The following editorial appeared in the Pasadena Star News on March 11, 2001.
March 1, representatives of the U.S. Forest Service met with residents of the region to discuss the future of the 650,000-acre urban forest. We presume they were seeking input from forest owners - the public - on how best to manage their national resource. It does make the people feel good when they're consulted now and again.
The next day, Angeles National Forest officials denied a use permit application for the Chantry Flat mule station - in use for 60 years - and told the new owner to vacate the property within 30 days. Without a permit, District Ranger Fred Krueger said, owner Kim Kelley was trespassing.
Last month, a U.S. District Court judge in Los Angeles sided with the U.S. Forest Service and pronounced a Los Padres National Forest visitor guilty of being on forest land his taxes pay for without the now-requisite Adventure Pass. Angeles National Forest officials were pleased this trespasser got his comeuppance.
Seems these days the only folks allowed on the forest floor, as rangers say, rather than just driving through on the roads, are those who are paid to be there or those who volunteer to cut and maintain trails, pick up trash, plant seedlings or catalog newspaper articles. (We hope this newspaper's numerous stories and editorials go into the history vault.)
If volunteers read as they clip, they'll note our stand against the $5-per-day ($30 annual) Adventure Pass fee. We feel it's double taxation at best and a means to stem increasing flow of visitors based on economic status at worst.
To be fair, U.S. Forest Service personnel are only obeying law set down by Congress (voters will be reminded of the onerous fee in 2004) when they've handed out more than 77,000 notices of noncompliance since the program was initiated in 1996.
And, Angeles Forest administrators probably were following law when they denied mule station owner Kelley a conditional use permit and told her to raze the station's circa-1900 buildings.
Seems forest residents - there legally in their own cabins - were incidental to that law. After all, they depend on the pack mules to bring them supplies and take their trash out.
We guess the specter of starving, snowbound residents and mounds of rotting garbage changed forest service thinking. That or public exposure in these pages (attention volunteers: snip out this week's stories by Becky Oskin, please) or pressure from cabin owners' association.
Whatever the cause, we're happy the sevice finally saw the good of the forest for the regulatory trees blocking their view. Meanwhile, we'll continue chopping away at the Adventure Pass to further everyone's enjoyment of our national treasure.