Rec.gov is like the weather, everyone complains about it, but no one does anything about it.
Thankfully, it has aroused the attention of at least one Senator. OTOH, he may be missing several boats… like the FS is only one user of Rec.gov.
I know Senate staff are very smart people and can use search engines, so it’s a bit puzzling.
Maybe Heinrich could work with the Chair on a bipartisan set of hearings to get at some of the issues? Congress could ask to take a look at the Booz-Allen books and maybe ask the Admin to get a team to look at other options, including moving it in-house to the USG. So many possibilities! But asking Chief Schultz to work on bots for a system the FS is one (probably unwilling) client of? Come on.
************
WASHINGTON – Last week, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, sent a letter to U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Chief Schultz demanding that the agency take action to address issues on the Recreation.gov permit and reservation system that threaten equitable access to public lands. Addressing these issues is particularly important as families across the country plan summer vacations and holiday trips to our nation’s public lands.
In the letter, Heinrich raises concern over reports of automated bot activity on the Recreation.gov website preventing individuals from obtaining permits and reservations to USFS sites.
“I write to request that the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) take direct and immediate action to address the publicly reported issues surrounding the Recreation.gov permit and reservation system, where bots appear to be rapidly securing permits and reservations at release times, shutting out the public and leaving campsites and river launches unused despite appearing fully booked,” the Senator began.
The Senator continued, “These reports raise serious concerns about the integrity, fairness, and oversight of a system that is supposed to ensure equitable access to public lands.”
Challenges surrounding the USFS permit and reservation system make it so only individuals with the resources or expertise to develop technical workarounds can gain access to recreational sites, undermining Congressional direction to increase fair and equal access to public lands.
The Senator concluded the letter by calling on Chief Shultz and USFS to establish oversight policy prohibiting automated bots to procure permits and reservations on Recreation.gov, prioritizing transparency, accountability, and equitable access to public lands for all Americans.
Read the full letter here and below:
Dear Chief Schultz:
I write to request that the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) take direct and immediate action to address the publicly reported issues surrounding the Recreation.gov permit and reservation system, where bots appear to be rapidly securing permits and reservations at release times, shutting out the public and leaving campsites and river launches unused despite appearing fully booked. These reports raise serious concerns about the integrity, fairness, and oversight of a system that is supposed to ensure equitable access to public lands.
As reported, individuals with the resources or expertise to develop technical workarounds can disproportionately secure access to limited permits and reservations on Recreation.gov. This dynamic undermines the intent of Congressional direction to increase recreation access on public lands. The current system, created and operated by contractors at Booz Allen Hamilton, appears to reward the most technologically advantaged with access to the most sought-after recreational sites and leaves many Americans without fair access to public lands.
In light of these ongoing challenges, I request that the USFS establish a clear policy prohibiting the use of automated systems, bots, or similar tools to procure permits or reservations on Recreation.gov. I stand ready to work with my colleagues in Congress to provide any additional statutory authority necessary to implement or enforce such a policy.
At a time when the outdoor recreation economy generates $351 million every day from activities on our public lands and waters, it is critical that the USFS prioritize addressing these systemic issues. The public deserves transparency, accountability, and a reservation system that allows them to spend their spare time on public lands connecting with the places that bring peace, joy, and solace.
I look forward to your timely response on this important matter.
***************
Here’s what the Rec.gov website says about bots:
A: The Recreation.gov platform does experience attempted bot activity; it is impossible not to given ever-evolving technology and advancements in AI. However, Recreation.gov has multiple defenses in place to detect, prevent, and mitigate the variety of bots that attempt to take advantage of the system. The primary targets of bot mitigation efforts are large-scale bot attacks on the stability of the site or bots seeking to capture multiple reservations. There is no evidence or examples of widespread abuse by bots across the platform impacting system stability, bots securing dozens of reservations, or bots securing reservations before they are released. While there are some individual reservations where basic user-written programs or more sophisticated bots may be helping a visitor secure a single reservation, this is not happening at a large scale and we are continually assessing and implementing new countermeasures and defenses to mitigate these bots when they are detected. Recreation.gov, and the program’s technology partner Booz Allen Hamilton, strive to implement industry-leading solutions and best practices for preventing bot activity while aiming to strike a balance between providing a frictionless user experience and deploying security measures to ensure access to all users.
A sign with a green two-way mixed use trail and no-bike alternate route at Floyd Hill Open Space in Evergreen, Colorado on Wednesday, June 17, 2026. The Denver area has a number of purpose built downhill only mountain bike trails. The Sluice is a black diamond downhill only at Floyd Hill and features a variety of alternate lines including a number of double black diamond rock drops and chunky lines. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
This story from the Denver Post is interesting because it talks about trail disagreements and compromises without the federal lands-specific kinds of issues and the question of how to enforce restrictions.
“We have been encouraging land managers that are managing trail systems to institute three basic principles of trail management: Designated use, directional controls and separation by speed,” Moore said. “Designated use is a trail built just for biking or just for hiking or a trail built for equestrian use. You’re going to have the best experience on a trail that is built for the way you want to enjoy it, whether you are a hiker, a biker, an equestrian.”
A solution is building more single-use trails. Perhaps that would run into environmental objections on federal land, but not so much on county land?
**************
When the Boulder County commissioners initiated a study to determine whether mountain bikes should be prohibited on select days and specific trails at two open space parks, the county’s legion of trailriders was aghast.
The county’s so-called alternating trail use pilot proposal, under study by Boulder County Parks & Open Space staff since April, stemmed from concerns that some hikers are uncomfortable sharing trails with mountain bikes. Alternating use would mean specific activities being allowed only on designated days or times on the same trail.
“It really felt like the mountain bike community was being targeted, explicitly and unnecessarily,” said Tim Stelzer, an avid mountain biker whose children participate in mountain bike teams. “We’re already dealing with such a scarcity of trail access in Boulder, so the idea of restricting even further was really kind of shocking.”
