The Sierra Club has long opposed the current, worrisome trend
for land
management agencies to charge fees to access the public lands that
have
traditionally been free for visitors.
The new no-fee bill
introduced in the US Senate last December, S.2438, fits
right into our Sierra
Club anti-fee policy. The bill needs more cosponsors
to help it move
promptly through the Senate.
Your calls to Senators
Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein will demonstrate
that citizens of
California support an end to fee programs such as
Southern
California's "Adventure Pass," for access to large parts of our
four
National Forests. (Contact info for Senators is listed
below.)
BACKGROUND:
S. 2438, the Fee Repeal and Expanded Access Act
(the FREA Act), will
terminate access fees for all lands administered by the
US Forest Service,
BLM, US Fish & Wildlife Service and Bureau of
Reclamation. (These fees
began in 1996 with the "Fee Demo" program and
were extended in 2004 by the
current fee legislation, which was attached as a
rider to a must-pass
appropriations bill.)
For National Parks, S.2438
will require Congressional approval of entry fee
increases, and terminate
second layer fees such as those for backcountry
access and interpretive
programs in National Parks. The new $80 America
the Beautiful Pass will
be scrapped, and replaced by the former $50
National Parks
Pass.
Senator Barbara Boxer
(202) 224-3553
Senator Dianne Feinstein
(202)
224-3841
Please make calls through the month of
March.
Can you ask family and friends also to make these brief
calls? This no-fee
campaign is entirely a grassroots effort - The
success of S.2438 depends
on all of us.
WHAT TO SAY
When somebody answers the phone at the Senator's office, simply
leave a
message asking the Senator please to cosponsor S.2438. Leave
your name and
the city or county you live in.
You may also add
a brief reason why the Senator should support S.2438,
(such as: fees
discriminate against lower-income Americans; or, fees are
double taxation;
or, fees change the historical relationship of Americans
to our unique public
lands; or, fees force lands managers to prioritize
developments that make
money. but it's not necessary to go into much
detail.
S. 2438
was introduced by Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Mike Crapo
(M-ID), and has
been cosponsored by Senators Jon Tester (D-MT) and Ken
Slazar (D-CO).
This bill seeks to end a failed fee experiment that for 10
years burdened
Americans with a double tax and kept many away from pubnlic
lands they had
once enjoyed.
Passage of S. 2438 would help derail the alarming trend of
the land
agencies and motorized recreation industry to promote public
lands
recreation as a "commodity", for which citizens, like "customers" of
a
business, must shell out payment. Passage will give us time to
persuade
our land managers that recreation is NOT a "product" that we "buy"
from
them; we are NOT their "customers".
S 2438 would repeal the
Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act of 2004,
sometimes called
Recreational Access tax (RAT) and reinstate legislation
dating back to the
1965 Land and Water Conservation Act that limits the use
of fees on public
lands. National park fees can continue at present levels.
The ultimate
solution to the problem of agency recreation management willl
be to provide
adequate Congressional appropriations to our land managers.
Fee opponents
have waited over ten years now for legislation with a good
chance of ending
fees for access to the public lands we love to visit. Now
that it's
here, S.2438 needs our determined and consistent
support.
Sierra Club national Recreation Issues
Committee is leading the Club’s
fight against fees and
commercialization on public lands.
http://clubhouse.sierraclub.org/go/leaders/conservation/wpst/recreation_issues.asp For more information, contact Vicky Hoover, Recreation Issues
Committee at
415-977-5527, or vicky.hoover@sierraclub.org. I can email you the
Club's
fact sheet on this issue. Or contact Alasdair Coyne, To Keep the
Sespe
Wild, 805-921-0618, or sespe@sespewild.org