Many Want Forest ‘Adventure Pass’ Axed

It was meant to be a simple program with a laudable goal when it was launched six months ago--people would pay to play in Los Padres and the three other national forests in Southern California.

With 10 million hikers, bikers, anglers and swimmers descending upon Los Padres alone annually, it was thought the user fees--priced at $5 daily or $30 annually per carload--would enable the budget-squeezed U.S. Forest Service to fix vandalized campgrounds and washed-out trails.

What the agency actually got is a program that even federal officials admit is overly complex and difficult for people to comply with.

At its best, the Adventure Pass program, as it is called, is largely unknown to casual forest visitors. At its worst, the program has provoked rebellion among some of the most ardent forest users, who have formed groups opposing the fee, organized boycotts of businesses selling the pass and bitterly denounced the idea as unworkable and even un-American.

To make matters worse, agency officials acknowledge that, at least at Los Padres, the program has fallen short of financial expectations. Revenues are less than projected, providing grist for opponents who contend that more money is spent on administration than physical improvements.

“Does that automatically mean the program is a failure?” said Ruth Wenstrom, a spokeswoman for the four-forest program. “No, in my mind it doesn’t mean that at all. . . . Once people become aware of it and they understand the money comes back [to the forest] and doesn’t go to the treasury, we find that 80% to 90% support the program.”

Yet if awareness of the program is growing, so is the backlash against it.

A boycott of businesses that sell the pass, organized by an Ojai-based group called Free Our Forests, so alarmed employees at Great Pacific Ironworks, the outdoor clothing and equipment store owned by Ventura-based Patagonia Inc., that they recently held a meeting with local Forest Service officials to outline their concerns.

Patagonia sells passes at its cost--$27 for the annual version, $4 for the daily--to let its upscale clientele know that the company does not wholeheartedly support the program. But frustrated store employees told agency officials they spend much of their time educating people about the pass, and many of those customers see it as an example of double taxation.

“I feel like I work for the Forest Service,” said Assistant Manager Don Piper after being bombarded with customers’ questions. “They’re looking for ways to get around it. They don’t want it to work.”

Yet opponents and proponents agree that the program has at least stimulated discussion about management of the long-neglected national forests.

Indeed, user fees could eventually give heretofore voiceless recreational forest users lobbying clout to rival that of timber companies, cattle ranchers and mining companies, speculates Andy Stahl, executive director of the Eugene, Ore.-based Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. Although those powerful business interests provide much of the agency’s budget by paying to tap forest resources, critics see their activities as environmentally destructive and subsidized by taxpayers.

“User fees crystallize many of the problems that have faced the national forests,” said Stahl, whose group counts 800 Forest Service workers among its more than 9,000 members. “It’s a good thing if people want to effectively influence Forest Service behavior. . . . You get what you pay for. Access and influence [are] in direct proportion to where the money goes.”

Redirecting where the money goes in the massive Forest Service bureaucracy was precisely the idea behind user fees.

Although the main focus of the 156 national forests is not recreation--Los Padres, for instance, was created at the turn of the century to protect water supplies--the nationwide forest system is host to more visitors than even the national park system.

In the past, most visitors paid no direct fee to use the wilderness. The isolation of campgrounds made fees difficult to collect. And the little money that was taken in ended up in the federal treasury.

As budgets shrank during the 1980s, maintenance was delayed nationwide, leading to a $3-million backlog of recreation-related projects in the Ojai Ranger District alone by 1994. Wrecked campgrounds, dirty bathrooms and bullet-riddled signs became the norm in “urban forests” such as Los Padres, which stretches from the fringes of Los Angeles to the outskirts of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Last year, Los Padres officials began large-scale leasing of campgrounds and recreation areas to private companies. The result was higher camping fees, but also cleaner restrooms, improved interpretive programs, less vandalism and an increased sense of security for many visitors.

Encouraged by the public’s generally positive response to such arrangements, Congress approved a pilot user-fee program to bring similar improvements on a greater scale. To be tested over three years, the program would return 80% of the money to the area from which it had been collected.

The idea was to ask those who used the national forests to pay for better services.

Little public input was sought before the program began, which has antagonized the many forest visitors who see the user fees as taxation without representation.

Still, more than 100 such programs are underway, and the largest is the Adventure Pass, which covers the Angeles, San Bernardino and Cleveland national forests, as well as Los Padres.

Through Sept. 30, only 1,767 annual passes and 1,353 daily passes had been sold for Los Padres, although the passes can be bought and used at any of the four regional forests.

In the second quarter of 1997, the sale of passes resulted in about $66,300 in revenue, far less than the $223,000 projected.

After subtracting almost $42,000 for the cost of having field personnel carry out the program and for $3,000 worth of unsold passes, that left all of $7,950.10 for Forest Service programs, according to agency documents.

The tangible improvements in Ventura County’s Ojai Ranger District so far, according to Forest Service recreation officer Charlie Robinson: 22 new toilet-paper holders, 18 refurbished picnic tables, 12 new fire rings and two new wheelchair-accessible camp sites.

