Petition drive mounted in federal fee program
By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer
Public lands users who’re disenchanted with the U.S. Forest
Service’s and Bureau of Land Management’s National Recreation Fee Demonstration
Program will have this Saturday devoted to their dissent as part of a nationwide protest.
Blaine County residents will make the rounds of local trail heads
in the afternoon to collect petition signatures from those who oppose the fee demo
program. The Idaho Sporting Congress is spearheading the local protest.
"I’m
acting as a spokesman to get the word out that groups like the Sierra Club are now
speaking out against user fees," Ketchum-based Idaho Sporting Congress representative
Will Caldwell said.
Dubbed "Recreation Fee National Protest Day," it was
conceived by Scott Silver, an Oregon-based public lands activist and founder of an
undeveloped recreation advocacy group called Wild Wilderness. The day is organized as a
vehicle to combine and convey citizens’ unified voices as they gather together
against paying fees to use public lands.
The hope, Silver said in an interview, is for Congress to hear the
nation’s unified voice, to take action based on what constituents are saying.
"In the next millennium, will Americans enjoy free access to
pristine forests, deserts, mountains, rivers and streams, or will wild nature be developed
into recreational products and sold to those with thick wallets or those most willing to
buy access?" Silver asked.
In addition to the Idaho Sporting Congress, numerous organizations
from around the nation will carry out demonstrations of varying degrees that speak out
against public lands fee programs.
Members of the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition will stage
three simultaneous protests along the coast on Saturday. A large protest is being
organized by groups at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif. Also organizations in Washington,
Ohio, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming and Colorado are scheduled to hold protests and rallies.
In the face of anti-fee public sentiment, Forest Service officials
maintain that fees are a necessary source of funds to supplant dwindling congressional
appropriations.
"If we don’t have user fees and appropriations continue
to lower, something has to fall off the plate," Sawtooth National Forest supervisor
Bill LeVere said.
LeVere and other local Forest Service officials point to projects
like the newly expanded Baker Creek trailhead, new restroom facilities in Adam’s
Gulch and larger trail maintenance crews as direct results of fee demo proceeds, results
that would not come to fruition without funds from user fees.
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The fee demonstration program began three years ago when
Congressman Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, added the program’s enabling legislation to the
Omnibus Recisions and Appropriations Act of 1996. It has been a source of controversy in
about 12 National Forests ever since.
Also, an organization called the American Recreation Coalition
(ARC), a lobbying group and self-declared recreation advocate, is a major driving force
behind fee-demo’s conception and remains to be one of the program’s largest
supporters today.
According to ARC president Derrick Crandall’s testimony to
Congress on Feb. 26, 1998, "Recreation fees on public lands were one of the issues
which prompted the creation of the American Recreation Coalition…"
ARC’s members include 130 corporate and semi-corporate
businesses including, to name a few, Walt Disney, Exxon, Harley Davidson, Kampground
Owners Association (KOA), the National Rifle Association (NRA), Chevron Corp. and the
American Association for Nude Recreation Inc.
Crandall further explained that ARC and public lands governing
bodies see user fees as necessary for the upkeep of the country’s public lands and
recreation facilities, Crandall said.
"Back in 1972 we saw a significant problem beginning. We felt
that the (public lands) system was failing. We began to explore other ways to make money
on public lands," Crandall said.
In the early 1980s, he explained, a commission was created, the
President’s Commission on American Outdoors (PCAO), that was headed up by the
governor of Tennessee., Lamar Alexander.
The commission worked for two years, Crandall said, to sketch a
blueprint for garnering increased public lands funding. It came up with user fees to
replace dwindling public funds.
"The ARC played a leading role in trying to translate that
recommendation into legislation," he said. "It’s not about money. It’s
about making sure people who show up at the SNRA have a safe, quality experience.
"We believe that recreation is a good force in America. We
believe that time spent outdoors is good for mental health and family."
Now with the fee demonstration program in place, Crandall said, it
has been up to local public lands managers to effectively implement the projects.
"In terms of progress and fee collection strategies, I’d
give the Forest Service a solid ‘B’," he said. But there are some areas
where the Forest Service has really fallen down in terms of communication."
Crandall pointed to the SNRA as one example of about two-dozen
relatively unsuccessful fee-demo test sites where the program and officials "fell
down" during the program’s infancy.
He said a lack of effective communication between Forest Service
officials and the public was a key to the lack of acceptance of the Fee Demo program
locally. Local Forest Service officials agree there were problems during the
program’s beginnings.
For that reason, Sawtooth National Forest officials responded to
the public’s outcry and revamped the local program from a general access pass to one
that only requires those who park at trail heads to carry a pass.
Addressing the SNRA-centered opposition to user fees and the
recent program alterations, Crandall said, "I understand the anguish associated with
the SNRA. I think the problems with the SNRA were the fault of the local officials. A lot
of us are going to watch closely to make sure it’s a success (there)."
Those who oppose the program—many activist groups and
individuals from around the country including The Sierra Club, Wild Wilderness, Keep the
Sespe Wild, Congresswoman Mary Bono, R-Calif., Congresswoman Lois Capps, D-Calif., and
congressman Peter DeFasio, D-Ore.—say fee demo amounts to a double tax on those who
recreate on public lands.
Bono has called the program "oppressive" and said it
creates a burdensome new tax for those seeking to enjoy the great outdoors. It contradicts
the very concept of the national forest system, she said.
Wild Wilderness’s Silver has closely followed the user fee
program since its beginning and has paid particular attention to ARC’s involvement.
He fears ARC’s objective is to gain profit’s for its member organizations by
improving recreation facilities, thereby increasing recreation users.
"ARC’s objective is to privatize the management control
of America’s public lands, and in so doing, to maximize profits for its member
corporations," he said. "They openly admit that the user fee program is theirs
and they are almost certainly the most influential lobbying group in American recreation
today."
Basically, Silver said, ARC wants to package and sell recreation
on public lands as a product. He said that, in all probability, National Forest recreation
will be run as just another extractive industry similar to the grazing, mining and logging
industries that have been the traditional businesses subsidized under the wing of the U.S.
Forest Service and U.S. government.
"What the ARC wants," Silver said, "is to have
greater management control of the lands to build facilities that can generate maximal
financial returns for its member companies."
The Sierra Club concurs.
"Reliance on user fees and private funding as directed by
fee-demo would encourage federal land managers to promote the equipment-intensive,
motorized uses that provide most revenue—and that, at the same time, cause the most
environmental degradation," the Sierra Club states in a special newsletter, The
corporate takeover of nature: What’s wrong with ‘fee-demo?’
Public lands recreation operated as a revenue-generating business
is a reality, say activist groups, if fee-demo continues to prosper.
Perhaps no single statement sums up what activists fear may happen
on United States’ public lands should fee-demo continue more than one issued by
Forest Service Chief Michael Dombeck on Dec. 3, 1997:
"Rarely is recreation and tourism on federal lands understood
as a revenue generator. Instead it has been perceived as an amenity—something extra
that we are privileged to enjoy. Fortunately that’s beginning to change."
