I turned 70 this November, and now learn that the Trump administration wants to double fees to $70 for permission to enter certain national parks.
Whether discussing local, county, state or federal recreation areas, we have to agree they face some common challenges in maintenance backlog, firefighting and the ravages of climate change, and the salient issue becomes funding for the various agencies.
U.S. recreation and wild areas come at us in a plethora of names such as national parks, national monuments (e.g. Death Valley), “federal wilderness” areas such as the Dick Smith embedded in our national forests, and more.
There are many car-camping areas in our local Los Padres National Forest, often near the perimeter of a glorious wilderness such as the San Rafael or Sespe, and in the past I’ve written about Rose Valley, Beaver (now closed), Davy Brown and other remote U.S. Forest Service camps.
California’s 2 million-acre Los Padres National Forest is just as strapped for funds as the National Park Service. In November 2016, it informed the public it had issued (sold) a 10-year Special Use Permit to collect fees at popular recreation sites in the forest.
These include the heavily used Lower Santa Ynez Recreation Area (Red Rock, White Rock and more) and more than 45 other sites scattered throughout the southern Los Padres National Forest (click here and see the list of fee sites at the end).
At one time it felt like a citizen’s right to go car camping for free inside public lands, and usually at little or no cost. The right to charge car-camping fees at crude Rose Valley Camp and Davy Brown Camp and many others now has been sold (issued) to the for-profit concessionaire Park Management Co., and I sincerely hope it’s more efficient than the earlier Rocky Mountain Co.
There is a common argument that in privatizing fee collection for the Forest Service, and more than doubling fees to get into our beloved national parks, these agencies will have more money to undertake their massive maintenance backlog. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has made this argument and plans to reduce the size of Utah’s spectacular Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, thus allowing more mineral and fossil fuel extraction (mining) there.
The fee theory in all these cases basically follows the Uber “surge pricing” model where high demand results in higher prices. If you are comfortably middle-income, or wealthy, a fee rise from $30 to $70 entering these parks may feel OK.
If you are younger, with a family and among the urban poor — or older and on a fixed-income — this increase is significant. And a lifetime senior pass at the national parks was raised to $80 in August (the cost had been $10 since 1994).
Readers can see where this is going: privatize services, raise fees, forget the low-income families and oldsters short of cash, and hammer the middle-class and wealthy who can easily afford the higher cost. As Timothy Egan recently wrote, this becomes “National Parks for the 1 Percent.”
The national parks plan targets the 17 most popular national parks (e.g., Yosemite and Yellowstone), whereas the local Los Padres Forest Service system that began in November 2016 has added $20 fees at many remote and less-used car-camping sites like La Panza, Navajo Flat and Reyes Creek as well as the Lower Santa Ynez Recreation Area (Red Rock).
Before readers decide I’m just being selfish and cheap and that I only want to prolong my 40 years of free car-camping at Davy Brown Camp, please note that I can certainly afford the $20 for the overnight there (or Rose Valley Camp or Reyes Creek Camp) despite being retired and on a fixed income.
In September, I ungrudgingly paid my $20 for an overnight at barely-improved Davy Brown, as noted in a column late that month.
The $20 fee will definitely discourage some lower-income families from bringing themselves and their children to these rough and beautiful sites far from the towns. If I wanted these rugged camps to myself, I would approve the continuing privatization of the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service.
But I do not approve. It’s selfish and anti-community to desire higher fees since they discourage lower-income campers and children from visiting public lands.
This is the larger point: These lands belong to the public, and the park and forest services manage them for us. All of my interactions with local Forest Service employees have been excellent, and they work very hard to keep these areas available to us and safe.
However, upwards of 60 percent of the Forest Service budget has been given to fighting wildfires and thus subtracted from those services these dedicated employees render the public and the area they protect. The Forest Service’s funding issues go straight to the top in Congress and with the current administration.
Interior Secretary Zinke, who visited Santa Barbara in mid-April (I was there politely protesting outside the Reagan Ranch Center with 200 others), states that the new fees will raise $70 million yearly for the Park Service’s budget, but simultaneously the current administration plans to cut its budget by almost $300 million.
Do we know with any certainty where the supposedly saved money from the parks management deal will go — to shore up Forest Service deficiencies elsewhere? Perhaps to help fund the current administration’s beloved $20 billion “wall” against illegal immigration from Mexico?
Maybe the parks management fees, even for parking, along Paradise and at the First Crossing make some sense in terms of the heavy usage there, and thus the more money raised, but why the $20-a-night fee at remote spots like those mentioned above? Why the $10 day use parking fee at Nira Camp?
While the administrators like to contend that although 52 sites managed by PMC have the new (higher) fee structure, and 23 still require the illegal Adventure Pass (confusing!), another 50 remain free of charge.
We can be sure that these 50 are mostly sites no one ever gets to, such as Toad Springs.
Why are we privatizing public recreation resources? More than 100 years ago, President Teddy Roosevelt asserted that access to public parks and public lands was a basic American right.
Some wonderful citizens, of course, just don’t care. When they head south to spend a few days at magnificent Joshua Tree National Park after Jan. 1, 2018, they will carelessly pay the exorbitant new $70 entrance fee.
When a low-income Latino or Anglo family thinks about the gasoline for 46 miles driving to Davy Brown Camp with the kids for a weekend of car camping plus the money for some extra food and barbecue supplies, the additional $20-a-night fee can be a budget-breaker.
Davy Brown and many others had been free for more than 30 years — folks often ignored the Adventure Pass nonsense — and because I’m 70, I recall that even earlier Davy cost $2 a night since there was piped-in water at each of the 13 sites.
Today: two pit toilets, 13 fire rings and wooden tables, and a usually over-filled trash container.
4.1.1.
» Books: Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia (Polity, 2017); Timothy Egan’s recent New York Times piece, “National Parks for the 1 Percent” (Nov. 4, Page A23); Rod Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind.
— Dan McCaslin is the author of Stone Anchors in Antiquity, and has written extensively about the local backcountry. He serves as an archaeological site steward for the U.S. Forest Service in the Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at cazmania3@gmail.com. Click here to read additional columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
