Recreation

Hickenlooper Asks Feds if State Can Reopen Federal Highway

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This reminded me that the Park Service can charge for you to access a federal highway, Trail Ridge Road. So when the Park closes you can’t drive the road.

Had to call CDOT, and found this out. It’s always been interesting to me that the Park Service can charge for people to “simply drive the road.” Of course, it’s different legislation, but still seems odd. IMHO.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper is vowing to do everything he can to save Estes Park from a second economic hit, even if that means staffing part of Rocky Mountain National Park with state employees.

First it was the devastating floods that hit Estes Park and the surrounding roads, but now it’s the government shutdown that threatens to sink some small businesses for good.

Trail Ridge Road through the RNMP is one of the more popular routes to Estes Park. Since the park is closed, Trail Ridge is closed, cutting Estes Park off from the Front Range and tourists.

Wednesday afternoon. Sen. Michael Bennet sent a letter to President Barack Obama asking that Trail Ridge road through the RMNP be reopened.

“Estes Park is in the midst of a massive recovery and rebuilding effort following the historic flooding that Colorado experienced early last month,” Bennet wrote. “Reopening Trail Ridge Road, if only for a few weeks, would help that effort.”

and also from Hickenlooper..

“I have to talk to the department of transportation and I have to talk to the department of public safety, but I know those guys, they work for me, so they kind of have to say yes and they will,” Hickenlooper said. “We don’t have to open the whole park up. We just have to have Trail Ridge Road open.”

Take a Breath, See the Sights and Enjoy the Scenery

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With all the controversial crossfires going on, here, lately, and the angst that goes along with it, we need to be reminded that most of us want the same outcomes and benefits for our forests and public lands.

Let us take a small break here, and smell the ….. errr…. deer poop.

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My last trip to Yosemite, before the Rim Fire started, was to Tuolumne Meadows, a high elevation “Mecca” for enlightened Yosemite lovers. I’ve seen big bucks here before but I didn’t think there was such a big herd of these “muleys”, who migrate over the top of the Sierra Crest from the Mono Lake area. I had seen and “shot” about 20 nice bucks before I ran into this group. For the whole day, I saw almost 40 bucks, and some of them were rather tame. In all my years of working in the woods, in many different National Forests, in many different states, I’ve never seen such a rack on a buck. I’m not a hunter so, is a buck like this very common? I’m sure that “trophy hunters” wouldn’t hesitate to shoot this guy but, I prefer to “shoot” him, this way.

Rec-tech for a day: Misty Fiords by floatplane

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This is a guest post by Travis Bushman.. thanks for being so generous with your (furloughed) time to share these with us!

This is partially a meditation on the challenge of developed recreation on the Tongass, and partially an excuse to post some spectacular aerial photos of Misty Fiords.

The week before the furlough hit, I had a chance to get out of my third-floor office at the SO and get into the field — both to provide an extra pair of hands to the Ketchikan district recreation staff and to gain an understanding of the challenge they face in maintaining the Tongass’ developed recreation infrastructure.

Our day’s work plan involved making end-of-season visits to a number of recreation cabins in Misty Fiords National Monument. We’d be cleaning out garbage, hauling skiffs out of the lakes, inspecting facility conditions and documenting any urgent maintenance problems that would need attention before the winter hits. On any other district of any other national forest, this would likely involve two people getting a pickup truck out of the motor pool and spending the day driving around forest roads.

Not on the Tongass.

Rather, the three of us drove down to the docks and boarded a contract DHC-2 Beaver floatplane, which proceeded to hopscotch across the 2.3-million-acre monument, setting us down at eight lakeside rental cabins in breathtaking, almost-inaccessible settings. There is no way into any of these cabins except by floatplane or helicopter. Many of them are in designated wilderness and must be maintained without power tools. Cabin maintenance crews even split logs with a maul and wedge to provide fuel for those cabins which have wood stoves.

We returned after a full day in the monument with 13 full garbage bags, 11 empty propane cylinders and a couple broken fishing poles all loaded in the floats — and I brought back a new appreciation for the hard work of the cabin crews, whose numbers continue to dwindle.

