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Fee-free on the Snake

Linda Merigliano was rehashing a tough decision when she met the hiker in the summer of 1998. Merigliano is a Forest Service recreation manager, and her district was about to launch an unpopular fee demo program in Wyoming’s Snake River Canyon. Up to 4,000 people clogged the nine-mile stretch’s ramps and rapids on summer Saturdays—one of the nation’s four busiest recreational rivers. Use was expected to double in a decade. But the fee proposal had locals fuming.

Merigliano figured boaters had three choices: accept a permit system that limited use to levels the resource could stand; accept resource damage; or pay for more management. Reallocation of tax dollars from Congress wasn’t going to happen; about 30 percent of recreation money already went straight into managing this bit of the Snake.

She looked up to see a man walking toward her. He said he’d read about the impending fee. What did she think? "I don’t see an alternative."

When he asked about volunteers, she explained that after two years of public meetings, the Forest Service was sure people didn’t want that. They would pay, but they wouldn’t commit their energy. "I think they will," he said.

Four years later, Snake River Canyon has no fee. What exists, instead, is the Snake River Fund, a donation program catalyzed by that anonymous hiker’s contribution of $50,000, and his challenge to the community to prove him right. It has. These days, the fund collects donations in the envelopes that would have held mandatory fees. It sells maps, stickers and T-shirts, and holds fundraisers. Community groups and area outfitters donate. The kitty is managed by a volunteer committee which sponsors town meetings and tells the Forest Service how users want fund money spent. Volunteers supply money-saving labor. In return, the Forest Service has promised that fund money will not replace federal money. The fund doubles the prior $70,000 budget for Snake River Canyon. It has paid for trail stabilization, parking lot sealing, bear-safe dumpsters and trash pickup, toilets and toilet cleaning. It funds swiftwater rescue training for search and rescue volunteers. It buys two seasonal river rangers, to augment the rangers the district pays for.

The plan isn’t perfect: Outfitters make about two-thirds of the contributions. Some say that’s more than their share. Local boaters say out-of-towners don’t cough up enough cash. But out-of-towners gearing up at the ramp, when asked if they contribute, often say, "Fund? What fund?" Meanwhile, River Manager David Cernicek scrimps—contributing unpaid hours, not requesting promotions—to keep his promise within an increasingly claustrophobic Forest Service budget.

But serious critics are hard to find, least of all among the Forest Service, even though the fund generates nearly a third less cash than fees probably would have. At first glance, the difference between fees and donations seems slight. Whichever way shortfalls at overused sites are gathered from the public, the Forest Service ends up in the awkward role of shopkeeper. And catering to the customer, even at the expense of the resource, becomes the only way to gather the funds that might preserve the resource.

But that $50,000 check did buy something real: Not all Snake River Fund contributors feel like customers. Some few have come to see themselves as custodians, partners. They invest time. They talk with—not at—the Forest Service. And what might happen if the idea spread, if a few Payette River and Nantahala boaters decided to stop accepting a shopkeeper steward for their rivers, and insisted on more from themselves as well as the Forest Service?

—Jo Deurbrouck