Federal Lands and Parks Archives

Donald Trump is donating 436 acres outside New York City to the state to create a new park named after the Donald himself. CNN reports here; Tim Haab comments here.

Holly Fretwell of PERC is in the Seattle Post Intelligencer today discussing the possibility of selling off some Forest Service lands. The article is similar to a piece she had in the Online Wall Street Journal not too long ago, so if you missed it then, catch it now.

A comment to my previous post raises what might be an interesting question. I am not enough of a constitutional scholar on the Establishment Clause to know the legal ramifications, but what sort of church/state issues would the purchase of Dr. King's center by the National Park Service raise? My understanding is that the Court's current take involves the traditions of the site in question when it determined whether the Ten Commandments could be part of state displays or not. To the extent that Dr. King's works reflect religious teachings and doctrine, what sort of management, display, or ownership problems would the religious nature of his writings impose on the Park Service?

I'm sure there must be historic churches that are on the National Historic Register. How are they managed? Are services still allowed to occur at those sites? Could legal challenges be raised to services continuing at such sites? Would explaining the religious beliefs of Dr. King and continuing the study of his writings at a Martin Luther King, Jr. Center under Park Service ownership create a state/church conflict?

UPDATE: An article from today at law.com shows the current state of flux in the Supreme Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence.

CNN has a poll going at the moment over whether the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center in Atlanta should remain independently run or should be sold to the National Park Service. Just over half of respondents would rather see the center remain independent. The King family is equally divided. Two of King's children are worried that ownership by the federal government would compromise the center's independent voice and water down Dr. King's message of social justice.

As one model, the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association does a wonderful job of maintaining George Washington's Mount Vernon estate in the private sector.

New research by Oregon State University scientists found that salvage logging of Oregon's Biscuit fire did more ecological damage than good. It killed more than two-thirds of the seedlings that sprouted after the fire and left debris behind that made the area more susceptible to future fires. This research was reported in today's Oregonian.

To be fair, the research was done by graduate students and at least one forestry professor, Michael Newton, is quoted by the paper saying that killing seedlings today is not the issue -- the issue is how many seedlings will grow into trees in twenty years or so.

On the other hand, another professor of forest ecology, Jerry Franklin, says that the trees that were removed would better have been left to provided nutrients "to nourish forest recovery and lend shelter to wildlife." "Salvage almost never achieves any ecological goal," Franklin is quoted as saying. "It almost always is a tax on the ecological process."

But what is most telling is the Forest Service's response, given by the deputy regional forester for Oregon and Washington national forests. The agency had to sell the trees, he claims, because cutting them brings in revenue that the Forest Service can use to do other work such as stabilize erosive hillsides. "It's a revenue source that we shouldn't be passing up."

In other words, as I have long argued, Forest Service timber sale decisions are driven as much or more by the budgetary incentives built into the sale process as by any social or ecological benefit from cutting timber. Forest Service managers always think they need more money to do some good work in the national forests. If timber can provide that money, they will justify the timber sales in their own minds no matter how sound they are otherwise. The fact that they keep a share of receipts for "overhead" also influences the decisions.

I am sure some people can argue that the timber sales are worthwhile. But my point is that we cannot trust the Forest Service to make such decisions when the rewards to the agency from selling timber are huge and the rewards from not selling it are nil. A secondary point is that the current process actually encourages the Forest Service to design sales so that they lose money because any money made for the Treasury represents an opportunity cost for the Forest Service -- that is money the Forest Service could have kept for itself.

The Grand Canyon Trust turned to he marketplace in its efforts to improve the condition of federal grazing lands. Rather than seek additional regulatory controls on the use of federal land, they began buying grazing permits from ranchers who were willing to sell. Over the past several years, the Trust has spent over $1 million buying grazing permits on some 400,000 acres. It seemed like a win-win solution -- the Trust reduced grazing, ranchers got paid -- but some ranchers were not so happy about it. As the New York Times reports:

The deals seemed to suit all concerned, until a group of local officials decided that they were bad for the local economy and a threat to the ancestral tradition of living off the land. The group set out to end this latest, uncharacteristically civil chapter in the fraught history of cattlemen, environmentalists and dueling visions of the West's future.

