LETTERS TO NEW ENGLAND NEWSPAPERS AND TO CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES

To the Forest Service and Several Congresspeople:

The fee demonstration program must stop. As taxpayers we have already paid for our right to use our PUBLIC lands. We should not be charged a "recreation" fee on top of that.

I have read what you intend to use the money for. I am opposed to practically all of your priorities. I want my nature natural, thank you, not paved, built upon, used by motorized vehicles, or signed by fee demonstration program signs. I go to the forest to get away from it all, not to be hit by the uglier sides of civilization once again. Stop your alliance with the American Recreation Coalition and get back to taking care of the forest in its natural state.

And, by the way, two particularly ludicrous things. You ask for 16 hours of volunteer trail work for a fee $20 parking decal. How many of you are paid $1.25 an hour to do trail work? This is absurd.

Also, in New Hampshire, you require a parking decal to park at the end of Ravine Lodge Rd. in the winter. Why should be purchase a decal to park there when we are going to spend the entire day on Dartmouth College land. Give me a break.

Thank you for giving me a chance to share my thoughts. A reply would be appreciated.

S.E.H.

Dear ________,

I have been offended by the demand to pay for public land access. There are two aspects to this issue that are particularly offensive to me:

First, public lands are presumably public. How is it that we must pay a fee for entrance to land that we presumably own? In addition, people who are profoundly poor will be daunted by the fee.

Second, the fee system trivializes the land itself by verifying that indeed, we as a culture are willing to attach a price to everything, even our wilderness -- and by implication, the vast mysterious universe that it represents. In doing so, the fee system destroys the very concept and experience of wilderness. We pay to enter carnivals. So now our public lands have become merely another theme park for a populace that lives in a simulated world.

At its foundation, this is not merely an issue of money and ownership. Although I now pay FOUR TIMES to guide on our national land it is not the money that bothers me. Instead, I am concerned with the effect that such policies have on the quality of our lives and on the fundamental aspects of who we are and in the essential ways that we meet our world.

By surrounding ourselves with our own designs and by abstracting all else, we limit our access to the particular wisdom and humility gained by confronting mystery. Our children will need to move to Mars to gain access to the lessons that wilderness has to offer.

Mike Jewell

Mountain Guides Alliance

ACCESS TO FORESTS SHOULD BE FREE

[Concord Monitor, Thursday, March 16, 2000]

I write in response to the article in the March 12 Sunday Monitor on the recreation fee program. I was quoted in the article and agree that the quote was accurate but was taken out of context.

This issue is so complicated that one small piece of what I said does give the impression that I am just too cheap to pay such a small fee. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only do I pay the fee every year but I also am a member of the Appalachian Mountain Club and contribute extra money to the trail maintenance fund. I am a member of the Appalachian Trail Conference and contribute to trail maintenance for that.

I just believe that the lowest-impact users, who through organizations such as the AMC and ATC maintain our own trails and facilities, are forced to pay while high-impact users such as the timber industry and mining industry get huge subsidies and do not even pay enough in fees to cover the cost of work done on their behalf.

Also, fees hurt the low- income users. If you want to see what happens to an area where fees are allowed, just go to a national park. The poor in this country are prohibited from enjoying these national treasures because of the expense.

However, the parks are maintained for recreation, and I concede that the fees are necessary at these facilities. The national forests, however, are managed for timber; recreation is just a wonderful byproduct.

Don't turn our national forests into national parks. Let's keep at least some of our public lands open to the entire public.

KEVIN BUCKLEY

Holderness

WHY WE OPPOSE RECREATION FEES

[Concord Monitor, Friday, March 17, 2000]

While it is heartening to finally see some coverage of the recreational fee demonstration program in the regional press (Jim Graham's front page story in the March 12 Sunday Monitor), I feel it necessary to clarify a couple of points lest those of us opposed to recreation fees are viewed simply as freeloading scofflaws attempting to get out of paying our fair share of public lands expenses.

I think I speak for every member of New England Public Forest Advocates when I say that it is vitally important for all Americans to support the continued health and integrity of our remaining wild places. I am a paying member of the Sierra Club, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests and The Climbers' Access Fund. I accept site- specific fees from developed campgrounds and backcountry sites in fragile or heavily used areas. I also pay taxes that go to the USDA Forest Service, most of which (unfortunately) go toward subsidizing the extractive ndustries (logging, grazing and mining).

