Opinion: SoCal Adventure Pass ruling: Goodbye forest fees, hello trouble?

The Adventure Pass -- the bane of the occasional hiker in Southern California -- is no longer required for visitors who just want to park their cars and explore the region’s national forests.

A federal judge recently ruled that the U.S. Forest Service can only charge people for the use of amenities, such as bathrooms, developed parking lots, campgrounds and picnic tables. Requiring that visitors have a $5 daily or $30 annual Adventure Pass simply to park near a trailhead violates a law aimed at ensuring free access to federal land.

This is mostly good news.

It’s great for people who want to use the Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres and San Bernardino national forests but have been discouraged from visiting because the Adventure Pass is so inconvenient. You can’t just pay at the trailhead or the entrance gate, like a state or a regional park. You have to plan ahead and order one online or find a sporting goods store that sells the passes. (You’ll still have to get a pass if you want to use a picnic table or other amenity.)

But the Adventure Pass program has also generated millions of dollars to help maintain public land for the public good. Cuts to the U.S. Forest Service at the federal level have left local land managers without the funding to make the investments and repairs needed in heavily used urban-adjacent forests.

Congress recognized this in 1996 and allowed national forests to enact recreation fees that would generate money that forest managers could use for maintenance. Many forests adopted fees, and many of those fees -- like the Adventure Pass -- are being challenged in court for essentially charging people to simply access federal land.

It’s highly unlikely that today’s Congress will increase Forest Service funding, so where does that leave Southern California’s forests? With less money and potentially more visitors (now that you don’t need an Adventure Pass to simply park and hike.)

So as much as I may want to cheer for the end of the Adventure Pass, I worry about the future of the forest.