Of course, President Trump finds room w/in those cuts to give the BLM a $16 million increase to its Oil and Gas Management program and an $8 million increase within its Coal Management program. Not to mention assumes extra revenue from oil/gas drilling lease sales in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge(thank you GOP Senate!).

This is what happens when we elect a businessman to the White House. The best way to make your voices heard? Call your Senators and Reps and let them know that our federally protected lands and natural resources need SERIOUS adequate and dedicated funding. And that increased entrance fees by themselves are but apathetic table scraps to the mission of the NPS in addition to being an insult to the American people.

second is that you are too confident in your hypothesis.

Because I know I am right. 🙂

I mean, two things…

The first is that increases in funding would increase our parks’ ability to handle more users. I honestly don’t think this is the case. Talking with friends who work in the park service, these most popular parks where the fee increases are being imposed are absolutely swamped. You could build more privys and ramp up shuttle frequency, but at the end of the day the land itself has to handle the impact. A dirt trail can only take so much traffic before it turns into a landslide where the critical edge breaks down, or turns 20′ wide where a mud puddle forms. And what then? Well then we have to make it more durable – hopefully using natural and local materials like rocks, but often simply by pouring down concrete. These newly paved trails will then degrade the wilderness experience, and encourage more people to hike farther in, as hardier trails are easier to hike. And as the large crowds move deeper into the backcountry, they’ll increasingly effect the habits of wildlife – something the park service is also tasked with protecting. And as people hike farther in, they’re gonna start needing to poop somewhere – so there’s either lots of poop everywhere now, or we need to build another privy. It’s the induced-demand feedback loop.

I think a lot of this is caused by the internet. Since the internet is a low-friction environment, it creates winner-take-all scenarios. For example, say I want to buy some trekking poles on the internet, so I search for them on Amazon, or REI, or whatever (the fact that these sites make up vast amounts of online retail is another example of the winner-take-all effect). There are 500 options for trekking poles, but I want to buy something I’m sure will have good quality for the price – and since I’m lazy, that means I’m going to only look at poles that have lots of reviews and star votes. So 450 poles have no reviews and no votes. 40 have one review or one vote. And about 5 have 3000 votes and 500 reviews, and 3 of those 5 show reviews and stars that are negative-to-mixed. So I’m going to limit my choice two sets of poles, which happen to already be the most popular, and I’ll probably write a review and give a star vote, contributing to these models’ dominance. The same effect will happen with parks. For example, Angel’s Landing is the most popular trail in the history of time. As such, there are going to be a large number of pictures of it on insta-tweet-face-tagram, lots of people will see it, and it will get even more popular. Now, Angel’s Landing is a cool trail, no doubt about it, but the use it recieves is outsized compared to how cool it is – there are lots of trails that are equally cool, but are less popular, simply because they are less popular and therefore get less exposure on social media.

This isn’t to say that I don’t think the parks don’t need increased funding. Just saying that increasing funding will not solve all our problems.

The second is that you are too confident in your hypothesis. This is the narrative fallacy at work. Humans are excellent at pattern recognition, and understand stories better than unexplained cause and effect, so we automatically create narratives that fit our current worldview to explain patterns that we see. However, this can lead to blind spots in our knowledge, and mistakes in our actions. I’m not saying it is impossible that your hypothesis is correct – but there are innumerable other hypotheses that might also be correct, and we should be open to these as well. A better method to follow is heuristics. For example: increasing park fees will restrict access to poorer people, and this is bad, therefore we should oppose these fee increases; or: these fee increases are being supported by the GOP, which has a bad record when it comes to environmental conservation and preservation, so we sould oppose these fee increases.

I’d also like to note that my original comment wasn’t in favor of these fee increases – I’m following those two heuristics I outlined above. I just wanted to point out that there is nothing wrong with fee increases as an option to decrease demand in overburdened parks, given a largely economically equitable society. But given that our society is not economically equitable, we should focus on creating more economic equality, *and then* fee increases would be a reasonable path to take. In the current environment, I’d be more in favor of a mixture of online lottery and first-come-first-served (like JMT permits, for example) where parks have determined that they need to limit visitors (especially during peak months). I’d also be happy with additional permits being issued for visiting less popular areas of the park – for example, if you plan on going deep into the wilderness on a 5 day backpacking trip, rather than just, say, taking the sunset shot of Delicate Arch.

