It’s hard to deny the power of the U.S. Forest Service’s recreation numbers: more than 200 million visitors generate more than $100 billion in gross domestic product annually.

With numbers like that, it seems recreation might be in line to become the new mission of the Forest Service. Backcountry skiing and fishing, along with hiking, biking, snowmobiling, dirt biking, rafting, climbing, hunting and folf (don’t ask) could provide enough revenue to replace the big-money interests that have dominated the Forest Service budget for most of the last century: timber and grazing and, more recently, fire.

But it may not be that easy. The Forest Service is much more comfortable managing trees and fire than bathrooms, blisters and Bermuda shorts. Recreation has been a stepchild for the Forest Service because it poses a dilemma: how do you both serve the public and pay for that service? Former Chief Jack Ward Thomas puts it less mildly than dilemma; recreation, he says, is “a pain in the ass” (see “Empty Promise”).

The agency has been behind the curve in dealing with recreation, and it’s unlikely to catch up any time soon. Visit the Angeles National Forest in southern California and you see the problem in the extreme: unauthorized trails snake into the chaparral, parties rage until dawn, campers stoke their fires with wooden sign poles, and there are bathrooms where you just shouldn’t go. In some ways, the Angeles is lucky: at least it has a recreation constituency, however loosely affiliated. What about all those other national forests and grasslands way back in the most rural of rural North America, hours and hours and hours by SUV from the nearest major city? the Modoc? the Hiawatha? the Samuel R. McKelvie?

The problem is motivation. The problem is technology. And the problem is the people.

Fundamentally, the Forest Service can’t count. According to the General Accounting Office, this is true with trees and with fire, and it’s true with recreation. The agency revised the way it counts recreation visits a few years ago, dropping the estimated annual visits from 800 million or so (and rising, the press releases exclaimed) down to about 200 million annually, but even those numbers are sketchy.

Thoreau Institute economist Randal O’Toole says the agency’s recreation numbers are flawed. “The national forests hosted 209 million visits in 2001. But what is a visit?” O’Toole asks. “Spending seven days hiking in a wilderness area is one visit. Stopping at a Forest Service scenic overlook while driving a U.S. highway through a national forest is another visit. Yet the former visit is worth hundreds of dollars; the latter just pennies.”

The point of this is that the Forest Service’s inability to figure out how many people are doing what in the forest translates into extreme difficulty in figuring out a way to profit from all those visitors. And until the agency can find a way to make recreation pay, and powerful leadership to implement it, it won’t. The agency is content to do other things that it’s more comfortable doing. It’s better at asking Congress for fire money than it is at marketing the aesthetics and solitude of its 191 million acres (see “Empty Promise”).

Meanwhile, the agency, lacking in recreation leadership, is watching change come at an alarming rate to its trails, rivers and mountains. Technological advances in gear are allowing people to go farther, faster and bigger than ever before. Extreme is routine. Solitude? Look elsewhere, dude. Allen Best looks at Gore Canyon on the Colorado River, among other places, to explain this phenomenon (see “Everyday Extremes”).

Finally, a clear constituency is hard to muster. Hikers disdain dirt bikers. Mountain bikers would prefer not to ride with horses. Skiers give the stink eye to snowmobilers. Kayakers call the legions of rubber rafters back East “tourons.” Folfers (OK, it’s Frisbee golf) just hang out by themselves (see “Hikers, Hubs and Hooves”).

Considered from the perspective of its constituency, recreation is a big, unwieldy concept. One person’s notion of fun is another’s pain in the …

Click on the links below for additional “This Land is My Land” cover stories.

This Land is My Land:
Everyday Extremes

Steeper, deeper, bigger and faster: our toys are taking us to the edge. By Allen Best

This Land is My Land:
Hikers, Hubs & Hooves

Sharing solitude. When did getting out get crowded? by Bobbie Willis

This Land is My Land:
Empty Promise

A lot of people want recreation to be the next big thing. Why the U.S. Forest Service doesn’t care. by Rebecca Clarren