Committee pushes National Park Service to privatize campgrounds

A committee that reports to the National Park Service (NPS) is recommending privatizing campgrounds within national parks, limiting benefits for senior visitors and allowing food trucks as a way to bring more money into the system. The panel that shared the ideas was formed under former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, part of the Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee designed to “advise the Secretary of the Interior on public-private partnerships across all public lands.” The memo prepared by the Subcommittee on Recreation Enhancement Through Reorganization highlights privatization and an increase in contracts with private companies as a way to offer services such as Wi-Fi, food and equipment rentals to draw more visitors to parks. The subcommittee called park campgrounds “the victims” of park infrastructure problems as the U.S. park service faces a $12 billion maintenance backlog. “There is also broad consensus that the current national park campground system, largely operated by federal employees, combines inadequate and outmoded visitor infrastructure,” the memo reads, saying campgrounds lack funds, have not kept up with demand and they fail "to meet expectations of the contemporary camping market.”A spokesman for the Department of the Interior, which oversees NPS, said they have yet to be formally provided the Sept. 24 memo...MORE