How much would you pay to walk around Grand Prismatic Spring or watch Old Faithful erupt?/Rebecca Latson file
A new video (below) on how best to fund national parks, built around the maintenance backlog at Yellowstone National Park, wonders how much you would be willing to pay to visit the park, watch Old Faithful steam and bellow and spurt, and perhaps catch sight of a grizzly bear?
It's not a new question. From time to time over the years Op-Eds appear, either arguing for higher -- much higher in some cases -- entrance fees, others saying the National Park System should be free to enter.
Back in 2017 a poll was released with a claim that higher entrance fees would hurt park gateway towns because, at the time, 64 percent of those surveyed said they would be less likely to visit a national park if entrance fees increased.
Under that proposal from then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, there would have been a more than doubling of entrance fees at 17 national parks for nearly half the year. Interior Department staff estimated it would raise $70 million to help address the maintenance backlog. The proposed $70 fee for a week, if approved, would have applied to Yellowstone, Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Denali, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Olympic, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Yosemite, Acadia, Mount Rainier, Joshua Tree, Shenandoah, and Zion national parks.
But the proposal was criticized and opposed by members of Congress, attorneys general from around the country, and a vast majority of Americans who commented on it.
In the end, there was a $5 increase added to the fees to enter a number of parks, including Yellowstone, where the fee inched up to $35 for a private vehicle entering the park and staying for seven days.
Every year there seems to be a number of parks proposing, and imposing, higher fees, whether it's to enter the park or for backcountry permits or camping fees or some other amenity fee. Even with passage of the Great American Outdoors Act, which was designed to give the National Park Service $6.5 billion over five years to apply towards its maintenance backlog, which last was estimated at $12 billion (the Park Service no longer announces the backlog total), parks are raising fees because there's simply not enough money to go around.
Indeed, GAOA is not considered by everyone to be the vehicle to cure the park system's continually growing maintenance backlog.
Against that backdrop, the Property and Environment Research Center -- PERC-- , a free market environmental think tank based in Bozeman, Montana, has released a video that pushes the idea of raising entrance fees to help parks stay on top of their maintenance.
"What would you pay to see the grandeur of the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone, the otherworldliness of geysers and thermal features, or the paint-palette colors of Grand Prismatic Spring, or to see a grizzly bear, or a wolf in the wild," Brian Yablonski, PERC's CEO, asks viewers. "Well, the answer apparently is not much."
In the 7-minute video, which features Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly discussing his park's maintenance woes and the lack of funding to adequately address them, Sholly points out that a $35 fee for a family of four to spend 3.2 days (the average stay) in the park works out to $2.89 per person per day.
"A very miniscule amount of the total trip cost," notes the superintendent.
To visit the Space Needle in Seattle, it costs a family of four $122, said Yablonski. A trip to Disney World in Florida costs $110 per person per day, he added.
Possible remedies, Yablonki suggested, would be charging foreign visitors more than U.S. residents, going to a per-day fee per person, a per-person fee vs. a per-car entrance fee, or a per-day vehicle entrance fee vs. a weekly fee.
"Users should feel good about user fees, because user fees actually stay in the park, and they go to fund the very thing that the user is there to see," he said. "What would you be willing to pay?"
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Comments
I would pay whatever it costs to purchase the annual pass. It is a National Park System and Yellowstone is part of the National Park System. $80 is still a great bargain. We should all think more than one park at a time. For the cost of cell phone service for about 2 months, you can get access to a wonderful park system - the best in the world!
What I got from the video is that the NPS spent money on a marketing campaign to attract more visitors which in turn increased costs instead of paying down its existing bills. Sounds like our government alright.
I would like to see a study of what the actual market value of an NPS visit is. I recently paid $75/ticket for a 90 minute tour of Monticello which is run by a provate foundation with some sources of funding. Extrapulate that figure out...
I visited Yellowstone last June along with Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.
I will never visit any of these places again until their views on wolf hunting change. SHAME ON YOU!
Do you not realize that's why most people visit these types of places is to experience true wilderness and without wolves there's no true wilderness. Why can't you listen to biologists and science, you know...educated people. How many wolf hunters have a college degree or spend money in YNP??? It's 2021 and the whole world is watching to see what you will do.I will convince every single person I ever at come across the rest of my life to never ever put one of their dollars towards any of the tourist industries listed above. Again shame on YNP. You are an embarrassment to our country.
I think the prices need to be a $100 per vehicle . We always buy a pass for the entire year but it is way to cheap . An annual park pass should cost about $500. It is time to do this so all the back log of work can be done for our parks .
Hunting is necessary to keep the number of wolves at a healthy number . Hunters pay fees which in turn is used for programs that help the wildlife . The idea of not allowing any hunting at all will in turn lead to an overpopulation of the wolves . I have friends that live in those 3 states you are talking about and they have a problem with to many wolves right now . You will not hear about it in the media but the problem is real.
Did we forget these are huge regions of our country that we are essentially turning into disneyland now with disneyland prices.
If your an american you should not be priced out to see your country.
In the video Mr. Yablonski suggests that each park superintendent should be able to set the entrance fee structure for his/her park, and determine how that money should be spent. Assuming most (all) superintendents would consult with staff, local stakeholders, the public, etc., this seems to me like a viable solution to at least try first. Hopefully, this would lead to implimenting the best fee structure for each park. There is a lot more I could say, but I think I won't - for now.
It's a little bit more complicated than that. When one purchases an interagency pass, the money goes to the federal government to be distributed among the participating agencies, and not just the National Park Service. When one pays an entrance fee, the NPS fee program directs at least 80% of that money directly to the park where it's paid. There was someone earlier mentioning having a senior pass, but then paying entrance fees sometimes to benefit the individual park.
So that also creates an interesting dynamic, where the $80 America the Beautiful pass starts looking really good when that price hasn't changed, but entrance fees have increased. Typically a park specific annual pass is double that of the 7-day vehicle entrance fee, but I'm not sure how that works if double the price is more than that of the interagency annual pass. It wouldn't necessarily make sense to the visitor to buy a park specific annual pass, but it's my understanding that the park specific annual passes also have at least 80% going straight tot the park. There were some combined ones too, like one for all NPS sites in Hawaii that charged an entrance fee.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title16/html/USCODE-2011...
Still - I've seen some weird stuff over the years. I was at Muir Woods National Monument waiting to show my pass behind a group waiting to pay. I had the (then) $20 annual pass that allowed either 4 adults on foot or everyone in a noncommercial vehicle. There was a group with maybe 10 people who said they came in on two vehicles. The volunteer taking the fee said nothing about the annual pass, which I think they could have bought two for $40 (and they can return later or even just give away since there are two signature lines on each pass), but instead he charges then the $7 daily fee per adult. Even 3 of the annual passes would be cheaper. I asked why he didn't mention the annual passes, and he said it wasn't his responsibility to save anyone any money.