[The California Department of Parks and Recreation will no longer run the parking lot as a SnoPark. The Forest Service has rescinded the SnoPark's permit and is looking for a concessionaire to manage the area year round.]

[ The American Recreation Coalition is a nonprofit, Washington-based federation founded in 1979. The association provides a unified voice for recreation interests to ensure their full and active participation in government policy-making on issues such as public land management, energy, and liability.]

Quoted from appended article from today's Sacramento Bee:

    [A House committee soon will review the new proposal, but pride of authorship resides beyond Capitol Hill. It's a coalition of Californians who put aside their historic antagonisms to negotiate the package, acre by acre. "It's really the way it should be done," said Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy.]

Richard Pombo needs no introduction -- BUT did  know Pombo serves on the Advisory  Board of the National Wilderness Institute and that NWI has very specific ideas on the way Wilderness should be done?

If Pombo and / or NWI supports a Wilderness bill, what does that say to you about the bill and the compromises built into it?

Learn more http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=75

Scott

PS... be sure to see the two quotes at the bottom of this page.

 1) [Mr. Smith] said the [new NPS] policies are more balanced than have been portrayed, noting that the media misinterpreted the Secretary's statement that where there is conflict and impairment, conservation will prevail to mean that recreational use will always be secondary to preservation

 2) Smith said that "a significant initiative," announcing his legislative and other priorities will come in the next 10-14 days.

National Park visitation has been declining for about a decade. Only recently have the National Park Service and park interest-groups acknowledged this reality and begun to speculate as to the cause.

Almost invariably, declining visitation is attributed to things externals to the parks --- things such as 9/11, gas prices, excessive video gaming by today's youth and changing cultural norms. Rarely has the decline been attributed to anything actually happening within the National Park system. Rarer still is for anyone to so much as suggest that declining visitation may be correlated to escalating entrance fees.  If fees are mentioned, it is generally to praise them and then discount the possibility that they might, somehow, be involved.

The appended article is the rarest of all. It quotes a park superintended saying "Visitor numbers have been dropping for all the attractions of the park since 1999 when the fee was introduced..." and then quotes him saying  "we had a hard look at the numbers and decided to eliminate the fee."

So here's a question. If declining park visitation correlates to increasing fees in one park, is it possible the same may be true in other parks??? Is it possible the declining visitation on US Forest Service lands may also be related to increasing fees???

Scott 

Last Thursday, as everyone knows, the President proclaimed a new marine national monument. As part of his speech, he said:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/06/20060615-6.html "To protect our marine ecosystem and the future fishing of all kinds, the Ocean Action Plan calls for Congress to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. They need to get that done.

Last Thursday Senators Wyden and Boxer lifted the hold they had placed upon this legislation, freeing that bill to move. Concidence? Perhaps.

Today Representative Richard Pombo sent the news release pasted below announcing that the Senate passed their version of Magnuson-Stevens. The House had already passed Pombo's version of that same bill.

 Presumably the bills now head to conference committee where it is not unreasonable to assume that the very worst features of the Pombo bill will be incorporated into the final bill and that this it will pass into law as the President requested.

That said... there may be MORE on the horizon. Pombo issued a SECOND news release today. The headline is "Resources Committee to consider bipartisan Deep Ocean Energy Resources (DOER) Act"  and here is a short quote from that release:

http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/Press/releases/2006/0619_doer.htm "Roughly two dozen OCS-related energy bills have been introduced in this Congress," Chairman Pombo said. "The DOER Act is a hybrid of these bills, making it the most comprehensive, balanced and forward-thinking approach proposed to date. I look forward to a spirited debate on this bill in committee on Wednesday. The DOER Act ...creates a flexible framework that balances the interests of different states by putting the states themselves in the driver's seat with unprecedented authority over their coastal resources.

Then there's this snippet from yet another recent news release by Pombo. The headline for that news relase was "Committee Hears Testimony on Ocean Energy Policy".

http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/Press/releases/2006/0614OCS.htm Today's hearing was the latest in a series held by the Resources Committee as it considers deep sea energy legislation in the 109 th Congress.  Similar legislation has been championed by Chairman Pombo, and by Reps. John Peterson (R-PA) and Neil Abercrombie (D-HI).

