| America the Beautiful Pass-- Ripoff or Reasonable? Article |
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| Page Type: Article | Page By: Bob Sihler Created/Edited: Feb 13, 2009 / Feb 17, 2009 Object ID: 489416 Hits: 3298  Loading... Page Score: 90.72% - 44 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
Foreword
Since forum threads on controversial subjects sometimes devolve into personal attacks or go off on tangents only marginally related to the original topic, I’ve made this submission an article rather than a forum topic. My hope is that any debate the article spurs will be spirited but respectful, but if two or more people head down that road of personal vilification or off-topic posts, any newcomer to this topic can always read it according to its original intent and add new comments while the keyboard warriors boldly continue to launch electronic missiles at one another.
Also-- although I normally respond to every comment someone makes on a submission of mine, I can see that this article may generate so many comments that it may be difficult for me to keep up with the replies. Therefore, I will read every comment and do appreciate every civil and constructive one whether you agree or disagree with me, but I may refrain from a reply if my answer has already been revealed in the text, if the comment is mostly an affirmation of my position, or if I perceive the tone of the comment to be insulting; as to that last-- I welcome civil debate but disdain Internet bravado.
Thank you for reading.
Photographs-- the pictures here are of public-owned areas not protected by the NPS and not currently subject to user fees; they are places dear to my heart and places I strongly feel are worth our collective effort to preserve.
Opening
On January 1, 2007, the National Parks Pass and the Golden Eagle Hologram became things of the past, replaced by the America the Beautiful Pass, also know as the Interagency Pass. The new pass, which is a fairly pricey $80, covers admission to all federal fee areas administered by the National Park Service (NPS), the USDA Forest Service (FS), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS-- administers most national wildlife refuges), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM--sometimes not-so-fondly known as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining), and the Bureau of Reclamation (think dams). Previously, one could pay $50 for a National Parks Pass and an extra $15 for the hologram expanding access to other federal fee areas.
Leading up to the enactment of this program, there was a good bit of criticism of it here on SP. Some people either had the impression or tried to give the impression that this pass would be required for use of any federally owned public land. Some posted links to blogs and articles that exuded hysteria and conspiracy theories; I even saw one article claiming that the off-road-vehicle lobby was somehow behind it all. (Some of those pages have since disappeared, but here is a discussion begun by a respected Western publisher and commentator; note not only his certainly valid points but also the valid points by the few who disagree with him.) Another blog I read seemed to imply that declining park visitation is because of higher fees and that the fees are a sinister way for powerful special interests to erode public support for the parks so that they (the special interests) can gradually turn them into places for private enterprise.
Well, it is within the realm of possibility that that is true, and, in fact, some people who worked for or with the Bush Administration did espouse the idea of privatizing some of the smaller, “less profitable” national parks, but maybe declining park visitation, if it is in fact occurring, also has something to do with the fact that we Americans get lazier and fatter by the second, or that high summer gas prices and less free time due to our work schedules and commutes play a role, but maybe the mysterious special interests are behind that, too. You see, fast-food companies, along with the oil industry, are encouraging us to eat unhealthy foods and are raising gas prices in an attempt to keep us in bad shape and at home, which will cause a collapse in support for national parks since no one will be visiting them, which will, in turn, enable those companies to buy parklands at basement prices and use them for grazing so that they can hostilely take over American ranching, buy up all the ranchland, and turn those places into subdivisions, strip malls, and drilling fields. Then more and more Americans will live farther and farther from their workplaces, resulting in more gasoline usage, which will result in higher prices, longer working hours, and so on.
If you just read the above paragraph and are thinking that sounds pretty plausible, then for your own sake I suggest you stop reading this article. First, it was heavy on sarcasm. Second, if you read on, you may get into a fit over something that really is not worth blowing your top over.
Time could prove all that to be right, of course (I guess). And the bill’s wording does open the door to an expansion of fee areas (which shouldn’t matter to pass holders). But for now at least, the program is what it says it is, or at least it seems to be.