Michael E. Noel, a former Bureau of Land Management employee who now is a Republican state representative from southern Utah, led the charge to roll back agreements the trust had forged. Mr. Noel said the loss of the grazing allotments would hurt ranching, which would in turn deprive the area's young people of the character-building chance to work on the land.

"Yes, it's a free market to buy and sell," Mr. Noel said recently. "But if you buy it, you use it."

By retiring the lands, he said, the trust is reneging on an implicit agreement, and "if we allow that to occur, we go down the path of eliminating all grazing on public lands."

Perhaps so, but this is a change being brought about by the marketplace, rather than government fiat. That's how markets work. If a given land-use is less desirable, the land will be purchased and devoted to higher valued uses. In the past, this meant that much land was devoted to grazing and resource extraction. Yet as the nation gets wealthier, people are willing to spend more money to purchase enviornmental amenities on tha same lands -- if the government lets it happen. Mr. Noel is seeking to put a legal halt to the Trust's efforts.

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It seems that Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep and domesticated sheep don't go well together. According to this article, the domesticated sheep seem to carry diseases that kill bighorn. Thus, grazing one is incompatible with grazing the other, necessitating stricter controls on sheep grazing where bighorn roam, or other measures to keep the two apart -- such as shooting bighorn that stray near grazing sheep herds, as one agency proposed. Neither land use -- sheep grazing or providing bighorn habitat -- is necessarily the "proper" use of any given plot of land. Both are reasonable uses of land, but the conflict endures in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest .

Given that the land in question is politically managed, rather than privately owned, competing interests -- environmentalists who like bighorn and sheep ranchers -- must resort to the political process to resolve the dispute. Clearer rights to the lands in question, in either group's hands, would seem to resolve the problem. It would also encourage the development of alternative "fencing" or monitoring techniques to reduce the costs of trying to reconcile the two competing uses. The problem here is not that ranchers want to graze sheep, or that environmentalists want to protect bighorn (as a wildlife-loving meat eater, I'm in favor of both), but that the institutional mechanism with which we address such conflicts -- political management of land -- is not particularly well-suited to resolving disputes in a productive manner.

Peyton Knight, who joined The National Center for Public Policy Research's staff Monday as the new director of The National Center's John P. McGovern MD Center for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs, is making a plea for eco-sanity on our military bases.

Our brave men and women in harm's way have enough burdens to shoulder these days - without being hamstrung by environmental ideologues.

According to the Associated Press:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned Monday that procedures designed to protect the environment can sometimes jeopardize U.S. troops and should be balanced against military needs.

Yet over the weekend, the White House was busy "playing environmental matchmaker, encouraging odd couples such as the Nature Conservancy and the Pentagon as they team to save wild birds and military ranges," according to the AP.

The fact is, environmental organizations have been wreaking havoc on U.S. military preparedness, using the Endangered Species Act, for years.

For instance, due to its unique terrain and coastline, Camp Pendleton in Southern California is regarded as one of the best places to train U.S. Marines. Unfortunately for the military, it is also home to the California gnatcatcher, the San Diego fairy shrimp, the tidewater goby, and more than a dozen other species listed as "endangered" or "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.

To comply with endangered species regulations, our men and women in uniform, when training at Camp Pendleton, must make pain to avoid treading in certain areas.

If they don't, they could find themselves subject to penalties and fines.

Considering that about 25 percent of all species listed under the ESA are found on military bases, the conflict between the ESA and military prepardness may only grow deeper.

Unfortunately, Congress missed its chance to exempt crucial military training exercises from the long arm of the ESA two years ago, when related legislation was derailed in the Senate. Perhaps now is the time to reenergize this effort.

Rather than play environmental matchmaker, Congress and the White House should promote eco-sanity on military bases. Considering the tremendous sacrifices our troops are make on a daily basis, it is not too much to ask that they be afforded the best training possible. After all, their lives are on line.

