WILD WILDERNESS

FEE DEMO IN THE NEWS (OLDER ARTICLES)

There are some who would have you believe that the American public supports the recreation fee demonstration program. Pasted below are but a sampling of articles that prove otherwise.

(NOTE: Links that are now 'dead" at their original location
can generally still be viewed at The WayBack Machine.)

The following articles date to June 2001 and earlier.
To read more recent articles, click here

 

  • By Sen. Larry Craig Op-ED - Fee Demo program has fallen short
    ("The grades are in, and the recreation fee demonstration project has flunked in Idaho. I will oppose the continuation of the pilot project as it has been implemented over the last few years...")

  • Big switch ... Sen. Craig reverses his position on forest fees
    ("Citing concern over where the money collected from forest recreation fees is ending up, U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, announced that he won't support the fees after all.")

  • Fee market economics - The federal fee demo scam is all maxed out
    ("Max Baucus and his compatriots in the Senate are our only hope to end this unwarranted fleecing of ordinary citizens.")

  • Rustic campgrounds offer refreshing retreat
    ("Too many campgrounds in national forests are being improved to the point that you feel like you´re in your backyard or a city park. Combined fees for added vehicles and reservations make it almost cost as much as staying in a cheap motel.")

  • Strickland, Allard say no to fee demo
    ("Opponents of the Fee Demonstration program can take heart. Both Colorado candidates competing for the U.S. Senate this November say they do not support the program...")

  • Sen. Allard denounces fee demo program
    ("U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard announced this week he will oppose the U.S. Forest Service's recreation fee demonstration program now in place at various high-use areas throughout the state.")

  • Nickled and dimed in the outdoors
    ("Barker, pastor of Columbia Lakewood Community Church in Seattle's Seward Park neighborhood, said his opposition to fees began in 1997 when he saw a mother and her three young sons shooed away from a trail because they couldn't afford a parking pass.")

  • Trail-fee foes fight on
    ("People are losing confidence with the Forest Service and seeing them being untruthful.")

  • Foes of recreation fees plan to make some noise
    (Opposition to the program has grown to include 241 groups across the country, 27 regional and national groups, including 13 in Washington. The states of California, Oregon, New Hampshire and Colorado also oppose the program.)

  • Fees restrict public lands access
    (The recreation fee demonstration program on our public lands has turned out to be a first class ruse.)

  • Forest officials keep trailhead fees as public questions use of money
    ("Public lands are the last place you can go to escape the onslaught of commercialization that is everywhere you turn. We don't need packaged trailheads or products on the forest. We just want the nature that was there originally.")

  • National day of protest opposes recreation fees
    (Organizers of the protest say now is a crucial time to make this opposition known because the Bush Administration proposes, as part of its 2003 budget, to make the fees permanent.)

  • Groups protest fees, operations in ‘Yosemiteland’
    (“They're turning the Park into Yosemiteland,” says Joyce Eden, voicing her concerns as an activist who would like to see the National Park Service change the way it manages federal public lands, most especially, Yosemite National Park)

  • Yosemite fee, renovations are protested
    (Those opposed to Yosemite National Park's $20 entrance fee and renovations to its most popular tourist site will gather Saturday at the valley visitor center to protest the changes.)

  • Sierra Club Supports Keeping Public Lands Open to All Americans
    ("This summer as Americans head out to public lands to fish, hunt, camp and hike, they should not have to pay to play," said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope.)

  • First $5 Fees, Then Forests By Disney
    (So what can you do? Very simple: Stand up right now and say "no" to this plan to take the "wild" out of wilderness.)

  • Day-use fees not welcome by all
    (The newly implemented day-use fees required at several sites around Dillon reservoir has infuriated residents and tourists alike.)

  • Is this land our land?
    (Our public lands are supposed to be a public commons -- so why is the government charging citizens just to enjoy them?)

  • Protest targets forest fees
    ("Fee-Demo is the nose of the camel," he said. "It will lead to the corporate takeover of nature and the Disneyfication of the wild.")

  • Protests target fees charged at forest trails
    ("The opposition is growing, and it's clear that there is enormous political pressure to make this permanent," he said.)

  • Public lands are for everyone
    (Americans should never forget that public lands are for us all -- a birthright to protect, not a commodity for sale to those who can afford it.)

  • Rallies will protest land access fees
    (He argued that no amount of fine-tuning can make it acceptable to the American public. "People have a right to walk on public lands," he said.)

  • Refuse to pay forest use fees, hopeful urges
    (Demonstrators decried use fees for public lands as a form of double taxation and said the fees were driven by lobbyists trying turn public lands into private commodities.)

  • A proposal -- just in case those June 15 protests fail
    (Despite this effort, it's entirely possible that Congress will enlarge the user-fee program to keep dunning the public. And if that's the case, perhaps the best way to fight might be to demand refunds on those occasions when you don't get your money's worth.)

  • First $5 Fees, Then Forests By Disney
    (The federal government's Recreational Fee Demonstration Program, or "Fee Demo," is about nothing less than privatizing and commercializing all public lands.)

  • Senators debate recreation fees
    (Idaho's other senator, Republican Mike Crapo, slammed the recreation fee, saying that Americans should be able to enjoy the federal lands that their tax dollars support without having to pay additional fees.)

  • Fee for public land use disputed
    (John Borowski said he feels cheated when he uses public land such as the Marys Peak Recreational Area west of Philomath and has to pay $5 to be there.)

  • Critics blast park fees
    (Fee critics say it's part of a trend toward giving private corporations more control over public lands.)

  • U.S. recreation fees could be permanent
    (Before the fees are made permanent, the agencies must work out challenges in collecting the money and distributing the money, [ARC's President, Derrick] Crandall said. His coalition is helping with that.)

  • Privatization's Trojan Horse
    (While the few, but powerful, proponents of recreation user fees are advancing their anti-democratic, pay-to-play agenda, Wild Wilderness and other environmental organizations are working to keep our public lands from being commercialized, privatized and over-developed.)

  • Op-Ed Public lands are for everyone
    (We should demand that Congress put an end to fee demo and restore the funding stripped from general appropriations.)

  • Rally on Saturday to oppose fees charged to enter forests
    (Organizers say charging citizens to hike, bike or camp in the nation's forests through the Federal Recreation Fee Demonstration Program is undemocratic because it denies citizens equal access.)

  • Op-Ed, Money seems to buy access to forests
    (If I can't walk up Barr Trail then tourists shouldn't be able to buy their way to the top of the peak.)

  • Op-Ed, Is This Land Our Land?
    (Americans should never forget that public lands are for us all -- a birthright to protect, not a commodity for sale to those who can afford it.)

  • Op-Ed, Recreational Fee Demonstration and the Economic Taliban
    (The Recreational Fee-Demonstration Program is the greatest threat to the federal lands since the breathtaking proposals in the Reagan years to sell off the entire public estate, and there is a direct connection between the two.)

  • Op-Ed, Arizona Daily Star - We own public lands; we're not 'customers'
    (The Forest Service is claiming broad public support, because it counts everyone who complies with the program as being in favor of it.)

  • Agencies struggle toward a unified public-lands pass
    (After a clamorous seven-year test, the Bush administration wants to expand and make permanent the federal government's program of charging user fees for recreation on public lands.)

  • Op-Ed, The Idaho Statesman - Forest fee a walking disaster
    (Boycott this thing any way you can.)

  • Op-Ed, Salt Lake Tribune - Stop Making Us Pay to Enjoy Our Public Lands
    (Enjoying the magnificence of Utah shouldn't be something we have to purchase.)

  • Op-Ed by Kimberly Kaminsky in The Oregonian
    (Will the fee program benefit the public? Or will it pave the way for more parking lots, more development and more bureaucracy?)

  • Fee-demo protest takes new direction
    (In its latest effort to wipe out fee-demo programs, the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition is trying toilet paper.)

  • Let fee-dom ring
    (The Forest Service's controversial fee demo program is actually a tax on those who want to access the national forests.)

  • They want to ‘Disneyfy’ our public lands
    (Is called the Fee Demonstration — or “Fee Demo” — Program, and it’s getting out of control.)

  • Fee demo opponents ordered to pay fine for protest
    (Given the grass-roots opposition to the program, the program needs to be modified, Rethmeier said.)

  • Local solons' bill urging repeal of fee-demo passes
    (The resolution states that recreational fees constitute double taxation, limit public access to public lands, and harm tourism.)

  • McInnis defends fee demo
    (Concerns over the controversial fee demonstration program that has allowed the U.S. Forest Service to charge fees in certain wilderness areas dominated discussion Saturday at a town meeting held by U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Grand Junction.)

  • Colorado Legislature decides on ... fee demo program
    (Colorado becomes the fourth state along with 23 counties and cities in the nation to oppose the fee-demo program.)

  • Promises made, promises broken? - Editorial Idaho Mt. Express
    (The user fees look like they will live up to every skeptic's expectations. A $50 national fee will be expensive, unfair, and will improve nothing.)

