FEES AWAIT DAY VISITORS TO FOREST.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Daily News Staff Writer

Visitors to the Angeles National Forest this summer will find something unexpected: fees.

Starting June 16, anyone who parks a car in the forest to hike, hunt, picnic, fish, paddle in a stream or anything else must display a ``National Forest Adventure Pass'' available for $5 a day or $30 a year.

``It's going to be difficult to tell how people are going to respond,'' Angeles National Forest representative Randi Jorgensen said last week. ``We really would like people to come out in support of the forest, knowing their money will go back to their favorite campground.''

Southern California's four heavily used national forests - Angeles, Los Padres, San Bernardino and Cleveland - are among 47 locations picked by the U.S. Forest Service nationwide for a 27-month experiment into charging new fees to bolster dwindling forest budgets.

Forest officials, whose budgets were cut 30 percent over the last four years, say the fees will pay for amenities that mean the most to visitors: more and cleaner restrooms, more frequent trash removal, better maintained trails and restoration of the environment.

But the Forest Service is already getting some flack.

The Sierra Club's Angeles chapter says it is taking a wait-and-see attitude on the fee, but its leaders also blast Congress and the Forest Service for allowing livestock grazing and logging in other forests at what the club says are subsidized prices.

``Congress says if you go into the forest to picnic, to ride your bike, you've got to pay $5 a day,'' said Jim Schoedler, chairman of the chapter's public lands committee. ``We don't think that's necessarily fair. We think that subsidies should be addressed before they start charging for picnics and recreation.''

And while the passes are scheduled to go on sale May 23 and will be required starting June 16, forest officials have not determined yet where they will be sold.

In addition, officials acknowledge they are late in launching an information campaign to let the public know about the passes, and that some visitors may have to make a special effort to find a place to buy them.

National parks set up gates at every entrance and charge each carload of visitors as they drive in. The Southern California forests will not do that, since so many people live inside their boundaries or merely pass through - like the hundreds of commuters who daily use Angeles Forest Highway.

Instead, the passes will be sold by mail, or at ranger stations - though one problem is that some, such as the one in Valyermo, are closed weekends - or at certain businesses: service stations on a road leading into the forest, or sporting goods stores, for example.

``That's one of the biggest concerns, and certainly I know we've been working on trying to make it as easy as possible,'' Jorgensen said of the effort needed to buy a pass. ``That's why they're going with the vendors. We'd like it not to be a hassle.''

The possibility remains that automated parking pass vending machines will be installed like those at Devil's Punchbowl and Vasquez Rocks county parks, or that visitors could pick up passes on the honor system and drop their fees into steel receptacles like those at campgrounds.

``Everything's possible,'' Jorgensen said.

The pass won't be necessary for everybody who goes into the forest. Motorists just passing through are exempt, as are people who use campgrounds or recreation areas that already charge a fee - Littlerock Dam and San Gabriel Canyon, for example.

The pass is also not needed by people stopping at private campgrounds or at businesses in the forest, such as the Mountain High ski area. Also exempt are motorcycles bearing the off-road green tag license sticker.

Forest officials are interested in the test program, which ends in September 1999, because the new fees would go directly back to the Forest Service for maintenance and improvements.

Present fees, such as the $8 to $12 or so a night charged at campgrounds, go into the federal treasury.

Under the law passed by Congress last year to authorize the test fees, 80 percent of the revenue would go into the recreation maintenance budget of the forest where they were collected. The remaining 20 percent would go to the Forest Service chief for distribution nationwide among the forests taking part in the test.

The exact projects in the Angeles that would benefit have not been decided, but one leading candidate is reopening the Switzer picnic grounds on Angeles Crest Highway, which forest service officials said they closed because they lacked the staff to keep it maintained in the face of heavy use.

In the Valyermo ranger district, which covers most of the foothills south and west of Palmdale, plans are to pay for more crews to clean up litter and eradicate graffiti, to install more restrooms and improve campgrounds, officials said.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Antelope Valley groups interested in the new fees and visitor passes can contact Bernice Bigelow, Angeles National Forest Valyermo District ranger. Bigelow is available to speak to groups about the fees. She can be reached at [phone].

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