Links to Organizations and Interesting Articles

ARC and
ARC's Friends

• AMERICAN RECREATION COALITION HOMEPAGE
  (The best place on the web to learn about ARC.)

  

   

• Forest Service Chief Explains New Business Plan
  (US Forest Service Chief of Staff, Pandolfi, explains his plan to "sell recreation on the National Forests". Pandolfi is a former Chairman of the Recreation Roundtable!)

• Foundation for Clean Air Progress
  (A phony "environmental organization" organized for the purpose of opposing restrictive air pollution standards, heavily supported by ARC)

• Coalition for Vehicle Choice
  (An automotive industry created, "grass roots," coalition organized for the purpose of opposing restrictive vehicle emissions standards, heavily supported by ARC.)

• National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds
  (ARC Member explains its Government Affairs Policies. They shouldn't let us see stuff like this!!!)

• Trail Fund Tops List For 1997
  (Blue Ribbon Coalition Director, Clark Collins, says: "organizational growth and Congressional changes since 1991 have resulted in having many new friends in Congress. We can count on some help from these political allies...")

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

• American Motorcyclist Association Attacks Wild Wilderness
  ("AMA's Legislative Vice President tells motorized recreationists to listen to the American Recreation Coalition and ignore Wild Wilderness.")

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

• Literature Collection, Critical of the Disney Corporation
  (This page, provided by Wild Wilderness, provides easy access to articles and books, which critically examine the "Disney Agenda".)

Government
Sources

• Recreation.Gov Site for Recreation Fee Passes
  (This is the "Official" Federal gateway to pay-to-play recreation.)

• USFS Site for Recreation Fee Program
  (This is the "Official" Forest Service Fee Demonstration website.)

• Recreation Fee Demonstration Program Authorization
  (Text of the legislation which authorized the fee-demo program.)

   

   

• A "Brand" New Forest Service Wreckreation Brochure
  (This is SO HOT OFF THE PRESS, it's not available from the USFS.... YET!)

• USFS:   "National Recreation Strategy" 

(In 1988 the Forest Service already decided that our public lands should be commercialized, privatized and motorized.)
• USFS is "outraged" by the "allegations" of Wild Wilderness  [VERY GOOD]

(When a member of the general public complained to Chief Michael Dombeck about Fee-Demo, this is the actual letter he received in reply.)
• Forest Service Key Policy Topics  [DRY READING]

(Offers a look at the evolving direction of Forest Service management with respect to recreation, user-fees and the role of private partnerships.)
• Forest Service Internal Document dated 12/4/00  [EXCELLENT]

(Deputy Chief Jim Furnish rallies the troops encouraging them to apply business principles when developing and managing USFS recreation.)
• National Forest Foundation
  ("The official non-profit partner of the U.S. Forest Service.")
  Learn why the NFF wants your fees!

• National Recreation Lakes Study
  (This is the "Official" Department of the Interior National Recreation Lakes website.)

• Recent Research Findings   
  A recently held, federally sponsored, symposium suggests reason for caution with respect to charging recreational user-fees, especially for Wilderness access.

• Recreation Fees in Wilderness and Other Public Lands    [EXCELLENT]
  This very complete and outstanding Annotated Reading List comes from the Rocky Mountain Research Station of the USDA Department of Agriculture.

Concise
Related
Literature

• The latest 1,000-pound gorilla
  ("Whatever ARC's intentions may be, its policies seem likely to alter the use and the look of the public lands." [High Country News 4/27/98])

  Source: High Country News

   

• Forest Service Prime Evil
  ("The nerve center of this "pay for play" gouging of the American public is an inappropriate --to use a good Washington word-- alliance between Dombeck and an organization called the American Recreation Coalition." )

• Fee-Demo and the Economic Taliban
  (An explanation of how fee-demo has become one of the greatest threats to public lands written by Richard W. Behan, author of Plundered Promise: Capitalism, Politics, and the Fate of the Federal Lands.)

• Undersecretary of Agriculture Jim Lyons speaks at ARC Convention (6/8/98)
  ("We've got a great product to sell. And, with your help, we can make it even better! The national forests are truly America's Great Outdoors. Thank you for your continued support and partnership.")

