WILDERNESS & BIG BUCKS
I was disgusted with the tone of a recent WildAlert from The Wilderness Society. Why should lands be designated as wilderness? Surely NOT to "safeguard the world class recreational opportunities and bolster the economies of local communities" the Wilderness Society speaks of... And not just to protect ecosystems from traditional resource extraction (although this is a most important benefit that comes with Wilderness designation). Wilderness needs to be designed and protected to ensure that WILDERNESS remains. This is a concept that has largely been lost from today's wilderness discussion and it is a concept that must be restored to its rightful place if we are to stand any hope of preserving wildness. The "WildAlert" suggests that TWS is willing to turn wilderness into a recreational resources and promote wilderness areas as revenue generating playgrounds.
TWS is prepared to market and commodify wildness and in so doing they are following the lead of free-market think-tanks and the industrial-wreckreation industry. It's no wonder that TWS quotes no less of a public lands privatization authority than free-marketeer Terry Anderson (www.perc.org) in their own support of fee-demo. TWS justifies their position using Anderson's logic and these specific words: "Higher fees will give recreational users the clout they lack now.... higher fees are morally right." Terry Anderson, Political Economy Research Center, New York Times, 1993
So I ask --- just exactly how does TWS EARN ITS POLITICAL CLOUT? How do many other big-greens earn their political clout? There are reasons why the environment is getting trashed and why wilderness is becoming less wild every year. One of those reasons has to do with the failure of organizations such as TWS to understand morality or to do what is morally correct.
Designating an area as 'Wilderness' is no longer enough to protect the area as Wilderness, not in an era when federal land management agencies and all-too-many "wilderness defenders" do not have the will-power, the courage or the moral strength to manage these areas as wild Wilderness once they have been so designated.
Simply stated, I see the battle for the wild as almost lost and there is nothing to be gained by pretending otherwise. Holding the present course will not save wildness and holding the present course will certainly never save wildness if POGO was correct. ("We have met the enemy and they is us.")
FOREST SERVICE WASTE
Next time someone asks you: "If we don't pay user-fees, then how is the USFS going to find the money to maintain the forests or keep toilet paper in its outhouses ?" you might ask that person to read the letter to the editor pasted below. The waste of the USFS is legend. Their willingness to burn through taxpayer's money in the hope of attracting additional paying visitors/tourists will (unless nipped in the bud) become the stuff of legends for decades to come.
Online archives from The World newspaper, Coos Bay, Oregon. May 04, 2002
Signs won't bring new jobs or tourists
A recent article about the Port of Bandon's signs to be placed on the new boardwalk was a classic illustration of government waste (The World, April 20). A U.S. Forest Service grant of $20,000 funded the design of the signs. Construction of the signs will cost $15,000 and the Coquille Tribe has donated $7,500 for two more signs, a total of $42,500. There will be eleven, 24-inch-by-36-inch signs and three, 18-inch-by-24-inch signs for a total of 75 square feet of signage. If I read the article correctly and my arithmetic is correct, this is a cost of $566-plus per square foot of sign, in place. This cost is more outrageous than the $119,000 for the 20-foot-by-24-foot restroom that was not needed. That cost worked out at $248 per square foot in place. And how much will be the total cost of the boardwalk, proposed picnic shelter and the rest? The Port of Bandon is really skilled at spending public funds and grants, but it never has any new jobs to show for it all, nor will there be additional tourists coming just to see the boardwalk.
Bill Powell Bandon
UDALL ON WILDERNESS AND FEES
I'll be weighing in whatever way I can to restore that funding. U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo
There is no question that going back in time starting even before fee-demo was implemented in 1996, funding for Wilderness management has decreased in many parts of the country. This trend, however, has NOTHING to do with declining tax revenues, with 9/11, or with a sour economy.
This trend began during times of unparalleled prosperity and accumulating tax surpluses. So let's hope that Mark Udall weighs in mightily on the issue of RESTORING Wilderness funding. Let's hope he does not accept the alternate funding solution of Recreation User Fees, a solution created by the motorized recreation industry and one supported most vigorously by Anti-Wilderness leaders such as Reps. Jim Hansen (R-UT), Scott McInnis (R-CO), Joe Skeen (R-NM) and others of their ilk. The funding of Wilderness, like the funding of so many other important programs, was cut in order to precipitate a management crisis that would (some hoped) necessitate the application of free-market solutions such as commercialization, privatization and user-fees.
How Congress now chooses to deal with these induced crises will have profound implications. Please encourage Mark Udall to focus upon RESTORING Wilderness funding and encourage him to totally reject the user-fee solutions offered by those who hate Wilderness. Udall is, I believe, sitting on the fee-demo fence.
For the sake of Wilderness, it is important that he falls on the correct side --- the side OPPOSITE that of Hansen, McInnis, etc.
FEES UP...VISITATION DOWN
Since fee-demo was introduced in 1996, the USFS has revised its estimates of National Forest visitation, reducing its earlier estimate by nearly two thirds. Attendance at America's most popular National Parks, such as Yosemite and the Grand Canyon, is down 20 - 25%. And now, with Washington State recently introducing $5 per vehicle access fees at its State Parks, visitation instantly plummeted by 30-40%.
For agency after agency, in example after example, the data is clear. Recreation users fees have become a major deterrent to the public's use and enjoyment of the public's lands. Simply stated, these fees are NOT THE SOLUTION to a funding problem---they have become part of THE PROBLEM. When the revenue generated by these fees fails to generate adequate replacement funding for lost tax revenues, the NEXT SOLUTION will be to provide additional commercial (pay-to-play) attractions for which still higher fees can be charged. And when revenues from those new and expensive attractions fail to support the operation of those public lands, the FINAL SOLUTION will be the privatization of those lands.
So, let there be no uncertainTy, the user fee you are being asked to pay today will--as sure as night follows day--result in the privatization of your lands one, two, or perhaps five years from now. Congress needs to know that this is NOT AN ACCEPTABLE SOLUTION. I hope and trust that you are doing everything you can do to convey this message to your elected officials. The price of inaction is more than we, as a people, can afford.
Scott Silver/Wild Wilderness
248 NW Wilmington Ave. Bend, OR 97701
phone: 541-385-5261
e-mail: ssilver@wildwilderness.org
Internet: http://www.wildwilderness.org