“We have deep concerns over this project because there is no bike-only trail in the entire county of Boulder,” added Wendy Sweet, executive director of the Boulder Mountainbike Alliance. “We don’t think the answer is alternating days on trails. We think the answer is building more trails, especially directional trails and bike-only trails.”
But the concept of shared trails isn’t new. For more than 20 years, Boulder County has imposed restrictions on mountain bikers at Betasso Preserve, located in the foothills west of Boulder. They are allowed five days a week but are prohibited on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Hikers, who have access seven days a week, like that arrangement.
“For folks like myself who are hiking, it’s much more pleasant on those days because we don’t have to step aside every five minutes for a bunch of bikes to come through. We don’t have to jump out of the way when a bike comes screaming around a corner unexpectedly,” said hiker Jeff Pistana. “I have a hard time sympathizing with bicyclists who complain about the policy there, because they get five days of unlimited riding and they only have to give up two.”
Sharing trails isn’t new in other parts of the state either. Over the past 10 years, open space managers in neighboring counties have worked to balance the competing interests of hikers and mountain bikers. Their solutions include the designation of biker-only trails and one-way directional trails on select shared-use trails. Some have also implemented alternating schedules for hikers and bikers. And in most cases, public officials say it has been working.
A decision regarding the Boulder County proposal to impose hiker-only days at the two open space areas, Heil Ranch and Hall Ranch, may be coming soon. After conducting surveys and public forums to gauge community sentiment, open space staff will present its findings to the commission on Tuesday.
“Our team is going through the data, balancing it with some of the direct feedback we hear from people, and trying to propose a couple of ideas and alternatives,” said open space director Jason Seuc. “We’re going to speak on a few different matters before the county commissioners. They may make a decision on the path forward.”
Mountain biking is on a roll
Boulder County has been an international mecca for endurance athletes, including elite distance runners, triathletes and cyclists, since the 1970s, and mountain bikers there have developed strong support networks and connections.
But other towns, cities and counties throughout the state know that attracting mountain bikers is good for their economies.
Steamboat Springs, Breckenridge, Crested Butte, the Grand Junction region and Durango are major magnets for the sport, while Idaho Springs, in partnership with the Colorado Mountain Bike Association, is developing a mountain park on a steep slope in Virginia Canyon, adjacent to the new Mighty Argo Cable Car gondola, with free trail access for mountain bikers and hikers.
Winter Park Resort transforms itself into a mountain biking playground each summer, attracting throngs who ride up the mountain with their bikes on the gondola or chairlifts, then take the plunge downhill on expensive bikes with full suspension shock absorption. Clear Creek County built a mountain bike park at Floyd Hill. The city of Blackhawk built one at Maryland Mountain.
Mountain biking is so important in Lyons, which is in Boulder County, that the board of trustees passed a resolution opposing the county’s alternating trail use proposal. Heil Ranch and Hall Ranch are located just south of town.
So it’s not surprising that 55% of the respondents in a survey conducted by Boulder County Open Space said mountain biking was their primary open space activity, as compared to 27% identifying as hikers or walkers. Overall, 75% of the respondents said they oppose or strongly oppose alternating trail use, while 8% support it and 10% strongly support it.
“The less opportunity we find for mountain bikers, people don’t say, ‘Aw, shucks, I’m going to take up pickleball now,’” the Boulder Mountainbike Alliance’s Sweet said. “They’re still going to ride.”
But Boulder County Commissioner Claire Levy said she has heard complaints from hikers since mountain bikers have come to dominate trail usage at Heil Park.
“Many hikers have said to me that it is not pleasant to hike on the narrow trails at Heil when you have to constantly be on the lookout for a fast-moving mountain bike coming towards you or gaining on you from behind,” Levy said. “The purpose of the project is to explore options for welcoming hikers back to the trails at Heil Valley Ranch.”
Traffic separation
Open space managers in Jefferson and Larimer counties have taken steps to address issues between hikers and mountain bikers on shared trails, mostly because trailriders move at significantly higher speeds, especially on downhills.
The mountain bike community lauds Jefferson County Open Space for leading the search for solutions.
“When it comes to managing conflict on trails created by heavy multi-use, we have seen quite a bit of that in the Denver metro, most famously Jefferson County Open Space,” said Gary Moore, executive director of the Colorado Mountain Bike Association.
Jeffco instituted an alternating-day system for trailriders and hikers more than a decade ago at Centennial Cone Park, 10 miles west of Golden in Clear Creek Canyon. Since then, it has designated biker-only trails at Matthews/Winters Park and White Ranch Park while instituting an alternating-use system at Apex Park.
More than 100 people turned out at a community meeting called by Jeffco Open Space in 2020 to explain the plan for Apex.
“A lot of them were cyclists, saying, ‘You’re taking this away from us on odd days?’” said Jeffco Open Space spokesman Matt Robbins. “This was met with a lot of caution when we first rolled it out. After a year’s time, we had no evidence that said this wasn’t going to work.”
Two years ago, Jeffco built a new biker-only trail on a steep, wooded, technical slope at Lair o’ the Bear Park near Evergreen.
“It’s been extremely popular,” COMBA’s Moore said of the Rutabaga Ride at Lair o’ the Bear. “The county heard more from hikers thanking them than they did from bikers, because their experience was so improved by having this separation of speed.”
Larimer County has taken a somewhat similar approach. It built a new trail for mountain bikers at Devil’s Backbone Park in 2016 to separate user groups in what had been a congested area near the trailhead. Four years later, a survey commissioned by the county found that 99% of the park’s visitors rated their experiences as good or excellent.
Clear Creek County designed the Floyd Hill Open Space with designated biking and hiking trails. The city of Blackhawk did the same at Maryland Mountain.
