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Fee Programs

Federal forest, trail fees program should be repealed

By REP. PETER DeFAZIO

The scene: the French Pete Creek trailhead in the Willamette National Forest. A sign informs would-be hikers that they are now required to pay $3 for the privilege of hiking on a forest trail. Similar signs have sprouted up at trail heads and beach access points throughout the state.

The scene: the Goldstrike mine a massive industrial earth-moving operation located on about 1,7O0 acres of land formerly owned by the federal government in Nevada. The Canadian company that owns the mine expects to removing about $10 billion worth of gold from the site. Under the archaic 1872 Mining Act, the company paid U.S. taxpayers only $9,765 for this golden giveaway. If the land was still in federal ownership, the company could mine for gold without paying one dime in royalties to the U.S. government. The United States is the only land owner that doesn't charge mining royalties.

Congress is socking it to ordinary citizens who want to enjoy their public beaches or take a hike in their National Forests. But a multinational corporation is allowed to take a free hike straight to the bank carrying billions of dollars worth of gold mined on our public lands.

These new user fees are part of the so-called Recreational Fee Demonstration Program authorized by Congress about two years ago. The program gave the federal land management agencies the authority to raise existing fees and create new ones. So far, the fee program has generated 95 new access fees, a price increase for Golden Eagle passes, 119 new passes good for a single forest or park, 29 new day-use fees, 23 hunting and fishing fees, wildlife viewing fees, trail fees, motorized recreation fees and more.

In theory, these new fees are supposed to be returned directly to the forest, park or wildlife refuge where they were collected for needed improvements. But the early indications are that a lot of the money is disappearing into the bureaucracy.

Last year, the Forest Service spent about 53 percent of the fees it collected on "collection costs". The National Park Service didn't do much better. Some of the high overhead can be attributed to start-up costs. But especially for the Forest Service - which is trying to collect these extremely unpopular fees at trailheads and other widely dispersed recreational sites - it is likely that collection costs will continue to be very, very high.

The land management agencies recently reported to Congress that "public acceptance of the [fee] program is generally high." I'm not sure which public they're talking about. Certainly not the Oregon public.

My phones started ringing with protest almost as soon as the first fees were put in place. One Oregon paper notes a new form of vandalism in the state's national forests: widespread theft and defacement of trail fee signs. Newspapers in California report that the fees have "stoked rebellion". More and more stores in the Golden state are refusing to sell the Forest Service's new Adventure Pass as a result of the widespread public opposition to the new fees.

The problems aren't limited to the Forest Service. As part of the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program, Crater Lake National Park increased its entrance fees from $5 to $10 per vehicle. At Yosemite National Park in California, the National Park Service has increased entrance fees from $5 to $20 per vehicle. These kind of increases threaten to price some low-income families right out of our parks.

The editors at one prominent Oregon newspaper recently wrote that it's fair to charge people to hike on a forest trail or stroll down to the beach. They argued that the alternative to new user fees is no maintenance or investment in recreation.

That raises a fundamental question: how should we support the upkeep of our public lands? The plain fact is that these new taxes and user fees simply can't do the job. The Forest Service has a national maintenance backlog for its recreational facilities and trails of about $1 billion. The new user fees the agency collected last year would cover only .06 percent of that backlog. At that rate it will take about 1,600 years to catch up.

There is another way. To make the point, I introduced legislation to repeal the recreational fee demonstration program and replace it with a 5 percent royalty gold and other valuable minerals that mining companies now extract from our public lands for free. Let's go after corporations that are getting a free ride before we sock it to the ordinary folks.

If Congress won't require corporations to pay their fair share, it must face up to its responsibility to properly fund the maintenance and upkeep of our national parks, national forests and other public places. Over the last 10 years, our government has spent more than 44 billion on 20 B-2 bombers - an airplane designed for nuclear war with the now defunct Soviet Union. The aircraft has a number of serious defects, including an aversion to rain. Surely a nation that can squander money on unneeded weapons like the B-2 can take care of its parks and let its citizens hike on a forest trail for free.

The recreational fee program violates the principle that our national forests belong to the people of this nation and should be accessible to them. It is also fueling a deep resentment of our land management agencies and of Congress. It should be repealed .

Democrat Peter DeFazio represents Oregon's Fourth District in the U.S. House of Representatives.