P.O. Box 9175 • Missoula, MT 59807 • p: 406.542.2048 • [email protected] • www.wildernesswatch.org October 7, 2013 Board of Directors Dear California BLM Land Managers: Louise Lasley Wilderness Watch submits the following comments on California BLM’s King President Wyoming Range Business Plan, and particularly the proposal to impose new wilderness access fees for the King Range Wilderness. Wilderness Watch is the only national Gary Macfarlane nonprofit wilderness conservation organization focused solely on the protection of Vice President all areas in the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS). We have over Idaho 100,000 members and subscribers around the nation, including many in California. Susan Morgan Secretary As you know, Congress designated the 42,694-acre King Range Wilderness in 2006 Washington as a unit of the NWPS. The King Range Wilderness constitutes about 67% of the Joe Fontaine King Range National Conservation Area (NCA). Treasurer California As we understand the proposal, the Bureau of Land Management in Arcata, Janine Blaeloch California, has announced plans to charge visitors to the King Range Wilderness Washington and King Range NCA Backcountry an access fee of $5 per person per day for the Lost Coast National Recreation Trail and other trails within the designated Bob Oset Wilderness. The minimum overnight trip fee would be $10 per person (for two Montana days). The average trip length in this Wilderness is 3.5 days, so for most people the Jerome Walker fee would be $20 each. The same fee would apply to children as well as adults. Georgia Reservations to secure a permit for a future date would be handled through the privately operated for-profit service recreation.gov, and would add $4.00 to $6.50 Howie Wolke Montana per person, depending on whether the reservation is made by phone or internet. Wilderness Watch strongly opposes the proposal to impose a new Wilderness and Backcountry access fee for the King Range Wilderness and King Range Executive Director NCA Backcountry. George Nickas We base our opposition primarily on three reasons: Advisory Council Magalen Bryant 1. The proposed fee violates federal law. Dr. Derek Craighead Dr. M. Rupert Cutler The proposed fee for the King Range Wilderness violates the Federal Land Michael Frome Dr. Roderick Nash Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA). See the following excerpt of this statute: 16 U.S.C 6802, subsection (d): Limitations on recreation fees. (1) Prohibition on fees for certain activities or services The Secretary shall not charge any standard amenity recreation fee or expanded amenity recreation fee for Federal recreational lands and waters administered by the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, or the Bureau of Reclamation under this chapter for any of the following: (A) Solely for parking, undesignated parking, or picnicking along roads or trailsides. (B) For general access unless specifically authorized under this section. (C) For dispersed areas with low or no investment unless specifically authorized under this section. (D) For persons who are driving through, walking through, boating through, horseback riding through, or hiking through Federal recreational lands and waters without using the facilities and services. (E) For camping at undeveloped sites that do not provide a minimum number of facilities and services as described in subsection (g)(2)(A). (italics added) As you can see, this federal law prohibits BLM from instituting a new fee for the King Range Wilderness for parking, for dispersed areas, for walking and hiking through the area, or for camping at undeveloped sites within the King Range Wilderness. The U.S. courts have also ruled in this way. In the 2012 Mount Lemmon case in Arizona, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. Forest Service could not charge for simply “parking and hiking” while the visitor did not use any other amenities. Mount Lemmon lies in the Coronado National Forest behind metro Tucson. (See Adams v. U.S. Forest Service, 671 F.3d 1138.) Yet this appears to be exactly what the BLM is proposing to do in the King Range Wilderness now. 2. The proposed fee violates the intent and purpose of the Wilderness Act. Wilderness areas belong to all of the American people. They are an irreplaceable birthright to all our citizens, open to all the public and not just those wealthy enough to pay additional fees. All citizens across the nation already own the Wildernesses in the NWPS and have paid for them with their taxes. It is simply unjust to charge people to visit the Wilderness they already own and just to park a car, hike, and camp at an undeveloped spot in the King Range Wilderness. User fees for accessing an undeveloped Wilderness strike at the heart of the ideals of freedom and anti-commercialism found in the 1964 Wilderness Act. These access fees for undeveloped designated Wilderness areas also discriminate against the lower strata of socio-economic groups in our society and is distinctly anti-democratic, a regressive double taxation, and ethically wrong. 3. The proposed fee further commercializes and commodifies Wilderness. Under the proposed fee, a commercial for-profit business (recreation.gov) will benefit commercially from the fee, and this further commercializes and commodifies the Wilderness, and builds in an incentive to continue commercializing and commodifying Wildernesses. The commercial pressures to increasingly commercialize and commodify Wilderness keep accelerating, as we see extraordinarily power lobby groups like the American Recreation Coalition (ARC) pushing all over the country to commercialize and commodify our public lands, Wilderness included. Congress intended that Wildernesses be kept free of commercialization in the Wilderness Act, and we should resist further commercializing and commodifying the King Range Wilderness with this new access fee. For these reasons, please cancel the proposed plan to impose new user fees in the King Range Wilderness and Backcountry. Please keep us your mailing list on this matter. And please inform us of any further action on this ill-advised proposal. Sincerely, Kevin Proescholdt Conservation Director [email protected] 612-201-9266 .