At the Virginia Canyon in Idaho Springs, a joint project between the city and COMBA, there is a four-mile climbing trail open to trailriders and hikers that rises 1,300 feet from base to summit.
“It is designed for the hiking experience, bi-directional, and for bikes, it’s uphill only,” COMBA’s Moore said. “Bikes and hikers go up together, but the bikes come down on (other) trails that are purpose-built, designated-use, directional-travel for bikes only.”
Compromise makes sense
Boulder County mountain bikers see what other open space managers are doing and wonder why it’s not happening there.
According to an analysis by the Boulder Mountainbike Alliance, there are 152 miles of mountain trails between Boulder County Parks & Space and the city of Boulder’s Open Space & Mountain Parks department. Only 67 miles, Sweet said, are open to bikes.
“We know from other areas that everybody has a better time on the trails when the trails are set up for good experiences,” Sweet said. “That includes things like (one-way) directional loops. And, when bikes are coming downhill, it’s more fun for everyone if they are not on the same trail (as hikers).”
COMBA has been pursuing solutions and advising open space planners in several counties for years.
“We have been encouraging land managers that are managing trail systems to institute three basic principles of trail management: Designated use, directional controls and separation by speed,” Moore said. “Designated use is a trail built just for biking or just for hiking or a trail built for equestrian use. You’re going to have the best experience on a trail that is built for the way you want to enjoy it, whether you are a hiker, a biker, an equestrian.”
For instance, he points out that at Apex Park near Golden, designated trails are open for bikes only on even-numbered calendar days, while hikers and equestrians are only allowed on odd-numbered days. On weekends at Centennial Cone, trailriders have access on even-number days, hikers and equestrians on odd-number days.
“I think that compromise, alternating days, has been a decent balance,” said Robbins, the open space spokesman. “We’re not anywhere close to where we want to be. We want to have more.”
Seuc has been the director of Boulder County Open Space since April 6, arriving shortly before the county commissioners announced their alternating trail use proposal. In his previous job, he was a diplomat based in Nepal as part of the U.S. Agency for International Development. He lost that job when the Trump Administration shut down USAID last year.
His diplomacy skills may well come in handy as Boulder County wrestles with its mountain bike issue. He understands the trail-riding community.
“I’m a mountain biker myself, and when I want to go down the trail, it would be great to go with some obstacles, some rocky sections with some fun chunky bits,” he said, using a trailrider term for highly technical sections filled with rocks, roots and ledges, “and not have in the back of my mind, ‘Gosh, I hope I don’t run into somebody.’”
He also understands the anxiety hikers can feel when sharing single-track trails with faster-moving mountain bikes.
“There are a lot that are really comfortable on the trails, but we then hear from members of the community who aren’t so comfortable,” Seuc said. “So it’s our job to try to figure out what that balance is.”
MESA COUNTY, Colo. — Federal wildland fire officials are releasing the identities of three firefighters who died while responding to the Knowles Fire in western Colorado on Saturday.
The firefighters were assigned to the Rifle Helitack crew and were engaged in initial attack operations on the Knowles Fire when the incident occurred.
The deceased firefighters have been identified as:
Emily Barker, 38, of Clinton Township, Michigan, assigned to the U.S. Forest Service Rifle Helitack.
Nick Hutcherson, 27 of Glendale, Arizona, assigned to the U.S. Forest Service Kaibab National Forest.
Sydney Watson, 27, of Warrior, Alabama, assigned to the U.S. Wildland Fire Service Rifle Helitack.
Two additional firefighters were injured during the incident and are receiving medical care.
The Snyder Fire has merged with the Jones Fire and subsequently overtook the Knowles and Gore fires. All fire activity is now being managed and reported as the Snyder Fire. The fire is currently estimated at over 28,000 acres along the Colorado-Utah border.
An interagency complex incident management team has assumed command of the Snyder Fire.
“We mourn the loss of three firefighters who answered the call to protect others and made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their fellow citizens,” said U.S. Wildland Fire Service Chief Brian Fennessy. “Our thoughts are with their families, loved ones, friends and crewmates as they face an unimaginable loss. These firefighters embodied the courage, professionalism and selflessness that define the wildland fire service. Please join me and my family in keeping our thoughts and prayers with the families of the fallen and our injured firefighters and their families.”
“This is an incredibly difficult moment for the entire wildland fire community,” said Forest Service Deputy Chief Sarah Fisher. “Our heavy hearts are with the families during this unimaginable time. We recognize the tremendous impact this loss has on them and are deeply grateful for the devotion their loved ones brought to our organizations. We will honor their memory with compassion and support as their selfless service and commitment create an enduring legacy.”
The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Wildland Fire Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service are closely coordinating response efforts and providing support to the families, coworkers and loved ones of those affected by this tragedy.
A serious accident investigation team has been mobilized and is reviewing the circumstances surrounding the incident.
The wildland firefighting community mourns the loss of these firefighters. Additional information will be released as it becomes available.
Sharon asked me to share more thoughts on the Recreation Fee program, so I pulled this possibly too-long remembrance together. This is a little bit about my experience with Recreation Fee Demonstration in those smoke-filled DC rooms from 2001-3.
I’ll lead with the famous Margaret Mead quote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” I couldn’t say it at the time, but Kitty Benzar and Robert Funkhouser and the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition, among others in opposition to recreation fees, made a meaningful impact on how FLREA developed. The Forest Service at the national level was listening, and so was Congress. I also want to thank Jim and Vladimir for their observations from the ground. I’m so glad they worked things out together.
In 2001 I went to DC from a ranger district in AZ to see how the sausage was made, and it nearly wrecked me!
Imagine arriving in DC in the 5th year of a grand experiment authorized by Congress to try out different kinds of recreation fees, with no objective goals other than to reduce deferred maintenance and improve the recreation experience.
