Public Lands Access

Check out the following article:No Serpents in Paradise

Who exactly is setting policy on "public lands"? Not the public as you might think of it. The blog article above is an inside look at the private concessionaires who run your public lands recreation areas, and in many cases set policy with or without regard to the voice and will of the taxpayers who support their enterprises. It is an exploration of solutions to the problem of public access, user responsibility, and maintenance of public lands and rec areas.

Please read this, feel free to voice any constructive criticism, and if you think this is a worthy cause, sign and pass along the links to the Save Our Access petition.

Thanks in advance for your help and support.

I think the bigger issue is actual access to these public lands. The payment part is totally messed up, but since we are all citizens of this wonderful nation, we should all be treated equally under the law.

So you don't see this change, an increase in fees and decreasing interagency pass acceptance, enacted by a private contractor with no regard of public support and in fact completely counter to the wishes expressed by We, The People in every survey and opinion poll, as a symptom of decreasing access? This is a first step towards closing "public lands" to anyone who can't pay the arbitrarily-selected fee, anyone who can't afford to buy a separate pass from each concessionaire for each venue they would like to enter.

Under the original mandate and in the original spirit that created these spaces in the first place, we should ALL have free access to any public space on which we will not be using recreation facilities like bath houses, rec halls, convention centers, etc.

The fact is that these facilities are more and more often being built on public lands, at the behest of groups like ARC and without any public request or input, simply to justify putting a fee system in place or increasing the fees in existing systems.

And those fees are NOT necessary. The concessionaires have no problem running these facilities as quite a profit... why can't our government? Tens of billions of dollars pour into these places every year, and the vast majority of that pours right back out again, into the coffers of companies whose only interest is in increasing profit by increasing fees, increasing the number of people crammed into sensitive back country areas, and decreasing the number of people entering and/or using those places for free.

If that isn't an access issue, what is?

If not now, when?

If not us, then who?

I agree that it should be free for every citizen to access their national forests. I don't think exceptions should be created for any particular citizen.

+1 Ronin

We here in CT grapple with a somewhat similar issue on some fronts... There is a Conservation Land Committee (CLC) which is comprised of three people, one from each, Aquarion Water Company, Dept. of Environmental Protection, and The Nature Conservancy.

This "committee" is not elected and the majority is not even appointed by public officials. This "committee" is responsible for over 15,000 acres of public land here in CT. So we have a for profit water company, and a non profit controlling public land not the public.

They have banned all activity on over 15,000 acres except for hiking along a single trail and fishing on the shorelines of reservoirs. Step ing off the trail is illegal and you can be ticketed and fined. Swimming, wading, biking, pets, camping, alcoholic beverages, smoking, campfires, picnicking, littering, radios, motors and vendors are prohibited.

When we recently approached this committee to volunteer to fund and clean some graffiti off a cliff (climbed at for decades now) and we were told since there was no trail at the bottom to the cliff even though they don't own the cliff and thus they would not allow us to clean up this tragic grafitti all over the base of the historic cliff. They said they would start patrolling and arresting/ticketing people who try to climb or rappel or walk down to the base though being at the top was fine cause they didn't own that. The committee even suggested that climbers were to blame for the graffiti and how could they trust us not to vandalize the cliff more. When asked how we can talk to a public official about it they said it doesn't matter they don't appoint us. So basically we have this mafioso committee deciding everything about how our lands should be used and have set unprecedentedly strict policy basically banning public access to almost all 15,000 acres.

CaptainMo- I keep hearing variations on this story; "We went to the (insert branch of government here) to try to fix a problem ourselves, and wound up banned, fined, arrested, confiscated, profiled, illegally searched", etc.

I have little or no problem with small, local companies run by local people operating public concessions. It is when huge, out-of-state corporations who care only for the bottom line not only take control with a virtual lock-for-life guarantee of contract, but also ignore public opinion and response to set and enforce policy that does not originate from or profit us, their employers.

How long would you keep a security guard and grounds keeper who did as they pleased, when they pleased, and charged you a fortune to run your place into the ground and ignore poachers and vandals? And how long woujld you employ a manager who made 10 times what he earned for you? Those are the big corporate concessionaires currently handling the reins in most of your National Forest Recreational Areas, and an increasing number of Parks, state and Federal.