For outspoken Alasdair Coyne, spokesman for the Ojai-based conservation group Keep the Sespe Wild, which has led the fight against user fees, the lackluster performance provided ammunition for what he had been saying all along--the program had failed.

Most of the money spent was going to people hired to enforce the program, he contended. What was worse, including start-up costs, the agency had spent about $177,000 through Sept. 30, Coyne noted.

“Not only is what they’ve collected not going back out to the forest, what they’ve done is spend $177,000 to put $8,000 back in the forest,” he said, adding that the Forest Service could have raised more money with a garage sale. “We’ve got a problem.”

Forest Service officials have been quick to respond:

* Projections failed to take into account that people simply driving through Big Sur and other regions surrounded by forest would not have to buy the pass, and that several of the most popular campgrounds are now run by private concessionaires, and passes there are not required.

* Program start-up costs skew the financial picture.

* The number of people who could simply walk into the forest from communities such as Ojai and avoid paying the user fee was underestimated.

* The $42,000 staffing cost isn’t solely for program enforcement, since those people also answer visitors’ general questions. In addition, their presence reduces vandalism and provides better customer service--something many tourists have wanted all along.

* The sheer number of access roads into a huge forest such as Los Padres has made enforcing the program difficult.

As proof, officials point to the three southerly forests where urbanites accept fees more readily, and where the geographic concentrations of people and amenities make enforcing the fees easier, officials said. In those areas, revenues are said to be fairly close to projections.

But the mechanics of the program, in which the pass is attached to a vehicle--although forest officials insist the Adventure Pass is not a parking permit--are difficult to communicate to the public, officials acknowledge.

Moreover, money is unavailable to adequately advertise the program, and people have to look for a store that sells the passes since, unlike at national parks, there are no booths at national forest entrances.

“We tried so very hard to make a program that was fair,” said Kathy Good, spokeswoman for Los Padres National Forest. “Perhaps we made it unduly cumbersome.”

That the Adventure Pass is a source of exasperation is undeniable. Patagonia employee Mike Brown notes that the Adventure Pass is simply the latest addition to an ever-increasing number of government user fees.

The avid hiker or surfer, Brown said, is already forced to pay separate user fees for Ventura County parks, Santa Barbara County parks, state parks, national parks and now, national forests.

“At some point the public is going to throw up their hands and say ‘forget it,’ ” he said. “The sophisticated public looks at this as a real source of frustration and not one where there’s a lot of benefits.”

Pass opponents have seized upon the problems in Los Padres, where criticism of the fees has been most strident.

But even opponents are somewhat at odds.

Coyne, whose group has received requests for almost 1,000 bumper stickers with such slogans as “Can’t See the Forest for the Fees,” believes fees are appropriate for camping but not to merely stroll in the forest. Congress should allocate enough money to allow the Forest Service to do its job properly, he argues.

Ojai resident Jeffrey Pine of Free Our Forests takes a more emotional view: The pass is a symbol of an unresponsive government bureaucracy that should be gutted and its priorities reevaluated before it threatens the nation’s ideals.

“The Adventure Pass is morally and ethically wrong,” Pine said. “If we allow the freedom of the forests and the last of the wilderness to be taken from us, then I’m almost convinced the very idea of freedom may die with it.”

Coyne and Pine disagree over the boycott as well.

Coyne notes that Patagonia is urging people merely to protest the fees and has ordered anti-Adventure Pass T-shirts printed by Keep the Sespe Wild.

Pine, however, wants the 1,300 people who have signed a petition opposing the pass to refrain from patronizing all sellers of the passes.

No business has stopped selling passes because of the boycott, forest officials said, although Pine maintains that at least two will do so once their supply is exhausted.

Nevertheless, all involved--officials as well as opponents--urge people with opinions about the Adventure Pass to write their congressional representatives, because they approved the idea.

Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) said he generally supports the idea of supplementing the agency’s budget to enhance services. But he said he intends to ensure that a congressional committee holds hearings next year to find out whether money from user fees is being spent appropriately.

“Anyone who can afford to find their way to a national forest can certainly afford the $5,” Gallegly said. “But any taxpayer has a legitimate concern if they are being taxed for one thing and their tax dollars are going for something else.”

The debate over user fees rages even within the Forest Service, Stahl said.

Members of the employees’ watchdog group, most of whom remain anonymous for fear of retribution, are agonizing over the fees’ ramifications.

Will fees help protect the environment, the same way the sale of duck-hunting licenses has helped preserve wetlands, perhaps even leading to the demise of the logging that conservationists decry? Or will user fees simply exchange one form of exploitation for another--recreational vehicles instead of lumber companies?

The group has not taken a position on the issue, Stahl said.

“I believe that by its very nature a user fee is more equitable than general taxation,” he said. “[However] . . . there has to be a lot of oversight to make sure this money is spent where it’s supposed to be spent.”

The question of oversight is just part of the debate, though. Many see the issue as much broader.

“The beef is not over the Adventure Pass, but congressional priorities for funding the Forest Service,” said Rich Tobin, Los Padres recreation officer. “I see the Adventure Pass as the catalyst for a much broader discussion about the role of the national forests in this country.”