As the year draws to a close, let’s take our eyes from the day-to-day and look at the bigger picture. Turns out that PERC has given us a template for that discussion.
Note: PERC had a good year in 2025. One of the ideas they championed . charging international visitors more for access to the National Parks with the funding going to the Park, has been adopted by the Feds and is beginning January 1.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2026, international visitors will pay a $100 surcharge at the 11 most visited national parks. PERC CEO Brian Yablonski shared this statement in response to the announcement from the Department of the Interior:
“This is a big win for everyone who loves America’s national parks. A $100 international visitor surcharge could generate $55 million annually at Yellowstone National Park alone, more than quadrupling that park’s revenue to address deteriorating trails, failing wastewater systems, and crumbling bridges.
PERC has long led an effort to adopt this smart pricing approach, already common abroad, as a way to steward America’s best idea. Thank you Secretary Burgum and the Department of the Interior for your leadership and working with us on this monumental investment in our parks.”
For a deeper dive, read PERC’s report exploring pricing options at Yellowstone, The Economics of Awe.
There was also a NY Times story on their virtual fencing efforts, and they added Robert Bonnie (in USDA political leadership from Obama to Biden) to their board.
PERC held a workshop at which they discussed “the Next Era of American Conservation.” The entire piece is linked here.. I thought it might be interesting for us to discuss some of their ideas.
Bryan Yablonski wrote down some of their ideas..in the piece, there are a few paragraphs on each one of these.
Private lands are the next frontier of conservation
Conservation must be bottom up, not top down
Speed up proactive conservation efforts, rather than slowing things down
Incentives and markets will need to play a more prominent role in the next eraFinally, a handful of other innovations—in technology, ambition, and philanthropy—will likely shape the next era of conservation.
Today, thanks to GPS tracking and remote sensing, we know that many species of wildlife migrate through corridors that transect a tapestry of public and private landownership boundaries. A focus on conserving the fluidity and messiness of corridors, connectivity, and cross-boundary solutions will be just as relevant in our time as the creation of more geometric national parks and forests were in the time of T.R.
Moreover, setting big goals that can be achieved in an era’s-worth of time is a worthy priority. Where are the conservation moonshots? Why can’t we set a goal of recovering 10 percent of endangered wildlife rather than the dismal 3 percent of the last 50 years? Why can’t we “de-fence the West” of 625,000 miles of barbed wire in a way that makes better economic sense for ranchers through virtual fencing?
What are your ideas for conservation “moonshots”?
Similarly, private philanthropy is a marketplace that must become more entrepreneurial in backing new tools, experiments, and innovations. Conservation philanthropists tend to circle the wagons around the safe, older tools of the past or the politically popular issues of the day. But such safe thinking perpetuates the disconnect between challenges and solutions, rather than encouraging invention. With more tolerance for risk, the philanthropic community can act as a player in conservation markets to catalyze conservation innovation.
My own experience with philanthropies moving into the wildfire space, as they recently have, is that they seem to be more about strategizing, convening, collaborating and partnering and maybe funding some research (which often sounds duplicative with other research). I don’t know if that’s from the lack of new ideas coming in from local folks, or from the difficulty of entering a new space and understanding what is truly helpful by the philanthropy staff. Or maybe better linkages need to be made between people currently working in an area and philanthropic organizations. Or maybe they haven’t hired folks with market backgrounds or aren’t interested in market solutions?
Finally,
From Static to Dynamic
The story of conservation in this country has never been static, but it feels static at this moment. Perhaps our reliance on federal, top-down problem solving for more than a century has run its course. Perhaps our feet are stuck in the cement of the previous eras. That said, there are signs of vitality.
The window of what is socially and politically possible is shifting. As the wildfire crisis in our forests explodes, there is growing bipartisan support to accelerate mechanical thinning and prescribed burning by cutting red tape and limiting litigation. Some conservation organizations are beginning to soften hardline stances on endangered species policy, enabling quiet conversations about how to improve actual recovery rates. Likewise, wildlife migration policy became a priority for the first Trump administration, then bucked the trend by continuing to be championed by the Biden administration rather than being unwound as many other policies were.
Finally, conservation groups once seen as regulatory and litigious adversaries of private landowners like ranchers and farmers are recognizing that development has become an even greater threat than extractive industries. Many of these groups have recalibrated and now seek to work with private landowners by harnessing incentives that enable these ranches and farms to operate in an economically viable way. Trust still needs to be built to bridge to more landowners, but many conservationists now see working lands as integral to their efforts.
These are all paradigm shifts that would make conservation more dynamic. For those of us who recently sat on the hallowed ground that is Mardy Murie’s front porch, the message could not have been clearer: We stand at a hinge point in America’s conservation story.
