One may dislike one party or another, but these assertions that there's some secret plot to drive down attendance in order sell the system aren't rooted in reality.
The NPS is facing a $12 billion backlog of deferred maintenance across the system. At current visitation and entrance fees, the gap between revenue and need will simply never be be met. That's the problem. It's real.
Feel like nerding out a bit? there's an excellent GAO report on the funding challenge here: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-136
Incidentally, the Land & water Conservation Fund, which is the primary means of funding federal public land acquisition, is supported entirely by offshore oil and gas leases in federal waters.
Guess what decreased under the previous administration? If you said oil and gas revenues leases in federal waters, you're right.
All that said, I do not support the proposed fee increases, and I'd rather see Congress direct more funding to NPS.
If you oppose the fee hikes, submit a comment (I did).
If you think Congress should just appropriate more funding to NPS, send your representative an email or letter (I did).
If you have a preference as to how that new funding should be made available (cut military, tax the rich, mine the Moon for lunar gold, whatever floats your boat), express that to your member of Congress (I did).
But this "Republicans are closing parks and selling our land" business just prevents people from recognizing that there's an actual problem, and it certainly doesn't help solve it.
On Friday, October 27, 2017 at 9:21:45 AM UTC-4, Miles wrote:
"A lot of people would choose not to spend that much money, so instead of SNP getting $10 (or $40 for a year pass), now they'd get zero...part of me thinks that might be the intended effect, drive people away with price hikes, starve the NPS of cash, then declare them a failure and privatize the parks system."
That would be the part of you that is... absolutely right! It's their MO in pretty much every domain: take a public asset, neglect it to ruins, then declare "Government has failed" and sell it off.
Miles
http://www.tpfr.org
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