Yesterday I offered my congratulations to those dedicated, public-spirited activists who insisted that the National Park Service comply with environmental laws and manage Yosemite Valley and the Merced River corridor appropriately.

For almost a decade, Friends of Yosemite Valley (FoYV) and Mariposans for Environmentally Responsible Growth (MERG) have defended the public's interests against repeated assaults by the NPS. The courts have confirmed and reaffirmed the correctness of their position. With the decision handed down by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday, there can be no lingering doubt who was right and who was wrong.

The ramifications of this case are enormous. The Court in effect ruled that the "Wild and Scenic Rivers Act" of 1968 (WSRA) has teeth and that the English language meaning of the words of this act can not be ignored. The law can not be ignored by the NPS in relation to the Merced River. The law can not be ignored by other land management agencies in relation to other designated Wild and Scenic rivers.

Amongst other things the WSRA requires that the river corridor must be adequate protected, that the outstandingly remarkable values (ORVs) must be preserved, that a Comprehensive Management Plan (CMP) be written and adhered to and that the kinds and amounts of public use that can be sustained without adversely impacting the resource be established, monitored and enforced.

As I said, the ramifications are enormous.

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Congratulations are in order for everyone associated with yesterday's big win for Yosemite National Park.

Yesterday, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeal dismissed the National Park Service's appeal of a 2006 decision that had found the agency deficient in their plans to protect, and appropriately manage, the Wild and Scenic Merced River. Quoting from the appended article as it appeared in today's San Francisco Chronicle,

[The plaintiffs were led by a local organization called Friends of Yosemite Valley, which said the government's plans would lead to commercialization of the park and turn it into a playground mainly for wealthy lodgers, people driving recreational vehicles and visitors arriving in tour buses...

The federal agency "has failed to take the steps necessary to make sure the river is given as much attention as the concessionaires' profits," said Peter Frost, attorney for American Rivers, a conservation group that sided with the plaintiffs.]

Today's Park Service managers have come to see themselves as just another cog in the global tourism industry. They act as if charged with the task of facilitating ever-more commercialization, privatization and motorization of America's Crown Jewels.

The Park Service caters to the wants and whims of the travel industry, the recreation vehicle industry and commercial outfitters. They've done so for decades, and things have gone from bad to worse since Congress, in 1996, passed the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program  and, by so doing, gave the Park Service financial incentive to harm the lands entrusted to their care.

The Department of Interior threw at this case every high powered lawyer at their disposal. Even so, a small group of magnificent grassroots activists and environmental lawyers prevailed. Their win is our win. They won this case for Yosemite, for you, for me and for future generations.

The court's ruling is available HERE.
Scott

Black is White. War is Peace. Loss is GAIN — and the joke is on us.

Here is an excerpted quote from the appended article which recently appeared in the Santa Fe New Mexican. The complete article is appended.

If you want to bicycle, hike or watch birds in the state-run wildlife areas after April 1, it's going to cost you. Non-hunting and non-fishing visitors will have to pay to play, view and enjoy 28 wildlife, wildfowl and camping areas managed by the Department of Game and Fish, according to department spokesman Marty Frentzel. The new permit is part of the department's Gaining Access Into Nature or GAIN program.

       
Folks should understand that virtually all non-consumptive nature-based activities are currently being commodified so that they can be sold. For example, watching birds and other animals has been branded as the value-added "Watchable Wildlife" product. It was, until recently, possible to watch birds without having to pay a fee. Now to gain access one must pay a "Gaining Access Into Nature" fee.

Is this a GAIN? Does anyone believe that GAIN will promote appreciation of, respect for, and an enhanced desire to protect nature? Or do new programs such as GAIN simply put nature onto the same playing field as Disneyland and other entertainment commodities?

GAIN may be a pain but more importantly, GAIN is a LOSS.

Scott

George Orwell once wrote - "Omission is the most powerful form of lie" and today the US Forest Service is guilty of that lie.

