Ashley National Forest, entry fee

l Fishlake Campgrounds Fishlake National Forest, developed campgrounds fee

l Manti area

Manti-LaSal National Forest, developed campgrounds fee

l American Fork Canyon

Uinta National Forest, entry fee

l Mirror Lake area

Wasatch-Cache National Forest, developed campgrounds and day-use fees

Source: U.S. Forest Service

www.fs.fed.us/recreation/

programs/feedemo/index.shtml

By Faith Bremner

Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON - Americans will have to pay to play at many national forests, wildlife refuges and reservoirs.

Lawmakers late last year extended for at least 10 more years a program that charges the public small fees to hike, picnic, launch boats and camp in national forests and Western public lands.

Federal land managers and their supporters pushed for the fees to help pay for much-needed maintenance and environmental restoration projects, like fixing broken water hand pumps and shoring up eroding riverbanks.

Some fee opponents, however, argue that taxpayers shouldn't have to pay to play on public lands and that general tax dollars should cover the cost of operating, maintaining and improving federal recreation areas.

Others argue that a long-term fee program will give federal land managers an incentive to expand the fee to more places and to partner with private industry to develop and privatize federal recreation areas that have traditionally been rustic and open to everyone.

As part of the legislation that makes the fee more permanent, Congress added the Bureau of Reclamation - which manages 348 reservoirs in the West - to the list of federal agencies that can now charge recreation fees.

''There isn't going to be anywhere you can go in this country to recreate unless you pay a fee of some sort,'' said Velma Hodson of Arizona, who pays $4 every time she and her husband, Myles, go fishing at nearby Roosevelt Lake in the Tonto National Forest.

Myles, who is disabled and living on a fixed income, and Velma Hodson have lived near the manmade lake, which provides drinking water for Phoenix, for 30 years.

''If it were free, we'd go every day,'' Hodson said. ''That's what we did when we first moved out here."

How it works: Visitors to national parks such as Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon have paid entrance fees for decades under a law passed in 1965.

In 1997, Congress started an experiment that allowed the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to also charge fees in less developed recreation areas.

The Forest Service manages 155 national forests and 20 grasslands in 44 states. The Bureau of Land Management manages millions of acres in the West and the Fish and Wildlife Service manages hundreds of wildlife refuges and fish hatcheries around the country.

Late last year, lawmakers extended the program 10 years, which supporters and opponents alike agree is akin to making it permanent.

A typical fee is $4 to picnic and $10 for a night at a campground. Under the experimental program, the agencies collectively raised $52.9 million at 401 sites across the country in 2003.

Eighty percent of the funds must be spent at the sites where the money is collected. According to the agencies' annual report to Congress last year, some of the money was spent to resurface roads and buy picnic tables for BLM's Painted Rocks Petroglyphs site in Arizona, clean restrooms in the Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres and San Bernardino national forests in Southern California and replace boat docks on Idaho's Snake River.

''Right now we're just trying to get the toilets to work and not let the tables fall apart,'' said Jim Upchurch, a legislative affairs specialist with the Forest Service.

Between 1995 and 2004, Congress increased the U.S. Forest Service's recreation budget from $220 million to $256 million - not enough to keep up with inflation.

Fears of development: Some opponents are worried that federal agencies will use the permanent stream of money to turn national forests into national parks, many of which have paved roads, lodges and restaurants.

''We are very concerned the quiet little special lake at the end of the road that provides one kind of opportunity today - primitive camping - will be developed into something with major facilities, like jet ski rentals,'' said Scott Silver, executive director of the Bend, Ore.-based group Wild Wilderness.

''In a pay-to-play world, the kind of experiences traditionally enjoyed on public lands cannot compete with the resort country clubs that some people would like to see,'' Silver said.

But a spokesman for the American Recreation Coalition - a trade and lobbying group that represents the leisure industry - said he doesn't foresee the fees leading to a big increase in the number of private companies doing business on public lands. Partnering with the federal government is risky and costly because of environmental restrictions and closures due to wildfires, he said.

''The companies that do business on public land would not tell you it's a way to make money easily,'' said ARC President Derrick Crandall, whose group lobbied for the permanent fees.

''The real heart of what we want to accomplish [with the fees] is inglorious things, like picking up trash, cleaning bathrooms, providing an interpreter and doing campfire talks at campgrounds,'' Crandall said.