How much would you pay to walk around Grand Prismatic Spring or watch Old Faithful erupt?/Rebecca Latson file
A new video (below) on how best to fund national parks, built around the maintenance backlog at Yellowstone National Park, wonders how much you would be willing to pay to visit the park, watch Old Faithful steam and bellow and spurt, and perhaps catch sight of a grizzly bear?
It's not a new question. From time to time over the years Op-Eds appear, either arguing for higher -- much higher in some cases -- entrance fees, others saying the National Park System should be free to enter.
Back in 2017 a poll was released with a claim that higher entrance fees would hurt park gateway towns because, at the time, 64 percent of those surveyed said they would be less likely to visit a national park if entrance fees increased.
Under that proposal from then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, there would have been a more than doubling of entrance fees at 17 national parks for nearly half the year. Interior Department staff estimated it would raise $70 million to help address the maintenance backlog. The proposed $70 fee for a week, if approved, would have applied to Yellowstone, Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Denali, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Olympic, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Yosemite, Acadia, Mount Rainier, Joshua Tree, Shenandoah, and Zion national parks.
But the proposal was criticized and opposed by members of Congress, attorneys general from around the country, and a vast majority of Americans who commented on it.
In the end, there was a $5 increase added to the fees to enter a number of parks, including Yellowstone, where the fee inched up to $35 for a private vehicle entering the park and staying for seven days.
Every year there seems to be a number of parks proposing, and imposing, higher fees, whether it's to enter the park or for backcountry permits or camping fees or some other amenity fee. Even with passage of the Great American Outdoors Act, which was designed to give the National Park Service $6.5 billion over five years to apply towards its maintenance backlog, which last was estimated at $12 billion (the Park Service no longer announces the backlog total), parks are raising fees because there's simply not enough money to go around.
Indeed, GAOA is not considered by everyone to be the vehicle to cure the park system's continually growing maintenance backlog.
Against that backdrop, the Property and Environment Research Center -- PERC-- , a free market environmental think tank based in Bozeman, Montana, has released a video that pushes the idea of raising entrance fees to help parks stay on top of their maintenance.
"What would you pay to see the grandeur of the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone, the otherworldliness of geysers and thermal features, or the paint-palette colors of Grand Prismatic Spring, or to see a grizzly bear, or a wolf in the wild," Brian Yablonski, PERC's CEO, asks viewers. "Well, the answer apparently is not much."
In the 7-minute video, which features Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly discussing his park's maintenance woes and the lack of funding to adequately address them, Sholly points out that a $35 fee for a family of four to spend 3.2 days (the average stay) in the park works out to $2.89 per person per day.
"A very miniscule amount of the total trip cost," notes the superintendent.
To visit the Space Needle in Seattle, it costs a family of four $122, said Yablonski. A trip to Disney World in Florida costs $110 per person per day, he added.
Possible remedies, Yablonki suggested, would be charging foreign visitors more than U.S. residents, going to a per-day fee per person, a per-person fee vs. a per-car entrance fee, or a per-day vehicle entrance fee vs. a weekly fee.
"Users should feel good about user fees, because user fees actually stay in the park, and they go to fund the very thing that the user is there to see," he said. "What would you be willing to pay?"
Comments
Either our tax dollars pay for this (which they are not sufficiently) or you pay to play. It is pretty simple.
If I had a trip planned for the next year, and prices went up, I would be annoyed. But if I had not planned the trip yet, I do not think a reasonable price of even a few hundred for a week would be a problem. We spent 3 weeks in West Yellowstone in 2011, we paid $!500 or so for the 3 week stay. Booking for 2022 would cost you $775 a week for a premium site, or $110 a day.
I would say up to $300 week is reasonable, maybe with day options of $100, so that maybe if someone coming through just wanted the day.
Non US Citizens should pay more since the park is partially subsidized with tax dollars. Maybe set the price at $500 a week and offer a $200 patriot discount for US Citizens. Anyone over 65 could get a discount as well as anyone with Medicaid (easily identifiable as low income) could be free.
I think a $100 per car (vans and SUVs $200) per day would be good. Kind of an entry fee plus congestion charge in one. Keep the camping site fee the same.
I don't like the idea. One of the reasons why national parks were considered a revolutionary idea was because they didn't price out people depending on ability to pay. Certainly nominal fees are something that most can agree with, but pricing people out of even means testing for reduced/free visitation is going to result in a lot of people deciding that they're not worth visiting. They should be properly financed by the federal government.
That's a bit of an extreme take. Even federal lands recreation passes for seniors and disabled are available to permanent residents. I know plenty of people who have been permanent residents for decades who hadn't become naturalized, and they pay taxes like anyone else.
Parks should charge like a profit seeking business . Whatever that would be to cover maintaining and improving the park. Privatization would be the best solution
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A few years ago I paid $10 for a lifetime Senior Pass. Each time I enter a NP I feel guilty so I sometimes still pay the entrance fee. if I camp within the park, I get 50% off the site fee. The NPS should be permitted to discontiue the senior discount for camping. The Senior Pass is now $80, but a steal if one visits a federal property more than a few times. Veteran's get into all national parks and monuments free, which is as it should be. Foreign visitors, on the other hand, which account for a substantial percentage of visitors, should be made to pay double or triple what a US citizen pays since US taxpayers are substantially subsidizing our public lands. Perhaps charging the general public a graduated fee schedule, say, 1-day, 3-day, or 7-day pass might be set so as to generate more $$ but still not out-price thoese of limited means. Most US visitors do not spend a whole week at any NP. Setting a base entrance fee at 7 days automatically loses money for the park.
the first passenger should pay $40 per day and others in the same car $20 per day Fares for non-citizens should be double that amount. they pay no taxes but overwhelm Yellowstone. It is no longer a National park , bua a World Park!
I'd just point out that the standard annual federal recreation pass is $80 and almost anyone is eligible including international visitors. Until that is no longer considered valid, I'm not sure why anyone would think a $50 visitor fee makes any sense when it would make far more sense to just buy an annual pass.