…or properly fund the parks in the first place so the infrastructure can handle the people. But that ain’t gonna happen. I truly believe the fee increases are part of a long con to further privatize the parks. And making them even more for the affluent. And focused on their needs. And, in the process, open up the backcountry where most people don’t go so as to more resource exploration.

There are three ways to solve this problem.

First, lines. Just limit the total number of people allowed in at any one time. A line form outside the gate, and you wait. And wait. And wait… “Well if you don’t want to wait, show up early!” you might say – but everyone will think that. So you get the choice of waiting for the gates to open in the early morning, or waiting for the line to move in the later morning. Say goodbye to your plan to summit and start heading down before noon to avoid the thunderstorms… Besides, while this is ostensibly fairer to the less financially well-off, it shifts the burden from those who are money poor to those who are time poor – often the same people anyway.

Second, lotteries. These are a bit better than lines – at least you aren’t wasting your time sitting at the entrance gate. And they’re somewhat fairer for poor people (though if you’re required to go on a certain date, those with more flexible schedules win out – again, poor people lose). However, this doesn’t account for *how much* someone wants to go. If Abby has been waiting her whole life to visit Yosemite, and Bryan enters the lottery for kicks but would be just as happy to stay home and watch tv, it seems like Abby should get the permit – but this won’t happen in a lottery, where everyone has an equal chance.

Third, fees. Higher fees will decrease the number of people who are willing to pay the price to enter. There’s no waiting in line, and it will ration permits to people who *really* want to go versus people who aren’t that interested. But, obviously, poor people lose out.

My personal opinion is that there should be a forth option considered – make the hike in longer – but this often isn’t feasible in places where major highways run nearby, precludes the old and sickly (and poor people are more likely to be sick) and sometimes simply doesn’t work (as can be seen by how many people do a 16 mile, high altitude day hike to Conundrum Hot Springs as their first hike ever).

The common denominator here, and what we should really be focusing on, in my opinion, is that poor people lose out no matter what scheme you choose. And while it is reasonable to debate the actual merits of one scheme over another, I think the larger conversation should focus on the root cause of the problem – income inequality. As the poor become poorer and the rich become richer, all of these schemes increase in filtering for affluence, adding to the natural filter of having the time and inclination to choose such a vacation. When everyone is on approximately equal footing, all these schemes are reasonable and fair, if onerous.

This problem / discussion has been a long time coming, though I certainly agree that Trump and his admin have forced it to the front burner. I haven’t actually seen the DOI or NPS budget for 2018 (have you?) so I can’t comment on just how much was slashed. Our local paper had an editorial that said entrance fees amounted to $70M last year; I was surprised that it was so low.

I agree we should all try to fight against the entrance fee increases, but it seems to be much more important to fight for sufficient funding to cover how the NPS should manage and sustain our parks.

(As a side note, the current admin — much like the last 4 — and Congress do not seem to draw any connection between taxes and spending. Yes, Trump’s ideas would greatly benefit businesses and will very likely help the rich, but he doesn’t seem to care whether that explodes our national debt or not. Sure he’s a businessman, but he’s also one with multiple bankruptcies.)

The new Trump budget cuts hundreds of millions from the NPS. These fee increases are a direct response to that, especially in light of the growing maintenance backlog.

Their strategy, with many constituencies, is to divide and conquer. Don’t fall for it. Unite and fight back!

We might be stuck with these increases for now, but if we each get more politically active, if we network with other constituencies equally outraged, we can reverse recent election trends in 2018 and 2020. Then, we can expect our new leaders to get their priorities in order and fund America’s Best Idea to the level they deserve.

I’ve been amazed at how many Republican-dominated towns, and Chambers of Commerce, in locales just outside of places like Shenandoah National Park have banded together to fight these increases. They know their closeby NPS unit is a magnet for the tourism economy they depend on. They know with decreased visitation comes loss of jobs and bankruptcies for small businesses that depend on Park visitors. They are bucking their usual political and ideological BFFs. On this issue, they deserve our support.

Some excellent points. Thanks for sharing.

I suspect the powers that be want the numbers to go down. Less revenue, bigger maintenance backlog, more cause to privatize.