Letters: Fight Ryan Zinke’s plan to jack up National Park entrance fees | The Sacramento Bee

Re “California moves to block national park fee increases” (sacbee.com, Nov. 22): I’m encouraged to see a bipartisan group of 11 state attorneys general fighting Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s reckless and misguided proposal to double or triple entrance fees at our most popular National Parks, including Yosemite National Park. For the past 100 years, our leaders have insisted that all Americans have affordable access to our extraordinary National Parks. Yet as the attorneys general lay out, Zinke's proposal does not follow the letter or spirit of our National Parks laws. Instead, Zinke’s proposal looks like it was written up on a napkin. Most importantly, it fails to evaluate the legal criteria applicable for rate hikes, including the negative impacts on American families’ ability to visit the National Parks, and on the resulting the economic harm to gateway communities. This bipartisan coalition of attorneys general, which includes California’s Xavier Becerra, should be commended for defending access to our awe-inspiring National Parks.