OPINION/COMMENTARY

Who do you want managing our National Parks?

The Western Slope No-Fee Coalition based in Colorado has been a long time opponent to Fee Demonstration. In soliciting support for its anti-fee crusade, Coalition co-founder Kitty Benzar recently likened Fee Demonstration to "having to buy a pass to go into your house." But Ms. Benzar's analogy only holds water if she has been living in public housing for the last several years (and even then, people in public housing have to pay something for that most of the time). If she lives in a private house, her living space is not paid for by tax dollars, but rather by her personal income. Moreover, it is the ownership aspect of private housing that ensures it remains in better shape than public housing. Similar to public housing, the nation's federal lands suffered from graffiti and littering problems as use has increased. In 1999, the National Parks Conservation Association named the Chaco Culture National Historic Park in New Mexico as one of the ten most threatened parks in the country. The main threat to the park came from vandalism and looting. Free access to the park not only led to a higher number of misfit visitors, but a lack of respect for the park's value. Forest Service lands across the country also suffered from vandalism and littering. "The anecdotal evidence is that [fees are] slowing vandalism," noted a forest supervisor for the San Bernardino National Forest. A Park Service report found similar drops in criminal activity at sites charging fees. Not only do fees discourage vandals from using federal lands in the first place, but they provide funding to clean up litter and vandalism when it does occur. For twenty years prior to the start of Fee Demonstration, the appropriations for federal land agencies outpaced increases in visitation, even when factoring in inflation. The percentage growth in full-time staff also outpaced increases in visitation over that time period and yet the resources themselves continued to deteriorate as multi-million dollar backlogs rose on both Forest Service and Park Service lands. Congress constantly threw more money at the land agencies, but the misguided incentives created by tax-funding directed those increased appropriations to the wrong projects (like million-dollar outhouses)....

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