access fund position on the recreational fee demonstration program
In 1996 Congress authorized the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program ("Fee Demo") authorizing federal land management agencies to implement and test new use fees across the country. Instituted as a three-year test program, Congress approved another 2-year extension of the Fee Demo Program in the FY 2002 Interior Appropriations Bill.
The Access Fund supports use fees on public lands in many situations, such as where services are provided or agency budgets are substantially burdened. The Access Fund, however, opposes charging recreational use fees for access to wilderness areas and other backcountry sites where (1) administrative support is neither required nor desired by recreationists, and (2) where recreational impacts do not significantly impact agency budgets or degrade the environment. That is, there should be no "pay-to-play" where "playing" costs the agencies nothing. The Access Fund opposes such fees where inequitably applied to wilderness and backcountry users.
The Benefits of the Fee Demo Program
The constructive role of the Fee Demo Program is apparent on several fronts.
- Many federal land managers currently rely on funds acquired through Fee Demo to support infrastructure, maintenance and critical resource management projects such as wildlife monitoring, resource inventory, and education.
- Recreation on public lands that burdens land managers should pay for itself; public lands visitors should be charged for the cost of services provided to them.
- Fees authorized under the Fee Demo Program are primarily retained by the unit that collects them, allowing visitors to see their dollars at work.
- Depreciative use, such as often occurs near urban areas, is lessened in fee areas.
Negative Consequences of the Fee Demo Program
The Fee Demo Program is often unfair, arbitrary, unpopular, and inconsistently applied.
- Fee Demo unfairly targets some recreational users who desire no administrative support and whose use has negligible impacts on public lands. Moreover, Fee Demo receipts from backcountry users consist of only 5-15% of total Program revenues.
- The collection of fees often unfairly target low-impact users to the benefit of high impact users?that is, fees charged to backcountry recreationists are often not being used to "improve" the backcountry, but instead benefit front-country facilities such as visitor centers, campgrounds, and picnic areas.
- Fee Demo conflicts with the mandate of the Wilderness Act when applied to wilderness area users, because the Act prohibits improvements.
The Access Fund requests that the Congressional Interior Appropriations Subcommittees consider revising future Fee Demo extensions to alleviate the unintended inequitable consequences on the current Program. Specifically, we ask Congress to revoke the authority of the federal land agencies to charge use fees to low-impact recreationists who access backcountry and wilderness area, while at the same time increase general funding of recreation programs on federal public land.