MORE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE
THIS is the way he's gonna PAY FOR HIS PROGRAMS!????
California environmentalists oppose Bush plan to sell forest land
ap on Bakersfield Californian ^ | 2/10/06 | Gillian Flaccus - ap
Posted on 02/10/2006 7:17:41 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Environmental groups sharply criticized the Bush administration's proposal to sell up to 85,000 acres of national forests in California to pay for rural schools, saying the loss of protected land in an already crowded state would be devastating.
California would lose the most acreage of any state under the plan, which calls for the sale of more than 300,000 acres in 34 states. The list includes up to 500 parcels in 16 national forests located across the Golden State, with the Central Valley and Northern California potentially losing the most open space.
The plan also lists possible, smaller, sales in seven national forests in Southern California, including the Los Padres, Angeles and San Bernardino forests.
The proposal would help raise $800 million over the next five years to pay for schools and roads in rural counties hurt by logging cutbacks on federal land. The Bureau of Land Management also plans to sell federal lands to raise an estimated $250 million over five years.
In California, environmentalists and politicians decried the plan, saying the state can't afford to lose more public land, particularly in crowded metropolitan areas such as the Riverside-San Bernardino area and the Central Coast.
"The urban population in Ventura County and the surrounding area is skyrocketing and the infusion of people in the national forest is just increasing," said Alan Sanders, conservation chair of the Los Padres Chapter of the Sierra Club.
The list includes four possible parcels from the Los Padres National Forest, which straddles Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, for a total of 430 acres.
"The idea that you would start selling off parcels and have people build residences and industrial uses in areas that aren't getting enough protection right now is just wrong," he said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called the proposal "a terrible idea based on a misguided sense of priorities."
"California's remaining wildlands are diminishing at a rapid rate, and we need, at the very least, to keep what we have, not to sell them off to the highest bidder," she said in a statement.
Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who directs U.S. forest policy, said the parcels to be sold are isolated, expensive to manage or no longer meet the needs of the 193 million-acre national forest system. Fewer than 200,000 of the 309,000 acres identified Friday are likely to be sold, Rey said.
"Every acre is precious," said Carl Holguin, a spokesman with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service in Vallejo. "But some of these are parcels that have been identified as surplus to our long-term management objectives."
That's no consolation to Lynn Adler, who runs the Sacramento-based Mountain Lion Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving open space for the big cats. She says each mountain lion needs 100 acres of space - about the amount of acreage that's proposed for sale in the Angeles National Forest. |
