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Fee Programs

Pay to Use

From the begining, the federal Recreation Fee Demonstration Program that was instituted in many national forests last year-including the Willamette National Forest-prompted squeals of outrage across a whole spectrum of the American public.

Many hikers and bikers protested that they were being required to pay a fee (locally it's $3 per car per visit, or $25 a year) to use public lands they already pay taxes to maintain. Others were concerned the fee would keep lower income people from using public lands. Still others said it was outrageously unfair to slap fees onto low impact users when timber and mining companies have for years been able to extract resources on public lands for a song.

"These new recreation fees are especially galling when you consider that large multinational mining companies are not required to pay one penny in royalties in exchange for the millions of dollars in gold and other valuable minerals they mine from federally-owned lands in the U.S.," Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio wrote in a 1997 letter to his Congressional colleagues.

In an unlikely coupling, Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, joined DeFazio in denouncing the fees, saying that they had the same effect as if a large "Keep Out" sign had been painted across the country's national forests. And Chenoweth has not been the only Republican to step forward and express her disdain. This issue crosses all boundaries, from the extreme right to the very liberal, to everything in between says Isabelle Spohn, with the group Free the Forests in Spokane, Wash.

Others detect an insidious intent behind the institution of the fee program. Presented to the public as a way for people who use national forests to pay for shoring up sagging maintenance on trade and roads and beefing up services for visitors the program is actually the tip of the iceberg in an orchestrated attempt to privatize, commercialize and motorize" public lands, says Bend resident Scott Silver. Silver, executive director of the group Wild Wilderness, says his main concern is what he sees as a general move toward placing public lands under the control of private (via corporate or concessions) businesses. It's user fees, he says, that will be the wedge used to open federal lands to this private control. If the public accepts the fees, he says, Federal agencies will declare the public is prepared to turn raw nature into a commodity."

Silver says that the decrease in federal lands logging-which has dropped two-thirds in the last decade alone-has left the Forest Service without a mission." So, to keep itself viable, the agency is turning to recreation on public lands as the new, up and coming revenue source. They are getting the public to not look at the land as part of nature, but as a playground where recreational products can be consumed."

To bolster his claims, Silver refers to a group known as the American Recreation Coalition, the major private financial sponsor backing the fee program. According to its own web pages the coalition is made up of more than 100 recreation and industry organizations, including the American Suzuki Motor Corp., the Resort and Resident Development Association, the International Association for Amusement Parks and Attractions, the Recreational - Dealers Association of North America and the Walt Disney Co. Associate ARC members include Exxon Co. U.S.A., Chevron Corp. and the Petroleum Institute.

According to Silver, Derrick Crandall, president of the coalition, has described the group as a non-profit federation that provides a unified voice for recreation interests to insure-full and active participation in government policy-making on issues such as public land management, energy and liability."

Silver says the predominance of motor-associated groups, and the absence of any genuine hiking, backpacking or wilderness organizations among the ARC membership indicates the fee program is meant to invite, rather than discourage, further the development of roads and services for off-road, recreational vehicle use.

The range of ARCs influence is significant, Silver says. For instance, Crandall holds an advisory position in the National Forest Foundation, the organization responsible for soliciting funding and partnerships-from corporations, foundaions and individuals-for the Forest Service. And just a month ago, Francis Pandolfi, the former head of Recreation Roundtable, an ARC spin-off whose members are the chief executives of 20 of the leading recreation companies in the U.S., was named the Forest Service's chief operating officer.

In addition, Silver says that because of ARC's financial sponsorship of the fee program, it has bought the right to evaluate the [fee] program ... and then to report to Congress on how the public liked it." ARC will also be able to help draft the final recreation fee system.

Dave Stone, conservation chair of the Lane Audubon Society, says that even without Silver's forebodings, reason enough exists to protest the fees. For instance, most campgrounds in the Santiam Pass have been privatized, Stone says, and therefore aren't regulated. He recounts an incident last fall in which a special rate "was advertised for hunters, but not for other users of the national forest.

Like many others, Stone is concerned about how the fees will be used. A communication to Stone from Sheryl Wilkinson of the Wlllamette National Forest supervisor's office says that public compliance rate with the fee program for the 1997 season was about 50 percent" and that none of the $53,400 collected for the program was spent on trail maintenance (although several maintenance projects are planned for 1998).

Yet Julie Cox, public affairs spokesperson for the Wlllamette National Forest, defends the fees, saying the program "is a good way to get funds needed for on-site use. And rest assured the dollars being paid are going directly to those trails."

But many recreationists aren't buying that claim. In central Washington, for instance, more than 7,500 individuals have signed petitions denouncing the fees, says Isabelle Spohn of Free the Forests People sign on, she says, because they believe existing taxes should maintain the forests, and because they feel everyone has the right to free access to public lands, not just those who can afford it." She says people are also concerned that the costs of administering the program will surpass funds spend on improving actual trails.

That concern proved true in the Los Padres National Forest in southern California, where, according to the Los Angeles Times, mandatory fees brought in $66,300 during the busiest quarter of 1997. Of that, $42,000 was spent on salaries for two recreation technicians to help carry out the program. Other improvements included 22 new toilet paper holders, 18 refurbished picnic tables, 12 new fire rings and two wheelchair accessible campsites.

An editorial in the Ojai Valley News, the paper that serves the area near the Los Padres forest, said the paper initially supported the fee program. However, the editorial continued, We were caught with our hiking shorts down" after learning the bulk of the fees collected had gone to pay for two recreation technicians. "It is difficult to imagine a more blatant example of exactly the sort of-bureaucratic money management the opponents of the Adventure Pass have warned about."

The fee program does have some supporters in the environmental community. One is Andy Stahl, director of the Eugene based FSEEE (Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics). The biggest problem with the fee program, Stahl sees, isn't allocation of funds or the insidious web of influence traced by Silver. It's that, after decades of watching the Forest Service sell off prime timber at basement prices, "nobody trusts the Forest Service as an institution. It has a black eye with the public, and it is hard-pressed to want to fork out more money to [the agency]"

The fee program does make pragmatic sense, he says. People who benefit from recreation on national forests should pay the costs, and those who can't afford to go shouldn't have to pay. Recreation is not a recognized "public good" that all taxpayers should pay for, he says, as is the case with military spending or infrastructure such as roads and bridges.

As a person who has scrutinized the Forest Service for years, Stahl says that environmentalists need to be more savvy about how agencies in general work. Agencies follow the money. It's the oldest axiom in bureaucrat behavior, he says. He says people who use national forests should drop their protest and get behind the fees full force.

"If all recreationists paid even a modest amount for using national forests, they would dwarf by seven or 10-fold all other revenues from using the national forest put taken together" he says. "Then, what would the Forest Service's new mission become? To provide recreation for people. To maintain trails. To not allow views to be marred by clearcuts."

ARC and other groups get what they want because they provide the agency with revenue to back up their desires. For instance, in California, a portion of off-road vehicle licensing fees goes to the agency to maintain off-road trails. The way to get the Forest Service to do what you want it to do is give it money," he insists.

The demonstration fee program will continue until 1999. Locally, it covers almost all trailheads in the Oakridge/Rigdon, Sweet Home, Detroit, McKenzie, Blue River and Lowell Ranger Districts, as well as the Three Sisters, Waldo, Diamond Peak, Middle Santiam, Mount Jefferson and Menagerie Creek Wildernesses.