The article I read was titled Parks in Peril, and was printed in the E magazine. It discusses problems and many of the reasons Nationals and State Parks are having so many problems keeping up with maintenance and other things. The parks bring in much money from visitors and concessions, but due to budget cuts and increased popularity; the parks cannot keep up with basic and needed amenities. .
Problems like increased popularity, which might be thought of as a good thing, have led to more problems than benefits. The parks have had in increase of about 273 million visitors, 40 times more people than 40 years ago. This had led to things like more parking lots, food, and oddly enough theme park related things. Many parks do not have any such theme parks within their borders, but locals place these amusement parks just outside of the national parks. .
Another thing that people feel they need is snowmobiles. Research has come to show that 1000 snowmobile fumes is as poisonous as 1.7 million automobile tailpipes. Each of these, the amusement parks and the snowmobiles, are both contributors to the destruction of the peacefulness and solitude that people generally go to the parks for, but the parks themselves cannot change a lot of these things because they are too busy trying to clean up the parks and maintain trails and keep up with similar necessities of the parks. .
The reason the parks are having so many problems keeping up with the simple park maintenance is due to legislators not seeing decreasing the budget from the parks as a negative thing, in addition to the fact that there are many groups who work against the parks. Some of the groups include the National Rifle Association, the National Cattlemen's Association and Exxon. These groups try to expand development, public and business related, increase timber harvesting allowances, and mining, just to name the bigger things. These groups stand against the environmental legislation and encourage the removal of any regulations that prohibit commercial use of public lands.