(Cross-posted to The National Center's blog.)

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), a fairly litigious environmental group, has taken to shaming ranchers for harming federal grazing lands by posting photos of degraded lands. Professor Bainbridge has an interesting post on what happened when a rancher fought back and won a substantial defamation judgment against CBD. Moreover, it turns out that government scientists investigating the rancher for potential environmental violations were giving money at the same time. While I'm not convinced this was a legal conflict of interest, it certainly explains why the rancher did not believe federal officials would neutrally evaluate any claims against him.

A 400-foot waterfall was just found in the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. All I want to know is, where did they hide it?

New York Times columnist John Tierney, who is vacationing in the West, wrote on July 26 a favorable article about the voluntary transfer of grazing rights. (Registration may be required to read this.) An environmental group, Grand Canyon Trust, has purchased grazing rights from a rancher in southern Utah, with the goal of retiring them. Such trade epitomizes the free market approach to resolving conflicts over whether livestock or elk should graze on federal grasslands in the West. But the Interior Department, under the political influence of ranchers, has refused to allow the retirement of grazing rights this way.

For an assessment of the Bush administration policy on grazing rights, see Terry Anderson's entry in the PERC (Property and Environment Research Center) Report Card.

Environmentalists, elected officials, and the Bush administration just haven't figured out the point behind charging fees for public land recreation. The point is incentives: If the agency is allowed to keep a share of the fees, it will have an incentive to do things that the people paying the fees care about.

For decades, the Forest Service charged fees for timber and kept the fees, but it wasn't allowed to charge or, if it could charge, to keep the fees for recreation, wildlife, or most other resources. So the Forest Service naturally became a timber-dominant agency: what was good for timber was good for its budget and therefore must be a good thing.

Congress made a tentative correction a decade ago when it allowed the Forest Service and other federal agencies to charge recreation fees and keep those fees. But some wilderness advocates and other environmentalists have protested those fees. Even as they complain about "below-cost timber sales," they promote below-cost recreation. They even convinced the Oregon legislature to unanimously pass a resolution asking that the fees be repealed.

The Bush administration responded by issuing rules that the fees could only be charged for improved sites. This will give the Forest Service an incentive to promote developed recreation and a disincentive to promote wildland recreation -- exactly the opposite of what the environmentalists say they want.

The simple reality is that, given a choice between a policy or program that will increase its revenues and one that won't, the Forest Service or any agency will usually choose the one that boosts its budget. The off-road-vehicl people figured this out years ago and they gladly pay recreation fees to get access to the public lands. Why are wilderness advocates so dumb?

I just got back from a pleasant hike in Mill Creek Metropark, and it got me thinking about park policy. Ohio has a fairly extensive state park system, that includes 74 state parks. Ohio also has quite a few Metroparks like Mill Creek, where there are some great trails for short afternoon hikes now that northeast Ohio finally has tolerable weather.

Use of Ohio's state parks is "free" -- rather, it is "unpriced." Ohio taxpayers pay for the parks whether they use them or not. This was scheduled to change this year, as the Ohio state park system proposed instituting parking fees -- $5/day or $25/year -- to help cover park maintenance, upkeep, and the like. Yet as often happens when park user fees are proposed, many park users rise up in arms. "We already pay for parks with our taxes," they say. Indeed they do, but so do people who don't use the parks. Ohio has the third most visited state park system in the country, and yet much of the system is paid out of general funds. General funding of state parks amount to substantial cross subsidies of recreational activity. People like me get the benefit of having other Ohioans help pay for our preferences. Why is that fair?

Well, not all park users feel as I do. They raised a stink, and the state backed down. Apparently newly discovered "budget solutions" make the proposed park fees unnecessary. Thus, the cross subsidies will continue, and Ohio's park system won't benefit from the positive economic incentives that result from tying its funding to the benefits it provides users. It's a shame.

Montana and Colorado's state legislatures have both passed resolutions calling for Congress to repeal the Fee Demonstration Program. Most of the arguments made by supporters are pretty unsupportable.