  • Put user fees to rest
    (User fees at trailheads, boat ramps, parking areas and other recreation facilities on federal lands have been tested under Congressional mandate since 1996. It's time for this contentious public lands access fee test to be put to rest, one way or another.)

  • Committee calls for ban on fee demo program
    (The resolution is similar to ones passed in California, Oregon and New Hampshire. It calls the fees double taxation that "bear no relationship to the actual costs of recreation.")

  • This land was not made for user fees - Times News Editorial
    (Leave it to government to make a bad idea even worse. That's what the Forest Service will be doing if it expands regional trailhead passes to a national program.)

  • Plan asks feds to ax access fees
    (DENVER - State legislators will debate a resolution that opposes access fees on federal public lands. Rep. Kay Alexander, R-Montrose, is sponsoring the resolution that asks Congress to abolish the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program and restore full funding of public lands agencies in Colorado.)

  • All-Purpose Rec Fee Still Controversial
    (Resistance in the Northwest has persisted. An internal Forest Service memo, leaked to the press last year, identified the West Coast and the Pacific Northwest as "hot spots" and said the agency must "get heat turned down in Ore., Wash., Idaho and Calif. before permanent authority will be considered.")

  • Charging to the End of Paradise - LA Times Op-Ed
    (June 15 has been set for a national protest against this commercialization of our public trust lands, specifically against Bush administration plans to make permanent this development, or "recreation," fee program.)

  • National trailhead passes considered
    (From the beginning, the Forest Service has been struggling to make "pay to play" more palatable to the public.)

  • Help Fight Forest Fees -- Denver Post Editorial
    (Colorado lawmakers should endorse HJR 1051 as a reasonable objection to federal-fee fever run amok.)

  • Forest Service works on national fees
    (Hoping to broaden acceptance of trail fees, the U.S. Forest Service will create a "national blueprint" that will create consistency between how individual forests charge fees.)

  • 'Fees, fie,' foes fume - Denver Post Editorial
    (Mt. Evans could serve as a poster child for why Congress should scuttle or retool the fees.)

  • Mt. Evans user fee facing challenge
    (The latest battle over recreation fees on public lands could come at an April 12 meeting of the Colorado Transportation Commission, when critics of the federal "pay-to-play" program will argue that the entrance charge at Mount Evans is an illegal toll.)

  • Candidate Strickland meets with residents
    (Strickland is opposed to charging people for access to public lands under the Recreation Fee Demonstration Project. Allard has said he has concerns about Fee Demo, but has not opposed it outright.)

  • Fees: Don't even think about it
    ("From now on, a person who thinks about a national park - about its trees, its lakes, its streams - will be subject to a $10 fee," said an agency spokesman.)

  • Our View: A failed fee experiment - Editorial Idaho Post Register
    (Fees and industry partnerships aren't the answer to sagging Forest Service recreation budgets. The taxpayers have already paid for these national forests once. They shouldn't be charged - through fees and hidden private-public partnerships - twice. It's time for Congress to drop the gimmicks and come up with real appropriations.)

  • Campbell blasts environmentalists, media at town meeting
    ([Senator] Campbell said that while he supports fees for those taking something from a national forest area, such as timber, he does not think visitors should be charged a fee for access.)

  • Rising cost of using public lands
    (Supporting public recreation through user fees is expensive, intrusive, and discriminatory.)

  • Ron C. Judd / Seattle Times staff columnist
    (The Forest Service Northwest Region office in Portland, reacting to an agency directive to "put out hotspots" of growing Western opposition to the fees, is reviewing all its fee sites in Washington and Oregon.)

  • McInnis dissatisfied with way fee-demo project is working - Durango Herald
    (Colorado Congressman Scott McInnis has blasted the Yankee Boy Basin Recreation Fee-Demonstration Program for using fee revenues to hire personnel to administer the program.)

  • Forest managers plan to eliminate fees - Oregonian
    (The program now faces its toughest test because President Bush's 2003 budget proposes making the federal recreation fees, which were imposed on an experimental basis since 1996, a permanent fixture on public lands next year.)

     
        (Bumper Sticker -- Available from Wild Wilderness)

     

  • Parks fees up for consideration - SF Chronicle
    (One of the most contentious public land issues in America -- charging for recreation access to national forests -- likely will face a do-or-die verdict in the near future.)

  • Durango City Council votes to oppose fee-demo program
    (The resolution states that recreational fees "constitute double taxation" and have resulted in "limited public access" and have "garnered strong public criticism.")

  • The New Mexican editorial
    (The first thing to know about federal-lands user fees is their blatant fraudulence. When you, good citizen, put your money in an envelope and put the envelope stub on your car's dashboard, you're paying to picnic or hike on your own land.)

  • Fee demo rebellion is good, bad
    (Unfair taxation, whether on tea or the public's use of public lands, seems to be the key argument for those pushing to kill the national fee demonstration program, now in its fifth year.)

  • The price of communing with nature
    (The Recreation Fee Demonstration Program, enacted by Congress in 1996, has attracted protest and controversy in some states where people say it is charging the public for what it already owns.)

  • Forest Service spending fees to collect fees
    ("The compliance is high at the areas they have rangers intimidating people into paying," he said. "But if they say there are 8 million visitors and only about 30,000 passes sold, there is an extraordinary amount of non-compliance.")

  • County considering a fee demo resolution
    ("I’ve probably never received as many e-mails on one issue as I’ve gotten on this one in my three years on the commission," said Commissioner Bob Lieb. "That speaks loudly.")

  • Fee demo case has national stakes
    (Feb. 05, 2002 - The 26 defendants accused of refusing to pay a $5 fee when they entered Yankee Boy Basin near Ouray last summer face possible misdemeanor fines of $25 each. But the stakes are really much higher than these minor alleged infractions.)

  • Public Land User Fees aren't going to go away
    (Some interesting dynamics are emerging, as four-wheel-drive enthusiasts team up with Sierra Clubbers to fight the fees.)

  • Group asks county to come out against fee demo program
    ("The group has convinced seven boards of county commissioners in Colorado to sign the resolution. An eighth board has drafted its own resolution, saying that increased federal funding for public lands is preferable to charging fees.")

  • PUBLIC LANDS: Group meets to discuss proposed fees
    ("The bottom line will be those most willing to pay will get to play and those special interests most willing to provide private sector dollars will get to develop private infrastructure on public lands.")

  • Federal land use fees might be expanded...
    ("My concern was once the door was open to managing the public lands for a profit motive, we might see the quiet lake getting houseboat rentals and a golf course on the shoreline," he said.)

  • Recreation-fee foes catch an agency fumble
    ("They lose millions of dollars on their timber program. If they started restoring our forests instead of destroying them, they wouldn't need my $5 so badly.")

  • House urges Congress to end fees charged national forest visitors
    (CONCORD, NH -- A resolution urging Congress to abolish recreational fees at the White Mountain National Forest had a hearing yesterday, with all speakers unanimously in support of the measure.)

  • Montezuma commissioners oppose fee demo program
    (Saying they oppose the proliferation of fees on public lands, the Montezuma County commissioners voted 2-1 Monday to adopt a resolution opposing the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program adopted by Congress in 1996.)

  • Outdoor recreation fees continue to nettle critics
    (Critics keep blasting the fees as flawed and unfair and say their ranks grow with each new recreation area added to the list of sites where fees are charged.)

  • Paying for Playing -- Double-taxation in our national forests
    (Recently, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Coffin ruled that the USFS was illegally collecting fees at thousands of sites; Congress had explicitly limited the fee project to100 sites.)

  • Paying to play: GAO study finds flaws in user-fee program - EDITORIAL
    (There is no lack of folks out there - conservationists, hunters, hikers and backcountry residents - who resent having to pay extra money to visit national forests, parks and other reserves. Many people believe, and with good reason, that America's public lands are threatened by crass, creeping commercialism...)

  • Flaws foil forest-fee goals, GAO says
    (Five-year-old federal recreation fees that stirred opposition in the Northwest have left visitors to national forests, parks and other sites facing a confusing and inconsistent variety of tolls and passes, congressional investigators say.)

    Trail fees near Ouray cause furor
    (Seven counties enacted resolutions against the fee programs. They include San Miguel, San Juan, Hinsdale, Gunnison, Rio Grande, Saguache and Mineral counties.)

    Judge rules against Forest Service on fees
    (A federal judge has ruled the U.S. Forest Service had no authority to collect users' fees at trailheads, pullouts and other sites around the Northwest from 1996 until November this year. Under the program, millions of dollars were raised to maintain trails and Forest Service buildings through the sale of Northwest Forest Pass permits, but it sparked opposition from those who say the fees priced people off public lands.)

  • Forest fee foes gain a hollow victory
    (Because the Forest Service "exceeded its authority" by charging fees at more than 100 sites, [judge] Coffin dismissed Siart's citation. "I hope this sends a strong message that the Forest Service cannot bill the public for their own mismanagement," Siart said. "They lose millions of dollars on their timber program. If they started restoring our forests instead of destroying them, they wouldn't need my five dollars so badly.")