The recreational budget crisis that the Forest Service faces is a deliberate attempt by Congress at the behest of powerful special interests to leave the agencies of our public lands no choice but to raise funds through non- traditional means. The danger here is that we, the American people, are no longer owners of our public lands but are being viewed and treated as paying customers. This is the beginning of privatization of our public property.

This is a much more complex issue than the Forest Service would have you believe. I urge anyone concerned with the future of the White Mountain National Forest to find out all they can. A good place to start is the NEPFA Web page: (http:/ /sites.netscape.net/ nepfa/homepage) or you can call (603) 726- 3538.

One more minor point: NEPFA members will not litter anyone's windshields with flyers. We will give out information to those who request it.

CHRIS BUCKLEY, Plymouth, NH

WHY ARE CITIZENS BEING CHARGED TO WALK ON PUBLIC LAND?

[A slightly-shorter version of the following letter appeared in the Valley News on Jan. 6, 2000]

To The Editor of the Keene (NH) Sentinel:

The more I learn about the user fee demo program being implemented in our national forests, the angrier I get. When I first received a "ticket" for parking in the White Mountain National Forest to hike Mount Jefferson, I was unaware of the fee program and wondered why I was being required to pay $5.00 (and threatened with a $100.00 fine if I didn't pay), to park my car. After doing some research about the program, and speaking with other people, I am beginning to understand where this fee program came from and where it is intended to lead us.

The Recreation fee demonstration program was started several years ago as a result of collaboration between recreation industry lobbyists, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service officials, and anti-environmental legislators. This fee program was slipped through the House and Senate as a "rider" and passed Congress in 1996. The fee program was to be a test from 1997 to 1999. It has now been extended to 2001. Although this program is called a "test" to assess public support, non- payment of the "test" fee (which would be my way of showing that I don't support it) is penalized by an additional threatened fee of $100.00, and a day in court. So, what happens? People who don't support the program are paying the fee anyway because they feel intimidated and want to avoid larger fines and/ or a court date. Forest Service officials then report this to the federal government as support of the program. How can the Forest Service claim to have supporting data when participation has been coerced by the threat of heavy fines?

Why are American citizens being charged to walk on public land? What we are not being told is that federal dollars are purposely being cut from the forest service budget to create the need for funding from other sources: your pocket, my pocket and financial relationships with corporations. Why is private industry showing an interest and getting involved in supporting our public lands? Because there's money to be made "in them thar hills"! The recreation industry is eager to win concession contracts to operate on our public lands and they plan to push hard for other major kinds of development. Anyone who has visited our National Parks can see the end result of a management philosophy that targets maximizing profits. Do you want to see similar types of development at the trailheads in our national forests?

The fee program's purpose is to demonstrate to the federal government that outdoor recreation on public lands can be marketed as a "product" that you and I are willing to buy. Well, I for one am not! And, there are growing numbers of people who want their public lands left public and free! There is an active, strong movement on the west coast, and a growing movement opposed to the fee program right here in New Hampshire. Opposition to the user fee program is gaining momentum because the truth about its beginnings and future goals are being made public through the efforts of grassroots organizations. The fee program is the first step in developing private, for-profit projects in our forests.

If you've received a user fee "ticket" or are just now learning about the program, I urge you to visit the following web sites to learn more: www.wildwilderness.org, www.freeourforests.org, www.igc.org/sespewild/. In addition, expect to see a number of grassroots organizations becoming more visible in New Hampshire in the near future which will be providing more information on the user fee demonstration program and its impact on all of us.

Susan Rivers
Charlestown, NH

FOREST FEES ERODE LIBERTY

[Valley News, Lebanon, NH, Feb. 18, 2000):

Susan Rivers' criticism [letter, 1/6/00] of the forest fee program is right on target. All over the nation an immense groundswell of angry public opinion has been building against these fees as people learn more about the origin and implications of this serious erosion of one of our most fundamental liberties.

