The United States Forest Service (USFS) has proposed massive countrywide rulemaking changes to benefit outfitter and guiding access to all USFS lands. Your favorite campsite, hunting blind, fishing hole or boat ramp, and your access to it, are at risk!
 
Our longtime readers know that we at River Runners for Wilderness have followed and mounted opposition to various attempts to pass an Outfitters Policy Act that grants rights and privileges to public lands outfitters over the self-guided public.
 
Past long-term efforts by the outfitters’ lobby have failed, due in part to your vigilance. This most recent attempt is more sinister. The outfitters and guides have joined forces with non-profit groups that lead guided outdoor trips, and are now attempting to re-write the rules that govern the policies of the US Forest Service to win special access privileges.
 
Once again, you can counter these efforts through your comments, due no later than January 17, 2008. Now is the time to stand up and protect your right to use Forest Service lands equally with outfitters and their clients.
 
If you do nothing, these sweeping changes will impact all do-it-yourself (self-guided) recreationists, including hunters, fishermen, off-road enthusiasts, hikers, backpackers, canoeists, jet-boaters, paddlers, mountain-bikers and river runners. Once the rights to your favorite picnic area, boat ramp, or wilderness trailhead are sold, the change is permanent; the self-guided public enthusiast loses, and also loses the right to comment in the future.
 
The proposed rulemaking changes include but are not limited to: 

* Outfitters and guides would be able to pay a small fee for sole and exclusive access to prime camping, hunting, fishing and picnic areas, including boat launch ramps.
 
* Outfitters, guides and non-profit organizations would be awarded an allocation of public use for ten-year periods. Commonly referred to as a “taking,” of public land the rule would give preferred access to the outfitters at the expense of the do-it-yourself public on all Forest Service-managed lands.
 
* This rulemaking would force allocating access in management areas where access is presently allocation-free, as it now is at Boundary Waters Canoe Area and the Deschutes River.
 
* Outfitters, Guides and non-profits become “Priority Users”. The public, who does not use outfitters, guides or non-profits for access would no longer have “priority use.”
 
* The general public would no longer be able to comment on USFS giving away blocks of access to Forest Service land. Outfitting and guiding in designated wilderness would not require public comment and review through an Environmental Assessment or Environmental Impact Statement. Additionally, there is no provision to prevent outfitting services from selling their preferred access rights to their successor companies.
 
* The new proposed rules do not protect wilderness areas from commercialization.

 To see the document in its entirety click here:
 
Comments on this proposed rulemaking will be accepted until January 17, 2008.
 
Do you care about your and your children’s access to Federal Land? Or their children’s access?
 
If so, please take the time to comment on this one, and urge your friends, no matter what outdoor activities they enjoy, to comment too.
 
<continues>

On June 10, 2006 I shared, yet again, warnings and misgiving about a piece of  legislation called the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act (SNPLMA). I wrote:

[The appended editorial .. basically suggests that we cash out all of America's public lands. It might not say that in as many words, but it says that nevertheless. It also points to SNPLMA as the model for this sell-off.

I'd just like to remind folks that while a few of us have continually spoken in opposition to that model .... many environmental/ conservation groups ACTIVELY supported it.]

This week, the New York Times published on this topic a lengthy article titled "Public Lands: Nevada Learns to Cash In on Sales of Federal Land". A much condensed version appears below along with a link to the original.

Last June 10 I asked my readers, "What is it about slippery slopes and wet paint...???"

Today I repeat myself and make my questions clearer and more pointed. Why must the conservation community blunder onto every slippery slope presented to it? Why does it feel compelled to rub its hands into things  grassroots activists have painstakingly identified and labeled as 'wet paint'??  Why has the big-green conservation community permitted itself to become so damned destructive to the environment and to become such a reliable facilitator of the commercialization and privatization of America's shared, public, commons???

