On January 4th, President Biden signed the EXPLORE Act, launching several new initiatives to enhance visitors’ experiences in the national parks. These include new bike trails, expanded camping options, and a groundbreaking change for independent filmmakers and photographers: small crews can now film in national parks without a commercial permit, so long as they respect park rules.
For travel vloggers like us, this is a game changer. The old rules treated a Hollywood blockbuster crew and an independent creator with a handheld camera the same, requiring both to navigate costly and complex permit systems. Now, crews of 6 or less are allowed to film for fun or profit with no paperwork required.
This new law doesn’t just open up many new avenues of content creation for travel vloggers like us. It’s a personal victory that resolves a very stressful chapter for us that made us stop visiting national parks altogether.
Why We Decided to Not Visit National Parks Anymore
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic left us unable to travel internationally, so we bought a converted Sprinter van and embarked on a journey to travel to every state in the US. We documented every part of this adventure on our YouTube channel, including our visits to Rocky Mountain National Park and Sand Dunes National Park.
While we were biking the Colorado Trail, we received a voicemail from government officials giving us some alarming news. Apparently, someone had reported our national park videos to the government claiming that we had filmed these commercial videos without proper permits.
The voicemail told us that we needed to call the National Parks Service by a specific deadline to pay a fine of over $1,000. If we didn’t, they would send out a warrant for our arrest. Furthermore, we would no longer be allowed to film in national parks without a commercial permit.
I’ll be the first to admit that we messed up in this situation by not researching National Park’s filming rules before filming our videos, but as we looked into getting our own commercial permit, we realized how unfair this process was to small creators like ourselves. This application seemed designed for big-budget movie productions, not independent filmmakers with the same handheld cameras regular tourists use.
In order to secure filming permission, we had to:
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Document every crew member, piece of equipment, and even animals we’d bring into the park.
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Pay a permit $325 application fee and a $150 fee for every day we spend in the park.
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Submit a detailed form 2-4 weeks in advance documenting everything we planned on seeing and doing in the park.
For us, these were completely impractical asks. We thrive on spontaneous adventures and love uncovering hidden gems – not sticking to rigid, pre-planned itineraries. Filling out endless paperwork for every park we visit a month in advance wasn’t just frustrating, it was unfeasible for us.
The whole experience left us completely heartbroken. We could’ve visited the national parks without filming them, but our true joy of traveling comes from being able to document our experiences. Sharing these incredible places inspires others to explore them or lets those who can’t travel experience this beauty through our lens. In the end, we made the difficult decision to leave national parks off our road trip itinerary entirely.
About a year later, the filmmaker community scored a major win. A federal court ruling deemed it unconstitutional to require permits or charge fees for filming in national parks. New guidelines were released that allowed “low-impact filming” without a permit, which included groups of less than 5 people using hand-held cameras – people like us! We were even able to film a video in Yellowstone National Park under these new guidelines. Unfortunately, this ruling was overturned in 2022, reinstating the restrictive permit requirements.
This EXPLORE Act changes everything for independent filmmakers and travel vloggers like ourselves. It gives us the freedom to share content we love with our audience, as long as we respect the parks. We are so excited to visit these national parks again and share videos of some of the world’s most incredible natural wonders.