Industrial Strength Recreation: The Future of Public Lands Management

by Scott Silver

In a recent address to the Public Relations Society of America, Tom Miller reported the survey findings of his company, the public polling firm Roper Starch Worldwide. "The bad news is, Americans are much more cynical about business," said Miller. "The good news is that Americans' expectations for honesty among businesses have gone down." The standing-room-only audience laughed appreciatively.

This may be "good news" for Roper, a company yielding extreme influence when it comes to shaping public policy for the benefit of its corporate clients. This, however, is far from good news for those of us who still, perhaps naively, believe the US is a truly democratic nation, governed by the will of the people.

How many readers are familiar with the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation (NEETF)? It is a private, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization established by the US Congress to "promote and support education and training as necessary tools to further environmental protection and sustainable, environmentally sound development." Sounds great, doesn't it?

But if you knew that Roper Starch Worldwide provides the research from which NEETF writes its educational material, might not that raise a warning flag? How objective can a report such as NEETF's "Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors of American Youth" be if its data was supplied by a company of questionable integrity, a company, hawking the somewhat oxymoronic message that corporate responsibility "will drive the nation's environmental agenda well into the 21st century." Presumably, NEETF's board members, from companies such as Phillips Petroleum and Arizona Public Service (a nuclear energy provider), have no problem with Roper's attitude. Perhaps they even found Miller's joke funny.

So, perhaps, did the top managers of the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Federal Highway Administration, as all four of these federal agencies use Roper's survey results to justify their entirely new paradigm for recreation policy-one strongly biased toward "commercialization, privatization and motorization."

It would be wrong to believe that federal policy was being created by public attitudes and opinions revealed by Roper's research. Quite the contrary, Roper's surveys are conducted specifically to justify and rationalize action-plans already long contemplated by its clients.

For example, consider the highly unpopular demonstration recreation fee program authorized as a legislative rider to a "must pass" appropriations bill. The original recreation fee legislation proposed by anti-environmentalist Representative Jim Hansen (R-UT) was strongly opposed by virtually every major environmental group because it would have shifted the focus of public lands management from conservation to revenue generation. Hansen's bill was so terrible that even the dreaded 104th Congress wasn't extremist enough to pass it.

The demonstration trail fee program recently introduced at selected test-sites around the nation was not, however, the brainchild of Rep. Hansen or of any other elected or appointed government official. This program comes to us courtesy of the American Recreation Coalition (ARC) and its affiliate the Recreation Roundtable (RR). ARC lobbied long and hard for this program and was rewarded for its effort by being named the program's official private partner in a "public/private partnership."

For those unfamiliar with ARC, it was founded in 1979 and describes itself as "a non-profit federation that provides a unified voice for recreation interests to ensure their full and active participation in government policy-making on issues such as public land management, energy and liability." Or, it uses this alternate description: "a national federation with more than 100 private sector members, including many of the nation's most prominent recreation companies and recreation associations. Since its inception, ARC has sought to catalyze public/private partnerships to enhance and protect recreation opportunities and resources."

The Recreation Roundtable, on the other hand, "was formed in 1989 to provide a key group of creative outdoor recreation industry CEO's with a forum for discussion regarding public policies affecting recreation and to serve as a catalyst for partnership actions which enhance recreation opportunities in America." Incidentally, ARC and the RR share the same mailing address and telephone number.

The American Recreation Coalition has been working behind the political scene and has, over the years, established exceedingly close ties with numerous influential congresspeople, as well as past presidents, notably Reagan and Bush. ARC also maintains extremely close ties with the wise use movement and actively participates in several anti-environmental corporate front groups. ARC's growing political influence spawned the off-shoot Recreation Roundtable and the Recreation Exchange as additional avenues to press their agenda upon receptive, or vulnerable, elected officials.

While the current recreation fee program is bad, the upcoming recreation Super bill, co-authored by Senator Frank Murkowski, is far worse. Needless to say, this package is a dream come true for the motorized recreation community, private recreation providers, public-lands concessionaires and those corporations interested in participating in the coming wave of public/private partnerships. Just one of the proposed acts under this umbrella bill would include legislation authorizing and defining the appropriate role of sponsors in national parks and other federal lands. Look for this truly dreadful legislation to come to a vote before the close of the next congressional session.

Also look for the recreation survey used to justify the current trail fee program to be rolled out once more as justification for the new recreation Super bill. The survey is the fourth in a series by Roper Starch Worldwide and is called "Recreation Roundtable Survey: Outdoor Recreation in America."

