[From September 2001 Edition of the Southern Sierran -
a monthly publication of the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club]
By Andrea Leigh
The Angeles National Forest watches over the metropolis of Los Angeles like a concerned neighbor. Its high-reaching peaks, gentle waterfalls and dense forests beckon its city neighbors with open arms, a haven for those anxious to temporarily escape the confines of urban living. Yet those travelers who do hop into their automobiles and snake their way up the Angeles Crest Highway are confronted by a plethora of road signs warning that parking their car anywhere in the national forest requires the purchase of something called an Adventure Pass-lest they risk being fined. Noting that Forest Service personnel are more frequently seen writing out notices of non-compliance with this program, known as fee-demo, than improving trails in the backcountry, Wilderness Adventures Section outings chair Jason Lynch asserts, "Fee-demo has turned our Forest Service rangers into meter maids." Believing that the program is an attempt by corporate recreation interests to treat recreation as a profitable commodity, the Wilderness Adventures Section has made fee-demo its highest-priority conservation issue.
Wilderness Adventures outings leader Deborah Nakamoto, frustrated because thousands of Sierra Club outings are conducted each year on public lands requiring user fees and yet many members still do not understand the implications of the fee-demo program, wrote a letter to Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope in January. "The Sierra Club must do more to educate its members about forest fees, keep the issue in the forefront of their awareness, and urge them to take real action to fight this fraudulent and insidious program," Nakamoto wrote. "By maintaining silence and complying with the program, we are telling Congress that we want our public lands to be handed over to the likes of Disney, so that they can finally build that mega ski resort that they tried to build in Mineral King 30 years ago."
What is the Adventure Pass?
The Adventure Pass was initially designed as part of a three-year federal Fee Demonstration Program slated to end in 2000. Encompassing the Angeles, Cleveland, Padres and San Bernardino national forests, the "Enterprise Forest" Adventure Pass was designed to entice the public to supplement dwindling federal dollars. Fee-demo, as the overall "test" program would come to be known, was attached to a 1996 congressional appropriations bill without public input and in place by summer 1997. The program was originally scheduled to end in 1999 but twice was extended to give the program additional time to demonstrate its success. Fee-demo is currently authorized until September 2002, and in danger of being extended through 2006.
On the surface, fee-demo appears to be a reasonable solution to augment national park and forest budgets. Previously, most national parks charged a low entrance fee ($5 per vehicle in Yosemite and Grand Canyon, for example) that did not go directly toward maintenance of the park where the fee was collected, but instead went into the federal treasury. Forest Service lands charged fees only for areas with developed campsites. The idea was to charge a nominal recreational use fee with 80 percent returning to the federal land agency and locality where the fee was collected. Fee concepts being tested include bear viewing in Alaska, numerous trailhead parking fee projects, snowmobile/cross-country ski projects, recreation lodging, visitor center fees, climbing fees and wilderness permits.
Since fee-demo's inception, what has been most disturbing is to find that at some sites, higher fees are charged for lower-impact use activities. A family of five staying at the developed Mather campground for four days at Grand Canyon will pay $80, while a family of five who hikes four days in Grand Canyon's backcountry will pay $130. Before fee-demo, permits to hike Grand Canyon's backcountry cost nothing. In the Sierra, six people who hike Mt. Whitney in a day will pay $90, while six people staying overnight at the developed Whitney Portal campground in Inyo National Forest will pay $14.
Closer to home, Adventure Pass dollars have provided funding to erect restroom facilities, bear-resistant trash cans and signs, and to pave over former dirt parking lots, while backcountry trail improvements and maintenance continue to be the purview of volunteers.
The American Recreation Coalition
Behind the program is the American Recreation Coalition, a Washington-based nonprofit organization formed in 1979. Since its inception, the ARC (see its website at www.funoutdoors.com) has sought to "catalyze public/private partnerships to enhance and protect outdoor recreational opportunities and the resources upon which such experiences are based." The ARC's corporate partners are representatives from high-impact recreation interests that include manufacturers of snowmobiles, motorcycles, RVs and water skis; hotel and motel associations; and its largest corporate partner, the Walt Disney Company.
