We’ve discussed this before many times, but I thought I’d bring it up again because I wondered if some of this (different kinds of passes) were regional choices, and, if so, how those differences might fare under a “no Region” reorganization.
“This” being, what FS units charge for what, recreationally speaking? I think everyone charges for campgrounds, but trailheads? And there are probably other uses. IMHO, this would be a good thing to try to achieve some national consistency about.. otherwise people will continue to wonder and potentially ascribe Forest employees with “apathy” toward “regulation”.
Dale made this comment on the chainsaws in Wilderness post:
How about finally charging trailhead parking fees FS-wide or at least in a much more expanded way than currently in the FS trail system that could fund trail crews (e.g., $5/day or $30 for annual pass as they have in Region 6 forests for 30 years now and at some trailheads on the Medicine Bow-Routt NF)? This is a funding source that has been available to the FS since the initial 1995 Congressionally-approved Recreation Enhancement Act, yet the FS as a whole has hardly utilized it, with limited exceptions noted above that I am aware of.
Fortunately for us, Kitty Benzar usually follows this, and I hope that she gives her perspective.
Today, Wyofile published this op-ed (picked up by an alert TSW reader):
WyoFile published an article in July indicating that Lonesome Lake has the worst contamination level of any of 981 lakes that were investigated. Car counts at the Big Sandy Trailhead in mid-August have exceeded 300. It is not uncommon to see toilet paper, defecation or refuse at Island, Lonesome or Big Sandy lakes.
The Big Sandy and Elkhart Park trailheads remain two of the fullest parking lots in the West from the middle of July through early September. While the popular Big Sandy Trailhead sits on the Bridger-Teton National Forest side, the Cirque of the Towers —one of Wyoming’s and the West’s most spectacular places— sits in the Shoshone National Forest’s Popo Agie Wilderness.
Frequently, Bridger-Teton forest officials will cite costs as a reason for a lack of regulation. Yet, closer to the Bridger Wilderness, entering the Ashley National Forest’s High Uintas Wilderness from the Mirror Lake Scenic Byway requires a parking pass. Fees for these passes are $6 daily or $12 per week. An annual pass is only $45.
I believe most backpackers entering the Wind Rivers from either Big Sandy or Elkhart Park trailheads would gladly pay the fee for better trail maintenance that could alleviate some of the now-common litter that suddenly appears in either Titcomb Basin, Island Lake, Big Sandy Lake or at the Cirque of the Towers —the last places in the world that should have litter.
Of course, we know that the National Parks are under a different legal structure, so this is not applicable..
Additional permit guidance comes from our national parks. Grand Teton National Park utilizes a combination of an advancereservation system through Recreation.gov and a walk-up permit, which can be obtained from the Jenny Lake Ranger Station at a cost of $35.In terms of scenery, the most comparable spots to the Wind Rivers, where permit opponents often cite the range’s size as an excuse for lack of regulation, are in the Sierras and are often visited via a hike along the John Muir Trail, which stretches over 200 miles through Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. This hike also requires a permit, which often must be applied for 168 days in advance. Even then, the success rate for these permits hovers around 40% at the most popular times of year.
I thought it was interesting, though, that the author he would throw in that comparison.
Anyway, what is your experience with FLREA and various forms of charging individuals for recreation? Does it vary by Region, or Forest, or District???? Or perhaps there’s quite a bit of hassle and potential litigation that is off-putting given the many other challenges the FS faces?
I was the Recreation Officer on the Eldorado Forest at the time that we started charging a “parking” fee (not really a parking fee as that is not allowed) for some trailheads associated with the Desolation Wilderness. We had a focus group that we talked with to understand a variety of perspectives and concerns, which helped us to craft a fee for Day Use – we started an overnight permit fee at the same time. One issue with trailhead parking fees is that it will shift use patterns which may not be in the best interest of the land. Or having no fee in low use areas or areas away from impacted Wilderness areas can be a technique to encourage use in other areas.
It’s really intersting to me that that would shift use. I often visit a trailhead run by concessionaires, which with my Senior Pass is now $5.50 but it doesn’t really affect my choice of trails. I suspect our recreation researcher friends know a great deal about user choices.
Lucky you, Sharon, if paying a private concessionaire $5.50 while allowing them to disregard your federal senior pass doesn’t affect your choices. Others are not so sanguine. Personally, I find it infuriating.
From a FS research report on Fee Demo in 2000:
” . . . we find that a $5 daily fee for use of public lands would affect about 49% of low-income people as compared to 33% of high income respondents.”