That, and it hit home just how much it costs to do anything in Misty Fiords. This one trip to eight cabins — out of the ~150 the forest operates — cost about $3,000 just for the flight. Or, put in another way, we expended 125 nights of rental fees from a single cabin. That’s the cost of doing business in the 17-million-acre maze of islands and fjords that is the Tongass, and it’s an increasing challenge in an era of declining budgets.

Forest Service Closing Concessionaire Campgrounds

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Here’s a link to a story from New Hampshire NPR.

The shutdown of the federal government is expanding to include privately run campgrounds in national forests across the country, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service said late Thursday.

“We are in the process of shutting these operations down at facilities across the country due to the lapse in funding,” wrote spokesman Leo Kay in an e-mail. “Some closures have already taken place while others are still in progress.”

That is expected to include twenty-two campgrounds in The White Mountain National Forest operated by Pro Sports Inc. of Campton.

However Kent Tower, the owner of Pro Sports, said he has not yet been told to close and expects to be open this weekend. The campgrounds were scheduled to close October 14th.

The closings are unwarranted because the campgrounds are operated by private businesses that do not need federal help, said Marily Reese, the executive director of the National Forest Recreation Association. It represents about 150 companies nationwide that operate campgrounds in national forests.

“It is a huge impact to our business owners for this loss of business and it is just a heartbreaking, heartbreaking result for the public and there is really no reason because these sites don’t require federal funding,” she

She said the closing is puzzling because in previous shutdowns the campground operators were allowed to remain open.

U.S. Forest Service spokesman Kay said the decision to close campgrounds in the national forests is consistent with the closing of national parks but he declined to answer additional questions.

Sounds a bit confusing…perhaps the idea is that the overseers are not there so they can’t proceed? But how much overseeing is really done regularly, do we know? And plenty of other things are overseen that are not recreation, that aren’t closed down. If this goes on until mid-October ski areas will or will not be opening.

Dear FS, USDA or Whomever.. please have a logical explanation for what you shut down, share it with the public (your logic) and be consistent across the country. I ask in the name of Gifford Pinchot. Amen..

The Beaver Creek Fire

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The Beaver Creek Fire has burned over 90,000 acres of the Sawtooth National Forest. This is a view (from the top of Sun Valley Ski Area) of the land after the Castle Rock Fire, of 2007. The Beaver Creek Fire is burning up to and into the footprint of the old fire. As you can see, the fires here can jump around a lot, finding new “jackpots” of fuels, on the north-facing slopes. Some of the acres burned are grass and sagebrush, too. Yes, there ARE some VERY fancy homes in and around the town of Ketchum. Will this be the fire that burns down part of the community?

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Privatization vs. Insourcing

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Thanks to Kitty Benzar for this link … Below is an excerpt.

The most commonly reported reason for insourcing is inadequate service quality, followed by inadequate cost savings. Using 2002 and 2007 survey data from the International City/County Management Association, researchers examined why city managers decided to bring previously privatized services back in-house. In both years, the top reasons were problems with service quality and lack of cost savings when the service was privatized.

Of the local governments that insourced services, 61% said that the reason was a decline in service quality, while 52% said that there were insufficient cost savings.2 The researcher concluded that citizens prefer local services to be locally controlled and publicly delivered.3
Insourcing is a viable and popular option.

Research shows that from 2002 to 2007, the rates of outsourcing and insourcing among local governments were about equal. 11% of municipalities surveyed contracted out services previously performed by city employees, while 12% took contracted functions back in-house.4 Insourcing has also gained traction in the federal government, as agencies including the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Army, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Defense are increasingly bringing contractor jobs back to the public sector to successfully save money and reduce debt.

Insourcing creates good jobs, while saving money.

