Commercial use is lobbied for. Our politicians are bought by corporations. We, as individuals, don't have the power to do a damned thing and we won't band together to make a difference either.
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Commercial use is lobbied for. Our politicians are bought by corporations. We, as individuals, don't have the power to do a damned thing and we won't band together to make a difference either.
Feeling sorry you posted yet? It appears many posters just don't have any experience with these fees, and so they're confusing the thread by talking out of their posterior orifices (...what else is new). Anyway, this has been a huge issue in some NF lands in the Pacific Northwest and the Angeles NF, for many years. Incredibly, you can drive forest roads, but you must have an annual pass to PARK – for any purpose, much the same as SNO-PARK. Thanks for the update.Quote:
Originally Posted by Heroique
Hmm ... seems to be a lot of confusion here between Parks and NF land. Yeah, I guess I've
READ about NF fees in the NW, but have never personally encountered them, except perhaps a 2.00 parking fee at Eagle Cr in the Columbia Gorge. I'm from California, so don't
have any experience with fees here. Sorry to hear about you folks south of the border in
LA.
I don't really mind paying a user fee to the US Forest Service or the BLM or whatever federal agency manages the forest.
What irks me is paying fees to companies that have been hired to "manage" our public lands. Outsourcing to for-profit firms is not a viable or just solution to forest management and funding problems. There are all to many of these arrangements in the NW. The Forest Service does the work, makes the improvements and the land-management companies make the profit. Not my idea of public land management at all.
Best,
Doremus
In the regional parks in our area, people will gather to drink beer after work if there are no fees. Minimum fees seem to affect people's behavior in positive ways at times.
All our regional parks around here (the most extensive system in the nation) are strictly enforced non-alcohol. These parks are mainly funded by modest property tax add-ons with
enthusiatic local support. Parking fees are seasonally collected at a few of the more developed picnic areas, though most parks have walk-in roadside parking too. A completely
different scenario than the State Parks which are having financial difficulty. But even NP
lands around here like GGNRA and Pt Reyes Natl Seashore do not charge any fees. This is
a case of where an abundance of open space creates wide public support, since almost
every local community benefits from it.
How is drinkong beer not positive? At least good beer?Quote:
Originally Posted by mandoman7
Yeah its like $30 in California for a year long adventure pass or $5 for a day pass. They're both avail at most gas stations around the forests and, of course, at the ranger stations or whatever you call em.
The $30 pass is the deal of the century. Imagine how much something like that would cost if you were setting it up for a chain of theaters, bowling alleys, 6 Flags, Chuck-E-Cheese, etc. Even if the fees were tripled I'd still think it was a great deal.
However, if I still lived in Illinois I don't think I'd feel the same way.
The popular picnic/visitor center lots here in the EBRPD have a ranger shack, but the big
areas are daily checked out by dedicated helicopter overflights. They've got a pilot and
another guy with hi-powered binoculars on a gyro stabilizer. They circled over me a few
times, but now once they see that big wooden Ries anywhere they just ignore me. A couple big pot operations have been spotted and raided however. Up in the narco counties, that's probably a huge economic boost to the FS. Not all "taxes" go on the books!
The Adventure Pass in Southern California forests was one of the lands I had in mind in my earlier post. The first time I encountered this was driving through the Angeles National Forest about a dozen years ago. The REA was fairly new, and I’d never heard of an “Adventure Pass”; from reading the sign, it was not clear just when I needed the pass, nor was there any indication of where I might get one. There were no ranger stations nearby of which I was aware, and the nearest store or gas station was about 20 miles back, so even had I known how to get the pass, it would have entailed 40 extra miles of driving—not exactly making compliance easy. And when was a pass needed? Driving through the forest on state highway 3? Hiking? Taking a picture from a scenic overlook?
I called the forest headquarters several times, and got several different answers ... though I was told I didn’t need a pass to drive through the forest, one person said I would need one if I hiked away from the car, another said I would need it to set up a tripod, and another said I might need one just to get out of the car ... suffice it to say I was unimpressed. If the FS couldn’t figure out when a pass was needed, how could anyone else? I encountered a fair number of others who had the same reaction.
A few years later, an Adventure Pass was included with a Golden Eagle Pass purchased from one of the four SoCal forests that required it. I asked what the deal was for someone who got the GE Pass elsewhere (for the same fee), and couldn’t really get an answer—one person said I could just leave the GE Pass on the dash, another said I would need an Adventure Pass, but couldn’t say whether I could get one for free by showing the GE Pass. I haven’t been through the Angeles for a number of years, so I can’t really speak to enforcement. I’ve spoken with several people who got citations who said they simply tore them up and never heard anything further.
Like a lot of folks here, I don’t have a problem with a reasonable fee, provided it’s clear when I need to pay it and that I don’t need to jump through hoops to get it. And if I purchase a pass that covers entrance to all federal public lands, I don’t want to get hit with an extra charge just to get out of the car—to me, that interpretation of “entrance” is pedantic to the point of absurdity.
In any event, most of these considerations now seem moot—at least for a while. And though the decision is binding authority only in the 9th circuit, it well may be persuasive authority in others—as the Ninth’s decision in Bryan v. MacPherson (TASERing a motorist who posed no threat) seems to be taken. As the Adams Court noted in quoting Brown v. Gardner, “Ambiguity is a creature not of definitional possibilities but of statutory context.” And here the statutory context seem pretty clear. Perhaps this isn’t what Congress intended, but if that’s the case, Congress should amend it.