Five years later a MS Candidate at U of WA did a similar survey on the other side of the country with nearly identical results. “Percent of ALL respondents saying they now visit public lands less often because of access fees 33%. Percent of low-income respondents saying access fees negatively impact their use of public lands 46%.”
So, yes, fees don’t deter everyone, but they do deter some people. I guess it depends on whether you see public lands as a public good, or as a profit center.
Please explain to me how charging a fee at a trailhead into backcountry is different from charging a fee for a dispersed, undeveloped area, which is prohibited under FLREA. Please explain to me how charging a trail fee (if it were legal) would solve the funding problem for trail maintenance, when fees for developed facilities that have been in place for 30 years have failed to solve that funding problem.
Access fees were a bad idea before Fee Demo, and the public rejection of them during Fee Demo demonstrated that. It’s why FLREA contains restrictions allowing fees only for use of developed facilities. Restrictions which the FS (and BLM, to be fair) have spent the last 20+ years finding ways to circumvent. Those various work-arounds of the law have had varying degrees of success, depending on local compliance, the outcome of litigation, and, frankly, how devious the local managers are. If there’s variability around the country that’s why. Discussed more fully in our 2015 white paper, User Fees For Federal Lands: A Failed Experiment.
https://www.westernslopenofee.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Fee_Policy_White_Paper.pdf
Kitty, would you explain why it’s OK for concessionaires to charge at trailheads and permittees (say the Pikes Peak folks) to charge for access but not the FS?
Because the court ruled they can when they were sued over it. It all hinged on one sentence in FLREA allowing a “third party” to charge for goods and services. The FS has used that as a get-out-of-jail-free card ever since.
https://www.westernslopenofee.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/44-Opinion.pdf
The comments from Kitty above are incorrect with regards to FLREA authorizing the FS to charge a fee at developed trailheads. That actually was the point of the law by Congress to allow the FS to generate some revenues from trail and trailhead users to help fund management of that recreation activity. In Colorado, the FS Is the only agency that generally is not charging trailhead fees, except for a limited number of trails. State parks, counties, and even CO Parks and Wildlife are charging to help fund maintenance or improvements of trails and trailhead facilities, and they charge significantly more than usual FS fees to date. The public has not rejected such user fees at FS trailheads where they are implemented. Only Western Slope No Fee Coalition has attempted to reject them, but the fee application has been upheld by courts when the FS properly provides required amenities.
Under the law, Something like 80% of the revenue is supposed to stay at the local FS units and be used for trail maintenance or other related improvements. These monies can and do fund trail crews where they are collected and where they are properly applied in good faith under the law. If the FS collected on a more widespread basis, many seasonal and permanent trail crew folks could be hired. Coincidentally, I drove by the Herman Gulch trailhead today west of Denver along I-70 on the Arapaho-Roosevelt NF and there were probably 400 cars parked (maybe more, hard to tell driving by on the interstate), but the ARNF largely does not charge any trailhead user fees. They do charge ‘entry fees’ at a few special areas. And concessionaires charge entry fees at the very popular Brainard Lake area on the ARNF but that is a different matter. That is THEIR fee that they have been authorized to collect in their concessionaire contract with the ARNF.
It is important to point out that the FS can choose what trailheads to charge at; they don’t have to charge at every trailhead. And in R6 forests, many trailheads have no fee, for example. Also, the Interagency America the Beautiful pass is accepted for the fee. As I noted above R6 forests have been charging for 30 years, as well as limited other locations that I am aware of. Under the law, they simply need to provide required amenities, such as vault toilet, info kiosk/sign board, trash collection, picnic table I believe in order to impose the fee.
The FS did abuse the law in a few places by attempting to charge fees for people simply parking along roads not near a trailhead within what they termed a “high use area”, but where they had not provided the required amenities. They lost in court over this at least once as they should have.
On high use forests such as the ARNF, collection of trail fees at most of the high-use trailheads ( this may be almost everywhere on Clear Creek and Boulder Districts for example) could likely generate very substantial monies to fund a lot of trail crews and maybe replace a vault toilet or improve or expand a trailhead parking area. But, the FS largely has not been utilizing this authorized funding mechanism for some reason. As noted in the WyoFile Op Ed above, I would also say I am dumb founded as to why they have not in a broader way across the FS. The trails and trailheads could be in much better condition.
Sharon’s question was why are concessionaires allowed to charge fees that the USFS is prohibited from charging. The court ruling I linked to answers that.
