Land Auction Update
March 1st, 2006
Background: In an obscene attempt to privatize our public lands, the Bush administration proposes to auction to the highest bidder “isolated” forestland to pay for rural schools. Hundreds of thousands of acres will be chopped out of Bitterroot National Forest, the Columbia Gorge, and many other national treasures. If this scheme is allowed to proceed, year after year, we can expect our public lands to be sold to make up for the Bush-created national deficit.
Starting today, the government is seeking comments on their proposal to sell-off up to 800,000 acres of our public lands. We only have 30 days to comment.
But what lands will be sold, specifically?
Maps were supposed to be available “at the end of February”. But, as of March 1st, there are still only four map samples available, along with this message:
NOTE POSTED Wednesday, 01-Mar-2006 12:12:08 EST: We are aware of the technical difficulties with the Geocommunicator.gov map viewing tool. We are trying to get this up and working as soon as possible.
They are selling our lands. And then they limit our ability to comment on this auction by not adequately allowing us to actually see what lands will be sold. Ridiculous.
And if the land is “worthless” why is the Forest Service now giving right of first refusal to land trusts?
Rey added that local governments and land trusts would have the right of first refusal in the sales, provided that they pay “fair market value.”
Please take action to stop this nonsense.
Related posts: For sale: forests in the Gorge, Bend, Tahoe..., More on Bush privatization of public lands, Bush wants to privatize Columbia Gorge forestland...



2 Comments Add your own
1. Mr.&Mrs. Jonh Seymour | March 15th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
Please do not sell off Forest land.The President got us into this let him find a way to get out of it.Let him stop sending money to rebuild Iraq and spend the money on the United States instead!
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