Yes, exactly the reason we should fight this.Originally Posted by tdoczi
The Appalachian Trail is managed by the National Park Service, so why don't they charge every AT backpacker $5 per night when on the trail? Duplicitious? I looked over the Grand Canyon mess and no normal Southeastern backpacker would put up with the haggling lawyer-inspired permits and vouchers and provisios and addendums and writs and affidavits and depositions they require. Unlimited car access may be the root cause of the overuse, both in the Canyon and the Smokies.
please read:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...8ef_story.html.
the shortfalls have to be made up somehow.
This makes sense, hire a coupla of rangers for something on the order of $200k (pay and benefits) to collect $50K (2000 thru-hikers, $5/day x 5). You might have a career in politics.
Maybe there needs to be a big change. The National Park Service could do an experiment and see if a wilderness area is cheaper to oversee than a Park. If so, just make the Smokies a wilderness and perhaps save money.
dont know any rangers making that kind of money.avg is around $50k :Earnings
- The base salary of forest rangers varies widely, according to Salary.com. A ranger can expect to earn anywhere from $32,296 to $67,933 annually, with the average ranging between $39,518 and $58,171 per year. Earnings are base salary only, since bonuses are not common in this field.
Read more: Annual Salary of a Forest Ranger | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_7486546_an...#ixzz27boHyEbR
O.K., $150K/year pay and benefits for two rangers.
i'm not getting into whether or not the fees are ever justifiable or not, just pointing out that the idea of a fee based back country permit in a national park is nowhere near unprecedented.
as for the car traffic at the canyon, you could charge $200 a vehicle and i doubt itd go down a bit. if the remote location combined with current gas prices isnt keeping the traffic down thats a loosing battle.
I doubt that 1% of the Grand Canyon visitors utilize the back country. My guess is that GSMNP the percentage of back county users is even smaller. Wonder what percentage of the budgets go to back country users?
i agree, largely because you need a permit. i'm the last person to favor any sort of government anything, and i see logic in the myriad of arguments that point out that the fee doesnt add up. at the same time, have you ever been to supai? its a section of the grand canyon not in the national park. its on tribal lands and ran by the natives. depending on how you look at it, their backcountry permit is possibly more expensive than the national park one is. at minimum its comparable. supai is a dive. graffiti everywhere, overflowing toilets, trash, stray dogs running all over the place, you name it. it makes lehigh gap look practically pleasant. the national park section of the grand canyon backcountry is 100% nicer. i cant help but begrudgingly attribute this to how hard it is to get a permit and how relatively few people are allowed to legally camp in the backcountry. remove the permit system and that 1% shoots to 5 or 10 if not more and the canyon will get disgusting fast.
complain about the fees all you want and its not without merit. that you have to have a permit and specify where and when youre going to be and that they will limit how many people can be in a given place at a time (doesnt gsmnp do this already? or is that just along the AT?) is not unreasonable at all. TW seems to think it is. it may be new to GSMNP (i dont really even think it is though) but thats basically how national parks work and i think its for the most part a good thing they do. if you dont believe me go to supai sometime.
I've been to Supai, probably one of the prettiest places I have ever been. They charge $15/head. The trailhead is nasty alright. The vilage isn't. I didn't see any graffiti or trash or stray dogs. They do use portapotties that are airlifted in and out by helicopter. The high tech composting toilets that were built didn't survive the last flood.
i was there before the last flood. there were no high tech composting anythings anywhere, i assure you. if theyve dealt with the stray dog problem i'm glad to hear it, but it was pretty amazing when i was there, but then again, having trash strewn everywhere will do that. yes, the falls are stunning, which is why they can get away with the rest of it being a dive.
They were there, just didn't work. Supposed to have cost nearly a million bucks. Interesting how folks have different take on places. I thought Supai was Shangri-la. Other folks saw Maine as lush and green. All I saw was a green wasteland. The dogs aren't strays. They all belong to someone. I thought they added color to the place kinda like the pigs runnin' down the streets in Mexico.
1. Govt agency says it has a shortfall. Solution: Tax citizens.
2. Govt agency doesn't look at how save costs by downsizing positions such as "transgender park experience specialist" <-- yes I am joking but trust me, there are positions nearly as weird, and they are spreading to the private sector due to regulations (yea Sensitivity Training!) Solution: Tax citizens.
3. Govt in general doesn't look to reallocate tax dollars spent frivolously, such as, propping up chosen "private" businesses or industries, ridiculous studies on ridiculous topics, creation of ever-more alphabet soup govt bureaus that once created, become dire-hazards-to-health-and-well-being of every person, place, animal and plant in the country. Let alone the world! Solution: Tax citizens.
I would love to see more land acquired, through reasonable means, to insure an increasing amount of wilderness, not a decreasing amount hemmed in by 4-lane highways. I would like to see this especially in the East of our country, despite it's population density. Montana and the Rockies in general are wonderful places, but I can honestly say that I love the east coast environment just as much--especially the Appalachian Trail. But until Govt is held accountable for it's incredible waste, and until the false logic used to excuse the ever increasing bureaus, regs, laws, bureaucrats and taxes, is eliminated...well count me out as an advocate of 'making up shortfalls'.
"I spent 500 dollars on booze this week. My fruits and vegetables budget is experiencing a shortfall. You do care about my well-being right? I mean, I have a right to fruits and vegetables don't I? Omg I live in a food desert! Halp!"
although government spending is definitely out of control funding to the National Park Service has declined. I'm not sure what you're arguing about tax rates are at an all time low.rein in the spending,sure,but not the nps.
dude, i literally saw a man take a dump on an "outhouse" that was a pit toilet that no longer had a building around it because it had been replaced by a portojohn that hadnt been emptied in so long you couldnt enter it because crap was overflowing out onto the floor and youd have to step in it to use it. shangri-la? i can see it having its ups and downs and that i may have caught it at a bad time, but the bad times should never be THAT bad.
and the dogs were there when you were there too, apparently. dont call them strays if you dont want to i guess. there were packs of feral or near feral dogs roaming all over the place, i call that a bunch of stray dogs.
And what incentive does the state legislature have for doing that? The monies collected would go to the federal government (not the state) and they would piss off all the locals that use the park (i.e. the people that voted them into office).
Tax rates are not at an all time low, it is mind boggling that you think that. Add in all the fees (which are taxes under a different name) then add in all the regulations and you get a Govt that thinks the solution to every so-called problem is to burden the private citizen more and more.
And you answered your own question in your response. Govt spending being out of control IS the problem. Govt doesn't stop or lessen spending, which is why we are now 16 trillion in debt, and at least what, 6 trillion from the last 4 years alone? Which is insane--so, assuming that will never stop I say that before the NFS starts pick the pockets of hikers and backpackers, the Govt in general shoujld reallocate the spending already in place now. Hence my booze vs fruit and veggies line.
Does the park system offer a lot? Heck yes, and for me, it offers more than most parts of our Govt and so I gladly purchase my yearly pass to Yellowstone Park, which lies just to the south of my house and which I use only as a pass-thru to the Beartooth Plateau. This despite having to pay 40% of my income in taxes when I had an LLC and was self employed.
'When the proportion of those who take, exceeds that of those who produce, calamity ensues'
-- paraphrase of Gibbon from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
It goes far beyond govt. we have a society that is drunk on debt. we have created a culture where we can spend money that we don't have. we have marketed that debt aggressively to fuel economic "growth.". and the bills have to be paid. regardless of the outcome of the election this November both taxes and fees will go up to help pay down the debt.
It probably doesn't help that the U.S. is spending 48% of the entire world's military budget.
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