Back in the day, WSNFC was far from alone in objecting to trailhead fees, which are obviously a charge for general access to federal public land. The reason Fee Demo’s unrestricted fee authority was reined in by Congress in FLREA was because there was huge pushback from the public against it. But as soon as that wide-open authority was scaled back to require the presence of “amenities” in order to charge a fee, lo and behold amenities began springing up like wildflowers at trailheads that had never had a need for them before. The whole vibe shifted from public lands where everyone has access and is welcome to Build It And They Will Pay. A tragic loss.
Now that nearly two generations of Americans have grown up with the pay-to-play model of public lands management the level of outcry has quieted down, and with a lack of pressure from the citizenry Congress has lost interest. So although fee opponents won some important battles, we lost the war and I fully acknowledge that.
Glad to see the discussion generated on this subject and in the more recent post by Sharon. To be clear, I am only talking about charging fees at developed trailheads that meet the FLREAA standard amenities. In my hiking experience, Most trailheads that get any moderate or high use already have vault toilets and an info board/kiosk. Those are the 2 most costly items. My memory is that the original REA law also required those, but maybe added trash and “security”. I believe security is met by an LEO or even rec person driving by once in a while.
One challenge in CO for applying trailhead user fees, I was told by former fellow FS employees, was the requirement of a standing Recreation RAC group, which strangely CO couldn’t always muster. Strange to me because CO is such a huge recreation state, including National Forest lands. However, I was also told maybe 4 or 5 years ago that a Recreation RAC was no longer required, thus no longer a hurdle if that is correct.
Dale, I bet there’s some kind of story behind all that. I looked at the applications, and it kind of implied that you had to be a member of a group. There might be folks interested, but it might be a hassle to ask your group if you can officially represent them.
From my FS website overview, it looks like Region 9 and Region 8 were successful in having RACs. So maybe if there are no regions, there would be enough volunteers for one national RAC. I also wonder if there were some kind of spiral of doom… FS employees try to find people, finally find them, find out that the charter has expired so applications go nowhere, by then potential volunteer loses interest, meanwhile FS folks find it easier to give up on the idea of having fees at all.
Chat GPT’s answer was interesting.. https://chatgpt.com/share/6a3ae588-2f70-83ea-8b05-88fbe801cab6
Maybe SRS FACA committees filled in for RecRACs?
per ChatGPT: Colorado’s RRAC is still active.
Wrong. FLREA allows the governor of a state to opt his/her state out of the RecRAC system and Colorado did that quite a few years ago.
per Dale: Most trailheads that get any moderate or high use already have vault toilets and an info board/kiosk. Those are the 2 most costly items.
Wrong. Trash is the most costly item by far. Not the container, the servicing. A picnic table is also required, but that’s not a limiting factor; they just drop one in and walk away and no one ever uses it. The final two requirements, Security Services and Developed Parking are so vague as to be legally meaningless.
I didn’t mention parking because any trailhead that has a vault toilet and info board of course has developed parking already. Regarding trash, one of my previous forests that charged trailhead fees under FLREA simply had their rec employees swing by and pick it up. They did not pay a waste management corporation to drive out to trailheads, which likely would be costly.
I am not trying to say FLREA fee collection is the silver bullet to all trail and trailhead management, but it can only help with funding that is being reduced by Congress. When Congress passed the Rec Fee Demo program originally they went out of their way to say it was going to be additional monies and that it was not going to replace congressional appropriations. Well that turned out to be happy talk.
Dale, I interpret that as “best of intentions rhetoric” and take it as such. “it will only be additional to appropriations” or “if you host the Regional Pack Train, we’ll make your unit whole.” I’m sure others can think of examples… not to be taken seriously.
Dale you are absolutely right about the happy talk of fees not replacing congressional approps. Within a very short time we saw RDs that had jumped on the fee wagon get their regular funding cut by nearly identical amounts as their fee revenue. But it wasn’t Congress doing it. It was the higher echelon levels, Forest, Region, WO that were redirecting congressional funds elsewhere.
“I also wonder if there were some kind of spiral of doom… FS employees try to find people, finally find them, find out that the charter has expired so applications go nowhere, by then potential volunteer loses interest, meanwhile FS folks find it easier to give up on the idea of having fees at all.”
Nailed it – exactly the story of Regions 8 (last met 2018) and 9 (last met 2019). Except for the deciding to have no fees at all part. What they gave up on was trying to keep a standalone RecRAC alive. Instead, in the east, they started using SRS Title 2 RACs. In the western states they use either SRS RACs or BLM RACs. Those have very different member-selection criteria than what FLREA specifies and tend to be filled by people who are well-meaning but have very little interest or knowledge about FS recreation issues, so they just take their FS handlers’ word at face value and vote to approve anything presented to them. They treat fee proposals as an intrusion and annoyance because they take time away from their main mission.