Rocky Mountain; Bob Marshall Wilderness, MT |
Arguments
Here are some reasonable criticisms of the policy and my own takes on them. It is not the definitive list of issues, and my views are not proposed as the final word on any of the issues but should be seen as just one person’s opinion and a starting point for civil debates.
But before you or I go on, let's establish a few things:
• Nobody likes paying fees. So although my overall position on this issue is one of support, I am not saying I am happy to be paying any fees, increased or otherwise.
• I am not under any illusions that the government wisely spends every dollar it collects. But when it comes to managing the wilderness, I trust private entities less than I do the government.
• There are always those who are going to be against taxes and fees and regulations. I am not trying to reach those people or change their minds; I am trying to reach those who believe fees are sometimes necessary but who have reservations about the current program.
• My observations and positions are based mostly on my experiences in the Rocky Mountain states, the Desert Southwest, and the East. I have read anecdotal evidence that fee programs are more burdensome in parts of California and the Pacific Northwest. It is my understanding that the America the Beautiful Pass covers federally owned fee areas there, but I would be interested to know if that has not been the case in particular instances.
San Juan Mountains, CO |
Okay, on to those arguments--
• This was pushed through without any debate, attached to a must-pass spending bill. Fair enough. I live in the Washington, D.C. area, which is saturated with political news to an extent that most of the rest of the country is not. The fact that I did not hear about this program until environmental groups began complaining about it suggests there is a good bit of truth to this claim.
I could go on with this into a discussion of partisan politics (and my draft of this article did), but in the interests of keeping this a non-PnP topic, I'll just offer this:
This is what goes on in Washington all the time. Congressmen attach riders to must-pass bills; everyone rails against the practice but everyone keeps doing it. More likely than not, there are programs and/or regulations you support that got through by the same means. I'm not defending the practice; I'm just saying it is what it is and that idealism has its limits and ultimately must give way to realism. It may stink (actually, it does), but it does not, in my opinion, undermine the core idea of needing to increase funding for our public lands.
• It’s too expensive. $80 does seem pretty expensive, but it’s really not that bad when you consider what it gets you. Say you take a cross-country trip and visit ten national parks (regular entrance fees would cost $10-25 per park). That’s $8 per park for a week’s worth of access to each; if you are into the one-hour-dash method of visiting the parks and think you’re not getting your money’s worth, that’s your problem. In comparison, have you seen what it costs to go to a movie these days? Have you noticed how bad most of the movies are? Which is the better value?
If you live close to a park and visit it just once per month on average, it’s costing you less than $7 per visit. Go twice as often and it costs less than $3.50 per visit. If you don’t go to other parks, you can get an annual pass (less expensive) or just pay the regular fee if either is the more economical choice. It isn’t law that you have to buy the America the Beautiful Pass just to go to a national park or visit any other federal fee area.
• The costs are hard on the locals of modest or meager means. This is supposedly one of the reasons many Western-state legislators opposed the plan. Part of my response-- see the preceding paragraph. The other part-- the vast majority of FS and BLM lands do not require fees, and it is these lands that local hunters and fishers use the most, and a great deal of hikers, climbers, mountain bikers, etc. use them, too (and hunting and all off-road motorized travel, including by bicycle, are already banned in most national parks and many wilderness areas). If fee areas and, more importantly, fee levels dramatically increase, that could put a bite on lower-income wilderness users, and that is a reasonable concern that people ought to be alert to. That necessitates vigilance.
Also, $80 out of a year's earnings is not that much for most people; it is less than $7 per month. I suspect that most people for whom about $6.66 per month is a major expenditure are not spending what free time they have hiking and climbing, anyway, and I thus see this as one of those arguments that has emotional power but is weak in reality.
• This will hurt local economies. Anytime there’s an environment-related controversy, one or both sides trot out this argument, often cynically. Cancel a logging project and local kids will go without Christmas presents, some say. Raise fees at parks or campgrounds and people will stop coming, hurting the restaurants, motels, and stores in local towns, say some others. Keep the logging and the low or nonexistent fees and people will ultimately stop coming due to the eventual environmental degradation and/or traffic congestion, killing the local businesses, yet another faction may say. It’s hard to refute these scientifically; it is easy to find one essay or study showing these arguments are bunk and find another saying they aren’t. For every argument proclaiming that the local economy has improved with the scaling back of extractive industry and the increase of “ecotourism,” there’s a real guy sitting there whose way of life has disappeared. It’s hard-- the jobs created by a bad mining project shouldn’t be justification to keep ruining the land, but how do you tell those workers they are losing their livelihoods and have to do something else? But that’s another topic, and I digress.
