National park managers should not be proposing higher entrances fees, according to U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, who thinks the parks should boost traffic by offering "recreational opportunities" in the parks.
The Republican's comments were specific to a proposal by Yosemite National Park managers to boost their entrance fee by 50 percent, from $20 per week per carload to $30.
"Last year, Yosemite Park management sought to drastically reduce the park’s amenities that attract visitors and generate revenues. This year, it seeks to increase admission fees on those same visitors by 50 percent," the congressman said. "Raising fees in a stagnant economy makes as much sense as a shopkeeper raising prices in a sales slump. Contrary to assertions by park managers, tourists don’t go where they’re not welcomed, and the national parks compete for tourism with a vast array of other destinations. The National Park Service has apparently not conducted any economic study of the impact of this proposal on park visitation, but simply asserts that attendance is not dependent on price. Yet prices almost always impact demand, especially when consumers have a wide variety of other choices available to them.
"I am sensitive to NPS attempts to recover costs from park users rather than general taxpayers, but the appropriate way to do so is to increase the recreational opportunities within the park that attract visitors – not to impose arbitrary fee increases that discourage them."
On the other side of the country, U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, R-North Carolina, recently took a swipe at proposals by Cape Lookout National Seashore to tighten ORV regulations and institute permit fees for the vehicles.
"American's hard-earned tax dollars already pay for the operation of the seashore; they shouldn't be charged an additional fee to access it," Congressman Jones wrote to seashore officials in opposing the proposed management plan.
Neither congressman spoke of increasing the National Park Service's budget to avert entrance-fee increases.
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Comments
I was just reading some good stuff by Ed Abbey the other night and came across his essay on "Industrial Tourism" in Desert Solitare.
Perhaps all of us who value our parks should read that again. It's a true today as when he wrote it back in the stone age. Even worse, his prophecies for the future -- our present day -- have all come true and then some.
As if Yosemite wasn't already Disneyland National Park (as described by a fellow passenger I overheard on an overcrowded Valley shuttle bus in August, 2011).
At Cape Lookout they are changing the entire management plan, including ORV access. I understand the need to increase fees because through the NPS own proposed mismanagement plan, the added beauracracy will increase the costs of running the park.
There is nothing requiring the NPS to change the management plan and add all these regulations.
It would appear that neither you nor your passanger have been to Disneyland. The comparison is absurd.
"It would appear that neither you nor your passanger have been to Disneyland. The comparison is absurd."
Really?
Oh, yes. I guess it is. Yosemite costs a family something like $30 to spend a week while Dizzyland will lift a couple hundred from their pockets every day just to get through the gates. I guess the comparison is absurd after all.
Finally, a congressman that is willing to call the NPS out on their fee drunkeness.
"American's hard-earned tax dollars already pay for the operation of the seashore; they shouldn't be charged an additional fee to access it". Sounds like the growing discontent of taxpaying citizens is filtering up to Congress. As it should.
It's not a "fee to access it", it's a fee to access it with a potentially environmentally-hazardous ORV. Go there without one and don't pay that fee.
Classic capitalism. If folks want the extra stuff, pay the extra fee.
I want my tax dollars to go to preserving our wild & historic places. I don't want it going to providing joy-riding opportunities for others.
Barky,
In the Smokies it is a fee to access the backcountry with no amenities provided by the NPS. Then a fee to park and see fireflies. That is where my problem lay. And this is a growing trend across the NPS. Charging to park at a trailhead because they provide a bathroom or picnic table. It's shameful price gouging of public lands and people are fed up, rightfully so. But when you have to pay for the gross bureacratic salary bloat as is so painfull obvious within the NPS, then illegal fees are a result.
At Cape Lookout most people use the ORV to transport them and gear to remote locations, park and recreate, and then use the ORV to exit. They don't joy ride, at least that's been my experience. Same goes for CHNSRA, people use the ORV to get to remote areas for recreation, not for joy riding. I'm not opposed to an ORV access fee, but those fees collected should primarily be used for maintaining ORV ramps and trails.