The appended article from today's San Francisco Chronicle contains much
good information including the following, important, fact -- "The
overall number of visitors to the park system peaked at 287 million in
1999."
Those who follow these issues know that the observed drop in park
visitation has been attributed to all sorts of phenomenon ---
everything from video watching by kids, to 911, to the failure of the
parks to allow unrestricted jetskiing, to sunspot activity. Rarely is the observed
drop correlated to the ONE major event that actually happening within
the precise time frame of interest ... that being the dramatic increase
in Park Entrance Fees. Funny how the US media almost never seems to pick up on
that fact.
Interestingly enough, in today's CANADIAN press, they have focused
with laser-beam intensity upon the correlation the Canadian Government
reports between Entrance Fees and plummeting park
visitation. That article is also appended.
The truth is available. Unfortunately, in our nation, the truth is
become ever more difficult to access and obfuscation of reality is
becoming the accepted norm.
Scott
The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public
opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The
agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep
the waters pure. -Thomas Jefferson
---- begin quoted ----
New policy on national parks expected to favor conservation
Today's notice said to contain few concessions to recreation industry
Felicity Barringer, New York Times
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Ending a yearlong debate over its management and guiding philosophy, the National Park Service was to adopt today a policy emphasizing conservation of natural and cultural resources over recreation when they are in conflict.
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is expected to announce the new policy in Washington today.
The new park-management regulations give barely a nod to most of the concerns of the recreation industry and its congressional champion, Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., while rejecting the most important revisions the industry sought.
The park service would not comment on the policy until it is made final but a draft of the policy was provided to the New York Times by a group favoring the conservation framework. It makes a few concessions to the recreation industry, like ensuring that so-called gateway communities -- close neighbors to the large national parks that draw tens of thousands of tourists each year -- have a role in park managers' decision making.
But it generally rejects earlier proposals that would have paved the way for increased use of snowmobiles, off-road vehicles and personal watercraft. Commercial activities like mining and cell-phone tower construction, which would have been easier under the suggested revisions of a year ago, will continue to face the same high hurdles they have in the past.
Laura Loomis, a policy analyst for the National Parks Conservation Association, said, "The new draft gives much greater guidance on what constitutes an appropriate use and what constitutes an inappropriate use of the parks." She said the current draft restores the park service's ability to push the Environmental Protection Agency to act when pollution -- often emanating from industrial and power plants -- fouled park air.
In this respect, as in many others, including the emphasis on conservation, the final policy echoes the policy in effect at the end of the Clinton administration.
In an e-mail, Andrea Keller, the spokeswoman for the conservation association, said the regulations to be signed this week "reinforce the agency's commitment to protect park resources such as air quality, and ensure that visitors this year and for generations to come will be welcomed to our parks and offered a memorable, inspiring experience."
After five years of aggressive, and often successful, industry lobbying on issues from park management policies to the interpretation of the Endangered Species Act to the expansion of oil and gas drilling across the Rocky Mountain West to livestock grazing policies, Kempthorne's rejection of the more industry-friendly draft policies turned heads among both environmentalists and industry groups.
It remains unclear, however, whether the new secretary who replaced Gale Norton is considering changing course on any of these other issues.
Derrick Crandall, president of the American Recreation Coalition, was conciliatory in his comments on the new regulations, and cautioned that he had not seen the final draft.
"In this world in politics you rarely get 100 percent victories," Crandall said. "We are convinced our concerns were looked at, some changes have been made and we're prepared to work with the agency to move to other kinds of important issues."
Among such concerns, he said, had been the role of gateway communities like West Yellowstone, Mont., which has a large snowmobile industry, in the formulation of policies for particular parks.
In a July letter to the outgoing park service director, Fran Mainella, Larry E. Smith, president of Americans for Responsible Recreational Access, wrote, "Trying to accommodate the existing generation of Americans should be as worthy a goal as is preserving our parks for future generations."