Oh, one last point -- Enviros and Democrats are NOT the only ones responsible for this fiasco. The wise-use, anti-environmental, American Recreation Coalition has consistently been a strong supporter of SNPLMA and is encouraging Richard Pombo,  Harry Reid and their other friends in Congress to EXPAND the SNPLMA model. From the get-go, the ARC supported SNPLMA as a mechanism for funding the expansion of their preferred forms of commercialized, privatized and motorized recreation. No one has any right to be surprised at the way things have turned out.

Scott 

When the pro-motorized, pro-development,  American Recreation Coalition joins forces with the Outdoor Industry Association, the Wilderness Society, the National Parks and Conservation Association, the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees and others to hash out compromise legislation for our National Parks, strange things can happen.
With respect to the management of America's National Parks, there are few points of intersection between the interests of the American Recreation Coalition and the interests of organizations representing pro-environmental positions. The ARC is this nation's most vigorous advocate for commercializing, privatizing and motorizing our National Parks. President Bush's National Park Centennial Initiative has been crafted so as to advance the recreation industry's agenda.

Fortunately for the parks, there is a competing Centennial Initiative. It has been introduced by Representatives Rahall and Grijalva and unlike the President's proposal, theirs is a genuine effort to protect and enhance the National Parks for the benefit of the people of this nation.

There are few points of intersection between the President's Initiative and the one written by Rahall and Grijalva. One initiative is good, the other is bad.  One should be supported by friends of parks, the other should be denounced, fought and killed. Unfortunately, that is not what is happening.

Name-brand conservationists are working with the enemies of parks. They are not advocating for the passage to the GOOD legislative proposal which has been written and introduced.  They are writing compromises.

Read on to learn about the tentative deal hashed out between the American Recreation Coalition and representatives of the conservation community.

Read on to learn about a proposal that would fund the National Park Centennial Initiative using receipts generated from SALVAGE TIMBER SALES.

Scott

Just days after George W. Bush took the oath of President, Lynn Scarlett (President of the Libertarian "Reason Foundation" think-tank) had this to say on the nomination of Gale Norton to the post of Secretary of Interior:     

 "There are two world views on improving the environment — the old, and the new. The old vision is top-down, regulatory, punishment-driven. The new vision is bottom-up, technological, market-driven. New Environmentalism — of the kind practiced by President Bush's Interior nominee Gale Norton — makes the forces of green punishment and prescription uncomfortable."
-Lynn Scarlett on the "New Environmentalism" (U.S. Newswire, January 24, 2001)

Norton is long gone and disgraced but Norton's Deputy Secretary, Lynn Scarlett, remains. Today Scarlett is perhaps the most powerful person in America when it comes to dictating public-lands policy.

I am no fan of market-driven New Environmentalism though a growing number of my peers within the conservation community are embracing this ideology. I suspect many of them will support Lynn Scarlett's latest proposal, that of Endangered Species Offsets.  It was described last month by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as:

"...an innovative new program designed to help federal agencies conserve imperiled species on non-federal lands. The recovery crediting system gives federal agencies flexibility to offset the impact of their actions on threatened and endangered species found on federal lands by undertaking conservation actions on non-federal lands, as long as the affected species receive a net conservation benefit."

Appended is an Environmental News Service article describing the latest, proposed, addition to the growing stable of "New Environmental" innovations. Public Comments are being taken and additional details can be read in the Federal Register Notice, available at at this link.

Scott 

In 1896, Illinois State Attorney General, Robert G. Ingersoll (a Republican) said:

"Don't you know that if people could bottle the air, they would? ... there would be an American Air-Bottling Association. ... they would let millions die for want of breath, if they could not pay for the air."

       
A century and a bit later, the American Air-Bottling Association has not, yet, become a reality but today there truly are fees for everything and today fees have become the Republican party's preferred method of taxation. Today, bottled water is common and water privatization has become a global issue. Today air can be bottled, but the potential air-bottlers have not yet figured out how to deny the public access to free atmospheric air. Today a walk in a National Forest is no longer free because people have figured out how to deny access to formerly-free public lands.

