Once upon a time, the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service administered public lands for citizens, taxpayers and extractive industries. This wasn’t ideal (it’s well-known that the costs of road-building, for example, outstrips the revenue the FS receives from timber sales) but at least some of us could walk freely on public lands without being charged both for maintenance and entrance.
All that changed with a fee program, supposedly a demonstration program, in the late 90’s, which was spearheaded by a coalition of industry heavyweights called the American Recreation Coalition and included Yamaha, Disney, and REI. This attempt at privatization of public lands kicked up a lot of opposition, from the right as much as from the left. As the collection of documents at Keep the Sespe Wild shows, the program was unpopular under the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, and a coalition of Senators, led by Larry Craig of Idaho, a Republican, was moving to end or severely limit the program when a rider was attached to last year’s overall appropriations bill, authorizing the fee program, but–supposedly–limiting it.
Now it turns out that the Forest Service is evading even the langauge of the rider bill, which–according to Ralph Regula, a Republican representative from Ohio, who sponsored the it–significantly limited its scope. Regula in a press release declared:
"No fees may be charged for the following:
solely for parking, picnicking, horseback riding through, general access,
dispersed areas with low or no investments, for persons passing through an
area, camping at undeveloped sites, overlooks, public roads or highways,
private roads, hunting or fishing, and official business. Additionally, no
entrance fees will be charged for any recreational activities on BLM,
USFS, or BOR lands. This is a significant change from the original language.
The language included by the Resources Committee is much more restrictive
and specific on where fees can and cannot be charged.”
In fact the Forest Service has continued to charge fees, as a survey (with photographs) shows, around the country and in Southern California. They claim a loophole–a "High Impact Recreation Area"–status even for hundreds of thousands of acres of backcountry, in order to charge entrance fees, which are specifically not allowed. But they’re not fooling anyone, and Senator Craig is holding hearings on the matter, and you can register your frustration by sending an email by Friday to:
kristina_rolph@energy.senate.gov
and beginning with the following statement:
"Please include this in the public record for the 10/26/05, 2 pm hearing before
the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests on the implementation of the Federal
Lands Recreation Enhancement Act."
Because your email will go to a Senator interested in lobbying his own members to bring the Forest Service in compliance with an existing law, this may well be more effective than the usual letter to your representative. Take a moment to speak up for freedom in our national forests. I am…
Kit Stolz 