

Yosemite National Park

Sierra Sun Times file photo



April 3, 2018 - Washington, DC -- News reports indicate that the Department of the Interior will withdraw plans to increase fees for visitors to U.S. national parks. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke had previously proposed to increase fees to as much as $70 at many popular national parks. Thanks to overwhelming resistance from hundreds of thousands of people who wrote in opposition to the plan to increase fees, Zinke has seemingly been forced to drop the proposal and announce that the Department of the Interior will pursue other options to raise revenue for national parks.

In response, Sierra Club Outdoors Director Jackie Ostfeld issued the following statement:

“We should be talking about how to increase access for all to our national parks, not fighting tooth and nail just to keep them open to the public. Make no mistake - this isn’t over. Secretary Zinke will try to find another way to hike fees to enter our national parks, whether by raising the cost of the senior discount pass or by charging more for tour buses.

“But we learned one important thing from this fight: resistance matters. Over two hundred thousand people took the time to write to the Trump administration in opposition to the scheme to raise national parks fees. Every single one of those people wrote knowing that this administration is pursuing the agenda of Big Polluters, not the people’s agenda, but they took the time to write anyway. Their optimism and commitment to resistance has been rewarded.”