Those who read Orwell's Animal Farm know how the farm animals would scratch their head in wonder as what had been clear and unambiguous Commandments written upon the barn wall seemed to change in the night.  "No animal shall sleep in a bed" became "No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets".  "No animal shall kill another animal" became "No animal shall kill another animal without reason" and, most famous of all,  "All animals are equal" became "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."


The law which grants the USFS authority to charge, collect and retain recreation fees says the following:

The Secretary may use not more than an average of 15 percent of total revenues collected under this Act for administration, overhead, and indirect costs related to the recreation fee program by that Secretary.

In the appended article from yesterday's Southern Illinosian and in countless similar references, the US Forest Service is now claiming that they may use no more than 15% of total revenues collected to cover the costs of fee collection.

The difference between what the law requires and the agency's new interpretation of the law, is as great as the difference between the original Commandments and those rewritten by the pigs in the dead of night.

I encourage you to read the appended article online at the link provided and to read the comments that your fellow barnyard animials have posted.

Scott 

Today's post is unusual. It was something I shared earlier in the day with a group of peers who are themselves expert in the field of National Park management. It was a response to a post on the NationalParksTraveler website and it assumes a high level of familiarity with park management and related issues. It was my call to experts to step away from the the trendy, hot, news items now appearing on the topics of declining park visitation, videophillia, Nature Deficit Disorder and to rationally ask the question -- "What the hell is going on?"

For those who do not read past this introduction, please understand that the stories you have been reading about National Parks in the media are largely fabricated spin. To get to the truth, you need to get past the spin. we must,  as Thoreau said;

Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe...till we come to the hard bottom of rocks in place, which we can call reality.

Continue reading if you'd like to try and get closer to reality.

Scott

   Things are seldom as they seem;
   skim milk masquerades as cream.
             - W.S. Gilbert

The Umatilla National Forest, located in the Blue Mountains of southeast Washington and northeast Oregon, has proposed charging recreation fees at new 39 sites as a follow-up action to their Recreation Site Facility Master Planning analysis. This is merely a "proposed action" --- in much the same was as the Umatilla RS-FMP was only an "analysis". Let's be straight, what is "proposed" is a foregone conclusion.

Pasted below are excerpts of today's announcement in the Federal Register. What I'd like to draw your attention to is the Forest Service's claimed 'justification' for charging new access fees at 17 trailheads.

When the old, entirely unrestricted,  fee-demonstration program became the new RAT (Recreation Access Tax) in late 2004, Congress thought it was raising the threshold for charging fees. Congress believed that it was stopping the FS from charging access fees simply because they could. Congress' defined the minimum level of development at a recreation site that could possibly warrant the charging of fees and prohibited the charging of fees where this standard was not met. The intent was to prevent the FS for charging for simple access or imposing a fee upon those who merely wished to enjoy a walk in the woods.

Unfortunately Congress set the bar low and gave the FS too many loopholes through which they could squeeze. The result is what we are now seeing.

Today, next week and the months and years to come UNLESS the RAT is repealed, the FS will be add 39 fees sites here, 25 there and thousands more scattered everywhere.  The FS will claim, as they have below,  that these new sites merit being fee-sites BECAUSE the are just like other fee-sites. They will justify the amount of the fee by saying that other recently created fee-sites charge that much. They will rationalize the imposition of additional trailhead fees on the basis of having added, or being prepared to add,  a cheap sign-board, a picnic table and a trashcan. The trail itself, which is the very reason and perhaps the ONLY reason for using a trailhead, will remain unmaintained or, at best, maintained by volunteers. 

Although this will be the future unless action is taken by the public, it need not be the future.  Legislation has been introduced that will repeal the RAT (S.2438). To learn more, click here.

Scott 

The Director and his students stood for a short time watching a game of Centrifugal Bubble-puppy. Twenty children were grouped in a circle round a chrome-steel tower. A ball thrown up so as to land on the platform at the top of the tower rolled down into the interior, fell on a rapidly revolving disk, was hurled through one or other of the numerous apertures pierced in the cylindrical casing, and had to be caught.

