Misadventure Passing as Policy

If you are planning an afternoon hike or a drive to watch the sunset in our national forests, be sure to bring along your checkbook or be prepared to be ticketed.

That’s the unfortunate scenario that people in some areas of California have experienced over the last couple of years since the U.S. Forest Service instituted the Adventure Pass program in the Los Padres, Cleveland, Angeles and San Bernardino national forests.

It was three years ago that Congress--without public hearing or debate--authorized the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program, which allows a variety of so-called user fees to be assessed on visitors to some of our national forests and parks.

The Adventure Pass program has, at best, turned into an unpleasant adventure for people who visit our national forests, whether to hike with friends, enjoy some solitude or have a picnic with the family.

Although these user fee programs are well-intentioned, my constituents have spoken loudly and clearly against the Adventure Pass program. Groups as diverse as Free Our Forests, Keep the Sespe Wild, the Sierra Club and several sportsmen associations are firmly united in their opposition to the Adventure Pass.

The user fee program was an attempt to address the growing backlog of overdue maintenance for our national parks and forests. No one I’ve heard from disputes the need to increase funding to ensure that educational and interpretive programs continue and that trails, campgrounds and other forest facilities are properly maintained and kept clean.

There is no question that if we want to ensure that public lands are in good condition for future generations, having the necessary funding to maintain them today is absolutely critical. There is no question that our dedicated Forest Service employees have done a tremendous job despite the inadequate funding they have.

The question is whether the Adventure Pass is the right way to generate that funding. I do not believe it is.

American families already pay taxes to maintain national parks and forests. The Adventure Pass means that when they use the forest, they are paying twice--once through income taxes and again when they purchase the pass. For low-income individuals and families that must watch every penny, the cost of the Adventure Pass may keep them from accessing their forest. Our public lands must be open to the public--every member of the public.

Furthermore, at the same time the Adventure Pass makes taxpayers pay more to visit their forests, current law and Forest Service policy are subsidizing corporate users of the forests. Consider that while logging companies are subsidized for building roads in our national forests, the Forest Service gets less revenue from its timber sales program than it costs to administer it. And mining companies continue to operate under an archaic 1872 law that allows them to extract precious minerals from public lands for a mere fraction of their value.

Taxpayer and environmental organizations alike have repeatedly called for the elimination of these unfair subsidies, which siphon off critical Forest Service resources and cheat taxpayers. It is unfair to ask taxpayers to pay to hike, picnic, park or see a sunset in our national forests while large corporations continue to be subsidized.

Finally, supporters of the user fee program in our national forests justify it by pointing to the National Park Service’s policy of charging entrance fees to some of the more prestigious national parks. There is clear differences between national parks and our national forests. Although our parks typically have a wide range of visitor-serving facilities, such as fully-equipped campgrounds and concessions, the forests are generally appreciated more for their rugged wilderness and vast open spaces. Additionally, national parks typically have a limited number of entrances but forests, such as the Los Padres, have literally hundreds of access points, making enforcement of the fee program problematic for the Forest Service and visitors.

We obviously need to provide the dedicated employees of the Forest Service with adequate funding so they can keep our forests in top shape, but we must find more equitable sources for this funding.

Congress can support the Forest Service by increasing its annual budget. And by simply reducing corporate subsidies, the need to charge the public would be eliminated.

I am working with my colleagues in Congress to take the Forest Service out of the User Fee Demonstration Program and have been working on legislation to replace the revenue now generated by the Adventure Pass program with funds recaptured by reducing unfair corporate subsidies.

Let’s stop this misadventure and give the forests back to the people.