The BLM fee proposal, October 2026

What did the BLM propose for The Wave, Paria Canyon and White Pocket?

A $20 Wave fee (from $7), $10 for Coyote Buttes South and Paria Canyon (from $5 and $6), and a new $10 daily fee at White Pocket.

The figures below come from the BLM's May 2024 draft business plan itself. Every fee is per person per day, and in the permit areas per dog as well. The proposed column is a proposal, not a price.

Has the Wave and White Pocket fee increase been approved?

No. As of October 2026 the BLM still lists it as a draft, the fees on recreation.gov have not changed, and we found no Federal Register notice.

The public comment period ran from 13 May to 26 June 2024, after an extension the BLM announced. The BLM's own plan page still carries the draft only, and its national business plans list files it under drafts whose comment period has closed, with no final version.

The Arizona Resource Advisory Council, which advises on fee proposals, had BLM recreation business plans and a council vote on its agenda for 11 and 12 December 2024. The agenda does not say which plans were presented, and no outcome for this one has been published that we could find.

Meanwhile the price you pay is the old one. The advance lottery page still charges $6 to apply and $7 per person or dog, and the BLM's Paria Canyon permit page still lists $6 for day use.

What happens next, and when could new fees start?

The plan needs sign-off from the BLM State Directors and, for the new White Pocket fee, a notice in the Federal Register. A new fee would start months after that notice.

The draft names the Arizona and Utah State Directors as the approvers (the signature lines are blank), and says the BLM will publish a Federal Register notice to set up the White Pocket fee. In its coverage of the same 2024 round of Arizona proposals, St George News described the order as comment review, then the council, then the State Director, then the Federal Register, with a new fee taking effect six months after the notice. That timing is the newspaper's account; the draft itself gives no start date.

In practice: if no notice has appeared by the time you book, the 2027 trip you are planning is very likely to cost what it costs today. Permits for a given month are sold four months ahead, and a new price would show on recreation.gov before it applied.

What would a White Pocket fee mean for visitors and tours?

A $10 day fee for anyone 16 or older, no fee for dogs, and no lottery or cap on numbers. Interagency passes would cover it.

White Pocket would become what the BLM calls a standard amenity fee site, with the $10 covering 24 hours. The draft says the America the Beautiful pass covers standard amenity fees and expects about half of visitors to use one. It puts the one-time start-up cost at $250,000, and notes that a decision approving a permanent toilet and parking improvements at White Pocket was made in January 2021.

What it would not bring is a lottery. A guide site that tracks the proposal, Jared's Detours, reads the plan as no lottery, no visitor cap and overnight camping still allowed, with roughly 17,000 paid visits a year. Those figures are its summary of the draft, not a BLM forecast we could check line by line.

For a guided day the change would be small next to the price of the small-group White Pocket tour, which starts at $183. If the fee arrives, check whether the listing includes it.

White Pocket is still free to enter. The hard part is the deep sand, and this small-group tour from Kanab drives it for you.

★ 5.0 · 8 hours · from $183

Explore the small-group White Pocket tour → Tour details

Has the BLM tried to raise Wave fees before?

Yes. In 2015 it proposed raising the Wave fee from $7 to $12. The fee is still $7 in 2026.

In July 2015 St George News reported a BLM proposal to take Coyote Buttes North from $7 to $12 and Coyote Buttes South from $5 to $12, with Paria day use dropping from $6 to $5. The Arizona council reviewed a Paria Canyon-Coyote Buttes business plan in April 2016, according to a BLM release. The permits moved to recreation.gov. The $7 fee stayed.

That is no guarantee about this round. Back in 2015, The Independent noted the fees had not changed since 1997, and in 2024 the BLM's deputy state director said its business plans had not reflected market conditions "in decades". What the 2015 round does show is that these plans can sit for years.

What does a Wave, Paria or White Pocket trip cost right now?

A group of four pays $6 to enter the Wave lottery and $28 if it wins. Paria day hikes are $6 each. White Pocket costs nothing to enter.

Here is the arithmetic for four adults, today and under the draft. The $6 lottery fee is a recreation.gov charge and is not part of the plan's fee table, so we keep it the same.

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