Comment on Anon tries to understand his coworker
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 18 hours agoWell, they do. They leave litter, destroy trails, vandalize formations, etc. Keeping things nice takes a lot of work, especially with how much foot traffic these parks get. Yellowstone gets over 4 million visitors every year, and that’s with the park fees, quotas, etc. Glacier is a bit less popular and still gets around 3 million visitors every year.
National and State parks are funded with both income taxes and park fees. Park fees keep the number of visitors down to a manageable level to preserve the natural beauty.
And walk-ins generally don’t need to pay, though some of the larger parks also have walk-in rates.
Dasus@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
OK yeah I’ll admit cleaning up after shitheads does cost, and probably a fair amount because of how famous those places are. (So it’s very much non-locals most of the time, I’d wager.)
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
Yup. The annual visitors to Yellowstone and Glacier is like 4x higher than the total populations of their respective states. I would be surprised if even 5% of yearly visitors come from the state they’re in, and I bet more than half are from outside the country.