There was a time when the National Park Service was perhaps the best-run land management agency in the USA. That is no longer true. Today politics rule supreme within the Department of Interior and the integrity of those at the helm must be challenged. Today it appears to me that when the leadership of the NPS is not misdirecting the media and the American public, they are speaking out of both sides of their mouths.

Days ago I shared with you an article about a funding scandal that was about to rock the agency. That story described how the NPS was quietly and secretly cutting visitor services and reducing park hours due to a lack in appropriated funding. Today I'm sharing an article written three weeks ago. This one describes how the National Parks Service and their private partners in the tourism industry are attempting to stem the decline in park visitation through efforts to aggressively lure additional paying customers back into the parks.

Clearly something is afoot within the agency and that being the case, I'm about to make a prediction. Perhaps someone would be so kind as to bury this prediction in a time capsule and unearth it 6 months or a years from today. Or better yet, perhaps people will chose to appropriately act upon it. By acting today, perhaps we can alter the future.

  ***** I PREDICT ****

  Budgets will be starved while money is instead put into marketing and promotion of the parks. Three months from now (give or take), the Bush Administration will announce that the National Parks are in decline and must seek creative new funding solutions. Gale Norton and Fran Mainella will announce a new public-private partnership initiative. Legislation to facilitate new private, commercial, development and private participation within park management will be introduced. It will be a foregone conclusion that the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program must be permanently authorized and expanded. The President's legislation will attempt to accomplish that objective as part of their larger privatization package.

Scott

The controversial Recreation Fee Demonstration program is about to take an enormous leap in the WRONG direction and it's going to cost you dearly (see appended article from today's Oregonian).

When introduced in 1996 as a test program, fee-demo was a real "User-Fee". Recreationists were asked to pay to use specific public facilities. They were told that the money they paid stayed right where they'd paid it. Recreationists were told that next time they visited that particular site, they'd see the benefits of the money they'd already paid. Whether any of this was true, is debatable. But it is what the public was told.

Today, that original User-Fee is being replaced with a regressive "User-Tax" in which recreationists pay into a general recreation fund and where there is no longer any direct connection between the "fee" paid and the benefits received. But try to remember how it once was. Less then 5 years ago, USFS literature stated:

 "Of every $1 in the federal budget, only .00018 of a penny goes towards the entire Recreation, Heritage, and Wilderness Resources budget for the Forest Service. This mean that a person with an annual income of $40,000 pays less than $.03 per year in taxes to recreate on Forest Service lands, nationwide."

Back then,  THREE CENTS is what you paid in taxes to recreate on Forest Service-managed public lands (YOUR LANDS), nationwide. Today, Oregon and Washington just announced the availability of a brand new public lands pass that will set you back $85.  DON'T BUY IT !!

The promoters of the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program are desperate. Everything they've tried with this unpopular experimental "demonstration" program has failed. The public rejected the Trail Park Pass when introduced in 1997. The public rejected the Northwest Forest Pass which came next. The public is bound to reject this new "supersized" $85 Washington & Oregon Recreation Pass.

So what comes next ---  a $500 United States Passport, good for access to all public lands for one year??? Whatever happened to the days when the public was welcomed upon their public lands and when a walk in the woods was something everyone could afford?

Scott 

Pasted below is a News Release, issued today by the Department of Interior. It announces a new promotional campaign designed to attract more paying customers into America's National Parks. Only thing is, the campaign is not new. It was originally called "Luring International Visitors to America's Great Outdoors" when first put forth by the tourism industry in 1993. And as someone who is intimately familiar with this ongoing effort, I can say that is little more that the tourism industry's effort to use America's Crown Jewels as LURES and to deliberately CREATE and/or exacerbate an overcrowding problem in our parks!!!       Let me explain....

National Park visitation has been generally flat for 25 years. Overnight camping in the National Parks has been in steady decline since 1981 while Park visitation has generally been falling since entrance fees began to rise in 1997 with the passage of the rec-fee-demo program.

