Activists Insist It’s Unfair
To Charge Them For Land Use

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. — Environmental activists have expended a lot of outrage over the years about what they call "subsidized" use of public lands by stockmen, miners and the timber industry. The productive sector doesn’t pay enough for use of those resources, they loudly insist.

Now they’re insisting just as loudly that they themselves should have the use of public lands for free.

Last year, when Congress trimmed spending for hiking trails and other maintenance, Southern California rangers began charging a $5 per day or $30 per year user fee to park along forest roads for hiking or picnicking, activities that had always been free.

Billed as a three-year experiment, the fees met stiff opposition. Environmental activist groups like the Sierra Club, which had long argued that national forests need help — and fewer users — found themselves painted into a corner and forced to withhold judgement, at least at first.

On Sept. 16, however, the club's Angeles Chapter, the nation's largest with up to 50,000 members, voted to oppose the so-called "Adventure Pass."

Upkeep of their favorite hiking trails should come from other people’s taxes, as it has in the past, their resolution insists. Officers said they would pitch it to state and national chapters.

Aware of the hypocrisy, opponents of "pay for play" have attempted to portray their position as a protest against double charges rather than insistence on free recreation. They contend the nominal hiking pass fee should also entitle them to services from various private vendors along the routes who operate parking lots and campgrounds.

"Our hiking parties are very upset about that," said Sierra Club hike leader David Czamanske. He has stopped taking groups to trails in the Crystal Lake area of the Angeles, where a private company operates concessions.

"We just don't feel it's fair to ask our participants to pay $5 and then pay $5 again," he said.

Complainers spin the fee program as paving the way for a corporate takeover of national forests.

On Sept. 26, about 120 demonstrators from Central and Southern California stood forming a "$" sign alongside Interstate 5 north of Los Angeles, taking aim at what they portray as corporate and political greed. The gambit appears to be working.

"It's the single issue that we've received most of our communications on," said Rep. Lois Capps, a Santa Barbara Democrat sponsoring legislation to end the fees. Mary Bono, a Republican congresswoman from Palm Springs, supports the bill, as do other western representatives from both parties.

Neither the legislation nor the Sierra Club resolution would affect national parks, where people expect to pay for special services and scenery.

"We recognize the need to raise money for the forests, but we can do that in a more fair and equitable way," Capps said. "Most people don't say the cost is prohibitive ... but it's the first step in the door, and then we'll see a bunch more privatization and charges."

The Forest Service collected nearly $2.7 million in Adventure Pass sales from May 1997 through Sept. 23, 1998, said Spencer. The money is earmarked for upkeep, repair of damage caused by weather — and by the hikers who are protesting the fees.