Yep, that means that you can visit some forest areas free of the $5 daily or $30 yearly Adventure Pass fees! Hikers and off-roaders rejoice!
Or that may be just what they’re expecting us to do.
I will always look a gift horse in the mouth – especially if that gift horse is coming from a governmental agency. The plan is called the “Federal Lands Recration Enhancement Act” – or REA. When you walk around it and kick the tires, it seems like a good idea. But when you look under the hood, there’s some hinky. There’s ALWAYS some hinky. Here’s a portion of what the REA says in their summary:
The Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act benefits visitors to Federal public lands by:
- Reinvesting a majority of fees back to the site of collection to enhance visitor services and reduce the backlog of maintenance needs for recreation facilities (including trail maintenance, toilet facilities, boat ramps, hunting blinds, interpretive signs and programs);
- Providing an interagency fee program that reduces confusion over differing fee programs and passes by reducing four national passes down to one;
- Providing more opportunities for public involvement in determining recreation fee sites and fees;
- Providing focused criteria and limits on areas and sites where recreation fees can be charged; and
- Providing more opportunities for cooperation with gateway communities through fee management agreements for visitor and recreation services, emergency medical services and law enforcement services.
What does that mean? That means that moneys collected will only be used WHERE the moneys are collected. By releasing 160,000 acres from the Adventure Pass program, we are losing maintenance – clean-up, replacing broken utilities (you haven’t lived ’til you’ve looked at a hole in the ground protected by sharp plastic broken toilet pieces and realized that no, you just can’t hold it until you get back to civilization), removing graffiti, or simple forest maintenance (including conservation efforts and managed reforestation) on those 160,000 acres.
“The REA funds will not be spent in the free areas but we do have other options for maintaining those areas such as partnerships and other appropriated funds,” said John Heil, a spokesman for the Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Region.
Here’s the problem: there’s no mechanism in place for those partnerships to exist. Not only that, but – as has been shown during the idiotic public lands shutdown during the sequestration this year – doing ANYTHING requires an act of politicians who all have an agenda that isn’t related to what the people of the United States actually want.
The Federal Lands REA is going to further erode California’s national parks and national forests. Maybe it’s time that the states take back control of the lands that are within their jurisdictions. Maybe the time of the National Parks Service is coming to an end. In California, national parks would come under the California State Parks program (a program not without it’s own issues).
You can find out more about the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act HERE.