By: Jim Powers

(This Article First Appeared in Forest Watch:
The Newsletter of the Prescott National Forest Friends)

The Forest Service is the largest federal provider of outdoor recreation with a reported 345,083 million Recreation Visitor Days (RVD) in 1995. The Forest Service provides a developed recreation capacity of more than 1,850,000 persons at one time at some 19,429 developed sites and undeveloped recreation opportunities on more than 191,4534,345 acres. The Forest and Rangeland Resources Planning Act (RPA.) projects recreation use to increase to 1.2 billion visits by 2040. At the same time, federal budget appropriations are expected to decline in real dollars 20 to 25 percent. In 1978, the Forest Service received more than 70 cents per Recreational Visitor Days (RVD). Today it is less than 45 cents, a drop of more than 35 percent. And it is expected to fall even more. The money is evaporating while at the same time the number of people using the National Forests is exploding. The Forest Service estimates that the value of recreating on its public lands to be about $5 billion annually. Currently, very little of that value translates into cash.

In many of these recreation areas, the Forest Service collects reservation, admission, and recreation-use fees. The authority to require a reservation fee is in the Fee and Charges Act of 1951. The authority for admission and recreation-use fees is contained in the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act (LWCF) of 1965, as amended.

In 1993, the Budget Reconciliation Act was passed which included amendments which expanded LWCF authority to include more recreation sites, facilities, and areas in the fee system.

The Forest Service is moving in a direction which is intended to turn recreation into a revenue resource. This new concept is currently being tested through the Recreation Fee Demonstration Project. It was passed by Congress in 1996 as a rider to the Omnibus Appropriations Bill. The recreation fee demonstration projects will expire in 1999.

In typical 105th Congress fashion, hellbent on cutting budget appropriations, the fee plan is designed to generate funds that can help improve and maintain National Forest trails and campgrounds as well as other recreation facilities. The Forest Service sees recreation fees as an opportunity to gain revenues in an era where Congress has cut appropriations of recreation monies by up to 50% in the last several fiscal operating budgets. The Prescott National Forest expects to receive an estimated $125 million from recreation fees.

The new recreation funding system is based on a formula composed of a number of factors: Recreation visitor days count for 31%; developed site capacity, 30%; forest acres outside of designated wilderness areas, 18%; existing miles of trail outside of wilderness areas, 12%; and number of special-use permits, 9%. Urban National Forests recreation areas will score higher under the above criteria than will rural National Forests. Rural National Forest will suffer because the scoring is weighted to favor National Forest recreation sites near large cities. The categories are: urban forests (less than one hour's drive from a million or more people), urban-dweller destination forests (more than one but less than two hour's drive from a million or more people), urban-influence forests (having at least one unit within an hour's drive of a half a million people, and special-attraction forests (forests close to major destination spots such as Grand Canyon).

Currently, on a National Forest in Oregon, hikers pay a $3 per visit trail-use fee. Many forest users feel that they are already paying through their taxes. As one person said, "Its is getting so that you can't see the forest for the fees." It now cost $5 a day - or $25 per year - to use most of the trailheads on the Willamette National Forest. The same is true on the Deschutes, Siuslaw, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests. Fees are being added to the Gilford-Pinchot, Mount Hood, Rogue River, Siskiyou and Umatilla National Forests and right here on our own Prescott National Forest. Steve Sorseth, a Forest Ranger, is concerned that some forest managers will begin making decisions based on revenue projections rather than on long-term ecosystem management resource protection.

One problem with the proposed fee program is that the Forest Service plans to turn over more of their duties to local interest and enlist businesses in partnerships to maintain some of the recreation sites. The recreation fee private/public ventures anticipates combining private-sector capitol with public resources to invest in recreation facilities and services on your National Forest system lands. In fiscal year 1995, recreation was appropriated $12 million for Challenge Cost-Share programs. This leveraged an additional $35.3 million of private sector contributed funds. Do we see a future where a rancher contracts with the Forest Service to collect a fee for recreating on his/her allotment?

Beginning in 1987, the Forest Service initiated a program to replace its direct campground management with concession operations. In 1996, 70% of all camping on our national Forests occurred at concession operated campgrounds. As a result, it is said that campers are benefiting from improved conditions, longer seasons, and a national reservation system.

One citizens group member states that according to a Congressional Research Service report, the Forest Service lost more than $791 million in 1996 in timber sales and believes that "if they can't manage what they have, why should we give them more?" This is just the tip of the Forest Service subsidies iceberg. Should not Congress be assessing the loggers, miners, and ranchers for environmental damage caused to our public lands rather than creating a Recreation Fee Project? Instead, Congress has devastated Forest Service recreation programs and, now, plans to make up the difference by allowing the Forest Service to charge a recreation fee.

