The Everglades National Park is 1.5 million acres of pure beauty, and it’s a wonderful example of the preservation of United States land.
I visited the Everglades last year, and it was a mosquito paradise. Although I left a much prettier shade of rash-like red, it was great.
The national parks were founded for the people. At least that was the idea in the beginning.
But now many of our parks have been caught in the struggle to survive financially.
Most of the people in our area have been spoiled by the lack of an entrance fee or backcountry permit fee in the Smoky Mountains.
This is not so among many of our other national parks. The Everglades, for example, has a $20 entrance fee, a $10 backcountry permit fee, and a $14 per-night camping fee. That’s pretty pricey, but I figure, “Hey, if it goes to help the parks, it’s all right with me.”
Oh, wait . it doesn’t.
Every red cent that the national parks generate from fees and so forth goes straight into the national budget. The parks are then given meager funding which is just a fraction of the revenue they generate.
So whom, you ask, is responsible for the systematic starving of our national parks? Take a guess.
You got it! An ignorant right-wing congress.
In 1997, a developmental “fee demonstration program” went into effect among selected national parks across the country. This fee program allowed certain national parks to keep a portion of their entrance fees.
What’s the problem with this program?
The fees throughout these parks doubled, and now only middle-aged people on family vacations, on a mission to see “the alligators,” are able to afford these new rates. Actual hikers who don’t have much in the way of monetary luxuries are not able to come up with these unjustified expenses.
What is the solution?
Our government should allow its national parks to keep a percentage of its fees without imposing a ridiculous “fee hike program” where the American public is put below the all mighty dollar. Let the parks keep the money they make. How hard is that?
Apparently keeping what you make is a very hard concept for our government.
As many of you may know, I blame conservatives for a lot of things. Well, my blame is accurate this time.
Does anyone know that President Clinton rushed to protect some untamed land in Alaska before his term was up?
Does anyone know that one of George Bush’s first actions was to revoke this protection from that Alaskan land?
Does anyone know what he’s going to do with that land? Sell it to environment-conscious coal companies. Everyone knows how shoddily mining companies replant the land. They put a bunch of saplings where 50-year-old trees once stood, and then half of those trees end up dying.
I can actually hear what the conservatives are saying about me right now.
“You liberal, hippie, commie .”
I care about people, I care about the environment, and I don’t particularly want to live in a world devoid of places like the Everglades.
If that makes me a liberal, hippie, commie . then yes, I guess I am.
So, everyone who claims to be a conservative Republican . I blame you for the slow but inevitable destruction of our environment. I hope you’re happy with the industrial, smog-filled cities you are ensuring for your children and mine.

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