<< Back 7/3/02 Fee program a bad idea for public lands By Gene Messick What is Fee-Demo? It’s a plan to charge us American taxpayers for use of what we already own. The Recreation Fee Demonstration program is a plan to charge you and me to walk, park, visit, or otherwise use public lands managed for us by the federal government: National Parks and Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish & Wildlife lands. The fee is claimed to be nominal now, to get the plan through. But the grand plan is to commercialize and privatize public recreation so there is little difference between paying to go to a public park or to a private theme park. Who wants Fee-Demo? Members of the American Recreation Coalition, a highly funded lobbying group that has been working for years to convert our public lands into their private profit generators. And they are close to succeeding. But what pours out of the belly of their Trojan Horse is not what they promise us. They claim money is kept locally to help improve recreation areas. But up to 50 percent of fees collected are reported to be used to build new collection centers, hire fee takers, employ enforcement officers, and prosecute offenders. A restful day in the woods away from the hassle of urban techno-life won’t be like it used to be. Already, out in the forests in the Rockies of Colorado, stand tall, expensive, mechanical steel sentries, ATM-type machines whose sole purpose is to take your money and spit out daily, weekly, or annual Recreation Fee permits. Open 24-hours a day. No excuse for not being able to find a ranger to pay. And what happens to the money that’s left over from collection costs? Will it be put into repairing the backlog of unmet needs? Not likely. With self-generating slush funds left to the spending choices of local land managers with no congressional oversight, the money will mostly go to build those facilities that will attract more and more fee payers. And the Disneyfication of our public recreation lands shall begin in earnest. Just in case the underpaid, beleaguered public staff needs help planning the additions (because they’re too busy enforcing fee collection), ARC members will be all to eager to help out. (Remember them? They’re the lobbyists who want Fee-Demo permanatized.) Anywhere they can find to put a new ski slope, marina, expanded gift shop (selling nothing made in the USA), snowmobile trail, high priced resort hotel with restaurant and spa, jet ski port, dirt bike track, monorail train ... well, you get the picture. Nowhere in the legislation establishing any of our public lands does it say they were created to profit the recreation industry. The big money boys — and their stooges in Congress — are behind Fee-Demo, seeing windfall profit to be made from public lands. Gale Norton, current Interior Department Secretary, was trained and groomed for the job in James Watt’s Intermountain Legal Institute. Watt, the infamous Interior Secretary under Reagan, was forced to resign for attempting to sell off our national parks to private entrepreneurs. Norton brings the same voracious wolf to the door 20 years later, this time in sheep’s clothing and wearing a polite smile. Fee-Demo is her weapon of choice. We’re told this money is needed because “we’re loving our parks to death.” Not so. Visitation has stabilized or is in decline, especially this year. And the claim that Congressional funding is declining is a myth perpetuated to promote Fee-Demo. That’s what I learned in school today. Those special natural and serene places where we can retreat to — places where the noise of commercial America is not allowed — are under imminent attack. If the false hope of Fee-Demo matters to you, make a pledge today to study and learn more about what you can do. As you know, the second thing, after arming yourself with facts to back your conviction, is to contact members of Congress and your employees at the nearest public land facility. (Messick is the supervisor of the ParkWatch Action Network in Ridgeway, Va.)