National Park concessionaires HATE this situation. They not only want more customers, they want to be able to claim that "Our National Parks are Being Loved to Death". They are working with  the Department of Interior, reconfiguring the parks in ways that will better allow the tourism industry to bus more and more warm bodies directly to ever-expanding gift shops. They are looking for ways to sell ever-increasing numbers of visitors more of everything from hamburgers to memories. And if anyone wants to see an example of how this is being done, please just look at what is happening to Yosemite Valley! No better example is possible.

Our National Parks are being underfunded. Money that is available, is being misspent. The entire National Park paradigm is based upon the Disneyfication Model and that is the wrong model.

The announcement made today the Department of Interior is counterproductive. It is inappropriate and it reflects the very mistaken priorities of Interior Secretary Norton and NPS Director Fran Mainella. Today's announcement is very bad news for America's National Parks.

Scott

What follows is another great fee-demo editorial. Too bad that the newspaper in which this appeared today, the Idaho Mountain Express, is not one that will be read far and wide. Therefor it remains up to us to get this story told in all the places that are either unfamiliar with this issue or are not already reading editorials such as this...

Scott

Quoted from appended LA Times article:

 [Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will raise state park fees to their highest levels ever, making California one of the most expensive places in the country for a family to spend time outdoors in a government-run park.]

Let the following be a warning:

• These dramatically higher fees will keep the public away. -Recent history in California has already shown that!
• Revenues will therefore be less than projected. -You can bank on that!
• The next step will be to commercialize and privatize the parks. -Let there be absolutely no doubt about that!
  

Advocacy groups that support these increased user-fees may be friends of the parks but they are nothing less than Enemies of Democracy. These groups should be denounced as 'elitists' and every effort must be made to keep public lands truly 'public' and accessible to rich and poor alike.

Scott

PS... for the past 7 years opponents of fee-demo have seen this coming. Perhaps this dramatic development in California will hasten the end of the much-detested, national, Recreation Fee Demonstration Program.

In today's Fresno Bee, a National Parks Conservation Association spokesperson said of the highly controversial Yosemite development plan.

"The plan strikes an elegant balance between visitor needs and protecting wildlife and natural habitat in the valley," said Diane Boyd of the national parks conservation association's pacific west regional office.

"ELEGANT BALANCE ??"  To that claim, a great many grassroots activists would say --  HOGWASH!!

Fortunately, this article goes on to quote Greg Adair, cofounder of Friends of Yosemite Valley, who says:

Adair disagreed, calling it the urbanization of a natural wonder which will allow easier access for visitors to concessionaires but limit visitor freedom. "There's upward of 70 archaeological sites destroyed or impaired in the Yosemite Valley under the plan," he said. Adair claims the plan will also bring pricier hotel rooms and less affordable campsites for families traveling on budgets.

Who is right, NPCA or Friends of Yosemite Valley???
Who should you truth ????

Pasted below are two further reference to  "elegant balance"  -- one from Jay Watson of The Wilderness Society and one from Michael Frome, author and long-time national park defender.

Who can you believe??
Which view is correct and which is a misrepresentation???

Scott

When they went to court, on the one side there was The Wilderness Society, National Parks Conservation Association, the National Park Service and a few more organizations. On the other was Friends of Yosemite Valley, Mariposans for Environmentally Responsible Growth plus several dozen grassroots organizations, including Wild Wilderness. This time, the grassroots organizations won. (see appended article)

My thanks and congratulations go out to Joyce Eden, Julia Olson and those who made this courtroom victory possible. Now its up to everyone who cares about Yosemite Valley to ensure that the National Park Service does not further overdevelop the park, as it seems determined to do.

Scott

 PS... You might ask: "What motivated TWS and NPCA to side with the NPS and to actively oppose those who are fighting so hard to protect Yosemite Valley?" In fact, I wish you would ask them!

