Everglades, Biscayne and Dry Tortugas National Parks are planning important increases in the fees they charge to use their facilities, with a short window of time allowed for public input — until the close of business on Thursday, Jan. 15. The biggest proposed increases are at Everglades.

In fiscal year 2014, Everglades collected $1,722,095 in recreation fees, says spokeswoman Linda Friar. Everglades got to keep 80 percent of that ($1,377,676) and the rest was shared by no-fee parks like Biscayne and Big Cypress Preserve.

“The increase that the park would be able to keep, should the proposed rate increase go through, would be between $1 million and $1.7 million, depending on the final fees that are adopted, based on public input,” Friar said.

“The current proposed fees would be the high end — though we may reduce some of these and/or phase them in over a few years.”

There were three public meetings about the proposal in the first half of December, two of them in the Keys and one in South Miami-Dade near Homestead. Possibly in response to criticism, two more are planned for squeezing into the week of Jan. 11, just before the close of the comment period.

Friar said one will be done in Homestead and the other in Collier County, which would be better for people who use the park’s Chokoloskee entrance. Locations hadn’t been determined by Dec. 17, but should be posted now on the park website. For that and more details, go here: www.nps.gov/ever/parknews/feeincreaseupdatepr.htm.

In the proposed price plan, announced on Dec. 2, Biscayne listed a $4 increase, up from $20 a night to $24, for camping on Elliott and Boca Chita Keys. It’s one of the few chargeable services in a park that’s 95 percent under water: You can get in by boat from the Atlantic, Biscayne Bay and any marina — entirely free unless you spend the night on shore.

If you land at Dry Tortugas, an island group 68 miles west of Key West, it’s now $5 plus $3 for overnight camping on Garden Key. Each of those fees is planned to rise to $10.

As for Everglades, its southern mainland highway entrance south of Homestead has an entry gate where visitors now pay $10 to drive in. That buys a seven-day pass even if you drive out the same day. Park managers propose raising it to $25 — the same amount visitors pay now for an annual pass.

If you tow a boat in, the proposal will tap you for an extra $25. That’s $50 before you launch. With a projected future annual boating permit for somewhere between $50 and $100, boating and fishing from Flamingo could be converted from affordable to near luxurious.

Bringing a canoe costs $3 now, or half that for seniors, but the canoe fee will be eliminated by the new plan. The annual pass price is a bargain for people who go often, but the plan is to double it to $50. Still a bargain? Depends on how often you go.

The seven-day admission fits well for campers, but it only gets you to the campgrounds, not in them. Everglades has two camping categories — frontcountry and back-country. Front country means the Long Pine Key campground on land, 6 miles from the visitor center and entry gate, and the Flamingo campground near the marina, 32 miles further down the road. Back country sites are scattered throughout the park’s huge marine area — some on islands in Florida Bay, many more deep in the interior beyond Whitewater Bay.

Front country tent camping will go up from $16 to $20 and back country from $10 to $15 if the plan goes through as proposed. No change is planned for the use of an RV site with electrical hookup. It’s to remain at $30 with a bargain price of $15 for seniors.

These plans are a result of a fee review conducted in 2014 by all U.S. national park staffs. The NPS announcement says Everglades did reviews in 2007 and 2013 without raising fees and hasn’t increased them since 1997 — although other national parks of comparable size and visitor numbers have raised theirs.

According to NPS: “The fees provide direct benefits to park visitors such as improving the condition of facilities, natural and cultural resource preservation, and interpretation of the park’s resources.”

In Everglades, little of obvious notice in those categories has been done in recent years. The entry gate near Homestead is almost new and improvements have been made to the Ernest Coe Visitor Center.

Best of all for campers, solar panels have provided hot-water showers in the Flamingo restrooms where showers had been historically cold.

Everglades managers assert correctly that maintenance needs are backlogged, and have been for many years. Worse, the 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Wilma were devastating at Flamingo.

The park is looking for concessionaires to replace the Flamingo Lodge and cabins, which were underbuilt in the first place and in bad condition before the hurricanes reduced them to rubbish. Neither the National Park Service nor its boss, the Department of the Interior, is willing to replace those themselves. Everglades in particular has been stiffed and starved for decades by a federal government that keeps cutting park budgets.

Apart from lodging facilities, would jacked-up visitor fees alone do very much to make up for years and years of deferred infrastructure maintenance? Or would that serve only to solve the little problems?

Experience with national park proposals in recent years proves that the National Park Service pays attention to criticism and tries to make controversial plans more acceptable to the public.

To support or object to the fee increase plans, mail written comments to this address: Proposed Fee Increase, Superintendent, Everglades and Dry Tortugas National Parks, 40001 State Road 9336, Homestead, FL 33034-6733.

You can also email your comments to Debbie_Lane@nps.gov no later than the close of business on Thursday, Jan. 15.

Grouper catch change

Are you keeping track of state regulations for grouper? They keep changing. Here’s the latest:

Starting Jan. 1, the bag limit for red grouper in state waters of the Gulf of Mexico reverts from four fish to two. The aggregate bag limit for all keepable groupers stays at four fish. Minimum size for reds remains 20 inches, total length.

In 2012, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) Commission raised the limit for red grouper from two fish to four. Pending federal regulations will make a two-fish limit for federal waters, and the FWC wants to keep state rules consistent with the feds.

Also, federal fisheries management policy closed the season early in 2014 because the overall recreational catch limit was exceeded in the previous year.

The Commission reasoned (with support from charter captains) that the reduced bag limit’s effect will be to keep the next red grouper season open longer.

For grouper purposes, Gulf-side waters of Monroe County (the Keys and Everglades National Park) are not included in Gulf regulations.

Saving sharks

Do you still cheer when heroic Police Chief Brody pulls off a near miracle with the gruesome destruction of the villainous great white shark at the end of every Jaws movie? Zap! There goes one more monster that won’t devour everyone who wets their tootsies at the beaches of Cape Cod.

In real life, though, killing sharks is bad and the heroes include people at Florida Keys Community College. They’re working on ways to save sharks from destruction as commercial fishing bycatch.

NOAA last month announced renewal of a grant to research conducted by Dr. Patrick Rice, a dean at FKCC. He’s found a way to infuse bait used in commercial longline fishing with a long-lasting shark repellent derived from rotting shark carcasses.

Of course it works. Who wouldn’t be repelled by that?

Only it doesn’t work quite well enough because it isn’t long-lasting enough, not yet. NOAA’s description of the problem says the repellent effect of the timed-release chemical SuperPolyShark, SPS for short, appears to fade after about eight hours in the water.

It’s also hard to put it in the bait while fishing, so Rice will keep working on it. The next phase will be to improve the effectiveness of the timed release and look for ways to put SPS in bait at the processing plant instead of at sea.

Want to know more? Try the FKCC website: www.fkcc.edu.