From now until the end of the year, the Forest Service will be molting. Until their new shell hardens, they will be uncharacteristically vulnerable and thus will be doing all they can to keep the environmental community generally distracted with positive sounding rhetoric. They may even have some believing they are preparing to become good land stewards, but don't be fooled. They are simply trying to survive until their metamorphosis is complete.
No federal agency is as badly demoralized and desperately looking for a reason to exist as is the Forest Service. They are being attacked from all sides and are falling apart as an agency. They realize that within a few years, 'Zero-Cut' will be the timber policy for all federally managed public lands. They fear that 'Zero-Extraction' may follow. Without extraction, the Forest Service, as we know it, would be lost.
Chief Dombeck is currently struggling to redefine his agency from wise-use 'destroyer of landscapes', to user-friendly 'provider of recreation products'. If he can pull this off, then the future of his agency is bright. If he fails, then neither he nor the Forest Service has a future. The key to success will be successfully demonstrating that recreation and tourism on our National Forests can be turned into a major new revenue generator.
However, in order for the Forest Service is to continue to exist in anything more than a 'custodial' role, recreation must become the highly profitable business that Dombeck has been promising his congressional antagonists. To make this happen, the public's unfettered enjoyment of nature must, by necessity, yield to outdoor consumption. Our forests must sprout new and improved facilities more conducive of recreational spending and better adapted to revenue generation. This process will transform natural ecosystems into playgrounds for two-stroke motorheads and Winnebago driving eco-tourists. Recreational opportunities on public lands will either be rented by the hour or sold to resort developers, ski area operators or anyone else prepared to pay top dollar for pretty scenery.
To make this all possible, the Forest Service must first provide proof that the public is willing to Pay-to-Play. And this is where they are most vulnerable. The public simply may choose to reject the new recreation paradigm, especially once they learn what's really involved.
The new Recreation Fee Demonstration Program is key to the survival of the Forest Service and was created for just one purpose; to demonstrate that the public won't riot when forced to pay to use lands they already own. Once safely passed this hurdle, the Forest Service and the scores of private corporations sponsoring this Fee-Demo program will begin converting our nation's public lands into scenic backdrops for a myriad of new Disneyfied eco-tainment, edu-tainment and wreckre-tainment products.
Dombeck's current vulnerability provides the environmental community with an enormously strengthened, yet temporary, bargaining position from which we should make every attempt to extract concessions on a wide range of environmental issues. At a minimum, we must be sure to use this opportunity to force the Forest Service to adopt stringent policies that will protect our public lands from the damages inherent with the coming of Industrial Strength Recreation.
The way for the people of this country to recapture control of our public lands is to ensure that Fee-Demo fails. If America simply refuses to accept the Pay-for-Play paradigm, then there is nothing left for the Forest Service except to reconsider its entire mission and to embark upon a program of genuine conservation and resource protection. It's truly that simple. If the environmental community vigorously attacks the new recreation agenda while Dombeck's shell is still soft, we could achieve incredible concessions in a wide spectrum of Forest Service policies. If we fail to act 'privately-concessioned wreckreation' will be the fate of our forests, deserts, mountains and streams.
In early 1999, Chief Dombeck will prepare his Fee-Demo report to Congress. Unless the American public has clearly rejected the Pay-for-Play model, Congress will grant the Forest Service expanded and permanent authorization for the collection of recreational user-fees. If that happens, then the Forest Service's metamorphosis will have been completed successfully and they can proceed with a clear mandate to convert public land recreation into the Extractive Industry for the 21st Century and beyond.
Scott Silver, Executive Director,
248 NW Wilmington Avenue, Bend OR 97701
Phone (541) 385-5261 E-mail: ssilver@wildwilderness.org