The Antiplanner is traveling to Washington DC today where I’ll testify tomorrow before the House Public Lands Subcommittee on federal land recreation fees. By an extraordinary coincidence, tomorrow the Cato Institute will release my policy paper recommending that Congress allow the Forest Service, Park Service, and other public land agencies to charge recreationists fair market value to use the public lands.
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Have you ever studied or written about the 1872 Mining Law, which is still in effect? It allows the government to sell federal lands to private interest for $5 per acre (was fair market value in 1872) to private interest for mining purposes. It had led to several lawsuits recently and seems a bit ridiculous.
Bennett beat me to it.
Nevertheless, I’m all for charging to recreate – esp with internal combustion – on public land. I’m also for raising…erm…”fees” to fight fires, to mine, to log, to do any kind of use on public land.
DS
” recommending that Congress allow the Forest Service, Park Service, and other public land agencies to charge recreationists fair market value to use the public lands.”
Disagree. If said lands are really public owned, they should not be paid for by taxes AND entrance fees. This is a perfect opportunity to depoliticize parks by removing them from taxpayer support and having them rely solely on user fees and donations, as do many conservation trusts and non-profits. It’s also the perfect opportunity to cut the pork parks created solely to help politicians get re-elected.
I’m curious, Randall. Does your paper mention that parks could be self-supporting if power and money were wrest away from concession companies like Aramark (owned by Goldman Sachs) and Xanterra?
Finally, some parks need to go so far as to ban all internal combustion engines, including those in heavy equipment owned and operated by said parks.
Nevertheless, I’m all for charging to recreate – esp with internal combustion –
Remember, generally speaking, that planners are liars. While they howl about “spewing carbon” and the “true” costs of internal combustion engines, they promote policies that increase CO2 output, such as timing traffic lights to maximize red lights and congestion. As long as lying planners continue such hypocrisy, they don’t have a leg to stand on.
The environmental damage caused by roads and cars in national parks is well documented. Some might want to charge more for the privilege of polluting parks, while others, including the renown desert anarchist Edward Abbey, have called for no more cars in national parks. Having seen the damage firsthand, and given the preservation mandate of the Organic Act, I call for an immediate ban of all motorized vehicles in national parks. “Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs–anything–but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives out.”
Frank wrote:
The environmental damage caused by roads and cars in national parks is well documented.
How about the many federal parkways around the nation, including those that serve as part of the transportation network of Washington, D.C. and its suburbs?
And the longer-distance rural motor roads like the Colonial Parkway (Va.); the Blue Ridge Parkway (N.C. and Va.); and the Natchez Trace Parkway (Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee)?
I’m referring to real national parks. You know, Yosemite, Zion, Sequoia, Crater Lake, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Rainier, Grand Canyon…the list goes on.
I’m also talking about things such as sand rails in the dune areas, snowmobiles near calving grounds, and 4-wheelers tearin’ it up and running over desert tortoises, bunny dens, sidewinders, fragile cryptogamic soil etc.
DS
Agreed. Don’t forget boats on Crater Lake and on the damn creations that are Hetch Hetchy and Lake Powell. No more snow blowers that blast bark and limbs off 300-year-old Shasta red firs. No more Caterpillars of the mechanized varieties. No leaf blowers. No chain saws. Abbey had it right: “We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places. An increasingly pagan and hedonistic people (thank God!), we are learning finally that the forests and mountains and desert canyons are holier than our churches. Therefore let us behave accordingly.” Amen.
Have you guys been to many national parks? If it were not for cars inside parks, there would be very very few visitors to national parks. Even the Grand Canyon can only afford a limited shuttle during the summer tour season. What are you going to do with the other 58 national parks without cars? Try Death Valley in the summer without a car! Try the largest national park without motorized transport (a car gets you nowhere)!
No cars = no people = no public support = no national parks.
On what planet is it a legitimate government function to own land?
Sell it, sell it all, let the Sierra Club, Dan and similar hypocrites buy the land and run it. Especially the parks.