I don’t have time to recount my whole experience, so I’m just going to cut and paste some parts of an oral history interview I did on my larger career for the National Museum of Forest History in 2023. Rec Fees were a small part of that interview.
In late 2000, I was working as a rec/lands/etc. staff officer on 3 consolidated ranger districts on the Kaibab National Forest. Here’s my introduction to recreation fees: “…it was kind of like the Wild West: experiment and see what works. And for us, we were south of Grand Canyon National Park, and it was a twenty-five-dollar entrance fee back then to get into the National Park. And we had this visitor center that we had created in Williams, and we started charging passes for the park, and we got to retain eighty percent of the park pass that we were selling as a convenience to people at our visitor center as they were heading up to the Grand Canyon. And then we got to keep all the money from our campgrounds too. And so, it was like, “Hey, this is a great deal and it’s not controversial. So, how hard could it be?” Right. [this was my reasoning for taking the job in DC]”
…” So, I took the Recreation Fee Demonstration [job], and I found out very quickly how incredibly controversial it was. And part of the reason for that controversy is that the Forest Service never set up a measure of how would we know it was successful? What would be some measures of our success? We just said, “Go out there and try a whole bunch of different things.” And every National Forest had their own ideas on how to charge for recreation. …All of the Southern California National Forests banded together and decided we’re going to have a de facto entrance fee. You cannot be on the National Forest without paying for a pass to be on the forest. And other places like Sedona, it would be certain trailheads that were just overrun, and they wanted to charge people at a trailhead….”
“…And it was very inconsistent. The public was running into signs saying, “You can’t park here without paying,” but there was no way to pay. And I just inherited kind of a nightmare. It was very much hated by almost all of the public. And the National Forests were like, “You can’t take my fees away. This is working for me. My measure of success is that I’m taking all of these receipts in, even if the public hates me, I’m getting finally money to keep the toilets clean or to put toilets in.” And I mean, I could do an entire interview about the mess that I inherited. And the first thing that I saw was that the agency itself was going to have to come to some kind of consistency on where and how we charge fees and make them fairer for the public. I always had a marketing perspective from the end user because I was one, out in the woods, and the hardest part was convincing our own agency leaders [I’m referring to Forest Supervisors and Regional Foresters here] to maybe give up on some of these ideas that they thought were successful in order to save the program.”
“…The very first thing that I did was have a trip out west to meet with all of the regional managers of the program to talk about the state of where we were. And I just had to find out how hard is this going to be? And I discovered very quickly that it was going to be really difficult for us to change into a more nationally consistent program. I had this “Locally Flexible, Nationally Consistent” mantra because the people who were making all the money on this recreation site weren’t seeing what was happening nationally and how it was not consistent. Like they weren’t accepting, at the time, there was a Golden Eagle Pass that the Park Service had, and we didn’t have a national pass, and that was something. So, there was consistency within the agency, but then there was consistency among the four agencies that were part of this program nationally.”
“…It was really the Forest Service that all the press was negative about our fee program. And there was a feeling that we were dragging down the Interior agencies and they badly wanted permanent authority. So, again, it was every year in the appropriations bill that they reauthorized us to do this. So, every single year we were involved in the appropriation process to try to get this authorizing language carried over, and then they’d want to keep adding little bits to it. And right when I got there, the purpose of my job was to work with Interior to develop permanent fee legislation. And so, we had to get our agency act together before we could work with the Interior agencies to bring a bill up to the Hill. And I don’t know how I got through those first couple years. It was very challenging, but I think I pulled it off in the end because we ended up getting permanent legislation.” [I’ll interject here that DOI’s Lynn Scarlett was very supportive of keeping the FS in the program.]
“… And part of that was starting with this—we came up with a blueprint, what we called “the blueprint” for rec fees in my first year there. And a lot of that was a result of working with Congress. There was a couple of Republican congressmen, one from Colorado [Scott McInnis and his staffer Josh Penry], … he was instrumental. He and his staffers, they said, “Look, this is what we’ve seen in this experiment. These are the principles that we think might make it acceptable.” So, they helped me. They were kind of the bad guys [to my FS folks]. They said, “Look, we’re not going to authorize this unless you meet these criteria: consistency, value for the visitor. You can’t charge people just to park on a National Forest. You can’t charge entrance fees to enter a National Forest.” So, there were some principles that they had outlined that I had to bring to the agency and say, “Look, this is reality, guys. Legislation is the art of the possible, and it is not going to be possible to get legislation with what you guys are doing out here.” That helped me a lot….”
I want to say here that Representative McInnis (and staffer Josh Penry) showed real leadership in grabbing this thorny issue and developing what seemed to be reasonable principles that the FS had to adhere to in order to get fee authority. It ended up with some rather unwieldy legislative language, including the very exacting list of amenities required at fee sites. This reflected a lack of trust in the FS, and in my opinion, it was well founded. We also missed out on the ability to charge fees for larger areas that had a cluster of recreation sites, like the Coronado’s Mount Lemmon Highway into the Catalinas, which had a single controlled access point like an entrance station. My interview continued after I went into a diversion about the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks, with this story about the new national pass…
“… It was maybe later that fall or that winter (2002)—the Interior and Agriculture agencies and our attorneys were literally writing the legislation for new recreation fees. We were going to do away with the old Golden Eagle Pass, because that was only good for the Park Service. So, there had to be a new interagency public lands pass that you could use on National Forests, BLM, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Park Service. And we were like, “Okay, it’s going to be called the ‘Federal Lands Recreation Pass,’ but that’s too wordy. Can’t be ‘The Golden Eagle,’ that’s no longer authorized.” It was going to replace the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act. So, this was a pretty big deal, authorizing all of the recreation fees that could be charged on public lands. So, somebody said, I don’t know who it was—I could lie and say it was me—but somebody said, “Well, how about the ‘America the Beautiful Pass?’” And that’s why your pass today is the America the Beautiful Pass—that got written into legislation. So, it was as a result of 9/11 and that moment of national unity” [because everyone was singing that song at the time]….