I don't know anything about Hawaii's Congressman Abercrombie other than I believe he was standing behind the President when Bush signed the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument proclamation. As for Pombo and Peterson, they are two of the most offensively anti-environmental members in Congress.  So what is the gentleman from Hawaii doing by championing deep sea legislation with men such as these???

Would anyone, besides me, care to speculate whether there's the possibility of direct connections been the good deed done by the President last week and the likelihood of bad marine-related legislation becoming law in the months ahead?

Scott

The National Park Service has launched a new marketing campaign. Here's their slogan:

 Visit the "National Parks: The Place to be for Family Fun" website at http://www.nps.gov to learn more about what's happening in national parks across the country.

If you GOOGLE for the phrase -- "The Place to be for Family Fun" -- you find that it is being used to describe everything from the local YMCA to tawdry amusements centers with batting cages, video games and go-cart rides.

The NPS (and their tourism industry partners) are desperately trying to boost travel and park visitation [ SEE: http://nps.seeamerica.org  ]. They are doing whatever it takes to get more paying customers past the ticket booth and into the concessionaire's gift shops. They are adopting commercial marketing language unbefitting National Parks. None of this is either new or surprising. Here's is a warning my friend Michael Frome offered in a lecture titled "National Parks or Theme Parks.

http://www.wildwilderness.org/docs/frome.htm National parks, monuments and historic shrines constitute a gallery of America and Americana at their best. Unfortunately, over the past half century I have witnessed many, many changes in the parks, some few for the better, but others highly damaging and cause for serious concern. Simply stated, these precious places are overused, misused, polluted, inadequately protected, and unmercifully exploited commercially and politically -- moreso in the recent reactionary, corporate-controlled Congress than at any time in memory. Clearly, we the people need to redefine and reassert the rightful role of national parks in the fabric of contemporary high-tech, materialist-driven society. We need to rescue the national parks from being reduced to popcorn playgrounds.

The  problems facing the parks weren't all created by the Bush Administration. Many of these problems won't be going away when Bush and his team leave town.

If the Bush Administration does not destroy the NPS (which I don't expect it can still accomplish), the parks will be in need of serious rescuing come 2009. Can the national parks be rescued and, if so, who will do it?

Scott

"(W)e must not allow our national parks and national forests to be degraded to the status of mere public playgrounds."    -- Ed Abbey, The Journey Home

 [...this is an incredible story, one that clearly connects all the dots when you start to wonder what the heck the Interior Department is up to these days.]

Quoted from the appended article about declining park visitation:

["Obviously, we want the numbers to be up, and yes, it is disappointing when we have put a lot of effort into advertising and the numbers are still down..."]

That particular comment was made by the head of the local Chamber of Commerce, yet if you read on, you'll find this even more explicit statement by the Superintendent of Carlsbad Caverns NP:

["We are doing everything we can to increase visitation. We don't have a budget to promote the park. Even in not having that budget, we are still doing everything we can. ]

A few years ago people were saying the National Parks were "being loved to death". Today park superintendents are hustling to attract more visitors. What do you suppose is going on???

If you read the document titled "Carlsbad Caverns National Park Fiscal Year 2004 Annual Performance Report," you'll discover that -- fee "collections in 1997 were $4,000, this year, the park collected over $2 million."

Not provided in that NPS report are visitation numbers for this same time period. I've added them here for comparison.


Carlsbad Caverns NP Recreation Visitors
    Year     Visitors
    1997     540,797
    1998     522,076
    1999     514,418
    2000     469,303
    2001     455,621
    2002     476,259
    2003     457,631
    2004     419,599
    2005     413,786  .... hmmmm.

I don't think gas prices, 9/11 or the weather is to blame.

Scott

The following comes from the American Recreation Coalition's website and is the statement of the Deputy Chief of the USFS as presented at an ARC meeting earlier in the month. "Marketing forests as inexpensive GYMS" -- is only one of the themes discussed.