Kitty Benzar, of the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition likens the recreation fees to "having to buy a pass to go into your house." Her analogy really only makes sense if she lives in public housing, which I doubt she does. If she did, she would see that it is in the same condition as our federal lands: pretty awful.

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I must say that I get a kick out of Amazon.com and others who attempt to sell stuff online that can be had for free with a google search. For instance, an article that I wrote on farm subsidies harming the environment two years ago costs you $5.95 at Amazon, but you can get it at the American Enterprise website where originally published as well as here and here for free.

I also found out in a shameless binge of ego-surfing today that A Better Earth is running a book review of mine where I argue that while "wealthier is healthier" is an important concept, it is perhaps more important to remember that stable property rights are what create wealth. Maybe the most important part of the review is its effort to debunk the idea that development assistance can have the same success as property rights in creating wealth for the developing world. If you have a little time to kill, I'm rather proud of that review and happy to see it getting a little press, so consider checking it out.

Finally, ego-surfing led me to a just-released Reason Institute study advocating recreation fees for federal lands, which relies on my paper from last June dealing with some of the hurdles facing such fees.

The famed Toklat wolf pack is in trouble, according to this Washington Post story. While Alaskan wolf populations, as a whole, are increasing, this well-studied wolf pack is threatened by trappers operating legally on the outskirts of the Denali National Park.

Wolf advocates maintain that the federal government has a particular interest in this wolf pack, insofar as it helps attract park visitors. One problem, however, is that current federal policy does not allow, let alone encourage, park managers to address such issues. If the wolves do indeed increase park visitiation, it would make sense to allow Denali to charge increased park visit fees to fund wolf conservation efforts. Such funds could be used in the park to protect wolves, but -- in principle -- could also be used to purchase buffer zones, buy-out trappers, and the like. Instead, it's unlikely the park service will do much of anything to help the wolf pack until it is too late.

Due to recently enacted legislation, the Bureau of Land Management is now authorized to sell wild horses that live on federal lands. If there are no takers, some of the horses will be sold to slaghterhouses. This new policy has many horse-lovers upset, according to this report in the Washington Post.

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With President Bush's signature of the $388 billion budget, CNN seems to lament the fact that the budget for National Parks focuses on operating expenses and not land acquisition:

The Interior Department will get $9.9 billion, nearly $100 million less than Bush wanted and 0.4 percent more than 2004. National parks operating money goes up 6 percent, but money for buying park lands remains nearly two-thirds below the peak of three years ago.

But given that federal lands are already mismanaged and falling into disrepair, it seems obvious that operating expenses are where money should be spent. If you can't manage what you already have, why would you go out and purchase more land to mismanage?

As I noted, in an earlier post, with Bush's signature of the budget bill, much of this mismanagement may turn around with the bill's extension of the Fee Demonstration Program for ten more years. This program provides incentives for proper management that is already leading to better caretaking of the federal estate. Fee Demo may also get the ball rolling for a day when the Park Service, Forest Service, and other land agencies consider selling off lands that are marginal to their mission in order to have more funds for purchasing or managing lands that are more critical to their mission --- whatever that mission may be.

While selling federal lands (partially or wholesale) is probably far off in the future, opportunities for expanded land swaps between federal land agencies and private landowners to deal with the checkerboard land ownership of the western United States might not be so far off. People in the Bush Administration have bandied such an idea about as a possibility for the next four years -- reducing federal land ownership through transfers that, at the same time, increase the quality of federal land ownership for habitat and stewardship purposes through the creation of more contiguous blocks of habitat.

Such a plan will be a lot more difficult for opponents to criticize than the outright privatization advocated by James Watt in the Reagan Administration, which failed so miserably to transfer any of the federal estate to the private sector. The benefits to both stewardship and wise resource use would create winners all around as lands are given a better opportunity to migrate to their best use whether as lands for consumption, conservation, or more accurately (given that in many ways conservation is a type of consumption), as both. Still, I won't be surprised to see such a plan attacked as anti-environmental by some sectors, but this will be a more difficult sell for opponents than labeling the Watt plan as anti-environmental was.