The fee program creates a new method of non-appropriations funding for the Forest Service which in the bottom line is not accountable to the public.

Are the proposed recreation fees a step toward applying the profit motive and privatization to our public lands? In the future you can think of Thumb Butte trail, Granite Basin Campground and Granite Mountain Wilderness as profit centers. (NOTE: By law, wilderness areas are funded differently than recreation areas.)

The part that is most frightening is that as recreation fee revenue increases, Congress will reduce Forest Service recreation appropriations even more.

The fee program has the support of recreation businesses, big and small. A consortium of recreation businesses called the American Recreation Coalition (ARC) is made up of a diverse membership of recreation vehicle manufacturers, snow mobile manufacturers, ski manufacturers as well as equipment suppliers for hikers, campers, and skiers.

This Coalition helped Congress write the fee demonstration legislation. There is no misunderstanding that they wrote the law in their favor. To add cause for concern, the Forest Service commissioned this consortium to chart and manage the concept of user fees into the National Forest recreation system.

In addition, ARC has been lobbying heavily for expanded recreation business opportunities on our National Forest lands. ARC endorses the Private/Public Venture Program that permits agencies to sell government facilities.

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. For example, although Prescott National Forest management will deny it, the purpose of constructing the Granite Basin Lake campground was in recognizing the future potential of turning the campground operation over to a concessionaire. According to Scott Silver, Executive Director of Wild Wilderness, "Recreational fees are a first-strike effort to privatize, motorize, and commercialize the National Forest." However, according to one Forest Service person, that is not the case, "Money isn't the bottom line in deciding which types of recreation benefits from the money generated by the fee program."

If the American Recreation Coalition is in charge, can we expect a golf course to be part of our recreational experience on the Prescott National Forest in the future? There is already a possibility for a golf course on our public lands on the Coconino National Forest adjacent to Sedona.

The American Recreation Coalition president said that the whole idea is to help make some public-lands recreation part of the marketplace. According to one source, recreation expenditures now total some $350 billion annually, or some 10.5% of all consumer spending. In the year 2000, Forest Service programs will contribute an estimated $130.7 dollars to our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - 78% of which will be generated by recreation. According to one survey, almost 95 % of all Americans engage in some form of outdoor recreation during the year. No wonder the American Recreation Coalition wants a piece of the action.

You can be sure that Congress loves this fee program. Congress has given the Forest Service the authority to generate funds and keep the money and spend it without returning it back through the appropriations process. Many federal recreation managers have reacted with disdain to the thought of using market approaches or generating profits. Some are opposed to letting market forces dictate or even influence management decisions.

What is a walk on the Thumb Butte trail or a hike to the top of Granite mountain worth? How do you place a value on either of these two recreation experiences? In terms of grazing and mining, how do you assess these public lands for long-term recreation value esthetics against the short-term commodity-extraction values in place today? What appears to be happening is that the Forest Service in the implementation of user fees to supplement dwindling budget appropriations is in actuality turning the right to hike on our public lands in to a privilege.

It would appear that the recreation fee program does not take into consideration that there is more recreation use in some areas than in others. True, more use equals more recreation dollars. However, this puts National Forests recreation areas at a distance from high metropolitan areas at a disadvantage.

Incidentally, fees collected in campgrounds which go to the U. S. Treasury have declined. Why? Many campgrounds are being run by special use permit (i.e., concessionaire) and fees are retained on-site in the form of landlord maintenance and infrastructure improvements. A recent GAO report on concessionaires determined that of the fees collected, only about 3% was returned to the U. S. Treasury; the concessionaire kept the major portion after operating and maintenance costs. This move toward concession management reduces payments to counties and aggravates local support. Rural county tax support is a key issue where Forest Service lands make up a large percentage of the counties. Yavapai county is one which will no doubt suffer from loss of revenue.

According to a 1996 GAO report, Concession Reform is Needed, there were 11,263 concession agreements managed by 42 different federal agencies. Concessionaires operating under these agreements generated about $2.2 billion in revenues, and paid the government about $65 million in fees and about $23 million in other forms of compensation. The average total rate of return to the government in fiscal year 1994 was about 3.6 percent of concession revenues. The average return to the Forest Service from concessionaires was about 3 %. Return from concessions in other federal agencies averaged about 9%.

These proposed fees, coupled with the new rules allowing the sale of public facilities to private enterprise and expanding opportunities for private business ventures on federal lands, have many wondering whether the Forest Service will become just another huckster, pushing profit over protection.

The following source materials were used in preparing this article: