We may be losing some of riding spots,





Bush Administration Details $1 Billion Land Sales
By Matthew Daly
The Associated Press

Friday 10 February 2006

Washington - The Bush administration on Friday detailed its proposal to sell more than 300,000 acres of national forests and other public land to help pay for rural schools in 41 states.

The land sales, ranging from less than an acre to more than 1,000 acres, could total more than $1 billion and would be the largest sale of forest land in decades.

Western lawmakers immediately objected, saying the short-term gains would be offset by the permanent loss of public lands. Congress would have to approve the sales, and has rejected similar proposals in recent years.

Forest Service officials say the sales are needed to raise $800 million over the next five years to pay for schools and roads in rural counties hurt by logging cutbacks on federal land. The Bureau of Land Management has said it also plans to sell federal lands to raise an estimated $250 million over five years.

Dave Alberswerth, a public lands expert with the The Wilderness Society environmental group called the plan a billion-dollar boondoggle to privatize treasured public lands to pay for "tax cuts to the rich."

"This is not going to be politically acceptable to most people," Alberswerth said.

But Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who directs forest policy, said the parcels to be sold are isolated, expensive to manage or no longer meet the needs of the national forest system. The administration expects to have to sell only about 200,000 of the 309,000 acres identified Friday to meet the $800 million goal, he said.

"These are not the crown jewels we are talking about," Rey said in an interview. The public can review the land parcels that are up for sale on the Forest Service's Web site, Rey said; Maps of just four national forests were posted as of Friday, but Rey said all the properties should be posted by month's end.

The public will have until late March to comment on the proposed sales.

"This is a reasonable proposal to take a small fraction of a percentage of national land which is the least necessary and use it for those in need and achieve an important overarching public purpose," Rey said.

The proposed sell-off would total less than half of 1 percent of the 193 million-acre national forest system. The money would be used for roads, schools and other needs in rural counties hurt by sharp declines in timber sales, in the wake of federal forest policy that restricts logging to protect endangered species such as the spotted owl.

A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management, which previously said it will sell another 125,000 acres, said BLM land to be sold would be identified at the local level. The lands are typically part of a checkerboard pattern of small parcels surrounded by suburban or urban areas, Interior officials say, and have been identified as holding little natural, historical, cultural or energy value.

BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington said much of the land would be near urban areas with high market value. In recent years, the government has sold parcels for tens of millions of dollars in Nevada, for example, she said.

"Lands formerly remote are now abutting metro areas. That is certainly the case in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah," she said.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said that is precisely the reason the land should not be sold.

"Our hunters, anglers, campers and other recreational users benefit from - and depend on - access to public lands," Bingaman said. "In my view, selling public lands to pay down the deficit would be a shortsighted, ill-advised and irresponsible shift in federal land-management policy."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called the plan "a terrible idea based on a misguided sense of priorities."

Not only is the administration proposing to sell off public lands to help finance the president's budget, the move also won't sufficiently fund the rural schools program, which has helped California and other states, Feinstein said. "I will do everything I can to defeat this effort," she said.

Nearly 500 parcels totaling more than 85,000 acres in California are identified for possible sale.

The proposal follows a failed move last year to allow the sale of public lands for mining. Western senators had criticized the idea, as well as a plan by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., to sell off 15 national parks.

 

for once, i agree with the dems on this. replublican betrayal to us? they are usually the ones to keep access open for us and reversed some of clinton's policies to allow access to public land; to sell it and thus reverse it again is senseless. the $$$ gained will not pay for anything in the long run.

 

My closest riding area is 85 miles away, and although it isnt federal land, i dont want to see any public land disapear.

 

That's funny. If you were to take out the democrat and republican tags, and last names, one would probably have no idea which party was giving away land and which one was protecting the public's right to use the land...

This sounds like a tactic to me. If it doesn't pass, Bush will say the Democrats didn't want the rural schools.

Politics as usual folks. That's why I hate democrats and republicans :-P J/K

 

maybe not. but who do YOU think is really for us ATVers? past, present, and future?

historically, the repubs have been more for the outdoorsman; this is documented throughout their lives, voting records and bush's reversal of clintons ridiculous land use policies.

it prob is a political ploy though. i would hope so... but have a feeling it isnt. it's a plan, unfortunately, that is attempting to help the fed gov get money. there's gotta be a better way to get money than this.

