Nonetheless, the fees may be discouraging some people from visiting public lands. The visitor center at Mono Lake in California halted fees entirely when they experienced a 30 percent drop in visitors. Because of inadequate surveying in the years before the program was put in place, the Forest Service has no records that show whether or not total forest visitation has changed as a result of the fees. In any case, the cost of the fee is not the main issue, says California Democratic Rep. Lois Capps, who has co-authored several bills to end the fee demo program. For decades, the Forest Service has sold timber to logging companies at a cost far below market rate, resulting in losses of tens of millions of dollars each year.
Similar policies are in place for mining and grazing on public land.
Environmentalists, naturally, balk at such expenditures. But subsidy advocates insist that loggers have as much right to public land as hikers. Timber subsidies ultimately serve the public by reducing home-building costs, Burnett maintains. Also at issue is how the fee income is being spent. Five percent of the fees goes back to the Forest Service's national coffers, but the rest is returned to the forest that collected it, where individual forest managers decide how to spend it.