'Strange.' mused the Director, as they turned away, 'strange to think that even in Our Ford's day most game were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting. Imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It's madness. Nowadays the Controllers won't approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games.' He interrupted himself.  

                  -- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World 1932

Some will say that the appended Editorial from today's Chinese press is of no relevance to America's National Parks and other public lands. Some might ask, "Of what possible relevance is the announcement that Communist China has stopped charging entrance fees at public museums under the jurisdiction of cultural authorizes?

The answer is PLENTY!

Try to read this short Editorial not as if it were about Chinese museums, but as if it were about American parks, forests and other open spaces where free access is being phased out and where market-pricing is being phased in.

Is there some part of this Editorial with which you disagree?  I could find none.

Scott

Some enviros (and some who are quite the opposite, such as Rep. Fred Girod (R-Slayton)) like the idea of turning Oregon's Silver Falls State Park into a National Park. I don't.

A friend and fellow Oregonian who happens to be a NPS retiree, shared with me his opinion. He said:

"Trying to turn Silver Falls over to the feds is one of the three stupidest ideas Oregon ever came up with. 1. lower gas taxes and take the money away from state parks and OSP. 2. The Kick yourself in the ass tax rebate 3. trying to turn silver falls over. 4 would have been 1. with measure 37, but we shot that in the ass, only wounding it, but it's a start."

Pasted below is a letter to the editor by someone intimately familiar with this particular park. She begins:

"I think Rep. Girod is really barking up the wrong tree! If he had more facts regarding the park itself, he would not be trying to do this."

I hope those who would transfer Silver Falls, or would consider transferring other public lands, to the NPS will carefully read the LTE which appears below. The author doesn't hit all the bases, but she makes a good start.

Scott 

For nearly twenty years, the American Recreation Coalition has held two major events each year wherein they instruct federal land managers how to run America's public lands. Each year,  the ARC creates a new rhetorical frame to which the land managers adapt, sing and dance.

This year's theme is "More Kids in the Woods". It's not exactly new, but it is very effective. It is unusually effective because it appears to be so apple-pie.

In reality, the ARC's  Kids in the Woods frame dates to the time when the ARC and that great environmental villain, Senator Frank Murkowski,  conceived their "Recreation Super-Bill" --- a major legislative effort designed to transform the Great Outdoors into the great wreckreational playground. Murkowski's super-bill was stillborn, but it was unneeded. The land management agencies operating under the ARC's directive  have all but accomplished the wreckreation agenda without need of authorizing legislation.

The Partners Outdoors 2008 meeting ended yesterday. Beginning on Tuesday of this week, seventy five leaders of industry and seventy five high level land management agencies yucked it up at Utah's Snowbird Resort. Today those land mangers return to the important tasks of implementing the newest instructions handed down by ARC's President, Derrick Crandall. Come August, the public and private sectors will meet again for the ARC's "Great Outdoors Week." There will be many high level meetings in between.

For many years I have referred to Partners Outdoors by its more appropriate name "Collusion Outdoors." My reports are available on the Wild Wilderness website www.wildwilderness.org/docs/po.htm

Today the Forest Service placed upon its website a 6 minute video depicting Chief Kimball and the Head of Recreation, Jim Bedwell, giving their welcoming presentation. If you look closely, you can almost see the strings controlling their wooden limbs and passive mouths.

To learn more about this year's event, click here.

Scott 

RRFW Riverwire
Groups Appeal GC Ruling on Park's 100th Birthday
January 11, 2008
 
Four conservation groups filed an appeal today to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as part of their on-going effort to protect and restore the Grand Canyon's natural sounds and wilderness values from motorized and commercial uses.

The groups, which include River Runners for Wilderness, Rock the Earth, Living Rivers and Wilderness Watch, claim the National Park Service's new management plan for the Colorado River corridor which authorizes motorboat use and helicopter passenger exchanges in the heart of the Grand Canyon is inconsistent with National Park Service obligations to preserve the area's wilderness character. 

