Check out Vladimir’s ideas.. some are novel (at least to me). much to discuss!
***************
The three major funding sources for Forest Service recreation programs has been appropriated dollars, collection of Recreation Fee Program and withholding of special fees related to the recreation program. There is a real need for new steady funding sources particularly for operations and maintenance dollars.
Except for a few very brief periods of time, the Forest Service recreation program has always been thought to be underfunded.
The proof of this was always the deferred maintenance backlog for recreation facilities. To a much lesser extent “overuse” and the inability to mitigate the impact of visitor use was also used to frame it as “underfunded recreation” in the Forest Service.
Historically, the recreation program was originally funded through special use permits. This funded the summer home program, when there was no money for campgrounds. The “fishing resorts” of the west when there was no money for boat launches. And of course, the western ski industry which to a great extent is dependent on Forest Service managed land.
Then, of course, there was the CCC program which built many recreation facilities on National Forests, but was a “employment program” with the built recreation facilities being “training” for folks. With the public land timber boom from the 1950’s through the 1970’s the Forest Service was able to use timber dollars to subsidize recreation opportunities.
The Forest Service Operation Outdoors in 1957, though not as successful as the Mission 66 program by the National Park Service, did push Forest Service into providing recreation opportunities.
Too Many Facilities Too Little Money.
Granted ,when developing a new program an agency will almost always overbuild the facilities for various reasons. The Forest Service took it to a entirely new level.
I worked for the National Park Service, BLM, and the Forest Service in recreation management. It has always struck me that the Forest Service has so many more recreation facilities than the other agencies for the acreage managed.
The Forest Service is probably underfunded, but it is also dramatically overbuilt in its recreation facilities. And its recreation facilities are poorly designed and incur high maintenance and operation costs.
The Forest Service has never successfully addressed the excess recreation facility issue. And it needs to focus on rebuilding and designing recreation facilities with low maintenance and operation costs.
The Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest example.
I was the Recreation Program Manager for the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest from July 1997 to my retirement in April, 2007.
The funding for the recreation came from basically three sources: State grant programs, Recreation Fee Program, and Appropriated dollars from Congress. Though it fluctuated year by year, each of those sources accounted for about 1/3 of the recreation, trails, and wilderness budget. The Forest recreation budget peaked at about 10 million dollars and then started declining slowly after that.
The issue was that Appropriated dollars did NOT cover the fixed costs of the recreation program. If I remember correctly from one of my economics classes that means the organization is bankrupt and should close it doors.
The state grant programs were competitive grant applications and the Forest invested quite a bit of time and energy to make sure we could compete in those programs and that we would be the model agency for grant program applications.
The Recreation Fee Program was at that time supposed to be experimental, but opportunities to change the program were very limited and in many cases defeated by recreation groups that did not want to pay for their recreation programs.
What to do???
The Federal land management agencies need a steady funding source that can be used for operations and maintenance funding outside the Congressional funding process.
The first really successful Federal recreation funding program was the Duck Stamp program and Pittman-Robertson 10-11% tax on hunting and fishing products to fund state wildlife programs.
There are other funding sources following this line of thinking.
There is need to develop Federal grant recreation programs similar to the State of Washington’s refund of gas taxes paid when the gas was used on “non-public roads” (it really means non-gas tax funded public roads) to fund recreation programs on local, state, and federal lands.
This is similar to the Federal Recreation Trails Program (RTP) Funded by gas taxes paid by off-road vehicles, the Recreational Trails Program (RTP) is dedicated to the construction, restoration and maintenance of nonmotorized and motorized recreational trails (paved and unpaved) and trail-related facilities.
EXCEPT, the state of Washington program includes ALL sources of gasoline, not just that burned by ORV’s like the Federal program. Expansion of the Federal program to all gasoline burned on non-gas tax supported roads would be a significant source of recreation funding for ALL Federal land management agencies.
Right now, gas taxes paid by recreationists using Federal lands are DIVERTED to state and Federal highway programs. The issue of fairness is a strong argument for diverting these funds to the agencies that manage the impacts of recreation users on the Federal lands. The other advantage is that the tax would be directly linked to inflation increases in the Federal gas tax.
I briefly looked at which agency would be benefit the most and it would be the National Park Service. But the funding increase would be most impressive for agencies like Forest Service and BLM. The recreation funds could be focused on operation and maintenance costs of existing facilities.
Likewise, years ago hunters and fishers put a 10% plus tax on fishing and hunting equipment to fund fish and wildlife projects. The program has been wildly successful for saving our fish and wildlife resources.
The same can be done by shaming the outdoor product companies that are dependent on public lands for their wealth, but refuse to even consider help funding the public lands that created their wealth. We are talking serious money. Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia is a BILLIONAIRE to his chagrin. One of only 900 in the United States. We can help him with his guilt trip by helping the Patagonia nonprofit fund recreation services on public lands.
There could be other programs that would fit under this heading.
