It’s a sunny day at Calico Basin in Red Rock National Conservation Area (RRCNA) outside of Las Vegas. In the parking lot, climbers transfer trad racks into roll-top backpacks, and hikers lace up their shoes. A family of eight unloads a classic red-and-white cooler, and the oldest teenager grabs it by the handles and shuffles over to the picnic area. Past the shade pavilion, a boardwalk weaves atop a marshy meadow, lush with Velvet ash trees, mariposa lilies, and salt grasses. It’s a busy day: the parking lot is full and there must be three dozen people on the boardwalk loop, including an older woman with her grandson and a couple that looks like they came fresh from the Strip.
According to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Calico Basin is only getting busier. After the BLM enacted an entrance fee and reservation system for the main loop road in RRCNA, visitors flocked to this free area. In 2019, 700,000 people visited the site – a number the BLM expects to jump to one million by 2024. Because of this increase, the BLM is considering imposing a $20 day-use fee to access Calico Basin, too.
Because for many Americans, a $20 fee means the difference between a day out with their family and a day at home.
Federal agencies, like the National Park Service and BLM, use entrance and amenity fees to fund operations and limit visitation numbers at crowded destinations. “In general, fees are used by land managers to make sure they have the resources they need to manage parks and public lands and improve the visitor experience,” explains Chris Winter, the Executive Director of the Access Fund.
However, up until 2004, with the introduction of the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, the BLM and Forest Service (USFS) could not charge user fees. Now, under this fairly new regulation, agencies can charge amenity fees but the majority of revenue must be used to fund and maintain the sites where they are collected.
Without fees, many of our public spaces would not have the services, like bathrooms and picnic areas, that they do today. “Agencies are underfunded and have been particularly underfunded for the past 12 years because of budget caps. Currently, fees fill an important gap,” says Paul Sanford, the National Director of Policy at the Wilderness Society. However, while fees may not seem like a big deal to some, they prevent many lower-income visitors and families from accessing our public lands.
The Inequity of Fees
“Aside from national parks, fees are fundamentally antithetical to the notion of public lands,” says Winter. Our federal lands are a service that our government institutions provide to the American public through taxpayer dollars, similar to public education and national defense.
“In some ways, these lands could be viewed as infrastructure because we know the benefits of accessing nature for our mental health, physical health, and outdoor recreation economy,” explains Teresa Martinez, the Executive Director for the Continental Divide Trail Coalition. “But I tend not to say public lands because they’re not public anymore.”
Fees are often proposed as the primary management strategy for both funding and crowd control, but they disproportionately affect different user groups. “First and foremost, fees are a barrier to access. Period,” explains Winter. “So, we have to be really careful to make sure that we’re not pricing people out of enjoying public lands.”
But that’s hard to do. A study by the National Recreation and Park Association found that public land fees substantially deter use for families that make less than $30,000 a year. Additionally, researchers at USU’s Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism found that a fee as low as $3 displaces low-income users, who will often drive miles to avoid the toll booth.
An angler tests his luck on USFS land in Montana. Photo: Margaret Donoghue.
“Family budgets are real, man,” says Ángel Peña, the Executive Director for Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project. “We have three kids — it’s five of us total — and that’s something we take on. These fees are absolutely one of the first things you look at when you’re pricing out your adventure.”
Even though fees may help to limit visitor numbers, the impact is inequitably dispersed. “They’re not helping with overcrowding. They’re only allowing people with a certain capital power to occupy spaces,” says Gabaccia Moreno, the National Monuments Fellow at Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project and a member of the Outdoor F.U.T.U.R.E. Initiative, “Parks should provide affordable recreation access for all Americans regardless of socioeconomic status. When you start charging fees, you start moving away from that,” explains Sanford.
Do Funding Alternatives Exist?
In an ideal world, fees wouldn’t be necessary to fund our public lands — they would receive full funding from our government so that the agencies could manage them for sustainable use. “If public lands are meant to be a public infrastructure, what prevents us from funding them as such?” posits José G. González, Founder of Latino Outdoors. “In the same way that we’re not asked to have fees to access firefighters, or we don’t ask the same question when we’re funding the military.”
Every year, Congress votes on how much money to give to our public lands as part of the federal budget. These are called Congressional appropriations, and they’re important because compared to other sources of funding, they come with the flexibility to support programming, explains González. “Education and programming often get overlooked given it’s easier to fund infrastructure, like building bathrooms and improving trails.” And while infrastructure projects are crucial for the user experience, programming is also necessary to support new communities and make them feel welcome.
In recent years, other legislative solutions have been enacted to enhance funding, like the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) which uses revenue from energy development to fund maintenance in our National Parks and other federally-managed lands. “The GAOA is a helpful commitment to help address the backlog of maintenance on public lands,” explains Sanford. “But we’re going to need to do more if we want to eliminate the need for fees.”