As part of the $388 billion spending bill passed by Congress last week, Representative Regula managed to include a 10-year extension for the Fee Demonstration Program among the riders.

Scott Silver, one of the biggest opponents of the program, is not happy and he's bringing out the fighting words. But as I've written here and (in more depth, here), recreational visitors to federal lands should be ecstatic. The program will continue to provide the necessary incentives to manage our national resources with an eye toward better recreational and conservation-oriented activities.

UPDATE: Both of Montana's senators are apparently unhappy with the rider, though Montana Congressman Rehburg supports it.

A federal district court judge has struck down the proposed ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, according to this report. More when details are available.

PERC research associate Holly Fretwell makes a practical case for increased decentralization of federal land management in today's Billings Gazette.

Holly Fretwell writes:

Citizens living closest to the lands are the most greatly affected by them. They bear the biggest burden of any environmental harms and dangers such as wildfire, the sight of massive clearcuts, or sediment-filled creeks. And they reap the most immediate benefits, whether from clean water, developed campsites or harvest or recreation use.

Those citizens should have greater weight in deciding how those lands are used than legislators acting collectively in Washington, D.C.

Sen. Kerry is calling for charging royalties (which he claims will raise $600 million per year) rather than privatizing mineral resources as a means of funding national parks. His comments (from August 12) are reported here.

The Kerry plan is flawed in (at least) three important respects:
(1) it is DOA - no major change in the Mining Law of 1872 is going to make it through the US Senate, where western state senators form a bipartisan group blocking attempts to mine resource companies for federal revenue (and Kerry needs to ask strong mining law supporter Democratic Senator Tom Daschle about this, as Daschle is in a tight race in South Dakota).
(2) There is no relationship between mining and national parks - and so tying national park funding to even hypothetical mining royalties is bad policy. Moreover, as the state lottery experience (all the money is for education! Really!) shows, earmarked revenue sources usually produce shifts in unearmarked revenue away from the funded entity. Even if Kerry's plan passed and produced $600 million annually, the National Parks would be lucky to see even a fraction of that as a net increase.
(3) Destroying the successful privatization program that is the Mining Law of 1872 is bad policy - privatizing resources based on investment in discovery (what the law does) avoids the corruption problems that have plagued countries that charge royalties. Anyone want to swap Congo or Angola's mineral rights regimes for ours? That's what Kerry's plan boils down to.

In reference to Randal O'Toole's comment below, I have two thoughts:

1. It is certainly true that giving more money to the National Parks without changing the incentive structure faced by park managers will not improve the park' condition, and could make things worse. Yet it has been my impression that the fee demonstration program (discussed on The Commons here and here) has helped change those incentives for the better. Admittedly fee demo is no panacea, but I believe it's a significant step in the right direction. Does Randal disagree?

2. I would also question Kerry's assumption that altering the 1872 Mining Act will produce a substantial increase in federal revenue. Increasing royalty payments will reduce the amount of mining activity on federal land (which is one reason many environmental activists support this policy change). Thus it is possible that an increase in mining revenue could be more than offset by a decrease in federal tax revenues.

[Speaking of the Mining Act, my colleague Andrew Morriss co-authored a provocative defense of the Act which can be found here.]

John Kerry says he wants to increase the Park Service budget by $600 million per year funded by "updating" the 1872 Mining Act. Just think of the incentives: Park Service officials will lobby hard for more mining on federal lands in order to increase their own budgets.

Aside from debate over the mining laws, the real problem with Kerry's proposal is that he thinks the national parks need more money. He obviously doesn't know that half the Park Service budget goes into administrative overhead.

Kerry points to a "$4.9 billion maintenance backlog (that) has grown to $6.8 billion." He obviously doesn't know that a huge portion of this "backlog" consists of employee housing. Why should the Park Service provide housing to employees when every park in the lower 48 states (not to mention Hawaii and most in Alaska) are within easy driving distance of private housing?

