The Impossible Problem Facing National Parks 

The problem with crowds is that no one thinks they’re part of the problem with crowds. I deserve to be here, no one else does.

Part of the problem is we all want to go to the same place. While there are 2-hour lines and/or timed entry at one trailhead near me, I can go to another trailhead an hour away and hike in not seeing more than half dozen people.

Hi! Park ranger here! I think you are missing another large aspect of the problem. The yearly federal budget for the National Park Service. Despite popularity and visitation is going up year over year… the NPS’ budget is going down year over year. Along with that mentioning the huge glaring issues resulting in understaffing for almost every national park: - Wages. Entry level park service positions with a college degree required starts at $18.09 an hour. Many employees can get hired at like a mcdonalds and be paid more. - Unreliable and inconsistent park housing. Many of which lack any form of connectivity. No cell service, no wifi. - Park housing prices being tied closely to the prices of nearby towns within a certain radius. And with the rise of Airbnb resulting in sky high prices, many park rangers are being priced out. - The hiring process is beyond convoluted and can take over a half a year to just be offered a seasonal position. - The process of gaining permanent status can take up to 4 years worth of seasonal 6-month work. This results in park rangers being without a job for 4 winters until they are even eligible to apply for permanent position that doesn’t lock you into a harsh wage cap with no upward movement available. - Remoteness of locations. Some parks are very very remote. So much so that it takes over 3+ hours one way to go get groceries. One way. I’m talking about you Old Faithful park rangers in Yellowstone. Just getting groceries is an entire day’s journey and it’s truly obnoxious. It’s the reason why I turned down positions at parks I adore such as Great Basin National Park in Nevada. Oh yeah. You also don’t get any benefits such as health care and dental care as a seasonal. And well, yeah. Having to deal with the very issues of this video in regards to sky high visitation that leads to timed entry that leads to rangers working the entrance station being harassed by ill informed visitors day after day after day. Working for the park service is so fun, but also the amount of abuse that the life of a seasonal has to go through is borderline abusive. This is the thing that nobody talks about in regards to the problem with the park service. One that I would love to see you make a video on.

How things have changed. In the early 60s, my dad would rent a little trailer and our family would spend a couple weeks touring in the mountains. It was usually in Colorado, but we had one trip into Montana and Idaho and up into Canada. We never needed a reservation and we were never in a crowded campsite. We were never constrained by having to be at a particular place at a particular time or having to vacate on a particular day. A few years ago, while feeling nostalgic about that era, I remembered the names of a few of the campgrounds and Googled them. The videos I found showed overcrowded (by my obsolete standards) campgrounds with ATVs running up and down roads and people everywhere. Some of my most pleasant memories are helping my dad set up the trailer and then walking off to explore the area and within 10 minutes or so finding myself sitting on a big rock in the middle of a stream with nobody in sight.

As a Park Ranger, retired, I frequently engaged visitors talking about the contradiction of NPS mission and they unanimously agreed with default to conservation, even if inconvenient. Well presented, thank you.

I HATE this problem... Timed entry makes it almost impossible to do multiple National Parks in a road trip format. Road Trips are just as much a part of the American Experience as are the National Parks themselves. I nearly had to skip Zion, Arches, and Rocky Mountain on our last trip because of this timed entry nonsense. Supply and demand principals seem to indicate that we need more National Parks 😉

I’ve started going to every park during the off season. So much less stress.

Protection vs recreation! A dual, conflicting mission dating all the way back to The Organic Act 108 years ago! I did a project on this last year in school and we should be talking more about it this year in my National Parks & Protected Areas class! Definitely going to post the link to this video in our discussion posts 😂

You are expecting WAY to much from politicians my friend .

You should talk about the situation in Florida where the state DEC wants to turn a bunch of their state parks into disk golf courses and pickle ball courts.

*Skips video and goes straight to youtube solution section*

the core problem is there are too many people. the US population has doubled in my lifetime.

Ambiguity in legislation will open the NPS up to all kinds of issues now that the Chevron deference has been overturned by the supreme court. The Chevron deference said government agencies could fill in the blanks and adapt where there was ambiguity in the law. They (government agencies) are no longer allowed to do that.

