Oh, good, this discussion again.
All of the other items mentioned above come with restrictions on where and when they can be used in a national park. You can’t drive your Harley or Winnebago down a nature trail, but any yutz with a Mavic can carry it into the backcountry.
And motorcycles are drawing an increasing number of complaints, and the NPS is finally starting to take them seriously. Look for more restrictions on those in the future. It’s already being discussed.
Ultimately I don’t think the restrictions on drones have anything to do with fire dangers or whether they’ll upset the animals, although those are valid concerns.
The real reason drones are banned is because they can be really annoying and the general public doesn’t want them there, period. If they were allowed you wouldn’t be the only person trying to get “badass shots” of some beautiful location. Among the thousands of national park visitors on any given day, there would be a lot of them with drones.
The national parks are already overcrowded and understaffed. The last thing we need is a dozen drones buzzing around the most popular spots in the park at any given moment. And while every one of us likes to think of ourselves as the next Chuck Yeager with these things, I think we all know there will be plenty of idiots crashing their drones, getting them lost in trees, hitting people, you name it. You’ve read the threads here started by people who have crashed their drones.
The day the NPS allows drones in national parks is the day our hobby starts feeling some real backlash from the public. And I won’t blame them.