{"posts":[{"_id":"65bfcc663fa701b1d5712d2c","title":"The Privatization of Public Access","publishDate":"2024-02-04T17:14:28.738Z","content":"I recently moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, in part because of my love of climbing and my belief that Red Rock Canyon is one of the best and most beautiful places in the country to climb for most of the year, i.e. when it's not summer and 115 degrees outside.\n\nBeing a National Conservation Area, Red Rock Canyon charges entry fees, though they're relatively modest as far as entry fees to federal lands go: $20 for a single car, and the costs go towards conservation and management. Falling under the purview of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Red Rock Canyon accepts the inter-agency \"America the Beautiful - The National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass\". Better known to the general public and probably to you as the \"National Park Pass\". What would otherwise result in 100-200 dollars a month from my pocket in daily pass fees is reduced to a cool $0 thanks to the power of the subscription model.\n\nThat said, I have never visited Red Rock Canyon for free.\n\n# Introducing Recreation.gov\nI'm passionate about all people having equal access to the outdoors. We may all dress up and go to work and use electronic money to buy things, and use tools like ChatGPT and toilet paper, but at the end of the day we're all walking, talking animals. So at face value, I love the idea of Recreation.gov: a public service giving ALL Americans (and tourists) equal opportunity to enjoy nature, find information about public sites and services available, and make reservations. \n\nIn recent years you may have noticed an increase in U.S. recreation sites using Recreation.gov. Secured a spot at Camp 4 in Yosemite National Park? Booked a permit for back-country camping in the Grand Canyon? Tried to snatch a highly-coveted Half Dome hiking permit, or the most-difficult-to-obtain permit for Coyote Buttes North, AKA The Wave? Then you've used the exact reservation system I'm talking about.\n\nLike most federally-managed outdoor recreation sites in the United States in recent years, in 2020 Red Rock Canyon introduced a seasonal reservation-only entrance policy to among other reasons, restrict the flow of people through the scenic loop drive. These reservations are offered through Recreation.gov.\n\n# Cool, so what Jeff?\n> \"That said, I have never visited Red Rock Canyon for free.\"\n\nBack to this. Between December, 2023 and January 24 I spent $10 on fees from 5 different entrances into Red Rock. Just yesterday, I spent another $2. I used my National Park Pass each time, so I should have spent $120 on entrance fees during that time, but spent $14 instead. Sweet.\n\n# But wait a minute, where does this $2-per-visit come from? \n\nRecreation.gov charges a $2 fee each time you book a reservation, as a \"reservation fee\". \n\n

\n $\"Recreation.gov$ \n

\n\nNow you may be thinking who cares, Jeff it's just $2. It probably goes towards conservation too. \n\nTo which I say: no, remember I said that the *$20 entry fee* goes towards conservation and/or management? You can see in this screenshot that it isn't clear to whom the fee goes or why.\n\nIn the past, I'd have said the same thing, \"who cares\", and just paid the fee without paying (pun intended) much thought into where it was going. It's just 2 bucks after all. Now that I'm going much more frequently to climb, I'm paying the fee more often; logging in and taking the time to make a reservation more often. This got me thinking, does someone like Alex Honnold, who supposedly visits Red Rock Canyon nearly every day to climb, have to take his time to log in and make 30 reservations a month; to pay $60 a month in reservation fees? $720 annually? The average person likely isn't recreating every day, but that still sounds like a lot of money adding up here, and this is one person we're talking about. How much money are these fees generating and why are they levied at all?\n\n# Math time\nRed Rock Canyon receives nearly four million visitors per year. If we assume that most of those people are coming in by car, that each person visits exactly one time, and that each car that comes in is full (so say five people coming in for single reservation), that means that there are by extremely rough estimation, 800,000 reservations in one year. There are some faulty assumptions here though. It's probably safer to assume that not every car coming in is full, not every full car is a five-seater, and that some percentage of visitors comes more than once in a year (observe me or Alex Honnold or any other local climber) so the real number is likely much higher. To keep this estimate conservative for the sake of argument, however, we'll leave it at 800,000 reservations. \n\nWe'll also need to account for the fact that reservations aren't required four months out of the year. Considering these months overlap with summer, there likely aren't as many visitors during this time considering the temperature is consistently in the 90s and 100s, but again, let's be conservative and remove all visitors during that period; 1/3 of the annual reservations. So with these numbers, the number of reservations per year sits somewhere around 533,333. For those following the math, at $2 per reservation, by estimation that leads to roughly one million dollars a year in reservation fees.\n\nNow keep in mind, this is only **one** recreation area that Recreation.gov manages reservations for, and mind you, it's not even a national park. Note that **3,680** sites fall under the purview of Recreation.gov. On top of that, many national parks requiring reservations experience significantly higher volumes of visitors. Also consider that fees are charged by Recreation.gov for not only entry to recreation areas, but also things like reserving campsites and also lottery entries (of which the fee is much higher than $2 - last I checked, somewhere around $9.\n\nI recognize that there are other incorrect or missing assumptions here. The *exact* number of American simoleans that collectively we're paying in reservation fees isn't necessary for my argument here, my argument is more a general issue of magnitude; that **someone is profiting handsomely off of our recreating.**\n\n

