By Gail Binkly

In all the debate over how to manage that 164,000-acre chunk of BLM land west of Cortez — make it a national monument? a national conservation area? or leave it as is? — one significant issue has been largely ignored: fees.

If, as seems probable, the area is soon given a new designation to protect the Anasazi ruins scattered across that rugged terrain, will it mean the visiting public might have to pay a fee to hike, bike, or simply visit there?

The answer, so far, is unknown.

According to Roger Alexander of the BLM’s Montrose office, fees are not common on most BLM lands, either in Colorado or throughout the West. One BLM-managed site that does charge a fee is the Anasazi Heritage Center near Dolores. Another is the Gunnison Gorge Wilderness Area north of Montrose, and a third is Red Rock Canyon outside of Las Vegas, Nev.

The latter two are both national conservation areas, but in the case of the Gunnison Gorge, the fee was implemented there before it became an NCA, Alexander said.

Charging recreational users to enter public lands is not a new idea — the national parks have done it for decades — but the practice has become much more widespread since 1996, when Congress approved the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program. That three-year test program, which was recently renewed for another two years, allows the National Park Service, BLM, and U.S. Forest Service to retain most or all of the fees collected at popular sites rather than sending them off to the general treasury.

Since that time, fees have risen in many areas where they already existed and have popped up at new sites such as trailheads and picnic grounds.

The monies are used for a variety of purposes, from improving paths and picking up trash to stabilizing ruins and operating visitors’ centers. At Hovenweep, for instance, part of the fee revenues in Fiscal Year 2000 will be used to provide rangers to collect more fees, a rather circular idea.

The burgeoning practice raises a number of disturbing questions:

• Is there any upper limit to the charges? Locally, fees have gone up from $3 to $10 a car at Canyonlands, from $5 to $10 at Mesa Verde, and from nothing to $6 a car at Hovenweep. At the Grand Canyon, it’s $20 a carload to get in. While these prices are not exorbitant, they still constitute a regressive tax: They hit the lower-income family harder than Joe Trust Fund with his $40,000 SUV and $3,000 mountain bike.

• Will Congress rely more and more heavily on user fees to fund the public-lands agencies? Some officials suspect that their budgets are already dropping in amounts commensurate with the revenues they’re bringing in.

• Are all these trail improvements, parking lots, fancy visitors’ centers, and other projects that are being funded wholly or partially through fee revenues really desirable? How well-developed should public lands be?

• Will the land agencies begin managing more to maximize revenues than to protect their areas and enhance each visitor’s experience? Will they concentrate on packing in as many people as possible, regardless of the quality of their stay?

• Why should non-consumptive users in non-developed sites, who aren’t making a living off public lands but merely enjoying them, have to pay a fee on top of the taxes we all pay? While some ranchers, loggers and miners are glad to see hikers being hit with fees, many of those same traditional users are disturbed, as they too like to take a stroll or go for a drive on public lands.

And while money clearly is the main issue in the fee debate, it isn’t the only issue. There’s something drearily Orwellian about having to "check in" at a booth every time you want to take a simple hike or snap photos of a sunset on public lands. Surely the average citizen should have the right to go off into the woods and be unmonitored for a little while.

The reason touted for changing the designation of the McElmo Dome area west of Cortez is to protect the cultural resources there. Clearly that’s going to take money. Will Congress be willing to provide it outright, or will the BLM be expected to raise some of those funds through entrance fees?

Although access to the proposed Canyon of the Ancients National Conservation Area is available from many different points, that doesn’t preclude the possibility of a fee; it just makes it harder to enforce. Hovenweep now has signs at the outlier ruins stating that visitors should trundle over to headquarters and pay up. And the county commissioners in San Juan County, Utah, had a plan a few years back under which all non-county visitors would have to pay to use federal public lands. They apparently planned to ticket parked cars that didn’t have local license plates at trailheads and such. Fortunately, they’ve abandoned this idea — at least for now.

Legislation sponsored by Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell and Rep. Scott McInnis to create the NCA is not yet in its final form, and one area locals could still possibly influence is whether fees will be imposed for recreational uses, and if so, how much.

Beyond that, maybe it’s time to pressure our legislators to rein in the fee program and take a hard look at what it might be costing us, not just what it’s bringing in.