• @[email protected]
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    fedilink
    14 hours ago

    Well, they do. They leave litter, destroy trails, vandalize formations, etc. Keeping things nice takes a lot of work, especially with how much foot traffic these parks get. Yellowstone gets over 4 million visitors every year, and that’s with the park fees, quotas, etc. Glacier is a bit less popular and still gets around 3 million visitors every year.

    National and State parks are funded with both income taxes and park fees. Park fees keep the number of visitors down to a manageable level to preserve the natural beauty.

    And walk-ins generally don’t need to pay, though some of the larger parks also have walk-in rates.

    • @Dasus
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      24 hours ago

      OK yeah I’ll admit cleaning up after shitheads does cost, and probably a fair amount because of how famous those places are. (So it’s very much non-locals most of the time, I’d wager.)

      • @[email protected]
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        fedilink
        14 hours ago

        Yup. The annual visitors to Yellowstone and Glacier is like 4x higher than the total populations of their respective states. I would be surprised if even 5% of yearly visitors come from the state they’re in, and I bet more than half are from outside the country.