  • Fee demo project draws kudos, ire
    (The fee demonstration project at Yankee Boy Basin has been declared a success by federal officials and an abomination by opponents.)

  • Scrutinize Forest Service's fee-reduction partnership
    (Fee-demo is nothing more than the vector for spreading the recreation industry's commercialization - privatization disease. It's not the bite that will make you sick; it is the disease contracted from that bite.)

  • Forest fee issue builds to a finale
    (A leading group of outdoor businesses, long supportive or neutral toward fees, now says the program first passed as a spending rider has continued too long as an experiment and should be settled through permanent legislation.)

  • Bush Extends Fees at Federal Recreation Areas, But opponents blast it as double taxation
    (Calling the fees double taxation, opponents predict the fees will become permanent. Public backlash will balloon as the program spreads to new recreation sites and expands "industrial recreation" at the expense of wildland conservation...)

  • Park visitors enjoy break from fees -- and news
    (Officials predicted parks in other areas of the state are likely to see more visitors this weekend because of the waived fees.)

  • Fees waived for access to public lands
    (Some critics of recreation fees, particularly the federal Recreational Fee Demonstration Program that gave rise to the Northwest Forest Pass, argued that the plan to drop fees for Veterans Day weekend proves that they keep some people from using public lands.)

  • Access fees to public lands extended
    (Crested Butte attorney Jim Starr doesn't think it's fair to charge people twice if they want to access public lands. But double taxation is how Starr views a project authorized in 1996 by the U.S. Congress to charge access fees for popular spots on public lands.)

  • Bountiful man says many can't afford charges
    ("'I'm not really against anything. I'm for freedom of the public to use public lands,' Bountiful resident Clarke Doxey said. 'When they start charging fees . . . there are a number of people who will not be able to go into the canyons.'")

  • Recreation user fees likely to be permanent
    ("Even as Congress considers the issue, 31 Coloradans are potentially facing fines and jail time for their refusal to pay a $5 day-use fee in Canyon Creek this summer during a protest against the program. Julie Kreutzer, the Boulder attorney representing the protesters, said she will fight the case mainly on First Amendment grounds.")

  • Land of the Fee
    ("Fee demo was created by the commercial recreation industry as a mechanism for turning raw nature into saleable recreation products. Fee demo was created only to provide the foundation for a pay-to-play, public lands, recreation-tourism economy.")

  • Yankee Boy fee protestors plead innocent
    ("Thirty-one protesters have pleaded innocent to failing to pay tickets they were issued for refusing to pay an entry fee to Yankee Boy Basin.")

  • Fie on fees
    ("It is not as simple as paying $5 to enter public lands. It is a program that calls for public/private partnerships between public agencies and private corporations. It is about commercialization of our public forests for private profit. They are giving away our national heritage, but these are our lands we have already paid for with our taxes.")

  • It's tough to come clean with park rangers
    ("As it turns out, you haven't really lived the life of a Northwest outdoorsman until you've had an intellectual, emotionally heated — and completely buck-naked — debate about user fees with a hostile National Park Service ranger.")

  • No Fee Coalition holds peaceful protest
    ("The core group spent several hours talking with visitors about why Fee Demo is the wrong way to fund public lands. According to Benzar, most people were aghast when told their trip into the area was only free that day and would normally require a fee.")

  • Posh privy flushes priorities - Denver Post Editorial
    ("Until Congress infuses sanity into the agencies' budgets, it should suspend the fee demonstration project. And until it straightens out its own spending priorities, the Forest Service should stop pleading poverty.")

  • Fees lifted for Fee Demo protest
    (" '... I have decided to make Aug. 25 a free day and not charge for the day use of the area," said Free. 'My hope is that this will lessen tensions during the protest scheduled for that day from where they were during the previous protest held on July 7 of this year.' ")

  • Rangers face restrictions in citing forest pass violators
    ("On the Rogue River and Siskiyou National Forests, spot checks of sites over several years show about 30 percent of forest users have complied with fee requirements by displaying the pass...")

  • Resounding uproar over fees
    ("When Congress reconvenes after the Labor Day recess, it will decide whether to make the recreation fee demonstration project permanent. If it does, you can say goodbye to the freedom of the hills and hello to getting harassed for just entering land that you already bought and fund through your taxes.")

  • Opposition builds as more federal lands ask visitors to pay
    ("If you have to pay to use public lands, where do you stop?" asks Montle. "Will you have to pay a quarter every time you check a book out of the library?")

  • Fee Demo continues to draw attention
    ("Last week, U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO) held a public meeting in Ouray and the Fee Demo program was one of the hot items on the agenda with WSNFC representatives in attendance.")

  • Red Rock pass system in trouble
    ("A federal magistrate in Flagstaff has dealt what appears to be a major setback to the ability of the Coconino National Forest to enforce its Red Rock Recreation Pas demonstration program. Before a packed U.S. District Court in Flagstaff Monday, three of four people who refused to pay fees associated with the program were not required to pay fines because they were not seen by rangers near vehicles that were cited.")

  • Courtroom erupts in applause for verdict
    ("Two immediately had their cases dismissed by the U.S. Attorney's Office. The cases of Jackson and Brinkel were dismissed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Lodge just before the four trials were to begin because he said the cases were unlikely to result in convictions based upon U.S Attorney's Office guidelines")

  • Park admission fees deter some residents
    ("New Hampshire citizens have a right to use our national forests without imposition of any fee," [House Speaker] Chandler said. "In addition to being grossly unfair to lower-income citizens, the fee program has and continues to cause serious and unnecessary discontent between the Forest Service and towns in and around the forest. It is an insidious fee system.")

  • Sierra Club says: 'Pay to Play' Fee Demo Should End
    ("Fee demo is a move to make public lands private, which precludes social equity. Studies show that low-income visitors stay away from public lands where fees are charged.")

  • San Miguel takes a stance against Fee Demo
    ("The San Miguel Board of County Commissioners says a federal pay-to-play program for public lands will limit access and lead to privatization of areas such as Lizard Head Pass and has asked the federal government not to implement the program in San Miguel County.")

  • Fee program irks some forest users
    ("More fees aren't the answer to the agency's budget crunch, according to Silver and Holt. Instead, they said, Congress needs to allocate adequate funds to ensure the agencies can fulfill their mandate to manage public lands in the public interest.")

  • The forest business - recreation fees in National Forests stir debate
    (" 'They're using it to cover costs that have historically been covered by appropriations - cleaning restrooms, putting in trash bins, etc.,' Ortiz said. 'It takes the focus away from land management to revenue acquisition.' ")

  • Campers happy elsewhere
    ("Many parks saw visits peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before the gate fees - typically $10 or $20 per car, but often less - became widespread. It could be that fees are keeping visitors away.")

  • Fighting For Your Right - To Pollute
    ("Unless you are comfortable with the park ranger being eventually replaced by a mega-mart employee wearing a blue smock and use fees in the double digits, you had better tell your elected representatives today to resist industry efforts to motorize and privatize our public lands.")

  • Flipping over State Recreation fees
    ("It is becoming harder to recreate on public land without paying at the gate. While many users expect to pay at full-service beaches, campgrounds and marinas, some are surprised and angry when they discover it also costs to take a walk in the White Mountain National Forest or launch a canoe or kayak into Lake Winnipesaukee.")

  • It's absurd to pay a fee for taking a walk in the woods - Op-Ed
    ("More than 220 groups oppose the program, including the Sierra Club, Northwest Rafters Association, Oregon Equestrian Trails and the Oregon Mountaineering Association.")

  • How I received a ticket for hiking without a permit - Op-Ed
    ("Whether Congress provides more funding for trails or not, the Forest Service is making a mistake in requiring day hikers to pay for parking and then hiking in the woods.")

  • Trail Fees - A Bad Idea for a Rogue Agency
    ("The trail fee program charges you to use a decreasing number of trails in an increasingly damaged forest.")

  • Forest Pass: Don't buy it - Op-Ed
    ("By installing signs, toilets, and later on, resorts, lodges and RV campgrounds, the Forest Service and their corporate partners hope to leverage those facilities and lay claim to the entire backcountry experience.")

  • Time for your job review, Mr. Marmot - Editorial
    ("In its desperation, the Forest Service has resorted to charging fees to those who want to use the land and bringing in "concessionaires" to run Forest Service facilities ... and charge their own fees. This is, to put it simply, wrong - very, very wrong.")

  • This land is made for you and me?
    ("The real issue is commercialization of public lands," said Kitty Benzar, co-founder of the Durango-based Western Slope No-Fee Coalition. "It's a bigger issue than mining, grazing or roadless areas.")

  • Jeep drivers ticketed in Yankee Boy fee protest
    ("More than 50 Jeep drivers were cited for a federal violation of failing to pay. More than 150 people participated in the protest.")

     
    Logo created by Western Slope No-Fee Coalition, Durango, CO

     

  • Protesters, forest officials face off over access fees
    ("Open-lands advocates faced off with federal officials Saturday during a peaceful, if tense, protest over a new mandatory access fee for a high mountain area near Ouray.")