On October 8th, 2003 seven East-Coast Republican Congressmen lead by Ralph Regula (R-OH) introduced the Bush Administration's long-awaited legislation to permanently authorized the "Recreation Fee Demonstration Program". This is horrible legislation that will affect all Americans and forever change the purposes for which public land recreation is managed.

HR 3283 represents the culmination of a 20 years effort by a powerful element of the recreation industry to commodify, privatize and commercialize outdoor recreation on America's public lands. (Read relevant Congressional Testimony here.)

HR 3283 proposes the creation of an outdoor recreation "Passport" that would be required by all Americans for access to federal lands. The passport would be called by the name given to it a dozen years ago when it was first proposed by the American Recreation Coalition and George Bush Senior --  the "America the Beautiful".

The bad news is that HR 3283 was introduced at all. The good news is that there is little chance of this legislation being acted upon in the remaining weeks of the current legislative session. Unfortunately, the possibility remains that Mr. Regula would insert this language into other 'must-pass' legislation as he did in 1996. The treat of HR 3283 must not be ignored.

The curious news is that Mr. Regula should dare introduce legislation that will generate as much negative reaction as HR 3283 or that he would introduce legislation containing as many illegal elements as are contained within HR 3283.

HR 3283, if passed, would...

1) ...make fee-demo permanent for 5 federal agencies.... adding the Bureau of Reclamation to the agencies already covered by fee-demo.

2) ...create three levels of outdoor user fees. In addition to the "Basic Recreation Fee" there'd be new "Expanded Recreation Fee" and "Special Recreation Permit Fee" categories.

3) ...permit the issuance of an "America the Beautiful" Pass/Passport which "will be accepted by one of more Federal land management agencies or by one or more governmental or nongovernmental entities..."

4) ...make it virtually impossible to maintain the direct connection between the fee paid and the service received. These user fees would become a regressive user-tax paid by anyone wishing to visit public lands.

5) ...authorize "volunteers" to collect recreation fees and sell recreation passes. Volunteers would be compensated for their work by being issued a pass "in exchange for significant volunteer services performed." America's minimum wage laws would be thrown out the window as underpaid volunteers are used to replace agency staffers. This section of the legislation, like the related "Take Pride in America" initiative, is a key component in President Bush's federal jobs "outsourcing" program.

6) ...criminalize failure to pay. Currently failure to pay a recreation fee is an infraction, like a parking ticket. HR 3283 would make it a crime publishable by a maximum penalty of $5000 and 6 months in jail (the maximum for a Class B misdemeanor).

7) ...throw out the Constitutions protection of "presumed innocence until proven guilty". The owner of a vehicle illegally parked on public land would become jointly liable. Unless that person could prove that his vehicle was used without his express or implied permission, he would be issued a ticket and charged with a criminal offense. Likewise, persons who fail to properly display a pass (even though one might have been purchased) will be required to prove their innocence within a given time period or be subject to criminal prosecution.

8) ....repeals the section of the Land Water Conservation Act that has for nearly 40 years severely constrained the number and type of recreation fees that could legally be charged upon public lands.

9) ...repeals the Golden Age, Golden Access and Golden Eagle passes. It used to be that if you were 62 years of age you could purchase for $10 a life-time pass good for admittance into all National Parks. If HR 3283 becomes law, the cost could easily jump to $100 per year and increase in price with every passing year.

10) ...authorize a minimum of ONE free day each year when all Americans will be permitted "Basic Access" to their public lands. Even on that day, expanded and special fees will apply.

... and finally, if HR 3283 is passed into law it would make the recreation industry a full partner in the development of this recreation fee program. HR 3283 reads: "The Secretaries may jointly enter into cooperative agreements with governmental and nongovernmental entities for the development and implementation of the National Parks and Federal Recreation Lands Pass Program."

HR 3283 is one of several important things happening with respect to fee-demo. Some are good, some are bad. If you do not want to be forced to purchase and carry a passport next time you visit your public lands, I recommend you contact your Congressman and Senators without delay.

---

HR 3283 can be read on here.