Pasted below is a "Special Report" from New York Daily news titled "City, state hike fees for everything but breathing." In just a few words it drives home the point that today there are, indeed, fees for everything but breathing. I'd just add that when it becomes possible to deny the public access to clean, fresh air, those who have the ability to charge for air will, without hesitation, let those without the money to pay for air die. That is the way of the market.

Scott

With so much talk of the obvious benefits of private philanthropy, it is rare to see anyone thinking beyond the obvious. Appended is an editorial titled "Privatization of University raises worries." It concludes with these words:

 University President Dave Frohnmayer called Lokey's contribution "an extraordinary act of philanthropy that will transform the University." This is a true statement. But so is this: A transformed University won't do much good if students can't afford to enroll here. ]

I read this article and thought of the privatization of the National Park System and how the President's private philanthropy "solution" and his Centennial Initiative are creating much the same privatization threat as described below.

It is so very hard to look gift horses in the mouth ... and yet it is so very important to do so.

 Scott

 

San Francisco's Presidio was conceived as America's privatized National Park and with each passing year as the Presidio strives to become financially self-supporting as required by its authoring legislation, it becomes increasingly commercial and less like a genuine National Park. It become more like the National Park System President Ronald Reagan envisioned when, in 1982, he set about to cut federal National Park funding to zero and to replace public funding with commercialization and user fees.

The Walt Disney Family Museum has recently broken ground within the Presidio National Park. It will pay homage to like and creations of Mr. Walt Disney.

The Gap Inc. would like to follow suit. Don Fisher, the multi-billionaire founder of San Francisco-based Gap, Inc., wants to build a 100,000 square foot museum for his personal art collection in the Presidio National Park.

The comment period for this proposal ends on Monday, October 15th. Details appear below.

Scott

The appended article is new from the free-market think-tank PERC. It describes what PERC has always wanted for America's National Park and Wilderness systems. It is what they dream about. It is where PERC's dear friend and former Senior Research Fellow, Gale Norton, might have taken the NPS and Wilderness management if she not been required to resign prematurely.

This is the direction in which the Bush administration is steering the national park system. The President's Centennial Initiative plays heavily into this concept and helps make the dream come alive.

The final two paragraphs of this article set a stage and then request the read imagine some things. Those things are the dreams of PERC and those who share their vision. I suggest that, to one degree or another, those running the Executive Branch and those within the Department of Interior who oversee the park system share this vision and this dream. I suggest that those who unquestioningly and uncritically support the President's Centennial are supporting this vision, whether they know it or not.

Scott

The appended message from the National Parks Foundation is all smiles. It's not until you look behind the facade will you see what is so troubling. Please go to the link provided and click around. It will take you but a moment to discover why I am drawing your attention to this upcoming Leadership Summit.

I can barely keep up with the rapidly increasing outpouring of this and similar propaganda. To be honest, I am finding it increasingly difficult to report upon the harm deliberately being done to our National Parks and to continue issuing warnings as I have done for the past decade.  It is, I suppose, like watching one's child bleeding to death with no help in sight and starting to accept what appears increasingly inevitable.

My greatest hope at this 11th hour is that the conservation community will get involved and will somehow manage to keep the President's Centennial Initiative from being passed into law. My hope is that come 2008 we will have for the first time in many years, a genuine opportunity to do right by the parks.

My greatest fear is that the conservation community will not merely stand by and watch the President's intentional destruction of the National Parks System, but that it will start giving chest compressions and thereby speed its exsanguination.

As I have been writing in many of my personal correspondences and now share with you...

The President's Centennial Initiative is the biggest threat to the NPS.
The President's Centennial Initiative is the biggest threat to the NPS.
The President's Centennial Initiative is the biggest threat to the NPS.
The President's Centennial Initiative is the biggest threat to the NPS.

