The Recreation Fee Demonstration is not, as some suppose, a program to test whether the American public is willing to accept pay-to-play recreation. Key Republican Congressmen and the recreation industry made that decision for us long ago.

The demonstration taking place on public lands today is designed only to test how to charge and collect recreation user fees in ways that people will pay-up with a minimum of complaint. Every test site within the demonstration program is a unique experiment in fee charging and fee collection. Whether or not the fees cover the cost of collecting the fees, enable better trail maintenance etc is largely irrelevant. The test is to determine how best to sell us what we already own. Once we associate enjoying a sunset with paying a fee, the stage is set for higher prices, more "fee only" areas and the whole scale assault on our last treasured spaces.

This site is not meant to be the definitive site explaining the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program. There is a short list highlighting reasons to oppose the program, background information, and a short exploration of -your voice- as well. For an exhaustive review of the program, go to the links at the bottom of this page.

• It is double taxation: We already pay for the professional management of our public lands through our taxes. Facilities which we now must pay to access were built with our taxes.
• Economic discrimination: Such fees are already pricing out 1 of every 4 lower income taxpayer. See More, Journal of Leisure Research, 2000, Vol. 32, No. 3 p. 341- 357.
• It doesn't work: According to the Christian Science Monitor, nationally 4% of such fees are used for habitat enhancement and resource preservation. 52% is consumed by operations, law enforcement and collection costs. See Resistance to Rising Fees. According to a recent New York Times article, Bush is hoping to cut $175 million from the current FS budget. This is more than double what they have made in SIX years of Fee Demo.
• It privatizes our natural heritage: International business interests have been lobbying for such fees for over two decades. They see dollar signs where we see landscapes. "Have we fully explored our gold mine of recreational opportunities…. and managed it as if it were consumer-brand products?" (ARC).
• It robs us of our natural heritage: Fee Demo disempowers the people of the United States by turning us into customers and not owners of our own national heritage.
• It encourages development and bureaucracy: Fee Demo makes our public land agencies dependent upon increased visitation and greater development for funds. As this happens, the impact to these areas increases.
• Where is the money going? - (Figures based on Forest Service's summary report to Congress for 2000 in the Southwest Region and communications with the Sedona Ranger District in the Coconino National Forest.)39.6% of all money collected went to the cost of "annual operations. "
  - 21.9% was consumed by "fee collection" (not including enforcement).
  - Only 0.5% was spent on "habitat enhancement" and "resource preservation" COMBINED.
  - In Sedona, AZ, 60% of every dollar put into an automatic payment machine, at a trail-head etc., goes to the private company that owns the machine. After they make $175,000, their take drops to 40%.
• The Forest Service is fiscally irresponsible. The agency has been red flagged by the Government Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, numerous times. Roger Viadero, the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, testified in front of Congress that "The depth of the Forest Service's accounting deficiencies is so extraordinary that even the most fundamental principles.... are not always honored" in 1997.

A General Accounting Office (GAO) 40-page report entitled Information on Forest Service Management of Revenue from the Fee Demonstration Program (2001), requested by Rep. Scott McInnis (R, Western Colorado) and released May 19, 2003, reveals a deep-seated culture of deception and a total lack of accountability within the US Forest Service's Fee Demo program. It is online here as a 3.4 MB PDF file.

Here are the highlights:
The US Forest Service (USFS) has been secretly subsidizing the management of its Fee Demo program with (in 2001) $10 million of appropriated tax dollars (p.32). Costs of fee collection at major Fee Demo sites such as Southern California's Adventure Pass program have been under-reported, by illegally concealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions received by pass vendors. The USFS has no mechanism for ascertaining whether Fee Demo has lessened the deferred maintenance backlog, which Fee Demo was created by Congress to address. Worse than that, they actually have no idea what their maintenance backlog really is! The manner in which the USFS categorizes expenditures in their annual reports to Congress are based on subjectivity, making them inconsistent and unreliable.

FOREST SERVICE CONCEALED TWO-THIRDS OF FEE DEMO OPERATING COSTS.

In what amounts to a complete absence of accountability on the part of Fee Demo managers across the nation, the Forest Service has failed to mention in its annual Fee Demo Progress Reports to Congress that (in 2001) close to $10 million was used as a taxdollar subsidy to administer the program (GAO p. 32). This alone immediately triples the $5 million which the Forest Service was declaring as the true cost of collection and administration for the program. For the Forest Service's 2001 cost of collection ($5 million or 17% of total expenditures), see p. 9 of the GAO Report.

