Of the 147 National Park Service-managed sites at which entrance fees are charged, fee increases are proposed for 88 of them in 2008.

While fees will not increase for Yellowstone or Grand Teton national parks, they will rise for Devils Tower National Monument and Fort Laramie National Historic Site.

The Devils Tower annual park pass will rise from $20 to $30, while the vehicle fee will rise from $10 to $15 and the per-person fee will rise from $5 to $7. The Fort Laramie annual pass will rise from $15 to $20 in 2009, while the per-person fee will rise from $3 to $5.

The current annual pass, vehicle and individual fees for Yellowstone and Grand Teton are $50, $25 and $12 respectively, effective May 1, 2006. Before that, the fees had been $40, $20 and $10 since 1996.

Park Service spokesman David Barna said price increases are not yet finalized, but confirmed that a Freedom of Information Act-obtained spreadsheet indicates "where we think fees will go."

Barna defended the entrance fee increases as reflective of inflation costs, noting that entrance fee money stays in each park. He said there will be public relation initiatives at each park unit to tell visitors where their money is going.

Analysis of the spreadsheet shows that at fully 60 percent of all Park Service fee sites in 2008, either the cost per vehicle, and/or the cost per person, and/or the cost of an annual pass, is slated to increase, said Scott Silver of Wild Wilderness, an anti-fee advocate. In some cases costs are set to double or even triple compared to what is currently charged, he said.

According to Park Service literature, "The goal of the new pricing structure is to have entrance fees support NPS goals, be consistent, simple to administer and adjust with inflation while providing the public with a pricing structure that is fair, equitable and easy to understand. The model has four pricing categories based primarily on the legislative designation of the site: National Monument, National Historic Site, large destination National Parks and other National Parks. The consistent pricing points were based on services provided and the similarity of resources."

Silver said the Park Service has been "looking at the costs of private recreation alternatives and setting the price of admission to public parks accordingly. I believe it is inappropriate to equate private recreation facilities with publicly owned and what should be publicly funded public facilities."

Silver said he believes Libertarian ideologues have been pushing this pricing agenda, so as to eliminate the cost difference between the public's use of public resources and the public's use of private alternatives.

"The purpose is to increase the cost of public resources in order to remove the supposed 'subsidy' given to citizens when they recreate on public lands. The idea is to create markets for private alternatives and then, eventually, to merge the two," Silver said.

According to Kurt Repanshek, who writes books, news articles and a blog (National Parks Traveler) about the National Park Service, the system could actually lose money on entrance fees, if you factor in the America the Beautiful Pass, good for admission to all federal public lands.

"Let's say you go to a handful of parks a year, or go to the same one or two parks a handful of times. Well, you'd be smart to shell out the $80 for the ATB Pass rather than pay $25 each visit. And if you did that not only would the park lose that daily entrance fee, but if you bought your ATB Pass at a Forest Service or BLM office, those agencies would keep the lion's share of your $80 and the Park Service would get a pittance," Repanshek wrote in his blog.

"And if you bought your pass at REI or EMS or some other retail outlet, well, no one is publicly saying exactly how those revenues will be distributed. And if all that happens, how would the Park Service be able to 'support its goals'?"

That's a legitimate question, said Cameron Hardy, press secretary to Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo. Thomas established the national parks fee demonstration program and was pleased to note last summer, at the grand opening of the new Yellowstone Canyon Visitor Education Center, that of the $10.5 million used to fund the project, $8.6 million came from entrance fees collected from the 20 million people who visited the park between 1997 and 2005.

Hardy said the new America the Beautiful pass muddies the water on where entrance fee money really goes. He said Thomas remains concerned about the issue, but is doubtful anything will happen during this session of Congress.

In an interview last year, Thomas said, "an $80 fee is certainly higher than what folks should have to pay to recreate on federal lands. If there's a budget problem in our land management agencies, let's get to the root of it, address it head-on, and not put budget shortfalls on the back of recreational visitors."

In the House of Representatives, Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., has expressed similar concerns. He recently wrote to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, protesting proposed entrance fee hikes in Oregon.

"I agree that the national park system is in need of additional funding, but raising fees for park visitors will only drive visitors away. Instead, the Department of the Interior should raise the money it needs to improve the park system by collecting the royalties that oil companies owe the United States," DeFazio said.

Yellowstone spokesman Al Nash said summer attendance was relatively flat from 2005 to 2006, rising 1.06 percent, from 2,750,172 to 2,779,369.