This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land, NOT NOW

Tell US Forest Service our National Forests Are Not For Sale
The Bush administration’s FY 2007 budget request includes a proposal to sell up to 300,000 acres of National Forest land and use the revenues to phase out funding for rural schools over the next 5 years. While funding of rural schools is something we support, paying for it by selling off precious natural resources is misguided.

Such a land disposal plan has, as conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote in 1949, “the same desperate finality as having to chop up the furniture to keep warm." The land sale proposal would require Congress to adopt special legislation because the Forest Service currently has very limited legal authority to sell National Forest land.

Locking out the Public

If the legislation passes, it would eliminate virtually all formal opportunity for the public to comment on or object to proposed land sales, short of going to court. The sales would be exempt from environmental reviews unless there are “extraordinary circumstances” such as impacts on endangered species habitat.

Special Areas Could be Sold and Developed

Lands that are currently protected through forest management plans and regulations -- such as Inventoried Roadless Areas, old-growth forest reserves, riparian areas, streams, lakes, wetlands, campgrounds, big-game winter range, and endangered species habitats -- could be considered for sale.

Moreover, a purchaser of the land would be free to develop the land in whatever ways are allowed by local zoning and land use laws that apply to any private lands. Potentially that could include housing subdivisions, strip malls, gravel pits, and parking lots, as well as new mansions and driveways perched on scenic real estate.

Opposition Growing

Many Senators and Congressmen already have vowed to stop this legislation. Governors have spoken out against the idea and urged their Congressional delegations to take action. State legislatures in Colorado and Idaho, as well as counties all over the nation, have passed resolutions opposing it.

The newest voices in the chorus of opposition to this proposal are the four former Chiefs of the Forest Service who wrote a letter to current Chief Dale Bosworth urging him to abandon the misguided plan.

What you Can Do – Tell the Forest Service your forests are Not for Sale

You can take action immediately from the previous page. Or, for maximum effect, send your own letter directly to the Forest Service:

USDA Forest Service
SRS Comments, Lands 4S
1400 Independence Ave., SW, Mailstop 1124,
Washington, DC, 20250-0003.
Fax: 202-205-1604
Email: SRS_Land_Sales@fs.fed.us

For More Information

Fact sheet on the land sale
Facts about the BLM’s proposed land sale
Letter from four former Chiefs of the Forest Service to current Chief Dale Bosworth
Forest Service website with details on the proposal

WE ALL BETTER DO SOMETHING NOW, EMAIL AND TELL THEM NO!

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