REC FEES USED TO CLOSE CAMPGROUNDS, LIMIT ACCESS
Now We Know Where the RAT Goes
By Bill Schneider, 2-10-07
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| Sign on the Catalina Highway in the Coronado National Forest near Tucson. Courtesy of the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition. | |
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I’ve written extensively about RAT, the Recreation Access Tax, created by the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, and how agencies, particularly the Forest Service (FS) have been recently aggressive in charging new fees and increasing existing fees. While reading some of these articles, you may have wondered where all this money goes. I, for one, assumed it goes to enhance recreational facilities on our national forests, but no. It’s going to limit recreational facilities on our national forests.
In a high-level meeting among FS bosses held in January, John Pasquantino, lead OMB budget analyst for the FS, said he has made $93 million in recreation fee revenue available to the forests to implement the much-maligned Recreation Site Facility Master Planning (RSFMP) process. That $93 million is basically all the recreation fees collected in all national forests for two whole years.
How’s that for irony? We pay fees at toll booths to enter our national forests and feed “Iron Rangers” to park at trailheads and the FS uses our money to close, privatize, or “demonstrate” (i.e. start charging fees) campgrounds, trailhead parking lots, and picnic areas.
Why is the FS using recreation fees to close campgrounds? According to Pasquantino, “it’s logical, transparent, and makes sense.”
I don’t know about you, but for me, his logic is too complex to understand.
Does spending fee money on RFSMP really fit with the spirit of the law the FS uses to charge fees, the Federal Lands Enhancement Act? The key word, of course, being “enhancement.”
As a disclaimer, this information comes to us from the notes of Sherry Wagner, who works as Director of Communications and Government Relations for the FS’s eastern region. Her notes may not be exact quotes from people at the meeting, but knowing government at this level, I have to say her notes must closely capture the spirit and essence of the meeting. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have circulated them. Fortunately, she did. Otherwise, we might not know where RAT revenue goes. A copy of her notes ended up in the hands of Robert Funkhouser of the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition. His response? “It’s like having to buy the rope they use to hang you.”
The FS may argue that the purpose of the RSFMP process is not to limit recreation access and facilities, but they must have a hard time saying this with a straight face because that’s the result of the plans so far.
Interestingly, at the same meeting, Jim Bedwell, Director of Recreation and Heritage Resources for the FS admitted that RSFMP “has been framed around there’s not enough money, so what can we shut down.” Even if those weren’t his exact words, we get the picture, Jim.
Launched in secrecy back in 2002, RSFMP has only recently been revealed, and not by the FS, I might add. And is anybody surprised that a secret process intended to close or limit access to thousands of recreational facilities would be controversial? As soon as word seeped out, the FS held a high level meeting and decided to “pause” the process while a public involvement process solicited comments from national forest users. This means, of course, as it always does, that after 90 percent of the comments oppose the intent and result of RSFMP, the FS will do it anyway. (Witness the recent revelation that the FS is still going ahead with plans to sell off large chunks of the national forests after 99 percent of comments opposed it.)
Keep in mind that over the past ten years, the FS’s recreation budget has increased 22 percent, but national forests are still starved for money to manage and maintain recreational facilities. Fee income is supposed to replace budget shortfalls, but instead it’s going to a pricey planning process that will probably be shelved soon and become nothing more than another example of government waste.
I suppose the federal government does not consider $93 million a significant sum when the Defense Department just misplaced $12 billion in cash on its way to Iraq, but I’m going out on a limb and predict that to the folks who built up that $93 million by forking $5 or $10 every time they tried to go out on their own land for a little outdoor fun, it seems significant.
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Comments
Just imagine if the issue was your land, gradually encroached upon by the godly 'sustainable' masses who then changed the rules and allowable uses for your piece of heaven. This is the real issue- not the charitable trespass rules of a kindly government so you can ride your bike on a sunny day on a maintained trail in a pretty park.
I hope for your continued success so as you might own a sandbox big enough to play in without leaving home and experience the pain at the next level of government fraud.
Some folks can't smell the odor until they are ankle-deep in it!
Good fishing,sir.
Elitism comes at a cost.
This isn't in your article but appears to be the bent of the commenters. The government hasn't tried to say I can hike across Joe's place unless the waterway happens to be maintained and belong to us all. Then Joe wants me maintaining that waterway, the deer he hunts, everything around his private domain while he can keep anyone else from the same benefits. I am hopeful at some point this country will back away from the rule of the mighty at the expense of the many-- but not sure it'll happen in my lifetime.
