Bush administration sells off public forests to energy companies

The states hardest hit will be California (85,500 acres), Idaho (26,200 acres), Colorado (21,500 acres) and Missouri (21,500 acres).

The administration is justifying these sales by claiming that they will generate funds to continue the Secure Rural Schools program, which is scheduled to run out of money in September. In reality, the Bush administration is plundering publicly owned lands on behalf of big business and the land sales will do nothing to seriously alleviate the mounting economic hardships faced by rural America.

Historically, the Forest Service has given 25 percent of its annual timber sales to local rural communities for schools, roads and other basic civil amenities. However, during the Clinton administration, several concessions were won by environmental groups that limited national forest logging.

The decrease in aid and the general decline of the logging industry devastated many rural counties. In 2000, Congress passed the Secure Rural Schools bill which provided over $1.5 billion to the rural counties to offset their deficits. The SRS bill is set to expire on September 30 of this year, with no source of funding available for its renewal. The Bush administration has seized on this situation, cynically exploiting the plight of rural communities to enrich energy and timber conglomerates.

The Forest Service has attempted to quell the public outcry over the sale of the public lands with its announcement that it intends to sell only small, scattered tracts of land that are hard to manage and, for the most part, closed off from public access by surrounding private property. However, the Forest Service has yet to provide any evidence to substantiate their claims.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/jul2006/land-j20.shtml