To get an understanding of the linkage between HR 3283 and the special personal relationships that made this legislation (and the recently revived, and not-to-be ignored, "Take Pride in America" initiative) possible, read this http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/papers/1992/92051400.html 1992 speech available on the Bush Library website.

To learn more, click here.

Scott

For years we have heard that 'Our National Parks are being loved to death' and it seems that with each repetition, the National Park Service builds some high-priced facility or hardens some trail or constructs something (whatever-it-may be) --- to 'solve the problem'.

The NPS is wrong and their solutions are killing the parks and driving away visitors... (full statistics available at http://www2.nature.nps.gov/stats)

Why, as the appended article states, is National Park visitation declining? It is NOT because of 9-11. It is NOT because of the sour economy. It is NOT even a short-term problem. And, let's be honest, declining visitation is not necessarily a problem at all, not unless you happen to be in the tourism business.

Declining visitation is the public's way of demonstrating their disapproval of park mismanagement!  Visitors (referred to as "customers" by the NPS) are simply voting with their feet and dollars.

In 1987, National Park historian Michael Frome delivered a speech in Des Moines, Iowa titled: "Protecting the Golden Goose" in which he warned:

 "It grieves me that national park administrators themselves tend to lose sight of their mandate and mission. As I observed on a recent visit to Virgin Islands National Park, the emphasis in management is on serving development and tourism without concern for preservation of the natural ecosystem....The emphasis needs to be on protecting and enhancing the quality and character of each park, and letting dollar values follow. When the desires of business interests for profit are allowed to dominate, the beauty will be lost - inevitably, and without fail."

Is there anything equivocal in the words "inevitably and without fail"?? Let's not let the NPS shift the blame. They are a big part of the problem and they must accept responsibility for their actions.

Scott

The Army Corps has long been thought of as "the low hanging fruit" by the motorized recreation industry.

So when the American Recreation Coalition, American Trials, George Bush and the Army Corps of Engineers team up to bring the public an exciting new program, you just know the environment is about to get picked clean.

Scott 

Few activists closely watch-dog the US Fish and Wildlife Service and fewer still are following their (mis)adventures into the Wonderful World of Industrial Tourism. That's a shame. The USFWS needs careful watchdogging, especially since they got sucked into the world of public-private-partnerships and recreation user fees.

Pasted below is a recent article which describes one of the USFWS's most glaring misadventures into this realm.

For those who find this article of interest, you are certain to find the USFWS's recent dealings with Kym Murphy  (Walt Disney VP and American Recreation Coalition board member) of extreme interest. The place to learn more is HERE where you can read a month-old USFWS news release titled: "National Bison Range and Walt Disney Executive Announce upcoming National Wildlife Refuge System Centennial during Annual Roundup."

Scott

Quoted from appended article:

Casual visitors from valley cities often opt to go to other lakes and parks, where they don't have to pay such a large fee, said Dan Carter of Oakhurst, executive director of the Yosemite Sierra Visitors Bureau.

Support for the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program for lands managed by the USFS, BLM and FWS never was high. Today it has fallen to all time lows. Support for this program on lands managed by the National Park Service, however, has been and remains high. It's time for that to change.

The appended article shows what's happened at Yosemite where when entrance fees  were suddenly quadrupled, attendance took a dive and has been diving ever since.

If there is one person who will suggest that this increase in fees has not adversely impacted persons of limited income to a greater extent than it has impacted wealthy visitors, let that person speak his peace. Solving the "crowding" problem by pricing working people out of the market isn't a solution and what is happening in Yosemite NP is an unmitigated disaster. Yosemite is being turned into a playground for the rich. More to the point, the very purposes for which National Parks exist are being quickly forgotten.

So I'd like to remind folks that recreation user fees are as inequitable when charged at National Parks as when charged at National Forest. Furthermore, the incentives created by allowing the fees to remain where they are collected will do every bit as much harm to the National Parks as they will do to other public lands.

It's time to carry the anti-fee-demo campaign to the National Parks and to prevent America's Crown Jewels from becoming sacrificial offerings to the Gods of Industrial Tourism.