A recent study by the Project on Government Oversight showed that the federal government pays almost twice for contracted services than what it would cost if public workers performed the same job, even when accounting for the long-term employee benefits of federal workers. The study found that even though many public employees are paid higher salaries and receive better benefits than contractor employees, the lower compensation of the contractor employee was more than offset by the overhead, executive compensation, and profits that the contractor company charged the government.6 By bringing contracted functions back in-house, the government is often able to create good family-supporting jobs, while saving valuable taxpayer funds. For example, when the Department of Homeland Security insourced 200 previously contracted technology jobs, the agency was able to save $27 million that year not by lowering employee pay, but by cutting out the fees that they had to pay the private contractor.

In my experience, the desire to contract is more about ideology than reality. Plus it comes with the creation of separate lobbying needs.. remember Eisenhower and the “military industrial complex”? That’s how I feel about the risk of concessionaires.

I feel like using concessionaires for campgrounds is like being the pastor of a church and sending contractors to your flock’s bedsides when they are dying. When the public is with you camping or at other times, is the time to make a difference and really touch their lives (those folks who own our public lands). Even for kids at the campground be able to say “I want to work for the Forest Service, because they helped us, or I really learned from that ranger talk.. or ..” “I want to work in public service and wear a uniform with history.” All these things are very right-brained, but the important things in life are all that way (love, spirituality, art). Rearranging our lives around the apparently cheapest way to do things, regardless of implications to others, is not a compelling philosophy.

Our former RF would say that the Park Service has that right.. the brand, the uniform, the respect for people .. I would say presence is a sacred act, the most sacred to honor a person.

“Sustainable Recreation”: USDA /Forest Service Bites the Hand that Feeds Them?

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First, let’s go back to the Mike Dombeck quote I cited previously from this article in Forest History:

The most enduring and powerful maxim of business is that “money flows to things people want.” People want their cultural heritage protected, clean air and water, healthy forests and rangelands, good hunting and fishing, sustainable supplies of timber and forage, etc.

Actually, Mike’s only listing of recreation was hunting and fishing on this list, but recreation is clearly the #1 use of the national forests by people of the U.S. (and other countries).

Friday, I reviewed the history of the sustainability concept in various planning rules. In the 2012, a new concept hit the street. This is “sustainable recreation”. I know all of you who are specific and careful about words are wondering “what’s up with that?” doesn’t everything have to be sustainable? Why single out recreation to be called “sustainable recreation” every time?

Well, it’s not really clear but I guess it’s because there is an internal strategy/framework about “sustainable recreation.” Here is a link to a document about the strategy from 2010. The strategy is an easy read, and makes a great deal of sense. I thought it was well done, even though I’m not usually a fan of “strategies.” I didn’t find anything particularly novel, although I’d be interested in what readers of this blog think.

However, I wonder about the “sustainability” (ink, paper, electrons) of adding an extra word (sustainable) every time you write about one of the multiple uses in a regulation when it’s already required to be sustainable.

So let’s see how it is talked about in the 2012 Rule.

The final rule provides direction for sustainable recreation throughout the planning process. The final rule retains the term ‘‘sustainable recreation’’ to recognize that planning should identify, evaluate, and provide a set of recreational settings, opportunities and access for a range of uses, recognizing the need for that set to be sustainable over time.

Again, everything has to be sustainable so…??

Ah so now we encounter the Directives, let’s look at BRC’s comments:

E. The draft Handbook at 23.22b – “Sustainable Recreation Resources” and “Opportunities to Connect People with Nature” Does Not Properly Track the Rule

The draft Handbook inappropriately modifies the definition of Sustainable Recreation. Again, the Handbook contradicts the Rule, and whether intentionally or otherwise sets up the agency to fail the newly-configured duty to provide “sustainable recreation.” The Rule states: Sustainable recreation. The set of recreation settings and opportunities on the National Forest System that is ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable for present and future generations.
(36 CFR 219.19)

The draft Handbook modifies this definition here:
Plan components must provide for sustainable recreational settings, opportunities, and access. Sustainable recreation opportunities and settings are those that are economically, socially, and ecologically sustainable for the future. To be sustainable, the set of recreational settings and opportunities must be within the fiscal capability of the planning unit, be designed to address potential user conflicts among recreationists, and be compatible with other plan components including those components that provide for ecological sustainability.
(Chapter 20 at 23.22b Page 80 underline emphasis added) I

Ironically, the Rule’s definition of “sustainable” recreation troubled agency recreation staff, who proposed changes to the definition that they feared would “set the bar too high.” See email correspondence dated Oct. 13, 2011 (AR 0125036-0125039). The draft Handbook not only ignores but builds on these fears, again with the effect of creating an unnecessarily high burden.