There are serious issues with agencies lobbying Congress and the Forest Service, BLM, and other Federal agencies need to develop OUTSIDE LOBBYING groups to lobby on behalf of the agencies. American Forests, the Boone and Crockett Club did this in past decades.
I don’t see today. It needs to happen again.
There is other legislation that can be “tweaked” to shift funds to the land management agencies as well.
Agency Special Use Fees.
Congress has over the years allowed the Forest Service to retain fees to be used in management of the National Forests.
The agencies really should do a review of these authorities and how they could be used to fund recreation opportunities.
The OKA-WEN had a problem with the state of Washington and the snowmobile program. To change the funding I had to rewrite and get approval for a new MOU with Washington State Parks. And they were not too excited about diverting snowmobile funding from them to the Forest Service for management of the snowmobile program. At that point, we started looking at putting them under a Special Use Permit. That would provide monies for funding Forest Service oversight of the snowmobile program. I did retire before jumping into that rabbit hole.
There is a need to look at all Forest Service permit programs and take a look at what it would take to adequately fund oversight of these programs.
Recreation Fee Program.
The Recreation Fee Program is a disjointed mess.
Special attention needs to be paid to REC.GOV. That program needs some serious reform. As expensive as the National Park Service fee program is to the American people. It is at least coherent and accepted by the public.
The other land management agencies need to look at the Recreation Fee program to simplify and make it more effective.
Appropriated Dollars
Congress likes building “monuments” to itself. It doesn’t like using taxpayer monies to maintain the monuments.
It might be more effective for the agencies to focus using recreation fee programs, special use fees, and special tax on recreation and the proposed redirect of Federal gas tax revenues to fund recreation operations and maintenance programs
Congress can then focus on building “monuments”.
Conclusion
I thought I could write a “short” article on this topic and it quickly got away from me.
But to summarize, the land management agencies need to review all state and Federal grant programs related to recreation. There are many out there. Some can be rewritten to make them more effective and extend them to recreation funding.
The Special Use Permit fees are another program area that should be reviewed.
The Recreation Fee program is a mess. It needs to be made simpler and more efficient.
The Forest Service lost its “special relationship” with Congress in the late 1970’s and the agency has not recovered. Congress likes funding “monuments” the land management agencies should insist on stable funding sources for operations and maintenance.
***************
Vladimir Steblina graduated from UC Berkeley with a BS degree in Forestry in 1972. His first professional job was with a forestry and engineering Consulting firm based in Oakland, California. After than I worked for the National Park Service, BLM and Forest Service and finally retired as the Recreation, Wilderness, and Trails Program Manager for the Okanogan/Wenatchee National Forests in 2007.
Here are some of the highlights of his career, in his own words.
Career highlights from my perspective included as project manager for mapping and inventory of ALL the Giant Sequoia’s south of the Mineral King road for HJW consulting firm. That also included a couple of timber growth studies and other projects such as timber sales.
For the NPS I developed and prepared a Recreational Carrying Capacity study for the Lake Mohave part of Lake Mead NRA with Mike Harvey. The study focused on the resolving conflicts between various users primarily water skiers and houseboaters.
For the Forest Service I wrote the St. Joe Wild and Scenic River Plan. Then there was about 15 wasted years in Forest Planning as economist and analyst doing ForPlan runs and other wasted analysis.
I am really proud of laying out and building Huckleberry Flat Campground for BLM. The BLM and Federal Highway came to agreement dumping waste material into Huckleberry Flat before I got there. I worked Federal Highways to ballast the road and put funny little spurs off the main road. Thanks to them the public got a “free” campground.
My career was split between recreation and timber analysis, but my heart was always with recreation management, but timber paid the bills for a long time.
I could see a group of agency retirees gathering outside the Holdfast Collective (the Patagonia trust) holding signs reading “More Recreation, Less Litigation!”
“Holdfast Collective is already making good on its promise to defend the environment. Two years in, more than $100 million has been invested in nature conservation, said Curtis. “There has been a lot of project work in terms of programs, litigation, political climate leaders and actual landscapes protected,” he said.
Last February, for example, the organization gave a staggering $5.2 million to the Nature Conservancy, a global conservation group, to help with its acquisition of nearly 8,000 acres of land in Clarke County, Ala. And last September, it offered $1 million to the nonprofit Rodale Institute to support underserved farmers across Ventura County, Calif. “We’re excited to get a few more years into it and have more of a track record,” said Curtis, who noted that Patagonia is still in the early days of its unusual corporate structure.”
https://observer.com/2025/03/patagonia-nonprofit-head-explain-purpose-trust/
When I took the Recreation position the Ranger District folks wanted me to make “finding more money” a priority.
So I did. I did look into foundations and non-profits. I was staggered by the waste of money by foundations. A large majority of them actually had it written into their charters that they could NOT give money go government agencies.
Instead they funded groups that sued the Forest Service, and the other land management agencies, further reducing the amount of funds that agencies had for management as we were spending recreation funds on litigation instead.
