The Pike National Forest southwest of Denver is scrambling to find $180,000 a year to keep its mule teams – a budget decision that puts a face on a looming crisis facing our national forests and other public lands.
Congress followed the Bush administration’s request to cut the Forest Service budget from $5.5 billion this year to $4.8 billion for 2006, slashing capital improvements, land purchases and fire management.
Of more than 150 national forests across the country, the two most visited are the White River in central Colorado and the Arapahoe-Roosevelt on the Front Range. Yet in the five-state region that includes Colorado, funds to maintain campgrounds and other facilities fell from $25.8 million in 2004 to $11.2 million for 2006. Recreation trail use is growing, but trail funds fell from $8.8 million in 2003 to $5.3 million for 2006. Federal officials say an accounting change makes the drop look steeper than it really is.
Still, the public will soon see the real-life results. By 2007, all national forests are to rank their 16,000 campgrounds, picnic areas, boat ramps and other facilities based on costs and use. Lower-ranking facilities may be shut or have services such as garbage collection cut. Critics say the order is part of a troubling trend to turn national forests into commercial businesses, and they fear the Forest Service will simply shut facilities that aren’t profitable. Indeed, this spring the Forest Service got orders to sell many ranger stations and other buildings.
Meanwhile, there’s money in the Land and Water Conservation Fund to invest $900 million a year in acquisition of wildlife habitat and recreation areas. But last month Congress appropriated just $114 million for such purchases, down from $169 million in 2004, and only $28 million to help states buy recreation lands, down from $92.5 million.
All federal land agencies (forests, parks and wildlife refuges) took a hit, but the Bureau of Land Management received a body blow. Its acquisition budget fell from $18.4 million last year to $8.7 million this year. Yet the BLM manages some of the West’s most popular recreation areas, such as mountain biking trails near Moab, Utah, and some of southwestern Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks.
Thus the Pike’s push to keep its mules can be put in context: The mules can carry lots of loads for little cost and can go more places and are far more ecologically friendly than ATVs, so it would be foolish to get rid of them. Yet across the country, federal resource budgets are being decimated. That big picture should alarm Americans who love our forests and public lands.