Scott 

Pasted below is an article from the SF Chronicle. The author strongly suggests that the decrease in National Park attendance observed during the past several years correlates to increased user fees. To make the comparison even more convincing, she contrasts NP attendance with California State Park visitation for the same time period ... a period in the State Parks characterized by a 50% reduction in entrance fees and a 30% INCREASE in visitation.

In light of these data, it is curious that not one of the four agencies currently collecting fees under the fee-demo program have ever publicly so much as contemplated the possibility that these new, and/or higher user fees, are responsible for reduced visitation.  Its' odd. It's almost as if these land managers were deliberately trying to hide something from the American People or from Congress!!

Scott

"NPS Founders Day is the day the National Parks were authorized by congress.  Now all National Park sites celebrate this day by offering FREE entrance fee admission." http://lewisandclarktrail.com/eventsstate/oregon.htm

What you just read had been National Park Service Policy until today.

"Entrance Fee Waiver on Founders Day - There will be NO waiver of fees on August 25th, Founder's Day. Fees were waived on the weekend of June 22nd and 23rd in support of President Bush's "Healthier U.S." initiative. This was done in lieu of the annual fee free day in August. [Jane Anderson, RAD/WASO] "

What you just read appears on this morning's National Parks Report.

I do hope you've already enjoyed your one free day at the National Parks this year --- because they'll be no more free days until next year.

And to think the NPS says they are providing adequate access for low income and under-represented persons who are now excluded from their public lands because of the higher fees charged since the introduction of the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program!!!

Scott

PS... President Bush's "HealthierUS" Initiative was first announced to the American People during the American Recreation Coalition's Great Outdoors Week in June.  You have ARC to thank for creating fee-demo and making public lands and recreation upon those lands unaffordable to many Americans. You have ARC to thank for the free access day President Bush bequeathed upon you in June. And now you have ARC to thank for the cancellation of Founders Day as a free-access day this weekend. 

Quoted from appended article:

 [ "There are so many factors, it's hard to put a finger on just what exactly is going on," says Scott Gediman, spokesman at Yosemite National Park, where visits are down about 10%. Visits to the park, he says, peaked in 1996 at 4.1 million and have been dropping since. Last year, 3.5 million came. ]

Curiously .... this article never even suggests that the introduction of fee-demo, authorized in 1996 and first implemented in 1997, might be one of the many factors contributing to reduced visitation in the National Parks.

As for the reduced visitation at Yosemite, this has NOTHING to do with the events of 911 and to suggest otherwise is to offer a red-herring. Here is the recreational visitation data for the past 10 years --- YOU DECIDE whether 911 is responsible for the decline.

Yosemite NP 1991 3423101
Yosemite NP 1992 3819518
Yosemite NP 1993 3839645
Yosemite NP 1994 3962117
Yosemite NP 1995 3958406
Yosemite NP 1996 4046207
Yosemite NP 1997 3669970
Yosemite NP 1998 3657132
Yosemite NP 1999 3493607
Yosemite NP 2000 3400903
Yosemite NP 2001 3368731

Pasted at the end of this message are a few similar examples. I've gone to the middle of the list and copied the statistics for 5 parks listed consecutively. You need not be a statistician to know immediately that something is keeping people away from the National Parks and that that something is NOT 911. And while the NPS swears to Congress that fee-demo is having no such affect, perhaps they are mistaken.

Scott

PS... If anyone wished to see the data for NPS visitation, full statistics can be found at:  http://www2.nature.nps.gov/stats/

Since fee-demo was introduced in 1996, the USFS has revised its estimates of National Forest visitation, reducing its earlier estimate by nearly two thirds. Attendance at America's most popular National Parks, such as Yosemite and the Grand Canyon, is down 20 - 25%. And now, with Washington State recently introducing $5 per vehicle access fees at its State Parks, visitation instantly plummeted by 30 - 40%.