The plain truth is that the people do not want parks. They want beer, smokes, pizza and drugs and sex. They visit parks twice in a lifetime, because the wife makes them.
This is all just another system of smug, fat faced middle and upper class toffs using the system to force the taxpayer to fund their smug, fat faced wishes. Even then, they hardly even use the parks. Hey DS, when were you last in a National Park and for how long? Why should a poor or lower middle class citizen pay for your whims?
The grease of roasted taxpayer running down your porcine cheeks as you munch on the crackling skins of your fellow citizens disgusts me.
National Park attendance in 2011: 278,939,216 . This is per the National Park Service and is therefore probably a fraud, inflated by 200% or more. Even using their figure we have the citizens visiting the park less than once a year. Big surprise.
Sell it to the big Enviros and expose the fraud.
I dare any national forest or park to propose a true user fee that doesn’t give its friends a highly reduced per-use seasonal pass. The government fees are amazingly receptive to rent-seeking and screwing the occasional distant user.
By the way, the most visited National Park, more than twice as visited as any other, is just a road with a nice view.
http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/national-parks/most-visited-parks-photos/
“No cars = no people = no public support = no national parks.”
I worked in Denali for a summer in college. No cars, lots of people, great park.
Sandy Teal:
“Have you guys been to many national parks?”
What does this have to do with the argument that cars and roads are harmful to national parks? But to answer your question, for a decade I worked and lived in several national parks (and if you’d been paying attention, you’d know that).
“If it were not for cars inside parks, there would be very very few visitors to national parks.”
Please support this assertion. Abbey’s suggestion that people “walk. . . . [o]r ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs–anything” hints that access can happen without cars.
“Even the Grand Canyon can only afford a limited shuttle during the summer tour season.”
Zion has a mandatory shuttle system for six months due to lack of parking and air quality in the canyon. The shuttle is paid for by user fees. Please provide evidence that “the Grand Canyon can only afford a limited shuttle”.
What are you going to do with the other 58 national parks without cars? Try Death Valley in the summer without a car! Try the largest national park without motorized transport (a car gets you nowhere)!
“No cars = no people = no public support = no national parks.”
Slippery slope. Bare assertion. Please try again.
I’ve backpacked in many parks and will in Yellowstone this summer. I don’t think the reason for preservation is the ability to visit – rather, the beauty is the reason.
DS
Ah, yes, GRSM, a park that was created by the federal government’s forceful eviction of the Cherokee people in the 19th century and farmers and homesteaders in the 20th century. It is also the most polluted park, again showing that cars/roads have severe environmental consequences in national parks.
Yes, it has the most visitation of any single unit, but of all 400 units, it receives only 3.4%.
Finally, it is the federal government who created the situation by improving roads in the 1960s, thereby doubling visitation.
The NPS went on a road-building binge in the 1960s, whoring itself out to the industrial tourism industry. Another example: the Kolob Canyon region of Zion National Park. The January 1962 edition of National Wildland News documents one instance of NPS subverting wilderness and ignoring their preservation mandate. The article quotes the western representative of the National Parks Association, who wrote a letter to Zion’s superintendent imploring him not to build a seven mile road into the Kolob wilderness.
Referring to the proposed road, the representative said, “First, it would destroy scenic qualities. Second, it would eliminate entirely the cloak of solitude that rests over the area now. Third, it would forever mar the sense of adventure one inevitably feels when he approaches the region. It would become just another ‘accessible’ part of the park, and having been stripped of its wild character–a quality that sets it apart from the masterpiece that is Zion Canyon–it would be reduced to comparative mediocrity. . . . I do not believe we should concern ourselves with making every vista, canyon or natural feature accessible. We should work to make this mood of atmosphere available in its purest form. This atmosphere is the very essence of the national park idea.”