Some people tend to misread the imposition of these fees as a necessary part of the drive to cut spending and taxes. But the costs we're talking about are comparatively paltry, and the income- tax impact on each citizen is negligible. (The Forest Service's's own literature states that "a person with an annual income of $40,000 pays less than $.03 per year in taxes to recreate on Forest Service lands, nationwide.")

So what's going on here? Why the push for this intrusive, burdensome fee system?

Mainly it's a misguided application of free-market/ privatisation ideology run amok. But Rivers is also right in identifying the well-documented role of private corporations, the main culprit being the American Recreation Coalition, a huge umbrella lobbying organization whose membership includes behemoths such as Exxon and Disney. The ARC has boasted that the forest fee program, which they have been pushing hard for since 1979, is "the direct result of our efforts." Their strategy is to shift public perception away from the traditional view of the simple enjoyment of nature as being our birthright toward its being a provided "recreation experience" which we must purchase.

It is incredibly ironic that this fee program, sometimes touted as a "conservative" initiative, in fact seriously violates the best of conservative thinking. Get the government off the backs of the people? This incredibly demoralizing, resentment-creating system does precisely the reverse. Trim federal bureaucracies and reduce their power? Setting up the Forest Service as entrepeneur is a ready- made recipe for bloated budgets, ever-higher prices, and all the associated problems that come when the audience is captive and the business holds a monopoly.

The powers-that-be are increasingly desperate to downplay public protest and call the fee program a success. But their methods of guaging public endorsement are fatally flawed: pass-purchase compliance data are now being coerced by threat of heavy fines; and their questionaires are so blatantly manipulative and transparently designed to elicit a "favorable" response that no one familiar with proper polling technique takes them seriously.

These fees are horribly unfair. They represent a supremely regressive tax which falls very harshly on those least able to pay. In fact, 1999 research funded by the Forest Service has shown that such fees have already had a "significant exclusionary impact" on low income people in New Hampshire and Vermont.

"Fee-demo" is a completely unecessary, misconceived idea and should be ended. To learn more about this issue visit the website of New England Public Forest Advocates [http:// sites.netscape.net/nepfa/ homepage], and then write your representatives.

Sincerely,

John Joline, Norwich, VT

OUR LANDS ARE UNDER ATTACK

(Letter published in the Keene Sentinel on Sunday, March 5, 2000)

To The Editor,

Our federal lands are under attack. ItÍs odd that the government that is responsible for preserving and protecting our public land legacy is out in front leading the assault. In 1996 a temporary user fee demonstration program was passed as a rider to an appropriations bill. This rider was passed with no public hearings. It seems that a bill that threatens to fundamentally alter the governmentÍs and the peopleÍs relationship to our federal lands warrants a public airing.

The American Recreation Coalition (ARC), a collection of corporations and associations, has lobbied strongly for user fees on our federal lands for decades. This is the first step in an established plan to inure people to the idea that enjoyment of nature on public lands is a privilege that must be paid for rather than a right. While ARC has been lobbying for user fees, they have also been working with our federal landsÍ agencies to cook up schemes to commercialize our National Forests, Wildlife Refuges, and Wilderness Areas. For nine consecutive years, ARC and representatives from the Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the BLM, and other federal agencies have gotten together at the "Partners Outdoors" conference, most recently hosted at DisneyÍs (an ARC member) Lake Buena Vista Resort. The meetings are held behind closed doors with the public and the press locked out. Through the Freedom of Information Act the purpose of these meetings has been made public. They have been meeting to develop methods of increasing profits from recreation on public lands, and to open more land to high impact "wreckreation." It seems highly unethical for our federal employees (they work for us after all) to go behind closed doors to cook up plans with private commercial interests to get more of our money for using our own lands.

Ostensibly, this user fee program was implemented to reduce the tax burden. Well, according to the Forest ServiceÍs own numbers someone earning $40,000 per year will save 3 cents a year, thanks to the cuts in the Forest Service recreation budget. As long as we are giving away over 100 billion dollars in corporate welfare every year it is extremely disingenuous for our Congress to argue that some type of fiscal hardship mandated a program to charge user fees to walk on the public commons. Especially when this program saves Joe Taxpayer only 3 cents.

