Yuck, please no! The privately-run concessionaires inside the parks are already terrible, providing poorly-maintained lodge rooms at cutthroat prices and overpriced terrible restaurants. At least most of the private guiding companies are good.

These parks are our nation's shared treasures, they should just be free like the D.C. museums. The last thing they need is more privatization. The NPS does a fine job at providing the visitor services that AREN'T totally commercialized (rangers, upkeep, lotteries, etc.)

A good way to make a bad situation worse. The park service has already been doing that with campsite management and concessions[1]. Unfortunately we aren't willing to budget enough to take care of the parks properly (and visitors continue to trash them).

1: https://www.outsideonline.com/2404058/interior-department-pr...

What type of services? Will taxes be reduced as people will have to pay for those services or are they going to be subsidized?

I'm only ever a tourist in the US but I visit National parks and I'd hate to see public land go private for-profit, ads everywhere, and whatever else shit they can think of.

Let the vastness be vast and devoid.

Concession operations in national parks have existed since 1872, when the Yellowstone Park Act authorized the Secretary of the Interior to grant leases to private persons to develop visitor accommodations and facilities. [1]

[1] https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/management/concessions.htm

Privatizing ownership would be the end of the NPS.

As far as I know almost every service provided inside the park for money is a private enterprise.

I think you're underestimating just how extremely unprofitable NPS is. Nobody but a complete sucker or die hard altruist would join a private partnership with a national park... though the most likely outcome would be that someone would find (or intentionally insert) some loop hole to exploit natural resources within the parkland and just turn it into resource extraction. Alternatively, I suppose you could make it so severely exclusive that you could turn parks into an exclusive resort for the super rich and start charging outrageous sums to visit them while pulling down your maintenance costs to just some luxury spa.

Either way it'd be awful and likely just lead to bankrupted parks in disrepair.

Privitization would make the park an amusement park at the expense of access to nature. Actual nature access is a liability nightmare. There are 12-15 deaths per year a Yosemite, just to give an example. That's more people per two years than have died at disney land in its entire existence, even though disney gets an order of magnitude higher visitors.

This is exactly how you end up with yet another a golf course or ski resort. The average American does not need or desire that.

Some of the NPS facilities have been contracted out to private entities and they are the ones that suck.

I completely disagree but if the current regime lasts it’s inevitable. The burgeoning federal debt will be used politically (not operationally!) to force selling federally assets especially land and leases to the politically well connected.

Is this sarcasm? If not, why?

To do what exactly? There are plenty of private companies that offer services already: tours, guides, gear rentals, etc.

There's already a ton of that in terms of lodging options, etc.

Didn't booz allan just make a ton of money off a nps contract?

You’ve got to be kidding

Shit take

This feels like a shitpost