Let’s return to your unsupported assertion that “No cars = no people = no public support = no national parks.” Remember that many national parks were established before widespread use of cars and roads. Second, consider that the cost of maintaining national parks would not be so high if the infra was sustainable. 8,500 miles of roads, including 1,736 bridges and 67 tunnels. More than 20,000 permanent structures. If the NPS had followed its preservation mandate, the cost to maintain parks would be much more affordable. Additionally, wasteful regional and national office bureaucracy consumes hundreds of millions of the total NPS budget.
Before responding, please be equipped with evidence to support your assertions. And please read the NPS Organic Act, particularly the part about leaving places unimpaired.
Frank – I don’t understand your anger and condescending tone, especially since your entire rant is based on reading three words in the NPS Organic Act, completely ignoring everything else. Go do your own research and actually read more than three words.
National Parks are not Wilderness Areas. They are to be used and enjoyed. The NPS is to promote their use and enjoyment. Sure a few people would love to have roadblocks put around them and made their own private domains, but that would never have received much support in Congress and their would be almost no National Parks. When did someone every say “I support making this a National Park to keep people away from it?”
Sure a handful of national parks could run shuttles inside the park and try to charge extremely large fees to break even after their visitor numbers drop off. A few national parks run shuttles in part of the park and for only part of the year. That is far far far far far away from making “banning all automobiles” in national parks feasible.
“Frank – I don’t understand your anger and condescending tone”
Maybe that’s because you’re projecting. Not sure sure which words convey an angry tone. Condescending? Perhaps. You rarely offer evidence for your positions. You seem to be arguing from ignorance on the matter of the 1916 legislation. Your pathetic command for me to do my own research non-withstanding, that particular clause is the ultimate criterion of preservation. Go ahead. Redefine “unimpaired”; I dare you.
The rest of your post is an unsupported regurgitation of apologist talking points. Come back with some evidence, and perhaps we can talk again.
I am used to conversing with people who can Google and have basic knowledge of environmental issues. This took 0.25 seconds to find.
TITLE 16–CONSERVATION
CHAPTER 1–NATIONAL PARKS, MILITARY PARKS, MONUMENTS, AND SEASHORES
SUBCHAPTER I–NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Sec. 1. Service created; director; other employees
There is created in the Department of the Interior a service to be called the National Park Service, which shall be under the charge of a director. The Secretary of the Interior shall appoint the director, and there shall also be in said service such subordinate officers, clerks, and employees as may be appropriated for by Congress. The service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments, and reservations hereinafter specified, except such as are under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Army, as provided by law, by such means and measures as conform to the fundamental purpose of the said parks, monuments, and reservations, which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.
The only reason that parks are managed to leave them “unimpaired” is so that future generations can also enjoy them, not to lock them up from people. Try reading a whole sentence once in a while.
Hey, nobody is saying the parks should be gutted. And if you can think of a way to have a park be used and enjoyed without cars, then great! The NPS keeps cars out of Alcatraz, and that works, but it won’t work to keep cars out of the Presidio.
“I am used to conversing with people who can Google and have basic knowledge of environmental issues.” Sandy, please.
Yes, you found the Organic Act. No one is talking about “Al Gore’s socialist plan to lock up the national parks” (something a senior citizen once said to me at one national park). It’s not about locking them up; it’s about restoration. People can enjoy parks without the aid of internal combustion engines. Did you read this quote from Abbey? “We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture”. Parks can be enjoyed on foot, on horseback, on bicycle, on shuttle for those too invalid to walk. Roads and cars desecrate our most sacred sites and the sacred sites of American Indians.
Try understanding that “enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations” means that anything that impairs parks, LIKE ROADS AND CARS, are not permitted under the Organic Act. Any enjoyment must leave parks unmarred. PERIOD.
Also, you keep bringing up areas that aren’t national park in name, like GOGA, of which both Alcatraz and the Presidio are a part; this is an NRA. I’m talking about national parks that were set aside for their natural qualities, not their cultural resources or recreational qualities. Please stop trying to distract from that. There is an overwhelming body of evidence that shows that cars/roads have impaired places like Sequoia, Crater Lake, Mount Rainier, Glacier, Bryce, Arches, Grand Canyon, Olympic, Yosemite, Zion, etc, etc, etc. Roads and cars in these parks are an impairment, which goes against the mandate of the founding charter. Period.