Both Smith and Crandall have questioned whether a slow but steady decline in park visitors in the past decade or so can be attributed in part to the failure of parks to provide certain kinds of recreation, like trails for off-road vehicles, to visitors.
But park service statisticians say the comparative numbers are flawed, since their methodology was changed about 18 years ago.
The overall number of visitors to the park system peaked at 287 million in 1999.
Park service management policies are drawn from congressional directives, case law and the 1916 Organic Act, and have afforded parks the highest level of natural resource protection of any federally managed land. The policies instruct park service officials to balance visitor use with wildlife needs, resource protection and historic preservation, generally holding protection and preservation as their highest goals.
The Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.
---END---
Published: Thursday, August 31, 2006
Parking fees blamed for drop in visits to parks
Attendance at popular sites plunges by one million visitors a year
Chad Skelton, Vancouver Sun
Parking meters in provincial parks are almost entirely to blame for the steep drop in visits to B.C. provincial parks in recent years, according to the government's own report on the matter.
In 2003, the B.C. Liberal government began charging daily parking fees of $3 to $5 at 41 of the province's most popular parks.
Since then, attendance at those parks has dropped by about one million visitors a year -- with attendance at the most popular Lower Mainland parks dropping 27 per cent.
Some government ministers have dismissed suggestions that the parking fees are to blame.
In May 2005, Management Services Minister Joyce Murray suggested the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and the SARS outbreak may have depressed visits to parks.
"And we had major forest fires that closed down half of British Columbia," she added. "So, not too surprising, park visits were down."
But a report by consultants Perrin, Thorau & Associates Ltd. -- commissioned by Environment Minister Barry Penner last fall -- leaves little doubt that parking fees are the main culprit.
Using a sophisticated calculation based on everything from average temperatures to demographics, the report concluded that 75 per cent of the lost visits to parks "were due to the imposition of day use parking fees."
Only eight per cent were due to forest fires and 17 per cent to the aging of the population and the public's increasingly sedentary lifestyles.
"The government's own report shows that the reason why people stopped going to parks was because of the meters," said Gwen Barley, policy director with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, which opposes the fees.
"People didn't want to pay to take a walk on the beach or have a picnic with their children at a provincial park."
Penner has not yet released the report, which was completed in April.
The WCWC obtained a heavily edited copy through the Freedom of Information Act and provided it to The Vancouver Sun on Wednesday.
In a phone interview, Penner said the government always expected that parking fees would lead to a short-term drop in park visitors.
"It was anticipated that there would be an adjustment period, [although] it's safe to say the adjustment has been bigger than anticipated," he said.
Penner said other provinces that have brought in day-use park fees have found attendance recovers after an initial drop.
He noted visits to B.C. parks were up slightly in 2005 and appear on track to improve this year as well.
Penner said he has no intention of removing the parking meters, saying most provinces and states have day-use fees that are higher than in B.C.
But he said his ministry is looking at reducing the price of an annual pass, which currently costs $50.
In addition to detailing the impact of parking fees on visits to parks, the government report also suggests the meters have not been as profitable for the government as it had hoped.
When the parking fees were introduced in 2003, the government estimated they would bring in about $1.5 to $2 million a year.
The final draft of the report suggests that the meters have fallen well short of that goal -- making just $921,000 in the 2005/06 fiscal year.
But an earlier draft of the report, also obtained under FOI by the WCWC, suggests the fiscal picture is even more dire than that -- with just $228,000 in revenues last year.
The reason for the difference is that the early draft includes several direct and indirect costs of the meters that the final draft does not, including:
- $290,000 in commissions and costs to private park facility operators, which collect parking meter revenue on the province's behalf.
- $244,000 in amortized costs for the installation of the parking meters.
- $160,000 in BC Parks staff time.
Penner said he couldn't comment on why the calculations changed.
"I didn't write the report so I can't comment on that," he said.
But he added: "I do know [parking fees generate] close to a million dollars a year in total revenue [and] if that source of revenue were to be removed, we'd have to struggle to make it up."
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