This statement was printed in a March 1999 Sierra Club Fact Sheet and Action Alert on Public Lands Recreational User Fees.
[Resolution adopted unanimously by Sierra Club's California/ Nevada Regional Conservation Committee Sept. 1998, and subsequently endorsed by chairs of all the Sierra Club regional conservation committees.]
The Sierra Club supports, and urges its members to promote, efforts in Congress to restore needed public funding to the Forest Service and other federal public land agencies for their recreation programs.
The Sierra Club opposes recreation access and use fees on federal lands, other than entrance fees on lands managed by the National Park Service. Consistent with this position, the Sierra Club opposes the current Congressionally-mandated recreation fee demonstration program. We oppose any efforts to privatize, commercialize, and motorize recreation on the public lands.
The Sierra Club supports the Capps-Bono bill (now HR 786) and/or other legislation that seeks to end the imposition of recreation access and user fees on public lands, other than entrance fees on lands managed by the National Park Service.
The Sierra Club will inform and educate Sierra Club members nationwide on the long range consequences of public land recreational access and user fees. The recreation fee demonstration program, specifically, is not just a benign effort to fund needed programs but is the leading edge of the recreation industry's attempts to commercialize public land recreation.