“… We didn’t get into the nitpicky details [of how to divvy up the funds] at the national level. With the National Forest or Park, you could get into those little nitpicky things. We were like, “No, it’s wherever it’s sold”. And then we started being able to sell them by mail, like virtually. But no, we didn’t get into that. [Apologies to the folks on the ground, but you did figure out income distribution, and this was part of the “local flexibility” that seemed to work.]
“… I was always trying to think of, “How can I simplify this?” And I came up with “The ABCs of Recreation Fees.” “A” was accountability: that we were to be accountable to the public on how and where we spent their money. So, there would always be information on where their extra fee went to. “B” was benefits: that you would see the benefit of your extra money that you paid. You would see that it got me security at the trailhead, or it got me a new restroom or a better trail. And “C” was convenience: that it would be convenient to buy these. And it was that convenience part that we really had to work on because I wanted that pass to be accepted in as many places as possible. And what happened was we had these concessionaires that we had contracts with that predated this, and people were taking their passes and expecting them to be good at these day use areas that were under contract with third parties. And part of the contract was, “No, we don’t accept these passes.” [and that’s still the case].”
To wrap up all these memories, as I’m explaining all of this, the interviewer, Dr. James Wall, who might be in his forties said:
“Wall: “This is blowing my mind. I’m sorry. So, until 1996, you never paid a fee to go onto the National Forest. You would pay to camp probably.
Teri Cleeland: I love this. I love that you’re saying that [laughs] because that means that we were successful in our transition toward having some visitor fees.
James Wall: I’ve never known any other reality and they do a lot of good things now with the passes and stuff. I always have a pass every year. The America the Beautiful Pass.”
End of interview excerpts.
When I became eligible for the senior discount America the Beautiful Pass, I made sure to buy it from that little Kaibab NF ranger district office that I left to go to DC. They deserved the 80 percent!
In 2003, I followed the siren call of promotion to the Legislative Affairs staff, where I stayed until 2009. I got to celebrate the passage of the first 10-year authorization of FLREA. It was quite an accomplishment. But I much more enjoyed working on other legislation: lands, wilderness, partnerships, heritage, tribal relations. We got a lot of good work done in those days when we had a functional Congress.
It’s interesting to see the program from afar, and as a consumer, I’m pretty pleased with how it’s turned out. The funds have brought meaningful improvements to a lot of places. Of course, there are still problems everywhere and some things like the RACs that didn’t work out. That whole thing was a political compromise that seemed unwieldy from the start. I experienced that as a deputy forest supervisor when I had my own RAC for some pretty minor rec fee sites in Florida. We certainly weren’t raking in the dough on our OHV trails and other day use areas. We always had to subsidize fee sites with appropriated dollars.
Thanks for the link to the annual report. It looks to me like the revenues for the Forest Service are still a small portion of the recreation budget. Twenty years ago it was around 10% of the budget or somewhere around 30 million, now it’s 85 million. For lots of reasons, it costs a lot of money to provide quality recreation amenities. And the FS has a really hard time closing recreation sites. There was a concerted effort in Region 8 to assess low performing sites with high deferred maintenance. But when it came time to close some, there was always a constituency group calling their congressperson. We also got into real trouble building multiple visitor centers on Mount St. Helens. All the congressionals want to be at the ribbon cutting but not fund operations.
Rec Fees came about as a result of the loss of the big timber program, which subsidized a lot of other programs. Road maintenance, for example, was no longer paid for by timber receipts. Then fire rose after the big fires that started with climate change around 2000, and because of the 10-year average the fire budget kept creeping up to a larger and larger share of the overall budget squeezing out recreation and other programs. The recreation program was running just to stand still. Some couldn’t even handle volunteers or grants because we just couldn’t keep up with the field work. Toilets don’t clean themselves!
The National Forests have been overrun again in the Covid and post Covid era, and then DOGE came along and just decimated the recreation staffing. Now with reorganization and ever-consuming fire seasons, there isn’t much attention being given to the recreation resource. I’m hopeful that some good will come with downsizing the overhead above the Forest level, but it will take some time for that to settle out. I’m on the NASFR recreation committee and we’re in hiatus now. There was some internal effort in the waning days of the Biden administration to refocus on recreation, but they didn’t get past listening sessions before the DOGE shock came.
Rec Fees play a crucial role in helping to close the funding gap, but as we predicted back when, they will never supplant appropriated funds. I wish that Congress and the Administration valued public lands recreation as much as I do. But they just don’t and never will. I believe that the worst fears of the opponents have not been realized, nor the greatest hopes of the proponents.
I only hope that American’s love for their public lands will prevail and that these lands will continue to be a place of joy and wonder for generations to come.
I don’t have the full article ($), but here’s an excerpt (thanks to Nick Smith, who included the link in today’s Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities email.
An environmental group’s lawsuit filed Wednesday aims to invalidate decades of logging projects, oil and gas leasing, and numerous other federal land management decisions made over the last 30 years because the federal land plans they were conducted under weren’t submitted to Congress.
Cascadia Wildlands’ lawsuit challenges two Oregon federal land management plans finalized by the Bureau of Land Management since the Congressional Review Act was enacted in 1996. The plans, which were never submitted to Congress for review, authorized logging projects the group says harm wildlife.
The group filed the lawsuit after Congress last year, for the first time in history, began using the CRA to scrap BLM land management plans disfavored by congressional Republicans, including plans for Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, and North Dakota.
The Government Accountability Office in 2025 declared the plans are rules under the Administrative Procedure Act. This gives lawmakers the ability to disapprove of them under the CRA, which requires rules to be submitted to Congress before taking effect.
