Teton currently is on furlough...as the park doesn't have enough money to cover her position.)
    Apparently, those who typically seek advance reservations are not weekend warriors who simply want to head to one campsite, spend a night or two, and go home. No, apparently those who reserve in advance want to secure multiple campsites for an extended trip. I've done that a number of times in Yellowstone and Grand Teton when I've headed into the watery backcountry of Shoshone, Yellowstone and Jackson lakes. In those instances, you definitely want to know you have a site reserved.
    And, truth be told, a $25 fee for reserving any number of sites isn't that terrible. But a 40 percent increase in one year?
    And in these days of shrinking ranger forces, wouldn't you think park managers would want more people to reserve sites on-line through an automated system Grand Teton officials claim "simplifies and streamlines" the overall process rather than encouraging more and more people to descend on the visitor center staff with walk-in requests?

    I'm afraid we're entering a phase of rampant fee creep at the national parks as individual parks struggle to make ends meet with inadequate funding from Washington. Why else would we see such large percentage increases in fees?

    ^___

    In case you were wondering, backcountry travel in Grand Teton actually was up this year over 2005 levels. During 2005 the park issued 4,156 backcountry permits, and this year the total jumped to 4,889. No word on how many of those involved advance reservations.

Comments

Hey Jim, Did you know that Edward Abbey was also anarchist and a damn good one at that. More power to you Jim! Skoal, Snowbird

Two people can sign their name to the new $80 pass and not have to be related to one another (unlike the Park Pass or Golden Eagle). So if you have a good friend who visits parks often, go in on the deal together, and share the pass. $40/each ain't a bad deal! Or, head over to a National Park and buy your $50 pass before Dec. 31st, thus putting off the price increase for a year.

The Smithsonians are something of a special case, since the Smithsonians owe their existence to a non-profit foundation that explicitly prohibited the charging of entrance fees. As such, the Smithsonian makes up for the lack of entrance fee with a lot of fundraising and corporate sponsorship. For example, around 73,000 people made "contributing member" donations of $70 each to the Smithsonian. Somewhere on the other of $170 million is raised from private sources each year by the Smithsonian, and as noted above, this often means corporate sponsorships of programs and exhibits. The Smithsonian also has an entity called "Smithsonian Business Ventures" that seeks ways to commercialize the Smithsonian through concessions, theatres, gifts, sponsored tours, etc. - which contribute another $17 million or so to the bottom line. By contrast, the largest non-profit association supporting the Parks, Eastern National, which operates bookstores at most East Coast NPS sites, contributes only around $1-2 million per year to the National Park service based on information I could find online.

Yes, on the Smithsonian...an institution I've lost most of my respect for...if you walk in the Natural History Museum and look at the rotunda, you see the name Kenneth Behring all over the place. Behring gave a lot of money to the Smithsonian. But, this guy, besides being vilified in Seattle for trying to move the Seahawks to California when he owned it, is known as one of the biggest game hunters in the world, a man so legendary, he is known to shoot at elephants from helicopters. Behring belongs to an exclusive sportsman's club that celebrates this kind of hunting. He is otherwise reviled. Yet, when he opens up his pocketbook for the Smithsonian, you see his name celebrated right up front for everyone to see. That's in part how they raise money so that the Smithsonian is free of user fees. I don't need to rehash what I've said though about this still being a symptom issue, but I did want to say that Sabattis is right.

The parks belong to the US people. They are mine - I should not need to pay anything more to visit what is mine. User fees only real purpose is to create a barrier to keep out the non rich. It is a means to create more country clubs and golf courses for the rich. Either way so called user fees are obscene and should be repugnant to all Americans.

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