This really frosts my cookies. I'm old enough to remember when there were virtually no fees, and virtually no gates either. Public lands were considered to be public lands, open for public use. Our tax dollars (and timber sales receipts) paid the costs of running the USFS. Now, of course, timber sales are practically a thing of the past. So ever-increasing fees seem to be a significant source of funding.
However... If the USFS (& others) didn't have so many employees collecting fees and patrolling the lakes and woods looking for 'violators', they wouldn't need to collect all the fees to pay all those employees. Hmmm, not sure if that makes sense to anyone but me....
And don't let me get started on their 'wildfire management' techniques. That's a whole other story...