• 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.")

• Forest Service Seeks to Expand Private Partners
  ("collaborative agreements ... are raising eyebrows among environmentalists, who fear deep corporate pockets could influence policy or tempt the agency to abrogate its management responsibility.")

• Dozens of Environmental Groups Oppose Forest Fees
  (Nearly 100 groups say: "We are opposed to these alternative funding sources because of the inappropriate incentive they create for large-scale recreational development.")

• Sierra Club Opposes Forest Fees
  (The Sierra Club writes, urging "to educate its members on the long-range detrimental implications of the current Forest Service 'Fee-Demo' program for public lands user fees.")

• American Lands Alliance Opposes Forest Fees
  ("The National Recreation Fee Demonstration Program (fee-demo) creates a powerful and inappropriate financial incentive for the land management agencies to promote high-cost, high-impact recreation.")

• Audubon Society Opposes Forest Fees
  ("It seems inconsistent and unfair to us to charge the public trail fees to simply walk through public land, when the most damaging extractive users are granted tax payer subsidies to enter and abuse those public lands.")

• Keep Sespe Wild Opposes Forest Fees
  (Keep the Sespe Wild Committee of Southern California blasts the Adventure Pass in oral testimony presented to a national meeting of USFS Fee-Demo coordinators.)

• Backcountry Horsemen Opposes User Fees
  (The Inland Empire Chapter of BCHW is staunchly opposed to general user fees for recreational use of public lands.)

• International Mountain Bicycle Association Opposes User Fees
  (For the many reasons explained here, "IMBA does not support the collection of user fees on federal public lands.")

• 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 and Washington Trails Association says "they should go back and try again.")

• North Cascades Conservation Council - Don't Buy It!
  (In his President's Report, Marc Bardsley eloquently, powerfully, and concisely ripped the costume off "Fee Demo" and gave the finger to the "moral cowardice" of Congress.)

• Cities, Counties and States Opposed to Fee-Demo
  (This link provides access to the text of multiple resolutions and joint memorials from governmental bodies opposed to Fee-Demo.)

• State of California Opposes User Fees
  (The California State Senate and Assembly voted unanimously to oppose forest fees, to abolish the Adventure Pass and to endorse the Forest Tax Relief Act introduced by representatives Bono and Capps.)

• America's Eroding Atolls of Nature (link now dead) 
  ("Now, as the Forest Service struggles to keep a grip, it is turning for help to the private sector and particularly to companies that have business interests in the forests, such as the American Honda Motor Co., promoter of the Enduro.")

• Robbing Peter to Pay Smoky  
  ("While increased public/private partnerships may mean good news for local land managers and private concessionaires, they will likely mean the opposite for the general public. Instead of a non-profit government agency managing the nation's forests for the American people, an increasing number of private contractors are managing the forests for profit")

• Vail fires shed light on controversy
  ("The industrial-recreation issue came up in Denver two weeks ago, when U.S. Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck -- confronted by protesters -- admitted recreation already has superseded logging as a target for environmental lawsuits.")

• Playing With the Big Boys
  ("Seeing dollar signs in the trees, corporations are chomping at the bit to market their newly created forest service "products" to an established customer base. And their shareholders are thinking in terms of quarters rather than generations.")

• 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.")

• Interior Secretary Babbitt Slams Congress' Systematic "Starving" of America's Heritage
  ("As I speak, Congress is slashing funding for our environment and our natural heritage across the board. They have no excuse for this. None whatsoever.")

• Recreation industry threat to conservationists
  ("It's time for the conservation community to wake up to the threat posed by the recreation industry. Today the issue is climbing bolts; tomorrow it could be a whole new definition of public lands, where, once again, the environment takes a back seat to commerce.")

• Environmentalists warn that the Forest Service’s new Colorado mogul could be dangerous.
  ("Environmentalists like Roz McClellan see Laverty’s arrival as a harbinger of the Forest Service’s increased emphasis on recreation, which they feel could turn out to be more detrimental to public lands than even their perennial pet peeve, logging.")

