Dear HCN,
I just received my April
27 issue of HCN and it’s without a doubt your best issue. I can’t
thank you enough for Jon Margolis’ article on the coming threat of
industrial recreation. Like Scott Silver, most of my personal life
outside of work has been taken over by trying to get the word out
on this. Believe me, public knowledge of the extremely intrusive
new national forest fee system is virtually nonexistent! Any public
relations rhetoric put out by the Forest Service that public
opinion supports the fee system is based on an extremely small
sample of people who were given such skewed information that they
couldn’t possibly know what they were really commenting on.
As a person who lives to spend time in our
national forests for the physical, mental and spiritual renewal the
natural world provides, I visit over a dozen forests a year – which
would now cost me over $300 in annual sticker fees. National
environmental groups need to catch on; the potential threat is as
bad as clear-cutting. The unholy alliance between the American
Recreation Coalition and Alaska Sen. Frank Murkowski threatens
future access by average familes to our entire national forest
system.
Irene
Schmidt
Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Recreation: “as bad as clearcutting’.
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