Month: March 2012

LA Times Editorial on Recreation Fees

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Thanks to Terry Seyden for this one.

National forest fees work
The U.S. Forest Service should work to change the law regarding fees in national forests to reflect the realities of modern recreational use.

Here’s the link.

March 1, 2012
Does a hiker go to the bathroom in the woods? It might matter, under a recent federal court ruling.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled correctly last month that parking fees were being wrongly levied in many areas of America’s national forests. A 2004 law is quite specific that it is impermissible to charge fees for parking or for “general use” of the forests. But while the court’s ruling was perfectly in line with the law, the real problem is with the law itself. Under its provisions, if you use the bathroom while hiking in the forest, you can be charged, but not if you use nature itself as the bathroom. Picnicking on the ground has to be free under the law, but eating at a picnic table could, at least theoretically, cost you, as could using a trash can.
The way the law was drafted, it’s all about whether forest visitors are using “developed” facilities. But as the examples above show, that’s a ludicrous distinction that is impossible to enforce, out of line with the procedures at most wilderness parks and ultimately harmful to the forests and their visitors.
Most national and state parks and many regional parks charge an entry fee for vehicles whether they’re headed to the trail or the interpretive center, understanding full well that hikers’ and bikers’ activities come with costs even if they don’t use the “developed” facilities. Most hikers require trail markers to guide them on their way. The heavily used trails themselves must be maintained. Anyone might need emergency rescue or medical help from rangers. And for that matter, why shouldn’t a parking lot be considered a developed facility?
One argument against fees is that they keep poor people from enjoying the forests. But at $30 a year, a forest Adventure Pass is one of the best bargains in Southern California. It’s less than a fourth the price of an annual pass to state parks and is good for unlimited day use of four forests — the Angeles, Cleveland, San Bernardino and Los Padres. A single-day pass to the forests costs $5 for a carload of visitors, less than half the price of most movie tickets for a single person. The gasoline to drive to the forest would generally cost more.
Most of the money is used in the local forests where it is collected. In 2006 alone, the fees paid for, among many items, adding 74 new portable bathrooms, refurbishing 123 picnic areas and removing 8,752 cubic yards of trash in the Southern California forests. But as a result of the law and the recent court ruling, the U.S. Forest Service is now planning to drop fees in many areas of the forests. Instead, the law should be changed to reflect the realities of modern recreational use.

Being Wrong: Adventure Pass Edition

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Could it be that with the Adventure Pass program, the Forest Service was once-again trying to emulate business interests it once sought to regulate. Not that this is wrong, or evil—at least not unless you firmly believe that “Money is the root of all evil.” But it is clearly not what I want from the Forest Service. I made this case last year in Forest Service Mindshift: From Regulators to Partners.

I believe that the move to “marketize”, say, an ‘Adventure Pass’ program comes naturally to those in the Forest Service who have been hobnobbing with ski resort owners, Disney people, outfitters, etc. and want to be part of that world. It is just a piece of a broader “Print Your Own Money” mentality that has become firmly entrenched I the minds of some Forest Service managers? Of course they want to be apart from that world too, they want to be recognized as government agents, civil servants, etc. Can they have it both ways? I don’t think so.

My ‘beef’ with the Forest Service in this is, and has been for a very long time, simply expressed via Joni Mitchell’s lyrics from A BIG YELLOW TAXI. (copied from a dialogue thread I put into Eco-Watch bulletin board back in 1999):

Big Yellow Taxi
by Joni Mitchell
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They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique and a swingin’ hot spot

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

They took all the trees, put ’em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see ’em

Hey farmer farmer, put away that D.D.T. now
Give me spots on my apples but leave me the birds and the bees
please

Late last night I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi took away my old man

They paved paradise, put up a parking lot (choo bop bop bop bop)
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot
~~~~~~

I don’t want national forest trees put into a “tree museum,” where you “pay a dollar and a half just to see them.” I don’t want “swingin’ hot spots” and other overly luxurious recreation facilities on the public lands. Not that such is imminent, but it might be only a bit further down the road to ‘market land’. In short I want my experiences on public lands to be as far from Madison Avenue spin as possible.

So I was delighted that the Ninth Circuit slapped the Forest Service hard (pdf) on this one—particularly since the Congress put the Recreation Enhancement Act in place to give firm guidance as to how the Forest Service ought to administer fee collection programs. Questions remain. How/Why did the Forest Service come to believe that it was acting within the scope of the Recreation Enhancement Act (available here) when it continued to use the Adventure Pass program for general access fees in some areas after the REA was passed in 2004?

Extended Footnote on Framing/Blaming
In an earlier post, I argued that the there were various ways to frame arguments, building from one of Sharon’s posts. The frame I imposed was a bit extreme, and unfairly characterized the Forest Service as a villain. I did it in part to suggest that Sharon’s earlier post had unfairly characterized the Forest Service as a victim. I realize now that I was unfair in my framing and in my characterization of Sharon’s earlier framing. In short, the victim/villain framing was too harsh and a bit silly—but it did get some folks to think a bit. A better approach would have been to admit that villains are best left for fiction, and that better framing for real world situations ought to follow this advice:

“In the real world there are no villains. No one actually sets out to do evil. … There are no villains … rubbing their hands in glee as they contemplate their evil deeds. There are only people with problems, struggling to solve them.” Ben Bova

In a recent book, Being Wrong, Kathryn Schulz says, among other things, that people often put people they disagree with in one of three boxes: either they are “unformed”, else they are “idiots”, else they are “evil.” Schulz argues that there remains another possibility. People we disagree with may be quite well informed (have plenty of facts at hand), and they may not be idiots, neither evil. They might just view the world differently.

Incidentally, here is a link to a great little video presentation from Schultz at the 2011 TED Conference. Or, if you prefer, just browse the “first few pages” via Amazon of Schulz’s Being Wrong.

I challenge all to steer clear of the victim/villain framing that I used in my earlier post, as much fun as it is to frame things that way. But to so steer is to move away from much of the rhetoric used in the “industry/environmental wars” and other political arenas.

Finally, keep in mind that it proves very hard for any of us, particularly those in power, to admit error. Here is what Diane Ravitch said, when being interviewed on being wrong about her earlier championing of the “No Child Left Behind” program:

Schulz: If you could hear someone else interviewed about wrongness, who would it be?

Ravitch: That’s a hard one. Donald Rumsfeld said he was wrong, but I don’t even want to hear from him. [Former Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs Co-Chair, and former Citigroup Chair] Bob Rubin would be interesting, but he’ll never admit he was wrong. Right now what’s coming to mind are people who have never admitted that they’re wrong about anything.

Schulz: Like who?

Ratcliff: Like basically everybody I’ve been associated with for the last 20 years.

Related Reading
Kathryn Schulz. 2010. Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
Robert Jervis. 1997. Systems Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life
Albert O. Hirschman. 1991. The Rhetoric of Reaction. Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy
Deitrich Dörner. 1989. The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations
Larry Tye. 1988. The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & The Birth of Public Relations
Richard Hofstadter. 1952. The Paranoid Style in American Politics

[Note: Here’s a post I developed on The Logic of Failure]