The Park Service is a classic example of the failure of socialized housing. The agency typically spends twice as much on construction and reconstruction as any private owner would pay, again partly because a huge percentage of the agency's "construction" budget is siphoned off into administrative overhead.

Unfortunately, Gale Norton defends the Bush Administration's record by pointing out that the Park Service has increased its budget by 20 percent since 2001. When are we going to stop measuring the success of bureaucracies by the growth of their budgets?

Sorry, Secretary Norton. No, thanks, Senator Kerry. The parks are better off with less money, not more.

The Bush Administration is supporting proposed changes to federal law that would encourage the Bureau of Land Managment to sell off wasteful and unnecessary federal land holdings by allowing the agency to direct the resulting revenue to other projects, including environmental conservation. (See stories here.) Explained Assistant Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett explained the value of the change to Grist:

There has long been a concern that BLM really didn't have any incentive to sell [portions of its holdings] that are unmanageable and not germane to its mission. . . . There's a lot of work involved in doing the surveys and appraisals and so forth that are necessary to sell land, and as long as the revenues from the sale go straight off to the Treasury, it's all cost to BLM and not necessarily much benefit.

Allowing the BLM to keep the revenues would encourage it to consider the opportunity costs of maintaining unneeded parcels in the federal estate.

A 2000 survey by the Clinton Administration identified over three million acres owned by the BLM worthy of sale. Maintaining these lands in federal hands, the Administration concluded, was a waste of taxpayer dollars. Nonetheless, establishment environmental groups are skeptical, and decry any effort to divest any federal land-holdings. Indeed, some are upset that the Bush Administration supports a requirement that only 60 percent of the revenues from federal land holdings be devoted to federal land acquisition. (Just how much land does the federal government need to have?!?)

Allowing federal land agencies to keep the proceeds of land sales is a positive step forward in federal land management, as is not requiring that all of the money from such proceeds be spent on acquiring more land. Yet there is far more to do. Given the federal government already owns approximately one-third of the continental U.S., a "no net loss of private property" provision requiring the federal government to offset any new land acquisitions with the sale of equivalent-sized parcels would be a welcome next step.

I visited Yellowstone National Park this past weekend, as I have almost every year for the past decade. As usual, I gained admission by using my National Parks Pass. I purchased the pass, which covers admission to all National Park entrance fees for a year, last August for $50. When I visit Yellowstone, the pass covers the entrance fee for any vehicle in which I am riding. This was the third time I sued this pass for Yellowstone, and I have used the pass to bring at least five guests to the park in my last three visits. In other words, if I only used the pass for Yellowstone, my guests and I would be visiting the park for just over $6 per visit per person (5 guests + 3xMe = 8 visits). Had I paid the vehicle entrance fee of $20 each time (good for 7 days), the cost would have been $10 per visit per person. Either way, it's a miniscule cost for visiting one of the nation's treasures.

By any measure, my frequent visits to Yellowstone National Park are heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. The National Parks face a staggering maintenance backlog, and regular visits by millions of Americans further strain the budgetary resources of the National Park Service. Like most Park visitors, I could well afford to pay more for my visits -- and would be willing to do so, particularly if I were assured that the money would actually address maintenance, upkeep, and general operating costs in the parks. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Although the Fee Demonstration program has produced some positive results, in part by letting individual park units raise fees and keep the revenues within the park, the existing program is limited and under attack by a motley coalition of Western Republicans and esablishment environmental organizations.

The dirty little secret of federal lands policy is that recreation is among the most subsidized activities on the federal estate. It is more heavily subsidized than logging or grazing. Yet because hikers, campers, and other recreationists are not as easy to demonize as timber barons, cattle ranchers or rapacious miners, there is little attention to the cost and extent of such subsidies -- and the subsidies persist. So, for those readers who haven't visited Yellowstone so far this year, thank you for your support -- and I hope I am not able to thank you for this subsidy for too much longer.