  • No-fee demonstrators cited at Canyon Creek
    ("Participants in the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition's demonstration were offered an opportunity to leave the area without receiving a citation, but instead chose to enter the fee area without paying the $5 per vehicle fee.")

  • Proposed camping fees cause flap
    ("We just don't like to see fees," said local resident Varda Greenberg. "We'd like to see those last few remaining campgrounds that are free remain free.")

  • User fees for forest still stir passions
    ("...five years down the road, resistance to the fee is as strong as ever.")

  • Extra Park Fees Don't Bother Most Visitors (Good article, Bad Title!)
    ("American taxpayers should not have to pay more to swim in wilderness lakes, to bike abandoned mining routes or munch picnics in the forest because they already foot the bill for these natural resources.")

  • Recreation fees get mixed reviews but generate plenty of cash
    ("It's a tax, particularly on Westerners who live near the public lands, without any legislation, any deliberation or a public hearing," said U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. "It's just not equitable. It's just not fair.")

  • End 'Fee Demo' - Durango Herald Editorial
    ("If there is money to give everyone a tax refund, there is money to pay for the maintenance and care of our national treasures without expecting every hiker to dip into his pocket when he wants to take a stroll.")

  • Public land's fee program
    ("Any warm and fuzzy relationship there may have been with the Forest Service has turned cold or even adversarial. Volunteering is way down.")

  • Disneyfy the Forests? House Says Yes
    ("For years the Forest Service was dominated by the timber industry. In supporting an expanded and permanent fee system, Forest Service leadership is asking to be dominated by the recreation industry.")

  • Need for forest pass pared, but enforcement to increase
    ("Recognizing that the public still doesn't like paying to play in national forests, the U.S. Forest Service is experimenting with cutting back the number of trails where special passes are required.")

  • Forest Pass program whittled
    ("Compliance for the trail pass has only been about 30 percent, according to Jim Heck, recreation staff officer, although no fines have been handed out this year. Many of the trails that had been excluded from the pass had poor compliance, he said.")

  • Forest Service drops some fees
    ("Ultimately, corporations want to build and operate more profit-making operations on public lands," he said, warning that will lead to those lands being eventually controlled by big business.)

  • Fee opponents to stage protest on Ouray road
    ("People think this is just about paying fees, but it is not; it’s about the development and commercialization of public lands and turning public lands into a profit-making business vs. protecting the resources.")

     

     

    In Favor of
    Fee Demo

       

       

       

    • This land is your land? Not so fast - Rocky Mountain News Editorial
      ("It so happens that the biggest free-loaders on public lands are not miners or loggers or even parks concessionaires. Mining generates a net gain to the federal treasury, for example, while logging may or may not, depending on whose figures you believe. But there is simply no doubt that hikers and mountain bikers and all the others who enjoy recreation in the wild receive a federal subsidy of literally hundreds of millions of dollars a year.")

    • U.S. Rep urges rec use fees stay in effect
      ("The fees are miniscule compared to what people will pay to go to a movie or to go to Disneyland," he said. "It is one of the best bargains in town.")

    • Fee Legislation Promises Improved Visitor Experience
      (Brought to you by ATV Connection; "The best of ATV's on the net!")

    • National Forest Adventure Pass
      (An official government explanation of the "Fee Demonstration Project", courtesy of Off-Road.Com and the Suzuki Motor Company.)

    • Should we pay more to visit our public parks
      ("Derrick Crandall, director of the American Recreation Coalition and one of the chief architects of the fee plan hopes that within the next decade roughly 40 to 50 percent of recreation funds might be raised through visitor fees. 'Under this demonstration program [public lands] are run more like a private business,' he says.")

    • Recreationalists should fork over the fees
      ("To protect wilderness values, wilderness lovers should demand the right to pay more fees, not less.")

    • It's time for the public to pay up
      ("If recreational users want smaller clearcuts, less mining and fewer cows on federal lands, they must learn a basic lesson of economics: 'He who pays the piper calls the tune.'")

    • Evolution of the Forest Service
      ("At the Verlot Public Service Center, giving directions, providing parking passes and selling Smokey Bear dolls are all part of the job...")

    • Recreation fees a fair price to maintain our public lands
      ("Instead of bellyaching - like miners, loggers and ranchers - backpackers and other outdoor enthusiasts should take the high ground and show they can carry more of their own weight.")

    • Get Behind User Fees, or Else
      (John Viehman - Backpacker Magazine: "If we as an industry oppose it, we risk losing whatever political firepower we once had, which could prove important to a battle that truly should be fought sometime in the future. We cannot be perceived as "against" everything.")

    • The Case For Higher National Park Fees - Forbes Magazine
      ("While the demonstration is still a far cry from privatization, free-market analysts say, it is at least a sign that market principles are being introduced.")
    • Land of the Fee -- Washington Post Op-Ed
      ("Fee Demo is only a first step, and more regressive, costly, and environmentally damaging measures likely will follow unless the program is halted.")

    • Pay to Play
      ("Reaction to the fees from users ranges from resignation to indignation at paying for something that should be covered by taxes...")

    • Shell Game - Editorial
      ("The bill unmasks the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program and finally shows it for what it is: a government shell game foisted on a gullible public.")

    • House votes to keep fees for national forests, parks
      ("To ask that we collect $35 from each family so they can park on the side of the road and go swimming in a favorite creek or collect rocks is amazing to me," Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said on the House floor. "We are charging the American people for something they've already paid for.")

    • Permanent user fees bill draws fire
      ("The bill 'essentially throws up a toll gate on all federal lands we now use for free and which we now support with taxes...' ")

    • Fees for public lands a medieval concept
      ("The insidious policy was supposed to expire two years ago, but it's being kept alive by corporate political forces who could profit handsomely if citizens grow accustomed to paying for recreation on public lands.")

    • Fees pester outdoor enthusiasts
      ("Hulet and other taxpayers like her say these are tax-supported public lands and they resent having to pay again.")

    • A fresh air fee
      ("People may not like the idea of paying to use the great outdoors, but it's getting to be a trend.")

    • Protest ends in debate
      ("Once Americans get used to paying for such simple pleasures as a walk in the woods, Joline and others believe, it will only be a matter of time before commercial developers enter the picture.")

    • More fishing holes require admittance fees
      ("It's a disheartening trend. All these fees exclude a lot of people who want to participate. Colorado sportsmen already paid for the product, and now are being asked to pay again. No wonder fishing license sales are down.")

    • Rec area fees for bikes, ATVs draws protest
      ('The Forest Service should be lobbying to get its budget increased, not just sell tickets,' Benzar said. 'As soon as you do this, you will need a ticket for all public lands.'")

    • State parks become land of the fee
      ("Those who can pay, after all, still get to go. And to hell with the rest of ya.")

    • Political prowlers, rising fees threatening National Parks
      ("This blatant form of governmental thievery should be combated.")

    • Paying to play on public lands
      ("Hundreds of groups have signed a letter asking the government to have the fee demo extension rider removed from the 2002 Interior Appropriations bill and not be made permanent.")

    • Opponents span spectrum when it comes to user fees
      ("Last week's column protesting user fees on federal lands confirmed something I've long suspected: Opposition to federal user fees such as the Northwest Forest Pass (a $5 daily or $30 annual parking permit for Forest Service trailheads) runs a lot deeper, and is becoming more widespread, than most people think.")

    • Seattle Times Columnist Ron Judd on Fee-Demo
      ("Just as user-fee critics long have predicted, Congress continues to slash federal money for hiking trails, campgrounds, backcountry rangers and other outdoor activities at an even greater rate than new money gained through user fees.")

    • Hated forest fee still in force
      ("Earlier this month, Josephine County commissioners unanimously passed a resolution opposing the program. State Rep. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, has also recently introduced a bill opposing it.")

    • Capps revives bill to end forest fees
      ("Opponents of the unpopular Adventure Pass got a boost on Wednesday from Rep. Lois Capps, as she reintroduced her bill to end the $5-a-day charge and other recreation fees in U.S. national forests.")

    • Middle class should be aware of who will be used in park user-fee debate
      (" 'User fees,' which came to prominence 20 years ago in the Reagan administration, are conservative Republicans' favorite form of taxation.")

    • Battle royal brewing over rec fee program
      ("... thousands of people have protested the fees by simply not paying them.")

    • Public lands panel opposes Mount Charleston fee plan
      ("We must realize how sensitive we must be to low-income people who need space and recreation," rancher Marta Agee said Thursday.")

    • Activists to stump Saturday for repeal of forest-use fee
      ("More than 150 groups oppose the fees, including the 600,000-member Sierra Club, which has urged its chapters to join or host protests.")

    • Opponents of Lemmon fee score a win in court
      ("A federal judge threw out criminal charges yesterday against four Tucsonans who were cited for not paying the $5 Mount Lemmon recreation fee.")

    • We shouldn't have to pay to enjoy our forests
      ("People don't go to the mountains to climb stairs. Will hand-rails be next?")

