Making foreigners pay more for national park visits

That's the story, per the Beeb.

Note that three states will be most hit, because relatively few US national parks are unique.

Europeans can see Yellowstone's geysers in Iceland and bison in the wisent of Poland, for example. They can stay at home for the Alps instead of the Rockies. Chinese and other Asians can do Banff instead of the Rockies, and there are plenty of waterfalls, in a couple of exceptions I'm about to note, in Europe and Asia.

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There's only one Grand Canyon, and only one saguaro cactus, and both are in Arizona. I'm not sure how much foreign visitation Saguaro NP gets, and Tucson has other attractions, but Tusayan et al losing foreign visitors to the Grand Canyon would be big.

Many canyon visitors also do one or more of Utah's Mighty Five, and like with the Grand Canyon, the small towns in this area might be affected.

In the Pacific Northwest, Olympic's temperate rain forest and Crater Lake's starkness are semi-unique, but not biggies.

Further south? California's Redwoods, in the combined state and national parks, the giant sequoias in that national park, the all-around beauty of Yosemite Valley, and especially for Germans, it seems, the starkness of Death Valley all are special.

The parks that will have a steep hike in per-park fees for foreign visitors without a fee-hiked foreign Parks Pass? Acadia National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Everglades National Park, Glacier National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Parks, and Zion National Park.

So, we have Grand Canyon, two of the California parks, and two of Utah's Mighty Five. Why Arches isn't on the list I have no idea.

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That said, just days after The Donald announced this, The Louvre said it was more than doubling the admission cost for non-EU visitors. So, it's not like this is unique, or in terms of Trump-world, that bad. That said, he's just trying to soak visitors. He doesn't actually care about national parks and monuments; we already know that. 

Democrats care about the system somewhat more than Republicans, but not THAT much more. After all, they gave us

Environmental news roundup — #climatechange and #bucketlist problems

1. Climate change has become entrenched enough, and in northern latitudes, starting to produce feedback enough, that the Arctic of the last several thousands of years may be permanently gone. This, in turn, will have yet more feedback. Ocean shipping will put more big ships on the Northwest Passage and Northeast Passage. Their diesels will drop sooty pollution on remaining icecaps and glaciers, further speeding the melting.

Sadly, speaking of petrochemicals, per this piece, natives in the region are contributing their own feedback loops. And, by now, probably 80 percent of Inuit have either lost the skills, or abandoned the temperament, to run dogs rather than a snow machine.

2. Yellowstone's grizz may get re-protected under the Endangered Species Act. A bit of good news for the park and its wildlife in the middle of three red states with much of the population having a high animus toward grizzly, and wolves.



The Temple of Sinawava at the being-visited-to-death Zion National Park. More photos in this album.

3. Even as Utahans like Congresscritter Rob Bishop applaud President Trump for whacking away most of Bears Ears National Monument, thanks to the state of Utah's official promotional efforts and other things, visitation at national parks in the state continues to break records. The situation is worst (yes, worst, not best) at Zion. Rejecting Interior Dept. grifter-in-chief Ryan Zinke's plans for use-level pricing, I think Zion does need a reservation system. And, if that decreases visitation, not just controls it, fine. Nearly 5 million visitors a year would be tough enough for a park twice its size WITH most sections of the park visited equally.

But, given that the Kolob Canyons get almost no visitation, and even within the main section of Zion, 80 percent of its visitation is in Zion Canyon, something has to be done. Sadly, many richer bucket-listers won't be affected.

What COULD help, and immensely, is charging a surcharge for RVs, and making it by the length. Say a $5 minimum, then say another $5 for being over 32 feet. When campgrounds are being reconfigured to accommodate an RV flood, they need to pay for it. Not just at Zion, but all parks.

And if the Park Service is going to preserve mega-parks for the long-term future, it needs
1. Zion-like shuttles at more parks
2. Said shuttles to be electric (Zion's are propane, and I believe Yosemite's are too), for global warming, for cutting local air pollution, and for cutting local noise pollution
3. They need to have better scheduling than Yellowstone's does.
4. Fines need to be higher for visitor non-compliance on entry restrictions and bus use, and other things.
5. Here's another. Ban smoking on all trails in national parks.

4. Grist notes that people should avoid touting China's new carbon market trading program before it actually rolls out. Among other things? It's been in the pipeline a decade but is only being rolled out now, and it will only have simulated trading its first two years. I agree with that, as well as noting that Chinese municipal-level corruption is reason enough not to trust a capitalist system like this.