This is what I’m talking about. You see any enjoyment on that guy’s face? All I see is environmental impairment and city-like stress. Rainier is a park that should ban private and public automobiles. Shuttles would help, perhaps. But no more cars at Paradise, Sunrise, or even Ohanapecosh.
Frank – This is my last communication with you because you have so much to learn and so little space in your brain to put it in.
1. My precise quote was not to the Organic Act, but to the US Code. Since you don’t know the difference, even if the words might be exactly the same, shows how clueless you are. Talk to me after you get a college education.
2. Edward Abbey couldn’t manage a taco stand, so why is his view worth more than his taco? In Edward Abbey’s world, every yahoo can go do whatever they want regardless of the law, so there would not be an animal larger than a pack rat in any National Park. Polluters could dump wherever they want. That is Edward Abbey, your argument to authority. Without the rule of the law, national parks throughout the world are worthless.
3. You are just dishonest in your discussion. I talked about the 58 National Parks, then you tried to be a smart-ass and say you knew about 400 units, which then must include all the NRAs and NMs and everything else. So then I cite an NRA back to you and pretend that you were only talking about “National Parks”. Stupid is as stupid does.
4. Tell me your plans to ban all private cars from all National Parks. Tell me your plans from 10 National Parks. Tell me your plans for 1 National Park year round. Stupid is as stupid posts.
Sandy, you’re a stupid cunt. Go away.
Just to show you what a stupid cunt you are:
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/fhpl/nps_organic_act.pdf
Maybe before you go accusing people of not having space in their brains or not being educated, you ought to look at yourself and your years of inane spam posted here. Oh and stop distorting. It makes you look like a cunt.
This is what I’m talking about. You see any enjoyment on that guy’s face? All I see is environmental impairment and city-like stress. Rainier is a park that should ban private and public automobiles.
I don’t see how this is an argument for banning automobiles. Let’s say this guy lives nearby in the Puget Sound area. How is this situation any different from him sitting in traffic everyday on I-5 or I-405? What is the common thread? Excessive delays due to the absence of efficient prices to ration a scarce good. Higher park entrance fees at Rainier would reduce traffic on the park roads just like tolls on I-5 would smooth traffic flow on that highway. Both situations could be improved by adopting time-varying tolls. Rainier could allow park entrance fees to vary by week (or even by day) according to seasonal demand.
This solution would address the problem without getting rid of the people who are actually there to enjoy the park.
MJ, good point, which I had not fully considered. I don’t think the NPS will ever seriously consider a full ban or efficient pricing. Similarly I don’t think most NPS sites will seriously consider charging for scarce parking. This is a good reason to advocate for a free-market approach to park management. Conservation trusts would be more flexible to local conditions; after cost/benefit analysis, some might decide not to plow certain roads or might close specific or all roads entirely. Some might follow the Zion model and require mass transit during peak visitation. However, by doing nothing to alleviate congestion, the NPS contributes to impairment (exhaust from the two-mile long line of idling cars) and destroys enjoyment, as evidenced by the exasperated visitor pictured above who may not have known what he was driving into due to a total lack of communication about congestion.
I’m not sure that pricing is the complete answer as demand to visit “premier” parks like Yosemite and Glacier may be relatively inelastic.
And please note that I’ve not once advocated “getting rid of the people who are actually there to enjoy the park.” Banning cars, as Zion Canyon has proven, does not mean banning PEOPLE. In fact, the increase in visitation post-2000 shows that more people are able to visit environmentally sensitive places where parking is scant without their cars. That particular road is still a major environmental impairment, but Zion’s system is a step in the right direction that other high-traffic, low parking, environmentally sensitive parks should consider.
Ultimately, though, automobiles and roads violate the NPS’s preservation mandate. Why people can’t make the connection between government’s violation of its own charters in favor of moneyed interests is beyond me.