JUST PAY THE FEEThere may be legitimate reasons to object to the experimental trailhead fees being charged by the Deschutes National Forest and other Northwest forests, but none of them has anything to do with a government conspiracy with the private recreation industry.
The director of a Bend-based group called Wild Wilderness is trying to launch a national boycott of the trailhead fee. He claims the fee some how is linked to a conspiracy to privatize and commercialize national forests and parks.
That seems far-fetched, to put it mildly. No doubt there are many private companies that would like a piece of the recreation business on public lands, but there's no evidence that the trailhead fees will lead to that outcome.
Trailhead users should ignore the suggested boycott. There are legitimate questions about the experimental trailhead fees - the most basic of which is whether it's right to charge people for a walk in the woods. But any final decision on the fees ought to be based on the real issues, not some unproven claim of a conspiracy.
Wild Wilderness offers the following excerpted quotes from recreation industry sources as additional support for our "far-fetched", and "unproven" claims. We hope that the growing body of information we have been providing through our internet site will result in other authors and organizations joining Wild Wilderness in our attempt to "Sound the Alarm".
The following materials are listed according to their file number in the Wild Wilderness reference collection. There is no significance to the order in which these are presented. All statements are direct quotations from the indicated internet source documents. Information in square brackets [ ] has been added for clarification. Information in parenthetical brackets { } has been added for guidance.
L-8 (National Forest Recreation Association - Fall 1996)
{Many articles can be found at this internet address. Individual articles
from which quotes are taken will be identified using the major heading
associated with that article. Articles are excerpted in the order in which
they originally appeared.}
The success of NFRA also depends on good partnerships. We begin with our members who have come together as partners collectively working for an improved business climate on the public lands. As an association, we have also established partnerships with other private entities that result in a variety of benefits for individual members. Our partnership agreements with the Jim Calfee Insurance Agency and National Sanitary Supply, for example, offer significant savings to NFRA members. On the national level, NFRA's partnership with the American Recreation Coalition provides our association with access to legislative and policy information which we could not afford to generate on our own.
I firmly believe that the need for small business on the National Forests will not go away - despite the efforts of Congress or the wishes of the agency. As the politicians and the Forest Service may learn the hard way, big business will pick up only the choice operations and will ultimately throw away the small, marginal, or remote concessions - regardless of the service they provide.
Although most of the good news for the recreation community is related to actions taken at the very end of the legislative session, we can also point to significant successes earlier in the 104th Congress. For example, the National Recreation Fee Demonstration Program - additionally enhanced in the session's final days, as described above - was actually initiated less than a year ago. This is truly a breakthrough program because it allows the public to show the types of services it wants on public lands and provides federal agencies with new resources to deliver those services... Even where we did not get final action - on permanent recreation fee reform, for example - we made dramatic progress which should translate into bipartisan legislation in the 105th Congress.
The 1996 survey was also designed to help the recreation industry and government officials understand public attitudes toward higher recreation fees, asking how much more recreationists would have been willing to pay on their last visit to a Federal recreation site... Recreationists who were least willing to pay higher fees were fisherman, RV'ers, and motorcyclists/snowmobilers. Campground users and off-road bicyclists reported the highest willingness to pay more.
... The Recreation Roundtable is comprised of chief executives from more than twenty of America's leading recreation companies, including Coleman, REI, Walt Disney Attractions, Times Mirror Magazines, L.L. Bean and KOA.
{The Recreation Roundtable is an operation of the American Recreation Coalition. For additional information about the Recreation Roundtable please visit ARC's internet site (http://www.funoutdoors.com/#rndtable.html). The source from which this information has been quoted, the National Forest Recreation Association, is itself a member of ARC. A listing of all ARC members can also be found at ARC's internet site. (http://www.funoutdoors.com/#members.html)}
In Dr. Dombeck's view, the recreation industry needs to find a way to get its economic story told in a believable fashion. Despite the common view of recreation as less significant that other uses of the public lands, Dr. Dombeck asserted his belief that "the long-term future of public lands will be associated with recreation."
A special opportunity involves amendments to the park concessions law which nearly passed in 1994. The amendments have brought support - and some changes may well be appropriate. But the changes in the measures passed by the House and Senate individually (but not agreed upon) undermine existing protections for private investment on public lands like preferential right-of-renewal and possessory interests without providing any replacement provisions at a time when federal budgets will be unable to provide needed capital investments in recreation facilities. We hope that the new Congress will consider carefully opportunities to recognize and reward private companies providing exceptional services within our national forests and parks, agreeing to performance measurements and then conducting objective evaluations on a periodic basis.
Success in 1995 - and long beyond - will depend upon key leaders of the recreation community stepping forward to explain our ideas and our needs to our elected officials; upon companies that invite the newly elected Members of Congress to see smiling visitors on the forests this summer, served by federal and private partners working together; and upon the National Forest Recreation Association and others focused on the future and addressing challenges America faces as we enter the 21st Century. We're counting on NFRA to provide public policy leadership in Washington through the American Recreation Coalition and other organizations during this key period!
The purpose of 'The National Forest Recreation Site Enhancement and Management Act' is to preserve and enhance the opportunity for visitors to enjoy safe, high quality recreational services and facilities on the national forests, through continued and increased private sector investments and management and a more cost-effective allocation of government resources.
The bill will call for the USDA Forest Service to develop a significantly improved program of encouraging private sector investment, construction and operation of forest-based lodges, resorts, marinas, riding stables campgrounds, and stores...
Shaw, a leading advocate of public/private partnerships is marketing the U.S. as a tourism destination...
In a message to the Illinois Governor's Conference on Tourism last month, fellow interim USA NTO Board member Judson Green, president of Walt Disney Attractions, applauded Shaw's "energy, enthusiasm and unfailing commitment to merchandising tourism as the vital economic component of our country's future success."
{USTAA recently fell victim to recent Congressional budget cuts.}
The Blue Ribbon Coalition is a national umbrella group, located in Pocatello Idaho, of over 400 organizations with 500,000 members. The BRC advocates environmentally sound off-highway recreation and multiple-use of public lands.
{Wild Wilderness is a grassroots organization with 300 supporters. Our organization came into existence in 1991 specifically to protect opportunities for non-motorized recreation from BRC and its local snowmobile associates. We have, so far, prevailed.}
Scott Silver, Executive Director,
248 NW Wilmington Avenue, Bend OR 97701
Phone (541) 385-5261 E-mail: ssilver@wildwilderness.org