They Paved Paradise, and Put Up a Parking Lot...

"They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
No, no, no, don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got till it's gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parkin' lot"

Environmentalists are saying a decision to install parking meters has backfired in B.C. parks.

The problem - according to environmentalists, now that people have to pay, people stopped coming. And apparently, they stopped comin g in droves - by some estimates, attendance is down 20 percent in 2003.

"The decision to put parking meters into parks was poorly thought out, poorly planned and poorly implemented," Eva Riccius, a wilderness society ecosystem specialist, said Wednesday. "British Columbians should not have to pay to go for a walk in the park."

Actually, I think the truly funny part of the story lies within the details - only 1/4 of folks actually chose to pay the meter. The rest simply ignored them. Park authorities issued tickets, but don't have the legal authority to collect on them.

To claim the decline in attendance simply on parking meters is oversimplistic - after all, this is the same Province that had massive forest fires in 2003. Forest fires tend to occur in... well... forests.