Your favorite campground could be on a U.S. Forest Service hit list.
The agency, which manages about 15,000 camping areas and other recreational sites on 193 million acres of public lands, is surveying each site to weigh its value against the cost of upkeep.
We urge Congress to review the process and properly finance the maintenance of these sites.
Forty-four national forests have been examined, and 10 percent of their facilities are marked for decommissioning or closure, Jeremy P. Meyer reported in last Sunday’s Denver Post. Another 175 forests and national grasslands are to complete their reviews by the end of 2007.
The Forest Service says it launched the survey because of a generally tight budget, increasing fire-fighting costs and a $346 million backlog in maintenance work. Officials say that most campgrounds were built in the 1960s, and many are outdated or deteriorating.
But the review has raised suspicions among agency critics. The Western Slope No-Fee Coalition, a Colorado group that has opposed service efforts to charge for some facilities and services, believes the agency wants to impose a “for-profit” model on the forests and turn operation of many sites over to contractors.
The group says the Forest Service has ineffectively used the recreation-management funds that it already has. Beyond that, the agency has run the project without adequate public input, even though spokeswoman Lee Ann Loupe told Meyer that the public will be able to comment and that “nothing is set in stone yet.”
We don’t object to the inventory, and we’re quite certain that there are facilities that can be closed or downgraded because of their light use and ongoing costs. And it may be reasonable to institute some moderate fees for the use of some recreational facilities.
But the Forest Service needs to remember these are public lands. The agency should make sure all survey documents available and schedule hearings on the plans for each forest.
Congress should review the project and the agency’s motives. That would be a good 2007 project for John Salazar, Mark Udall and Doug Lamborn, three representatives whose districts include most of the national forest land in our state.
