Here’s another one for the kids: The Bush administration
has decided to auction off acres of forest as a source of funding
for rural schools and roads affected by a decline in their
county’s logging revenue. The proposed funding source sounds
circular in its reasoning ““ help schools that were hurt
financially because of logging cutbacks by destroying tracts of
forest nationwide.
This is part of the Bush administration’s
“fix-the-budget-without-really-fixing-the-budget” plan
revealed in the early days of February.
The land-selling program proposes to auction off parcels of
forest and public lands to gain funds for the federal treasury and
for the Secure Rural Schools program. The U.S. Forest Service and
the Bureau of Land Management have handpicked parcels of land
deemed “dispensable” to their departments to be
auctioned off for approximately $2,000 an acre.
These pieces of forest lie in and around urban and suburban
areas, and the lands being sold will most likely be zoned in
accordance with the surrounding areas’ zonation. The funds
made by the BLM will go straight to the federal treasury while
those from land sold by the U.S. Forest Service will go to the
Secure Rural Schools program.
Now, I would like to see these rural communities affected by
logging cutbacks succeed as much as the next person, but the
foundation for the Secure Rural Schools program is a shaky one. The
rural schools program was started in 2000.
With an approximate $106 million cut in the U.S. Forest
Service’s federal funding this year and a necessary renewal
for the rural schools program in sight, the government turns to the
selling of the U.S. Forest Service’s only commodity ““
forest land.
How strange, though, that a program being renewed for another
five years is going to be funded by a one-time revenue source. What
natural resource will the government pillage for funding in the
years to come? I guess we’ll just have to wait for future
budget proposals to know.
In all fairness, this isn’t the first time public lands
have been auctioned off. The BLM and the U.S. Forest Service are
old pros at selling off public lands; we don’t really need to
worry.
Only, they haven’t done this exact same thing before.
Tracts of forest with little value toward wildlife preservation
have been sold to fund the acquisition of more valuable lands for
natural habitats. When the selling of land turns from environmental
reasons to political piracy, I start to get nervous. This is the
largest sell-off of public lands we’ve ever seen.
I don’t know, maybe we should feel honored. California is
lined up to sell the largest amount of land of any state with a
total of 85,465 precious forest acres. Land will be auctioned off
in some of our favorite places ““ the Angeles forests, San
Bernadino forests, Sequoia, Sierra and Stanislaus forests.
This list is from the U.S. Forest Service and only for
California. About 125,000 acres of other undeveloped lands will be
sold by the BLM nationwide, though they have yet to post where
these lands are located.
Now I love sound economics as much as the next person, but does
it really seem feasible to have a war, raise security spending, cut
taxes and still be able to effectively hack away at the deficit?
When it’s at the expense of public lands, of scarce natural
habitats, of some of the last undeveloped land we have in and
around our cities, I say there has got to be a better budget
solution.
Enman is the president of Environmental Bruins.