One possible solution is as simple as spreading awareness of lesser known trails and scenic destinations. I live in southern Arizona, and there are so many beautiful mountains to summit, canyons to see, surprisingly a lot of forests to camp in. Most people only know of the Grand Canyon, Sedona, or Page. It is pretty sad to me as a local, so many missed opportunities for people who will probably never return to my beautiful state. This is a solution that we can actually try and implement as small individuals with no platforms. I joined just about every hiking page for AZ on social media, and I like to show people the lesser known, often much more beautiful spots

When it comes to national parks and their management, I really like Abbey’s Desert Solitaire. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, but he poses some important questions.

Social media fallout, simple as that. The marketing was too successful.

I gave been to most of the parks before time tickets. I get it. Some need it. But, you can't destroy the park to make more roads and parking. However, if the people do not get to visit the parks, they will not support funding the park service. I am not going to travel 3000 mile in the hope that I can get in to visit the park. It is a double edge sword the the park service has to deal with and with pressure from politicians for either more access or less funding. As far as the lack of guidelines in the organic law, I am okay with that. No one size fits all. Yellowstone is much different than a national seashore or a presidential house.

I stopped getting recommended your vids a year ago for some reason, but very glad this got recommended to me! I remember when we had a conversation over zoom about the Colorado River/Dams, I had a class mate doing a project on the over crowding of parks. Ended up being a really controversial project, but I think most people on the know agree that conservation of these areas needs to come first.

I've read most of the comments and many, especially the first one, show the problems, but don't offer any solutions. The more visitors, the more infrastructure and Rangers needed. That requires more money from visitors or from the Government. The more people, the more damage, the more regulators needed,it's a catch 22. I can't see a solution the way the parks are handled. Change the park mandates and restrict the visitors. Times have changed from even the 60's when I visited parks throughout the country. Perhaps a unified National Park data base can help regulate things . Cheers, Rik Spector

Over the past decade, I've done a lot of road trips, visiting a lot of national parks & monuments on these trips. And over the same period of time, my preparation for trips has had to adapt to some new realities. People are traveling more than ever. Parks are visited more than ever. I used to be able to hop into car, drive to some city and just find a hotel room for the night. But after a couple instances of having to alter trip plans due to rooms being sold out, I always book rooms well in advance. The reality is that if you want to do a vacation to some national parks, you have to also spend a little prep time to ensure your entry to the more popular ones. I actually prefer the idea of the popular parks going to timed reservations to avoid an overcrowded park where you can never find anywhere to park and every spot is a sea of people. And I'll also likely only plan return trips to the popular parks in the shoulder or off seasons. This is a long way of saying sometimes you just have to adapt the reality of a situation.

Thank you! I've been a lot of these places! Thank you for breaking this down in a way that I can understand

To add to the challenge everyone wants to visit said Parks all at the same time (primarily Summer). Going in the off season is also much more pleasurable and easier & frequently provides a very different (& again better) experience for all.

The key word here is "unimpaired". That means the Park Service *shall* (must) regulate access as appropriate to secure that objective. May I share this link when I sign petitions against activity development in Florida's state parks? Some of them have plenty of golf courses and accommodation nearby already and they all are needed to protect fragile ecosystems and wildlife and plants. I hope you will make a video about it. Thanks for all you do!

People have been swamping parks--and not just the big, famous ones--ever since c0v1d became a thing. It's odd to me how it continued after the lockdowns were lifted. But even here in Tennessee all the little state and local parks and waterfalls are virtually no-go zones on summer weekends. Stupidly, while the number of visitors has skyrocketed the greedy state government has been seeing dollar signs, and has an aggressive marketing campaign going telling people in surrounding states to come visit.

Add an Instagram tax to offset overcrowding at the flagship parks. I jest, but honestly, going to a dynamic pricing model would help with the crowds and improve revenue at the same time i feel.