Most, if not all, USFS Programs are not adequately funded. Indeed, the shortfall in the roads maintenance budget, and the trail maintenance backlog for trails in designated Wilderness, is well documented. The language here raises the concern that the agency may attempt to rely on lack of funding as an excuse for lack of effort and creativity in comprehensive recreational planning and motorized recreational travel planning specifically.

That’s the BRC point of view.. my point of view is … let’s call things as they are and not redefine commonly used expressions like sustainable, (or restoration, for that matter) to mean something different. It seems like you are trying to put something over on the public rather than clarifying your intentions and being transparent.

If the FS means ” there’s a great many multiple uses, but only recreation will be subject to the “fiscal capacity” test. I wouldn’t call that “sustainable” because it doesn’t have the same meaning as other uses of the term. I would call it “fiscally prudent” recreation approach. Other proposed terms are welcome in the comments. In English, are they thinking:

We fully recognize that recreation is the most popular to the citizens of the US who provide this funding. We also value our partnerships, volunteers and other ways (outlined in the Sustainable Recreation Framework).

But we are holding recreation to a higher standard than any other use, because ______.

I’m trying to understand how they would fill in the blank.

It seems to send a message “we’re not so sure we want you recreationists out there, despite all the partnerships and volunteering” which could ultimately be a funding death spiral. Not enough money, we’ll kick you out, you won’t want to fund the FS, therefore fewer people and shoddier facilities, so more will be kicked out..

As Mike Dombeck said above, “money flows to things people want.”

Or perhaps recreationists aren’t organized enough across the motorized and non-motorized spectra to resist, as oil and gas, timber or ranching might be, so they are an easy target for integrity- promotion? Or maybe it just sounded like a good idea to someone and was stuck in the directives randomly?

Maybe someone can shed some light on this.

Forest Budgets, Recreation and the Need for a Recreation-Oriented Service First

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Not surprisingly, FS budgets are down, and there are impacts, including to recreation.

Here’s one from the White River. On a scale of 1 to 10, this is probably an 8 in terms of information..
This is from the Aspen Times here. I think it would be interesting to have this much information on each forest.

As funding stands now, the White River will lose “somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million” in funding compared with last year, Fitzwilliams said. The funding for 19 national forests is decided by the Rocky Mountain Region headquarters in Lakewood.

Some decisions still are being made in the regional office that could affect the White River’s final budget for 2013, Fitzwilliams said. For example, some of the funds budgeted for the forests in the region weren’t spent in 2012, so there is a chance some of that will carry over to the 2013 budget. In addition, national forests across the country took funds out of programs to contribute to fire-fighting efforts last summer. Some of those funds also may be replaced.

The White River National Forest’s budget varies drastically from year to year. It had a $28.57 million total budget in 2010 with a huge caveat. About $10.6 million of that, 37 percent, was allocated specifically for projects to deal with bark-beetle destruction. Last year’s budget was about $22 million, Fitzwilliams said.

this is not counting sequestration, and

The major portion of the funds raised at the Maroon Bells will remain intact. The funds there are collected and spent under a program separate from the general operating budget.

“That’s fee money and that’s pretty sacred,” Fitzwilliams said.

Congress passed legislation that allows the Forest Service to charge a fee at areas that meet certain criteria. Those funds must be spent in the area where they are collected.

The Forest Service has collected between $100,000 and $200,000 each summer from visitors to the Maroon Bells Recreation Area since the fee was started in 2000. The agency charges $10 per vehicle and 50 cents on each bus ticket. Travel for personal vehicles is limited, so the buses take tens of thousands of visitors to the popular Maroon Lake. Fitzwilliams called the fee a “lifesaver” in a 2011 interview.

