Boulder News

STRETCHING THE LAW NOT GOOD POLICY

FS Digging Its Own Grave

By Bill Schneider, 4-26-07

This week, I posted two major articles on the U.S. Forest Service’s (FS) recreational fee policies and implementation of the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA)--the Recreation Access Tax (RAT) to opponents. In one, U.S. Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) talks of introducing a bill to repeal FLREA and the other details how the FS has been overly aggressive and loose with the truth in implementing the law on Mount Evans in Colorado.

Both articles sort of say the same thing. The FS is digging its own grave. And I’m not referring to the well-meaning, hard-working, budget-deprived FS employees in Colorado and elsewhere, only their Beltway bosses with their misguided political mission.

A sane approach to recreation fees would win support from most public land users, but that’s not what we have right now. The current trend can only lead to a Congressional fix the FS bosses might not like, but that FS employees might welcome.
Not many people mind paying a reasonable fee to camp in a developed campground or enjoy an interpretive center, but designating large areas as High Impact Recreation Areas (HIRAs) and charging entrance fees not only violates FLREA, flies in the face of the spirit and tradition of public lands.

HIRAs are little more than the FS’s attempt to make national parks out of the national forests. FLREA specifically disallows the FS from charging for access to national forests, for driving through them, for parking in them, and for dispersed recreation like hiking or hunting, but by creating HIRAs, which are at best a shameful end-run around the law, the FS does exactly that, exactly what the law prohibits.

Then, the agency has the audacity to say it isn’t doing it, claiming it’s “charging for the amenities,” which are defined by law to be permanent physical structures, like nature centers, picnic areas and public restrooms (not porta-potties), and campgrounds, not for access to hundreds of thousands of acres of public land.

On Mount Evans, for example, the FS charging everybody who enter the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest. This has been going on for ten years or more, including the past two years after FLREA was slipped into the law as a rider on a must-pass spending bill in December 2004. Only after a few locals who knew the law and their rights complained bitterly did the FS give out a “pink pass” for them to enter without paying, but then, had a ranger follow them looking for a reason to write a ticket.

The FS won’t put up a sign or verbally tell people about the option of not paying for their trip up Mount Evans to look at the scenery or go hiking. Only after being challenged did the FS admitted it will let people enter without paying--“if they ask,” but let’s be real. How many people will go to a toll booth and ask if they can pass through without paying when they don’t even know they have the option?

As a frequent user of the national forests, I’m embarrassed to even know that the agency managing my lands would behave like this.

Again, on Mount Evans, which is only one site but happens to be an excellent example of what’s going wrong in the FS, I have a personal experience to confirm the above, that the agency is not being truthful with its customers. In 2005, I tried to ride my bicycle to the top of Mount Evans, and I had no idea there was a fee to enter the national forest. Why would I think this? It’s against the law, and I’ve been in national forests all over the West and never encountered a single toll booth, until I tried to ride my bike on State Highway 5 through the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest. But there it was. A toll booth right smack in the middle of the state highway. I stopped and asked, “what’s this?”

The not-so-pleasant lady scowled at me and said, “Three dollars.” I told her I didn’t have any money with me and all I wanted to do was ride my bike up the road and back, but she would not let me pass.

Now, I hear from several FS officials that I really wouldn’t have had to pay because I wasn’t “using the amenities.” That might be the company line from the corner office, from behind Gifford Pinchot’s desk in the Old Auditor’s Building in D.C., but that’s not what they say down at the toll booth.

When you stand back and look what’s happening, not just at Mount Evans but throughout the national forest system, it seems like the Forest Service just wants to be the National Park Service, but national forests aren’t national parks. National forests have a strong tradition of free access, and the recent attempts by the FS to change that and run them as “enterprises” (translate, like businesses) is simply failed policy that has never had the support of Congress or the public land users.

I feel for FS employees. They can’t hide in the Beltway. They frequent the frontline where they feel the scorn. They pay the full price of this failed policy. incentive to raise their own money with fees and make them defenders of an ill-conceived system, which sometimes pays their salaries. I’m sure most would agree with me--in silence, of course--when I say we should return to the old system of getting decent budget through the normal appropriations process to manage recreation on national forests.

Hello, political bosses of the FS, the old system worked for 90 years. Now, you’ve had ten years of dismal failure to prove the full-cost-recovery system doesn’t work for public lands that are considered a free tradition by the people who own them, so let’s go back to doing it right. Compared to other line items in the federal budget, adequately funding recreation management the old way in our national forests is not only inexpensive, but people will actually like something you did.

Footnote: I’m proud of myself for making it through that entire article without saying the words, “Trillion Dollar War.”

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