3 issues that have really made this problem far worse over the years: 1: The commodification of nature. Nature is now no longer really seen as something to experience, but rather something you do as a set activity, then snap some pretty pictures to post online. People want to take the most spectacular pictures, or replicate the same pictures as someone else, and they want a particular experience that's been marketed to them. This ends up leading people to the same parks over and over again, which while it diminishes the pressure on parks which are relatively obscure and don't have any super distinctive photo opportunities, absolutely increases the pressure on well known and photogenic locations 2: Overpopulation. There are over 3 times more people than there were a century ago, when the national parks were first really taking root. That's over 3 times the demand. There is just way more competition for the same amount of natural wonders, and you can't just create new natural wonders out of the blue. Pretty much all the most truly spectacular sites in the country are in national parks, and its pretty easy for people to find out where these are. 3: The internet. Information is _way_ more accessible now. Got some amazing secret spot? Well, all it takes is for one person to "discover" it, post about it online, and then boom there are massive crowds there. Even already famous hikes have now become known to basically everybody in general, as opposed to everybody who read up on national parks which is a big difference. You really don't see quite the same massive issues with overcrowding in historical discussions about national parks, I mean even 10 years ago the problem very noticeably less due to the nascent nature of social media (nature hadn't been commodified quite so much and people were just beginning to use the internet to "discover" secret spots). Unfortunately there's not really any good way to undo any of these, and it seems like more and more nature is becoming stratified by wealth. Thankfully there are plenty of still really nice locations with few or even no people, but oftentimes these are very difficult and expensive to get to.

This is why I quit hiking after the pandemic. It was never the same.

Thank you for using my pictures of angel’s landing

Thanks for the awesome content and all the amazing videos!!!

I’d love to see every park actually enforce the entrance fees. We are hitting all 63 and have done over 20 so far in two years. I’d say maybe 5 times I’ve had to show my pass to get in. 24/7 entrance monitoring. Imagine the money they would get and the amount of people that would stay out knowing they can’t get load the system.

This is not an impossible problem, it is a development problem. For example, Glacier Park is huge and has only one major road going through it, and it has camping restrictions that even make backpacking access difficult for much of the park that is far from the road. Make more roads and more trails, and let people camp, the attractions are there people just need to know where they are and have access. Of course there is a problem when just a fraction of a percent of the park can be accessed in a reasonable day hike.

Edward Abbey was right about the doom that designating a place as a National Park brings: Commodification, upgraded paved highways, concessionaires, etc.; but obviously could not foresee the damaging impact of social media and the trumpeting by influencers of Fear of Missing Out. There is an example in my own Southern California backyard that is Joshua Tree National Park. Growing up in the 50's and 60's it was an overall obscure National Monument drawing most of its interest from users local to the area and lacked mobs of people and regimented access. Promoted to a National Park it was instantly subjected to the usual onslaught of maximized for profit development draped in the cachet of "must see" or miss out that earlier ensued at Arches and Canyonlands upon their "upgraded designation". I will always mourn the loss of the Joshua Tree of my youth. Hardly recognize the place now.

I worked as a concessionaire for the National Park Service at Grand Canyon National Park for 2 years and while there I became appalled at how predatory the park services (Rangers in particular) were to the general public. Like most police forces they have become corrupt to the point of embarrassment.

Flexibility is always better than rigid bureaucracy. It’s a cycle: thing gets popular, popularity ruins thing, thing loses popularity, thing gets good again. I’m happy to explore all the unpopular beauty of America until the hot spots lose their luster.

US Citizens need to be given preference over international tourists. Lottery system for international tourists and HIGH HIGH HIGH fees on their entrance fees.

It's not "impossible" at all. The parks are managing it pretty well now. And if Republicans would pony up the money needed for maintenance and sufficient staffing (and better wages for you guys), then this would be solvable for a long time.

Everyone wants to see the parks, but no one wants to admit that everyone can’t. By going to see these places in masses we are in essence destroying what makes them pristine and idealistic landscapes to get away.