Land plans were never considered rules prior to 2025, and those that took effect between 1996 and 2025 have never been submitted to Congress. Cascadia Wildlands says Congress’ use of the CRA to scrap the plans invalidates countless public lands management decisions made since the CRA became law.
“If land management plans are subject to the CRA, then no land management plan adopted after 1996 is in effect unless and until it has been submitted to Congress,” Cascadia Wildlands and its legal representation, Susan Jane Brown, an attorney for nonprofit law firm Silvix Resources, said in a statement.
“We used to be able to release specifics about serious accidents and incidents,” complains an employee of the National Park Service who has asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. “Now we can’t release any demographics or specifics, just say, ‘the NPS responded to a serious incident’ with no other details. Which basically makes everyone who has someone visiting the park thinking their loved one has died.”
The below are my thoughts on the E&E News piece Steve W. posted. Many of us remember happenings during the Clinton Administration. Perhaps that was so long ago, it is not worth mentioning. But to be picky about words, “unprecedented” has a meaning that is not “rarely”.
I”ve written about the different ways in which workers can be considered to be “political.” Let’s break down some distinctions..and maybe there are more? What kind of appointment are they on? Where are their offices/cubicles located (NRE or Yates building or both)? What are they actually doing in terms of day-to-day activities? Most of these things are difficult or impossible to tell from the outside. At least when I worked in the Yates Building during the Clinton and Bush Admin, I could see new people roaming the hallways, and some had offices in the building. I used to think that the best test was “do they leave when the party in power changes?”, which would fit folks in SES who are hired under one Admin and leave at the next one, but they are not formal “political appointees.” Think of Doug Vilsack for example, BLM State Director in Colorado (and son of Sec. of Ag. Vilsack) who came over from the State DNR and left after the election. I guess technically not political, but certainly there’s a bit of a political vibe there.
If I were going to look at a couple of vectors, I’d look at “how did you get in Federal Service?”
Anyway, there was general interest when the two new senior advisors were appointed and I wrote about it here last fall. I even read Verhayen’s book and wrote about it.
So what are the new items of interest about these folks that led to this story? Let’s look at the headline and tagline and think a little deeper.
Political hires break with tradition at the Forest Service
By bringing political appointees to the Forest Service, the Trump administration puts accountability to the White House at the top of the agency’s agenda.
But wouldn’t that be true of any Admin who puts political appointees in the Yates Building? Like I have mentioned previously, during the Obama Admin, I was told to visit a public affairs person seated in the corner of 4NW- the Chief’s Office area. Was this person a “political appointee”? Or just concerned about general alignment with “the Department”? Who knows? And does it work the other way? Generally in the past, FS detailees were often found doing important work at NRE. I think the career/political connections are actually more complex that perhaps is visible from the outside. Much seems to depend on mutual trust or lack thereof.
Anyway, remember the retardant issue during the Biden Administration, where the Sec of Ag was apparently overruled by a person at CEQ.. that also put “accountability to the White House at the top of the Department’s agenda” but wasn’t actually framed that way in any news I saw at the time.
Former Forest Service officials said it’s unusual if not unheard of for the agency’s chief to both manage and be managed by political appointees.
There have always been appointees around, as far as I know. And the Undersec is a political appointee, so of course any Chief is managed by political appointees. They can even get rid of Chiefs they don’t appreciate. So we are left with “it is unusual for chiefs to manage political appointees”- do these “former Forest Service officials” not remember Chris Wood (who worked for Chief Dombeck). Mark Gaede was often seen in the Yates building also; and his views seemed to be taken seriously, and he wasn’t a career person- was he a political appointee? Without looking at his paperwork, how would we know? It may be unusual but definitely not “unheard of.”
The arrangement is a reflection, they said, of the Trump administration’s desire to exert more control over the forest agency, steer it toward greater timber production and make it look more like the Bureau of Land Management, which is led by a Senate-confirmed political appointee and has wider policy swings when White House administrations change.
There are many actors within the Trump Admin with decidedly different goals. I suspect that these unnamed FS retirees don’t know any more than the rest of us about intentions of an Admin. And as I’ve said before, as far as I can tell, western R’s are not very happy with the wide policy swings of the BLM. Yes, there are weirdly ideological people in the Admin (as in every Admin I’ve worked with) but will they win out?
Tidwell and others are mourning what they see as the potential end of a professional forestry staffer atop the 30,000-employee Forest Service.
This is a little confusing in terms of wording, also, and I think elides two different concepts. There is “a career fed” vs. a “forestry professional”. Some of you may remember the drama when Max Peterson became Chief…(an engineer!). Or even Mike Dombeck (a fish bio!) or Jack Ward Thomas (a wildlife.. researcher!). These people were all career feds, although let’s be honest, every Chief has to align with Admin priorities or they will find themselves sidelined or mistreated in various forms. I remember our RLT being told about various annoying things that had happened to a Chief, and I remember thinking “if I were Chief X, I would just quit, that’s obviously what they want.”
There is a view that given all that alignment, it’s more honest in a way to have a “real” political person at the helm. I don’t share that view, but it exists, and way predates the Trump Admin, as it was a topic of discussion when Chief Thomas was chosen.
“The Forest Service was established under the principle that no political appointees would enter that agency,” Miller said. While there’s always been political pressure applied, he said, the Forest Service was built to resist it — including by having a chief whose term lasted from one administration into the next.
None would enter, or none would become Chief? Because they have been entering for awhile. And Chiefs have been removed and replaced if the new Admin does not prefer them. And many of us may remember a Chief being moved out to a different position in the Department, housed in the basement of the South Building. I could even find that in Google AI when I asked specifically about the Chief and the basement (you definitely have to ask specific questions):
This administrative move stemmed from the Clinton Administration’s push to accelerate reforms and environmental policy shifts within the agency, particularly concerning timber management in the Pacific Northwest. The reassignment was essentially a transfer to a “departmental” status rather than a literal relocation to an office in a basement, though historically, some Forest Service units or reassigned staff were housed in the basement of the USDA South Building
Back to the story:
Those reassurances don’t fully convince Kevin Hood, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics and himself a former Forest Service manager. While those jobs may not be filled with political appointees now or ever, Hood said, the posts could have been advertised instead as SES “career-reserved” to dull any suggestions of political influence.