Managing Visitation Numbers without Fees
In terms of managing visitation numbers, federal agencies have more in their toolkit than just fees. Visitation management arises from the need to reduce the impact on these spaces. Most times, when people are acting irresponsibly outdoors, they just don’t know proper etiquette. “We prefer that land managers first educate the public on how to recreate responsibly,” says Winter. “So, for instance, if parking lots are full, agencies can educate people on where else to go and how to spread themselves out.”
However, sometimes, more drastic measures are necessary. “Once land managers try that and decide they need to use more restrictive approaches, then we think it’s even more important to put equity at the center of the conversation,” says Winter. For example, the BLM could institute a non-fee-based reservation system to assuage parking issues. To enhance system accessibility, the agency should present the reservation system in a multilingual format. They could also consider how users access the reservation system. Is it all digital or are in-person reservations available for visitors without reliable internet?
Additionally, permits are commonly used to reduce visitor numbers on trails. Generally, permits are accompanied by fees, but they don’t have to be. “The Central Cascades Wilderness project in Oregon originally proposed both permits and fees, and the way they structured the fees was going to make backcountry trips very expensive,” explains Sanford. “They ended up backing out on the fees but going with the permit system.” Visitors still need to pay the Recreation.gov reservation fee, but the USFS worked to mitigate financial barriers when establishing this new system.
Hope for a More Equitable Future in Public Lands
Until Congress allocates more money towards our public lands, fees will play a vital role in funding operations. But there’s still hope to create more equitable systems. If public land managers do resort to fees, there’s “a lot of room to rethink and reframe how fees really rolle out, especially for those most historically overlooked,” says Peña. Land agencies can — and are — beginning to address these issues in their management plans. Because for many Americans, a $20 fee means the difference between a day out with their family and a day at home.
Top photo: Jimmy Conover/Unsplash
Perhaps simply one less bloated-priced jet —- problem solved.
I have mixed feelings about user fees on public lands. I do see both sides to the issue. I have been in that financial situation with a young family that the $10-$15 made a difference if we could visit the park. That can be offset at a time by visiting on free fee days. Higher visitor interaction is the price you have to pay for free fee days.
If you are military or a veteran you can get a free yearly pass to the NPS. I would rather have a free pass to the National Park System than get a free meal on Veterans Day at a pancake house.
Hunters and fishermen have paid for hunting permits for years. They are seen as being a conservationist. In my state, a freshwater fishing permit, trout permit, and use fee for different waters for trout will cost around $70. That’s still cheaper than a one-day pass at a theme park.
I would like to see a class in schools that address the user etiquette issues of public resources. This class would cover LNT, first-aid, stewardship of public lands, and would have a service project that takes place either at a local, state, or federal park.
This is a great article and one that brings a lot of debate. But we should look at something that works for all Americans as it is our public lands.
I’m in Northern CA. I would love to see more facilities for family tent camping in the Sierra’s many National Forests. There are many lakes in the national forests, and they would make great family vacation sites for cheap family camping trips if:
1) make them more tent friendly and don’t let in RV’s and trailers with their generators
2) build family friendly hiking trails
3) build bike trails
Right now, you go and it’s full of people with huge RV’s and generators running, and there’s few hiking trails etc around to entertain the family.
I hope we don’t increase fees and drive a sector of the community further from the great experiences there are to be had on public lands
$20 isn’t going to break the bank for anybody interested in visiting a park. If they have the means to get there, they can scrape together $20. We can’t not collect fees from everybody because it might affect a couple of people. In California, people can check out a state park pass from their local library.
This has been an active discussion amongst folks who work in conjunction with the outdoor industry and related environmental and infrastructure matters and support (conservation, access, maintenance, etc.). The hunting and fishing industries and users have been paying into funds for this kind of financial support and action for over 100 years, primarily via fees and taxes on hunting and fishing equipment as well as license/permit fees. This seems like an equitable solution that has worked well, but, admittedly, the rest of the outdoor industry consumers and users have not provided the same level of support (or even close). To me/us the most equitable system is a tax system. If you can afford a $5k and up mountain bike, then you can afford a percentage tax on it, and because it is a percentage tax, then cheaper the gear the less the tax. In addition to financial support though, there still needs to be social infrastructure to provide those with less abilities and access the opportunity to have such experiences, both out of fairness and because that potentially increases the pool of individuals and communities with a vested interest in the outdoors. For too long those of us who enjoy outdoor recreation have gotten great cost-effective opportunities to do so without providing as much support as some others (hunting and fishing) and, unfortunately, the government support system is constantly challenged, decreasing, and so on. It is time for some sort of additional resources, but I don’t believe onsite fees is necessarily the best answer (or that there is just one).
The starting point for “users’ fees need to be focused on the extraction industries (grazing, mining, logging, etc.) These industries operate at “fees’ far, far below the market value or being profitable (or even break-even) for the government; in fact, the BLM and Forest service are usually loosing money in their management of these permits. I would guess that the damage caused by grazing, mining and logging far outweighs the aggregate damage from the public. But yes, I agree some areas need a more aggressive public manage scheme.
