USFS oppression marches on with proposed high-Hood permit

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Waffle Stomper
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Re: USFS oppression marches on with proposed high-Hood permit

Post by Waffle Stomper » August 7th, 2022, 10:45 am

jvangeld wrote:
August 5th, 2022, 9:33 am
It seems to me that, as we come out of the time of Covid, people are returning to the old standbys. Before Covid I think a lot of people were seeking out the more obscure places because of crowding at the popular ones. But now, everyone seems to be thinking, "I haven't been to Mt. Hood/The Gorge in five years. Now that I can go there, I will." And so the obscure places are less crowded than they have been, and the popular places are slammed.
That, along with a new group of people who have discovered the outdoors after being locked out of dining, theaters, sporting events, concerts, etc.
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." - John Muir

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Water
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Re: USFS oppression marches on with proposed high-Hood permit

Post by Water » December 15th, 2022, 9:10 am

FYI on 12/12 the Hood-Willamette SRS RAC gave their affirmative recommendation on increases of fees on campgrounds, yurts, lookout towers and the Mt. Hood Permit. They declined to endorse new fees at 9 currently free trailheads, based on equity concerns. They were originally going to recommend them but Jeff Parker from NW Youth Corp said he felt just charging to be at a trailhead was not equitable or necessary and a bunch of members flipped their vote. Despite a positive outcome, it did not inspire confidence to watch people so easily flip their vote--why were they voting in favor if that one mention was enough to flip them? My impression is there was minimal review of materials by most of these people, prior to the meeting. And to that end, the relationship is one of helping award title ii project money and being 'part of the team' with the forest service, there's a lot of feel good pat-on-the-back vs much check/balance with FS desires.

They however did add a few items to the Mt. Hood Permit - they want a governing board of stakeholders (PMR, Crag Rats, Sheriff, etc) to be involved in the implementation phase, alterations or changes of the $10k being distributed to rescue organizations, and to change the 2 day climbing permit to 3 days.

Beyond that, Todd Harbin, Assistant National Recreation Fee Program Manager unsurprisingly seemed extremely committed to fees. He also said equity concerns were not really concerns because it already costs a lot of money to have a car and drive to the forest, and climbing equipment is really expensive too. Discounting that Mt. Hood is the only Volcano you can easily take public transit to..and ignoring equity concerns can be cumulative. This was especially tone deaf in my opinion from a middle aged white male making over $100k.

To that end he also said that FLREA specifically has an exemption to let them use a SRS RAC and other places have done it, congress wouldn't have put that language in there if they didn't want them to do it, so that is fine. Regarding the provisions in FLREA listed below, he said (paraphrasing) "general public support is hard to define, it's a nebulous thing, yes there is support for more campgrounds and services, people like those things." This seemed like a bad faith answer to me, I guess congress puts one thing in the law that's specific but despite a whole section talking about making public announcements and getting public comment.. that's unclear to him.
§6803. Public participation
(9) Approval Procedures
A recommendation may be submitted to the Secretary only if the recommendation is approved by a majority of the members of the Committee from each of the categories specified in paragraph (5)(D) and general public support for the recommendation is documented.
They briefly showed a powerpoint that attempted to quantify the number and type of comments but they clicked off the slide very quickly that broke it down as a pie chart.. I will receive that and the rest of the minutes/logs etc in about a week. Along with a brief presentation they did on FLREA to get the members 'up to speed' on the law/what they were doing. It omitted/glossed over a lot. Some members of the committee were still not clear on the 'different types of fees' after the presentation. I am not surprised since they are a committee convened under the authority of Secure Rural Schools Act and not a FLREA generated Recreational RAC.

It was a sad affair to watch overall. I am still in vociferous disagreement two equestrian interests, geriatric commissioners of linn and lane county, and this committee giving the approval to go forward with the Mt. Hood Climbing Permit. There were a few decent/pointed questions from 2-3 individuals on the committee, but it seemed more like a formality, the FS has a ready-made answer. A big part was 'where do you get all the money to do maintenance backlog improvements, or capital improvements like new toilets?' --and why can't you use that money to improve existing things? I heard a sociopathic response about budget tom-foolery and why they can't move money this way but that can that way. It was rather nonsensical. But that new fees would allow them to take money previously allocated to a site and move it elsewhere. The same shell game of investing in more services/amenities, growing a deferred backlog, and pretending fees will ever cover it. Status quo, you won't see things really improve anywhere since they will take existing funding away from it when a fee comes online or is increased.

