Forest Service programs are siphoning money from the national forests' recreation programs, which is not true.
WASHINGTON – With the White House calling for a big cut in spending, the U.S. Forest Service is asking local forest supervisors in Washington state and elsewhere to consider which campgrounds, trailheads, cabins, picnic areas and other recreation facilities could be closed to save money.

Each of the 155 national forests has until the end of 2007 to inventory its recreation sites and decide which ones might be closed. But Forest Service officials have left little doubt closures are coming.
“It is likely that most forests will have to make tough decisions to close some sites, curtail operations at other sites and decommission some sites in order to define a sustainable program,” Forest Service Deputy Chief Tom Thompson said in a March memo to regional foresters.
Thompson’s memo said the decision to look at closing recreation sites was driven by shrinking budgets and the need to spread already sparse operation and maintenance dollars as far as possible. The Bush administration proposed reducing Forest Service spending on capital improvements and maintenance by about one-third, from $515 million to $381 million. The Forest Service’s overall budget dropped last year from $5.8 billion to $5.0 billion.
“When resources are insufficient, the only option is to close some sites to maintain minimum acceptable standards at the sites which remain open,” Thompson said.
The Forest Service’s Northwest region includes 19 federal forests, six of them in Washington state and the rest in Oregon, along with such other units as the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and the Columbia River National Scenic Area.
There are more than 2,600 recreation sites in the Northwest region’s national forests. Of those, roughly one-third are campgrounds and another third are trailheads. Other facilities include boat ramps, cabins, picnic sites, interpretative sites and snow parks.
No decisions have been made on which sites might close. Each forest will have to do its own inventory and rank its facilities based on criteria that include usage and whether similar facilities are available nearby.
“We don’t have the money to manage all these things. No forest does,” said Tom Knappenberger, a spokesman for the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in southwest Washington.
Feeling the pinch around here
Each year, an estimated 2.8 million people visit the Gifford Pinchot, hiking on almost 1,500 miles of trails or staying in nearly 50 campgrounds.

Knappenberger said the Gifford Pinchot already has felt the budget crunch as the number of full-time employees has dropped from 600 to 170 since 1990.
Many of the layoffs were the result of a steep drop in logging resulting from the need to protect endangered species. In the late 1980s, more than 350 million board-feet of timber was cut each year in the Gifford Pinchot. Now it averages between 15 million and 20 million.
Recreation is now the No. 1 program in the Gifford Pinchot. Even though the forest has been charging recreation fees since 1997, it is still not enough to cover the cost of maintainance and operation.
“When you have less money, you stretch, you are creative, but at some point you have to do less,” he said.
The Olympic National Forest has been struggling with limited budgets for years and has done such things as eliminate trash cans at its campgrounds. Instead, it asks campers to pack their waste home.
“It’s nothing new for us,” said Ken Eldredge, a spokesman for the Olympic forest, where annual visitors range from 500,000 to 1 million, depending on the weather.
Because of rain, closing campgrounds in the Olympic forest is a “last option,” Eldredge said. If campgrounds aren’t maintained, they have to be rebuilt.
“You can’t just close them for a few years and then throw open the gate,” he said, suggesting that another option could be to close campgrounds during the winter months.
Inventory is ‘just good management’
Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service as undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and the environment, said that because “money is a little tight,” the forests have to be managed more efficiently and recreational priorities have to be set.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean we will be closing facilities,” Rey said in a telephone interview, adding it was “just good management” to do the recreational sites inventory. “It’s what the public should expect of us, no less.”
Rey said the idea behind the inventory was to ensure that heavily used sites are well maintained, while less used sites might be closed. At this point, Rey said the Forest Service doesn’t have a “good handle” on its maintenance backlog.
In a separate inventory already completed, the Forest Service is looking to sell off such administrative facilities as offices and housing that are no longer needed. The facilities were constructed when the forests’ primary mission was timber harvesting. Forest Service officials estimate they could raise more than $45 million during the current fiscal year by selling off the buildings. The money would be used to maintain existing structures.
Rey said there was no connection between declining recreational funding and increased money and emphasis on the Healthy Forest Initiative and other programs related to timber harvesting.
“One program isn’t being funded at the expense of another,” he said.
But skeptics disagreed.
“King timber returns,” said Bill Arthur of the Sierra Club in Seattle. “It’s a natural extension of Bush administration policies. It’s logical they would cut back on everything else like camping, hiking, fishing, hunting, recreation.”
So far on Capitol Hill, the administration’s effort has attracted little attention. But it could prove controversial, especially to Northwest lawmakers.
“If the administration really wants to hang a ‘for sale’ sign on our national forests – privatize or just shut down recreational facilities all together so they don’t have to pay for upkeep – it’s going to be tough sledding for them,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Edmonds), a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that oversees the Forest Service.