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Preserve Land Sales Opposed: State Environmental Officials Say Tracts Shouldn't Be on Block

Posted on: Saturday, 4 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Bruce Henderson, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

Mar. 4--Some of the nearly 10,000 acres the U.S. Forest Service wants to sell in North Carolina shouldn't have gone on the block, an agency spokesman said Friday as outrage spread from local hikers to public officials.

Recently protected state land, habitat for dwindling bird species and clear mountain streams would be threatened if the sales go through, conservationists say.

"Our phones have been ringing off the hooks," said Terry Seyden, a Forest Service spokesman in Asheville. "A lot of people mistakenly think the lands are definitely going to be sold. And a lot of people want to buy them."

In mid-February the Forest Service proposed one of the biggest land sales in its history, more than 300,000 acres nationwide, if Congress agrees. The money would continue a program that supplements payments to rural schools in forest-heavy counties.

But the tracts proposed for sale by agency headquarters in mid-February hadn't been vetted by district offices, Seyden said. Some N.C. tracts, he said, don't fit the sale criteria: isolated tracts, surrounded by private land, that the service already wanted to get off its books.

Critics say the sales would close off crucial connections that link one wild place with another in forests that are already fragmented.

-- In the Uwharrie National Forest, three tracts would be sold in the Barnes Creek watershed. The state has given the watershed its highest designation for clean water.

Other plots in the Uwharrie shelter rare plants and border streams rich in aquatic life, conservationists say. Their sale could undermine efforts to draw tourists and jobs to the region's rich environment.

"It's a patchwork forest as it is," said June Mabry, an Albemarle resident who camps and canoes in the Uwharrie.

-- Three tracts totaling more than 600 acres are adjacent to the scenic Needmore tract, 4,400 acres of newly acquired mountain gameland along the Little Tennessee River in North Carolina's western wedge.

"You could envision condo development" with a sale, said Paul Carlson of the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee.

Commissioners in Macon County, which holds North Carolina's largest chunk of sale land, will vote Monday to oppose the plan.

While land prices are growing at gold-rush rates, proceeds from the 2,750 acres the Forest Service wants to sell there wouldn't be returned to Macon County. A government formula gives it pennies on the dollar.

-- At least three tracts in the Western North Carolina mountains are potential Important Bird Areas, a National Audubon Society designation for critical habitat, said biologist Curtis Smalling. They're in the Linville Gorge and Wilson's Creek areas, in Burke and Caldwell counties, and parts of the Pisgah forest in Madison County.

Audubon also worries about dwindling warblers that nest in the Cheoah Mountains, south of Lake Fontana. One species, golden-winged warblers, are drawn to the young growth that sprouts after clear-cut logging.

"The one thing they don't really tolerate," Smalling said, "are second-home developments."

Southern forests bear a disproportionate amount of the sale acreage, the Southern Environmental Law Center said, but would enjoy fewer benefits.

About 10,000 acres would be sold in both North Carolina and Oregon. But Oregon has more than 15 million acres of national forests, compared with the 1.2 million-acre N.C. forests. Rural N.C. schools, under the formula for distributing the money, got about $1 million last year to Oregon's $147 million.

To Learn More and Comment

For more information, including maps of proposed sale tracts in the N.C. national forests, go to www.cs.unca.edu/nfsnc/ lands/lands.htm or visit U.S. Forest Service district offices.

A 30-day public comment period ends March 30. To comment, write SRS_Land_Sales@fs.fed.us , fax to (202) 205-1604 or mail to USDA Forest Service, SRS Comments, Lands 4S, 1400 Independence Ave. SW, Mailstop 1124, Washington, DC 20250-0003.

Bruce Henderson: (704) 358-5051.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)

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