Grazing rights? Playoffs? Playoffs? Who’s talking about playoffs!? OK kidding aside, on the scale of 1 to 10 for “clusterf**cks,” you raise a top-ten valid point on this messy messy issue. Folks want an answer but their own personal change in use, habits, fees paid (ex., for grazing) to assist in meeting that answer is not within many folks’ radar.
Another example? Re-drafting the Colorado River Compact to meet realistic modern drought-ravaged needs, with premiums charged for areas/municipalities not coinciding with nor contributing to better-managed water usage big picture.
The list goes on and people are stuck in their ways because ‘it’s always been done that way.’ Pessimistic? Heck yeah. Realistic? Unfortunately yes. Sometimes everything seems normal status quo until the dam breaks, when everybody scratches their heads and says “woulda shoulda coulda.”
“Woulda Shoulda Coulda” is the horse that never comes in at the track. Alright enough analogies I gotta go.
Perhaps they should use my tax dollars for that instead of half the things it gets used for. I am a single older gentleman and believe me when I say that I pay a lot in taxes. I am against user fees for myself and families that can’t afford it. This is why we fought the revolutionary war.
Why not an annual license rather than a daily fee? Like hunters and fishers?
Not everyone needs to buy in bulk, Roman. Most of us only get out a couple times per year. 😀
How about a license comes in every copy of Packrafting.
“ because they’re not public anymore.”
That right there nailed it.
These lands are the property of all of us, yet having to pay to visit your own place absolutely locks many people out. It’s unethical.
It didn’t use to be this way either.
The way inflation (actually price gouging in many businesses) is devastating anyone on a fixed income; the disabled, seniors, wage slaves, so you will see less and less of these groups enjoying their own lands.
We need as much diversity as possible, to grow advocates for these places, to replace those of us aging out as conservation voters.
Not every government entity needs to be “run as a business”. That’s a big lie to excuse negligence.
Outbound Collective is getting city kids and POC into our parks, it’s a great agency to support if one has the funds.
Fees to access public lands owned by all of the American people are unfair to lower income people and turn the lands into another restricted playground for the wealthy. Low fees for use of improvements such as campgrounds, trails, swimming areas, etc. could probably be justified. If we have to restrict access by permit, perhaps we need more public land? Permits are only a temporary fix.
I’d suggest if fees are being considered then start making people who use our collective resources for personal profit (e.g. freeloading Bundy family) pay before you impose fees on those looking just to recreate.
People on the left say that if you pay for access to public lands, then it’s no longer public. People on the right say that if you have to pay property taxes to keep your land, you don’t really own the land.
In Montana, you are supposed to pay $20/yr for a recreation pass to visit state lands. The hunting license contains a line item for state land access for hunting. Farmers and ranchers pay the state to lease the land for agriculture. None of this money funds land management or conservation. Instead, it goes to public schools.
A private land access company I’m writing an article on at the moment charges $25-$50 per person per day for non-consumptive access like hiking or birding, and $100-$200 for hunting access.
You are probably already paying for access to something through your vehicle registration, or firearm purchase, or income taxes (although, readers of AJ are probably most likely of any group to not have any of those.) It’s time to make some decisions on whether access is a commodity, or a right, on public lands.
Increasing fees for businesses (grazing, extraction etc) on public lands sounds ideal. I object to the pennies on the dollar fees charged. Charging at least a break even cost (like for water too) would be a great first step. I object to it costing everyone money to subsidize the Bundy’s.
I did just read about a local state park camping site which has put it’s costs up by 250% in the last few years. At $10/night, it was a complete bargain for a cheap family holiday. At $25/night, it starts adding up a lot quicker. Especially when that same family could do dispersed camping in the National Forest for free.
Uh-Oh do not shout that last sentence too loud. I fear someday dispersed camping will [1] cost $ & [2] be subject to a reservation.
Money for infrastructure is one thing. What is missing in this discussion is that these fees are often used as operational funds to keep trash picked up, restrooms pumped & cleaned, and personnel available for search and rescue/first aid/interpretation. Over the past 15 years the USFS has been forced to use almost 2/3rds of their budget for firefighting. It used to be about 20%. W/o FULL FUNDING the agencies have little recourse but to do any combination of the following- charge a fee, reduce amenities/sites, or concession their operations to a 3rd party (that issue is not even remotely addressed in this article). Even the permits to enter cost money. The agencies must contract those services out because there’s no funding or personnel to do it in house. That too costs money.
Public should mean public and not serve as a method to segregate haves and have nots. While we may not think a fee is significant, it does pose a barrier and therefore a social “sign” indicating all are not equal or welcome to enjoy public resources and treasures. The price to acquire the resource should consider the staffing, educational and maintenance aspects of ownership. We all need to do our part in developing shareholders to find a common solutions to address barriers and maintenance opportunities. Non-profits are willing to help find solutions, educate and help with programming to build a community of supporters.