Getting back to the idea that the higher fees will negatively impact local economies, I am highly skeptical. First, high travel expenses (airfares, car-rental costs, gasoline costs) are far more likely to deter me (and the much-maligned vacationing families that unload a lot of money on local economies) from visiting a place than an admission fee is. Second, backpackers, hikers, climbers, and many other outdoor-oriented people are seen by a lot of people as being notoriously cheap, and many of them are not pumping much money into local businesses. We’ll spend hundreds or thousands of dollars at REI (well, only those of us who are “soft,” that is), but we gripe about access fees. Go figure. We wear all our fancy clothes and use all our fancy equipment but sleep in cars instead of at campgrounds to save a few bucks (and to get some more privacy and quiet-- count me as guilty of this). It’s people like the birdwatchers, the skiers, the golfers, and the tourist families who are the types that spend the big bucks in the gateway and resort communities; most of the rest of us spend only what we have to while dashing through as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Local residents have more to fear from runaway development and the pricing out, plus the degradation of quality of life, that results from it than they do from increased fees in nearby parks and other natural areas. In many areas of the Mountain West, the proliferation of tacked-up subdivisions, trophy homes, and affluent transplants who want the politics, people, and culture of their new hometowns to match their old ones change communities by making land (and, accordingly, taxes) more expensive, killing small businesses and replacing them with big-box stores, chain restaurants, and niche shops catering to the well-heeled. Whenever I have to pass through some of these towns, I can’t help but think that except for the stunning mountains in view, I seem to be back home in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. The long-time residents in these towns sometimes adapt and get by or even flourish, but many get driven out by the changing demographics and lifestyles. So fear developers and those they serve or draw (depending on your view), not fees.
As a rebuttal to this, someone might point out the situation in Ouray, Colorado a few years ago. There was a fee system for the Canyon Creek area (think Yankee Boy Basin), but the system was discontinued after local business owners complained of lost business. I have no idea where the truth lay. Part of me can picture locals banding together to protest a program they found disagreeable just for its own sake; another part of me understands that although it is laughable to think that a fee deterred the thousands of out-of-staters who visit the area every year to see with their own eyes what so many calendars, posters, and the like depict, it might have encouraged in-state residents to go elsewhere on their weekend and day-off forays. Still, though, considering the popularity of the area with both in- and out-of-state people, I'm a little skeptical of those business owners' claims. Politicians aren't the only ones who take cynical stands on the issues.
• We already pay taxes for these places. We pay taxes for a lot of things, and no one is happy about all of the things his or her tax dollars support. There are people who resent that their taxes support places like national parks and other public lands, and they’re not only entitled to that view but also can sometimes eloquently and plausibly argue their case. I wish we appropriated more money to the parks and other wildlands, but the political reality is that it won’t happen anytime soon. The money just isn’t there without a large tax increase or cuts to programs that someone else cherishes (or canceling a war the government simply is not going to cancel, despite the rhetoric and despite whether it should or should not), and the chances of any unhidden tax increases at all are pretty slim for almost everyone. And what will happen if there is a tax increase, even one dedicated to funding the national parks? People, even park lovers, will say they're being ripped off or will complain that this wouldn’t be necessary if the government managed its (our) money better. People hate tax increases. It just becomes a circular argument-- we want all these things, don't want to pay more for them, and think we should instead cut elsewhere, as long as the cuts aren't to things we care about; or, we can increase funding, as long as the increases come from someone else's paycheck, preferably those who deserve to pay more (always a popular idea until you're a member of the must-pay-more crowd).
