Subject: wildlife viewing licenses
Date: Dec 26 08:33:57 2003
From: Connie Sidles - csidles at isomedia.com


Dear Ken, I don't know if you have been following the tweeters discussion on
user fees, but there's been an ongoing thread debating such fees at state
parks, preserves, etc. The debate itself has more or less come down to two
sides:
1. User fees, while nasty, are okay because somebody has to pay for upkeep
and it might as well be those who use the facilities
2. User fees should be abolished because the lands in question are already
public, and who runs this government anyway?

As you know me quite well, you can guess that I fall into category 2.

However, that is not what I'm writing to you about today. Rather, several
people on the tweeters thread have made the suggestion that, as long as user
fees are in our foreseeable future, at least they should be easy to pay.
Several people have advocated for the idea that the state should issue a
kind of uber-pass which would allow us to pay one giant fee that would then
give us a year's access to all the parks, preserves and other public lands,
including federal and state lands.

This strikes me as a very good idea. My husband and I often find ourselves
out birding in remote areas, where signs are sometimes posted requiring us
to have a sticker or some other evidence of a permit. But there is no way
for us to buy one right there. Other times, we'll encounter a drop-box and
envelopes but we don't have the necessary cash on hand, or the cash isn't in
the right amount (we might have a $5 bill but the fee is $3). We have tried
to buy a conservation sticker, but we're never sure we're buying the right
one, and sometimes when we ask at the hunters' counter, the clerks have
never heard of anything but a hunter's or fishing license.

I wonder if you could do something to facilitate the creation of a single
pass that would allow free access to everything? I have a feeling that if
such a pass were as easily available as a duck stamp, the state and federal
governments would take in more revenue.

Since the creation of such a system is bound to be complicated, I wonder if,
in the near-term, your staff could issue a complete list of every single
permit we birders might need in the state - and where we can buy it?

Thanks for your time. - Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com