    • Uncle Sam wants you to pay to play on public land
      ("Prominent outdoor writers have advocated civil disobedience, penning pieces in outdoor magazines -- including Back Country, Couloir and Climbing -- suggesting that users should simply refuse to pay fees.")

    • Critics Chafe Over Public Lands Fees
      ("The Forest Service contracted with Robert Shulman, a marketing consultant whose resume includes Disney and Universal Studios, to help design a marketing plan for fee demonstration.")

    • Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editorial Board
      ("Of all the controversies to dog the U.S. Forest Service of late, none has generated more anger than the new fees charged to recreate in the forests.")

    • Voluntary Fees for Recreation Proposed
      ("An Oregon congressman wants to make the Forest Service's recreation fee voluntary by prohibiting the agency from spending money to enforce it.")

    • Access fee brings protest
      ("'A walk in the woods is not a recreational experience we should have to purchase from the government,' he said.")

    • Pay to play on public lands?
      ("If companies were allowed to enter a deal with the government to maintain public lands, a company like Walt Disney could come in and change the name of the Colorado Trail to the Colorado/Disney Trail and charge people to use it.")

    • The selling of nature
      ("In a nutshell, the new vision defines outdoor recreation as a marketable commodity or product which the Forest Service, as a vender in partnership with private recreation corporations, will sell to the public, its paying customers.")

       

       

    • Protesters to target forest recreation fees
      ("Hikers and other recreationists are expected to gather at dozens of sites around the country, including Bend, on Saturday to protest the U.S. Forest Service's policy of charging fees at trailheads, camping areas and visitor centers.")

    • Keep public lands open to all to keep them healthy
      ("Fewer people are fooled by the partisan prattle that forest access fees are just paying for something we used to get for free.")

    • The Real Reason for Public-Land User Fees
      ("Other friends just observe that those "$5 a day use fee" signs make excellent firewood.")

    • 25 protests set over U.S. Forest Service hiking fees
      ("The fee program "has the ominous potential to transform recreational management of our public lands from a public service orientation to a commercial enterprise," says Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope.")

    • Forest user fee program under fire
      ("If the people like it so much, why should there be enforcement? And if they comply, why should they have to pay for enforcement? That is the message from Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon)...")

    • Board lends support to opponents of forest fees
      ("Opponents who don't like the fees charged in Southern California's national forests, boosted by support from the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, said this week that they will take their fight to San Bernardino County and beyond.")

    • Demonstrators protest fees for access to federal lands
      ("Some of the demonstrators expressed bitter feelings about the fees. Mike Baker, a retired U.S. Postal Service employee who was wounded in Vietnam, said denying people access to the forests unless they pay erodes the freedoms he fought for.")

    • Foes of recreation fees raise national ruckus
      ("For the second consecutive year, opponents of the controversial Recreational Fee Demonstration program joined forces today across the United States in a national day of protest. More than 35 demonstrations in 16 states are expected.")

    • Critics say fees shut public out of forests
      ("Thomas A. More, a social scientist with the Forest Service's Northeastern Research Station in Burlington, Vt., explained that the user-fee system has the potential to create a spiral of development that is at odds with the fundamental goals of wildness management and preservation.")

    • Protesters organize 'Day of Action' against fees
      ("The events, organized under the name "National Day of Action," range from information booths at farmer's markets to performances to all-out "No Fees" protests with activists voicing their opposition to the trend toward pay-to-play.")

    • Poor, middle-income residents hit hardest by fees
      ("In a new study to be published in the Journal of Leisure Research in the fall, More and Tom Stevens of the University of Massachusetts found that 23 percent of low-income users either reduced use or went elsewhere as a result of fee increases.")

    • Controversial fees keep money local ...
      ("It seems there are no governmental agencies that are free from corruption any more. It saddens me that you have the power to take away the beauty and splendor of God's handiwork on the Main and Middle Fork of the Salmon Rivers just out of reach for people with low to moderate incomes.")

    • Forest Service fee program questioned: Theft case led to changes and criticism
      ("It's just another example of incompetence and confusion by the Forest Service in administering this program.")

    • Loophole helps those who do not pay
      (Because of a loophole in the law that allows for fees to be charged for using the forest, case after case of recreation fee violations is being thrown out of court in Concord.)

    • Survey finds forest fees discourage some users
      (It's basic economics: Charge money - or raise existing fees - for using public lands, and some poor people become less likely to use them. A new study has found just that, and it may add fuel to the controversy over the pilot Recreation Fee Demonstration Program.)

    • Groups continue fighting White Mountain Forest fees
      (Sen. Fred King, R-Colebrook, who heads a special legislative committee on forest issues, worries other large landowners might begin charging to use their property, too. "We're on a slippery slope," King said.)

    • Lawmakers say forest fees should be voluntary
      (State Rep. Gene Chandler says officials for the White Mountain National Forest need to explore making their controversial forest user fees voluntary.)

    • Hikers buck system that charges $3 for a sunset
      (Kevin Brady has aimed his slingshot at a giant coalition of formidable interests -- conservative congressmen and high-dollar players in the outdoor-recreation industry. His beef? The $3 fee they want him to pay any time he sets foot in the Sandias)

    • Forest fee protest case headed to court
      (Terry Dahl calls it a protest guaranteed under the First Amendment. The U.S. Forest Service says fine, just don't ride a bike while doing it.)

    • Don't Take Fees Lying Down
      (We do not have to "get used to" Big Government and Big Business conspiring together to rip us off not only of our money, but of our rights and freedoms as well. The user fee program is a grotesque fraud and and an evil conspiracy.)

    • That doggone slippery slope of Forest Service user fees
      (What's the difference between a highway robber and a U.S. Forest Service fee-collection ranger? -- The robber leaves you with gas money to get home.)

    • Feds back down over park fee
      (The judge said future citations would also be dismissed until the passes were made mandatory and not part of a demonstration or test.)

    • Slade Gorton: Forest Service Blew Fees
      ("Sen. Slade Gorton says U.S. Forest Service misuse of a controversial recreation fee program is to blame for a budget crisis that might force deep cuts in visitor services at Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument this summer.")

    • Hikers face new fees
      ("This is bureaucracy at its best, charging for access to public lands which we are already being taxed to maintain," she said. "The Forest Service just looks at this like its their own private property to do what they want.")

    • U.S. attorney freezes forest fee prosecutions
      ("The U.S. Attorney in Boise is asking the Forest Service to review its controversial user fee program on the Payette National Forest and Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA). Meanwhile, she told the Idaho Mountain Express, her office will freeze prosecuting fee violations.")

    • The two Grand Canyons
      ("For those living on the wealthy side of Arizona's new chasm, the fee is a bargain. For their poorest neighbors across the shameful gap, it is 10 percent of their weekly wage.")

    • Revised plan refuels battle over forest fees
      ("There's a feeling of unfairness," said incoming Mountaineers President Ed Henderson. "The Forest Service subsidizes things like timber, mining and grazing. And they want to charge us to take a walk?")

    • Forest pass prices to increase
      ( ... “pay-to-play” program has sparked a backlash from wilderness activists who believe public lands should be free to all.)

    • $30 pass will allow fee-area access
      (The original intent of the pilot program was to return fees to the campground, trail or site where they were paid. With a regionwide pass, the original intent of the law can't be met, Silver said. "Now what we have is a tax, pure and simple," he said.)

    • Washington Trails Association Gives USFS, Congress Failing Grades on User Fees
      (The U.S. Forest Service finally unveiled its user fee program for the Year 2000 today, and the Washington Trails Association says they should go back and try again.)

    • Forest Service boosts trail park pass fees
      ("We're concerned they'll take a market approach to land management and put profit ahead of resource protection," said Dan Nelson, spokesman for the Washington Trails Association. "We're concerned that they'll start selling trails to the highest bidder.)

    • Forest Service to charge 'simpler' recreation fee
      ("The Forest Service keeps saying the public supports these fees, but boy, they must not be talking to the people I hike with," said Ann Marshall of Poulsbo, a longtime hiker and editor of Pack and Paddle magazine.)

    • U.S. Forest Service to raise trail fees
      (Elizabeth Lunney, executive director of the Washington Trails Association, said the fees were imposed "behind closed doors, using market research instead of a public process.")

    • Fee scofflaws walking away without fines
      (While most recreational users of the national forest comply with the parking fees, those who don't have found that in many cases, judges aren't making them pay.)

    • Forest fee program fails Bookkeeping 101
      (The Forest Service should declare the fee program a failure, go back to Congress, and get its funding from the proper place—from federal income tax revenues.)

    • Officials defend new forest pass
      (The Oregon chapter of the Sierra Club and Wild Wilderness, both groups concerned about public forest uses, remain opposed.)

    • Forest Service raises parking fees
      ("They've diverted from their missions: stewardship and environmental responsibility," Frome said. "They now want to see how many visitors they can get in and how much they will pay.")

    • To Fee of Not to Fee?
      ("Americans, at least some of us, want access to our public land to be free, unencumbered by the type crass commercialization that we face in most waking moments in our capitalistic culture.")