• Too much of the money goes to infrastructure, too little to conservation and restoration. I agree. I personally don’t have much interest in visitor centers, ranger programs, and the many road projects that strike me as little more than welfare for local construction companies and their employees, and I’d like to see more emphasis on trail maintenance, wilderness restoration, habitat protection, and wildlife conservation. Maybe healthier budgets will lead to these things. Maybe they won’t. But a lot of people do care about those things that I and some of you don’t. And enhanced visitor experiences can turn curious sightseers into devoted advocates of wilderness. Ranger programs can get kids into nature and away from their video games and televisions. Nobody who experiences nature closely is unchanged by it. Today’s tourist masses in air-conditioned visitor centers may produce some of tomorrow’s John Muirs, Bob Marshalls, and Aldo Leopolds.
• Why should we pay more when the loggers, miners, and grazers only face cut-rate costs for using public lands? That is an excellent point. My only answer, unsatisfying though it is: that situation is not changing anytime soon; and large-scale refusal to comply with policies, though some think such will lead to the abandonment of said policies, is more likely to become an argument for anti-wilderness forces that recreational users don’t care about wilderness as much as they say they do, leading to the development of policies that are even worse than what we have now.
• It is unfair that we are forced to pay for National Forest, USFWS, BLM, etc. sites if we primarily visit national parks and when before we had the option to pay extra for access to the non-NPS fee areas. Don't expect much of an argument from me here; I agree with the sentiment. It is not enough to turn me against the program, but I do think it's unfair. There are at least two explanations for this change. One is that the government is just using its power to make us hand over more of our money. The other is that places like national wildlife refuges are important but can never hope to pay for themselves through targeted user fees, and they need some extra help. But yes, it's still unfair that the choice is gone.
• It is not right that areas that never had fees before have fees now. I'm guessing that this argument resonates strongly with long-time locals and many people a good 10-20 years (at least) older than I am. The point has its merits, but there's also another perspective-- times and circumstances change. Let me use an example from my own back yard to illustrate...
Here in Virginia, we have Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah National Park. It is in many ways a standout mountain for the Southeast, and one of the chief reasons for that is the Ridge Trail, a rocky route that includes a good deal of Class 3 scrambling and unbroken views, both of which are not terribly easy to find, especially together, in Virginia or any other Southeastern state. In short, although the trail traffic there can be maddening, it is easy to understand why there is so much trail traffic.
I first climbed Old Rag in 1994. It was busy then, and it is busier now. Unless one goes on a winter weekday, peace and quiet are hard to find unless the weather is poor. Back in 1994, there were no fees for those approaching Old Rag from outside the park, which is what the vast majority of Old Rag's climbers do.
March 1997 was the last time I climbed Old Rag for almost 11 years. The crowds just became too frustrating, especially at some of the narrow Class 3 areas, where lines would often form because of someone inching his or her way up with the kind of caution one might expect of someone free soloing El Capitan. Sometime between 1994 and 2007, probably when the Fee Demonstration Program began (one of the precursors to the current situation), the Park Service began requiring user fees.
This made perfect sense to me. The area had become overcrowded and overused. Signs of wear were apparent all over the trail system. User fees probably did not cut the crowds much, and they will not restore the damage done to the mountain as long as the mountain remains open to the public, which it should and will, but those fees might help meet other important needs the park faces. Also, it puts a tangible out-of-pocket cost on the impact people make.
Related: I pretty much only go to one place; it has never had fees and does now. That stinks, but, and I don't mean to be flippant, you should buy an annual pass instead of paying each time you go, or you should diversify your interests. Going back to the Old Rag example-- if you've been visiting Old Rag every weekend for the last ten years, that might mean you know the place better and may even appreciate it more than others do, but it doesn't lessen your impact on the resource. In fact, you are probably making much more of an impact than the average visitor is, and maybe it's time to give a little extra back.
And that brings me to the last point to cover:
• Some of these fee programs are ripoffs and serve no need other than the government's need to raise money. Despite my overall position, I will not deny that. For a good example of such an abusive and possibly illegal program, watch this video by a well-known SP member and site administrator about the fee program on Mount Evans in Colorado. Long story short-- the federal government is charging you to drive and, in some cases, hike, on a road and land owned by the city of Denver, not the Forest Service. Furthermore, according to the video, no one is saying where the money is going.
