An order tells Interior and Agriculture to increase entrance fees and recreational pass fees for foreign visitors. Image: FloridaStock / Shutterstock.com
A pair of executive orders calls for expanding access to national parks while also pointing out a growing maintenance backlog in them and in national forests.
One tells the Interior Department to review its recreational access rules “and take steps to rescind any that unnecessarily restrict recreation in national parks. In conducting this review, the Secretary of the Interior shall especially scrutinize all recreational access rules or other restrictions promulgated or enacted during the prior administration.”
Interior also is to review the maintenance backlog within the National Park Service, fully carry out the Great American Outdoors Act, and “invest in the infrastructure of national parks, and increase visitor capacity to allow more Americans to visit national parks.” That 2020 law dedicated certain funding from revenues from energy development on federal lands to infrastructure projects at Interior.
A document released with the order says that despite that law, the NPS maintenance backlog has grown from $14.9 billion to $22.9 billion in that time.
The other order similarly for expanding access to federal recreational lands, saying that “Years of mismanagement, regulatory overreach, and neglect of routine maintenance require action. Land-use restrictions have stripped hunters, fishers, hikers, and outdoorsmen of access to public lands that belong to them.”
That order says the Agriculture Department’s U.S. Forest Service has a separate deferred maintenance backlog of $10.8 billion. It tells Interior and Agriculture to increase entrance fees and recreational pass fees—but only for foreign visitors, which the document calls “a common policy at national parks throughout the world.”
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