Wilderness Watch is pushing back against the Forest Service’s (FS) proposal to more than double visitor fees for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in Minnesota, one of the most visited in the National Wilderness Preservation System.
The FS has charged a visitor fee there since 1998 and last raised the fee in 2008. But the FS now proposes to drastically increase the per-trip youth fee from $8 to $20 and the per-trip adult fee from $16 to $40.
While Wilderness Watch supports quotas and permit systems to reduce impacts and protect wildlife and solitude for visitors, the proposed 150 percent fee increase for the BWCAW will both add to the commodification of the Wilderness and make it harder for lower-income individuals and families to experience the BWCAW. Access to Wilderness should be available to everyone, not just those who can afford to pay.
The FS and Congress have also been starving the wilderness program for years. While nearly 20 percent of the National Forest System is Wilderness, the budget for Wilderness is not even one percent of the FS’s budget. The agency shouldn’t be charging wilderness visitors exorbitant fees so it can spend taxpayer money elsewhere. It needs to fund its wilderness program at a reasonable level out of its current budget.
This new fee increase proposal also comes on the heels of the Trump administration’s extreme staffing cuts at the FS—including wilderness rangers—with about 100 staffers cut on just the Superior National Forest alone (which the BWCAW is part of).
The public shouldn’t be asked to backfill those severe budget and staff cuts that affect the BWCAW. The Forest Service should seek to restore staffing and budgets outside of asking the public to make up for the administration’s cuts. Public lands belong to all of us and we should not be asked to pay more simply to visit Wilderness.
Photo: Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness by Tony Webster via Flickr
