Robbed by RAT's

But the recreational-vehicle issue is just a sidebar. Although Rick Swanson has it right about RAT funds getting to the ground (at least in most cases), appropriations from Congress keep disappearing into bureaucratic black holes. So RAT money--virtually none of which goes to fisheries research or enhancement--has become both a replacement for squandered wealth and an incentive for continued profligacy.

Instead of shaking down visitors for a few extra bucks on top of what the IRS has taxed them to buy and maintain the property, on top of what state game and fish departments and the Park Service have charged them for fishing licenses, on top of what the Fish and Wildlife Service has charged them to buy and maintain refuges, and on top of what campgrounds charge them to spend the night, the agencies might try not wasting the money they already have. For instance, the BLM and Forest Service could save $2 billion a year and dramatically improve fishing and hunting by desisting from below-cost timber sales and unnecessary road building. The maintenance backlog for Forest Service roads (which could circle the globe 19 times) is $10 billion. It can't even take care of the roads it has, and yet it's building new ones.

What's more, the non-motorized people paying RAT fees are the very ones most invested in public lands and who, in many instances, have volunteered to staff visitor centers, maintain trails, pick up litter, find lost hikers, remove invasive exotic plants, restore stream habitat, and backpack trout fry to high-country lakes. The best analogy I've seen is the Park Service sending France a bill for refurbishment and maintenance of the Statue of Liberty.

"I fish," wrote John Voelker in probably the most quoted statement on angling since Walton, "because I love to, because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful, and hate the environs where crowds of people are found, which are invariably ugly." But RAT puts federal resource agencies in the business of attracting crowds of people, thereby disfiguring the environs of trout. It motivates managers to ignore sportsmen and promote instead activities that damage fish and wildlife and conflict with fishing and hunting. Recreation becomes a business. Our rivers, lakes, grasslands and forests become Disneyfied amusement parks.

Noted outdoor writer and Field & Stream's erstwhile conservation editor Michael Frome offers this: "Stewardship of public lands--especially wilderness--often requires limitation of use, but [RAT] provides a powerful incentive for managers to avoid anything that will limit use--the more use they can generate, the greater their budgets. Money is not the simple answer, but Congress must provide the funding to do the necessary administration to maintain these national treasures for future generations. It should not order administrators to merchandise the resource in order to pay their salaries."

We're seeing the results of this incentive in a new Forest Service program under way (sans public participation or Congressional oversight) called "Recreation Site Facility Master Planning." The agency evaluates recreation facilities in each forest, then assesses them for profitability. In some forests this means closing almost half the recreational sites--the ones that generate the least revenue. The remote campgrounds and trailheads--places to which an angler seeking a quality fishing experience would naturally gravitate--are first to get disappeared. Bulldozers are knocking down campgrounds, dismantling latrines, even removing fire pits. You won't be able to even park.

For instance, the new master plan for the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri calls for reducing "Recreation Areas" (containing one or more campgrounds, picnic areas, boat accesses or trailheads) from 53 to 30, campgrounds from 36 to 22, picnic areas from 41 to 25, and trailheads from 51 to 38. In Colorado about half the 140 campgrounds and other recreational facilities on the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison national forests face closure. The BLM has just announced a similar plan.

RAT fees provide an excuse for Congress and the administration to chip away at critically needed programs such as the Land and Water Conservation Fund (derived from oil and gas exploration leases). The four agencies use the fund to purchase fish and wildlife habitat, an activity the president frowns on because the privatizers inside and outside the White House who have his ear contend that the feds shouldn't be "tying up land." The Land and Water Conservation Fund is supposed to provide $900 million a year for public-lands projects to offset damage caused by offshore drilling. For 2007 the president has asked for $84 million.

The Western Slope No-Fee Coalition estimates that the Forest Service will decommission about 3,000 campsites, day-use facilities, picnic areas, trailheads and parking places. "Very little budget money from Congress is getting to the ground," says the group's president, Robert Funkhouser. "About 80 percent is used for administration." As for anglers getting any return on their RAT investments, Funkhouser says this: "I stay pretty close to this subject, and I have never heard about fee revenue going toward fish or fish habitat. I would feel pretty comfortable saying it doesn't."

The same grim scenario is unfolding on our national wildlife refuges that the Bush administration--again, at the behest of privatizers--has placed on a starvation diet. RAT fees aren't helping. Last December I visited the Pahranagat Valley National Wildlife Refuge in southern Nevada--a 10-mile ribbon of green in the Mojave Desert and one of the few places in this, our driest state, where the public can fish. The Upper Lake has a good population of largemouth bass, but it's infested with carp. The carp muddy the water, degrading bass habitat and preventing photosynthesis in plants that sustain waterfowl.