OHV fees were dropped. Because the state collects a registration fee and that money goes to the FS as well, there was concerns about inter-mingling such fees and it amounting to double-taxation. It was mentioned that there were private conversations with OHV group(s) interests that opposed it, but none of this was in the public record of comments on the proposal. Also mentioned was that if they put fees on OHVs, they're worried they will cause resource damage in other places. Too bad climbers can't threaten to trash some other volcano so they don't put fees on Hood.. :roll:

Also unmentioned was anything about security that the proposal said would increase (but was wholly unsupported with any facts), and parking as an issue for climbing (have never seen one iota of data about that).
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retired jerry
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Re: USFS oppression marches on with proposed high-Hood permit

Post by retired jerry » December 15th, 2022, 9:48 am

good points

"Also unmentioned was anything about security that the proposal said would increase (but was wholly unsupported with any facts), and parking as an issue for climbing (have never seen one iota of data about that)."

It seems like they start with the policy - increase fees - and then just come up with arguments to support that and arguments that attack opposition

Like the internet in general - rhetoric rather than trying to figure things out, understand others,...

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Re: USFS oppression marches on with proposed high-Hood permit

Post by Jesse » January 27th, 2023, 3:46 pm

If you want to see oppression, imagine what our public lands would look like if they became privatized. I know that a gate permit on the Weyerhauser St. Helens Tree Farm will run you over $100, and there is only a small number of people who they allow to purchase them. That's what truly limiting access looks like.

I see the complaint that the FS needs to build more trails and recreation areas to help spread people out, but also an unwillingness to pay nominal fees to an agency that has become precipitously more and more underfunded as the years go on, and public use explodes. The two desires do not seem compatible to me (doublethink?) Where exactly is the FS expected to get the funding to build these new facilities if not from recreation fees?

Things are always changing, and it just so happens that we are living in a time when recreational demands upon our public lands are at an all time high, while congressional funding is near historic lows. People who complain about their taxpayer dollars don't realize that it's just a fraction of a fraction of pennies on the dollar that goes to funding agencies like the USFS and NPS. Public land management agencies are struggling to adapt a massive rise in overcrowding, trash, vandalism etc at recreation sites in the last decade, thanks in large part to the rise of social media as a popularizing force. Many of the fee dollars collected at these sites go directly back to their upkeep. Now seems like a time that more people than ever are reaping the benefits of public lands, not fewer. These places need maintenance and cleanup. Can you blame an underfunded agency for introducing relatively nominal fees as an answer to this? Not only to keep recreation sites nice but to help limit excessive overcrowding and resultant strain on the very nature people are seeking out? Now seems like a time to appreciate public land management agencies more than ever for the service they provide us, rather than whining about oppression and pining for the "good old days" of unfettered access simply because elements of our culture outside of any agency's control have changed, and they are striving to react as best they can.

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Re: USFS oppression marches on with proposed high-Hood permit

Post by jvangeld » January 27th, 2023, 4:19 pm

I could be wrong, but my understanding was that Weyerhauser issued recreational permits for free until sometime after the various government entities started charging for their permits. Perusing their website, I see that there are a number of properties that they still allow people to access for free.

Access restrictions look like a race to the bottom, to me. When one large landowner tightens down, all the other landowners use it to justify their own increase of restrictions. And then another one tightens down some more. And the rights of the public just keep shrinking.
Jeremy VanGelder - Friends of Road 4109

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Re: USFS oppression marches on with proposed high-Hood permit

Post by Jesse » January 27th, 2023, 4:43 pm

jvangeld wrote:
January 27th, 2023, 4:19 pm
I could be wrong, but my understanding was that Weyerhauser issued recreational permits for free until sometime after the various government entities started charging for their permits. Perusing their website, I see that there are a number of properties that they still allow people to access for free.

Access restrictions look like a race to the bottom, to me. When one large landowner tightens down, all the other landowners use it to justify their own increase of restrictions. And then another one tightens down some more. And the rights of the public just keep shrinking.
What do you propose?

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Re: USFS oppression marches on with proposed high-Hood permit

Post by RobFromRedland » January 28th, 2023, 7:53 am

One of my biggest beefs with the public land management (USFS) is the glacial pace at which things move. See the current struggle to get access to lands closed after the 2020/2021 fires. Initially they said they had no funding. Then they got funding, so they do their project (with its extremely long comment periods). The project eventually gets approved and it takes months and months and months for them to even begin to solicit bids to do the work.

Even back when the fires were burning, they were cutting out roads to be used as firebreaks, creating large decks of saleable timber - but where is all that timber now? Money that could have been used to do a lot of this work? It is mostly still sitting on the ground rotting instead of being used to fund said work. The perception (at least from where I sit) is that they do not WANT to do this - it is easier to restrict access and complain they have no funding.

To make matters worse, there is little to no communication about what the status of the project(s) are. Had there not been a huge push by a large number of people to open highway 224, I bet it would still be closed. Had there not been a huge push by those same people to reopen road 46, there would still be no access to vast areas of unburned forest.