I dug into the details of the process in this post. My sources tell me most of the applicants are career folks, so that’s good.
Putting political appointees in senior roles at the Forest Service could test the chain of command, said Steve Ellis, a retired Forest Service official who retired as deputy director, the top career job, at BLM. The danger, he said, is that people in those roles could call local forest managers directly rather than working through the chief, an exercise in political influence that’s new to the Forest Service.
Again, those of us who remember the Clinton Admin remember that very thing happening with regard to specific projects on Forests not desired by Admin friends who happened to live nearby. So this can happen even if politicals stay housed at NRE (in the USDA building, or wherever they are now.). If they want to reach down, it doesn’t seem to matter what office they are in.
Another interesting quote was from Mary Jo Rugwell of the Public Lands Foundation:
Whether they’re political hires or not, state directors may be more accountable to governors than the Forest Service’s regional foresters have been.
“You have to develop a close working relationship. That governor needs to trust you,” Rugwell said.
The connection can grow distant, Rugwell said, when political officials in Washington wield too much influence.
Rugwell said that from what she could see, during the Biden administration local officials too often didn’t have the authority to make their own decisions. “It was driven from above,” she said.
So even where there are state directors, as with the BLM, their decisions can be overruled from DC. At the same time, some groups are afraid that having State Directors gives too much power to States. And yet, we saw several instances during the last Admin when State Directors were left out of the loop, and the wishes of governors overridden by Biden Admin appointees. So perhaps State Directors are not threats to federal decisions as some groups’ talking points have made them out to be.
Fire, Discernment, and the Collapse of Distinction
Something is wrong with fire in America. Not the fire that has always existed — the lightning strike on a dry ridge, the creeping ground fire that clears understory and opens cones and moves the way fire has always moved through a living landscape. That fire belongs here. What is wrong is something harder to name, and that difficulty is part of the problem.
Fire is growing. Not just in acres, but in behavior — in heat, in speed, in the way it consumes things it was never meant to consume. And the story we keep being given — drought, climate, fuel load, bad luck — doesn’t fully account for what experienced firefighters, foresters, ranchers, and long-time land stewards are actually seeing on the ground. Something else is happening. The question is whether we still have the capacity to see it.
AN ANCIENT WARNING
In the book of Leviticus, two priests named Nadab and Abihu bring what the text calls “strange fire” into the sanctuary — fire that was unauthorized, severed from its rightful source, brought into sacred space where it had no business being. They die for it. The consequence is severe, and the sequence of what follows matters: God immediately speaks of the need to distinguish between the holy and the profane, the clean and the unclean. The warning about strange fire is inseparable from the collapse of discernment that makes such fire possible.
The Hebrew behind the phrase carries the sense of something foreign, forbidden, altered from its rightful origin, and brought improperly near to what is sacred. This is not a warning about fire’s existence. Fire already belonged at the altar. Fire could warm, illuminate, refine, and purify. The danger was fire severed from its source and invoked where it was never meant to go. Introducing the profane to the sacred is a line that may not be crossed without grave consequence.
That ancient framework is not merely religious. It is a framework of discernment — one that applies anywhere human beings are responsible for distinguishing between what is authentic and what is counterfeit, what is natural and what is manipulated, what originates from rightful order and what has been profaned. The biblical word for profanation is important: it describes the corruption or inversion of something originally designed to sustain life, turned on its head — and nobody notices.
NOT ALL FIRE IS THE SAME
Modern society increasingly speaks of wildfire as a single category — natural, inevitable, in some ecologies even beneficial. And some of it is. Fire has always been part of the created order. But anyone who has spent real time around forests, prescribed burns, indigenous fire stewardship, or historical fire ecology knows intuitively that not all fire behaves the same way or produces the same results. It doesn’t take a forensic analysis to distinguish between the profane and the sacred. It takes only a measure of discernment.
The scale, intensity, and thermal behavior of many fires today are tied not just to what is growing on the land, but to what has been introduced into it: synthetic materials, utility infrastructure, lithium storage systems, plastics, industrial corridors, and expanding development. A fire moving through a living forest watershed is not the same phenomenon as a fire moving through a utility corridor or a landscape saturated with modern construction materials. But we call them both wildfire. That collapse of distinction is itself dangerous.
More troubling still is what happens when fire is no longer even primarily ecological — when it becomes institutional. Across much of the American West, fires are now planned, managed, and expanded within pre-scribed and carefully planned operational boundaries called PODs — Potential Operational Delineations. These are not maps of what nature does. They are maps of what agencies decide. Within this framework, more acres burned means more funding. Larger fires generate secondary and tertiary contracts for “restoration” work that almost never produce thriving forests, restored biospheres or health watersheds, but reliably produce an explosion of highly flammable thorns, thistles… and another healthy budget cycle.
The incentive structure does not reward fire that stays small and ecologically appropriate. It rewards fire that grows to scale in keeping with the million acres per year quota for “treatment” across almost every state in the West.
This is strange fire in the most literal sense. It is fire brought into sacred terrain under an unauthorized mandate — not the mandate of the created order, but the mandate of institutional economics. There is no room within the sacred framework of fire for managed burn perimeters drawn to maximize reimbursable acres. That is not stewardship. That is profanation.
THE QUESTIONS WE HAVE STOPPED ASKING
If discernment is to recover any role in how we understand and mitigate fire, we have to start asking different questions. The current framework begins and ends with scale: How many acres? How many structures? Those numbers drive the headlines, the reimbursements, and the after-action reports. But they are the wrong first question.
