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.
Deef get antrax from cows? Now that`s a new one. Wonder why anybody is still worried about mad cow disease. Does Bush know about this?
Opps, deer not Deef. Deef is what they call meat from a deer that made babies with a cow
No it is not new. I have spoken with a few game biologists over the past 10-15 years. Ever since the Cherry Herd was decimated. Then the herd that ranges from Eagle Peak area to Long Barn. Same story.
The herd is now smaller than at any time from the 1970s! Fewer hunters, fewer campers and fewer deer!
Guess what. If the biologists talk about the causes they are afraid they will loose their jobs! \
It is not politically correct!
They are on the side of deer management which means supporting the hunter and not the rancher. Healthy deer mean a better hunt. Last thing I saw was a cow! A really stupid animal (next to a democrat).
I was born here; it is my land.
keep your lands east of Nevada and north of Oregon. Leave us alone to work out our own issues. Don't touch our agriculture and keep away from our forest.
We won't touch or even think of your lands... because basically to us, you are irrelevant.
Bad night dead=deed
Your state wouldn't have half its population or much of its agricultural base if the federal government didn't build great public works like the Hoover Dam during the depression. The southern part of your state is a desert.
That being said, the federal government owns and restricts use of far too much land out west. Privatized forests would be better run and not overgrown fire hazards. Heck, even federally-owned forests would be much better off if the environmentalists stopped tying the federal government's hands behind its back in resource management.
I don't know enough about where the proposed forest lands are to be sold, but I don't have a problem with the government disposing of its excess land holdings.
NY, I don't even think about your state. Why would you care about ours?
Keep to your own.
Blah, blah, blah.
Keep to your own.
Or, just send the illegal invaders back where they came from, ALL OF THEM!
Include the Chinese, Russians, Koreans, Viet-Namese, Canadians, etc.
That would take a lot of pressure off the infrastructure.
Last I checked, we lived in the United States of America, and I was free to move or travel to California at any time. And the federal government (i.e. all of us) owns the national forests in your state, not the State of California. That might not be the way it should be, but that is the way that it is.
Oh, big surprise, people from NY thinking what the rest of the country should do according to NY values.
We don't care. You can have Florida and Boca Raton. Keep your eastern liberal whack job politics to yourselves.
California should buy the land from the feds. Everyone wins.
The bond money doesn't end up down the State Department of Education rat hole educating Mexico's poor or into the black hole of the State Department of Corrections wasted on $200K/year salaries guarding Mexico's felons. The feds pumps 25% of the bond money into rural areas to offset the damage from the Greens and California sportsmen still have wide open spaces to hunt and fish.
A win-win deal.
Now you know how the Indians felt.
As a side note, the west was long ago invaded by easterners who now occupy many elected offices acroos the west.
I understand your concerns and your emotions.
I doubt these sales would go thru any time soon , maybe in a couple administrations if it cleared all the legal hurdles likely to ensue.
Then you should be happy. The Feds are SELLING the land, which they should not own in the first place, and are getting out.
BTW, one reason they are selling it is that the people who are unhappy with the sales, have stopped the owners (Feds) from using the land for its intended purposes, but want them to retain ownership without benefit.
One of those benefits was production of income to pay the local governments, especially school districts, 'in lieu of fees' to make up for the land NOT being on the tax roles.
Were you happy when Clinton took the opposite tack, and declared unprecidented amounts of such lands "wilderness areas' and 'National Monumnets', both keeping it off the tax roles forever, AND removing it from grazing, mining, logging, etc?
South Dakota? Is that in Mexico or something?
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