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- Newsgroups: rec.climbing
- Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!leland.Stanford.EDU!garth
- From: garth@leland.Stanford.EDU (Douglas Garth Jensen)
- Subject: Re: USFS Backcountry Fees
- Message-ID: <1992Nov18.000127.8587@leland.Stanford.EDU>
- Sender: garth@leland.stanford.edu
- Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
- References: <1ebq8hINNm63@morrow.stanford.edu>
- Distribution: na
- Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 00:01:27 GMT
- Lines: 23
-
- In article <1ebq8hINNm63@morrow.stanford.edu> AS.MSW@forsythe.stanford.edu (Marc Whitney) writes:
- >I have just seen a news report on a proposal to charge user fees for
- >backpacking and hiking use of the National Forests. My first
- >response was negative. However, to say that the money collected
- >would be used to replace logging revenues. The implication was that
- >for every $1 collected from backpackers there would be $1 less in
- >timber sales. If this is true I would be inclined to change my
- >view.
-
- If the National Forest Service was really so interested in reducing logging
- and maintaining revenue, it should simply increase the cost of trees to the
- timber companies to a price which more reasonably represents their true value.
- As I understand it, the NFS now sells trees on NFS land to the timber
- companies for something like 1 dollar per tree. As if that isn't already
- enough of an insult, the cost to U.S. taxpayers of making those trees
- available to the timber companies (by building roads and taking care of
- paper work) is about $1.40 per tree. In other words, we actually PAY the
- timber companies to take the trees. I'm skeptical that the NFS would use
- fees from backpackers in a productive way.
-
- -Garth
-
-
-