\n $\"Red$ \n

\n\n# Taking a step back...\nI work as a software engineer. I have worked on large, multi-million dollar web applications for small companies and for corporations alike, and also many micro personal projects that will never see the light of day. I'm acutely aware that building web applications has financial and temporal cost, and that cost is generally speaking, always high. Exact figures vary depending on the project, but there are financial costs that exist universally across all projects; costs for computer hardware and electricity to power said hardware, funds to pay developers. For a larger project like this, especially one run with government funds, there's a need for project managers, product designers, graphic designers, Quality Assurance, etc.\n\nThen there are maintenance costs. Initial delivery of software usually isn't the bulk of the cost-- it's actually in maintenance, which can account for 90% of the total cost of a project. \n\nRegardless of how much it cost to develop Recreation.gov, I can assure you a few things:\n\n1. While the cost to host the site might scale linearly with the number of people visiting the site and making reservations, the maintenance costs likely do not. The maintenance costs are likely constant.\n\n2. The cost of Recreation.gov, split per reservation/site visit is far below $2. Considering there are hundreds of millions of visitors to national parks a year, and there are also likely millions of visits to the site that don't result in a reservation, the cost of each reservation made is likely a small fraction of a dollar. \n\nEven if the up-front costs to develop Recreation.gov were high, the site has been active since 2018 so it's probably prudent to assume the $2 figure is not purely recouping for the initial cost to launch the service.\n\nSo at this point you may be thinking: ok so government is inefficient and it's probably bureaucracy that causes these fees. It's a .gov website after all so the money is going to the government.\n\nThat's what I thought initially as well. After all, the .gov in Recreation.gov implies that the site is owned by a government agency, and therefore, it's not a stretch to think that any money you pay through the site probably goes to the government agency, for no profit.\n\n# Introducing Booz Allen Hamilton - the team that brought you Recreation.gov\nIf you haven't heard of Booz Allen Hamilton, remember that name. They're one of the largest technology and consulting firms in the United States, with an overall company value of roughly 18 **B**illion USD. The United States federal government is one of their largest clients, and they fulfill many millions of dollars in government contracts each year.\n\nYou can read about their strategy for delivering Recreation.gov here but I'll share an important snippet:\n\n> \"Recreation.gov was an investment for Booz Allen, designed collaboratively with participating agencies, but at no cost to the federal government. Instead of a traditional cost structure, the unique contractual agreement is a transaction-based fee model that lets the government and Booz Allen share in risk, reward, results, and impact. This is a true public-private partnership—it uses no government money.\"\n\nAt first glance, you might think \"oh wow! Benevolent capitalism! You love to see it.\" At second glance, you might see what Booz Allen Hamilton saw: deferred payment in lieu of a a per-transaction fee would be tapping into a goldmine, with hundreds of millions of visitors annually visiting national parks. An ever-expanding gold mine when you consider that more parks have gradually started requiring reservations during peak seasons.\n\nLet me be clear: I have no qualms with capitalism. Quite the opposite actually. I am a small business owner myself, and believe capitalism is the most productive means of addressing people's needs AND wants.\n\nThat said, when you consider the larger picture of what is happening here, it is quite insidious. The lands managed by Recreation.gov are public lands. We already pay to maintain them with our access fees, yet a private company now receives money nearly every time we visit. Consider this: If you purchase a national park pass for the low price of $80 a year, during every day of the year you could make 3 reservations and visit 3 different parks, for a total of 1,095 park visits. In that time frame, the federal government received $80. Booz Allen Hamilton received $2,190.\n\nI'm not the only one who sees the absurdity in this fee structure. After a bit of research I found out that there's an ongoing lawsuit over the fees that started in the State of Nevada, Kotab v. Bureau of Land Management, the impetus for this lawsuit: the reservation fees at Red Rock Canyon, with the plaintiff arguing and the court ruling that reservation fees were implemented without proper public approval.\n\nA small excerpt from the ruling:\n> \"Because the record does not show that BLM complied with the FLREA's public-participation requirements before imposing this $2 processing fee, I find that this charge was adopted in violation of the statute.