It is extremely ironic that the party of smaller, less intrusive government gave us this program. The implementation of user fees has placed Forest Service employees squarely on the backs of citizens in an extremely invasive manner. A hiker must now pony up $5 every time they want to recreate in The White Mountain National Forest or risk receiving a $100 fine. I have no thanks for the Congress that gave us this bill or the president that signed it.

In April of this year our Congress will begin hearings on whether user fees should be made permanent. If you want Congress to accept their responsibility to provide adequate funding for maintenance and protection of our priceless public land legacy, and to end this move toward commercialization you must contact your senators and representative now. Do not let the politicians swing a shady backroom deal with special interest lobbyists.

If you would like to find out more about the links between the user fees and commercial interests you can look up http:// sites.netscape.net/nepfa/ homepage.

Respectfully,

Neil Adams, Charlestown, NH 03603

August 14, 1999

Dear [VT & NH Congressional Reps]:

I am writing to you because I am very upset and dismayed by the current proposal to charge American citizens money to walk on land they themselves own.

Currently Americans have to pay admission to national parks. This is not great, but for better or worse the precedent has been set.

But plans have been underway for some time proposing that HUGE amounts of American public land now be subject to user-fees, including the White Mountain National Forest.

I am refering to the so- called "Forest Fee Demonstration Program."

This is a terrible and misguided idea!

For over 220 years it has been a fundamental right of Americans to walk freely on their nation's public land.

What has happened that suddenly makes this no longer possible?

Was Fort Knox robbed? Did some terrible economic or natural crisis occur which renders fees necessary??

Of course not!

Do we really want a country in which going for a walk in the woods is an ENTERTAINMENT we PURCHASE from the government?

Of course not!

Does the fee-demo system "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," as the Preamble to the Constitution promises ... or is it a trend in the other direction?

Clearly the latter!

Did the American people rise up and demand that they be deprived of what has been a traditional, totally fundamental right?

Of COURSE NOT! Not even close!

Are we a better, healthier, happier, more at-peace country when people are NOT confronted by semi- threatening signs throughout the national forests telling them they have to BUY their contact with nature?

OF COURSE!

SO WHAT IS THE PROBLEM????

As far as I can see, this radical shift in policy and tradition in is driven by reasons that are almost entirely ideological, the result of a kind of political monomania.

It is also apparently being fueled by an intense amount of lobbying from recreation industries of every kind to be allowed to make profits from public land.

Obviously, certain very conservative members of Congress have in recent years been obsessed with reducing Federal spending at almost any cost.

It is incredibly ironic, however, that the fee- demo program in fact violates the best of conservative thinking, both in fundamental principle and in practical terms.

(1) It is undemocratic. You are aware that certain conservatives are incessantly promoting recitation of the "pledge of allegiance." Well, imposition of forest fees goes AGAINST the idea of "LIBERTY." And it goes against the idea of "liberty and justice for ALL," since it prices out lower-income people, who in fact have the greatest need for free access to the land.

(2) "Get the government off the backs of the people." This incredibly demoralizing, resentment-creating, intrusive system does just the reverse.

(3) It will ENCOURAGE the kind of ever- expanding federal bureaucracy which conservatives are perpetually and insightfully warning about. (Even with the best of intentions and finest of professionals, if local Forest Service managers are essentally given the public land as a kind of "capital" and told that they must make money from it, as a kind of business, then that is a ready-made recipe for bloated budgets, higher prices, and all the associated problems that come when the audience is CAPTIVE and the business holds a MONOPOLY. This will be especially true when private companies are allowed to move in make profits from public land as "partners" with the FS. Fees will go up and up over time, and the new "owners" can and will tend to charge what the market will bear. There will ALWAYS be justification for a never-ending list of new and bigger budget items - - exactly what conservative political thinkers abhor.)

(4) THE FOUNDING FATHERS MUST BE TURNING OVER IN THEIR GRAVES! They would be APPALLED to learn that this fee-system is being promoted by individuals in Congress who so often invoke their names. I am not a lawyer, but I suspect that this is EXACTLY the kind of "unenumerated right" which the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the 9th Amendment. To them it must have seemed so entirely self-evident that a citizen had a right to walk freely on his nation's common land that it was not even worth mentioning as an explicit "right." This right would have been as fundamental and obvious to them as the right to live or the right to breathe the air.