 

I just noticed this post, this proposed action by the USFS is but one more shameful step they are taking toward the destruction of our natural resources and our way of life.
Mark Rey will use any words or excuses he can to justify what is not legal or needed. Many will say it is needed to protect the schools and county road departments but at best it is a one or two year band-aid approach at best. The USFS has turned into one of the best "spin" organizations in existance. They will tell any lie, cover up any truth or facts, alter anything they need to in order to obtain the funding they need to waste to protect their jobs and their retirements. The USFS needs to perform a medical mirical and pull their collective heads out of their butts. Short term atrocaties are no path to long term fix's......................Tass

 

Looks like we have some politicians in the carolinas who oppose the sale.

Taylor says forest sale ‘not going to happen’

Western North Carolina Rep. Charles Taylor, R-Brevard, has spoken out against the proposed sale of 300,000 thousand acres of National Forest land.

During U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth’s testimony on the Forest Service’s 2007 budget request hearing before the House Interior Appropriations Subcommit-tee, which Taylor chairs, Taylor said the sale was “not going to happen.”

“Any sale of forest land affects the communities and counties in which those forests are located,” Taylor said. “You cannot put out a plan to sell off this much land, all across the nation, without first sitting down with each of those local communities and talking about their priorities and their goals. They cannot be cut out of the process.”

Following the announcement, candidate Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, welcomed Taylor’s opposition to the sale.

“I am glad that after weeks of public outcry over the proposal to sell off our national forests Charles Taylor has decided to listen and join me and so many other North Carolinians in opposing this plan,” Shuler said.

Shuler made the land sale into a campaign issue by taking an active role in opposing the sale and educating the public on the issue since the proposal was issued in early February. He held a press conference in Macon County, where more than 3,000 acres are on the chopping block, condemning the land sale and calling on Taylor to do the same. Shuler criticized Taylor for speaking vaguely about the sale and his position. John Armor, a Republican from Highlands challenging Taylor in the May primary, has also come out against the sale and did so early on in the issue. Michael Morgan, a Democrat from Asheville challenging Shuler in the primary, is also against the sale.

The proposal to sell of the national forest land — generated by the Bush administration — was intended to generate revenues to pay for reauthorization of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000. Under this program, counties that had historically received 25 percent of the Forest Service’s timber harvest revenues were compensated for the enormous declines in harvests under the Clinton Administration. The program is set to expire at the end of September of 2006.

In his remarks during the Forest Services’ budget hearing, Rep. Taylor further noted that the Bush administration’s proposal would send a disproportionate amount of land sale revenues to school districts in the Pacific Northwest. While more than a third of all the acreage to be sold lies in the South and Midwest regions, their school districts would receive only 10 percent of the revenues.

 

Protest the sale of the public's forest land

Charles Blankenship

Blankenship lives in Roanoke and is a retired forester with the U.S. Forest Service.

Scott Nelson's commentary concerning the sale of national forest land ("Selling our birthright for a bowl of porridge," March 2) was an accurate criticism of a very bad idea.

However, the blame does not rest with the appointees in the Washington office of the Forest Service. The Forest Service leaders in Washington are listening in agony to a proposal they have heard before. The Bush administration and specifically the U.S. Department of Agriculture are responsible for this proposal.

The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000 expires at the end of 2006. This and similar acts of Congress have been funding local roads and schools since the early years of the agency. In the past, funding for these acts came from the general treasury.

In discussions with Congress to reauthorize the act, the administration took the position that it would support reauthorization only if budget offsets could be found to eliminate any impact on the treasury. This boiled down to further budget cuts for an underfunded agency or the sale of national forest lands to produce the offset.

The Payment In Lieu of Taxes Act of Oct. 20, 1976 (PL 94-565) authorized Congress to appropriate funds when national forest revenues were insufficient to fund local governments for schools and roads.

Make no mistake, this is part of three phases of a campaign to reduce the size of agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service. The first phase has been budget reductions since Vice President Al Gore started reinventing government. The second phase has been "competitive sourcing" and outsourcing critical functions within the agency. Radio, computer and telephone services as well as personnel management have been moved to Albuquerque, N.M. Now, in the next phase, 304,000 acres of the public's land will be sold unless the public objects.

This sale is a dangerous precedent and likely the first salvo of subsequent fundraising sales. This would seem unlikely except for the fact that the sale of even more National Forest land was considered in the latter years of the Reagan administration. Intelligent leaders convinced that president's people to abandon the proposal.