There is a simple solution to this problem build more roads, visitors centers and trails as the population increases. I know the environmentalists won't like this but the reality is that the parks have so much wild space you could build another road or two and there would still be a good amount of wild space and it would be better for the environment because people would be more spread out. I'm very disappointed in the park service because they don't seem to be upgrading their infrastructure/few new trails have been built since the depression and I'm very disappointed in the environmental movement because they don't recognize that you have to build a little more when the population goes up. I realize the park service has a very limited budget but punishing everyone for you're lack of funding doesn't help the problem. News flash congress doesn't listen to the tax payer they only listen to their big donors. When the park tells the tax payer get us more funding or we are going to treat you badly it just makes the taxpayer angry and less likely to support the park in the future. I'm a big nature fan. I used to support the park service but not anymore because I don't like how rather than hire a few more rangers to properly enforce the parks more sensible rules they punish everyone with ridiculous over the top rules, I don't like how hard it is to access the park, and I don't like that fees have gone up alot in recent years but we haven't really got anything for it. There recently was a vote to expand Olympic National Park and I voted against it, I'd rather the area remain national forest because its alot easier to access the national forest and there is much less red tape to worry about.

One way to preserve more land AND allow more visitors is to ban cars and have more buses and trains to connect parks to the rest of the country. Amtrak operates buses to access. Yosemite from the central valley train stations in California. Tearing out land for larger parking lots or more roads clearly is destroying labd to increase accesss. Also wildlife crossings NEED to be installed over busy roads in more popular parks.

Parks are overcrowded with cars, not people. We need smart and bold leadership able to design solutions that go beyond cars.

10:30 Legislation is also flexible and can change over time. The difference is that one method (legislation) carries with it a stronger representation of the will of the people, while the other (bureaucratic regulation) is more technocratic in nature. In this context, I view the word "flexibility" more as "we can do what we (the bureaucrats) think is right and good, without much (if any) regard to what the people want." Having said that, I would much prefer an NPS that was able to conserve than one hamstrung by some legislated mandate to perpetually allow any and all comers to access the parks. They'd be overrun, degraded, and miserable. The NPS seems to do a decent job navigating the dual mandate, and if it (the existing framework) ain't broke, don't fix it. National parks, though, have become a big turnoff for me. I loved them in my youth (I'm in my mid-40s), and my family went all the time. Now, they're too crowded for my tastes and have too many backcountry restrictions. I understand and appreciate why, but I can't do the things I used to enjoy doing within the boundaries of national parks. National forests are my playground now.

There are just too many people in the world. Overpopulation is the fundamental cause of all environmental, ecological, and often other social and political problems in the world. Unfortunately, people only want to complain about the symptoms, but no one seems interested in addressing the problem of overpopulation openly or directly. Overpopulation and global warming were big issues in the 1960s and 70s, but somehow, they got swept under the rug in the 1980s and the mainstream decided “let’s not talk about it anymore”. Now the consequences of becoming apparent.

People need to learn how to pick up maps and find any of the millions of possible other beautiful places in this country with easier and free access. National Parks are over hyped and over marketed, and are such a Disneyland bubble, they are usually nightmares compared to getting a real experience in the outdoors.

Unelected bureaucrats shouldn't have the power to make so many decisions on their whim. If it was up to them nobody would be allowed in.

The park service and environmentalists dedicated the land for tourism, then advertised it. Then they complain when people come to visit. It seems to a problem of their own making.

The crowds would decrease by 50% if there was no Instagram to display selfies on trips likely paid for with student loan money.

Simple, create more national parks especially in the Midwest and east.

No, it's not impossible. The two mandates are not inherently mutually exclusive. It simply takes intelligent planning and management. So, after a minute or so of that false dichotomy, I'm moving on.

I am grateful to all the you tubers out there taking us to places some of us will never see with our own eyes but they take us with them ... and you don't have all that congestion. Some of us prefer that anyway. I feel the day will come when only the wealthy will have the privilege of going in person anyway. May as well get used to that idea. Film as much as possible. Use drones. 🤣

Same here in Canada...sadly.

You have some serious fangs

Bro 💀 for the thumbnail I’d rather have reality it looks nice

We need an Inventoried Roadless Areas video!

Nice to include your own merch in the video of Shenandoah at 5:42

I dont go to the parks any more . They dont apeal any more to crowded .and comercialized But there are lotts of parks people dont go too .thise are the one like to see . So sad whats happened , and people think they are petting zoos . Give the animals space people .

The challenge of such a minimal mandate statement is that there has been a trend, enabled by activist judges and venue shopping, against deferring to executive agencies when legislation is ambiguous. There have been a number of cases where courts have said regulation making authority must be explicitly and clearly delegated to the executive. This is a deeply problematic interpretation of the law when the NPS Organic Act is so vague.

