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."

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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.

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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

Pasted below is an article from Idaho with a twist.

A popular walking area has repeatedly been vandalized in the night.

As a result, the Forest Service is thinking about charging walkers who use the area in the day.

Would that be a "user-fee"?

Would charging such a fee solve the problem?

Scott

The Travel Industry Association will hold it 2007 Marketing Outlook Forum beginning on October 22nd

The event is a very big deal – a big deal that has significant impacts upon policies directly affecting outdoor recreation upon, and visitation to, our nation's public lands. If past conferences serve as a guide, this conference will likely be attended by senior level land managers representing the National Park Service and other federal and state agencies.

Derrick Crandall, President of the American Recreation Coalition has prepared a special report for this conference. It makes very interesting reading.  Here are the introductory paragraphs:

   Outdoor recreation is a large and varied force in the leisure choices of the American public. Generating at least $300 billion in estimated annual spending, outdoor recreation is shaped by America’s public lands and waters – covering one-third of the surface of the nation. The outdoor recreation industry is dominated by small, responsive businesses providing a large variety of recreation products and services, ranging from campsites to marinas, from fishing guide services to whitewater rafting.

  In general, recreation spending has climbed more rapidly than the CPI and most other core economic measures for a generation, although participation in specific outdoor recreation activities has been more mixed. Traditionally, participation has been influenced short term by weather and the economy, but longer trends – including an aging population and growth in the proportion of minority populations – have also shaped participation.

  The following information provides an overview of key recent trends and expectations...

Those interested in the fate of outdoor recreation as predicted by the wise use group that calls the tunes to which land managers dance might find the entire document of value. It can be found here.

Scott

You and I and our fellow taxpaying citizens are looked upon as being merely "customers" by the leadership of the National Park Service. By way of contrast, industry groups such as the National Tour Association (NTA), are recognized to be "partners". The difference is starkly depicted in what I'm about to share.

NTA is, or so their lobbyist Jim Santini stated when testifying before the House of Representatives in support of increasing National Park entrance fees and in  support of the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program, "a Lexington, Kentucky-based international package travel association of 627 companies." NTA is also a member of the American Recreation Coalition. You can read his testimony here.

And if you scroll up that page, you can read the testimony of the ARC's President, Derrick Crandall.

Today in an industry publication we learned that while National Park entrance fees for the public have risen dramatically and will continue to increase,  entrance fees charged to NTA members have not gone up. In fact, those low fees are now guaranteed not to increase for several more years. NTA described their special arrangement in these words:

"The National Tour Association and the National Park Service have been able to ensure that visitors have equal access to the national parks due to a longstanding partnership between the two groups. As a result of recent meetings with  NTA and the park service, there will be no increases in National Park group entry fees until 2010."

That doesn't sound like "equal access" to me.

You can read the entire article below. You can also find below that a posting made by an NTA representative to an NTA electronic bulletin board. The posting is titled "NPS Entrance Fees Impact Consumers, Not Operators" and goes on to tell NTA members that:

"NTA has a longstanding partnership with the Park Service, and has continued to work on behalf of its members on issues related to visitation and fees at these treasured landmarks."

Does this sound like "equal access" to you?

Scott

When I created the Wild Wilderness website in 1997, at the top of the home page I placed the following statement

On this website you will discover how conservative Congressmen, cash-strapped land managers, and recreation industry leaders are working cooperatively to create an entirely new land management paradigm. Their efforts are being directed toward maximal "commercialization, privatization and motorization" of our natural heritage. The name best used to describe their vision for the 21st century and beyond is: "Industrial Strength Recreation"

During the next 10 years I wrote and distributed to the Wild Wilderness network some 4000 updates detailing the progress of this Industrial Strength Recreation agenda.

It was never my intention to be a chronicler of the loss of what had once made the National Forests and other public lands so special -- though it often times feels as if that is what I am doing. I was my belief and expectation that through a combination of outreach, activism and education, the Industrial Strength Recreation agenda could be derailed.


Pasted below is an article from today's Oregonian titled "Rethinking Camping."  Its subheading reads "A Forest Service plan could dramatically change Mount Hood's offerings."  It is about the final stages of the implementation of the Industrial Strength Recreation agenda I first described a decade ago and it involves much more than merely rethinking CAMPING -- it involves Rethinking Recreation.

Similar plans have already, or will soon be, being drawn up for each and every one of the 155 national forests in this country. What you will read below affects you no matter where in the USA you live.

I may not be too late -- not if people are willing to stand in the way of this agenda and to turn it back.

Scott

Have a look at these snippets from the appended article about a US Forest Service employee fired for failing stick to the script presented to her by her superiors:

When she described the reduced funding as "a problem," she said, her supervisor told her the talking points should say that "everything is fine out there in the forest, and there is no need for additional funds." She refused and was quickly removed from her public-relations job, Wenstrom claims.

"Local Forest Service officials are really under the gun to talk the party line," [San Bernardino National Forest's former supervisor] Zimmerman said then.

Wherever I look, I see Forest Service people reading from the same few scripts — scripts that are usually disingenuous, if not downright dishonest. On occasion a FS employee will deviate from the script because their integrity requires them to do so. Those who do so risk being punished.