I lost a lot of respect for so-called “environmentally caring people”.
If your gonna donate money to non-profits make sure they buy land and then transfer that land to public agencies.
All the other non-profit spending is a waste of private money and the taxpayers pick up the part of the tab for that waste through tax policy.
Never trust a billionaire like Yvon Chouinard to act in the public interest.
Recreation is one of those hot potatoes that consistently chap the behinds of everyone in leadership, at one time or another. PAOT’s, FLREA, GT, fee retentions, etc only muddy the waters of never having enough $ but making up acronyms seems to help soothe the mind!
Anyone working east of the Great Plains have encountered extreme build outs, mainly old CCC and WPA projects from the 1930’s. So, having a public used to those amenities require a great deal of deferred maintenance costs to keep those old Cadillacs a’humming. The West seems to be a bit more raw in amenities, using the wow factor of natural landscapes as the draw.
But – enter the Obama era and the ARRA junket. On the Ouachita NF, an old Forest that has a whole bunch of these heavily maintenance dependent, CCC facilities, we worked day and night to get our list of “shovel ready” projects into the RO for consideration. Nary a dime, we got! But as luck would have it, I was headed to the Apache-Sitgreaves (A-S) NF as a new Deputy FS, just after the realization the Ouachita didn’t matter…..
The A-S received only 22 million dollars! 22 million dollars; split about half for recreation and half for fuels work. We had more $ than we could spend, since we were a large, well financed Unit to begin with. But boy old boy did we build some infrastructure! Big Lake Campground was about 25 miles from town, but it now has all paved, mainly full hook-up camping spots, it’s on fresh water and sewer treatment plant, hot and cold water shower houses (did I mention hot water?🤣), pavilions, A/V infrastructure, the works!
Of course ARRA was about unemployment, and since Apache County, AZ was mostly Navajo Reservation, we were the third most disadvantaged County in the US! The old Ouachita was mainly a diverse, heavily employed region of remnants of the Five Civilized Tribes, white and black folks who worked.
So long story short; recreation funding is one of those discretionary tales that should require adequate funding for the people who own these National Forests can enjoy them! However, the mindset of FS leadership doesn’t feel the need to appease those rightful owner; NOT Congress, leadership just fails to make the case!
A “new” source of recreation funding is not a mystery; it’s been staring the FS in the face for 30 years. The FS has been authorized to charge trailhead fees (daily or annual) since the first Recreation Fee Act passed by Congress in 1995! To my knowledge, only Region 6 really has taken some advantage of this. During my years living and working in Oregon and Washington on multiple national forests, I would buy the $30 Annual Northwest Forest Pass that covered trailhead parking, where a Forest chose to charge it. I was told it funded seasonal trail crews on the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie while I was there, and that they would not have had trail crews without that funding.
I was not supportive of this fee initially in 1995 because I thought it should just be Congressionally appropriated dollars, but Congress doesn’t give enough and the FS doesn’t seem to ask much, for Recreation anyway. For some reason, most of the rest of the FS has never taken advantage of this revenue opportunity, now 30 years in existence! This has always seemed like leadership and recreation mismanagement to me. For example, the Arapaho and Roosevelt NFs (from which I retired and hiked on many many times and still do) would probably take in enough fee revenue to fund multiple seasonal trail crews on each district with the level of trail use it receives. Probably same for most Forest units in Colorado, many other Forests, and to a lesser extent more remote Forests that may have fewer trailhead and trail miles to maintain anyway.
I do applaud the FS for keeping a day pass fee to $5 and Annual Pass to $30, unchanged from 1995. It is still that same cost in R6 and the few other sites where I know it is charged on the Med Bow and Routt NFs, for example. Where I live on the northern Colorado Front Range, the FS is the ONLY agency not applying trailhead fees, at least to some extent. The local County Open Spaces and State Parks have charged for years now, and the County day or annual passes are around $10/day and $100 for Annual Pass (too expensive I think). Even CO Parks and Wildlife now requires a paid parking pass for their fairly primitive State Wildlife Area trailhead parking. Yes, the law requires some trailhead amenities, most costly one a vault toilet. But most heavy and even moderate use trailheads in R2 already have a vault toilet, and also a signboard/info kiosk also required. Cheap to add the other amenities under the law.
My understanding is that some of the original processes to be able to charge the fee are no more, and it is now simply a matter of the FS choosing to implement it more broadly. It is not charged at all trailheads. In R6, they probably charge at half or less of the trailheads. The Federal Land Recreation Enhancement Act (latest rec fee act version) requires something like 80% or more of the fees collected to go back to the local unit for trail/recreation management where they are collected. I have heard that the FS does not always honor this requirement and sometimes has improperly used it for other purposes but that shouldn’t stop the agency from this funding opportunity that has always been there since 1995. It would make more sense to have regional passes, like the Northwest Forest Pass that covers R6 Oregon and Washington Forests, rather than individual Forests.