Forest permit no longer available in Welches
May 12, 2004
Mount Hood National Forest officials will offer visitor information and permits in Sandy
CATHERINE TREVISON
The Mount Hood National Forest is pulling out of a Welches visitor information center that it has operated for 14 years with Clackamas County.
Forest officials will instead offer visitor information and permits in the reception area of its Sandy headquarters starting Monday.
The move is one of several that will cut the forest's visitor information budget from about $500,000 to about $300,000 over the next two years, said Malcolm Hamilton, recreation program manager for the forest.
Clackamas County will continue to offer maps, passes and recreation information from the center seven days a week through its contractor, Welches-based Mountain Quail Information Services, said Linda Bell, executive director of the Clackamas County Tourism Development Council. However, items such as permits for firewood or forest products will no longer be available there, she said.
The total operation budget for the Mount Hood National Forest is about $18 million this year; it is expected to decline over the next several years and level off at about $10 million to $12 million annually, Hamilton said.
"This is the first step in what will be several steps to tighten the belt on visitor information services and provide them in different ways," Hamilton said.
Other steps include improving the agency's Web site (www.fs.fed.us/r6/mthood), building information kiosks, and offering products and services through commercial vendors.
Moving from Welches to Sandy also "puts us close to a large segment of the visiting public that comes to the forest," Hamilton said. "Before, we had a sign on the highway directing people past us, 16 miles ahead to Welches."
The forest paid about $7,000 a year toward the Welches information center. It also assigned one full-time and one summer employee to the center. One of those workers will take on other duties in the Zigzag ranger district, and the other will be reassigned to the Sandy headquarters, Hamilton said.
About a month ago, Mountain Quail Information Services began selling books and souvenirs to help support the Welches center. That may help defray the extra expense to Clackamas County after the Forest Service pulls out, Bell said.
The Forest Service is unable to sell books and souvenirs directly, Hamilton said. At the Sandy headquarters, the function will be handled by a nonprofit group called the Northwest Interpretive Association.
The group will cover its overhead with part of the revenues and give the rest to the Forest Service as a donation, Hamilton said. The group offers such services at more than 300 public land sites in the Northwest, including national parks and forests, U.S. Army Corps of Engineer sites, Washington state parks and the Bureau of Land Management.
Visitors can get information from the Mount Hood National Forest headquarters from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday at 16400 Champion Way in Sandy. For more information, call 503-668-1700.