What was the ignition source — and who or what initiated it? What fuels were present, and how did they get there? Was the fire behavior consistent with the landscape’s historical patterns, or did experienced people on the ground recognize something else driving the fire? Was the perimeter shaped by ecology, or by an operational boundary drawn in advance? What institutional and financial incentives governed how the fire was managed — and whether it was allowed to grow?
These questions are not paranoid. They are the basic questions of accountability. And the fact that they are rarely asked — that the default narrative absorbs catastrophic fires into the category of natural disaster without examining the human systems layered around them — is precisely the condition the ancient text warned about. When the priests stopped distinguishing between holy and profane, the land suffered. So did the people. And in time, they lost the ability to tell the difference at all.
LIFTING THE VEIL
The deepest issue here is not fire. It is perception. Modern wildfire is increasingly presented as a singular story — climate, drought, heat, wind. But beneath the visible landscape is another reality: infrastructure, institutional policy, financial incentives, pre-planned operational frameworks, and forms of human intervention so embedded in how fires are managed that many people no longer recognize them as separate from nature itself.
When categories collapse, accountability disappears with them. Everything becomes an act of God. Everything becomes inevitable. And the harder, more truthful questions never get asked.
Fire has always existed. That is not the question. The question — the one that demands courage to ask, scientifically, morally, institutionally, and yes, spiritually — is what kind of fire we are actually looking at.
And then what we are going to do about it.
Dana Tibbitts
Dana Tibbitts is an author and investigative journalist specializing in wildfire risk, evacuation safety, and government accountability. Shis co-founder of the Tahoe East Shore Alliance and serves on the Board of the National Wildfire Alliance. Dana is also co-author of Harnessing the Sky.
We are a bit in the weeds about overtime regulations for federal employees, contractors, concessionaires and ski area employees, but that reminded me a bit of a broader look I ran across earlier today..the author thinks that proceduralism is somewhat necessary, but well-intentioned government mandates not so much.
And the author doesn’t even get to the point that we can see- agency co-evolution in response. In the FS case, hiring and contracting rules encouraged the agency to issue grants instead, without apparent competition or transparent forms of oversight.
Today, a new movement has identified a different problem with government in America. The issue for these reformers is not that the public sector is too big or too small, but that it increasingly lacks what is known as “state capacity.”
State capacity is best understood as the ability of the government to accomplish its goals efficiently. Thus far, state-capacity reformers have focused on removing the burdensome procedures government has placed on its own operations, from extensive public-outreach requirements to excessive lawsuit opportunities. Such reforms are necessary. And yet, due to the democratic nature of our system and its separation of powers, some amount of procedure is inevitable, even desirable. Thus, improving state capacity in America cannot involve simply minimizing procedure.
There is, however, another significant reason for state capacity’s atrophy: The federal government has placed many mandates on its own operations that it could never impose on society at large, from compulsory unionized workforces to affirmative-action goals to “Buy American” requirements. Whatever the value of such mandates, there is no principled reason the government should force more of them on itself than it does on private citizens and companies.
The best means of improving state capacity is to stop the government from attempting to serve as a putative model for the rest of society by imposing mandates on itself. To push back against this sort of vanguardism, state-capacity reformers should work to establish a rule of equal treatment for government and private-sector projects, whereby regulators should not impose mandates on government that it does not impose on the private sector. Such a rule would sidestep debates about the value of any particular goal while improving government’s core competencies. They should also oppose federal attempts to force state and local governments to act as vanguards when they receive federal funds.
***********
The frequency with which the executive levies mandates on government operations poses a challenge for those in the state-capacity movement who want to centralize power in the executive branch and enable it to act with more limited legislative and judicial input: Historically, the executive branch has been more prone to using its authority to adopt mandates than to eliminate them.
Passing either a legislative or an executive mandate on the public sector is easier than forcing mandates on the private sector. The costs of interest-group handouts on government projects are spread throughout the system and end up being borne by taxpayers or consumers of public goods. Most private-sector regulations, by contrast, burden a distinct business or other constituency. The relative ease of adding public-sector mandates through the executive or the legislature is the core reason they proliferate.
Each public-sector mandate brings its own apologists, but almost all of their advocates share the conviction that government can become a model for the rest of society. Politicians hope that if the public sector demonstrates the value of well-paid union jobs, paid family leave, purchasing goods domestically, environmental and historical sensitivity, affirmative action toward minorities, and so forth, it will become a sort of vanguard of the social order, showing the private sector and other policymakers what a better workplace and society should look like.
The phrase public officials often use when pushing the state to act as a vanguard is that the government should “lead by example.” President Barack Obama said in a 2011 executive order that he wanted the government to “lead by example” by promoting diversity and inclusion in the federal workforce. The 2020 Democratic Party Platform pledged to “lead by example” by transitioning public-sector fleets at the federal, state, and local levels to zero-emission vehicles. The Biden administration announced in 2024 that it wanted to “lead by example” in achieving net-zero emissions in federal buildings by 2045. Senators and representatives, too, have argued the government should “lead by example” through domestic-purchase requirements in an effort to re-shore manufacturing. State and local officials are not immune from this sort of rhetoric, either. Former New York City mayor Eric Adams said that he wanted to “lead by example” in securing government contracts that mandated hiring in low-income districts and unionization.
But such efforts are foolhardy. The vast bulk of the innovation that has improved Americans’ health, welfare, and prosperity came from the efforts of private citizens, businesses, and civil society, all of which acted freely to address problems they saw in their communities. They already have all the incentives and wherewithal to find out what works best for them, while the government, especially when acting as an employer, contractor, or general funder, does not. Thus, there is little to be gained and much to be lost from following the government’s example.
Whatever the virtue of a particular mandate, there is no ju
