Opposition to Forest Fee Heating Up

They call it the Adventure Pass, but a whole lot of Los Padres National Forest users consider it a misadventure.

“As it is now, it costs $5 just to park your car and walk the trail,” said Colleen Hefley, a Santa Ynez resident.

She and her young daughter routinely hike through the forest. Until the Adventure Pass was instituted, those hikes were one of the few things they could do together that was free, she said.

“What I’m hoping is that they’ll get rid of the fee, at least in the unimproved parts of the forest,” Hefley said. “It’s just a real hardship.”

Conceived of and approved by Congress two years ago on an experimental basis, the Adventure Pass is a charge to use national parks and forests. At $5 per day, or $30 per year, the fee is in effect at all national parks and about one-third of the national forests.

In California, those forests include the Angeles, San Bernardino and Cleveland in the Los Angeles Basin, and the Los Padres Forest, which stretches from Ventura north to Monterey.

Although there has been relatively little outcry over the fee elsewhere, it has been a different story in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. The Los Padres abuts the city of Santa Barbara and encompasses a large portion of the Santa Ynez Valley to the north.

Many people here regard the program as akin to charging them to visit their backyard. With the fee recently extended for another two-year period, the local furor is unlikely to die down soon.

In Ventura County, residents of Ojai were so outraged by the pass that they started a group, Free Our Forests, to protest it. The group now includes more than 200 people in five communities, and has been very active in Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez.

Members have staged protests at stores that sell the pass, successfully persuading several outlets to withdraw from the program. Nearly half of the Santa Barbara outlets that had been selling the pass have quit, and Ojai and Frazier Park each have only one outlet that still offers it.

Although forest users can purchase the passes at national forest offices, not a single retailer in the Santa Ynez Valley still carries it.

Free Our Forests is expanding its efforts to the Angeles Forest--organizing members, planning protests and making the Adventure Pass a fall campaign issue with California’s congressional representatives.

*

“This [protest] will get bigger and worse as it goes along,” said Jeffrey Pine, a Free Our Forests founder from Ojai. “The majority of the public is still not aware. All of us face the problem of the commercialization of our forests. We’re realizing that our heritage and our birthright are in danger. The Forest Service, which we entrusted to take care of it, is now going into business.”

Forestry officials dispute the assertion, saying that the money protects the public interest.

“There is absolutely no possibility that the forests are going to be commercialized,” said Los Padres Forest supervisor Jeanine Derby.

The Adventure Pass program is a “pay as you go” plan that provides funding for required maintenance and improvement of recreational facilities, she said.

Eighty percent of Adventure Pass revenues are supposed to go back to the forests from which they were derived, to pay for direct improvements such as new restrooms, trail cleanups and care of picnic areas.

With what forest officials estimate to be about a 60% compliance rate among users, more than 16,000 daily passes and nearly 9,000 annual passes were sold in the Los Padres National Forest during the program’s first year--from June 1997 to June 1998, said forest spokeswoman Kathy Good.

Sales totaled $356,857, of which $288,377 was spent on improvements to facilities and services within the forest. Such services included the hiring of five year-round field rangers and five seasonal rangers.

Forest administrators call these rangers “forest protection officers.” Hefley calls them “forest meter maids.”

Their duties include enforcement of the pass program, which has led to criticism that the money being collected is used for little more than ensuring that the fee is paid.

In Los Padres, Adventure Pass money has been used for cleanups, campground upgrades, the addition of picnic facilities, restrooms and barbecue rings, removal of road hazards and general maintenance throughout the forest, Good said.

But forest administrators have been unable to dissuade people from concluding that the money is being ill-used.

“People are aware that we’re not happy about this,” said Rep. Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara).

More of her constituents have complained about the Adventure Pass than about any other issue, she said.

Last week, she and Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs) introduced legislation that would eliminate forest fees. It would leave the Adventure Pass program intact in the national parks but exempt the forests.

Additionally, Capps has asked for a General Accounting Office investigation and analysis of the Adventure Pass program.

The legislation imposing the Adventure Pass was scheduled to expire in 1999. But in July, Congress approved an extension of the fee through 2001.

“Federal taxes cover only a fraction of what’s needed to provide recreation in the forest,” Derby said. Just one penny out of every thousand dollars in taxes goes to the forests.

But the idea that the national forests should be money-makers is a tough pill to swallow.

“We already pay through the taxes we have for our national parks and forests,” Capps said. “Maybe Congress needs to bite the bullet, with the economy we have, and allocate more money for the forests.”

Santa Ynez resident Diane de Avalle-Arce blames Congress for the pass system.

A backpacker, hiker and water colorist, she spends many hours in the forest. She also makes traditional Chumash Indian baskets and has special permission to gather materials in the forest.

“It is literally our backyard,” De Avalle-Arce said. “It should be open to all.”