For some of the things the author complains about there really are no good options. You can only shove so many people up the Half Dome cables on any given day or so many campsites in Yosemite Valley before it becomes a nightmare. You can't just build more of the experiences people are looking for in national parks like you can build taller buildings in a city. So your options are to ration by price (which NPS/etc generally don't do), to ration by luck (lotteries for e.g. Half Dome), or to ration by ability to plan ahead (far-in-advance reservations for campgrounds). None of these are great but what is the alternative?
Read "Industrial Tourism and the National Parks" by Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire. His solution is as simple as making people get off their asses and walk or bike, etc, rather than the then-current trend of building paved roads and parking lots ever closer to the "attractions".
There is, believe it or not, an IMAX theater right outside of Zion that shows movies of the park. My first reaction was to be appalled by the brazen crassness of such a thing. In time, my opinion has softened: if it diverts people from coming into the park for nothing more than a look around, great. Let them stay the hell out of the park and move on to the next checkbox on their vacation. It'll be less crowded for those of us who do like to hike.
This is the solution: not only does it manage demand, it reduces initial and maintenance costs and decreases destruction of natural lands. I couldn't come up with as good and natural a response to this problem.
Though I like this idea, as I age, I sympathize with people who are unable to do this for a variety of reasons. I'm sure those people can be accommodated, but that opens the door to abuse, putting us right back in this position.
I totally agree. In my country as soon as some natural reserves got paved roads, they also got restaurants and coffee shops, souvenir shops and an annoying crowd that could be equally entertained by having a coffee at the outskirts of their hometown, but instead they are now polluting a scenic landscape with their presence.
It's Nature. It is crappy already. When I went up Half Dome in the 70s It was the middle of June and pretty hot. It's a long walk and all of it is steep and some of it is slippery and scary. But "I'm a tough mountaineer" so I didn't turn back. And that image/ego thing is why making it crappy will not work.