THE FOREST SERVICE DOES NOT ACCOUNT FOR ALL FEE COLLECTION COSTS

The Forest Service does not report total revenues and fee collection costs related to commissions or discounts that vendors receive for selling recreation passes directly to the public (p.5). In the Adventure Pass fee program, the Pacific Northwest and Sedona's Red Rock fee sites, among others, the Forest Service uses private vendors to help sell Fee Demo passes. In the Adventure Pass area, vendors buy a $5 daily pass discounted to $4 and a $30 annual pass discounted to $25. Forest officials at the locations where this was occurring could not tell us the total amount of vendor discounts that the agency has permitted. Excluding vendor discounts from the cost of collection is also inconsistent with federal financial accounting standards and the U.S. Department of Agriculture financial manual. (p.25-6). Thus, both fee revenues and fee collection costs are underreported. Because of inaccurate reporting of fee revenues and collection costs, the Forest Service has no assurance that it is in compliance with the recreational fee demonstration requirement only allowing 15% of fee revenues to be used for collection costs (p.26).

IS DEFERRED MAINTENANCE ADDRESSED BY FEE DOLLARS?

The GAO report found that the Forest Service does not have a process for measuring the impact of fee demo expenditures on reducing the deferred maintenance backlog. Further, while acknowledging that it has a significant deferred maintenance problem, the agency has not developed a reliable estimate of its deferred maintenance needs (p. 4). As a result, even if the agency knew how much fee revenue it is spending on deferred maintenance, it would not know if its total deferred maintenance needs are being reduced (pp. 19-20).

INCONSISTENT REPORTING OF FEE DEMO EXPENDITURES

The GAO found that fee program managers do not allocate their expenditures into the categories in a systematic manner, and fee revenue expenditure reporting categories overlap. This is largely based on the fact that the agency uses subjectivity in deciding which category to attribute expenses to. Officials told us [the GAO] that deciding which reporting category a particular expenditure falls into involves making a judgment that is not necessarily consistent among sites. Thus the GAO concluded the accuracy of the spending information in the agency's annual report is questionable. (pp. 16-17).

HOW MUCH FEE DEMO MONEY REALLY GOES TO HELP OUR FORESTS?

The Forest Service gross Fee Demo revenue for FY 2001 was over $35 million (p.6). We must subtract the reported cost of collection, $5,051,000 (p. 9), the undeclared use of $10 million of appropriated funds to support the program (p.32), the Adventure Pass program's unrecorded vendor cost of collection $370,000 (data obtained under FOIA request in June, 2002 but withheld from the GAO, p. 25), and a further $4.6 million. That is the amount raised at some Fee Demo sites that already produced fee income [campgrounds, boat launches, etc.] before Fee Demo began in 1997 (April 2002 Interim Report to Congress on Fee Demo, p.23) that leaves a net revenue of $15 million. The cost of collection than is closer to 50% - requiring more than $15 million to raise less than $15 million. Congress' limit on Fee Demo cost of collection is 15% (p.26).The $15 million adjusted net revenue is likely to still be too high vendor discounts at sites other than the Adventure Pass are unknown, and Fee Demo managers have been inconsistent with their categorizing of costs of collection (p.17 and p.7).

• Wild Wilderness The authoritative site on the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program. An exhaustive, research oriented site. Learn how transnational business interests have been working for DECADES to turn your peace and quiet into a product they can sell to the highest bidder. Not for the weak of heart.
• Free Our Forests Leaders in the fight to stop the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program on the West Coast. An excellent resource that details the growing resistance to the program, and contains Congressional, agency and "industrial strength recreation" business information.
• AntiFee Legal Website A website dedicated to resisting Fee Demo through challenging it in the courts. An excellent resource for those who have received tickets
• From the Sierra Club This short article clearly highlights what is wrong with the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program, and provides a few ideas for further research and activism.

Please click here to view the legislation.

"We have to remain constantly vigilant to prevent raids by those who would selfishly exploit our common heritage for their private gain. Such raids on our natural resources are not examples of enterprise and initiative.They are attempts to take from all the people for the benefit of a few."
---President Harry S. Truman, December 1948, at the inauguration of Everglades National Park.