For something that's important to me, sure. If I feel the government isn't doing its job I try to step up through things like volunteering to plant apple trees on historic battlefields, picking up garbage along the C&O Canal towpath, or dropping a few extra bucks in the box at the small parks with no entrance fees. There are many ways to make a difference. Changing legislation and federal funding is just one of them. Writing to your elected representatives or chaining yourself to a redwood tree are others. My two children are hopefully becoming staunch advocates of our national treasures. The first step in saving our parks is getting people to appreciate them (and stop trashing them) in the first place. If we can accomplish that, I believe the rest will take care of itself. I see the parks primarily as a responsibility, not just a right.

What's fair is that everyone has the right to their opinions and the right express themselves. I see people wasting money on a daily basis on unnecessary things -- cigarettes, alcohol and drugs, toenail polish, i-pods, tanning salons, cell phones, exercise gyms, perfume, gold necklaces, cable television, body piercing (and the attendant jewelry to plug up the holes they just made), professional sports events and the team clothing they feel is necessary to buy, gas guzzling behemoths, Hyundais with fancy hubcaps and foglights, 4-person families in 5-bedroom, 3-bath McMansions pumping thousands of cubic feet of air conditioning all summer long, sprinkling perfectly good drinking water on their lawns and driving their lawn tractors around as they drink bottled water and don't take the time to recycle that plastic bottle but instead send it to the landfill. If people get their priorities in line, the vast majority of them can afford a trip to the park.

As a homeschool parent who pays thousands of dollars to the public school system each year but wants nothing to do with it, I feel your pain. It also annoys me that for-profit entities are grabbing up pieces of our national heritage. Bad bad bad.

"as they drink bottled water and don't take the time to recycle that plastic bottle but instead send it to the landfill"

If it is recycled, chances are it'll be shipped (using fossil fuel) to China where it will be incinerated and send back to America as particulate matter via the jet stream. Almost better to bury it. Best not to buy plastic at all. Right.

Oh yeah, and paying to enjoy the parks: this blog seems fixated at the least and obsessed at the worst on park fees. Search for "fee" and you'll get over 100 results including:

Fee Creep In the Parks
Entrance Fee Hikes: Time to Say No?
Entrance Fee Trivia
Poll: $80 ATB Fee is Too High
How Much Will it Cost to Attend A Campfire Talk?
Zion NP Raising Entrance Fees
Placing An Economic Value on National Parks
Your National Parks Pass Doesn't Always Cover Your Entrance Fee
Fee Creep Reaches Olympic National Park
Entrance Fees and National Park Attendance

That's just the first ten. And they all say the same thing: fees are bad. Ok. Point taken. This latest article is a regurgitation of other fee articles on this site. I look forward to reading more articles NOT about fees.

It's easy to not be bothered by increases in fees when you can pay them. Many Americans can't. There was a time (not all that long ago) when the parks were havens for overworked, underpaid families who were allowed a bit of nature to refresh and heal. Now they can't afford it. The middle class are getting squeezed out of the parks and lower income people?... forget it. This is a travesty considering that the National Parks should reflect the democratic ideal of being "public parks."

This is why the discussion of fees matters. We aren't talking about people not being able to afford entering Tahoe or Aspen, we're talking about the nation's parks which belong to the people.

Jon,

The problem with your argument is that you are making a generalization about all people who don't have means to enter the Park. From the fact that some people don't spend their money wisely, you come to the generalization that park fees might be afforded by all people if they only made different consumer choices. At least that's how I'm reading your argument...That's first of all not true of all people. Secondly, even if it were, it would still be an equity issue since people with means would still be afforded the right to make the same stupid consumer choices and afford the price and subsequent user fees for the parks. No matter what, there is an equity issue. That's why I asked you whether you believed your willingness to pay for a shortfall through user fees was a justification for everyone.