Um... We should consider the alternative situation which is that the parks are not protected and people destroy them anyway. I say the current system is way better.

I've seen all these sites...through a ViewMaster...circa mid 1960's. ... not gonna fight the crowds to see in person.

I think they need to split the responsibilities of the Secretary of the Interior. We should elevate an experienced, non politically motivated, NP Ranger to a new cabinet level position focused entirely on national parks. I'm sure my surface level understanding has me missing critical factors, but It seems to me that the onus of protecting and funding national parks heavily falls on the National Parks Foundation and private donations. It just feels like there is not anyone who has real authority giving the proper attention and advocacy that National Parks deserve.

Simple reality is that people would not enjoy giving tax money to national parks without public access and use. So it is a balancing act to try and do both which part gets more emphasis depends on the folks running the park service. Sadly they don't always achieve a reasonable balance between the 2 missions. Then add in congress and its control of funding and ability to just say do this or that which doesn't always help the goal. And the park service has struggled for years with the simple costs of maintaining things. There have been times when parks service got tons of money to build facilities for public use. But they often then have periods of congress not fully funding the service many years they have had to pick and choose what didn't fix this year. Because it is a question of how much is left after doing the things that must be done.

Build more parks to acomadate more people

Don't go on weekends!

That was interesting and informative -- thank you. I wonder if the Supreme Court's recent overturning of the Chevron Doctrine will have an impact on park management? I hope not.

The Park Service is all about promoting and advertizing. They want growth, but growth just wrecks nature. It's stupid.

and let them fine visitors if they touch the wildlife. i dont remember the national park service fining ppl for going off trail / disturbing wildlife. lmk if they do

I think overpopulation on a global scale is the core problem here and the elephant in the room that nobody wants to address.

Why am I getting a black screen? No pictures just sound

I say don’t fix it unless it’s broken 😂

I have had the privilege of being able to experience many of our Nation Parks and I am 100% in favor of entrance reservations.

It seems to me that the mandate is primarily to conserve the nature of the parks over access to them. I think the simplicity of the legislation makes it easy to identify its priority, which is conservation, and makes it easy to act. I believe that in order to maintain the parks unimpaired for future generations, crowds must be limited. The entire park experience is seriously impaired by the massive crowds. The trick is how to limit crowds in a manner that all classes of people have equal access (not guaranteed access, but an equal opportunity to be granted access). A reservation or lottery system seems like it could do that but seeing miles long lines of cars trying to enter the parks tells me that it isn't perfect yet. For overvisited parks like Yosemite or Bryce Canyon, only people with reservations will be allowed access. Signs 10-20 miles down the road should clearly post that fact, urging people without reservations to turn around. It's a shame because when I was a kid in the 70s, driving up to Yosemite was something we could do on a whim, but I can only imagine that the massive crowds are causing serious damage. I do believe that there is a significant number of people who aren't visiting the parks to experience them or learn about them, but instead are visiting them just to get the Instagram snapshot. These people often put themselves in dangerous situations for an outrageous pictures that end up taxing park resources even more. I saw a RU-vid video of a couple at Denali NP, miles from any help, walking out onto an ice shelf over a river during the thaw and then proceeding onto a trail that was closed. With so many visitors, the chances of vandalism increase exponentially, like the guys recently arrested for deliberately toppling ancient rock formations at Lake Mead NRA and filmed the video to post on their Instagram page. Joshua Tree NP was also the victim of serious vandalism. To protect the parks, people must be strictly limited.

NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE

I don't where you're going with this, but i like it.

Trains might help

Interesting problem alright. Good video. I'd agree that conservation should trump public access, if the latter is endangering the former; and that the mandate should be flexible enough to allow restricted public access depending on the situation.

Balance is key, and sadly reservations are easiest way to balance access and protection, lotteries could be done, but I feel lower income peoples odds should be better, not saying higher income shouldn't have chance, they can just afford to travel more so shouldn't have same odds

Can automobiles be prohibited from visiting these parks? That would solve many of these dilemmas. Automobiles bring most of the willful polluters to the park.

National parks should be given as reparations for the first peoples