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America's Forests: Not for Sale!
National Forests Proposed For Sale, Again
 Once
again, the Bush Administration proposes to sell off parcels of National Forest
lands on the false premise that they need to resort to a land sale to raise
funds for core programs. Inserted into the proposed budget is a proposal to
sell 300,000 acres of National Forest lands to raise $800 million and use half
of the funds for payments to states and half for land acquisition and other
programs such as "conservation education, access to public lands, habitat improvement
and to cover the administrative costs of disposal." The Forest Service made
this same proposal last year, which resulted in widespread criticism and complete
repudiation from the previous Congress. Clearly, this is a ridiculous proposal
that should be strongly rejected.
Thankfully, Sen. Jeff Bingaman will offer an amendment to the FY08 Federal Budget that would prohibit the scoring of the amounts realized from the sale or lease of federal lands or interests in lands administered by the National Park Service, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, or the Forest Service. The amendment would reinstate the rule on the sale of assets as it applied to these lands from 1987 through 1995. This budgeting rule change is a small but important change in the way that Congress scores asset sales proposals. The current system of scoring land sales proposals is both bad fiscal policy and bad public land management policy.
Selling off federal lands under the guise of deficit reduction is bad public lands policy. Our federal lands are a legacy for future generations and shouldn't be used to pay annual costs of government.
>> Read about the proposed land sales
>> See the maps of land parcels proposed for sale
Write a letter to the editor.
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