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Scofflaws aside, recreation fees pay dividends Boat landing renovation, improvements in forests are among the benefits By BETH QUINN In Southern Oregon's second year of user fees for recreation on some federal lands, the negatives outweighed the positives. Local national forest officials say at least 50 percent of 1998 trail users failed to buy newly required parking permits, and complaints led to a 40 percent rollback in the charge for a three-day Rogue River float trip. But the positives take center stage in 1999 as federal land managers begin to spend their user-fee earnings. The most visible spending will be a $250,000 revamp of the Foster Bar take-out on the lower Rogue River. Included will be four flush toilets, potable water from a newly drilled well, a disposal system for packed-out human waste and an improved site for the resident host. Separate funding will redo the roads and parking area at the boat landing. "We're able to accomplish things that we never would have been able to," said Jim Leffmann, river manager for the Bureau of Land Management. "The public accepted it rather well because they understood the fees were going back to the resource." Congress approved user fees in 1995 to see if recreationists at certain national parks, national forests, BLM lands and U.S. Fish and Wildlife sites would pay to play if those dollars went for local improvements. Most money earned on federal lands is sent to the Treasury, but up to 95 percent of recreation fees remain where they're earned. And 80 percent must be spent to improve recreation at those sites. Last year, recreation fees raised $179 million nationwide. Local fees included a $20-a-head charge for private in-season float trips on the Rogue River, the $10 entry fee at Crater Lake National Park, the $10 camping fee at the BLM's Hyatt Lake campground, and the $3 daily or $25 annual parking fee for some trailheads in the Rogue River and Siskiyou national forests. Some Rogue boaters balked at the $20-a-head charge and asked if fees collected from commercial outfitters were comparable. When an analysis showed outfitters actually paid about $12 a head, federal river managers lowered the private float fee. With a $55 million maintenance backlog on the Pacific Northwest's 20,000 miles of national forest trails, the parking fee made sense to many. Instituted locally in June, the fee last year raised $13,000 in the Rogue River forest and $12,000 in the Siskiyou forest. New bulletin boards, larger and improved parking areas, and improved spur roads are among the ways the money will be spent. "If we get some significant dollars from it, we can assure routine maintenance will occur every year on all the trails," said Mike Ricketts of the Rogue forest. "All of that money from people buying passes here is staying here and will be spent here. I see that as a big benefit if we can get that circle of life going." But some trail users oppose the new fees. "Some say, `I've paid my taxes and I shouldn't have to pay any more,"' says Gary Bartlett of the Rogue forest. Others, such as Scott Silver of Wild Wilderness in Bend, see pay-for-play fees as the first step to commercializing, privatizing and motorizing public lands. "People who have used nature in low-impact ways don't need these facilities," he says. "It's getting harder and harder to enjoy something that's truly a natural setting." But federal officials say facilities are falling apart and may no longer meet required codes. And with the cost of a new 50-site campground now more than $1 million, maintaining facilities is crucial, says Rolly Ortegon of the Forest Service's regional office in Portland. "It has gotten to the point where infrastructure is 30 years or older and we're not seeing the appropriations come," he says. "Our appropriations overall have gone down and the recreation budgets have essentially stayed flat." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA