Industrial Strength Recreation—Coming to a National Forest Near You?

By Scott Silver

Is a day spent enjoying the great outdoors on public land worth as much as it costs to spend the day at Disneyland? Sure it is. Is it right for the Forest Service to charge someone to view the sunset or smell the trees? Hell no!

The new admission fees being charged on national forests have created a tremendous controversy. So much so, that this past summer, no less than thirty-one simultaneous demonstrations took place in nine Western states. Environmental activists, outdoor recreation groups, and anti-tax advocates joined together in a National Day of Action to protest forest fees. Hundreds of demonstrators were seen and heard by the widest possible audience. By all accounts the day was an incredible success.

The vast majority of protestors did not turn out simply to protest having to pay a few dollars to take a hike. To understand what this issue is all about, it is necessary to recall that until very recently, commodity extraction was the business of the U.S. Forest Service. Today, outdoor recreation is fast becoming the Forest Service's new business and activities such as hiking, fishing, skiing, and nature viewing are being developed into its new products. Off-road motorcycling, jet skiing, heli-hiking, mountain resorts, theme parks other commercial development are also potential public land products—and therein lays the real issue.

The Recreation Fee Demonstration Program (Fee-Demo) was supposed to test the concept of charging general user and access fees on America's public lands, something previously prohibited by law. In reality, a powerful political lobby representing motorized recreation, resort development, concessionaires and similar commercial interests helped create and implement the Fee-Demo program. Spokespersons for this group now remind us that there is no such thing as a free lunch and that we had better get used to paying to recreate on public lands. For Day of Action Protestors, the issue is that those offering to pay the USFS for their lunch, do so with full expectation that they will be served any damn thing they order.

When first introduced, Fee-Demo was roundly criticized as a form of double taxation. Today, opposition to the program is nearly universal. Conservationists say the ability to charge for recreational use of public lands paves the way for commercial development and increased motorized recreation. Non-motorized outdoor recreation groups say public access should remain free. Sporting equipment manufacturers and tourism providers say the program hurts business.

There are many reasons to oppose public land recreation fees. It is quite simply wrong to charge for access to raw nature. Fees discriminate against poorer people and extend a class system where it does not belong. Managing recreation for revenue generation adversely affects low impact recreationists by creating an incentive for land managers to give preferential treatment to those who are prepared to pay more for their pleasures. Motorized recreationists understand how money buys access and stand alone in embracing user fees.

For persons spiritually connected to nature, the act of paying transforms the ensuing experience. They say it is rather like the difference between romantic love and paid sex.

Perhaps the most universally levied complaint about this user tax is that it is unfair to demand that low impact recreationists pay their own way, while taxes they've themselves paid, still subsidize logging, mining and grazing. If available tax dollars were wisely spent and better managed, there would be no need to enter the Brave New World of pay-to-play recreation. With the current robust economy, free access to public lands is an amenity we can easily afford to retain.

Wild Wilderness, an outdoor recreation and conservation group since 1991, is now urging active Fee-Demo non-compliance. If potential visitors refuse to patronize Fee-Demo sites, they will be helping to end forest fees. The efforts of persons writing letters, refusing to pay, or challenging this program in court will all help to ensure that public lands never become a wreckreation commodity.

User-Fees must be permanently authorized before the current program expires in September 2001. Between now and then, federal land managers will be doing all they can to promote customer satisfaction and to enforce compliance.

An honest demonstration would have been voluntary without the threat of fines being used to force compliance. Fee Demo, however, was never an honest test of public acceptance. Fee-Demo was simply a pilot program designed to determine how to charge, collect and enforce the payment of fees while avoiding open rebellion.

Luckily for those who value America's Great Outdoors in terms not measured in dollar receipts, the test is doomed to failure because the rebellion, having already begun, will only continue to grow stronger as the public comes to understand the real issues associated with pay-to-play recreation.

Scott Silver is executive director of Wild Wilderness based in Bend, Oregon. He can be contacted at (541) 385-5261 or ssilver@wildwilderness.org. To learn more about the issue industrial strength recreation visit www.wildwilderness.org