The groups challenged the National Park Service's management plan in Federal District Court in 2006, claiming that the Park's own policies require managing the canyon as wilderness. They also claimed that the National Park Service illegally granted the majority of river access to commercial concessionaires thereby forcing members of the general public to wait years for a chance to obtain a permit to float the Colorado River.

In November 2007, U.S. District Court Judge David G. Campbell upheld the National Park Service's new river management plan. Intervening in defense of the Park's plan were the Grand Canyon Private Boaters Association and the Grand Canyon River Outfitters Trade Association.

The groups' appeal comes on the 100th anniversary of President Theodore Roosevelt's declaring the Grand Canyon a National Monument on January 11, 1908.

A century ago, President Roosevelt proclaimed, "We have gotten past the stage, my fellow-citizens, when we are to be pardoned if we treat any part of our country as something to be skinned for two or three years for the use of the present generation, whether it is the forest, the water, the scenery. Whatever it is, handle it so that your children's children will get the benefit of it."

<CONTINUES>

Several weeks ago, America's land management agencies circulated a press release which has been  regurgitated numerous times by various media outlets. While the text of the printed articles has remained constant, headlines given to this propaganda piece have gyrated around a common theme.

Scott

Today, park managers, recreation touts and privatization ideologues assure us that the public is not only delighted to pay dramatically higher park entrance fees,  the public thinks the parks are under-priced.

These park mangers, recreation touts and privatization ideologues tell us that at least a portion of the public would like to pay more than the $25 now charged at "premium" National Parks -- and so they have arranged to keep the price increases coming and coming

The appended article from MONEY Magazine was published in 1987. It tells a very different story. It says that indignant tourists, socked with unexpected entrance fees, are growling. It says Senator Bradley was so incensed by the proposed $1 fee to visit the Statute of Liberty that he introduced exempting legislation. It has the Sierra Club asking, "Why should people have to pay to look at their own land?"

Can attitudes be so different in 2007 than they were in 1987? Have things changed so much? Is twenty five dollars now worth less than a dollar was worth in 1987? Or is it possible that park managers, recreation touts and privatization ideologues simply do not value the segment of the market made up of Americans who consider a $25 entrance fee as an obstacle to park visitation?

Scott 

Appended is an article titled "Land of the fee for photos in national parks?"
 
 The original idea behind charging fees for commercial filming in the parks was to permit film studios and advertising agencies to purchase as much access and agency cooperation as they needed. Instead of Park managers saying 'NO' to Hollywood studios or Madison Avenue ad agencies when they wanted to use a National Park for purely commercial (and/or inappropriate) purposes, managers would say 'YES'   just so long as they got PAID and could retain whatever money (baksheesh) they collected.  (Sound familiar???) 

Somewhere along the line, this collaboration between the Department of Interior, Park managers, and their commercial customers (business partners?) went astray.

Somewhere along the line the media and the public's right to know got caught up in this fee issue. The result is what you see below. The result is dramatic -- as is the explicit language being used by senior members of Congress.

Opposition to pay-to-play is, finally, coming to a head -- and increasingly doing so for all the RIGHT reasons.
 
Details from the recent Committee hearing are available online.
 
Scott 

 I recently did an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting on the topic of the US Forest Service's efforts to close, decommission and privatize campgrounds and generally shrink its developed recreation program in an effort to improve profitability and minimize operating costs.
 
That interview became part of a special broadcast given the title "What's the Value of Forest Recreation", the text of which can be read below. For those wishing to hear the broadcast, a link is provided.
 
I thought this was a well-done production. Hope you enjoy it.
 
Scott

The campaign to raise fear of being locked out of Yosemite by our National Park Service is slickly backed by private funds and political might. This spin befuddles Americans enough to make what's truly at stake in Yosemite frustrating and nearly incomprehensible.

Despite having lost two federal court battles on visitor capacity issues, the park has brought its refusal to comply with the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in Yosemite before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -- at taxpayer expense.