Scott 

I have long used the issue of recreation user fees as a tool for exposing, and  fighting, the wider reaching threats of neoliberalism and also what I have been calling "neofeudalism".

Starting with the creation of the Wild Wilderness website a decade ago,  I have continuously warned that park and forest recreation budgets would, in the years to come, be slashed. I explained that this would be done  in order to create a crisis that would eventually be resolved by privatization and commercialization.

A decade ago I coined the phrase "The Corporate Takeover of Nature" and as much as I had hoped to prevent that from happening, what I was really speaking about was merely the name of a battleground.

The war is over the "Corporate Takeover of Everything", and from the perspective of Wild Wilderness, it is a war that is not merely being lost, it is being lost with little meaningful resistance being offered.

Pasted below is an article by George Monbiot published yesterday in The Guardian (London) which explains as well as any brief article can, the nature of the neoliberal threat to our public lands, our shared infrastructure, our democracy and our lives. It needs no further introduction — and yet, for the sake of my peers in the conservation community, I wish to inoculate your thinking with one word. When you come upon it, I ask you to please momentarily pause and reflect. The word is "PEW."

Scott
 

On March 19, 2002,  Wild Wilderness became actively engaged in trying to prevent the privatization and commercialization of Sandy Hook's Fort Hancock within the Gateway National Recreation Area of New Jersey — and we are still fighting.

It was on March 19, 2002 that the American public got it's first inkling of what the National Park Service was cooking up and it was that same day that I distributed the warning which can be read at here.

My first message on this issue was titled "Privatization of Sandy Hook National Park" and it ended with these words:

"It is through these private-development schemes that George Bush and Gale Norton intend to "fix" the National Park System. Bush, Norton and NPS Director Fran Mainella will, unless actively opposed, parcel out our shared heritage bit by bit and make it available to developers and to other commercial private interests.   WHO WILL STOP THEM!!??"

Five years after asking "Who will stop them?" I may have a partial answer — one good for Sandy Hook New Jersey, but totally inadequate when it comes to addressing the larger question of "Who will stop the now so much more widespread privatization and commercialization of the entire National Park system?"

In the appended article from today's press you will read that New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone "has been granted his request that the U.S. Department of Interior's inspector general investigate the lease agreement between the National Park Service and a private developer who is seeking to redevelop a portion of Sandy Hook's Fort Hancock." You will read that Pallone says "the entire process had been a debacle" — and he speaks the truth.

I will just add that the U.S. Department of Interior is the most scandal plagued department within the Federal Government today. Its former Secretary, Gale Norton, is mercifully gone. Its former NPS Director, Fran Mainella, is mercifully gone as are so other disgraced DOI leaders — some of whom are now convicted felons.

The Department of Interior is still rotten to the core and scandals such as the ongoing one at Sandy Hook will continue until the PEOPLE rise up and stop the bastards who are "Stealing the People's Treasure".

Also be sure to visit the Save Sandy Hook website and the website of the developer whose arrangements with the NPS are currently under investigation.

Scott

Some may have wondered why Wild Wilderness has frequently and vigorously weighed in on the very unwilderness-like issues of road privatization and traffic congestion pricing.

We did so because those issues are reflections of our signature issue, "The Corporate Takeover of Nature." We did so because the same privatization ideologues are leading  both battles. We did so because the identical forces are at play in both issues and the same outcomes can be expected in both issues. Most of all, we did so to convince our readers that The Corporate Takeover of Nature is part of something bigger --- that being The Corporate Takeover of EVERYTHING.

Pasted below is a much condensed, new,  Jim Hightower essay. It's about the corporate takeover of roads and related transportation infrastructure. It's a topic about which I have written both directly and indirectly in many hundreds of postings that were focused upon the issues of recreation user fees and the privatization of outdoor recreation infrastructure.

When will people stand up for that which is theirs??? We're rapidly losing our shared infrastructure, our country and our democracy. Perhaps people will fight back when they understand what is at stake. The appended article helps explain what is at stake.