This story is at the other end of the budget in terms of what campgrounds are closed and the impacts to the environment (people aren’t going to stop “using the facilities” just because there are no facilities..and to other recreation-providing entities.

Here’s the link and below is an excerpt:

Pecos business operators are livid that the U.S. Forest Service has closed a campground, locked day-use toilets and taken away trash cans from popular recreation sites in the Pecos Canyon.

A Santa Fe National Forest spokesman says the problem is lack of funds to maintain the recreation sites.

The impact on the Pecos sites may be only the beginning. According to an initial fiscal year 2013 budget memo for the Santa Fe National Forest, recreational funding is trending down. The agency’s recreational budget was cut by about 8 percent — $166,000 — from the 2012 budget. “Without adequate funding to support program areas, the forest must set priorities as to which sites will open, and conversely which will remain closed,” the memo states.

Pecos residents say the agency shouldn’t make the Pecos Canyon low priority on the recreation funding list.

The Pecos Business Association and the Upper Pecos Watershed Association sent a letter Monday to New Mexico’s Congressional and state lawmakers and Gov. Susana Martinez about the closed recreation sites. The letter says their members met in mid-March with Pecos/Las Vegas District Ranger Steve Romero, who told them funds in the recreation budget were “insufficient to maintain services at existing recreation areas and that ‘potential’ closure of eight day-use areas, four campgrounds and one trailhead is planned for the new fiscal year.”

But the toilets already are locked and trash cans are gone from free day-use areas at Upper and Lower Dalton, Windy Bridge, Cowles Ponds and the Winsor trailhead, according to Huie Ley, owner of the Tererro General Store in the canyon. The Cowles and Links Tract campgrounds also are closed.

Finally, our friends in Southern California think “if there’s no budget, give it to the Park Service!” as we’ve discussed before..

Hmm.. if it works for the Angeles, why not the San Bernardino? Here..

NATIONAL FORESTS: Park Service offers a hand in the Angeles

Federal officials are proposing that the National Park Service help the U.S. Forest Service manage the very busy Angeles National Forest, which encompasses most of the San Gabriel Mountains stretching from the Cajon Pass to Los Angeles.

“Under the proposal, the region essentially would remain national forest land managed by the cash-strapped Forest Service. But it would draw upon the National Park Service for additional law enforcement, signage, trail maintenance and services such as trash pickup,” according to a story in the Los Angeles Times by Louis Sahagun.

Interestingly, Sahagun’s story said that more than 95 percent of public comments on the plan supported the idea of creating a National Recreation Area spanning the entire area, including the national forest land.

The San Bernardino National Forest suffers many of the same pressures as the Angeles, from vandalism and other crime to air pollution to illegal shooting and off-roading. Would the National Park Service be able to solve those problems? It will be interesting to watch what happens in our neighboring forest

Well potentially the FS and Park Service could work together to share resources in this tough budget climate but some think.. story here.

The only way the two federal agencies can work together in the Angeles is through an obscure program called Service First Authority. The NPS said this is one way to move some NPS park rangers into the heavily used Angeles Forest areas such as the East and West Fork of the San Gabriel River.

But Chu criticized this management proposal. “That is an unknown,” she said. “I don’t know if that has ever been used on a project of this scale. Visitors need – and deserve – additional resources in the San Gabriel Mountains and Watershed, and I intend to do my part to ensure that happens. ”

She will be hosting townhall meetings to allow the public to ask questions of the NPS, as well as roundtables with stakeholder groups, she said. No dates have been set for the additional meetings.

It doesn’t seem like an “obscure authority” to me, having seen it work with BLM extremely well in southern Colorado. I wonder if that is the journalist’s opinion, or the representative’s opinion. I don’t blame any representatives for doing their best to bring bucks to their forest, but discounting Service First out of hand does not seem fair either.

It makes sense for agencies to work together.. I am especially reminded since yesterday was tax day. If I were the new Interior Secretary, I would reinvigorate Service First in a serious way with the Forest Service, because giving pieces to the Park Service so they get more bucks depending on political clout doesn’t seem like good public administration.

