Recent comments

These park-by-park raises in entrance fees are NOT being driven by rangers or park superintendents. They have been mandated from the Washington office of the NPS. Yet each park is being required to announce them individually, possibly to spread the anger rather than having a focused target where it belongs. It's hard, but don't blame the messengers at the park level. We appealed Washington's mandated entrance fee level in our park and were blown off. JLongstreet A national park superintendent

Well, here is what would need to be studied on this point. Are people not visiting parks because of user fees? I don't think that's the case; the trip to a park is already quite significant as it is in getting to one and getting back from one. If user fees are proving to keep some people back, what is the demographic? Are they usually more local, regional, etc.? So, supply and demand economics only works here if people know and figure in the cost before they go to a park. It's very unlikely that someone drives 2,000 miles and then turns back because they didn't realize there was a user fee. Perhaps, the Park Service banks on the idea that the entrance fee is tantamount to something like the price of salt or the price of oil. If something is considered a necessity, then people will pay more and more and more for it. Since the price of the user fee is still insignificant compared with other travel costs, it's not likely to figure in, and so the person faced with user fee is likely to treat it as a necessary cost. Thus, they can keep raising it - whatever the visitation numbers (since the user fees aren't the cause of the decline, simply a correlation) - and be able to raise more and more revenue. Economics isn't as simple as supply and demand because we rarely are dealing with anything that has a one-to-one correlation. Yet, whatever the economics or the reasons, I think the value reasons against them are compelling. If you are right and rangers want lower visitation so that there are fewer people and see a connection between lower class people and abuse of parks, then that all on its own should be resisted because its another case of mistaking a correlation with a cause. Since class isn't the cause of "park destruction", then user fees only arbitrarily can work to help protect these parks, and we replace one good for an evil needlessly.

Jeremy,

This is a touching and fitting tribute to an NPS legendary great. I still remember how you and I listened to him and eventually dubbed him "Guru Hathaway".

Funny to think that it's been a dozen years since we crammed into that tiny apartment. Also funny to think that we shared our summer of formal interpretation together.

It is wrong for the park to keep the dogs tethered. Jurisdictions across the United States are banning this practice, because it's cruel to dogs. For information about the cruelties of tethering, visit the Sled Dog Action Coalition website, http://www.helpsleddogs.org

I think we should charge for using the toilet. They do in Bulgaria. Charge $1 each, payable by debit card, or in remote areas, quarters. But seriously, I'm with you on closing shop for programs that are under/unfunded. Close enough roads due to lack of repair, and visitors will SCREAM.

Ranger X, something like a cross between George Catlin and a Wild West Show, eh? How retro... It might work!

That's great in theory Ranger, but the problem is that most of those roads were pushed in wherever the logging/mining/inholding interest wanted them. That was usually the quickest route, not the most sustainable. Many have culverts which are going to blow (if they haven't already), dumping large amounts of sediment into what could be pristine creeks, streams, and rivers and damaging water quality and riparian habitat. We really need to get in there and obliterate those old roads or at least rehab the major drainage structures. It might take a century, but if we can at least mitigate the major damage areas, nature will slowly but surely take care of the rest. Of course, thats not going to happen, because if we don't have the money to maintain them we certainly won't have it to obliterate them.

How 'bout letting some of those $4.3 billion roads turn into very nice hiking trails or 4x4 trails at the price of: FREE! :)

"Which makes me wonder just a little why the agency is so focused on spending $3 billion through the highly touted National Park Centennial Initiative to build new stuff that it won't be able to maintain?" -- Unfortunately, its always easier (not necessarily 'easy') to get funding for construction rather than maintenance. If I want to build new trails, I can find grant money for that in a minute. If I want to maintain existing trails, I can find the money but have to jump through more hoops. If I want to repair trailhead facilities like parking areas or put a new water system in a campground, there isn't a dime to spare. People always like to be able to look at something fun to be able to say "that's where our money went". Fixing an SST isn't exactly what most people have in mind. I'm not generally on the anti-privatization bandwagon, but this way they can build all kinds of new facilites and then five years later they won't have the money to maintain them anymore. They'll have no choice (not that it will break their hearts) but to farm it out to a concessionaire or permittee to fix, maintain, use, and charge money for - but I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

Kurt, Apparently you have never seen the deer overpasses built over I-78 in the Watchung Reservation in Joisey.

"seems 'ol Billy Clinton didn't do a whole lot for the Park Service, did he??" A little history lesson: Congress was controlled by Republicans during Clinton's tenure, and it's up to Congress to to approve the President's budget. But Newt was too busy with his "Contract on America" and trying to embarass the president by spending millions of taxpayer dollars on a failed attempt to convict the president for lying about his private life. In 2001, Bush promised billions for the NPS, mostly for roads and construction. Then came 9/11 and those billions got funneled to Haliburton instead. And when adjusted for inflation, the trend in Bush's NPS budgets is downward.