I understand the funding issue and the increase in use, but from my perspective it just does not seem like the USFS prioritizes recreational use at all. It is a "well, I guess we have to do it" kind of mindset - especially for the lesser used areas of the forest.
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: WOW! What a ride! - Hunter S. Thompson

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Re: USFS oppression marches on with proposed high-Hood permit

Post by Charley » January 28th, 2023, 11:55 am

RobFromRedland wrote:
January 28th, 2023, 7:53 am
One of my biggest beefs with the public land management (USFS) is the glacial pace at which things move.
I've read a lot about this in the last few years. From what I understand:
  • In the Progressive era and the New Deal era, government agencies were both more creative and less restrained. On the one hand, it seems like they could react more quickly to emergent problems; on the other hand, agencies shot from the hip and created poorly understood policies with long-ranging consequences (such as wildfire prevention that gave us decades of fire suppression, along with dangerously high levels of fuels on the land)
  • After WWII, environmentalists and urbanists reacted to relatively unrestrained private and public development by successfully advocating for restraints on this development. These restraints took the form of legislation at many levels of government (National Environmental Protection Act, zoning codes, land-use review boards, etc.) that provided checks on the private and public forces of development.
  • These restraints helped slow development that wasn't good (like building neighborhoods on wetlands and flood-prone areas, building highways through neighborhoods, or plopping chemical factories in neighborhoods), but has also prevented developments that would be social goods (like apartment building in areas with high housing costs, bike lanes in prosperous neighborhoods, or transmission lines from renewable energy sources to energy-hungry metropolitan areas).
  • At present, academic studies indicate that public outreach processes privilege the views of a narrow, unrepresentative slice of individuals. Basically, when the FS has a public comment period, they receive comments from relatively affluent people with a lot of free time, who likely own a computer and are "in the know" regarding the issue at hand. To be sure, many commenters care deeply about the issue, but these comments are now understood to be unrepresentative of the public at large, who might just be too busy (with kids, jobs) to comment, or might not have a computer to make the comment process easier and faster.
  • For this reason, many policies and plans get hung up behind a vocal, well-connected minority of litigious citizens. I find myself torn between appreciating and hating this process. I love it when environmentalist litigation slows rampant logging of our remnant stands of old-growth, but I hate it when well-connected activists limit development of bike trails or apartments that would ameliorate crowding in our growing region.
  • The overall effect of the current policy-making process is to enforce the status quo: it is relatively easy to keep running a coal-burning power plant, because it requires no new building permits, while it is very, very difficult to build a new wind-power farm, because it requires new building. The coal burning plant may have been created decades ago, before an environmental impact statement was even required, but a new wind-power farm would be required to show how many birds would be killed, or how many acres of sagebrush would have to be torn up for access roads. This obviously doesn't mean the coal-burning plant doesn't have an environmental impact! But that impact doesn't have to be justified, so the mountaintops are removed, the coal is burnt, the kids nearby get asthma, and atmospheric carbon steadily rises. This is dumb.
  • There's a constant tension between goods like speed/creativity/efficiency and deliberation/informed policy-making/democratic control. What we have now seems to be relatively slow and inefficient, but also relatively informed and deliberate.
  • On one hand, if the FS just made policy and then told us, we'd likely be pretty ticked off about it! On the other hand, if they don't take the time to make a good faith effort to contact the public, they could streamline their policy process and move faster.
I have come to be a little bit radicalized in favor of less restraint. Because I have regretted how much dampening these processes have introduced into our society and economy, I have started to feel that our government should loosen the reins. In the past, there was rampant development. In the present, there is too little.
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Re: USFS oppression marches on with proposed high-Hood permit

Post by justpeachy » January 28th, 2023, 4:05 pm

RobFromRedland wrote:
January 28th, 2023, 7:53 am
I understand the funding issue and the increase in use, but from my perspective it just does not seem like the USFS prioritizes recreational use at all. It is a "well, I guess we have to do it" kind of mindset - especially for the lesser used areas of the forest.

If you haven't read it, this 2018 article is very enlightening: Plummeting Morale In The Forest Service: Why It Should Matter To Americans Who Love Nature

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Re: USFS oppression marches on with proposed high-Hood permit

Post by jvangeld » January 30th, 2023, 2:13 pm

Jesse wrote:
January 27th, 2023, 4:43 pm
What do you propose?
I'm glad you asked, Jesse. Though I prefer taking action to making proposals. I maintain a forest road that was at risk of being closed, with whoever cares to join me. We work under a volunteer agreement with the Forest Service. We are planning another joint workday with the Chinook Trail Association this year. We keep the Friends of Road 4109 facebook page updated with road condition reports and plans for our next workdays. So, if I have a proposal, it is that members of the public get involved with the volunteer groups that are already out there, or start their own for whichever corner of public lands that they love.
Jeremy VanGelder - Friends of Road 4109

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