    • America: Land of the Fee
      ("There’s something particularly unseemly about the Forest Service—which has earned its place in history by virtually giving away the bulk of our national public forest resources—charging me to partake in the least destructive form of land use.")

    • Recreation fee program praised (by some!)
      (Environmentalists say the study is flawed and that the program sets the stage for industrial-strength recreation, catering to the privatization of public lands. More than 100 organizations have opposed the program.)

    • You can't sell a sunset
      (More and more, the Forest Service is putting itself in between the public and nature. All the pull-outs have been McDonalds-ized - with all the kiosks and signs, it's like the golden arches.)

    • New regional federal park user fees planned
      (Laurie Thorpe, a member of the Forest Service fee team, said Sasquatch Advertising, a Portland-based marketing firm, has been hired to help promote and explain the fees.)

    • Working class can't foot the bill
      (What happens when the majority of working Americans realize they have been shut out of the great outdoors? Why should they care any longer about conserving wildlife habitat if they can't get in to see the animals? Why should they care about closing a scenic area to mining or timber harvesting?)

    • Land of the Fee
      (But the Inyo experience suggests that on the ground, the Forest Service is struggling to make the fee program work. In the process, the agency is being forced to think more like a business that caters to tourists and less like an agency that cares for the land.)

    • Fee fighters refuse to pay
      (The Forest Service claims wide public support, Joline says, "but if your endorsement is being coerced, it's clearly invalid. I don't endorse the fee, and if I get a pass I become part of the statistics being recorded as endorsing the fee.")

    • Revised plan refuels battle over forest fees
      ("There's a feeling of unfairness," said incoming Mountaineers President Ed Henderson. "The Forest Service subsidizes things like timber, mining and grazing. And they want to charge us to take a walk?")

    • Big brother really IS watching us—or soon will be!
      ("Imagine, every visitor to a wilderness could be required to wear a Trail Tag, and when they pick it up they must leave a valid Credit Card number on file. Then, using the tag, the land managers could simply charge your card for a variety of ‘uses’—for instance, they could charge on a " per mile hiked" basis, with an extra surcharge every time you pass a view point.")

    • Are you as sick of User Fees as I am?
      ("Once the Trail Tags are in use, what’s to stop the land managers from using them to keep track of hikers much like wildlife biologists keep track of radio-collared elk, cougars or bears?")

    • Forest fee program fails Bookkeeping 101
      ("It’s a good bet the bill, along with the cost of toll booths and fee stations that might make the system fair, will exceed the $260,000 in fees collected since 1997 when the program began. With bill in hand, the Forest Service should declare the fee program a failure, go back to Congress, and get its funding from the proper place—from federal income tax revenues.")

    • U.S. attorney freezes forest fee prosecutions
      ("The U.S. Attorney in Boise is asking the Forest Service to review its controversial user fee program on the Payette National Forest and Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA). Meanwhile, she told the Idaho Mountain Express, her office will freeze prosecuting fee violations.")

    • Cases dropped against 15 out-of-state trailhead pass violators
      ("The issue arose when the federal government declined to press a case against an Oregon woman who has steadfastly refused to pay the $5 fee to park her car while she hiked in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Derden said there was doubt the government could collect the $50 fine the Forest Service assessed against Majorie Hoye of Bend, Ore., after she refused to buy the pass.")

    • Trailhead fee violation thrown out before legal test
      ("A court test of the Sawtooth National Forest's user-fee demo program was avoided after the U.S. Attorney's office in Boise dismissed a citation issued against a woman who was ticketed in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA) this fall.")

    • Perils of the parking pass
      ("Returning from a walk in Adam's Gulch on July 31, I found a note on the windscreen of my car. It wasn't from a friend. It was from the Forest Service, telling me something I already knew—that I didn't own one of their parking passes.")

    • It's a spiritual issue, say 4 fighting Lemmon fee
      ("Finley also argues that the fee violates his religious freedom - essentially making him tithe before he even enters church. Swartz argues the Forest Service should raise fees on grazing, mining and logging rather than implementing the Catalina Highway fee.")

    • Repackaging Mother Nature for the public
      ("The "Recreation User Fee Demonstration Program" is blatantly the leading edge of a broader plan to transform the Forest Service and create a working partnership with the corporate recreation industry.")

    • Supervisors Back Forest Fee Protest
      ("Joining a nationwide campaign to end fees at forests throughout the country, Ventura County supervisors on Tuesday approved a resolution opposing a U.S. Forest Service program.")

    • Southern California's controversial 'Adventure Pass' program  (Informative)
      ("Forest Service Chief Michael Dombeck has received bipartisan support for his efforts to corporatize the Forest Service's management techniques and transform what has long been considered a birthright -- recreation on public land -- into a marketable commodity.")

    • Trees and Fees: National forests weren't meant to be cash machines
      ("If managers are required to turn the forests into money-making enterprises, or to measure success by the number of visitors who click through the turnstiles and buy T-shirts in the gift shop, it'll be a disaster for healthy ecosystem management and the quality of the outdoor experience.")

    • Public lands fees limit use to those who can pay  (Very Good!)
      ("Either the public is unaware of the consequences or is simply resigned to more taxes levied by congress. Either attitude invites further regimentation and restricted access to land we already own.")

    • Walk carefully
      ("Outdoors activists - and increasingly, elected officials - have protested the fees for using public land. In California, two county boards of supervisors and the Berkeley City Council passed resolutions opposing the program. Two members of Congress also introduced legislation to eliminate the fees.")

    • The West is the land of the fee
      ("Public land access fees are the beginning of a dogmatic effort to wear down public opposition to turning public land over to private ownership. It has already happened at the Grand Canyon where public land was traded to a private developer to build a strip mall and resort.")

    • Ojai council may say pass on Adventure Pass
      ("Opponents to the $5 per day, $30 per year pass argue they should not have to pay to use the forest, since it is a natural resource and that fees discriminate against the less fortunate. ")

    • User fees protested here, 8 other states
      ("Protesters gathered in a parking lot in Snoqualmie National Forest yesterday for the first national protest of the U.S. Forest Service's pilot fee program.")

    • Trail fees put to work — on the trails
      ("The big profits for the USFS and their private partners will not be made until the program is expanded to encompass greater private participation in the management and operation of recreational facilities on public lands.")

    • the land and the people who own it
      ("If the forest service isn't getting money from logging or user fees to maintain public facilities they may be forced to make more contracts with "industrial strength recreation" to cater to increasing numbers of visitors. Instead of trees being cut for lumber, habitat might be bulldozed down for a new ski lodge or RV park instead.")

    • News Bytes
      ("Wreckreation fee - The environmental group Wild Wilderness has gotten itself into trouble with the Disney Corporation because one of its members wore a T-shirt that mocked Disney's involvement with the controversial Forest Service Recreation Demo Fee Program at a protest outside of Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif. ")

    • Corporate Interests Are the Force Behind Adventure Pass Program
      ("The Walt Disney Co. is a major force behind the U.S. Forest Service's Adventure Pass program and the nationwide Recreational Fee Demonstration Program. It's likely that Disney is calling the shots in the attempt to commercialize America's public lands, as promoted by the American Recreation Coalition (ARC) and its sister organization, the Recreation Roundtable. ")

    • Small groups gather to protest public lands access charges
      ("Demonstrators at Yaquina Head carried signs saying "Owned by all, sold by the BLM" and "Yaquina Head isn't an amusement park," Recht said.")

    • Fee foes plan protests
      ("We recognize that the Forest Service is under-funded, and that it needs help," says Sloan Shoemaker, conservation director for the AWW. "We think the fee program is part of a deliberate attempt by the right wing of Congress to force public lands into the control of private businesses.")

    • Forest fee program undergoes overhaul
      ("Stung by criticism of its recreation fee pilot program, the U.S. Forest Service is temporarily revamping its system of forest-access passes to make it simpler and less confusing.")

    • Outdoors enthusiasts push onward in trek against user fee
      ("In what has become one of the most contentious issues since logging, the Forest Service has faced mounting criticism to the Fee Demonstration Program, a five-year experiment to test the public's willingness to pay to visit many national forests that used to be free.")

    • Protester cites loophole in park fee law
      ("Kappos is taking advantage of a loophole in the law Congress passed in 1996 authorizing the pilot fee program: Federal agencies are allowed to charge fees only for recreation. In Kappos' view, that means all other activities on the forests are not subject to the recreation fee program.")

    • Federal lands' recreation fees lure protesters to the woods
      ("But some environmentalists such as Phillip Johnson, a member of the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition, say that federal agencies don't understand that charging for access to public lands assaults many people's spiritual and philosophical view of the wild. 'It pollutes my whole idea of nature by treating it as a commodity,' he said.")

    • New call of wild: Trail fee must go
      ("The fee irked the Rev. Jeffrey Barker of Seattle so much that, starting in 1997, he spent many weekends at the trail head trying to convince other hikers that it is wrong. He's received at least a dozen $30 tickets for not buying a pass -- and sends them all back without paying. So far, nothing's happened to him.")