I was in Silver Gate, Montana over the weekend --- the tiny town on the northeastern edge of Yellowstone National Park. Generally, I stay at this old lodge called the Range Riders, which has live music on Fridays and Saturdays and a great little bar. All of the rooms have the names of different women on them, in an arrangement like an old-style brothel. Often when the bar closes, the band will do a little picking and grinning upstairs.

This time, however, I was forced to go across the street to the Grizzly Lodge. Yellowstone National Park has the Range Riders leased the entire summer for its summer research teams. According to a gentleman at the Grizzly, it is the Park's slow attempt to buy up Silver Gate and Cooke City and extend the park all the way to Red Lodge, Montana, which is 65 miles away over the scenic Beartooth Pass. He claims the Range Riders will lose their liquor license if the bar isn't open so many days out of the year and then will have little reason not to sell.

While I am not aware of any vast conspiracy by the Park Service to purchase up Silver Gate and Cooke City, locals' claims that it is happening show just how little the federal government is trusted in much of the Rocky Mountain West.

Tom Bray has an excellent piece in the Detroit News today about how more attuned fees could help depoliticize federal lands. The only place where I have to correct him is that I haven't graduated from law school yet, as he claims. Thanks for the nice thought, Tom, but give me two more years.

Not a great article on public lands, but at least it imagines one good-looking fellow.

UPDATE: In his article, Mr. Reynolds argues that if we simply fine litterers more, we could deal with trash problems at places like the Angeles National Forest. If this was done, according to Reynolds, we might not need to bill those strolling on public lands for access. But it is extremely difficult to monitor and enforce littering in such places. Putting a ranger behind every tree is hardly cost-effective. And who does Reynolds think is doing the littering? It is the people strolling those lands. True, not everyone litters - some do quite the opposite. My family and I are regular trash collectors on public lands, as we don't appreciate the actions of those who leave their soda cans and plastic wrappers behind.

Moreover, while littering may have increased at the Angeles National Forest since Fee Demonstration, most fee-for-access sites report declines in littering. (And I have my doubts that littering is actually worse at the Angeles. A friend who regularly uses that forest reports that its fee-based program is very successful.) Fees for access don't simply provide more resources for dealing with trash, they also lead to less trash in the first place as those visitors just looking for a place to cause trouble move on to less expensive locales.

Finally, contrary to Mr. Reynolds' opinion, I rarely crouch amongst the trash: I prefer to kneel.

Sierra Club President Carl Pope and Idaho Republican Larry Craig both oppose Fee Demonstration, but for largely different reasons. Pope wants a free ride for his backpacking constituency; Craig is worried the program's success may hurt his grazing and logging constituencies. The following story of mine was in The News Tribune.

DeCamping Politics
From Public Lands
By J. Bishop Grewell

When a Western Republican senator and the head of the Sierra Club share sound bites, alarms should ring. Currently, just such a duo is undermining one of the most successful initiatives we have seen on our public lands.

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Senator Larry Craig's (R-ID) bill to eliminate the Fee Demonstration program from public lands, except for national parks, passed the Senate last month. A better bill, offered by Congressman Regula (R-Ohio), which would make the program permanent for Forest Service, BLM, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lands remains in the House.

I currently have a piece on A Better Earth arguing for making the Fee Demonstration program permanent on all public lands, not just National Park Service lands. For those who haven't visited A Better Earth yet, it's a great site for FME types.

Also, my longer paper on recreation fees for public lands was published by PERC earlier this month. It defends recreation fees against arguments of double taxation, discrimination against the poor, reduced accountability, and commercialization.

Senator Larry Craig's (R-ID) bill to eliminate the Fee Demonstration program from public lands, except for national parks, passed the Senate last month. A better bill, offered by Congressman Regula (R-Ohio), which would make the program permanent for Forest Service, BLM, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lands remains in the House.

I currently have a piece on A Better Earth arguing for making the Fee Demonstration program permanent on all public lands, not just National Park Service lands. For those who haven't visited A Better Earth yet, it's a great site for FME types.

Also, my longer paper on recreation fees for public lands was published by PERC earlier this month. It defends recreation fees against arguments of double taxation, discrimination against the poor, reduced accountability, and commercialization.