It would be nonsensical to sell your house to pay a credit-card bill, but the Bush administration recently proposed something similar regarding national forests and other public lands. To grab a small one-time cash boost, it wants to sell 800,000 acres of national forest and Bureau of Land Management properties primarily in the West.
Very few proceeds would go to the BLM or the U.S. Forest Service. Instead, much of the expected $1.15 billion would go to the Treasury, where it would vanish into the massive maw of $8 trillion in total national debt. It’s akin to using a paper napkin to mop up water flooding the Titanic.
Most alarming is the push to make the BLM little more than a real estate office, by requiring it to sell a half-million acres over 10 years to raise $350 million, with 70 percent of the money going to the Treasury. To meet that goal, the BLM likely would have to sell valuable parcels that could fetch the highest market price. The BLM hasn’t said what properties might be sold, but its premier properties might include some of the most popular recreation areas in the West such as mountain bike trails, hunting and fishing areas and river running access.
Ironically, the BLM already makes money for the federal treasury, getting about $2 billion a year in funding but generating revenues of $3.2 billion from oil and gas leases and royalties and grazing and recreation fees. By selling BLM land, Bush could deprive the government of ongoing cash flow.
Equally absurd is the national forest plan, which calls for selling off 300,000 acres, including 21,500 acres in Colorado, to raise about $800 million. Only California could have more forest, some 85,000 acres, auctioned off. Colorado areas slated for sale include wildlife habitat in Eagle County, public access to the Poudre River and land surrounding the Stevens Gulch Road that leads to the very popular Grays and Torreys Peaks trail.
The Forest Service sometimes swaps or sells land so it can acquire properties that offer more public benefits, such as open space or wildlife protection. However, the new plan would effectively shut down such transactions. Instead, the Forest Service would sell national land partly to fund local schools in communities where federal timber harvests were curtailed in the 1990s. There’s got to be a saner way to assist the struggling former logging towns
Westerners should contact their congressional delegations and urge regional lawmakers to oppose the Bush administration’s short-sighted plan for the federal lands.
