A New Plan to Make Camping in National Parks Worse

[tulc]

A New Plan Wants to Make Camping in National Parks Worse

A controversial advisory panel for the Interior Department has outlined a plan to privatize national-park campgrounds, allow commercialized services such as Wi-Fi and food trucks, and limit benefits for seniors. Critics fear that the plan will create financial barriers to entry by upping fees and erode the visitor experience by increasing crowding and noise pollution. Unsurprisingly, it represents yet another step toward public-lands privatization and an attempt to enrich the current administration’s cronies.

The plan’s recommendations were contained in a memo published last month by the “Made in America” Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee, a group that was created by former interior secretary Ryan Zinke in 2017 and consists of executives from the RV and hospitality industries, proponents of park privatization, and companies with direct business ties to the National Park Service.

“Privatizing America’s public campgrounds and jacking up national-park fees to appease big-business concessionaires and powerful corporate campaign donors is just the latest egregious attempt to rip public lands out of public hands,” says Jayson O’Neill, deputy director of the watchdog group Western Values Project.

tulc(doesn't like the sound of this)

 

[Hank77]

I don't like it either. Camping isn't food trucks, WiFi, etc. If someone wants that kind of thing they can stay in an RV park.
They'll have a fight in the western states.

 

[bekkilyn]

I hope they have a fight everywhere because this is a truly awful and horrifying plan should it ever be implemented anywhere. But I suppose conservatives will likely be all for the idea of privatizing everything and handing all of God's creation over to big business and billionaire plutocrats because it's yet one more step forward in eradicating "socialism".

Bleh.

 

[JohnAshton]

This is terrible.