It is not easy to sort through the controversial plans and misinformation of a government agency that does not follow its mission or the laws designed to protect public places.

But the main issue being debated in court could be distilled down to one question: How many people can be along the Merced River in Yosemite Valley at the same time?

National parks are the American commons. Yosemite's natural beauty has something to offer everyone, no matter their philosophical bent, personality type or income level. And our society is in trouble if we cannot preserve the Incomparable Valley.

Apparently, our government feels it does not have to follow the protections of the rivers act -- at least when it comes to managing capacity in Yosemite Valley.

<continues>

Pasted below is the American Recreation Coalition's own description of their recent meeting with the new Director of the BLM, Jim Caswell and here is what may be the most interesting passage from that report:

[When it was pointed out that partnerships with user groups and state governments were not consistently in place for such programs as OHV management and trails, Mr. Caswell agreed that there was potential in leveraging powerful resources through partnerships with states, counties, recreation businesses and enthusiasts and it should be a priority of the BLM.]

OR perhaps, this is the most interesting passage: 

[He also told the group that he believes the key to multiple-use success is a partnership between private and public lands.]

And, as always, the list of sponsoring organizations which appears at the end of this message is extremely interesting. They are, after all, the the organizations which are most heavily influencing recreation policy in America today. These are "the partners".

Scott

"Kids in the Woods" is a phrase upon the tongue of every huckster intent upon boosting the sagging profitability of that segment of the tourism / recreation industry dependent upon people traveling to, and consuming recreation within, "The Great Outdoors"™. It's an important concept, hijacked by those pushing a particular agenda and now gone bad as a consequence of how it is being abused.

Kids, I might add,  are not the only demographic no longer visiting and enjoying their public lands.

Much has recently been made of the large decrease in the number of hunters and, as a result,  a great deal of energy and resources is being used to lure hunters back to the forest (and to the sporting goods shops, motels, and gas stations they are no longer patronizing).

Pasted below is an article from the Detroit press titled "Hunting fees in the crosshairs. " Here is a quote I thought most revealing:
           

"If you discourage people of my age and we don't go out, who's going to introduce it to the younger generation?" said Seefelt, who will be hunting in the Lewiston area this week. "And if no one introduces it to them, who's going to introduce it to their children?"

Unlike those who are using  "Kids in the Woods" to  promote the "Corporate Takeover of Nature and the Disneyfication of the Wild",  Mr. Seefelt is stating a simple fact.

Land managers and those in the commercial sector who have long promoted "pay-to-play" paradigm create fictions to explain declining participation in public lands recreation. Those fictions are designed to a paradigm shift in how, and at what cost, outdoor recreation will be provided in the future.

"Kids in the Woods" is one such fiction. The article which follows offers a more simple, and straight forward, truth.

Scott 

Last week a reporter contacted me for an article he was writing. Forest Service Chief Gail Kimball had just announced she planned to cut recreation and other programs by $300 million and to transfer that money into fire suppression. The reporter asked for a comment and in addition to what is quoted in the appended article, I explained how this budget transfer was a "twofer."  That line of reasoning didn't get into the article and so I share it here.

Not only is Kimball moving money into a bottomless pit from which private contractors will eventually receive the lion's share: in further staving the recreation programs, Kimball could ensure that local land managers would have no option other that to rely even more heavily upon increased and more wide-spread recreation user-fees, volunteerism, partnership and, of course, more commercialization.

With respect to the Forest Service, Congress is not primarily, or uniquely, responsible for using the Reaganesque "Stave the Beast" mechanism to destroy that agency's recreation program. It is the Forest Service itself, thought a variety of mechanisms, that is gutting its own recreation program.

Top brass within the Forest Service are minimizing the amount of allocated dollars that get to the ground. The more conspicuously the Forest Service does this, the more "inefficient" they are seen to be and the more impetus there becomes for cutting the agency's budget.

Sadly, the current administration values those employees who exhibit special competence in destroying their own agencies and showing to all the world, that government does not work and should, therefor, be privatized.

Scott