The primary theme expressed below is one I exposed for the fraud that it is in a piece published in 1999 and titled "Is Relevance Relevant". My warning can be read here.

OH.... and then there is this statement quoted from the article which appears below...

[ Addressing the issues of increasing populations and multiple use demands on public land, he stated that he believes that public dialogue over time will help us "to find the balance we are looking for" to accommodate multiple uses. He also stated that some adjustments in roadless and wilderness designations are in order. ]

Scott

There's a wonderful  piece of irony in the situation reported today in the appended article -- to which I've added an important "heads up".

British Columbia's Provincial parks have installed parking meters purchased from the USA and installed by Lexis, a Canadian Company.  USFS-managed recreation fee sites in Arizona and BLM-managed sites in California have installed "Automatic Payment Machines" purchased from Canada that were made, installed and are operated under contract by -- you guessed it --LEXIS. Check out http://www.parking.ca/uprs/ to learn more.

In January of 2005, the business assets of Lexis were acquired by San Diego-based Cubic Corporation. Why is that important? BECAUSE America's land management agencies are under intense pressure to acquire and adopt as quickly as possible "swipe technology" for the collection of Entrance Fees AND 'Special Recreation Permit' fees at National Parks and other recreation sites. And guess what:  Cubic Parking Systems is the only company to offer a contactless smart card payment system for on-street and off-street parking that is integrated and interoperable with public transit fare collection systems....

Read on to discover how hated are those parking meters and the length to which people go to sabotage them. Then prepare yourself for the coming of "Smart Card Payment Systems" to your favorite public recreation areas. They are coming and when they arrive, I expect they will be to the Great Outdoors, what PayPal is to internet commerce.

Scott

PS... Cubic Parking Systems is a division of Cubic Defense Applications group, a world leader in combat training systems, mission support services and defense electronics. 

The American Recreation Coalition's long sought after "America the Beautiful Pass" (ATB) was authorized as part of the Recreation Access Tax but has not yet been implemented. It is not expected to be introduced until 2007. Whether this pass becomes a reality is, perhaps, still uncertain. The government is, however, moving ahead with implementation, as the appended solicitation for bids makes plain.

The ATB Pass would be an extraordinary boondoggle. It was created by the motorhome industry and the chief (perhaps only) beneficiaries will be full-time RVers. This pass will harm not only the NPS, it will cut into the profits of campground concessionaires. These concessionaires (and federal agencies to the extent they've not already privatized their campgrounds) will be required to give a 50% camping discount to pass-holders. The pass is bound to be expensive, but it will pay for itself many times over by those who squat on public lands in their land yachts. Less frequent visitors to public lands are unlikely to see any benefits whatsoever.

Worse still --- if the ATB is introduced, it will effectively decouple the fees paid by recreationists from the services they receive. If it is introduced, it will dramatically decrease the amount of National Park entrance fees retained by the NPS and transfer much of that revenue to support recreation programs managed primarily by the BLM, Bureau of Reclamation and USFS.

I say 'IF' it is introduced, because I am ever hopeful that it will not see the light of day. I am hopeful that people will care enough to fight and defeat this beast.

Scott

Quoted from appended article:

[Leasing (NH) state land for skiing, cell-tower construction and all-terrain vehicle use to help pay for all state parks could be studied this summer in a bill passed by a Senate committee yesterday.]

New Hampshire's State Parks are required to be 100% self-funded. That requirement is creating serious conflicts between the purposes for which state parks exist and the necessity of funding those parks/purposes without the ability to use tax-based funding.

The following article has its roots in President Ronald Reagan's administration and in the "President's Commission on Americans Outdoors" (PCAO). Wilbur LaPage, then Director of New Hampshire Division of Parks and Recreation, was one of Reagan's PCAO commissioners. LaPage bears full responsibility for New Hampshire's self-funding requirement. Another of the commissioners was Derrick Crandall. Crandall was then, and still is, President of the American Recreation Coalition. Crandall bears full responsibility for fee-demo, the RAT and for leading the current effort to implement Reagan's PCAO recommendations! ARC's soon to be introduced "Federal Recreation Policy Act" has ITS roots firmly buried in Reagan's PCAO. After reading this news article, I encourage you to read the background I've appended.

