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Reader Participation Day: Should There Be a Moratorium On Additions To the National Park System?

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If you follow national parks and the National Park Service to any degree, you likely know that the agency has a very hefty maintenance backlog. Latest figures show that backlog is somewhere between $8 billion and $9 billion.

And yet, members of Congress have no qualms about adding new units to the National Park System. Would you run your household this way? Is it fiscally prudent to keep adding units when we can't seem to afford the ones we already have?

Or, because some of these opportunities are not going to be around forever, should those that merit entrance to that elite club called the National Park System be added with the details about how to pay for them, as well as getting serious about wiping out the backlog, put off for some other day?

Bottom line, travelers: Should there be a moratorium on additions to the National Park System until the red ink is wiped out?

Comments

I think it would be ok for more land to be protected but that doesn't mean we need to make it into a drivable scenic route with luxury cabins and what not. Can't there just be parks that are only backpacking & hike through only? Do we need roads, and staff to oversee every park? These type of parks would offer a more "primitive" camping experience for the more primitive type of outdoors man. Also, isn't the NPS a non-profit? Couldn't we do fundraisers to help lower costs?


Random Walker:

Nope, I support continuous acquisition, like in handing over Mount St Helens National Volcanic Monument to the NPS as long as there is an agreement of no further development.

I don't think that's the goal of those advocating for places like MSH to be transferred to the NPS. They actually want visitor facilities (there was a year-round visitor center there that was shut down due to lack of funding) and perhaps even lodging and new campground facilities. One of the difficulties there for tourism is that there is no road linking the two sides. If it ever gets added to the NPS, there will likely be development.

We have some interesting acquisitions in our local East Bay Regional Park District. They acquire land by purchase and/or donation, but set them aside until they have the further means to open them to people. That at least keeps them from being turned into housing or shopping centers. I'm all for it since we're losing a lot of our local open space.


I don't think that's the goal of those advocating for places like MSH to be transferred to the NPS.

Tell me about it! Screw tourism, wilderness for wilderness's sake I say..
Crap, they have what, three roads slashed into it, had 3 damn visitors centers at one time.
(Ya, I finished off a whole pot of coffee this morning..;-})


oopsy


With the number of NPS units approaching 400 and around 3675 state parks (source: Wikipedia) in the U.S., the public sector is already addressing the preservation, use and enjoyment of a huge number of "park" resources. That said, I'm not ready to call for a moratorium on the creation of new national parks. Instead, I'd like to see two things: tightening of the designation criteria and the removal of as much Congressional political interference as possible from the creation process. The first item would be relatively easy; the second one would be far harder, if not downright impossible at this point. Still, I think a relatively large and diversified advisory commission would result in quality submissions for designation and less controversy that could boost calls for no more parks. Another alternative to a moratorium could be the deauthorization of marginal parks. I'm sure we all have our candidates for such a process.


RoadRanger:

With the number of NPS units approaching 400 and around 3675 state parks (source: Wikipedia) in the U.S., the public sector is already addressing the preservation, use and enjoyment of a huge number of "park" resources. That said, I'm not ready to call for a moratorium on the creation of new national parks. Instead, I'd like to see two things: tightening of the designation criteria and the removal of as much Congressional political interference as possible from the creation process. The first item would be relatively easy; the second one would be far harder, if not downright impossible at this point. Still, I think a relatively large and diversified advisory commission would result in quality submissions for designation and less controversy that could boost calls for no more parks. Another alternative to a moratorium could be the deauthorization of marginal parks. I'm sure we all have our candidates for such a process.

By law, all NPS units must be authorized by Congressional legislation. Good luck trying to pry that power out of the Congress. Not sure about any commission. Bipartisan commissions have gotten rather messy over the years since they aren't exactly free from political influence.

Like it or not - in order to get funding for preservation, there is going to have to be a give in take regarding recreational uses.

And Captcha for today is "political enticed". And after editing my original comment, it's "Law trounced".


No responsible person (or government) should acquire things that they don't know how they will pay for. "Gee, there's a great little spot for a vacation home. But I don't have the money to pay the mortgage or the home owners association. I'll just buy it anyway."

If you are having trouble maintaining what you have, you don't get more. I definitely support a moratorium on new Park acquisitions until current ones can be maintained. And I agree with the poster who said that all $ collector for park entrances should go to the NPS and not into the general federal coffers. (I don't know how it is currently handled, but that makes sense)

Mark


Funds from entrance fees are allocated in a complicated formula depending on a set of criteria, but let's keep things simple: in the good 'ole days parks that charged entrance fees shipped all the money to the general treasury and could generally rely on Congress to fund park activities through the budget process. Then pay to play became more fashionable in the nineties, and we had the fee-demonstration program wherein land management agencies were encouraged to introduce fees for activities and entrance and agencies and units were able to keep a percentage to fund operations and projects. Things were a little loosy-goosy under the program, fees were being instituted for everything under the sun, and people started to get amped up about it. Then Congress passed the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA) in part to clean up the embarrassing mess, and in part to benefit parks and other lands. Now, a typical large park retains a small portion of their entrance fees to pay for "cost-of-collection" activities; 80% of the rest is retained by the park for specific "projects" (actually a complicated system of "grant"-type project proposals are formulated and sent up the chain for approval based on the political flavor of the year and then the dollars are given "back" to the park for the projects that the national leadership feels follow national strategic initiatives) and 20% is set aside for similar proposals from park units which do not benefit from entrance fees, including many that are prohibited from collecting them by their enabling legislation. That is the simplified version of course, and does not include what happens with concession franchise fees or other streams of income to the parks.


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