Robbed by RAT's

"Services at the concessionaire-run campgrounds are minimal and charges are high," says former Idaho conservation officer Gary Gadwa, who now directs the Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Association and volunteers for the Forest Service. "You might as well be paying to stay in an RV park. That's how expensive the campgrounds have become. We get 1.5 million visitors a year. This area is very popular for fishing--high-mountain lakes, streams, rivers and steelhead in the Salmon River. But very little of the [RAT] money went to fisheries or fisheries research and with all the fishing opportunities the need is great."

There's also a pressing need on the Sawtooth and elsewhere for monitoring species listed under the Endangered Species Act such as Chinook salmon, sockeye salmon, steelhead and bull trout. But the Recreational Enhancement Act explicitly prohibits the agencies from spending RAT fees for this purpose. The law was written by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) whose career-long crusade against the Endangered Species Act got him defeated in the last election.

Empowered by RAT fees, concessionaires are taking over our national parks as well as our national forests. So bad has the Disneyfication processes become that in 2005 the Park Service nearly succeeded with a "draft directive" in which it would have raised additional funds through corporate sponsorship. Gale Norton, then secretary of Interior and the Bush administration's queen privatizer, called the proposal "exciting." Most any corporate enterprise, even alcohol, tobacco and gambling companies, would have been eligible for sponsorship. Had not the public recoiled in disgust, the promo might have read: "Fish Grand Teton National Park, brought to you by Wonder Bra."

Still, the Park Service has what it calls "Proud Partners" (American Airlines, Discovery Communications, Inc., Ford Motor Company and Unilever) whose monetary contributions allow them to cash in on the Park Service logo. And another overt effort like the draft directive of 2005 would be anything but a surprise.

Pombo and the motorized recreational industries that brought us RAT fees never intended them to benefit fish, wildlife or any of the other natural attributes that make our public lands so special. A veteran Park Service biologist told me this: "Back in 2000 the Bush campaign talked about the maintenance backlog in the parks. The strategy, as I perceive it, was to redirect fee dollars away from all the important projects that parks were spending them on--planning, resource work, management. The Recreation Enhancement Act has basically taken away the ability to fund those programs. And now the administration can say, 'Oh look we're spending millions on maintenance.'"

RAT fees are just part of a decades-old campaign to privatize government and the land it manages. Perhaps that agenda is best articulated by Republican spinmeister Grover Norquist, who runs the anti-tax lobbying outfit Americans for Tax Reform: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

As long as Bush/Reagan-era privatizers wield power in the legislative and executive branches of government the future looks bleak. On February 2, 2007 the Forest Service's northern regional forester, Abigail Kimbell, took over for retiring chief Dale Bosworth, a decent, competent man who tried and often was not allowed to do the right thing and who pursued the administration's privatization agenda but without much enthusiasm.

Kimbell, on the other hand, has compiled a long record of brutal timber extraction and punishing her employees for doing their jobs, especially when it comes to defending fish and wildlife.

She says she wants to increase access fees.