The Recreation Fee Demonstration program is an ARC initiative, a program imposed upon the American public in collaboration between ARC, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service officials, and a group of corporate-financed, anti-environmental congressional leaders. The "user fee" initiative affects four federal agencies: the United States Forest Service (which oversees 192 million acres), the Bureau of Land Management (264 million acres), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (92 million acres) and the National Park Service (83 million acres).
Opponents of the fee-demo program believe that the ARC's ultimate goals are to promote a climate ripe for new and expanded public/private partnerships between federal land management agencies and the ARC's commercial development interests. As there is not money to be made in allowing the public access to nature simply as a passive and contemplative amenity, traditional rustic recreation will yield to highly developed recreation. Free access will be eliminated as it competes with commercial ventures. A push in that direction is President George W. Bush's National Parks Initiative, announced in March, which is designed to use the authority of fee-demo to replace a portion of congressional funding for national parks with user fees collected from paying customers. Money collected will be spent to provide infrastructure that will facilitate increased park visitation and will, in turn, generate additional revenue receipts.
Industrial Strength Tourism
The recreation industry insists that public lands must be made accessible not only to people, but also to their machines. There is an assumption that most Americans expect and demand to see their public lands from the comfort, security and convenience of their automobiles. Instead of experiencing the drama of nature in quiet contemplation, what results is a series of quick edits, of speed and immediacy, the 7-Eleven mentality of driving to a place, jumping out, snapping a picture and getting back into the car. What has developed is a mass consumer mentality-or, in the spirit of Edward Abbey, Industrial Strength Tourism.
The concept of Industrial Strength Tourism is reflected in how total expenditures collected through fee-demo dollars in fiscal year 2000 from all four participating federal land management agencies were allocated: 82 percent toward interpretation and signage, facility enhancement, fee collection and annual operation. Fee-demo dollars have been used to develop services made accessible from the confines of the automobile, enticing paying customers to visit public lands and spend money on brand-name recreation services and products.
The Wilderness Adventures Section has worked to expose the true agenda of the American Recreation Coalition, participating in two national days of action against fee-demo, devoting much of its newsletter, Avenues, to the program's numerous pitfalls, and educating participants on many of its outings. Concerted efforts by a small cadre of members within the section, however, has not resulted in an organized effort by Sierra Club leadership to mount an effective campaign against the program, despite the Club's overall opposition to the program.
Andrea Leigh is a Wilderness Adventures Section leader and a regular contributor to the Southern Sierran.
The Lowdown on Fee-Demo
Fee-demo total obligations for fiscal year 2000 for the U.S. Forest Service amounted to $25,424,700 and broke out as follows:Fee Collection: 17.9%
Annual Operation: 30.7%
Law Enforcement: 3.3%
Repair and Maintenance: 15.5%
Facility Enhancement: 8.2%
Resource Preservation: 3.4%
Habitat Enhancement: 0.6%
Interpretation/Signage: 10.31 %
Health and Safety: 4.1 %
Interagency transfers: 0.2 %
Other: 5.7 %Source: http://www.doi.gov/nrl/Recfees/2001Report.pdf
What this data indicates is that the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program is not allocating its revenue chiefly to resource protection and maintenance, but to operating costs and fee collection. These costs essentially did not exist prior to the implementation of fee-demo in 1996.
For supporting documents and a comprehensive look at the Recreation Fee-Demonstration Program, refer to Wild Wilderness' Wild Wilderness' website, http://www.wildwilderness.org.
Scott Silver, Executive Director,
Wild Wilderness
248 NW Wilmington Avenue, Bend OR 97701
Phone (541) 385-5261 E-mail: ssilver@wildwilderness.org