Scott

Supporters of privatization claim that government is inherently inefficient and wasteful. They say that it is for THOSE reasons that outsourcing of such things as US Forest Service campgrounds and day use facilities results in savings to the taxpayer. It is, so we are told,  to save you and me money that more than 90% of all USFS campgrounds have been turned over to private concessionaires and are, for all intents and purposes, privatized. It is for this same reason that an increasing number of DAY USE AREAS are being similarly privatized.

Unfortunately we, the public, are told lies. We are told lies by the very people we, the taxpayers, employ to manage our shared public resources.

  Pasted below is an internal US Forest Service document. As you will see, it was distributed only to top ranking Forest Service leaders. I does NOT tell lies. It tells several raw, unvarnished, truths and is educational on multiple levels. I'll focus on just one, and will introduce this memorandum by reminding readers that in 1999, the US Senate was incensed to discover that concessionaires were paying minimum wages. Federal law, so everyone thought, required concessionaires to pay their workers the SAME wage as the USFS was required to its people to do identical work.

 Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) went so far as to say:

"I had no idea that this economic juggernaut would have to be sustained on the backs of minimum-wage workers cleaning out Forest Service campgrounds."

The appended Forest Service document makes it clear the concessionaires are not only NOT paying fair wages, they are scamming the system and doing it AT YOUR EXPENSE!

If you want to know what you must pay to use formerly public, but now privatized, DAY USE AREAS on your National Forest, read on.

Scott

This morning I return to a topic that is but a tiny step removed from that of recreation user fees, the concept being that of road congestion pricing.

I do so because many of my peers in the conservation community are actively embracing this concept, yet they are doing so without any effort to place the issue within its larger context.

Pasted below is my attempt to provide missing context and to move the discussion beyond that of elephant tail hairs.

Scott

Governmental agencies within Canada are systematically destroying the park systems of that nation.

Governmental agencies within the USA are following in Canada's footsteps.

In Canada, the Libertarian think-tank known as the "Fraser Institute" has led the transformation of that nation's public parks into market based test-beds for a larger privatization agenda.

In the USA, the Libertarian think-tank known as the "Reason Foundation" has led the same charge.

Pasted below is an editorial from this morning's Canadian press keyed to tomorrow's Canadian Parks Day. IT is a plea for help for Ontario's parks.

THIS message is likewise a plea for help --- help for our parks. All of them.

Scott

The transfer of control of National Park and other public lands management to outside interests is now occurring so quickly that it is no longer efficient for me to point out single examples.  Like with an avalanche, once started the process gains speed without outside intervention. Unlike with an avalanche, the process can be stopped and even reversed. All it takes is understanding of the problem and the will to fix it.

Pasted below are excerpts from five recent articles —each of which presents another example of park policy being dictated from the outside, each published within the past seven days.

Whenever public policy is dictated, THAT is privatization. Each additional instance of privatization adds weight and momentum to a privatization avalanche.  Some of the impetus for increased privatization comes from self-serving, or commercial, profit-motivated interests. Some of the impetus comes from "friends".

I offer these five examples as evidence of the range of interferences now occurring. Next week I could, I expect, provide 6 or 7 additional examples and perhaps10 examples the week after that ... the avalanche is gaining speed that quickly.

Scott

With increasing frequency I make an effort to link the "Corporate Takeover of Nature" issue to the larger issue I call "The Corporate Takeover of Everything."  Today I'd like to link the "Corporate Takeover of Everything" to its larger context.

Pasted below are excerpts from a piece of writing coming out of London.  I share these specific excerpts because while they may appear to be unrelated to the issue of public land management here in the USA, they provides an effective summation of key points found within my hundreds of postings on the very specific topic of recreation user fees and public lands management.

Years ago Wild Wilderness gave away thousands of bumper stickers that said "Fee-Demo is UNDEMOCRATIC."

I hope the final paragraph of the appended article makes it clear why we chose that particular message.

Scott