Right? It's inherently public land... why should one have to pay in order to access nature? When you put it in words, it truly sounds like late-stage capitalism manifest.
The more popular national parks don’t actually have the capacity to meet the demand…theyre huge but the relatively easily human accessible areas are relatively small. Building these out to meet capacity would harm the wildlife goals.
Managing to capacity is not actually a reason for imposing the fees. And even if it was, the fees are not nearly high enough to have that effect.
Capacity challenges are being handled instead by denser transportation (e.g. Zion shuttle), by lotteries (e.g. Grand Canyon float trips), and by limited timed reservations (e.g. Rocky Mountain).