5. The GOPTaxScam includes opening a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. If ANWR in general, and the 1002 Area in particular, are so environmentally important (and I know they are, I'm being rhetorical), why did neither the Slickster nor Dear Leader make it a national monument, especially one inside the park service?

Answers? "Triangulation" and "all of the above energy strategy."

Beyond that, Jimmy Carter was arguably the last real environmentalist Democratic president. At a minimum, he knew how the Corps of Engineers lied about claims for dam benefits and he probably suspected BuRec did the same. He strikes me as more of an outdoorsman in general than either of his successors.

Schweitzer still anti-enviro

I'm talking about Montana Gov. Brian, and not saintly Albert, in case you didn't guess.
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The Montana governor has not only blocked bison from leaving Yellowstone, he says the Park Service should feed them hay.

Well, that's what created the current elk overpopulation, governor. That would be the same elk that, much as your hunters don't like to admit, are more likely than bison to be transmitting brucellosis.

Yellowstone wins, rich lose

Montana’s tony Yellowstone Club development, hardly more than a stone’s throw away from the national park, has filed for bankruptcy.

Grizzlies and wolves in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are crying a schadenfreude river as we speak.

Bush gets another Yellowstone smackdown

Once again, a federal judge has said that Bush's Yellowstone snowmobile policy will not pass environmental muster.

The Bush admin has agreed to a 40 percent cutback in its proposal as a short-term measure. With a new, Democratic administration in place, a long-term solution that's even less intrusive should be on the way.

Cheney’s Cody friends outrank Yellowstone wildlife

The east entrance to Yellowstone National Park, from Cody, Wyo., will be kept open year-round to benefit snowmobilers, no doubt largely ridden by Cody-area friends, acquaintances or suck-ups of Dick Cheney.

The National Park Service was all set to close the entrance in winter, a policy which has been under consideration for a decade. Avalanche risk was the primary concern. But, since reintroduced wolves congregate heavily in the northeastern part of the park, closure of the entrance from Cody made sense for other reasons, too.

Guess what? Somebody – a conveniently unnamed somebody in the weakest part of the story – from NPS headquarters in DC said last November that the White House needed to vet sections of the proposed change.

Voila! Soon, Cheney’s buddies got their winter snowmobile access. Beyond needlessly disturbing wildlife, it will cost millions of dinero a year for the already strapped NPS to keep the area avalanche-safe.

But, the White House, with the usual straight-faced lie, says this was all an internal NPS action:

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the consultation between the Park Service and the White House "is standard practice." He added, "We don't comment on those internal deliberations. The Park Service rendered their decision after taking into account all pertinent factors.”

Yet other problems? The noise factor from shooting off howitzers to deliberately trigger avalanches. The occasional unexploded round left inside Yellowstone. The fact that this could set a precedent for deliberately-launched avalanches (instead of more railroad-paid snowsheds) to keep rail lines open in Glacier NP.

Read the whole story for the gory details.

GAO faults feds and states for Yellowstone bison slaughter

The Government Accountability Office said the feds and the various states bordering Yellowstone are at fault for not providing more space outside the park for bison to migrate.

The Department of Livestock and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service have been unwilling to treat bison as wildlife, and instead they continue to manage them like livestock,” said Amy McNamara with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, a group that advocates for more bison habitat outside the park.

This year, more than 1,400 bison have already been killed in the annual ”hunt” slaughter which allegedly keeps bison from infecting cattle with brucellosis. (Actually, ranchers in the area should worry far more about elk passing on infections — the elk whose numbers will explode again if states start hunting wolves; the elk whose numbers already get inflated due to government feeding in the winter.

Environmental news round-up – wolf-baiting, ice-melting, elk-sickening

Government to look at claims of deliberate wolf-baiting

In a story High Country News reported last year, a Mogollon Rim ranch hand admitted deliberately baiting a Mexican gray wolf with cattle. His aim was to get the wolf to attack livestock, get its “third strike” on such attacks, and so be eligible for the euphemistic “elimination.”

Damn, even Idaho/Montana/Wyoming ranchers aren’t as bad with their reintroduced wolves as New Mexico/Arizona ones are with the reintroduced Mexican wolves.

Real brucellosis problem in Yellowstone

Is elk, not bison. Problem is, none of the Yellowstone-adjoining states have done much in the past to monitor elk populations. Problem No. 2 is that hunters don’t want the states culling elk, while they have no problem shooting a motionless bison from 20 yards.

West Antarctic ice melt speeds up

The West Antarctic ice sheet is calving more bergs and getting thinner. The Spiegel article is skeptical, in the good scientific sense, about tying this to global warming, mainly because the sheet has only been measured since the 1980s. Nonetheless, it certainly bears watching.