t’sokay. I didn’t mean to sound pissy.

Many of the larger parks are exploring shuttles (hybrid and pure electric) within their boundaries (which them used decades ago). This is the way to go: Get people out of their own cars. Mammoth Cave has a good set of paths from location to location, some specifically set aside for bikes. Acadia was fortunate to…

It’s funny, how we can have a 598 billion dollar defense budget approved no problem, but things that definitely serve the greater good like National Parks have a, small in comparison, 3 billion dollar budget, and we can’t find a way to just plain fund them federally. Shameful. Teddy Roosevelt is rolling over in his…

Believe it or not, I get a lot of penny-pinchers and those who just can’t afford current pricing for national park entry and camping. At a guess, about 10-15% of my calls are people who are disappointed when it turns out they can’t afford to hike or camp where they want. It’s not unusual for me to have to charge…

All those white women in floppy hats who voted for trump (53%) are happy because this is what they wanted.

$70.00 per car, plus an additional $30.00 per person in the car. Family of four? That’ll be $190.00 please.

“See, told you nobody wants or needs these parks! Drill baby drill!”

Yep. One year from now:

I’m so glad that we are finally recognizing that only the wealthy should have access to our greatest natural treasures.

I agree that parks need better funding, but disagree that raising park entrance/access fees is the way to do it. Instead, federal funding should be increased not decreased, as is the current plan.

I also disagree that raising the entrance fee won’t negatively impact visitation. You mentioned the increased cost still…

taxes [for the wealthy] go down -> user fees [for everyone else] go up

Only if they’re ethically harvested.

What if it’s all natural, organic, free-range human trafficking?

Human trafficking is the worst. It needs to stay out of our parks!

No parks director will ever tell you that their goal is to limit or reduce visitation. Where did you come up with that?

Yes, environmental concerns due to human traffic is relevant, but only to the consolidated areas that 90% of park guests visit. National Parks are massive, and the education of visitors pays…

National Moneymints, as Ed Abbey called them. I’d argue that they need less infrastructure in the first place. What Zinke could do that I would agree with is tripling (or more) the fees for tour buses and helicopter tours.

This might cost me and a lot of others our jobs. Shit.

The higher entry fees would be acceptable if it meant improving (or even preserving) the conservation and scientific efforts within the national parks, but accompanied by the reduction in these efforts, the increased drilling, etc., it’s fucked up. And of course they only include the national parks that people…

Those are theme park prices. National parks are supposed to be a public resource, not fucking Six Flags.

If you plan on visiting any of these parks next summer, it might be a good time to buy the $80 annual pass that gets you in to any and all of them as many times as you want for the next 12 months.