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Bush Budget Calls for Sale of BLM, Forest Land

Posted on: Monday, 6 March 2006, 03:01 CST

By Farquhar, Brodie

President Bush's $2.77 trillion proposed 2007 budget includes proposals to sell off 300,000 acres or more of federal lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.

Over the next five years, the sales could generate more than $1 billion, with revenues bound respectively to the federal treasury or to fund a rural schools program.

Federal lands total some 650 million acres, of which the BLM manages 261 million acres and the Forest Service manages 193 million acres.

The sale of 300,000-plus acres could lead to the increasing privatization of public lands, according to environmentalists, while private property advocates say the public lands can be better used by private owners.

To understand what these proposals mean, hikers, hunters, fishermen and conservationists will need to go look at these "for sale" properties, said Janine Blaelock. director of the Western Lands Project, a Seattle group that tracks the sale or exchange of public lands. The Forest Service posted its list Friday on the Internet. The BLM has not developed a list.

"You can't trust the agencies, because these properties often turn out to be ecologically significant, like wetlands or riparian areas. It is a desperate measure to use public lands as a cash register," Blaelock said.

The Greater Yellowstone Coalition has already determined that some Bridger-Teton National Forest land listed for -sale looks to be ecologically significant.

"Some of these properties are along the Hoback River," said Lloyd Dorsey, a Jackson, Wyo., representative for the Coalition. "This is exactly the kind of land the Forest Service should hang on to, not sell."

He called the property ecologically critical habitat for wintering moose and cutthroat trout, acknowledging that it would also be very attractive to real estate developers.

That's all right in the view of Terry Anderson, executive director of the Property and Environmental Research Center, a nonprofit environmental think tank in Montana seeking market solutions to environmental problems.

Federal land management is bad on two counts, said Anderson - fiscally, in that the feds lose billions of dollars in economic opportunities that could be pursued by private enterprise, and in environmental degradation, such as the nation's tinderbox forests.

"Selling public lands can help reduce the drain on the Treasury and give us benchmarks to compare private with public management," Anderson said.

Unwanted properties

Both the BLM and the Forest Service describe prospective lands for sale as isolated, scattered properties that can't be managed efficiently. Mike Ferguson, budget officer for the BLM, described them as having little scenic, recreational or mineral value.

Randy Karstaedt, director of physical resources for the Rocky Mountain Region of the Forest Service, said the program was designed to sell off isolated tracts on the perimeter of national forest boundaries, or tidy up the hodgepodge of private/public ownership around mining claims in the mountains.

Under the BLM program, some 125,000 acres would be sold to generate about $260 million over five years. Seventy percent of the funds would be -sent to the federal treasury, 26 percent for BLM administrative costs, and 4 percent to the states.

Although BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington characterized the proposal as mostly "an accounting issue," Blaelock disagreed.

The sale of BLM property falls under the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). Blaelock said she fears that the program will be expanded beyond its current activity level of land exchanges and small land sales.

"There's the potential for hundreds of thousands of acres to be sold, simply because the BLM has more land and it is easier to sell off a bunch of rocks and creosote brush than mountain forests," she said. Under the Forest Service program, between 175,000 to 200,000 acres would be sold to generate $800 million over five years. The money would be used to extend the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act known as Payments to States.

The 2006 allocations brought $24 million to Idaho, $14.3 million to Montana and $2.5 million to Wyoming, with half of the $405 million from the program going to Oregon. Not all of that money comes from the U.S. Treasury - 25 percent comes from timber harvests.

The Secure Rural Schools Act allowed the counties to choose a steady payment or take the normal 25 percent of an everdwindling timber program.

The act addresses the decline in revenue from federal timber harvests in recent years, which have historically been shared with counties and spent on schools and roads. For the past five years, the law allowed counties to receive a payment from the federal government based on the state average of their top three years of payments from federal lands.

Political reaction

The Wyoming and Montana congressional delegations seem to be taking a skeptical view of the federal lands sales proposed by the Bush administration.

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont, is taking a cautious approach, said spokesman Matt Mackowiak. Burns wants to see the Secure Rural Schools program renewed, but has "a healthy dose of skepticism" as to why it needs to be funded by federal land sales, said Mackowiak.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said he strongly, supports reauthorizing the act.

"However, I do not agree with the administration's proposal to sell off about 200,000 acres of public land to pay for it," Baucus said. "As Montanans, we value our public lands they're an important part of our recreational heritage. We are an outdoors state. We hunt, we fish, we hike, we take our kids camping."

Baucus said he has co-sponsored legislation to fund the Secure Rural Schools program without selling public lands.

"Anytime youre talking about 17,000-plus acres of Wyoming land, folks should be engaged in what's being proposed," said Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo. "The public should take a close look at these surplus parcels to determine whether these are lands that they want to have transferred into private hands."

Regarding the BLM proposed land sales, Thomas said, "Any changes to how money is distributed from these sales needs to be carefully considered. I'm not sure that dropping the money in the federal treasury is the best approach to take."

He said he would prefer that "a good portion of the money from these sales stay within the agency to help them be better stewards of the land."

The Forest Service's Wyoming plan involves more than 17,000 acres of land in Black Hills, Medicine Bow, Bridger-Tetons and Thunder Basin National Grasslands.

In Montana, it involves almost 14,000 acres spread among the Bitterroot, Beaverhead, Clearwater, Custer, Deerlodge, Flathead, Helena, Kootenai, Lewis and Clark and Lolo national forests.

On the Bitterroot National Forest, one of the parcels recommended is known as the Fred Burr 80 - a major trailhead into the Selway- Bitterroot Wilderness that is popular with hikers, bikers and horseback riders. The forest spent nearly $50,000 on a hazardous fuels reduction project on the 80 acres last year. But the Fred Burr 80 is completely surrounded by private land and so qualifies for the list.

A final Forest Service "for sale" list will be posted on the Federal Register on Feb. 28. That day, the Forest Service Internet site also will post complete maps. A 30-day public comment period follows.

Copyright Billings Gazette Feb 11, 2006

Source: Billings Gazette, The

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