With the December 5 deadline approaching for the public to comment on proposals to increase entrance fees at Yellowstone National Park, a major newspaper in Montana has weighed in on the idea. In an editorial on November 17, the Billings Gazette endorsed the park's proposal, urging readers to "... speak up. Tell the NPS to proceed with the fee increases..."
The editorial, titled "The biggest bargain on Yellowstone vacations," asks "How many vacation destinations haven’t had a price increase in nine years? Besides Yellowstone National Park?"
Citing a proposal to raise entrance fees into Yellowstone by $5 per vehicle, the editorial notes:
Eighty percent of the visitors’ dollars would stay in the park where the admission was purchased. By law, money from entrance fees can only be used for things that benefit visitors, such as operating visitor centers, cleaning restrooms, maintaining trails, roads and board walks, and hiring seasonal rangers to provide safety patrols, guided hikes and visitor programs.
Considering inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index, the proposed park entrance fee increases are roughly equivalent to what the fees would be in 2015 if they had been adjusted annually for inflation over the previous nine years.
Our region of Montana and Wyoming has extra good reasons to support the plan to boost park entrance revenues. Yellowstone is the crown jewel of the region’s thriving tourist industry...
That economic activity includes supporting thousands of private sector jobs in Montana and Wyoming. The 3.4 million people who visited Yellowstone between Jan. 1 and Oct. 31 filled hotels and restaurants, purchased the bulk of fuel sold at Montana and Wyoming gas stations this summer, shopped, drank, gambled, rented vehicles and generally spread their wealth far beyond the park boundaries.
Would the higher fees be counterproductive in terms of visitation? The paper doesn't think so.
The proposed entrance fee increases won’t deter visitors. Nobody will cancel their plans to visit Yellowstone because of these fees. At $30 for a three-day admission per vehicle, the proposed new park entrance fee will still be the cheapest item on a Yellowstone vacation. A family of four could spend more than $30 for a single lunch at an eatery inside or outside the park. A night of summer lodging in gateway communities can easily run $200.
It makes sense to tap user fees to maintain America’s most beloved park. This year, Yellowstone had about $4 million from current entrance fees to help upgrade campgrounds, improve accessibility for people with disabilities, repair utilities and do other projects that benefit visitors.
It’s certainly in the best interest of the region’s businesses to have the park invest in visitor services. The industry depends on visitors from across the nation and around the world having a good experience so they will stay in the area, tell their friends about it and come back again.
Now is the time to speak up. Tell the NPS to proceed with the fee increases and invest those revenues in the roads, trails, restrooms and visitor activities that make a Yellowstone vacation safe and fun.
Let’s boost revenue in time to spruce up the park for the NPS centennial in 2016 when there’s likely to be a surge in national park vacations.
You may agree or disagree with the Gazette's opinion, and you still have until December 5 to get your thoughts to the park. There's been some criticism for the park's approach for collecting public feedback—no comments are being accepted via e-mail, fax or an NPS website, although they can be submitted via U. S. Mail, or in person at a series of public meetings that have now been completed.
The park staff has not offered their rationale for this rather old-school approach for comments, so you're left to draw your own conclusions. That said, input on this question is not being restricted to local residents, as some have complained. If you're really interested in this issue, it takes little more time to compose your comment on your computer, hit print, stick your letter in an envelope, and drop it in the mail that it does to compose and send the identical response on-line.
All comments must be received by midnight MST on Friday, December 5th, 2014. They can be mailed to: Management Assistant Office, Attn: Entrance Fee Proposal, P.O. Box 168, Yellowstone National Park, WY, 82190.
Comments
The irony that shouldn't be overlooked in how Yellowstone officials are soliciting comments is that their decision not to allow email or on-line comments comes as the National Park Service is trying to be "relevant" to younger generations and as park staff considers a $30 million fiber optic network to enhance connectivity in the park.
Kurt as far as I can tell, Yellowstone is the only one that seems to be doing this. Many of the other parks still have their fee proposals open to electronic comments. I do think that when organizations spam the comments they are doing a disservice. Reminds me of the scene in Gangs of NY where Daniel Day Lewis's character is shaving people to get them to look different so they can return to the polls to "vote early, and often". And plus, it's not like these comments are a "vote". It's not like you are voting on a state constitutional ammendment, like some here tend to misconstrue this process. It's simply kicking ideas into the park service on a proposal. That's it.
If that is the reason Yellowstone decided to pull this to having comments only sent via a letter mailed in to the park service, it would obviously cut down the chance of the NGO spammers trumping up their numbers. But, that is IF that is the reason.
So, what is the solution? If one has had a website built, or has worked in software/web development, one would realize that having a user based system is not exactly cheap or easy to manage. Having a simple form generate an email response is rather simple (which is already being done on the NPS park planning sites from what I can tell), but once you have a user name login, with password, and trying to make sure that the person submitting the comments is legitimate so that they are not submitting comments multiple times under different accounts to trump up "opposition" - well that becomes a much bigger task to manage with the IT departments. That process also takes that thing called time and money, which then has to be a part of the park budgets, which of course is appropriated by congress. Or it has to be funded by other means. The parks seems to allow anonymous comments since you don't have to fill out your name, but I question if that is even effective. Having 9000 canned email responses on the server that were sent from one specific NGO website isn't exactly a scientific measurement of how the public truly feels about an issue in my opinion, because that can be very slanted, and "rigged".
This is the problem I see with electronric voting too. There should be some sort of accountability with those that supply the comments. And that's if this process even matters like some state. But sometimes I do think the comments and public approval/disapproval does bare some teeth. I look at the fact that Bison in Yellowstone are now given to tribes as one of those small victories that many people wanted to see. They have had a comment period on this issue for some time now, and the park service seems to be more open to sending the bison to other places instead instead of doing a full on "cull". I do think public comments with opposition or approval holds some weight.