Federal Land Sale Still Vague
Posted on: Wednesday, 8 March 2006, 03:03 CST
By Moore, Michael
At least for now, it's not particularly easy to find out what national forest lands the Bush administration has proposed for sale in Montana.
By late Friday, only a map of than 1,000 acres on the Bitterroot National Forest had been posted on the U.S. Forest Service Web site designed to outline the proposed land sales. (See accompanying story for Web site information.)
There are maps for several other national forests around the country, but the Bitterroot is the only forest in Montana with a map.
The Bitterroot forest also has put together a list of lands that made the proposed sale list. While the list isn't terribly explicit, it's more helpful than the huge list the Forest Service put out earlier Friday. That list contains the vaguest of property descriptions, identifying the properties by acreage and their locations by township and range.
"We haven't figured out where they all are yet, but it's pretty clear they're planning to sell off a lot of land that a lot of Americans and Montanans might find pretty important," said Matthew Koehler, director of the Native Forest Network in Missoula.
All in all, just under 14,000 acres of federal land in Montana and 300,000 nationally - is proposed for sale by the administration. which plans to use the money to fund the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act.
That act, signed into law in 2000 by President Clinton, was designed to help compensate rural counties and school districts that previously received significant revenue from timber sales in their counties, then lost the money when those sales diminished.
Instead of asking Congress to just fund the program, the administration has proposed selling off federal lands to pay the bill.
"(Agriculture Undersecretary) Mark Rey said Friday that it may not be the biggest federal land sell-off ever, but it's certainly the biggest in the last 40 years or so," Koehler said.
In western Montana, the list includes over 1,250 acres on the Lolo National Forest, the largest of which is 320 acres. The Flathead National Forest lists nearly 3,000 acres, with the largest parcel being just over 320 acres. The Bitterroot has just over 1,000 acres on the list.
Rey described the lands as "isolated" and "remote," but Koehler said the Bitterroot properties on the map are likely to feel pretty familiar to Montanans.
"There's land that's right at popular trailheads, there's land all along the Bitterroot River," he said. "These are pieces of land that people hike on, birdwatch on, hunt on. This land isn't remote for Montanans. Mark Rey can sit there in the Beltway and say these lands are isolated, but out here in the real world, these are important pieces of property that Montanans spend time on every day."
Copyright The Missoulian Feb 11, 2006
Source: Missoulian
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