Would it make sense to turn management of Bryce Canyon National Park entirely over to a business?/Kurt Repanshek
With a park system that is being strangled by its maintenance backlog and operating costs, would the National Park Service, and the system, be better off if the agency outsourced entire parks?
That isn't necessarily a ridiculous idea on its face. Already the Park Service contracts with others to manage its lodgings, restaurants, and many campgrounds, and it relies heavily on volunteers to cope with visitors. So why not go all in? Would it make a stronger, more efficient, and better managed park system if individual units were treated, say, as franchises that were independently managed?
The idea was raised last month in Bozeman, Montana, during a three-day workshop the Property and Environment Research Center held on the next century of the National Park Service. The topic certainly is timely, as the Park Service's centennial arrives on August 25, 2016, and, at least outwardly, more emphasis so far has been placed on how to celebrate the agency rather than what can make the agency better going forward.
Understandably, with a maintenance backlog estimated at more than $11.5 billion, congressional appropriations relatively flat, and unwieldy concession operations, fiscal fitness should be a key aspect of any long-range planning by the agency.
From the perspective of one of the workshop's presenters, Holly Fretwell, the Park Service appears to be an inefficient agency that likely could benefit by placing the day-to-day operation of some, if not many, of its units into the hands of the business community.
'To me, if we thought about this from some sort of economic perspective, the point of the National Park Service, the reason that you would want sort of that umbrella entity, is to lower the transaction cost of having these parks function," Ms. Fretwell, a research fellow at PERC and an adjunct economics instructor at Montana State University, said in a follow-up interview. "If it's not doing that, if it's actually increasing the transaction costs, then it's not serving its purpose. And I think at this point it might be increasing those transaction costs."
Whether the Park Service's staggering fiscal morass is due to managerial pitfalls or congressional underfunding has been, and will continue to be, debated. By placing some units under outside managers -- franchisees could be one descriptor -- not only could lead the units to become economically viable, but also help control Congress's appetite for creating park system units that might not quite fit the mold.
Would a First State National Monument be any less if a non-profit organization ran it, much like the Mount Vernon Ladies Association runs George Washington's home? Should $8 million-$26 million in tax dollars be spent in the coming years to fund the proposed Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, or should an outside group step forward with a plan to raise those funds on its own and operate such a park under the NPS umbrella?
'Why do we have a National Park Service anyway? What is the NPS, and what is it doing for us?" questioned Ms. Fretwell. "Is it providing a great service and helping us lower the transaction costs for us to have these wonderful parks, or is it not?"
There still would be a need for a Park Service, she went on, to manage park units that don't quite fit a business model but which we as a society still want preserved, either for their historical significance or natural resources. Units that might fit that description could include Buck Island Reef National Monument in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Mojave National Preserve in California, or St. Croix Island National Historic Site in Maine.
"I have a concern for these areas that are worthy of protection, but they can't pay for themselves. I don't want to cut those out and say everybody should be able to run as a franchise and everybody should be self-sufficient and everything's fine and dandy," Ms. Fretwell explained. "I do think that there are places worth protecting that will not be financially self-sufficient. I do think there are places for protecting that we do want people to recreate in that, sort of as a general populace, if they were privately run and managed the fees to go in there would be so high that most of us wouldn't be able to go.
"... I guess my big goal is to try to say how can we manage for those that can be better managed as a private sector or as public entity with sort of this franchise idea, because I don't think it's politically feasible or even politically appropriate at this time to say privatize them. I think that just turns too many people off. We're not going to get anywhere that way."
Buck Island Reef, which protects "one of the finest marine gardens in the Caribbean Sea," might not lend itself to private management/National Park Foundation
While she sees possibilities for creating "franchises," if you will, Ms. Fretwell also believes prospective units of the park system could be better evaluated than they currently are if they had a groundswell of support and also met a currently undefined set of standards or parameters for being a "national park."
"If there's a big enough group that says we really should be protecting this because it's a wonderful recreation area and we don't want it to be developed ... in that sense then we should be able to make it reasonably self-sufficient and then by golly let's create a business plan," she said. "The way that you get into the National Park System now is you create a business plan and you figure out how you're going to manage this, and you apply for a franchise."
That approach already can be seen, to a certain extent, across the country. The Nature Conservancy manages many of its own properties, and even owns the majority (nearly 11,000 acres) of the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas and co-manages it with the Park Service. The Audubon Society owns and runs the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary on Cape Cod. These non-profits have developed successful business plans to operate lands that would seem natural additions to the National Park System.
"If it really is worthy to be there, then people need to see it's worthiness and its value for the long-term period, and you need to be able to generate revenues for it to cover the costs for the long-term," said Ms. Fretwell.
While the "national park" cachet is potent, and has led to efforts to rebrand units of the park system as "national parks," Ms. Fretwell doesn't fear that a unit operated by a business rather than the National Park Service would lose its drawing appeal.
'In my mind, it's still going to be a national park. It's under the National Park Service, and if you've gotten that franchise then you've said, 'I am worthy and this area is worthy of National Park System status,'" she said.
'Is it (the NPS) helping us, helping the parks be more functional today, or is it making them more costly? I don't have an answer to that, it's sort of a rhetorical question. But I think it needs to be addressed.'