I find it curious that just as the federal government has begun wandering down the self-funded public-lands path pioneered by New Hampshire, New Hampshire has begun to seriously question whether that was the right way to have gone. It appears federal-lands funding is at a crossroads and it is possible to avoid repeating and old mistake.

Scott

   "Those who choose to ignore history are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana

I'm no fan of geocaching. I place using advanced technology to create a hide and seek game, on a par with Lazer-Tag. If folks wish to play this game that's fine. WHERE they play it is, however, another matter. The appended article from today's Oregonian is about playing the game in the proposed Badlands Wilderness located about 20 miles from where I now sit. It's a good, balanced, article that is well worth reading.

I've followed the geocaching issue since its inception and have recently begun finding growing and sometimes striking,  if not disturbing, similarities between the issues surrounding geocaching and the issues surrounding motorized recreation. Clearly, advocates for this activity have become much more organized and, so it appears, have paid particularly close attention to the efforts of the BlueRibbon Coalition and similar motorized recreation advocates as they've worked to develop their own messaging in defense of their own activity.

Motorized recreation has its "Tread Lightly Campaign", geocaching has its "Cache In Trash Out" campaign. Both motorized recreation and geocaching are "Access" issues. Just as motorized recreationists argue that their sport is compatible with Wilderness, so do geocachers. And in the way motorized recreation advocates like to point out that this activity is good for economic development and rural tourism, geocachers the same.

If you think about it, most recreation "access" issues share these commonalties, do they not?

The person profiled in this article, Bob Spiek, is a personal friend and strong champion of protecting the Badlands as Wilderness. Bob's a staunch opponent of fee-demo and is committed in his opposition of the American Recreation Coalition's entire Industrial Strength Wreckreation agenda. For all of those things and for his great support of my own work, I thank Bob immensely. We differ in opinion over geocaching.  I wonder how Bob and other geocachers who share his broader views would respond to this next passage quoted from an article published just last week:

Derrick Crandall, president of the American Recreation Coalition, envisions using high-tech recreation to draw a new generation to the national forests. The Forest Service could open its lands to geocaching -- a sort of scavenger hunt in which participants follow clues posted on the Internet and use handheld global positioning systems to locate hiding places for items. "I do think we have to understand that recreation on a national forest needs to change," Crandall said. Crandall doesn't believe that he is proposing to turn forestlands into amusement parks as some environmental activists fear now that the federal government is looking to charge more recreation fees.

Scott

Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 1:56 PM
Subject: Park Fees Up - Visitation Down

Rarely does a National Park Service official dare to suggest that today's increased entrance fees have taken a toll upon visitation. Instead we are frequently told by land managers that "Our parks are being loved to death" and that recreational use of our public lands is increasing. The fact of the matter is, park visitation have been trending down for the past 6-7 years and recreational use of most federally-managed public lands is also on the decline.

Pasted below is an article from today's press that is refreshingly honest. It states that at Hopewell Furnace National Historical Park visitation has fallen from 112,492 visitors in 1993 to 55,888 visitors in 2003. It goes on to say that in that same period, entrance fees have increased by 150% and that "when you go from $2 to $5, that may affect some people..."  (Duh!).

Can people remember just a few years back when outdoor recreation really was booming and when federal recreation managers predicted the rate of increase in participation would escalate into the future??? That was back in the days when pay-to-play was first introduced, when land mangers looked upon recreation industry executives as if they were Gods and at the general public as if they were customers ready for fleecing.

Well the hucksters and greedheads were fooled by their own hyperbole. They were wrong. The recreation industry's Fee-Demo program has proved to be a failure. The recreation/tourism Golden Goose is ailing. People are avoiding their public lands and outdoor recreation is on the decline. A reality check is long overdue.

