[CGTRWK]

It is impossible in this modern age to sustain a town and all of its civic services without some minimum threshold of population and economic base. As many of these communities are virtually surrounded by National Forest, they cannot expand enough to create a tax base to sustain their own services.

That a tiny town is untenable in the 'modern' age (an age where local government apparently needs to be bigger and more expensive than it was in the pre-modern age) is a pretty good reason for the people who live there to move somewhere else with a stronger economy if they want those services.

Which is exactly what most of them do, which is why those towns of a few hundred are dying across the country whether they have free land around them or not.

All the people who visit the Forests use police, emergency and road services. Yet the Feds pay little to nothing to support the services of their guests.

You're telling me tourists coming in and paying the gas taxes, the lodging taxes, patronizing at the restaurants and bars, supporting the local speed traps, etc. are a net expense? I don't buy it for a second.

[marsh2]

You make the same error in judgement that the economic analysts made in the Northwest Forest Plan. It is not just one or two communities, in our case it is the whole county of 6,600 square miles that has been empoverished and the economy destroyed by environemntal regulations. Our entire economy is based on access to natural resources. There is no industry. When access is cut off, we have nothing else. We actually track the contribution of welfare and food stamp benefits as a plus to our economy.

Some of these communities have a substantial Native American component. They are not going to leave their traditional lands. Others are from families that have been there for five generations or more. They are not going to leave.

It will (and does) cost the public an enormous price to provide social, health amd safety services (entitlements) to many of these remote populations because they are unable to support themselves under the current economic situation.

Believe me, folks round here would much rather work in the woods than be barred from harvesting timber, mining and ranching by overzealous enviros.

You can try and dry up the communities. Of course the restaurants, gas stations and hotels will also dry up and the roads in the least populated areas will be the ones that we let deteriorate. Then no one will be able to visit our federal lands, but I think that is what the enviros want anyway.