Camping fees at some Sequoia National Forest campgrounds are jumping 70% this year as hard-pressed Forest Service officials scramble for new funds.
The fee increases still leave even the priciest campgrounds a relative bargain at $17 a night. But the new charges at five of Sequoia's 54 campgrounds are also a sign of things to come, in California and nationwide. Spurred by Congress and squeezed by other costs, national forest managers will be jacking up fees to support local projects.
"We're trying to walk that fine line between having reasonable access to the great outdoors, which we all own, and providing the money needed for maintenance," said Nathan Rangel, a Sierra Nevada river guide and member of a key Forest Service advisory committee.
Some lawmakers and activists want to curtail the higher fees, which they consider unwarranted. For now, though, the fee increases have momentum.
"We're making certain that when someone, say, is renting a cabin on Forest Service land, then we'll be able to have the money to maintain the cabin," Rangel said.
Rangel serves on the California Recreation Resource Advisory Committee, an 11-member federal panel now quietly shaping what people will pay for using Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management recreation facilities. Together, the two federal agencies manage 35 million acres in California -- roughly one-third of the entire state.
Congress gave the agencies enhanced powers to raise fees in 2004. Guided by the newly formed advisory committees, officials are starting to do so. In California, certain Sequoia, Eldorado and Mendocino national forest campgrounds began costing more in January, along with a few other recreation sites statewide.
In the Sequoia forest, for instance, campsites at Kennedy Meadows and four other sites that once cost $10 a night go up to $17 a night. Hikers on the popular Eagle Falls trail near Lake Tahoe will pay $5 starting in May, instead of the current $3. Off-road adventurers on the BLM's Clear Creek area that touches western Fresno and Stanislaus counties face new vehicle fees totaling $15.
Most of the money raised through higher fees will remain for local projects instead of being absorbed by the U.S. Treasury.
"These were very, very minimal increases," said advisory committee member Danna Stroud, tourism and recreation director for the town of Mammoth Lakes, "and we look at it as an investment in the facility."
Congress gave federal land managers the power to raise fees and keep the money starting in the mid-1990s. The 2004 law extended this power.
Through the funding raised by its prior fees, for instance, the Sequoia National Forest in 2006 spent $310,441 on projects ranging from painting picnic tables to hiring rangers. From fees collected during the same period, the Sierra National Forest spent $76,120 and the Stanislaus National Forest spent $64,863 on various repairs, vehicle barriers and removing an old vault toilet, agency records show.
Officials crave the additional money in part because higher firefighter costs have been burning through the Forest Service budget.
"These fee increases will help us maintain the sites to the level and quality people have come to expect," Sequoia Forest Supervisor Tina Terrell said last year.
Yosemite and other national parks have used similar fee increases over the past decade to pour millions of additional dollars into local projects. Yosemite raised its per-car entrance fee from $5 to $20 in early 1997, under a "fee demonstration" program that has since become permanent.
At some point, though, visitors begin howling and lawmakers jerk to attention.
Last June, for instance, public protests caused the National Park Service to retreat from a proposal to further boost Yosemite's entrance fee to $25. Some lawmakers raise similar red flags about higher fees on other federal lands.
Last December, Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana introduced legislation repealing the new Forest Service and BLM fee program. Baucus has since collected three other Senate co-sponsors, and he has the support of some environmental groups.
"If the fee increase is necessary because it reflects the Forest Service's maintenance costs, that's one thing," said Mike Painter of the San Francisco-based group Californians for Western Wilderness. "But if it's because the campgrounds are being turned over to a concessionaire to run, then a 70% increase is objectionable."
Painter added that while "we have no objection to a reasonable fee for camping in developed campgrounds ... increased fees tend to exclude citizens at the lower end of the income scale."
Neither of California's two Democratic senators have co-sponsored Baucus' bill. It has not yet had a congressional hearing or incited discussion on the House or Senate floors, and a companion House bill has not yet been introduced.
The California advisory committee meets again in June, when Forest Service spokesman John Heil said additional Forest Service fee increases will be considered.
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