Comments
But Rick. When I was on the board of NPCA, we never turned down a conservative's money, either. In fact, we had so many entangling alliances I couldn't recognize the place anymore. Just for the record, environmentalists have no problem with big corporations pursuing their agendas--most recently solar power, wind power, and the abatement of climate change. In fact, back to my days on the board of NPCA, our magazine was running ads for Jeep Cherokee, while Audubon Magazine sported an ad of a Chrysler SUV pounding up a wilderness streambed. I am all for criticizing "dirty money," but you know what? Much of ours is dirty, too. Great fortunes are built by stepping on toes. Ouch! You shouldn't do that, Mr. Rockefeller, but yes, we'll be glad to take your money for Jackson Hole, the Smokies, and Acadia.
America is a messy place--full of contradictions and inconsistencies. The question remains before us: How do we fund these things called national parks? One of these days, we will have to stop pointing fingers and resolve the issue. I am all for starting the process now.
Alfred...
Yup. I live in a town with a tourism-based economy. I know about dirty money, literally.
There is a world of difference between a Jeep or a Chrysler and an organization formed with the precise purpose of working against things I believe in.
Rick,
All you've done is pointing out that you don't like the goals and funding of the organization, but you've said nada about the idea. You got your thinking priorities backward. Ideas and principles should stand or fall on their own, not based on who supports them. We already see too much of this in current politics with both parties who only like ideas that they came up with.
Now, that's not to say that we can like an idea while questioning the motives of the supporters. But, that's a separate debate.
So, who's going to debate the original idea or answer my question about how the NPS spends its budget? :)
Thanks for the sources Michael. I was just doing the math after a quick check of the number of households and the NPS budget. It doesn't solve the problem either way of course but it does influence my opinion somewhat. It could also hurt the credibility of the source. I hope it’s my numbers that are off somehow and not the NPCA’s. It is odd to me that they site so many different sources for their figure.
The number you sited didn't surprise me while mine did. $2.50 vs $25 is not insignificant. Then take into account how many households don't pay any federal taxes and the number would increase even more. Factor in those who don't care or visit the parks etc. and the numbers could get really interesting. If privatizing is an option certainly something any buyer would want to understand.
I am not a fan of the argument that the parks add to local economies. While I don’t dispute that is true, it opens the debate of who then should be paying for the parks or how much. That is, should a special tax be levied on those businesses that benefit from everyone else’s tax dollars? I liken it to the professional sports teams that argue cities need to build them huge new stadiums because they are so good for the local economy.
I also see a graphic from NPCA stating new parks aren't part of the problem. I think this is short sighted as any new park is certainly going to eventually add to the maintainence backlog sometime in the future.
I do not know much about NPCA but am a huge fan of the parks.
The case of CHNSRA, managerial pitfalls, NGO political influence, and inflexibility has dramaticly increased cost of managing that park. Many feel they increased the size of thier beauracracy simply because they can, with little benefit to the park or it's resources.
The same can said about Cape Lookout and Assateague, where they are reinventing the management plans solely because of NGO influence and management inflexibility that will raise the cost of managing these parks as well.
I would prefer allowing States to own and manage these parks instead of privatizing.
You see what I mean, Rick, in your statement: "There is a world of difference between a Jeep or a Chrysler and an organization formed with the precise purpose of working against things I believe in." Indeed there is. My grandfather once said the automobile would destroy America. And if the machinations of the automobile lobby in Washington, D.C., are not intended to do just that, what are? The biggest battles environmentalists have lost have been funded by the auto industry. That "maintenance backlog" the Park Service so boldly announces is almost entirely roads and parking lots. In Yellowstone, that backlog is an estimated $560 million.
Just who are we kidding here? Ourselves. I have always wondered why my book, ALLIES OF THE EARTH: RAILROADS AND THE SOUL OF PRESERVATION, never caught on with the environmental community, for which it was written. Now I know. Environmentalists never see the problem as having anything to do with themselves. It's always the other guy's car, and the other guy's airplane flight, and the other guy's second home in the mountains, and the other guy's investments in corporate America. We are clean because our motives are clean.
No, we're not. We are just as tied up into knots--and full of inconsistencies. We want to preach from a comfortable pulpit just as much as "the other guy." Edward Abbey hated cars in the national parks, but loved ramming his pickup truck through the desert just outside. All of my friends have done "low impact" hiking in Nepal, but how in God's name did they get there? "We have met the enemy, and he is us," said Pogo, that famous cartoon character from the 1960s. That still sticks with me today. We get nowhere by pointing fingers. We rather concede that all of us are guilty and need to mend our ways.
End of sermon, and yes, my pulpit is very comfortable, thanks to central heating run with oil. I am about to get in my car and get a cup of coffee. I should walk but it is four blocks away. So again, we see what Pogo meant.
Absolutely true, Dr. Runte.
However, if each of us does all we can to minimize our impacts by walking or biking when possible, by reducing home fuel use through good insulation, by turning the thermostat down just two degrees in winter and up two in summer, using solar power any way we can, buying fuel-efficient vehicles and literally hundreds of other available options, what can happen?
Yes, we are all part of the problem. But if we are willing to try just a little, we can all be part of the solution.
Let's not forget the F350 diesel truck used to pull the horses to the trails... I usually ride from my house to the trails.