Selling Off Our Natural Heritage
Editorial writers from around the region, and nationally, find proposal rife with flaws
Saving precious land
Raleigh News & Observer / March 2, 2006
“Rather than looking to sell land that is part of our country's very history and character, the White House might look to more responsible budget policy that improved school funding without putting public property on the block.”
Closer look at money trail behind public land sale plan should doom it
Asheville Citizen Times / March 4, 2006
“Politicians and the public are beginning to line up in droves to oppose a Bush administration plan that could sell off as much as 300,000 acres of public forest nationwide, including 10,000 acres in North Carolina.
“The best arguments against this plan are the obvious ones. The land, once sold, is gone; the kids, however, will keep coming to those rural schools. The land, once sold, will pass forever out of the public realm. In some cases around here, that land has been hunted or hiked on by generations.
“This can't be shot down fast enough.”
Forest sales need scrutiny
Charlottesville Daily Progress / March 11, 2006
“At this rate we could be chewing away at our forests for decades to come. Once sold, the land may become fair game for development.
And while a certain level of sales won’t materially hurt the forests - and will help the governments that receive the revenue - the danger is that we won’t know when to stop.”
Give Bush an acre, and he’ll take a forest
Roanoke Times / February 14, 2006
“The land belongs to all Americans, present and future, most of whom don't own private trails to hike, or streams to fish, or lands to simply bird-watch or soak up the outdoors.
“Instead, they hold in common the public lands. Whether they visited a forest lately or just have good intentions to do so in the future, Americans ought to be appalled that the president would squander their holdings. Once the land is sold, whether it is as small as a quarter-acre in Rockbridge County or as large as a 920-acre parcel in Bland, it cannot easily be recaptured.
Americans will have lost something of far greater value than a few thousands dollars funneled into school systems.”
Don’t sell off forest land
Tennessean / March 3, 2006
“Congress should firmly reject the administration's short-sighted land-sale proposal…. There may be a few tracts that would fit into that more-trouble-than-they-are-worth category. But most of the land, including acres in the Mark Twain National Forest, the Pisgah National Forest and the Cherokee National Forest, is crucial to this nation's heritage.”
Area could lose national forest land through sales
Athens Banner-Herald / March 10, 2006
“The sales would chip away at the watersheds that protect Georgia's uncertain water supply, said April Ingle, executive director of the Athens-based Georgia River Network. Preserving land is especially important now, when booming development threatens north Georgia watersheds.”
Bush plan to sell acreage in national forest draws fire
Post & Courier / February 15, 2006
“ ‘Conservation groups and others said the proposal sets a bad precedent. "There is no parcel in the Francis Marion that is unimportant,’ said Jane Lareau of the Coastal Conservation League.
“She said some parcels might not be contiguous to larger tracts of national forestland, but they still provide important ecological benefits. Moreover, she said, local Forest Service officials have traded isolated tracts for ones closer to the forest’s interior. The president’s plan would destroy this bargaining chip, she said.”
Bush seeks sale of national forest land
Birmingham News / February 11, 2006
“The Southeast has the lowest percentage of public forest land in the country but took the biggest hit proportionally in the proposal. More than one-sixth of the land proposed for sale, 55,862 acres, is in the Southeast although the majority of the nation’s public land is in the West.”
