Posted on 02/10/2006 7:17:41 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Environmental groups sharply criticized the Bush administration's proposal to sell up to 85,000 acres of national forests in California to pay for rural schools, saying the loss of protected land in an already crowded state would be devastating.
California would lose the most acreage of any state under the plan, which calls for the sale of more than 300,000 acres in 34 states. The list includes up to 500 parcels in 16 national forests located across the Golden State, with the Central Valley and Northern California potentially losing the most open space.
The plan also lists possible, smaller, sales in seven national forests in Southern California, including the Los Padres, Angeles and San Bernardino forests.
The proposal would help 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 also plans to sell federal lands to raise an estimated $250 million over five years.
In California, environmentalists and politicians decried the plan, saying the state can't afford to lose more public land, particularly in crowded metropolitan areas such as the Riverside-San Bernardino area and the Central Coast.
"The urban population in Ventura County and the surrounding area is skyrocketing and the infusion of people in the national forest is just increasing," said Alan Sanders, conservation chair of the Los Padres Chapter of the Sierra Club.
The list includes four possible parcels from the Los Padres National Forest, which straddles Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, for a total of 430 acres.
"The idea that you would start selling off parcels and have people build residences and industrial uses in areas that aren't getting enough protection right now is just wrong," he said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called the proposal "a terrible idea based on a misguided sense of priorities."
"California's remaining wildlands are diminishing at a rapid rate, and we need, at the very least, to keep what we have, not to sell them off to the highest bidder," she said in a statement.
Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who directs U.S. forest policy, said the parcels to be sold are isolated, expensive to manage or no longer meet the needs of the 193 million-acre national forest system. Fewer than 200,000 of the 309,000 acres identified Friday are likely to be sold, Rey said.
"Every acre is precious," said Carl Holguin, a spokesman with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service in Vallejo. "But some of these are parcels that have been identified as surplus to our long-term management objectives."
That's no consolation to Lynn Adler, who runs the Sacramento-based Mountain Lion Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving open space for the big cats. She says each mountain lion needs 100 acres of space - about the amount of acreage that's proposed for sale in the Angeles National Forest.
< /sarcasm>
California is a big state. It's overcrowded in some areas because they aren't using enough land.
The feds have no business in states' land issues.
BTTT
This is USFS land.
Many people don't understand that the Forest Service was set up by the govt. to make money from controlled sales of resources (which is why it is a part of the AG dept.)
Keep your federal crap out of my state. I don't want the fed in my home or my state.
Maybe you haven't noticed but it wasn't overcrowded 20 or 30 years ago. And it was nearly empty a hundred years ago. Since nobody is making more of the natural world and - nobody can - it's rare and precious and should be preserved.
So I have a different solution. People like you should be forced to share their space with others. Why should you have 3 bedrooms all to yourself when you'll do just fine in a closet?
The members of these 'environmental groups' should be arrested for their acts of treason against the citizens of the U.S. (their policies hurt the economies and wallets of U.S. citizens) and they would be put on chain-gangs whose jobs are to cut down these forests.
Its NOT your land, its our land. Didn`t hear you crying when you recieved our $$ for your schools.
Siskiyou County has almost 63% of its land base in federally managed lands (USFS, BLM, USFWS refuges.) There is not enough of a private tax basis to adequately fund essential community services. The federal ownership also precludes any expansion of communities so that development could occur and increase the tax base. When the Forests were reserved, Congress recognized that and passed a law that 25% of the revenue that came from federal lands would go to the counties for schools and roads.
When the Northwest Forest Plan went into effect (northern spotted owl and salmon,) the forests were shut down from timber harvest. Back in the 1950s, we had 50 sawmills, now we have zero - just one plywood mill (peeler/corer) and one door moulding mill.
The Secure Schools and Communities Act was passed by Congress to backfill the counties for this lost revenue. The Act sunsets this year. In Siskiyou County, we will lose slightly under $4 million in revenue for schools, half of our road department's operating budget and the funding for our general county fire (Amador Plan) and search and rescue services. It will be a huge and immediate crisis.
The Act is up for reauthorization. The President wants to renew for five years, but decrease the amount of payment to zero. Then the County will go back to its 25% of whatever harvest is allowed, which has been almost none.
I was told today that 33,000 of those acres slated for disposal are in the Klamath and Shasta Trinity National Forests. Sale would release them into private ownership and back on the private tax roles. I understand that most are along the I-5 corridor. I haven't seen the list, so I don't know how I feel about it. They gave me the URL today: http://www.fs.fed.us/land/staff/spd.html
The environmentalists are being their ususal unreasonable selves. They want to preserve all the land they can to the detriment of essential services for rural communities that are handicapped by the presence of a large, unmanaged, highly flammable, overly stocked and brush choked tinderbox at their doorsteps.
I completely agree.
Well said.
Since 1990, the agency has added about 2 million new acres of land...
Now, nationwide, they might sell 10 percent of that 2,000,000 acres.
Money that would go to rural schools.
Most of the land is not easily accessable by the public...surrounded on three sides by private land, etc.
None of the parcels are in wilderness or other protected areas...
The national forest system encompasses about 193 million acres nationwide, and the agency doesn't expect a net loss of lands due to other ongoing acquisition programs.
The law is intended to help rural communities and rural schools that have seen National Forest logging-based revenue drop as timber cutting dwindled across the country.
As a native of northern California and a hunter, occasional fisherman and camper, I disagree with selling any national forest area.
I wish and propose that the government would manage the forests, lands and habitat. Cattle run in the Sierras and are the cause of the death of thousands of deer from antrax!
Read it again! You wont hear about it in the NYTime or Sacramento Bee of SJMurkyNews, but there it is! Deer killed by the thousands from antrax acquired from cattle!
Forests are burned each year that could be harvested as a cash crop! This would add $$ to the Federal and State coffers. But no, Feinstein and Boxer wont support forest management.
So let's do it right! This is PUBLIC LAND! It should remain that way!
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