Welcome to the UNofficial website of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service - an agency in search of a mission.

Fee Programs

Fees for park, forest use face court test

Sunday, February 4, 2001 - By Michael Milstein of The Oregonian staff

Leeanne Siart and George Sexton knew they risked a citation when they hiked into the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area last month without the required $5 pass for their windshield. But the Eugene residents refused to buy in to the federal government's test of fees for hiking on public lands.

"They have logged and developed so many places, they have left fewer and fewer places to go hiking," Sexton said. "They should not be charging people to use those fewer and fewer places."

He and Siart never expected to be videotaped, threatened with arrest and fined $50, though. That's what they say happened when they returned to their car and found two U.S. Forest Service officers waiting. They plan to contest the fine in what could become the first key test in this region of the notion that the public should pay to play on its own lands.

With its plan to toughen enforcement of such fees in the Northwest this summer, the Forest Service itself will test the public's tolerance for the confusing mishmash of land passes and fees that has evolved since 1996, when Congress mandated an experiment in fees to help repair decaying recreation facilities.

While public land users have long accepted entrance fees at national parks and campground fees in national forests, their willingness to pay for such simple pleasures as day hiking is less clear.

Land agencies say the public supports the recreation fees that have raised millions of dollars, but critics charge that poorly designed surveys distort that support. And the Forest Service has muffled one of its scientists whose research suggested that fees drive low-income users off national forests.

Such questions are critical because fee revenue -- totaling $6.5 million from national forests in the Northwest last year -- has underwritten the Forest Service's emerging image as a recreation provider. The new Bush administration backs such a free-market approach to public lands, hoping use of the lands can generate dollars to maintain them. Officials are expected to favor extension of the program, set to expire in 2002.

When Congress created the Recreation Fee Demonstration Project in 1996, it instructed the Forest Service, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management to test ways of collecting new and higher fees. For the first time, agencies could keep the money instead of sending it to the federal treasury.

"Horribly confusing"

But the fee program never went through the normal congressional debate or public hearings to work out details. In the Northwest, the Forest Service enthusiastically levied nearly 20 different charges that quickly demonstrated how not to impose fees. The system so thoroughly confused the public that officials went back and tried again.

Last year, the agency unveiled the Northwest Forest Pass, which costs $5 a day or $30 a year and is required for parking at many -- though not all -- trailheads in national forests and North Cascades National Park in Washington. It is required for overnight camping at some backcountry sites around Mount St. Helens.

Although the Northwest Forest Pass combined fees at many forests, it remains just one of a confusing mix of more than 10 federal and state land passes available in the region. It applies only to parts of the Mount St. Helens region, for instance, where visitors need a special "Cascades Volcano Pass" to hike above 4,800 feet.

It works at North Cascades National Park and national monuments run by the Forest Service, but a different pass applies to other parks and monuments. Some passes cover a car full of people in one place but admit only one person to visitor centers in others.

The Oregon Pacific Coast Passport has proved popular because it covers all state and federal lands on the Oregon coast -- but it does no good away from the coast.

"They all charge different ways, for different things," said Manfred Wiesel, a Washington County resident who visits national parks and forests. "This is a waste of tax dollars, and it's horribly confusing."

Buying annual passes for two people to visit all federal and state land and visitor centers in the Northwest would cost well over $100. Agencies have discussed a discounted universal pass for the region, but though they agree that the public wants one, they disagree about how to share the proceeds.

Consolidating fees that way would also make it tougher for agencies to reinvest the money in the sites where people paid it, a premise of the program.

Those who paid willing to pay

The Forest Service reported to Congress that forest users overwhelmingly support its recreation fees. Yet some outside researchers say that's a skewed conclusion based largely on surveys taken at fee sites of people who have opted to pay the fees. It overlooks those who cannot or will not pay them.

"Those people are simply not showing up in the studies done by the Forest Service," said Thomas Stevens, a professor of resource economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Stevens and Thomas More, a Forest Service researcher in Vermont, conducted the first broad survey of the way recreation fees affect all forest visitors. In a mail survey of households throughout Vermont and New Hampshire, they found that while most of those who responded support fees to maintain facilities, one of every four low-income families visited national forests less often to avoid the fees.

The researchers concluded in a paper reviewed by peer scientists and published last year that fees "significantly discriminate against low-income people."

"When agencies begin to act like entrepreneurs seeking self-funding through fees, and low-income people are excluded, the public purpose -- the very reason for public ownership -- is defeated," the researchers wrote.

Soon after the paper emerged, the Forest Service barred More from talking to the press, a prohibition that continues. The agency issued "talking points" to its spokespeople around the country dismissing the findings as "statistically insignificant."

Stevens, More and other researchers who reviewed the paper say that claim is false. "The Forest Service is very sensitive about this," Stevens said. "They have staked their future on this fee program. They do not welcome information that raises questions about it."

In perhaps the only other inclusive attempt to gauge whether fees deter users, researchers at Arizona State University questioned beachgoers at a free national forest lake in Arizona. The survey found that more than half had chosen the beach because it was free. About 70 percent said they visited the forest less often because of the $4 day fee at other sites, and about one-third said they were surprised or angry about that charge.

"Definitely, if you have fees, there is some percentage of people who are displaced," said Ingrid Schneider, who led the study. "There could be implications for agencies, for recreation and for the public's support for natural resources in general."

Visitor counts unreliable

It is unclear whether recreation fees have affected overall forest visitor numbers, because even Forest Service officials acknowledge that their recreation counts are inconsistent and unreliable. A University of Montana report on recreation in the Northwest found that the Willamette National Forest in Oregon inflated its visitor counts in 1997, the first year the fees were charged, to warrant a larger budget.

"If you report more visitation, it can support the need for your programs," said Miller, an author of the report. "So there are all kinds of questions that surround visitation figures."

And many question the service's crackdown on visitors such as Sexton and Siart. Officials declined to discuss the pending case. In other states, however, judges have dropped charges against many fee resisters. In Idaho, federal attorneys have stopped prosecuting most fee violations because they are such minor infractions.

"The whole experience lowered my opinion, not only about the fee program but about the whole Forest Service in general," Siart said. "The point was to assess how the public felt about fees, not to harass and videotape people."