The USFS is rotten to the core. It is being squeezed from above by President Bush, by his Office of Management and Budget, by Undersecretary Mark Rey and by it's top-level executives and managers.  

Scott

1) Park managers, since 1996, have gotten to keep park entrance fees and they have be forced to rely upon that revenue stream. Prior to 1996, entrance fees were not retained by the NPS.

2) In recent years park managers stopped speaking of visitors and began referring to visitors as "customers."

3) Park managers have been brainwashed, or coerced, into believing that they are in the business of luring paying customers to the entrance gate. During the past decade,  business has been bad, park visitation is in decline, and so a park marketing campaign has been being kicked into high gear.

4) The President's Centennial Initiative is as disingenuous as it is potentially destructive. It is less about reaching out to minority populations than it is about using minority populations as an excuse to further privatize and commercialize the parks while transforming them along the Disneyland model. Learn more.

Recreation Site Facility Master Planning is a 6 year old Forest Service program. Its purpose is to reduce the number of maintained recreation sites and to ensure that those sites which remain open will be the least costly to maintain and/or the most profitable to operate.

RS-FMP, as this program has been called since its inception, became EXTREMELY controversial when brought to the media's attention by Wild Wilderness and the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition. It became SO CONTROVERSIAL that outgoing Chief of the Forest Service Dale Bosworth, as one of his last items of business, temporarily halted the program. Bosworth assured the public that  RS-FMP  would undergo intensive internal review and that changes would be made as required.

This month, the Recreation Site Facility Master Planning program was terminated. RE-FMP was replaced with something called "Recreation Site Analysis" (RSA).

The first RSA has just been released.  This new report appears to be virtually IDENTICAL to older RS-FMP reports. About all that has changed is the program name and logo -- and, to be frank,  the logo has not changed much.

Here are the BEFORE and AFTER comparison. Note that the dollar sign has been removed from the word "Sustainability". Note also that what appears to be writing has been added to the information board.

The implied message is that the Forest Service will no longer keep the public in dark and will no longer focus narrowly upon making recreation into a financially $ustainable business.  I'd suggest that nothing of substance has changed.

Scott 

Here are two articles about Wilderness that I thought created an interesting contrast.

This article about the Isle Royale Wilderness from the "Marquette Mining Journal" touts the inaccessibility of the Wilderness as a real plus.

This article from the "Columbian" titled "Wilderness that too few can enjoy" complains that the decision to not rebuild a section of the Stehekin Road makes the Stephan Mather Wilderness too inaccessible.

Some get it, some don't!

An added note (correction) about each article.  The Isle Royale Wilderness is about 130,000 acres, not 500,000 as the article states.   The Stehekin Road is a "cherrystem" in the Stephen Mather Wilderness, it is not in the Wilderness as stated in the article.

 George

Federal land management agencies deny even the possibility that increased recreation fees have been discouraging visitation and use. When confronted with the fact of declining visitation and decreasing recreational use of America's public lands, land mangers and their private-sector partners have created a long list of self-serving explanations. Fees are not among them.

That being the case, I wonder how our Park Service and Forest Service managers would explain this short article from today's Kansas City Star.

Scott

"It is difficult to awaken the person who is only pretending to be asleep." - an old saying

--- begin quoted ---

Beaches waive fees to combat heat

Too hot? Try the beach.

In an effort to provide relief from the high temperatures and even higher heat indexes, the entrance fees to the beaches at Blue Springs and Longview lakes will be waived through Friday.

Also a reduced weekend price of $2 per adult and $1 per child will take effect for the remainder of the season. Normal admission prices are $5 for adults and $3 for children. 

The first paragraph from the appended article from today's Oregonian tells an important story.

Here it is, in a nutshell.

Northwest national forests are hurriedly boosting federal logging to the highest levels in years with a new infusion of cash, even as they close campgrounds and other recreation sites because money for them is drying up.

Forest visitors wonder why there is so little money available for maintaining recreation facilities.

People wonder why they are having to pay ever-rising forest recreation fees while recreational opportunities on the forests diminish and disappear.

The Forest Service says the reason is because of Congressional budget cuts.

Read the appended article and, if you've not already done so,  you might question whether the Forest Service is telling the truth.

Scott 

Appended is an newspaper article from New Jersey titled "Beach tags to give way to wireless wristbands." The article is not merely fascinating, it is extraordinarily predictive of issues that are about to impact YOU!  This obscure, local, article is damned important!!!

Ostensibly, the article is about using high-tech to ensure that everyone who sets foot upon the Jersey shore has paid his or her beach access fees and that no one is on the beach who shouldn't be there. It is technology gone haywire in the pursuit of private profits and the privatization of public access.

Most importantly, it is about the future of access to our parks, forests, lakes, rivers, beaches and other places where we, as citizens and taxpayers, formerly enjoyed free access to what once were OUR public lands. Whether high tech will be involved, remains an unknown. That access will be controlled and priced, is all but certain.

That's all I'm going to offer by way of introduction, but I'd like to also share with you the comments NJ readers have already posted in response to the appended article. 

Listen to the PEOPLE. Lord knows, the politicians and the land mangers aren't doing so.

Scott

Here are those reader comments: