We need some ideas on how to better
align the incentives of the Forest Service with the will of the people.
Over the decades an obvious contradiction has emerged between preservation and access. As the Forest Service, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management — each of which claims jurisdiction over different wilderness areas — adopted stricter interpretations of the act, they forbade signs, baby strollers, certain climbing tools and carts that hunters use to carry game.
As a result, the agencies have made these supposedly open recreational areas inaccessible and even dangerous, putting themselves in opposition to healthy and environmentally sound human-powered activities, the very thing Congress intended the Wilderness Act to promote.
...The agencies have even taken on Capitol Hill: in 1980 Congress authorized bicycling in Montana’s Rattlesnake Wilderness, but the Forest Service refused to allow it.
From my limited experience it seems that law controlling the executive ends up being useless unless it is self executing (regular folks can bring it to trial) and puts penalties on those who violate the law (the actual employees not just the agency).
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