    • Day Set Aside to Protest Recreational Fees
      ("An article in the Idaho Statesman quoted Carl Pope, director of the Sierra Club as saying, "The Fee-Demo program is not a benign effort to fund needed programs, but is the leading edge of the recreation industry's attempt to transform public land recreation into commercial operations. The Congressional funding cuts (in recreation support) have been replaced by partnerships with private industry and there is pressure from these commercial interests to 'Disney-fy' public lands." )

    • Area recreationists plan user fee protest
      ("The Forest Service spends 93 percent of its $3 billion budget on subsidizing mining, logging and grazing, leaving only 7 percent for recreation, Caldwell said. If forest users pay the fees, they risk the Forest Service locking in the skewed allocation of money. "We've already paid our taxes which the Forest Service budget come out of," he said. Of the country's $3 trillion surplus, this is the first tax that should be cut.")

    • Protest fees
      ("Saturday is a national day of protest. Sign a petition or write a letter to a congressman or senator. Tell them how you feel about the fees. Tell them to quit believing their own PR and Crandall’s silly excuses, and to start listening")

    • Welcome to your forest; now pay up, you peasant
      ("The Clinton administration is asking to make permanent the alleged experimental program started in 1995 to charge people fees to use their federal lands for recreation. And the Forest Service, receiving money it could never get from a backward Congress, is letting the end justify the means and supporting continuation of the procedure. Money is money. Screw the public. ")

    • Trail parking fees raise nature-lovers' ire
      ("It's double taxation," said Armstrong, 69, a retired structural draftsman. "We're already subsidizing the lumber and mining industries. Until they stop subsidies in the national forests, they shouldn't charge anyone for hiking.")

    • This land is our land -- for a small fee, that is
      ("Charging a fee for access to nature does violence to our relationship to the earth. But a special violation takes place on Oregon's coast when toll booths block our paths to the shore, as we have a generations-old tradition that the beaches belong to the people. Our Oregon Beach Law gives us the right to wander our shoreline at will.")

    • Protesters: Fees devalue wilderness experience
      ("We commercialize every aspect of our lives," she said. "The one place we can escape the commercialization is to go to the natural world. And now our government is telling us we have to commercialize that.")

    • 'Pay to play' - Conservation groups plan user-fee protest
      ("Pam Lichtman, program director for the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, said the federal government subsidizes loggers and ranchers on public lands, building roads and charging below-cost grazing fees. When a regular person wants to walk in the forest, they pay out of their own wallet, she said. "The public shouldn't have to buy wilderness experiences," she said. "The growing trend of charging fees for everything imaginable leads us closer to an even more disturbing trend - pressure to privatize and commercialize our public lands.")

    • Protesters want federal land fees to take a hike
      ("David Czamanske of Pasadena, Calif., who plans to join the protest, says taxpayers should not have to fork over cash for a hike in the woods when a rancher pays just $1.35 per month per cow and calf for grazing on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands.")

    • User fees protested here, 8 other states
      ("At Snoqualmie Pass, the Rev. Jeffrey Barker of Seattle told reporters, "I pay my taxes. I shouldn't have to pay a user fee to walk on my open, wild and free public lands.")

    • Industrial-strength recreation? Some worry that commercial interests will take over public lands
      ("There's a move toward more commercialization of our public lands. I have no doubt that there's various interests out there that have an agenda like that," said Jeff Stier, natural resources aide to U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Springfield.")

       

       

    • Forest Service Prime Evil
      ("There is a little war going on throughout the country, and it's about to heat up. On one side of this war we have Congress and the agencies that govern our national recreation areas such as forests and parks. On the other side we have "users," people who hike, camp, fish, or those who simply want to be in a place that is quiet, scenic, refreshing and unlike daily life." )

    • Land of the fee
      ("The fee money doesn't go directly to administrative costs - but it allows the agency to free up money in its regular budget that in the past would have gone into field work and instead use it for overhead. In other words, the fees aren't necessarily increasing trail and building maintenance at the same pace they're collected.")

    • Users will protest recreation fees
      ("We will not charge fees while they're protesting," she said. "If they are there to recreate, then we will enforce it." But "we don't want to come down heavy-handed and make protesters pay. If they are protesting, they are exercising their First Amendment right of free speech.")

    • Forest officials meet foes of Adventure Pass - at last
      ("The move toward a fee-paid forest is part of a two-pronged agenda," said Coyne. The agenda, he said, is to keep the forests strapped for cash and ultimately to have private enterprise run the forests. At issue is the interest the American Recreation Coalition (ARC) has taken in supporting the Adventure Pass. Coyne said he believes The Disney Company, a member of ARC, has its eyes on the recreation potential of local national forests, and cited articles from environmental publications that charge the Forest Service is planning to close small campgrounds and then open privately managed larger ones.")

    • New anti-user fee legislation introduced
      ("Scott Silver, executive director of Wild Wilderness, a recreation advocacy group in Bend, Ore., said, "the Forest Service shows no inclination to listen to the growing public opposition to forest fees. Unless enough public protest reaches congress directly, it is likely that forest fees will soon become permanent." Silver is currently forming a national forest fee protest day, to be held on August 14. So far, over 50 groups and individuals nationwide are organizing various forms of fee protests.")

    • Debate rages over forest user fees
      ("As the summer outdoor seasons opens this Memorial Day weekend, hundreds of environmentalists and outdoor enthusiasts will continue campaigning to repeal user fees... In what has become one of the most contentious issues since logging, the Forest Service has faced mounting criticism to the Fee Demonstration...")

    • A sensible plan for forest fees
      ("Since it took effect in 1995, the U.S. Forest Service's Adventure Pass program has been anything but popular.")

    • Proposal to eliminate Adventure Pass fails
      ("Some protesters have claimed the fee is unenforceable and that anyone who is ticketed does not have to pay a fine. Forest officials warned those statements are false and said they expect the courts to start levying fines.")

    • Access to Public Lands for All Americans
      ("Silver is not popular with U.S. Forest Service leaders trying to make permanent the experimental fee demonstration program which requires visitors to pay a day-use fee in high-use areas. He fights regularly with the recreation industry's corporate arm over the increased motorization of public lands. And he criticizes the trend of private-public partnerships to provide more commercial facilities on public lands.")

    • Future of user fees uncertain
      ("The five-year pilot project to raise maintenance funds by charging access fees to National Forest visitors is scheduled to conclude in September 2001. However, detractors think the Clinton administration-backed proposal could be made permanent as early as this summer. To that end, U.S. Congresswomen Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara) and Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs) have reintroduced their Forest Tax Relief Act to abolish the program. ")

    • Confrontational summit meeting gives rise to fee activist
      ("Ankrum, 50, has joined hundreds of environmental groups in objecting to the nominal charged -- about $5 daily or $30 annually -- because the U.S. Forest Service subsidizes timber companies, ranchers and miners who use public lands. But mostly, they fear establishment of permanent user fees will lead to a commercialized forest in an era of diminishing wilderness.")

    • Fee protesters finding success in battles with the law
      ("Forest Service officials now say they won't contest an individual's right to demonstrate on public lands without permits anymore. At least until the fees become permanent.")

    • Fees still making for unhappy trails
      ("But several environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and Bend-based Wild Wilderness, are vehemently opposed to fee-demo — and for reasons not obvious at first blush. “The real fear is this whole corporate sponsorship trend,” said Dale Neubauer, co-founder of Wild Wilderness. “Development so you can generate money. The little guy is getting displaced ... The bottom line is, am I the customer on my own land?”)

    • After the gold rush
      ("There’s gold in them thar hills and the U.S. Forest Service is out to mine it. The gold is in the pockets of hikers, bikers, campers, boaters and climbers who venture into national forests.")

    • Forest Fracas
      ("The Adventure Pass is the first step by the recreation industry and the federal government to cash in on industrial tourism on public lands," says Pine. But ARC President Derrick Crandall denies that his group wants to take over public lands.")

    • Should You Need A Pass to Visit Nature?
      ("The implications of this fee program are far reaching and threaten to set a precedent that will affect the way we perceive public lands and the way we are allowed to visit the natural world for generations to come. We should never need to buy a pass to visit nature.")

    • Fees are a Big Controversy
      ("Pandolfi said he was aware that critics might envision mobs of people and lines of RVs descending on the federal lakes and ruining the environment... {and says} I personally don't have any real patience for preservationists.")

    • Distemper Fi   (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, and fun too!)
      ("Ah Wilderness! Pretty soon, exact change will be required. And when the black helicopters show up, they'll be wearing mouse ears. Remember, you heard it here first.")

    • Anti-Fees Activist Challenges Adventure Pass in Court
      (A Southern California man is waging a legal battle against forest fees after having been arrested and jailed. Financial support for Mr. Pine's legal defense is urgently required.)

    • Feds Dismiss Case: Recreation Fee Showdown Averted
      ("The incredible public interest has impacted the Forest Service to the point where they realized they don't want this to be brought to public attention.")

