[…] western states.17 The magnitude of the unfunded needs on current federal lands is staggering. The National Park Service alone has a deferred maintenance backlog of nearly $12 billion.18 Yellowstone and Yosemite, two of the most iconic parks, each face more than half a billion dollars in unmet maintenance needs.19 Overall, the total deferred maintenance backlog across […]
[…] revenue to maintaining national parks. Affirm park managers’ authority to set their own fees and keep the revenues locally. Many parks have fees—$30 for a week-long pass to Yellowstone or $25 for camping in Arches National Park—that provide supplemental revenue. Park managers, not distant politicians, decide how this money is spent, which is why it […]
Yellowstone National Park, NPS photo by Neal Herbert Today’s myth: As taxpaying citizens, we should not pay to visit our national parks. Fact: Our national parks are chronically underfunded and visitor fees provide critical, though currently insufficient, funding for park operations and maintenance. We Americans fancy ourselves a nation of conservationists. We claim […]
[…] was little, my family lived on the Idaho side of the Tetons, so I spent a lot of time in both the Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone. As a 4-year-old, I loved camping at Jenny Lake in the summer and exploring Yellowstone in the winter. Jenny Lake, Grand Teton National Park Which is […]
Throwback Thursday: From the Vault Road maintenance required near the Firehole River in Yellowstone National Park. Next week is National Park Week. To celebrate, the National Park Service is waiving admission fees to all national parks, advocating that this is a week for Americans to discover their national parks and the wonders they contain. […]
[…] our national parks are in trouble. Decades of neglect and misplaced priorities have left a glaring blemish on a system known for its crown jewels such as Yellowstone and Yosemite. The Park Service will reach its centennial with an $11.9 billion backlog in deferred maintenance projects, an amount five times higher than the agency’s […]
[…] ranching operations. The group aims to acquire private ranches in the region along with the associated federal grazing permits to create a landscape-scale conservation area larger than Yellowstone National Park.60 In contrast to other U.S. environmental groups, APR seeks to accomplish its mission through market forces by purchasing private lands and grazing rights from […]
[…] title to those lands to the states, and such solutions are still worth considering. Only a tiny fraction of the federal land is spectacular parks such as Yellowstone or untouched wilderness. Of the nearly 250 million acres controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, most is best suited for grazing and mineral production, and […]
[…] to around 120 active members. When totaled, they hold title to more than 10 million acres of private land in 11 western states. That’s equivalent to five Yellowstones. In turn, the alliance has created an expanding network of 650 other landowners, resource scientists, and professional conservationists, all interested in sharing information and insights. Notably, […]
[…] immigration might be required every few decades,” wrote Dr. Rolf Peterson, a biologist who long has studied the wolf-moose dynamics on Isle Royale, in an article for Yellowstone Science. At Isle Royale, the Park Service seemingly faces a managerial conundrum: On one hand, the National Park Service Organic Act directs the agency to “conserve […]