\" \n\nAs of today, February 2, 2024, Red Rock Canyon is still charging reservation fees (along with all other sites as far as I know).\n\nThis isn't the only legal action that's come out of this matter. There's another lawsuit Wilson v. Booz Allen Hamilton that's yet to reach resolution.\n\nYou can read great summaries about both of these suits here.\n\nThe effects of these suits are still playing out, and the outcomes are yet to be seen. whether they're successful at eliminating these fees is yet to be seen. As long as reservations are required, and the whole reservation fee goes to a private entity, we're being charged to use land that we collectively own, and a private company is the sole beneficiary; exploiting our human need to be outside for unbounded profit; turning our natural desire to be outside into a money faucet in which they have full control over the tap.","openGraphTitle":"The Privatization of Public Access","openGraphDescription":"Public access to public lands is lining pockets and we're footing the bill","openGraphImage":"https://res.cloudinary.com/a345gdfgg38/image/upload/v1717358561/GF5A9959_dx14cu.jpg","snippet":"Public access to public lands is lining pockets and we're footing the bill","author":"Jeff Fennell","published":true,"urlSlug":"the-privatization-of-public-access","imageUrl":"https://res.cloudinary.com/a345gdfgg38/image/upload/v1717358561/GF5A9959_dx14cu.jpg","imageAltTag":"Red Rock Canyon Conservation Area in Winter","tags":["red-rock-canyon"],"id":"d611e0bf-48cc-42bb-8885-e807cacced7c","publishdate":"2024-02-04T17:14:28.738Z"},{"_id":"654db05f3fa701b1d5712d24","title":"Yosemite Valley On Fire","publishDate":"2023-11-10T04:22:10.022Z","content":"\n\nYosemite National Park Management is afraid of forest fires, and understandably so. I can think of no more a devastating way to lose acres upon acres of some of the most beautiful forest scenery in the world than to have it all burn to a crisp, when it's well within human control to prevent that fate. Historically park management made efforts to prevent such a demise, monitoring and swiftly suppressing all fires within the park, manmade and natural.\n\nOver time, this lack of fire led to overgrown forest areas accumulating an abundance of flammable material, leading scientists and park managers to realize the ecosystemic benefits of regularly occurring natural forest fires. In addition to clearing out dead, flammable vegetation, as a secondary benefit fires also enrich the soil with nutrients to encourage new growth.\n\nIn the 1970s, Yosemite implemented a [Fire Management program](https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/wildlandfire.htm) which seasonally performs prescribed burns to cull dead vegetation, reducing the frequency and magnitude of naturally occurring forest fires. \n\nThe scope of these burns can vary depending on the time of the year and the area of the park, but I've happened to visit the park a few (2) times while burns were taking place in The Valley.\n\nThe first time was in May of 2022, when crews were performing pile-burns. Driving around The Valley, you could see evidence of the day's and week's burns, long trails of smoldering ash piles every 15-30 feet culminating in the current moment's flaming pile, and just beyond it, the queue of freshly aggregated fuel piles of dead branches and shrubbery awaiting their turn.\n\n\n\n\n

\n $\"Yosemite$ \n

\n\n\n

\n $\"Crews$ \n

\n $\"Fire$ \n

\n $\"Spent$ \n

\n\n\n

\n $\"Spent$ \n

\n $\"Fire$ \n

\n $\"Raging$ \n

\nFire crews stood idly by, setting fire to each pile using this tiny red can, passively tending to it (from what I could tell, supervising more than anything), moving along to the next pile once the previous one reduced to an acceptable level.\n\nThe second time I was there during controlled burning was the last weekend of October, 2023.\n\nInterestingly the strategy of the fire management team seemed much different this time. Rather than individual burn piles this time I witnessed man-made lines of fire slowly crawling along across the park floor in various places, more akin to how a natural fire would burn. As you can imagine, the fire management crews were out in greater numbers for these burns, and seemingly much more focused on keeping the fire under control. Some of these fires were set to allow individual trees (seemingly diseased and/or decaying) to burn while still standing.\n\n\nWhile I didn't take too many photos in the valley during this trip, mostly because the smoke in the air caused my lungs to burn after only a few minutes outside of my car, what I did manage to capture this time around was the impact on the air quality in the Valley during these rounds of burns. I don't have any official metrics giving insight into the air quality for the day, but what I do have are some photos to give you a visual sense of just how much smoke was in the air:\n\n\n## Tunnel view at sunrise:\n\n

