I Reckon: Don’t privatize America’s greatest holler
If money wasn’t a barrier for me to pursue any occupation in this world, I would drop everything to become a park ranger. I don’t mention that just so that I can insert myself into this article for my own vanity. Living and working in nature, away from the bustle and business of a world sometimes seemingly hellbent on keeping us behind desks in tall buildings, is a dream.
That’s why I miss living in the South: Nature, in the form of tall trees and canopies, covered my hometown. When I would fly back to Georgia, I knew I wasn’t in San Jose anymore when I would look out the airplane window to see a blanket of green surrounding skyscrapers and city centers.
However, national and state parks, as well as any other protected pockets of nature, are being threatened by commercialization. One such threat has struck the very heart of Appalachia. The West Virginia House of Delegates recently voted 77-20 to advance House Bill 4408, a bill that would allow the state’s Division of Natural Resources to enter into contracts with third parties in order to support facilities at state parks and forests. This effectively opens the door to a wide range of establishment: Casinos, tourist attractions and gimmicky lodgings. What this bill does, above all else, is reintroduce the idea of privatizing what is supposed to be a resource meant for all to enjoy.
Talks of privatizing national or state parks is hardly anything new. In 2019 under the Trump Administration, the Department of the Interior’s committee of recreation industry big-wigs released a proposal that would limit senior discounts for park entry, privatize campgrounds and enable Wi-Fi and Amazon deliveries to be made. Thankfully, that proposal and the committee was shuttered. Like West Virginia’s most recent move to hang some neon signs over a few hundred acres of pristine natural beauty, this move to privatize public parks and forests is motivated by the indisputable fact that maintenance of these pockets of nature is a sunk cost.
Like all government-owned and operated things, sunk costs are not worth getting rid of purely because they are sunk costs. Take the USPS for example. The USPS’s sole function is to serve the public. It does not discriminate where it adds new addresses or extends its services based solely on the gross income of a certain area or of a singular resident. Yet, year after year it incurs losses.
In 2009 alone, the USPS reported $3.8 billion in losses. When the agency put in measures to reduce those losses, however, they put thousands out of well-paying jobs. Similarly, national and state parks and forests serve the purpose of protecting and maintaining nature so that all people can enjoy it. Yet, national parks in particular are burdened with a slim part of the overall budget and a nearly $12 billion maintenance backlog. Neither of these institutions has escaped threats of privatization, but the threat to nature parks and forests is much more severe for a great variety of people.
National and state parks — as with most, if not all, of the land in this country — belonged to Indigenous peoples. Our national parks are pristine carvings out of stolen land. The Indigenous communities that existed long before the creation of the United States were, and continue to be, stewards of these lands. The National Park Service, doing the bare minimum, allows Indigenous folks to enter all parks for free. Privatization then carries with it the most heinous threat of becoming a barrier of entry for the stewards and protectors of America’s best idea.
The general public won’t just be burdened by possibly higher costs of entry. Companies and industries who choose to put their business in, say, a West Virginia state park, won’t stop at the construction of a tourist attraction or two. They’ll build things that they’ll think visitors would like and pollute the land they use in the process. In a state, and a region, with a history of corporations taking advantage of it — for example, coal which needs no introduction — this kind of move just welcomes more greedy businesses to tread where they really shouldn’t.
West Virginia is the last state in need of more corporations and companies coming to the state only to seek a profit. The last thing the state’s precious parks and forests need are polluters looking to use their natural beauty as a marketing gimmick.
In the future, what’s to say that these recreation companies won’t jump ship once they start wondering whether or not they’re making a good profit or not? America’s greatest ideas don’t need to be run like a business — they ought to be run like public goods.
Quynh Anh Nguyen is a sophomore writing about the implications of current Southern political events in her column “I Reckon.”