I think the user fee issue when it comes to parks is relatively lightweight because the parks have long squeezed out lower class people (except of a certain type - and they are forced into working in the parks to get in - an ironically good deal, but still a forced choice; people of means can either work or not work). When it comes to transportation costs (for instance, public transportation), health care, utilities fees (heat for instance on the Pine Ridge Reservation costs more in the winter than the entire per capita income of Lakota Indians), user fees of various kinds are already creating vast inequity discrepancies among values most people hold to be values in common. What's happening in parks, which applies more to the middle class, is squeezing people there, and we only push the inequities further when people who can afford to pay the fees do so because they can and are happy to do so. My point is that's not the only issue here, and it's not sound reasoning to raise the spending choices of some poorer people as though we are all born with equal opportunities or as though those choices always apply and are always relevant.

Finally, for those concerned about privatization, it's not at all hard to see why this is a step toward privatization, not simply because underfunding produces the impetus to say that public control isn't working, but because the park consumer has been re-defined to mean those having the means to consume. That creates a profit motive, which is best exploited by private enterprise. While that proves an efficient mechanism for those most able to afford the new reality, a lot of people are entirely left out, often through no fault and certainly no choice of their own.

(By the way, on another matter, the Yellowstone Newspaper feeds are live for anyone interested).

Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World

We're now experiencing the Republican way -- lower those taxes but raise the fees. The Democrat way, at least in the past, is to lower the fees and raise the taxes. Everything costs money to maintain. People want to enjoy the parks but don't want to make the hard choices necessary to keep them up. Let's see, entrance fee for Yosemite or that Barry Bonds replica jersey? Gasoline to pay for the drive to Yellowstone, or a year's supply of cigarettes? Should I drop that soda can on the ground and let the NPS maintenance guy pick it up, or should I shove it back in my bag and leave no trace? Sadly, most people choose in favor of short-term gratification or convenience and don't think long-term or globally. We are a nation of short-sighted materialistic opportunists who for the most part don't care enough about the world that our great-grandkids will inherit. That's what we're up against, our own self-centeredness. People need to care first before they'll act.

The parks are up against a myriad of businesses, services (and scams) that Americans are made to believe they must have: cell phones (and now i-phones), text messaging, internet connections with online shopping, cable tv, sports cars, Hummers, satellite radio, a tv and pc in every room, a guest room in the house, more bathrooms than people living in the house, a riding mower because yard work is tiring and a gym membership because there's no time for exercise elsewhere, chemicals to kill clover because we've been brainwashed into believing it's a weed... the list goes on, and on, and on. This is why people don't have money to visit a park once in a while -- their wallets are being bombarded on a daily basis with convenient ways to empty them out. We're not savers, we enjoy spending. We can't say "no". We have no self control.

-- Jon Merryman

We live in different parts of the country and I'm probably expressing my disgust with the locals here. Regardless of income level, they still have cell phones, they still drive fancy cars, and I could probably pick out a half dozen other major things they waste their money on.

I would hope people who are better off would be willing to pay their fair share in taxes to support our national parks and indirectly support those who can't afford an entrance fee for whatever reason. People are generally lousy money managers. Agreed, some people are so far down on the totem pole they have nothing to cut back on, but I'd bet those same people are more worried about putting food on the table and keeping their kids in school than making a trip to the Everglades.

I see people coming into this country with absolutely nothing - don't speak the language -- a total disadvantage. Yet after a single generation their kids are attending college and doing well. Then there are others that grew up here -- speak English -- are given plenty of opportunities to make something of themselves, yet get sucked into the abyss of culture over common sense. It's completely exasperating. Yes I believe that in this country we are all in charge of our own destinies. Many are admittedly trapped or severly handicapped, while still many others opt to remain trapped by their own choices.

I've made plenty of sacrifices to be able to travel to as many parks as I want with my wife and children before they grow up too fast. A smaller house closer to work, a much smaller car, a job that's not my passion but pays the bills, no cable tv, I don't buy music - I listen to the radio, I referee high school sports to make additional income. Still think if it's important to you - you can make it happen.

-- Jon Merryman

What irks me, we the middle class sacrifice so much for this great nation: The excessive burden of taxes, the blood for Bush's war in Iraq, and the heavy laden of labor that moves this great country of ours. Are goverment rewards us with a National Parks system that's dilapidated with huge needs for infrastructure repairs, a short professional staff to maintain it, and a budget that's a pittance that bares shame...if not sever ridicule! If we the people care enough about our National Parks, let are voices be heard and vote green in the next election in 2008. We all deserve better than are present do nothing administration.