And on timber... the problem was not just about environmental wackos but when the federal government was selling it to timber companies, there was no profit. The cost of roadways and what the government had to put into it was greater than the money paid for the timber-- at that time. might be changing with lumber prices so much higher. Not to mention back then a lot of it was exported to Japan. Now in Oregon at least, the law is such that you can't export it if you log it on federal lands. Is that such a bad idea?
Posted by: Kenneth James Boettger
Email:
Response
I read an article that was to sent me through the Western Slope No Fee Coalition.
What is happening is a simply supply verses demand model. Access to recreation is in fact supply. And if you can control supply, you can control demand... AND if you contol demand, you control prices.
That is what economy is all about folks. This is how the game is played. It is the same with oil, it is the same with gold, it is the same with campgrounds or hiking trails or even muishrooms and huckleberry bushes.
Given the land area of millons of acres here on the Wenatchee National Forest, there is essentially unlimited supply for camping if they wanted to make it available. But of course, there is in fact a hidden agenda to turn our forests in to a profit making industry where eventually the wealthy will be given precedence and the common people will be left in the smog and pollution of the cities.
If you can shut down campgrounds, you effectively constrict supply... and demand goes up. And then you can charge more money for the few campgrounds you left open.
It is an issue of efficency. it is all about cutting costs. Why manage 10 campgrounds generating $5 per parking area when you can limit access, increase demand, and charge $50 per parking area are allowed to camp?
You say, well, "I just will not go camping". But of the 1000 people who were originally camping, 100 of them (10 percent) make a very high salary and the new $50 fee is nothing to them. That 10 percent or 100 people pay the fee without question. And so they don't care if the other 900 of you refuse to go camping.
They still filled up the one campground they left open!
They only need 100 of the original 1000 to pay the higher fee.
The forest service is making the same amount of money but only needs one-tenth the staff.
Folks, you all need to understand how supply and demand works.
Then the psychologists that were hired to understand the public behavior then come into play...
After 5 years, the public becomes DESENSITIZED to the new $50 fee. And then they slowly start opening all the other campgrounds again... and charge everybody $50.
So you see, in the end, nothing has changed but using supply and demand to manipulate public perception, acceptance, and commercialize what was once free.
This is corporatization at work. It is a cancer of democracy, the commons and freedom.
All free dispersed camping is being shut down on every forest across the United States. They are taking away all the alternatives and they are shutting down a percentage of the other campgrounds because the economics of supply and demand require that they first establish control to make the above model work.
Here in Washington State, the US Forest Service has been shutting down campground and dispsersed camping areas that used to be along all of our US Forest Service roads. They have blocked the secondary spur roads and put up no camping signs everywhere. The purpose is clear, they are forcing us to use the campground and pay the fees. They are forcing the public to use fee structures.
When I compained about this, they used the environmental argument that the dispersed areas had to be shut down to reveg the areas and to stop silt from running into the streams and save our salmon.
And the average camper of course would accept this explaination because they do not know that they are being lied too.
But I am not an average camper but an an ecologist with a degree from the Department of Forestry at Washington State University.
They are using false environmental reasoning to justify the implementing of fee for access. As I tried to tell folks back in the 1980's (everyone accused me of being a conspiracy theorist) they are BUILDING A MANAGERIAL INFRASTRUCTURE AROUND THE PEOPLES RECREATION. It is being done for profits and transfer of public ownership to corporations - NOT environmental reasons. Though they use our own environmental issues and sentimenality against us.
And here is the proof of that fact:
1) The manashtash drainage, which I complained about, essentially has no salmon. The Yakima River does have a salmon run but nearly all of the salmon are raised at hacheries on the Yakima River itself. And all of the salmon return to those hatcheries.
2) there has been no siltation problem and the trout are reproducing in the stream unhindered by any such falsely claimed 'siltation' issues. I have monitored the streams, they are completely healthy.
3) The land area represented by ALL the despersed camping areas in the Manashtash drainage of the Wenatchee National Forest (that they claim are causing siltation problems) represents less than one tenth of one percent of the clear cut logging that the US Forest Service actual promotes on that same forest and along that same stream!
I used to work for the US Forest Service. I used to work for Heather Murphy who was a biologist on the forest. I used to call spotted owls on the Wenatchee National Forest. And here is how it works folks:
1) the public demands that old growth forest be saved for the owls.
2) a mandate is given, the forest service must preserve X number of acres in old growth status.
3) without notifying the public, the US Forest Service changes their internal definition of old growth to read any forest with trees over 24 inches in diamenter (the proper definition is any tree over 48 inches in diameter).