\n $\"Expanding$ \n

\n\n\n\n## El Capitan at 8 am\n\n

\n $\"Expanding$ \n

\n\n\n## Rays of sunlight poking through trees\n\n

\n $\"Yosemite$ \n

\n\n\nI don't know if the sheer quantity of material burned was higher during this trip, if I came towards the tail end of the burn cycle, so there was more residual particulate in the air, or if there are different acceptable amounts of particulate matter in the air depending on the time of the year and time of day that the burns take place, or entirely other factors altogether.\n\n\nWhat I do know is that the natural role of forest fires reveals such an interesting dichotomy in nature - to burn is to beautify; to destroy is to protect and enrich; to inflame is to suppress; to kill off is to give new life. Above all, I find it fascinating that one of the greatest tools that man has in preventing devastating forest fires is fire itself.\n\n\n

\n For the sake of transparency in this new age of Generative AI, I'd like to note that none of the photos I've shared here were created or altered using generative AI.\n

\n","openGraphTitle":"Yosemite On Fire","openGraphDescription":"Setting fire to Yosemite National Park (on purpose)","openGraphImage":"https://res.cloudinary.com/a345gdfgg38/image/upload/v1700531661/blog-posts/t1xx1n2jzhmgt2hpdcm8.png","snippet":"Setting fire to Yosemite National Park (on purpose)","author":"Jeff Fennell","published":true,"urlSlug":"yosemite-valley-on-fire","imageUrl":"https://res.cloudinary.com/a345gdfgg38/image/upload/v1700531661/blog-posts/t1xx1n2jzhmgt2hpdcm8.png","imageAltTag":"Yosemite Valley with a layer of dense smoke during controlled burns.","tags":["Yosemite","Photography"],"id":"f9b169c0-3471-40b7-a087-11245110a0cf","publishdate":"2023-11-10T04:22:10.022Z"},{"_id":"63e67aea9060e032e346cb69","title":"Hello World","publishDate":"2023-02-10T17:08:00.974Z","content":"It's been a few years since i tried to start a blog. Last time, I used an off-the-shelf solution, Ghost, but wished I'd had the time to build my own from scratch. I also only posted twice and then it fizzled out due to a lack of discipline.\n\nFast-forward about 5 years, where I had a burst of inspiration and built out a majority of a custom CMS for creating content. Any employed software engineer who's worked on personal projects knows that time and energy for programming outside of work can be a rare luxury.\n\nFast forward another 2 years, and I found myself unemployed after 18 months at Disney because of the \"challenging economic climate\". With a surplus of free time, and a desire to see this project through finally, I was more determined than ever to push it over the finish line. I'm hoping that as I have additional time in the future, I'll be able to publish tech posts somewhat regularly.\n\nThis blog isn't only for tech content though. I hope to also share quite a bit of my experiences in the other areas of my life, photography, climbing, guitar, and more. It's an exercise in balance, rooted in a desire to express myself creatively using not just the analytical half of my brain.\n\nI'll talk a little bit more in detail about my experience building this project, specifically my first time using [SvelteKit](https://kit.svelte.dev/) since it hit 1.0. Spoiler: it is *chef's kiss* and a React killer.\n\nIf you're along for the ride, welcome.","openGraphTitle":"Hello World","openGraphDescription":"A project finally seen through","openGraphImage":"https://res.cloudinary.com/a345gdfgg38/image/upload/v1676050223/jeff-fennell/buildings_lhzbhc.jpg","snippet":"","author":"Jeff Fennell","published":true,"urlSlug":"hello-world","imageUrl":"https://res.cloudinary.com/a345gdfgg38/image/upload/v1676050223/jeff-fennell/buildings_lhzbhc.jpg","imageAltTag":"Buildings towering above","tags":["dev"],"id":"505126a3-b215-494d-ae60-4361254cf69a","publishdate":"2023-02-10T17:08:00.974Z"}]}