• Partnerships work only is we keep public part strong.
  ("At first glance, the idea of using private money to build new facilities on public land seems like a wonderful idea. But there are veteran public-lands managers who worry the concept might go too far. And a few private environmental organizations are beginning to ask some pointed questions about these recreational partnerships.")

• Congress' Attack On Vacation Spots and Wildlife Preserves
  ("Largely unknown to the general public, these sneak attacks [by Congress] would shift management from conservation to development.")

• U.S. House to the environment: Die!
  ("Although some observers say cutting the fat from the environmental programs is long overdue, most say the congressional ax is aimed too much at meat...")

• Congress is reworking 100 years of federal policy
  ("The parks closure provision is one of dozens of examples of how the leadership of the 104th Congress is using the budget and appropriations process to roll back laws enacted to protect lands...")

• Forest Service Seeks to Expand Private Partners
  ("But while partnerships -- also known as ``collaborative agreements'' -- may be a logical means to raise money and improve public relations, they are raising eyebrows among environmentalists, who fear deep corporate pockets could influence policy or tempt the agency to abrogate its management responsibility.")

• Sponsorship raises suspicion
  ("Corporate America is playing an ever-increasing — and ever-controversial — role in the funding of public recreation projects at a time when budgets for public land management are stretched thin and park visitation is mounting.")

• A Golden Arches National Park?
  ("Corporations realize that investing in the outdoors and lobbying Congress for increased funding for trails, campgrounds and parks will ultimately increase their bottom line. Besides, it is the right thing to do.")

    It's all  -  FOR SALE!

   

• 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.")

• National Parks or Theme Parks? - by Michael Frome
  ("In the prevailing politics a national park is considered valid or defensible as long as it helps jingle the cash registers of local merchants, cruise lines and tour companies.")

• Americans Should not be Required to "Pay to Play" - by Michael Frome
  ("The agencies in charge make "partnerships" with profit-driven entrepreneurs bent on introducing motorized forms of recreation and commercializing wilderness. Step by step, the process leads to privatizing public lands.")

• "Respect Your Elders" - by Michael Frome
  ("I support wholeheartedly the National Day of Action on June 10, initiated by Scott Silver of Wild Wilderness and cooperating grassroots organizations to insure that the voice of industrial recreation is not the only message heard by Congress and the media about the misguided, misleading and misanthropic Recreation Fee Demonstration Program.")

• Protecting the Golden Goose - by Michael Frome
  ("Prudent and intelligent people must realize that unrestrained pressure on the parks for profit is not progress. It serves to make one generation rich and to impoverish the future.")

• Greenspeak - by Michael Frome
  ("There is no way to place a dollar value on a "park experience" or a "wilderness experience" and yet the simple act of visiting the natural world has become a commercial transaction. Worst of all, the agencies in charge, the National Park Service and Forest Service, make "partnerships" with profit-driven entrepreneurs bent on introducing motorized forms of recreation and commercializing wilderness.")

• Who owns the earth? Who in the end will save it? - by Michael Frome
  ("Today, unless there is serious sharp reversal in direction, our public lands, our national treasures, the landed heritage of the people, will shortly be up for grabs by moneyed America. National parks and national forests will be privatized. Wilderness will be motorized.")

• Starving the Public Lands
  ("If you want to weaken a government agency, the rules are simple: Cut its funding and divide its constituency. That's precisely what's happening to the agencies responsible for managing this nation's public lands...")

• Congress Declared War on Earth
  ("According to the San Francisco Chronicle, recent legislation 'is part and parcel of a giant national rummage sale, the effect of which will be to privatize, commercialize, pollute and consume America's natural heritage. It is a sell-out, pure and simple'.")

• Pro-motor group battles federal land control
  ("Look at who funds Blue Ribbon. Big oil companies, big paper companies, big motorbike companies, snowmobile companies... You don't have to be too smart to know what they want.")

• The Fall of the Wild
  ("Quite frankly, there wouldn't be a need to develop a corporate sponsorship device if Congress would do its job and appropriate adequate funds to keep our parks in first-class shape.")

• Stop Devastating Funding Cuts To Public Lands
  ("Our public lands and fish and wildlife programs are already underfunded even under current budget levels. Additional cutbacks will cripple these vital programs even further.")

• 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.")