Today, this administration is more desperate and determined, but there are some Republican leaders in Congress who are vigorously opposing the sale of national forest lands.

On Feb. 28, a Federal Register notice requested comments on the continuation of the Secure Rural Schools Act and the sale of public lands to finance the act. You are invited to submit your comments by e-mail to SRS_Land_Sales@fs.fed.us or to write USDA Forest Service, SRS Comments, Lands 4 S, 1400 Independence Ave., S.W. Mailstop 1124, Washington, D.C. 20250-0003.

The deadline is March 28. Mailing a copy of your response to your congressman and U.S. senators would be a good idea.

 

Um, I'm pretty sure the sale is for unused land. just my .02¢

I will wonder all day why I posted in a thread like this. =/

 

We Can't Afford This Public Land Sale
Selling forestland won't solve the real problem
by JOHN KRIST | posted 03.15.06

Selling federal forest land to subsidize rural schools and road projects is a bad idea for many reasons. But a proposal to do just that, incorporated into the Bush administration's 2007 budget, has one powerful virtue: It has focused welcome public attention on a century-old welfare program that has yet to achieve its goals.

Bush and his Department of Agriculture, which runs the U.S. Forest Service, have proposed extending a law that gives money to logging-dependent counties to compensate them for revenue losses caused by declining timber harvests. That law was signed by President Clinton in 2000 after protections for the northern spotted owl and other endangered species reduced logging in the Pacific Northwest, causing rural revenues to tumble.

But thanks to such fiscal irritants as the war in Iraq, tax cuts and a reluctance to veto even the most outlandish congressional spending proposals, the administration can't afford to keep the rural subsidy afloat. Rather than find offsetting savings elsewhere, or let the program expire as lawmakers apparently intended six years ago, the president and Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey want to prolong it another five years and sell more than 300,000 acres of national forest land to pay the $800 million bill.

Criticism of the proposal has been amusingly ecumenical. Environmental groups denounced the sell-off as a betrayal of the nation's conservation principles; they were joined in righteous indignation by conservative Western lawmakers, who typically show concern for the public lands in their states by aiding efforts to strip-mine, clear-cut and subdivide them.

Selling assets to pay ongoing expenses is fiscally imprudent, like emptying your 401(k) to cover your phone bill. But there's a bigger issue involved in the forest-sale proposal, and it goes to the heart of the evolving relationship between Americans and the remarkable landscape they inhabit. In a sense, the program in question awkwardly straddles a divide between the nation's rough-and-tumble past, when natural resources existed solely to be turned into cash as quickly as possible, and the modern era, when that attitude has become a wasteful luxury the nation cannot afford.

The proposal also serves as a reminder that when communities yoke their economic destiny to the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, their future is likely to be grim. There's a lesson there for the new energy boomtowns of the West, in case they missed the hundreds of similar lessons scattered across history.

The Clinton-era program that Bush and Rey propose extending, dubbed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, was enacted in response to the spotted owl controversy of the 1990s. But its real roots extend to the 1890s, when Congress authorized the president to create forest reserves that would be closed to settlement to protect them from abuse.

Several presidents put that power to enthusiastic use, notably Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt, who placed millions of forested acres off limits. Keeping that land in federal hands also kept it off the local tax rolls, prompting political concerns about the potential economic impact on rural communities that had hoped to prosper as settlers claimed that land, logged it and turned it into revenue-producing farms and ranches.

In 1906, Congress directed that 10 percent of all money generated by timber sales and other activities in a national forest be returned to the neighboring counties, enabling them to invest in community development and achieve prosperity despite the loss of potential tax revenue. In 1908, the share was boosted to 25 percent, where it remains.

When the mills were buzzing, it was a good deal. But the saws began to fall silent in the 1980s and 1990s, as the unsustainable level of logging finally began to unravel forest ecology across the West, and the money dried up.

Congress propped up the system with several supplemental allocation laws, most recently in 2000, but lawmakers never adopted any of the recommended strategies to permanently stabilize the program by disconnecting rural subsidies from fluctuating timber revenues. Most of those reform proposals were undermined by lobbyists for the timber industry and those same rural communities, which opposed any legislation that might weaken the case for increased logging.

Timber-dependent counties have had 100 years to diversify economically and kick their addiction to federal subsidy. They've failed to do so, and now the administration wants to sell family heirlooms to buy them one more fix. Nobody wants rural areas to suffer, but sometimes the kindest thing to do is say "no."