Although I disagree that a fee itself is inappropriate, I agree that it is wrong for people to have to pay to an entity that is not responsible for most of the facilities they are paying to visit. Here, we have a good example of an abusive program. Where such programs exist, they should be called out and challenged. But as to the argument that it's wrong to pay for services you don't personally use but which a public entity is deciding to provide, I refer to the argument four bullet points above. There's a lot of gray in that argument, but I do generally believe that it is not unreasonable to expect user fees to cover the services that are provided to all, even though few individuals utilize all those services. To recap-- when I go to a national park, I rarely go to visitor centers or attend ranger programs, but it doesn't bother me that my user fees help pay for them. If I feel the cost exceeds the value, I can choose not to go. And the vast majority of public lands, including the mountains, are still fee-free.
Great Divide Basin, WY |
In Conclusion
I’m cautiously supportive of the America the Beautiful Pass and the Fee Demonstration Program that led to it (that program was the one that created increased entrance fees for most national parks and established user fees for some very heavily used non-NPS sites back around 1996). The land agencies do need more money. The government won’t give it to them. And can’t we give a little extra back instead of wanting everything to be free? I say this not with the smugness of someone who lives in opulence and can shrug at fee increases but with the perspective of a teacher who makes a decent salary but is far, far away from making the Forbes list.
If every national forest access road develops a fee station and every BLM parking lot starts seeing ticket-wielding rangers patrolling them and checking for passes, we have a problem. Currently, it’s mostly only the national parks and some very popular non-NPS areas that have fees. As I said, we need to watch for “fee-station creep,” and we must vocally oppose it if and when it manifests itself. In fact, I’ve read that more increases are planned, that by 2020 it could cost $50 to visit parks like Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Yosemite. If those increases are fair relative to inflation or needs resulting from user impacts, okay. If not, get ready to protest.
But in the meantime, can those of us who frequently visit national parks and other wilderness areas that charge fees part with a little extra money to give something back to the places that have given us much, much more than we can ever repay? These places have immeasurably changed my life for the better; I'm thus willing to do a little more than everyone else has to do. Maybe the wilderness areas belong to all Americans and thus must be supported to some extent by all Americans, and maybe they are treasures that deserve to exist even if taxes and user fees can never meet all their needs, but is it that unreasonable to ask those who use them the most to put in a little extra?
Red Rock Lakes NWR, MT |
P.S.
This is not the take of an ideologically crazed right-wing fanatic who’s tired of hearing the moaning of liberal environmentalists. I admit I’m more conservative than I am liberal and seem to be politically right of the SP mainstream, but in political terms, I think of myself as a Republican disgusted with what the Republican Party has become but unable to buy much of what the Democrats are selling. I’m more like a Roosevelt Republican-- advocating strong defense, economic fairness, wilderness conservation, and toughness on crime-- something about as rare these days as a Truman or JFK Democrat.
I’m no secret apologist for those that rape the land or enable those who do. The dollar-driven practices of developers/builders and the oil industry, the former of whom will happily tack up anything anywhere and the latter of whom will drill anywhere for every little drop when drilling will never solve our energy problems, sicken me. The many other businesses and corporations that seem to see the wilderness as a resource for pecuniary profit and nothing more likewise dismay me. The many ORV operators who show a complete lack of civic responsibility infuriate me. So do the mining companies that make toxic messes and then leave them for the taxpayers to clean up. And then there are those landowners who legally and sometimes illegally block access to public lands. I am well right of center if you talk to me about certain issues, but I’m solidly left of center on other issues, including most conservation and environmental ones. However, I just can’t see in this fee program the Orwellian scenario that some others do. So I simply want to tell people that the parks and the national forests and their brethren are still there, you can still go to them, you probably won’t have to get on the welfare rolls after you do so, and that it might be both good and right to pay a little more to preserve what we love.
So what do you all think?
Mt. March Madness-- Wyoming Range, WY |
P.P.S.
If you see that this page has been edited since its submission date, please take my word that it has only been edited for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I will not change or add any positions and thus misrepresent the original submission.
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