Feds may cut forest fee sites

Gifford Pinchot among areas that would loosen restrictions

N.S. NOKKENTVED, THE OLYMPIAN

Originally published Sunday, March 31, 2002

OLYMPIA -- Outdoor enthusiasts might soon find their Northwest Forest Pass required at fewer places.

In an effort to quiet critics of the federal government's controversial recreation fee demonstration program, the Forest Service is evaluating the places where the Northwest Forest Pass is required. The fee might be discontinued at some locations.

No changes are expected at the Olympic National Forest.

"For the Olympic, it's pretty much status quo," Olympic forest spokesman Ken Eldredge said.

But Gifford Pinchot National Forest officials are looking at about 40 of the 200 sites included in the recreational fee program.

"We're trying to give people a uniform experience" so places where fees are charged all meet similar minimum standards, Gifford Pinchot spokesman Tom Knappenberger said.

The Forest Service and the Bush administration want to make the fee program permanent.

'Hot spots'

But before that is considered, the Forest Service was urged to put out "hot spots" of criticism, particularly on the West Coast. Forest Service officials say people want to see the results of their fees at the sites they use.

The National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also participate in the so-called fee-demo program, but in the Northwest the most visible part of the program is the Forest Service's Northwest Forest Pass. The pass costs $5 a day or $30 a year.

In the Olympic National Forest, the pass is required to park at trailheads only. At the Gifford Pinchot and other northwest forests and the North Cascades National Park, it is required to park at marked trailheads, turnouts, picnic areas and similar sites.

Regional Forest Service officials are reviewing the more than 1,100 sites where the pass is required to make sure they justify a fee. Officials want to establish consistency among fee sites, said Jocelyn Biro, recreation fee program coordinator at the Forest Service's regional office in Portland.

The region is looking at a $5,000 threshold of development to qualify as a fee site. But those investments aren't all for trailhead improvements; much of the investment is in the trails themselves.

"That really is where the money is going," Biro said.

But trail work is not always obvious, and the priority should be to spend the money where it's needed the most, not necessarily where most people will see it.

Doris Lodwig, an avid hiker and hike leader with the Olympia Mountaineers, doesn't mind paying if the money goes to forest trails. But she is skeptical of government assurances.

The fee-demo program was enacted in 1996 and went into effect in 1997 for three years. It has since been renewed, most recently through September 2004. Critics say the program commercializes recreation on public lands.

The concept was devised and supported by the recreation industry as a way to ensure quality recreation on public lands, says Derrick Crandall, president of the Washington, D.C.-based American Recreation Coalition. The coalition is a group of company executives from Coleman, L.L. Bean Inc., Walt Disney Co., Yamaha Motor Corp. and many other businesses.

The coalition also has lobbied for more money from Congress and other ways to protect the land and ensure quality outdoor recreation, Crandall said in a recent telephone interview.

The fee-demo program is one way of protecting recreation resources on public lands, he said.

The group also supports a program -- similar to fee-demo -- that would allow fees paid by concessionaires to stay with the unit where they are collected, Crandall said. Under such a program, fees paid by a ski resort on the Gifford Pinchot, for example, would stay with the forest.

In 1996 the coalition also proposed legislation that would have allowed corporations to become exclusive supporters of specific national parks. The effort was dropped when it was lampooned in the press.

In 2000, the program produced about $186 million, nearly $32 million at Forest Service sites.

N.S. Nokkentved covers the outdoors for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5445 and at nnokkent@ olympia.gannett.com.

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