Having introduced the organizations actually calling the shots, it would be helpful to know more about their membership and affiliations. This is where the picture begins to get downright scary for those who currently enjoy low-impact recreational pursuits or who consider themselves friends of the Earth.

Amongst ARC's 110-plus corporate members, you won't find a single low-impact recreation or pro-environmental group. ARC's sponsors consist of campground associations, motor-sport user groups, snowmobile manufacturers, RV dealerships, equipment manufacturers, off road vehicle associations, public lands concessionaires, petroleum companies, the Walt Disney Company and a whole host of other industrial recreation providers. The outdoor interests seated around the Recreation Roundtable are much the same: ski area operators, motorboat federations, jet-ski manufacturers, theme park operators, private recreation providers and once again the ubiquitous Disney Company. You might be thinking: " I've heard enough conspiracy talk about corporate cabals. I just want to know what, if anything, this has to do with the future of public-lands management?" Another key player is Francis Pandolfi, former chairman of the Recreation Roundtable and board member of the NEETF. The man is now referred to as "Dombeck's gatekeeper." Perhaps it was natural that on his first day as Forest Service Chief, Michael Dombeck announced the appointment of Pandolfi to a specially created, unprecedented government position, US Forest Service Chief of Staff. The two men have worked together for years, and Dombeck likes Pandolfi's style and no-nonsense business approach. According to a July 23, 1997, article in The Times, Pandolfi has a vision for the future and says that the agency "should look at recreation as a business, and a booming business at that." To former Times Mirror CEO Pandolfi, that means treating you and me as paying "customers" and the activities we enjoy as "brands." Pandolfi "foresees the Forest Service taking its cue from major corporations such as Proctor & Gamble, which has such brand names as Tide, the detergent. Instead of selling brands of detergent and toothpaste, Pandolfi envisions the Forest Service having brands of recreation, such as camping, biking, skiing."

Incidentally, industrial-strength recreation is not a new idea for Dombeck, but one he was advocating long before being given control of the Forest Service. According to the National Forest Recreation Association (an ARC member representing private concessionaires on public lands), "In Dombeck's view, the recreation industry needs to find a way to get its economic story told in a believable fashion. Despite the common view of recreation as less significant than other uses of the public lands, Dr. Dombeck asserted his belief that the long-term future of public lands will be associated with recreation."

So in 1996, the Recreation Roundtable commissioned Roper Starch Worldwide to conduct another survey. According to National Forest Recreation Association: "The 1996 survey was also designed to help the recreation industry and government officials understand public attitudes toward higher recreation fees, asking how much more recreationists would have been willing to pay on their last visit to a federal recreation site." Perhaps it comes as little surprise that the Roper survey concluded that the new recreation fees should be charged mainly for Wilderness use and for other low-impact pastimes because "recreationists who were least willing to pay more included fishermen, RVers and motorcyclists/snowmobilers." Apparently, in today's business environment, you get what you pay for, especially when it comes to privately commissioned surveys.

In 1997, Roper conducted another survey for the Recreation Roundtable. This time, however, RR was joined by four other sponsors, the US Forest Service, the BLM, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Federal Highway Administration. According to Roper, "The study sponsors will meet after studying the findings to decide upon appropriate activities to enhance recreation quality in America for customers common to the public and private sectors. Responses will be based upon public/private cooperation and coordination."

No public input, no public process. You and I are no longer the owners of these resources; we have metamorphosed into mere consumers and paying customers. Dombeck's bold new future for public lands management is one of "public/private" partnerships and an increasing trend toward the Disnification of nature.

The story you have just read is not a tale of conspiracy theory. It's a simple presentation of readily available facts obtained from completely reliable sources. It is, however, a tale not often heard by the general public. And it is a tale that I hope will inspire an outpouring of protest against the current recreation fee program and especially against the ARC/Murkowski recreation Super bill.

In this article, we have provided background information about the corporate powers currently shaping America's public-lands policies . We have also introduced several of the key players in this political game. In the next part of this two-part series, we will closely examine where these policies are actually headed and will provide specific examples of the types of changes that are envisioned for our nation's public lands.

Scott Silver is co-founder and executive director of Wild Wilderness located in Bend, Oregon. Wild Wilderness has fought in support of undeveloped recreation since 1991. Readers can learn more about this subject by visiting the Wild Wilderness website at http://www.wildwilderness.org or contacting Wild Wilderness, 248 NW Wilmington Avenue, Bend, OR 97701.