Further points:

Imposition of these user- fees will cause managers of currently-free public lands (state forests, town forests, remaining federal free lands, etc.) to feel compelled to adopt fee systems too, because: (a) they will be overwhelmed with people trying to avoid the fee areas, and they will feel under the gun to shift the user-population imbalance back the other way again. And (b) why should they contend with modest salaries and budgets while they watch their National Forest Service and BLM counterparts automatically taking in large amounts of money with this fee system?

The effect of this will be that a basic traditional freedom will be eroded even further. Foot travel on private land in the U.S. is already massively curtailed. "Public land" will be no longer "public" in the traditional sense. Therefore EVERYTHING will be either forbidden -- or else for sale if you can pay. This would represents a massive, watershed shift in how we relate to the God- given world around us.

(I was disturbed to read or hear a Forest Service employee state that their job was to "provide recreation" for the American people. This would be a subtle, but pernicious shift in their perceived mission, expanding it hugely into a domain which, in general, is much better left to the people themselves. The FS and BLM are NOT "Departments of Citizens' Recreation." It seems to me that Americans are intelligent enough to arrange their own recreation on public lands. The FS obviously has a role to play, but it is that of careful, wise stewardship, not that of a money-making developer.

Unlike using ski-lifts, or going to the movies, the forests, mountains, deserts, etc., are self- existent and are NOT goods or services provided by the government. Obviously a certain amount of resources are needed to properly care for these lands, but it is far less than the kind of development that is apparently being envisioned in some quarters.

Question: Why are we insisting on shooting ourselves in the foot this way?

Is it because of folly? Very likely! ("We have come this far already -- we can't turn back now!" or: "Our credibility is at stake!" or" "Our party must win on this issue!") Classic political folly includes a rigid, knee- jerk, reflexive attachment to simple- minded ideological/ political stance, in spite of knowing all the while that a certain course of action thusly motivated is bad for the country. {Please see the book: "March of Folly" by historian Barbara Tuchman]

Is it because of the perception there is money to be made? Also very likely! -- see later in this letter.

The proposed move to user-fees seems to have its roots not simply in a mindless rush to cut the deficit and to privatize public resources, but I can't help but wonder if it partly reflects also the animus that conservatives have felt for many years against "liberals," "environmentalists" and others who they see as impeding corporations from making profits from the land. "Finally these obstructionist, elitist people are GOING TO PAY!" seems to be the thinking. (You must remember James "I don't like to walk, and I don't like to paddle" Watt?)

The "Fee-Demo Program" is supposedly designed to measure American citizens' acceptance of fees to "use" the outdoors, but the methods used to discern the public's level acceptance or non- acceptance are DEEPLY flawed.

Two primary ways that the level of public endorsement of this system were to be guaged have been: (1) questionnaires, and (2) the level of public compliance (ie, how many people buy passes).

(1) Questionnaires:

TREMENDOUSLY manipulative and one- sided literature was left on people's cars for the past couple of years, ostensibly to "educate" the public about this issue. This included questionnaires to "learn" the public's opinion. The latter are filled with "have you stopped beating your wife yet, yes or no?"-type questions. They were clearly and transparently designed to elicit the response that the FS obviously wanted to hear. NO person knowledgeable about accurate polling methods would take them seriously, even for a second.

For example, people are asked if $20 is a "reasonable" amount to pay for a yearly fee. On the one hand, yes, $20 is a standard amount that is often charged in our culture for certain services, etc.; even I, who am adamantly opposed to forest fees, recognize that fact, and thus, in that narrow sense, I "agree." But then when people check the "yes" box, backers of the fee demo program can trumpet that "X% of respondents think the forest fee is reasonable," making it sound like they support the program. The original question does not address the fundamental matter of whether people support the imposition of such fees in the first place. The question therefore completely conflates two entirely distinct issues, misprepresenting answers to the first question ("is the amount of fee a reasonable one?") as being answers to the second question ("are forest fees a reasonable thing to impose at all?").

