Outdoor enthusiasts will have a new $80 annual pass, starting next year, enabling them to get into national parks, national forests and wildlife refuges.
The America the Beautiful – the National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass will replace annual recreation passes from five federal agencies to create one comprehensive pass.
It replaces the $50 National Parks annual pass and the $65 Golden Eagle Passport that covers forest, wildlife refuges and other sites.
Golden Eagle, Golden Age and Golden Access passports will remain valid until they expire.
The new pass allows access to more than half a billion acres, including 193 million acres of national forests and 258 million acres under the Bureau of Land Management.
“It’s a big step forward for people who like to use national parks, national forests and BLM lands,” said Jim Maxwell, spokesman for the Forest Service in Colorado.
“With one pass, you are able to meet the requirements of virtually all of the fee areas,” Maxwell said.
The added cost and the way the pass revenues will be parceled out is already drawing fire from critics.
“My biggest issue is this pass is now a complete disconnect with the fee you pay and the service you receive,” said Scott Silver, co-founder of Wild Wilderness, an Oregon forest advocacy group.
“When the program first began, there was a direct nexus between the fee and the service,” he said.
“If you used a particular campground, the fee would stay locally and would improve that facility,” Silver said. “Now, I pay $80 and it goes into a pot to be distributed around the states.”
Federal agencies said the interagency pass was needed to reduce confusion about the different types of passes, according to a report issued in September by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The GAO report found problems in the development of the interagency pass – how revenue from the sale of passes would be shared among the agencies and how fees would be collected at unstaffed recreation sites.
The pass was supposed to be available by Nov. 1 but now won’t be sold until Jan. 1.
Federal officials said Tuesday that 100 percent of the revenue from the passes sold at federal recreation sites will benefit the selling agency and no less than 80 percent of the revenue will benefit the site where the pass was sold.
Silver predicted that formula could hurt the national parks because Forest Service facilities are more plentiful than national parks offices.
“There is more access to national forests,” he said. “And people are likely to buy the pass at the first place they come to and that will be a forest site rather than a park.”
A free annual pass for park and forest volunteers with 500 hours of service is also being offered for the first time.
For more information about the pass, http://store.usgs.gov/pass/ or call 888-275-8747, option 1.
Staff writer Jeremy P. Meyer may be reached at 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
