A few thoughts on National Park Service rate hikes

I'd seen the proposal when it first came out, but, due to doing some Twitter research and other things, hadn't jumped on it right away.

First, let me state that I don't recall folks like the National Parks Conservation Association bitching too much when the Obama Administration replaced the old Parks Pass with the new Access Pass and forced people like me to subsidize the USFS and BLM because the government refused to charge more in extractive fees.

Nor do I recall the protests being a lot louder — and certainly not that long — when Dear Leader let guns back into national parks, and without a lot of pressure to do so, and that was with a Democratic-majority Congress.

Do I think every bit of protest by environmental groups over volume-based pricing for 17 parks is a way to gin up donations? No.

Do I think some of it is? Yes. Especially when I get emails warning of the fee hikes with "donate" buttons in the email.

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Now that that's out of the way, the fees themselves.

If the Trump Administration weren't simultaneously cutting the NPS budget, I actually wouldn't totally oppose such fees.

Fact is that NPCA et al know that most Grand Canyon visitors never get past walking along the South Rim in the tourist area, never get beyond seeing Delicate Arches as a parking lot distance (if they go that far), etc. Zion they will go to the start of the Narrows because you can get bused there.

So, in a vacuum, and not East Trumpistan?

I would:

A. Get rid of the Access Pass and go back to the old Parks Pass.
B. Through annual inspection of mines on federal lands, force Congress to overturn the General Mining Act of 1872. That gets rid of subsidizing BLM and USFS on hard-rock mining.
C. Find a similar way to price up lumbering in both agencies, though, outside of Alaska, timbering on federal lands seems to be in decline anyway.

With those preliminaries in place, I would support frequency pricing at some parks. Not all 17 on the list, but at:
1. Arches
2. Glacier
3. Grand Canyon
4. Grand Teton
5. Rainier
6. Rocky
7. Sequoia/Kings Canyon
8. Shenandoah
9. Yellowstone
10. Yosemite
11. Zion

About all of these fall into "iconic" parks. Shenandoah, like the California parks, gets listed as being near major urban areas.

And so, with that said, I'll add an 11th that East Trumpistan did not:
12. Great Smokies.

I might not make the frequency fees as high as has been proposed, but I would raise them.

It would drive the total "36-clickers," to use an old film photography phrase, elsewhere. Fine. Reduces stress on park highways. And, on cleanup. In general, people who want to see a park in depth are less likely to litter, etc.

As for minorities, lower-income in general, etc? Going back to a Parks Pass (let's say at the $50 fee it was) rather than the $80 Access Pass. provides 30 ways of solution right there.

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As for the NPCA donations ask?

Enviro groups have a high rate of churn among members, at least the "name" ones. So they push stuff like this.

Second, at least for Sierra Club, they pay employees crap.

A decade ago, it had an opening for a copy editor for its magazine. $33K a year. In San Francisco. Not "the Bay Area." In San Francisco. The City.

I generally don't give money to those groups.

I've even emailed a couple — if you first want to hire me as a copy editor, assistant managing editor, whatever, then we'll talk on donations.

The NPCA, unlike Sierra, is not a Gang Green group, nor is the Coalition for Biological Diversity, where I've twice sent such emails. OTOH, groups even smaller than NPCA sometimes have ethics problems.