For agency after agency, in example after example, the data is clear. Recreation users fees have become a major deterrent to the public's use and enjoyment of the public's lands. Simply stated, these fees are NOT THE SOLUTION to a funding problem -- they have become part of THE PROBLEM.

When the revenues generated by these fees fails to generate adequate replacement funding for lost tax revenues, the NEXT SOLUTION will be to provide additional commercial (pay-to-play) attractions for which still higher fees can be charged. And when revenues from those new and expensive attractions fail to support the operation of those public lands, the FINAL SOLUTION will be the privatization of those lands.

So, let there be no uncertainly, the user fee you are being asked to pay today will -as sure as night follows day- result in the privatization of your lands one, two, or perhaps five years from now.

Congress needs to know that this is NOT AN ACCEPTABLE SOLUTION.

I hope and trust that you are doing everything you can do to convey this message to your elected officials. The price of inaction is more than we, as a people, can afford.

Scott 

Pasted below is a news release from the National Park Service. It speaks of an initiative first announced during ARC's Great Outdoors Week. The themes expressed are amongst the priorty PR-themes currently being marketed by ARC.

This news release arrived with the NPS's name on it ... but based upon everything I am seeing, ARC certainly crafted the message and spoon fed it to the administration.

I think the time for fee-demo activists to oppose National Park fees is long overdue. I hope this community will formally oppose National Park fees other than those authorized under the traditional authority of the Land Water Conservation Fund Act.

Scott

President Bush, Gale Norton and Fran Mainella would have the American People believe that the National Parks are being loved to death and that there is no money with which to maintain things.  It serves very specific purposes to have people accept this as the truth. Reality, however, is not as they would have you believe.

Pasted below is a message I received from a National Park Service retiree who calls 'em as he sees 'em and who is, in my opinion, a very straight shooter.   His message is nominally about the recent NPS goings-on over "Stiltsville" but deeper down, it is about that ails the National Park Service.

The penultimate paragraph sends a message to which we all need to pay special attention. In fact... we all need to pay much closer attention to the National Park Service and to the many "goings on" associated with it.

Scott 

Pasted below is today's news release from the NPS announcing they have begun testing the "Segway Human Transporter."

IF all the NPS intends to do with these novel transportation machines is to evaluate their utility for use by NPS employees, then I see no problem.

IF the NPS is even vaguely considering the possibility of making these machines available to park visitors as an alternate mode of transportation within the parks, then I see ENORMOUS problems.

Based upon information available at the Segway website, I see enormous problems.

    (Source: Segway Company)

In addition to giving people from the park service an easier way to travel without adding to vehicular traffic, Segway HT could help reduce the environmental impact of tourism in parks. In addition, tourists could explore more deeply inside a park on Segway HT, relieving traffic congestion in welcome centers and other main public gathering points.

Segway Human Transporters represent an INAPPROPRIATE form of transportation within the National Parks. These machines would directly interfere with the enjoyment of the park by non-motorized visitors. In fact, were these machines allowed inside the National Parks they would further commercialize, privatize and motorize the National Park Experience.

Please do what you can to nip this terrible idea in the bud!!!

Scott 

Quoted from following LA Times article:

["The overall thrust of the suit was that the plan the park service prepared for the Merced River was not based on protecting the river's values," said Julia Olson, an Oakland attorney who represented the two groups. They contended that the plan is "a template for future development in Yosemite Valley and along the corridor."]

The Yosemite Valley Commercialization and Development Fraud was opposed by dozens of grassroots environmental organizations -- yet this deception was given crucial green cover by a handful of the national big-greens, most notably NPCA, TWS and NRDC.

Do you suppose these same big-greens will also support the absolutely horrendous Bush/ Norton /Mainella National Parks Initiative Fraud -- or will they denounce it vigorously and fight it tooth and nail along with the grassroots ??

Do you suppose these same big-greens will continue to support the Recreation Fee Demonstration Fraud despite nearly universal opposition from the grassroots ????

Whose side are these big-greens on anyway??????

You might find the answers here.

Scott