By Tom Wharton
At first glance, the idea of using private money to build new facilities on public land seems like a wonderful concept.
Land-management agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service provide the land. Their ``partners'' provide the recreational experiences and facilities.
Guides and outfitters take visitors on river, climbing or horse-packing trips. Ski-resort owners use long-term leases to build lifts and restaurants on public lands. And agencies turn over management of public campgrounds and marinas to private concessionaires who improve service and facilities.
The Forest Service calls the concept ``private-public ventures'' and uses bureaucratic-laden terms such as ``customer service,'' ``one-stop shopping'' and ``public-private partnerships'' in an effort to promote the concept.
Lyle Laverty, who served as the agency's director of recreation heritage and wilderness resources in July 1996, issued a white paper on private-public ventures (PPV) that year detailing how the program would work.
``PPV combines recreation facilities and opportunities with the capital and business-management expertise of the private sector,'' wrote Laverty. ``In PPV, private capital is used to construct new, privately-owned facilities or to rehabilitate existing Forest Service facilities. Types of facilities and services involved include campgrounds, day-use sites, marinas, nature trails, interpretive sites, camp stores and visitor centers.''
Thus, private partners team up with public-land managers to provide more and better recreation facilities. The concept sounds good.
But there are veteran public-land 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.
For example, does issuing a permit to a river, backcountry-ski or climbing guide create new demands on the land that have the potential of shutting out the public?
Is it fair for a private campground owner who has had to purchase and pay taxes on land to compete with a concessionaire offering essentially the same services for half the cost on public land?
Do campers who enjoy the more primitive experience found in most public-land facilities want to see concessionaires add amenities such as showers, hookups, laundries, horseback riding and camp stores which profoundly change the ambience of public campgrounds?
When the Wasatch-Cache National Forest pays rent to its partners at the Salt Lake R.E.I. for a contact station opening soon inside the store without giving other sporting-goods dealers a chance to make a better offer, is it giving its partner an unfair business advantage?
If ski areas with permits on Forest Service lands are considered partners with the agency, do they receive an unfair advantage over environmental groups or members of the public who may oppose resort expansion projects?
Scott Silver, who heads a Bend, Ore., environmental group called Wild Wilderness, worries that the Forest Service's vision of future opportunities is for ``commercialized, privatized and motorized recreation.
``In the eyes of the U.S. Forest Service,'' Silver said, ``wreckreation [recreation run as a revenue generator] is its new business. And we can be fairly confident that they [public-land managers] will manage it, as they have managed every other extractive use on our public lands, for the benefit of corporations and to the detriment of the public and of the land itself.''
Land managers who have been forced to close public facilities or watch them deterioriate certainly do not share Silver's cynicism about public-private partnerships.
But, as federal and state government land managers seek out new partners in the private sector, they need to make certain that the ``public'' in public lands remains.
© Copyright 1998, The Salt Lake Tribune