Another example: People are asked if the "recreational opportunity" they just "experienced" was worth the fee. This is much like asking a spouse to PAY for intimate relations with his/her mate, and then asking if the experience was "worth" x dollars! The implication is that one is selfish or greedy or unappreciative if one disagress with the idea of having to pay for such an experience. (Related issue: sometimes backers of user-fees argue that if people are required to pay, then they will appreciate the experience all the more. Apply my analogy to this preposterous argument also!)

I GUARANTEE, absolutely WITHOUT doubt, that a questionnaire could have been written that would have created diametrically OPPOSITE results from whatever the FS is claiming! Overwhelmingly so. There is no doubt of that at all -- none! [Imagine the response to an alternative question like: "Do you think American citizens should be deprived of their long- held fundamental right to walk on their nation's public land because certain politicians are terrified that their opponent might charge them with not reducing taxes and because private corporations seek big profits from the land that you as a citizen own?"]

I was so irked by those questionnaires that I refused to fill one out but instead made phone calls to FS offices.

The government has used its massive resources to present a very biased, one-sided account of things, and it is very difficult for the average busy citizen with limited resources to counter this propaganda.

(2) Compliance:

Before June 1999 people were given warnings saying that if they didn't buy a pass within 14 days they faced a possible fine of $100.

Now it has gotten much worse: At present, in the desire to push harder than ever for positive "compliance" data, cars without passes are being automatically ticketed for $50, in spite of the fact that the test- program is supposed to run until well into the year 2001. How can a citizen protest this system when he or she is being coerced into buying a pass under threat of punishment? This is obviously completely unfair. (In fact, one forest service official told me that in some other state(s) such tickets have been thrown out by the courts, as being an infringement of free speech).

I, for one, certainly cannot afford a string of $50 tickets -- or even one ticket -- and yet I cannot in good conscience comply with what I see as a terrible, pernicious program. Given that hiking and climbing in the White Mountains are an integral part of my life, what am I to do? There are many thousands of others like me in New England who are in the same predicament. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands or millions in other parts of the U.S.

Final points:

As I said earlier, it seems to me that the major impetus behind forest fees is ideological, based on a rigid, misguided "no free lunch" and "reduce federal government at all costs" -type of thinking, applied simple-mindedly and indiscriminantly.

However, there also seems to be an immense amount of convincing and depressing evidence that the corporate world is also pushing very hard for this shift.

The outdoor recreation industry evidently sees the millions of people who love nature as a giant untapped market, from whom unprecedentedly massive profits might be made -- and their mouths are watering.

This is tremendously disturbing, to say the least. It represents a very cynical, evil dimension to this entire issue.

Many people feel that the present attempt to impose user-fees is merely a wedge, not important so much for the revenues to be gained from the current fees themselves, but to wean people away from the idea that they are the rightful owners of the land, and designed to set a fundamental new precedent, a kind of new paradigm that "outdoor experience" is essentially a "product" to be bought.

It is too much for me to go into here, but I hope you will look at websites such as "wildwilderness.org" to learn more about this aspect of the controversy.

CONCLUSION:

For years I used to live in the middle of Philadelphia with almost no money at all, no car, and I very seldom could get out of the city. Yet just knowing that "out there" somewhere were vast forests and mountains and wilderness of which I was part-owner and could freely explore was a GREAT source of solace, comfort, and inspiration. When people ask me, "Why should people pay to maintain National Forests who seldom use them?" my answer is this: for the same reason that I, who don't have children, believe strongly that we all should support childrens' education: it simply makes for a better, happier, healthier country all around. It's as simple as that, and, in my opinion, INCONTESTABLE.

It seems to me that once these fees are in place they will likely be with us for the rest of our country's history. It will be almost impossible to get rid of them. What happens NOW is therefore very important.

So I urge you, in the strongest terms as possible, to support any bills which will abolish the fee-demo program, and which will restore funding for the adequate maintainance of the public lands. (This would include H.R. 2295 and H.R. 786.)

I know there is legislation pending which supposedly would exempt certain NH residents from this fee, but that is not the solution. Many of us travel outside the state too, and it is extremely demoralizing to be confronted with these "pay or else'' signs EVERYWHERE. But money per se is not the main problem. This is a matter of fundamental principle. The fee-demo program is a BAD idea, terrible in principle, and completely unnecessary. And nearly everyone I know hates it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Most Sincerely,

John Joline