Fees for using Public lands Managed by USFS and BLM

Andy Stahl posts on the blog The New Century in Forest Planning ( http://ncfp.wordpress.com/ ).  His latest entry is about congressional review of the fees being charged.  He writes:

"This week a House natural resources subcommittee heard testimony regarding the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA). FLREA, which became law in 2004, will expire in 2014 unless reauthorized, leaving federal land management agencies without legal authority to charge recreation fees.

My crystal ball predicts that Congress will reauthorize FLREA before it expires, but limit fee authority to highly developed sites only (e.g., campgrounds, RV hook-ups) and national parks entry.  I don’t expect the Forest Service’s and BLM’s existing “standard amenity fee” authority to survive congressional scrutiny. The agencies’ experiment with dispersed recreation fees began in 1996 with “fee demo” and has proven controversial, especially with local, rural residents accustomed to casual recreation access to their federal land backyards.  In 2012, the Ninth Circuit court took the Forest Service to the woodshed for abusing FLREA’s dispersed recreation fee authorities."

We are interested in this issue because our locals have some issues with the parking situation at Wildwood run by BLM.  Perhaps, congress will modify how BLM treats our "casual recreation access".

If really interested in this, you might enjoy reading the court decision linked in the blog entry.