    • Is the Forest Service Fee Program Appropriate for Public Lands?
      ("There is concern for the outcome if the Forest Service brings in these big businesses as participants in public-private partnerships to run recreation sites.")

    • American Whitewater Association Opposes Fee-Demo
      ("American Whitewater is opposed to Congressional Fee Demo based on abuses that we have seen elsewhere in the land management agencies... In our experience, the implementation of Fee Demo has often been unfair, arbitrary, unpopular, and inconsistently applied across resource areas.")

    • News Story from the Colorado Daily
      ("It's an all-out attack against public lands by American corporate commercial exploitation."..."snowmobiles are just the tip of the iceberg. Murkowski has crafted a recreation 'super bill' and circulated it among motorized recreation interests, including the American Recreation Coalition. Some believe it would open the doors of national parks, forests and other federal lands to unprecedented levels of tourism.")

    • Money trail can be a frustrating hike from: San Franciso Examiner   Aug. 9, 1998.
      ("In Congress, Rep. Herger testified that the fee program should be killed, and certainly not extended, because it was passed without debate, that it is not being executed as promised, and that it is so despised in some areas that it has created a new source of vandalism.")

    • This is not a test
      ("The program is testing just two things: What kind of sugar will make the sour medicine go down and whether public land managers can successfully trade in their plant-colored uniforms for gray flannel suits... The fee program is not a test. If it is a test of anything, it is a test of how easily Congress may take advantage of the public.")

    • Hooray! Only the poor have been hurt by forest fees
      ("Like it or not, the Forest Service is so tickled to have money from any source -- even a lousy one -- that is is singing the praises of a program that has led from congressional neglect of public lands to charging Americans to use their own property.")

    • Congresswoman Lois Capps on ending the Adventure Pass
      ("Mr. Chairman, today I join with my colleagues, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Herger) to offer a bipartisan, common sense amendment that will put an end to an outrageous tax increase on American families. Two years ago, the recreational fee demonstration program was slipped into a huge budget bill without adequate hearings or debate. This legislative maneuver authorized a variety of so-called user fees throughout our national forests and our national parks, but these fees are nothing more than regressive taxes on families who can least afford to pay them.")

    • Can't See the Forest for the Fees  (Outside Magazine)
      ("Jeff Pine is standing on a high ridge, thousands of acres of national forest stretching out below him. 'Our battle cry,' he announces to the dozens of ranchers, hikers, environmentalists, ATV owners, and bikers gathered around him, 'is that our national forest is our birthright! The forest is the last thing that's free. We should never let it go.' ")

    • Some fear the fees indicate a far more insidious trend
      ("In central Washington, for instance, more than 7,500 individuals have signed petitions denouncing the fees, says Isabelle Spohn of Free the Forests People sign on, she says, because they believe existing taxes should maintain the forests, and because they feel everyone has the right to free access to public lands, not just those who can afford it." She says people are also concerned that the costs of administering the program will surpass funds spend on improving actual trails.")

    • New National Forest "Adventure" Pass Could be a Violation of California's Constitution
      ("Clearly, it would seem that the new Forest Service fee is a violation of the State's Constitution. Also, I take issue with the U.S. Forest Service pulling revenues off the backs of California anglers and hunters who have already had to purchase fishing/hunting licenses and who are taking fish and game that they have already paid for with their tax dollars.")

    • Paying your way in the wilderness
      ("Resistance to the fees is strong in the Pacific Northwest, where nature is in the foreground of the region's identity. Opponents say new fees are the precursor of corporate-managed lands that will create recreational playgrounds for motorized vehicles. Some point to a proposed aerial tram in the Quinault rain forest as the dawning of this transformation.")

    • Reaction still mixed to forest user fees
      ("At least half the people who used hiking trails in the Siskiyou and Rogue River national forests failed to buy parking permits in 1998. ")

    • Against fees: Minister mounts a one-man campaign
      ("Barker was a fixture in the 394,000-acre Alpine Lakes Wilderness this summer as a one-man campaign against the fees. In an act of civil disobedience, he refused to pay for tickets received while handing out fliers. 'I send all my tickets back,' Barker said, unable to recall how many he has received. 'I tell everyone to send the tickets back - and use my name. They don't have the people to collect.' ")

    • Pay For Play
      ("While this program is being packaged as a last-gasp solution to budget cuts and maintenance backlogs, critics suggest that it is instead a Trojan horse through which the privately funded American Recreation Coalition and other commercial interests will colonize public lands." )

    • Some Moab Locals Resentful
      ("MOAB -- The Bureau of Land Management is offering a $2,000 reward for those responsible for shooting up the fee booth at the Sand Flats Recreation Area. For the third time since October, someone fired shots into the empty fee booth at the entrance to the site..." )

    • 'Money grab' on federal lands assailed
      ( WASHINGTON — Federal land managers — including some in Utah — are too greedy in chasing extra money from higher fees Congress allowed two years ago, witnesses told the Senate Thursday. Problems range from charging too many fees to even charging concessionaires for services they provide outside of parks. "This program . . . has almost led to a 'money grab' atmosphere," Robert Jones, president of the Utah Guides and Outfitters Association, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.)

    • User-fee protests no longer a lonely cry in wilderness
      (User fees represent a complete abandonment of an important principle: that the relatively minimal costs to maintain public lands should be borne by the public at large through tax dollars already given at the office, and/or by private users, who have raped and reaped in our National Forests for most of a century. Once you start paying (or in this case, repaying) for a government service, you won't stop. You'll just pay more. )

    • Recreation fees bring in millions
      (Agency figures also show that more than half the fees collected in 1997, and most of the money collected in 1996, went to pay overhead or to pay for the cost of collecting the fees. Several of the Forest Service's 40 fee demonstration projects spent more money collecting fees in 1997 than they collected.)

    • Boon for Sierra Nevada Hikers
      (Beginning next Jan. 1, hikers can reserve a permit by mail or fax for a fee of $5 for any time during the year 2000. Some hikers may not be too happy that the Forest Service also is considering imposing a fee of $10 to $15 a person to hike the Mt. Whitney trail.)

    • Congressional legislation could end user fees
      (In a press release issued last week, Congresswoman Bono stated that the [fee-demo] program creates a burdensome new tax for those seeking to enjoy the great outdoors. She called the program "offensive" and said it contradicts the very concept of the national forest system. )

    • County Supervisor calls for end of forest fees
      ("Very few issues have caused as many people to complain as the fact that people have to pay to use the forest when they have already paid for it through their tax dollars," he said.)

    • Annual public land fee considered
      ("Do you have to buy wilderness experience?" said Franz Camenzind, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance. "It is almost an oxymoron. All of these things tell me there is a heck of a lot of demand for these areas, and you simply have to ask why are there not more tax dollars appropriated to these public lands.")

    • Pay to Play
      ("Fee Demo it is about to be our worst nightmare come true, not because the public will pay for what is supposed to be covered by our taxes, but because it paves the way for downsizing federal management of our public lands to open the door for private development of pristine public areas.")

    • Forest Fee Opponents Rally
      (Purchasing a Forest Adventure Pass to visit the Angeles National Forest is a vote for the commercialization and privatization of public lands.)

    • Assembly and Senate Unanimously Vote . . .
      (Granlund said, "Since every California State Legislator voted unanimously to end this onerous tax, it should send a clear message to Congress that the people of California are requesting that it be repealed immediately.")

    • January trial set for forest fee protester
      (Along with hundreds of area residents, he protested the new fees at crowded public hearings in Mount Shasta and McCloud. Auxter will go to court loaded down with stacks of petitions signed by those who attended the hearings.)

    • HIKING: OJAI
      (In Ojai nothing is more odious than an Adventure Pass. Ojai residents are fomenting a rebellion against the Forest Service's monumentally unpopular revenue generation program, and the town is filled with bumper stickers and signs protesting the Adventure Pass. )

    • Fee fighters blast the Adventure Pass
      ("New recreation fees have incensed some Southern Californians who say they don't want to pick up the tab for playing on public lands. A major point of conflict is what the Forest Service calls its "Adventure Pass.")

    • We have answers - and better yet, there is no user fee
      ("As part of its continuing drive to take the "public" out of "public lands," the Forest Service recently announced an all-new "Dispersed Overnight Camping Fee" for the Cle Elum River Valley. This is not a joke. From now on, anyone willing to sleep along roadsides in the sticks will be charged five bucks a night for the honor.")

    • Board to ask for end to fees
      (Federal forest users opposed to paying more for sunset watching, hiking and picnicking received sympathy and political support from the Kern County Board of Supervisors Tuesday.The supervisors agreed to ask the federal government and the county's congressional representatives to take steps to end the Adventure Pass program. )

    • National forest fees are unfair
      (The USFS will continue to take heat for its duplicity in all of this, from the lies about how much money is coming back into the forests to their assignations with the recreational companies. )

    • Adventure in lawmaking
      (To say the Adventure Pass has been unpopular with local residents would be an understatement. The pass has been the target of letters to the editor and guest commentaries in the News-Press since its inception. We have been critical of the program in editorials, too.)