Despite Rising Entrance Fees of National Parks, Protecting Them is Priceless

The author looks back at Matthes Crest in Tuolumne, Yosemite National Park.

Photo by Evan Pierce, 2016.

Yosemite will always have a special place in my heart — and the hearts of many others. The great swaths of pine trees, interrupted only by jutting granite faces and rolling alpine meadows, have inspired artists, big wall climbers, bird watchers, hikers, and more visitors since at least the 1800s.

I don’t have to pretend to understand why John Muir fought so hard to preserve this piece of land as a national park in the late 19th century. I think I get it. While society runs on the idea of inter-connectivity and working together, the rules are different in a wild place: Yosemite strips away the assurance of togetherness. It’s just you, the trees, and the rocks. It makes us vulnerable.

Now, imagine my dismay when, during my last trip to Yosemite, before even stepping foot in the park, my nature-appreciation stupor was interrupted by a park ranger at the entrance booth:  

“Are you an America the Beautiful Annual Parks Pass Holder? No? Thirty dollars.”

Thirty dollars. For a single day’s entrance. I had come all this way in order to escape from society, only to have a man in a boy-scout-khaki uniform demand I adhere to the rules of capitalism. I hadn’t escaped anything at all. Ugh.

Yosemite didn’t used to charge this much. From 1997 up until 2015, a day in Yosemite was $20. Between 2015 and 2016, however, this all changed. All of the United States’ national parks agreed to up their entry fees in this time window—anywhere between 20 to 300 percent. Yosemite, for example, which saw a 50 percent increase in prices, was far from the worst offender. With almost two-thirds of campers choosing to camp on government-owned land, this price change affects a large group of people, many of whom are students—young, unemployed students. And like me, some of them may be disheartened, a little more broke, and left wondering, where is all this money going?

As it turns out, the park needs all the money it can get. In 2016, the National Park Service enacted budget was $2.8 billion. Besides the park maintenance of hundreds of miles of footpaths and cycle paths, the NPS funds climate change projects, science and monitoring programs, energy development research, health benefits for seasonal employees, and cultural preservation. But the list doesn’t stop there. The money also goes towards some causes you wouldn’t normally associate with national parks. Historical Black colleges and universities, Indian tribes, and post-Hurricane Sandy reconstruction efforts all received money from the National Park Service.

The reason why the price jump seemed so steep was because the entry prices to national parks had remained steady for two decades to encourage park attendance during the recent recession. During this time, many of the parks’ crucial projects, like maintaining trail quality to keep visitors safe, were put on hold due to insufficient funds. Finally, at a meeting in 2014, the National Park Service announced that all the parks were going to increase their fees to catch up on this necessary construction. In fact, the price increases, when inflation is accounted for, are not as steep as they may seem. That $20 entrance fee does not go nearly as far as it did in the late 20th century. TIME’s Money reports that $20 in 1997 is worth just under $30 today. Thus, the price increase, when adjusted for inflation, is more like 1.8 rather than 50 percent.

This relatively minor increase in fees will hardly put a dent in the overdue work that needs to be done in all of the parks, not to mention countering the cuts to the Department of the Interior that President Donald Trump has put forward in his recent budget proposal. The department, which is charged with the management of resources and heritage like the 400 or so national parks, is set to lose $2 billion of government funding. This significant budget cut to the DOI will likely translate to reduced funds going to national parks.

When you consider all the groups and causes that the National Parks Service is supporting, combined with the significant cuts it will be facing if President Trump’s recently proposed budget is passed, it seems like we aren’t the vulnerable ones in this relationship. If anything, Yosemite should make us feel empowered — empowered to enact change. Government-funded parks are looking at hard times ahead, and $30 seems like a drop in the bucket. Knowing what I know now, I would gladly hand those dollars to the park ranger. In fact, I would gladly pay more. I may not have been an America the Beautiful pass holder the last time I visited Yosemite, but next time, believe me, I will be. America is not only beautiful, but also (and more importantly), America is worth protecting.