The future has arrived, and not in a cool, shiny, space-age, spandex-like Star Trek kind of way.
Booz Allen already has its claws in with Rec DOT gov, and I suspect we’ll continue to see public lands increasingly administered for profit as more services are slashed and fewer employees are available to administer the lands Americans own.
From “More Perfect Union”
Access will continue to shrink, especially for those already facing economic constraints.
Shame.
Recently, the Florida Phoenix published a piece that encapsulates this increasing trend: “Private company controls access to public land at Florida national park.”
Prices are skyrocketing at popular swimming holes in Ocala National Forest. What used to be a $6 swim is now $13 per person plus $20 for parking.
You want to bring the kids for a day of frolicking?
Better hope you budgeted for it.
As the article notes:
“What was built as a public good now functions like a luxury resort… Corporations manage the bookings. Contractors collect the fees. Visitors navigate a web of apps, lotteries, and credit card forms just to reach what they already own.”
From iStock
Some of you reading this will know Sandra Friend, who has been long active in Florida hiking circles. She’s quoted in the article and rightly points out that longtime visitors are being priced out.
It’s not a small thing. It’s systemic rot.
And it is not just about Florida.
It’s a continuation of what I talked about in The Scourge of Rec Dot Gov, Back to the 1920s, and Thoughts on Gatekeeping.
The thread running through all these pieces is the slow erosion of access to the public lands. And in classic 21st-century American corporatist fashion, it’s not done by outright removal but through obfuscation, economic barriers, and normalizing the idea that public land access is for those who get points on their credit card.
We were told that Rec.gov was about modernization and access. What we got is something that resembles Ticketmaster with red rock deserts. Complete with upselling of gear, bot services scooping up permits, and for the privilege of reserving your campsite (if you can snag one)? A transaction fee. Because of course.
And it’s not just permits.
More and more, services once handled by on-the-ground rangers that know the land, the conditions, and the institution are being offloaded to third-party vendors and private contractors. Public lands aren’t being managed; they’re being administered, processed, and optimized.
They are getting corporatized.
From Café Viereck
In 1986, my dad gave up overtime pay to take me on a camping trip to the White Mountains. That trip to New Hampshire did not just lead to a mountain summit; it changed the trajectory of my life. It led to places a 12-year-old Catholic school kid from Rhode Island’s suburbs would not have imagined previously.
On Mt. Lafayette in 1986. My first mountain hike. Blurry, out of focus, pixelated. But I’ll take it.
But in 2025, I’m not sure that same trip would even happen. Not unless we had the right credit card, knew how to game a reservation app, had the time available, and could afford $13-a-head day-use fees.
This isn’t nostalgia. It’s a warning.
What happens to the kid whose parents can’t take the day off or afford $75 for a family of four to experience the outdoors? What happens when wild spaces become premium experiences curated for the affluent?
We celebrate trails. But as Ray Jardine once wrote, “We celebrate not the trail, but the wild places it passes through.”
And if contractors, apps, and upcharges guard those wild places, then they’re not wild anymore.
Found long ago via Google Image Search
And we’ve all seen how those stories end.
But I’d rather end on a story of hope –
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed… We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.”
— Wallace Stegner, The Wilderness Letter
Chief’s Head in Rocky Mtn National Park
Thanks for continuing to sound the alarm. The wolves will never leave the door.
We dodged a bullet with public land sales getting dropped from the federal spending bill. That gave me a bit of hope. Wow, did it have to be universally unpopular though. The powers that be really tried to force it through.
I doubt the powers that be are done yet. 🙁