this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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In Finland there is no trespassing on private property. Well, not if it's not gated or your yard or something. And you can't gate large pieces of land like that, so...
I understand that the nature is very different, for instance we have no mountains. So for me, I'm just thinking "just use another road", but some places just have one road going there, I guess. Here, I'll show my point:
I've highlighted the parks in yellow. Kansallispuisto = national park, luonnonpuisto = "nature park" (which sounds silly, I hear it). My point is that the trails in those areas start from a few places, and going to the national park, there's several parkin places you can go to, and you can get to the areas from so many different places. And this isn't a national park that requires any park rangers. I don't even know if we have any, but if we do, they're in the national parks which are up North in Lapland. This is a very small one. Just a big marsh with a lake in the center, essentially.
So you couldn't really set up a gatehouse or a booth anywhere there.
We have plenty of places like that here as well. The places where you have to pay to park are generally very popular and the fee is largely used to reduce how many go (i.e. reduce destruction) and fund maintenance and cleanup efforts.
In my area, the only places that charge are state and national parks, and not even all of them. I have dozens of hiking trails within a few miles of me without any parking fees, and there's a massive federally owned swath of land nearby also with no parking fees.
If you go to the handful of extremely popular parks, you'll pay a fee (and you can get an inexpensive yearly pass if you want), but if you go to literally anywhere else (dozens if not hundreds within 50 miles or so), there's no fee. So Grand Canyon or Yellowstone = fee, local falls or BLM land (federally owned, but not a "national park") are free.
I just don't understand how you can "fee" Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon. Those places are huge.
You have a booth on every road?
I don't believe there's a single place like that in Finland, what with our everymans rights
Yellowstone has limited access by road, but you could hike into it.
The Grand Canyon has visitor's centers and a few established areas with infrastructure for various activities, but you could hike to it, but getting into the canyon is another matter.
The other thing is that going in by road and paying for a pass let's people know you are there and if you haven't come back. Both areas are dangerous and people get in over their head because they have no understanding of the dangers of nature.
So by "limited access by road" you mean that "yes, there is a booth on every road leading there"?
So some company basically owns the rights to do that..? Have booths and whatnot on every road leading there?
It's just... weird for me, is all.
Federal or state government owns it depending on the park. And the fee is mainly just to pay for maintenance on the parking area. No one is chatging you to go to yellowstone or the grand canyon. They are charging you to park there or use some special service like guides, campgrounds, or picnic areas. Generally speaking though you can just walk onto any national park without paying anything. Yellowstone is a bit of a special case in certain areas because they really don't want people wandering around off trail because they're lible to fall through the ground into a hot spring that will melt their skin off before they get a chance to even scream and then the park rangers need to spend time dredging what little is left of them out of the hot spring. So those areas generally charge people to use the raised wooden trails because of maintenance costs. But at most parks no one is going around checking people for passes. They're only checking vehicles.
Also the costs are very low if you're paying at the park. You can also buy an anual pass to literally every US national park for $80. If you're a senior then you can get a lifetime pass for $80 and an anual pass for $20. There are also all sorts of ways to get those for even more discounted prices.
Usually it's the federal park service (government agency) that runs the parks, and they're the ones that take payment. It's not for-profit, and the fees don't completely pay for maintenance of the park in most cases, they just offset the cost of so many people going (mostly tourists).
And there's usually only one or two roads going to the parks (Yellowstone has 3 IIRC), and they're usually really out of the way, so you're not going to be able to just walk there. Many parks don't connect the entrances either, so they're purely a destination. My brother lives right outside Glacier National Park, and it's still a good 20 miles from the "city" (Columbia Falls is ~5k people) to the park entrance (again, there are two, one at each end of the park).
Yes, these places are massive, but they're also really far from normal traffic, so you'd have go at least a half hour out of the way to get there (often multiple hours driving). Someone needs to pay for maintenance of the infrastructure to get there, and that's what these fees are for.
Sometimes it's as low as $2 or so, sometimes it's like $50 (for more popular parks). It gets adjusted to preserve access for those that really want to visit and prevent abuse. Sometimes it's just a suggested donation.