Of course, if I were the Secretary I would ask them to stop doing studies and figure something out that minimized the need for political intervention and take the study money and give it to Mesa Verde for some decent fencing.

Visitors to public lands seek different experiences than in the past

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Here’s a link to an article by High Country News intern..Sarah Jane Keller.good article!

A couple of interesting perspectives

This desire to drive to the Oregon woods or coast to sleep on comfy beds in Mongolian-style tents is just one of the changing trends tracked by Chuck Frayer, recreation planner for Oregon and Washington’s national forests. “We’re starting to see a shift in use,” the 40-year veteran says. “It’s not like it was when I was a kid.”

After decades of growth, the number of people engaged in recreation outdoors and on public land began to level off or decline in the 1980s and 1990s (see graph below). People appear to have less time, money or desire to venture to the more remote and undeveloped public lands, so they increasingly seek out more convenient outdoor recreation.

A 2008 study funded by The Nature Conservancy with an ominous title — Evidence for a fundamental and pervasive shift away from nature-based recreation –– noted a recent decline in various activities, including national park visits, hunting and fishing license sales and camping. Similar studies, along with books like Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods, create the impression that Americans are hanging up their fishing rods and backpacks because they’d rather be glued to LCD screens than outside emulating Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir and Edward Abbey. Everything from the Internet and organized sports to the sagging economy and urbanization has been cited to explain the shifts in how often people visit public land, and what they do once they’re out there.

And…

The U.S. Forest Service doesn’t report such long-term trends because the agency has repeatedly changed its methods for counting visitors. But Robert Burns, an outdooor recreation researcher at West Virginia University who’s working with the agency’s new science-based monitoring system in Oregon and Washington, observes, “What we see in the West is that there are a lot of people traveling shorter distances and traveling for shorter periods of time. I see a decrease in national forest visitation to what we think of as traditional wilderness and deep-dark-forest kinds of settings.”
Ken Cordell, a leading recreation researcher in the Forest Service’s Southern Research Station in Georgia, also sees that the tastes of Americans are shifting, even as people continue to enjoy the outdoors. Based on telephone surveys, Cordell reports that from 2001 to 2009 “nature appreciation” activities — like watching or photographing birds and other wildlife — grew more rapidly than backcountry hiking, hunting and fishing. We’re still pursuing wildlife, but now we’re more likely to use digital cameras and binoculars. And recreation fads like kayaking and orienteering have some of the highest growth rates. Cordell and his research team also found that “walking for pleasure” and “family gatherings outdoors” are today’s most popular activities, enjoyed by about 85 percent and 74 percent of Americans, respectively.
Interpreting statistics is a complicated task, and the recent numbers indicate many different story lines. Late last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service reported that from 2006 to 2011, the number of hunters actually increased 9 percent — the first increase since 1975. However, well over half of hunters used private land exclusively — a worrisome trend for those concerned about public support for the concept of public lands.

Those rebounds don’t surprise Cordell, who believes recreation generally follows the economy’s ups and downs. Looking ahead, over the next 50 years, his studies predict an overall increase in outdoor recreation, with some activities growing more than others. Per capita participation in “visiting primitive areas,” hunting and fishing, off-road driving and snowmobiling will all decline, he predicts, while downhill skiing, snowboarding and climbing will have faster growth rates. “What people choose to do is going to continue to change,” says Cordell. “I think that’s a major point, because a
lot of our management folks have been pretty much focused on some of the traditional activities.”

What do our readers see in their neck of the woods? As I’ve written previously, I see a great deal of RV and dispersed camping and hiking, lots of ski area use, and lots of local use of open spaces.

We also seem to have many countervailing thoughts and views about recreation. One view is that recreation use is so important economically that it is primary (a la Headwaters study and OIA). The other is a worry about enough people recreating in the future to keep bucks going to our public lands. The next is that more people have more environmental impacts that need to be managed, when people are already concerned about impacts of people on wilderness areas and OHV use.