As inaugural participants in an ongoing dialogue about the next era of conservation, we may not have all the answers. But a good place to start would be an environmental reboot with several aims: 1) double down on private land stewardship with newer creative tools, 2) pivot from using evermore regulation to harnessing incentives, innovation, and markets that reward conservation, 3) lean into the local by bringing a bottom-up, rather than top-down, mentality to the challenges of today, and 4) recognize the need for reforms that deliver action and speed, especially when it comes to improving the management of our public lands and imperiled wildlife.
These approaches are not so much a departure from our heritage as they are a natural extension of it.
What do you all think?
The focus on private lands does remind me of the 2005 Forest Service report “Forests on the Edge“and previous FS efforts on forests and private lands. It seems to me that the current connections of the Forest Service with its State Tribal and Private programs are key to keep. Also the linkage to USDA and its existing landowner grant programs and local offices will be key in maintaining and strengthening those linkages. In fact, perhaps the BLM should move to USDA?
Could the federal government improve coordination and delivery of its private conservation programs?
If all conservation is ultimately local, what is appropriate role of the federal government (we already have LWCF and various other programs, but this question is more “what should it be?”). Block grants to states? What other kinds of help could the federal government give?
If you were a large foundation, what kinds of projects would you fund to further Bryan’s goals 1, 2 3 and 4? What are the gaps that you see that are filled neither by current philanthropy, NGOs, nor governments?
While I acknowledge that National Parks (and National Forests, BLM, and USFWS) desperately need more funding and fee revenue, is NPS now going to ask for proof of U.S. citizenship to determine who must pay the surcharge? Will visitors need to show their passports? 🙁
Thanks for commenting, Bill! I’ve thought of some different ways of looking at the issue.. there seem to be two vectors of importance.. why? and how? and of course they can be connected.
Why?
As to “why”, if I think of myself, I think “if I went to a Calif State Park, should I pay more than a Calif native/taxpayer?” I would say “sure!” since my tax dollars and annual fee go to supporting Colorado State Parks.
Then if you think about the industrial tourism of some parks, say Yellowstone, Glacier, Arches, Zion, Canyonlands and so on, you might wonder whether keeping entrance fees low for international visitors is a subsidy for the tourism industry, especially given how much (most) international folks spend to come and stay and so on. Now, for sure, a subsidy is in the eye of the beholder, so I grant you that.
Would it be different if there were a higher price for general entrance fees , and there were reductions for US citizens, as we currently have for veterans, seniors, and Gold Star families? I’m wondering whether “charging us less” feels different from “charging them more.”
How?
As a person who has to show a drivers’ license to use my Old Person Pass, it seems fairly easy (since most people probably enter via vehicle) to charge people more who don’t have a valid drivers’ license or other official US ID.
How much extra should be charged? This is a difficult question about which we all could disagree.
Academics have studied the question of “optimal park entry fees”. Here is a link to a paper “park pricing in theory and practice and implications for ecosystem and human health”, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12137153/#sec3
“Where lower fees are paid by local visitors, the justification tends to be in part because the local population bears the opportunity cost of alternative uses of the parkland, and also, many residents already pay domestic taxes that may in part fund the establishment and maintenance of parks, when those costs are not covered by entry fees and other related charges [22,32,38]. In contrast, overseas visitors pay taxes in their home countries, so an entrance fee can be seen as a way of recovering from them the benefits they gain from visiting the national parks [3]. Overseas visitors to national parks in lower-income countries also typically have a higher willingness to pay as they are more likely to come from a higher-income country. The empirical evidence suggests that low- and middle-income country (LMIC) governments are more willing to focus on foreign rather than local tourists as an important source of revenue generation. More broadly, there is an argument that foreign tourists who gain the advantage of using another country’s public resources should pay for the conservation of those resources [39]. Indeed, if LMIC governments do not differentially price, then residents of these countries could be seen to be subsidising visits from tourists coming from higher-income countries [24].”
There are lots of arguably good reasons. Unfortunately this is being done here now under a nationalist government that seems to have a goal of punishing foreigners.
Hmm. extracting money from them is not the same as “punishing”, is it?
People seem to be wondering why the last handful of years of more funding isn’t resulting in “more management” and tangible outcomes. Of course, we cannot offset over a century of mismanagement and catastrophic ‘change’, in just a few years of ‘better management’.
Do we really want larger, but less intense wildfires, through increased logging? Sadly, yes, right now. Do we really want big backlogs of prescribed fire. Of course not, but that is quite likely. (I’ve seen where hundreds of hand piles never got burned.)
I have dabbled in conservation easements on private lands on the side, and was one of the co-authors of “Forests on the Edge” (and some related things). The team got a national award for that. However, back home (R1 RO), my efforts to coordinate national forest planning with state and local planning didn’t seem to be appreciated – like the FS might have to change its management to accommodate larger goals – or least it was not a priority. Things got especially hostile with anything that suggested the Forest Service should have an interest in what happens on adjacent private lands. Which is what wildlife connectivity is all about; a lot of species start having problems when they can’t move between federal lands across private lands. Private land actions matter to fire risk, too, of course. Is the Forest Service more enlightened now.