Isle Royale Forums

Per the link in the first post, "All fees collected at Isle Royale remain in the park and are primarily used for trail and dock maintenance projects."

I'm a fan of the increase, but for selfish reasons: I can use my free Veteran's pass.

And, I also enjoy the fact that the money will stay with Isle Royale and not be used at some other park.

I have always feared the reservation system, one of the best parts of isle royale is the first come first serve availability system. It creates a sense of community in a way and allows people to double up and share space if needed, a somewhat unique part of the isle royale experience. Reservations will only lead to lower annual visitor numbers.
As far as the fees staying in the park, yes, they do. But the question is what are they used for, based on the dock and trail maintenance in the past twenty years it would seem very apparent that this money ended up in other places.
Investigating the proposed new fee structure further, it is likely the park will end up with less money than they do with the current system. Here is why, a $60 pass for up to four people, say they are there five days, (an average we find fairly accurate). This would be $20 per person in user fee or $80 total, a net loss of $20 for the park over the existing system. Couple that with the new adult/child age change from an adult being 12 to the proposed 16 years old and you eliminate revenue from all the boy scout, summer camp, school groups and so on that visit the island and there are big numbers of them. The day user fee will go from $4 to $7, it would seem that they would bear the largest portion of the increase even though they use the least of the resources being on the island for only a matter of hours. But, day users seem to possess the largest percentage of the various NPS issued passes, which will now be accepted. This will undoubtedly result in nearly equal or lower revenue over the current system for day visitors and an overall loss to the park when all user groups are combined. I feel the park would be better off raising the user fee to $5 per day for everyone, but if they need to create a pass to align with other parks it should be a minimum of $75. This would allow the possibility of staying closer to what they are bringing in now. Or, perhaps they could determine how much money they need to raise, which seems to be an unknown, and adjust the fee to meet that need.

I have always feared the reservation system, one of the best parts of isle royale is the first come first serve availability system. It creates a sense of community in a way and allows people to double up and share space if needed, a somewhat unique part of the isle royale experience. Reservations will only lead to lower annual visitor numbers.

I agree 100% here. When the state parks in Michigan went to the reservation system it deterred me from going. It made it seem like going to a KOA campground. Isle Royale is unique compared to other National Parks. I have been to many and come back to Isle Royale because if it's uniqueness.
As far as the numbers go, Don clearly knows more a lot more detail than I. I just want to be on the island and experience the wilderness. Wilderness, "the island" PERIOD EXPLANATION POINT!