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Forest Plan Draws Fire

Posted on: Monday, 20 February 2006, 18:00 CST

By Jacob Luecke, Columbia Daily Tribune, Mo.

Feb. 19--The Bush administration's proposed sale of U.S. National Forest Service land to fund the Secure Rural Schools Act would likely provide no money for schools in Boone County.

More than 300,000 acres of national forest land has been marked for possible sale, including 119 acres in Boone County and 120 acres in Callaway County. The properties here are part of the 16,500-acre Cedar Creek District of the Mark Twain National Forest.

Under the proposal, 21,566 acres of the 1.5 million-acre Mark Twain National Forest could become private property.

Payments under the rural schools act are meant to make up for property tax revenue that counties lose because they host public lands. Since 2000, the act has channeled about $29,000 to Boone County.

Boone County Treasurer Kay Murray said all the money went for road projects, as allowed under the law.

"The way it stands now, it's really not feasible to split that up between the nine school districts in the county," she said.

Last year, the rural schools act brought Missouri $2.7 million that was divided among 29 counties with national forest land, according to the Missouri Office of Administration.

In general, more national forest land inside a county results in more funds under the act. Boone County has about 4,000 acres of national forest, and about 12,500 acres of national forest are in Callaway County, which has received more than $100,000 in rural-schools funding since 2000.

Callaway County Treasurer Marsha Chism said 75 percent of that money is divided between the county's four school districts; the rest goes to roads.

The Missouri land that might be sold is part of a once-depleted forest that public financing and decades of management have nurtured back to health. In the 1930s, the federal government bought parcels of generally unwanted land that became the national forest, said Charlotte Wiggins, Mark Twain forest spokeswoman in Rolla.

The forest was officially established in Missouri on Sept. 11, 1939. Most of its 1.5 million acres are in eight districts in southern Missouri. The land covers about 4.5 percent of the state's total acreage, with the Boone and Callaway portions the northernmost section.

Wiggins said the national forest has helped deer, turkey and songbird populations revive in Missouri.

The Mark Twain forest consists of publicly owned tracts mixed with privately held property that is not accessible to the public. Wiggins said that about half the land in Mark Twain is owned by the government.

"It's easier for a place like Missouri to have a higher percentage of isolated tracts just because of that," Wiggins said.

Missouri's forest stewards previously have participated in a land-exchange program, where some forestland is swapped for private property adjacent to larger tracts of forest. But Wiggins said forest has never been sold outright, as is now proposed.

Only forests in California, Idaho and Colorado would lose more land than Missouri.

About a third of the 300,000 acres the forest department has marked as sellable could be spared from the sale, said Dan Jiron, press officer with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. A public comment period beginning late this month will help Congress decide which parcels not to sell. The parcels in Boone and Callaway counties range in size from 30 to 80 acres.

Cedar Creek District Forester Carol Trokey said the land was mostly wooded, but some parcels have old fields with cedar trees. She said the parcels would be most useful for recreation or hunting.

"Most of it, since it is wooded, couldn't be used for agriculture without some improvements to it," she said.

Selling the land would not affect the 36-mile Cedar Creek Trail, which is used for hiking, biking and horseback riding.

Forest and nature advocates in Missouri have decried the possible sale, including the St. Louis-based Missouri Forest Alliance.

Ken Midkiff, conservation chairman of the Ozark Chapter Sierra Club, said it is poor policy to sell national forest land.

"If you sell these lands, you remove their public value forever," he said. "You get a one-time windfall, and then they're gone."

Midkiff said he's worried that money from the sale of forestland in Missouri will be routed to other states.

U.S. Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., shared that concern in a written statement.

"I'm not inclined to support the sale of land in Missouri to help schools in California," Talent said in the statement. "We are going to hold hearings on this proposal in the committee, and these are the questions I'm going to ask the administration."

Missouri's other U.S. senator, Republican Kit Bond, also had a lukewarm response to Bush's proposal. Bond wants more information about which land would be sold and what the sale would mean for conservation, Bond spokeswoman Shana Stribling said.

U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof, R-Columbia, was noncommittal about Bush's plan.

"We must weigh the benefit provided to the public by keeping these parcels of land in the national forest against the funding challenges county administrators face by not having them on the local tax rolls," Hulshof said in a prepared statement.

Before any national forest land could be sold, Jiron said, Congress would need to identify which parcels to put on the market, create a process for selling the land and set a timeline.

Missourians already seem eager to snap up the property.

Wiggins said she's received as many as 30 calls an hour from people with questions about the proposed sale. Some people are confused, including a woman who asked when the land would be listed on eBay, an auction Web site.

Boone County farmer Thomas Bass said news of the possible sale perked his interest. He owns 160 acres adjacent to the national forest.

"It's certainly not suitable for agriculture. It's not income-producing land," Bass said of the forestland. "So it would either be bought for recreation or long-term development plans."

Bass said the price tag would determine whether he would try to buy forest land.

"I'll buy anything for the right price," he said.

A list of the acreage that might be sold is at www.fs.fed.us/land/staff/spd.html.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Columbia Daily Tribune, Mo.

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Source: Columbia Daily Tribune

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