Yes, Foreign Tourists Should Pay More at Our Parks

But don’t mistake that for a solution.

Here’s something I rarely say: a good idea just came out of the Wall Street Journal opinion pages. Brian Yablonski—head of PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center—just penned a piece arguing that foreign tourists should be charged $100 to enter U.S. national parks. This is something Will and I have been talking about for years. It’s obvious, overdue, and frankly just common sense. But before we get into that, let me throw some cold water on PERC.

PERC isn’t your friendly neighborhood conservation nonprofit. It’s a free-market think tank that’s spent decades trying to chip away at federal environmental protections. They’ve backed the land transfer movement, lobbied to weaken public land oversight, and polished up industry-friendly policies with a conservation-sounding sheen. Their idea of stewardship usually involves property rights, deregulation, and letting the market sort it out. And yes, they’ve taken money from fossil fuel giants like Exxon. So yes, I support the foreign…