5) X number of acres of previously logged lands (that were logged 40 years ago) are set aside as old growth under the hidden internal definition of old growth used by the US Forest Service. These trees were essential hand planted douglas fir that have, over the last 40 years, grown to 24-28 inches in diameter - in is seral stage, second growth forest. Not old growth.
6) The US Forest Service uses that second growth forest to satisfy the mandate with X number of acres.
6) The US Forest Service then goes into to the true old growth forest of Engleman spruce and red cedar with trees that are up to 8 FEET in diameter - and they clear cut that forest !
And they claim they preserved the mandated acreage on the forest when in fact it was all a lie based on an internal and nefarious change in how they define "old growth".
I left the Forest Service years ago because of this crap. And you know, the last 16 years I have worked in the corporate world as a senior computer consultant to Fortune 100 companies. And you people need to understand something. Laws do absolutely nothing.
You are wasting your time. Laws were meant to be broken. There will always be lobbists and their will always be loop holes. And there will always be dirty tricks like the changing of the definition of old growth. The only way you will preserve creation is to remove unethical and corrupt people from government.
There can be no compromise.
And with the issues we are facing today, you must become soldiers and be willing to give your life for our sustaining environment and our freedoms. And until you are willing to put your life on the line, you will continue to lose all that you have and define a hell for your childern.
You will be responsible for it.
Corruption in government is nothing new. Governments have gone the way of corruption since our ancestors first walked out of their caves and established social systems.
The question is, do you have the balls and the guts to stand up like our forerathers did to create and preserve the freedoms and morality of this once great nation?
Our government has been corrupted by the corporate elite. That is the problem. And if you cannot address that, realize that all other efforts are just wasted energy.
One of the first things we need is term limits, pure and simple. Then I think it might even be good to cut congress to 2 senators and 1 - 2 representatives each, it would be a lot easier to keep an eye on a few. Then they could be limited on what regulations they introduce that affects states other than their own.
In actuality I don't think this fee is so much a result of corporate America in the usual sense, but the result of the environmental corporate America that want to have absolute control over all public land in this country. They can then dictate who can and cannot use the land for any purpose. They already have an awful lot of that control now. They have no real oversight, and no accountability to anyone, and they have a tremendous amount of clout, and that is a very scary combination.
Dr.(Mr) Boettger has provided us with some interesting information and he is likely to be absoloutely corrrect. From what article was this comment pulled?
Will you please shut up. I'm so sick of reading your inane, outdated comments on everything I read on New West that sooner or later, I'll stop reading, just to avoid hearing your nails screech on the blackboard.
I suspect that's your purpose. You obviously don't have a job, or you'd never have time to infect all these discussions as you do.
Is it just me, or does anyone else out there wish Marion would give it a rest, and let someone else speak for a change?
http://www.newwest.net/index.php/main/article/local_media_turns_on_fs_over_mount_lemmon_fee/#comments
In my experience, the number of parks managed by one district in an agency unnamed has declined by over 50% (more than 300 sites closed) and they're still under funded $3 million to keep the gates open, the restrooms clean, the trash picked up, rangers to keep the rough crowd from moving in... you get the picture. So, next year there will be some more sites closed. And more the year after...
A recent overnight (as in ONE night) camping/fishing trip:
1) Purchased required fishing license (no prob with this!)
2) Purchased trout permit (Hmm, only species in lake so yeah)
3) Purchased State permit (Well, it is a state park_fair enough)
4) Purchased multi pole permit (Got it but will prolly not use it)
5) Purchased Urban lake license (Tricky border deal here so I got it)
6) Purchased Conservation stamp (OK, I'm a sucker but WTH)
7) Purchased entrance fee permit (Umm, for access to road in)
8) Purchased camping site permit (Mother Nature built not state)
9) Purchased wood (Previous renter left it but officials took it away. Later I went to their booth to buy wood and they sold it back to me. Have to admire their ingenuity!)
Early next morn at lake....lovely, peaceful until the park guy comes with a power blower and for the next three hours gases that rocket the whole way around the lake's little trail. Then the bull dozers and construction workers come. They are rebuilding services on the mountain from the fees as promised. I observe that they are building a multi million dollar eatery and homes worth more than I will ever make in my lifetime. Gee, I am so glad they are using the fees constructively and tearing through the gawd awful forest!
So, take away the fees and they cannot afford to pay for; the noise pollution, construction equipment, and personel charging me endless fees? What are you left with?
The beautiful solitude of the forest which is what I was after in the first place. Sorry for venting.