The federal government has identified 2,644 acres in Minnesota's Superior National Forest for possible sale, under a U.S. Forest Service plan that would sell isolated parcels of land to maintain payments to rural schools.
The Bush administration has proposed selling more than 300,000 acres of national forest in all, to raise $800 million to pay for rural schools in 41 states.
The plan would allow the federal government to continue paying for a six-year-old law, formally known as the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. The law, which expires later this year, has helped offset sharp declines in timber sales in Western states in the wake of federal forest policy that restricts logging to protect endangered species such as the spotted owl.
The plan faces an uncertain future on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers from both parties have expressed reservations about selling the land.
"I support the reauthorization of the program. (But) I don't know if selling public lands for more funding is the right answer at this time," Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., said Thursday. "I have concerns about selling lands at this time, and want to see if there are some other options."
According to a recent analysis by the Southern Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit law center, only about 10 percent of the proceeds would go toward rural schools in the South and Midwest, the two regions where more than a third of the land sales would occur.
The parcels identified for sale were selected because they were expensive to maintain, the Forest Service said.
But the Forest Service has no specific documents supporting that argument, according to the agency's response to a Freedom of Information Act filed by the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics.
According to Jane Cliff, a spokeswoman for the Forest Service's Eastern Region, based in Milwaukee, the Minnesota parcels selected are mostly between 40-80 acres, with one as large as 405 acres, and are mostly located in the eastern and northwestern edges of the forest.
Cliff noted that they represent a tiny fraction of the national forest, which is about 2 million acres.
But environmentalists strongly oppose the plan.
"The federal government has no right to sell public lands to pay for a program that it can't figure out how to pay for otherwise," said Wever Weed, a spokesman for Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, based in Minneapolis.
Mike Dombeck, who served as chief of the Forest Service in the Clinton administration, also panned the proposal.
"The economic value of that land would be much better utilized to acquire parcels within the National Forest, which would lead to long-term savings in management," said Dombeck, now a professor of global conservation policy at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.Associated Press via Star Tribune
