Eliminating America's Public Lands Though many details of President Bush's 2007 budget are still murky, some, regrettably, are painfully clear. Amid serious cuts to public lands programs (already grossly under-funded) there now comes a blatant proposal to begin selling off our public lands themselves.
It's not a new idea. The anti-environmental right has long cherished a fevered pipedream of selling off America's public estate. The President's budget proposal is a dangerous escalation of the crusade that now shows signs of becoming a trend.
Like A Broken Record Just two months ago, Rep. Richard Pombo included in a budget reconciliation bill a provision to sell off millions of acres of land to mining interests and developers. The measure passed the House. But unified opposition from western conservationists, hunters, anglers, local elected officials, businesses, governors and Democratic and Republican Senators alike forced its removal.
Similar coalitions have blocked other such extreme proposals, including one in which Pombo actually identified units of the National Park System to sell.
Over 800,000 Acres Could Be Lost to the Public In all, over 300,000 acres within our National Forests could be sold in 35 states. California would suffer most with 85,000 acres on the block, but this isn't just a threat to western public lands. In the southeast, where public lands are rare, 55,000 acres could be sold.
The Administration has already identified the forest lands it will sell. It has given the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) a sales quota, marching orders more appropriate to door-to-door salesmen than to professional land managers. That agency will identify sales tracts as it completes its land use plans. But to meet the Administration's sales quota, the agency might need to sell as many as half a million additional acres.
Important Lands in Valued Places Administration spokespeople are struggling to depict these land sales as small, isolated, of no particular public value or consequence. Nonsense. One is a 160-acre parcel in the Big Creek drainage of Emigrant, MT, in a popular recreation area adjacent to an upscale guest ranch. Another includes over 700 acres of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area in Oregon and Washington. A third comprises 1,300 acres along a remote and rugged river gorge with rare low-elevation old-growth forest in Washington.
Why? There is no good reason but there is a formal excuse: to raise money to help fund rural roads and schools. No one doubts the federal obligation to help local governments pay for such things, but the help should come, as it currently does, from the general treasury, as a broad public responsibility, not from casually peddling America's icons. Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO) sees the plan as a destructive way to pay for what he considers reckless tax cuts. "It's like selling your homestead to pay your credit cards," he said.
Voicing his concern, Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) said, "public lands are an asset that need to be managed and conserved." And Rep. George Miller (D-CA) said, "The suggestion that the only way to fund rural schools is to sell off our national forests is just ludicrous in a nation this wealthy."
Contact your representatives and tell them that our natural heritage is not for sale. The Wilderness Society has an excellent draft letter on its Web site.
http://http://wilderness.org