Scott

PS.... what has been proved true is the warning I've issued consistently since 1997  --- the one that appears, in part, at the end of this message. When reading that warning, think beyond our public lands. Think about the deficit Mr. Bush has bestowed upon this nation and what that deficit will mean in the years to come. Think about the CRISIS that has been created and which will hit America like a ton a bricks,  regardless of who wins the upcoming election. 

Blatant, glaring, obnoxious in-your-face National Park Service commercialization/ privatization is occurring as such a breakneck pace that it's impractical to share each of the stories I'm following at a rate of one example per message.

Pasted below are excerpts for five of the examples I've been following this week.  As you'll see, almost anything, short of a freak show museum, goes in today's NPS.

Scott

PS... Where have the NPS watchdogs been hiding while this is transpiring?

 "National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst."
              -Wallace Stegner, 1983

Quoted from appended:

[The project has the backing of a senior appropriator, Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), as well as the Interior Department.]

 Mr. Regula and the Interior Department are the two strongest proponents of pay-to-play, but this article is not about fee-demo.   It's about a closely related topic --- industrial tourism.

Also quoted from this article:

["This project is both an absurd and improper use of taxpayers' money," Ruch said. "It is not the business of the Park Service to help the great state of Ohio acquire a reputation for winemaking."]

Neither Regula nor Interior are interested in making wine or raising chickens. What they are interested in, is putting on a good show for paying tourists. This federally subsidized project should be recognized as a mechanism for priming Ohio's tourism pump by funneling federal tax dollars to private interests in Regula' home state in order to create public-private partnerships that will lure paying visitors.

It's worth noting that entrance fees are NOT charged at Cuyahoga Valley National Park making it a rare exception in the pay-to-play world Regula helped create.  I somehow doubt that Cuyahoga Valley National Park has experienced the severe shortfall in allocated funding experienced by parks from coast to coast. I suspect that Regula of the House Appropriations Committee has been taking care of this park as if it were somehow special.

Scott

Pasted below is an unusually candid article about fee-demo opposition in Ouray Country. It has real people, representing a diversity of interests and political suasions, speaking truth. Neither ideology nor ignorance sways this article.  Read on and imagine what it would be like if newspapers were filled with reporting such as this.

Scott

Quoted from appended article:

[Recreation groups hope their changes will be incorporated into Regula's bill, Jourdain said, She does not expect the controversial program to he approved before the presidential election, But interior Department Assistant Secretary Lynn Scarlett, who oversees the Park Service, and Mark Rey, the USDA undersecretary in charge of the Forest Service, said the Bush administration supports the bill and will not introduce its own recreation fee legislation.]

That's not exactly they way I heard it. I heard Scarlett and Rey say that THEY could work with the Regula Bill as a starting point for meeting their needs. But it was far from clear whether Mr. Bush is taking his cues from his employees or directly from corporate interests representing the recreation/ tourism industry.

The bottom line, as I heard it spoken yesterday, is that the recreation industry is no longer supporting any of the existing fee-demo bills... not ever the Regula bill (HR 3283) which they, themselves, created. They are instead now working directly with the President's staff to introduce new legislation --- legislation that presumably would make the Corporate Takeover of public lands explicit and unambiguous. Their plans were made clear in their testimony given last month at Senator Craig's fee-demo oversight hearing.  Their plans were repeated yesterday when three Board Members of the American Recreation Coalition gave testimony.

What it appears we have is Lynn Scarlett and Gale Norton pushing a version of user-fees which will permit recreational services to be provided without requiring tax dollars to be spent funding them .... i.e., the free-market vision as best expressed by Terry Anderson of PERC.

On the other hand we have the recreation and tourism industry looking to commercialize, privatize and motorize the public lands in keeping with the vision developed by ARC's Derrick Crandall and other commissioners who sat upon Ronald Reagan's President's Commission on Americans Outdoors.

The battle lines are drawn. It will be interesting to see whether the public gets a say in the outcome. It will be interesting to see to what extent organizations with interests in public lands become engaged in this issue. And it will be interesting to see how many such organizations remain seated on the sidelines without participating,  as the future is decided for them.

Scott