Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country | Founded 05-05-05

What a Bush Can Do to a Tree

Bush Budget Proposes National Forest Land Sales

Story by Lois Carol Wheatley

In his budget, President Bush proposes to sell roughly 270,000 acres of national forest land to raise about $800 million, about half of which would be earmarked to fund National Forest Service objectives. “This is like selling the back 40 to pay the rent,” said Rep. Zach Wampf (R-Tenn).

A similar item was included in last year’s budget proposal and was so vigorously opposed that legislators are surprised to see it back on the table.

In Tennessee, the plan calls nearly 3,000 acres to be carved out of its 640,000-acre Cherokee National Forest and sold to timber interests. In Western North Carolina, 2,394 acres would be similarly sold from Pisgah’s 510,119 acres and 2,065 acres subtracted from Nantahala’s 531,309 acres.

The local chapter of the Sierra Club chapter contends not only that tourism rakes in a lot more cash for the local economy than timber sales, but that the National Forest Service actually manages somehow to lose money every year through timber sales—an average loss of $1.6 million a year.

Other Incendiary Allegations

But let’s say for the sake of argument that stepping up timber sales will somehow turn a profit that could then be plowed back into the budget on the asset side of the ledger. Under the Bush Administration proposal, half the projected proceeds from timber sales would go to the National Forest Service and the other half would go to the Secure Rural Schools Initiative, a measure that passed Congress in 2000 to fund not only rural schools but also other miscellaneous items such as fire control.

These proposed allocations have furrowed many a forehead in the High Country.

Catherine Murray is director of Cherokee National Voices, a Sierra Club-affiliated group that also has strong ties with The Wilderness Society, Tennessee Audubon Council, Smoky Mountains Hiking Club, Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project and Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning.

“It has been said to us by other conservation folks that there is no guarantee, if they do this crazy thing and sell that land, that the money is going back into Tennessee and Cherokee National Forest,” Murray said. “If you read the finer print, it will go into the Forest Service general fund and more than likely will be siphoned off for firefighting, which is what they tend to do. We feel they tend to pull budget from other things to fight fires.”

The general sentiment here is that, conceivably, this economically depressed area of Appalachia will see one of its scant resources leave town on a rail, destined to benefit other far-flung parts of the country thousands of miles away.

“We don’t have the wildfires in the east like they do in the west,” Murray said. “Our forests here in the east are moist. We have more rain, so there’s not all that fuel buildup.”

Nobody here is arguing that the local rural schools couldn’t use the funding. Murray taught preschool for 25 years and she is not unsympathetic to their plight. “Some of our rural schools have always struggled for money,” she said, “and struggled to keep the extras like music and art that might get cut out first.”

Which Land tracts and Why?

The maps of the proposed land sales (www.fs.fed.us/land/staff/spd.html) designate seemingly haphazard splotches of terrain that suggest little or no rhyme or reason behind their selection. A Forest Service overview of the budget proposal offers the following explanation:

“Many of these lands are isolated from other contiguous National Forest Service land and because of their location, size or configuration are not efficient to manage as a component of the National Forest Service system,” said the report.

“Management of isolated tracts can be expensive because of boundary management and encroachment resolution costs. The sale of these lands … will allow the agency to consolidate federal ownership and reduce management costs.”

Murray remembers that verbiage from last year’s budget proposal. “From studying it last time, it was talking about lands away from the National Forest that had private property completely surrounding them,” she said.

“I have no idea why that would be unmanageable because they have managed it so long. I’m trying to get absolute verification of this.”

Susan Shaw, a spokesperson for the Forest Service, confirms the Swiss cheese effect of the National Forest’s current holdings, and notes that at least 50 percent of the proceeds from land sales is supposed to stay in the state. The federal government’s recommendations are to use some of that money to buy other tracts of land.

“Every once in awhile we’ll have a tiny piece of private land within a big block of National Forest land, and we would like to acquire those types of parcels,” she said. “We’ve always had a land strategy. There are some tracts that are really difficult to manage. They were either given to us or somebody exchanged them. I’m not sure how we got them.”

Shaw furnished a fact sheet that outlined the plan to keep the land acquisition funds within the state. It gave no such assurances as to the rural school funds.

“One of the recommendations within the budget is that part of the money would be kept within the state,” she said, “and we could turn around and use that money to buy other tracts of land that would consolidate our interests and make it easier for us to manage.”

Further Cause for Concern

The proposed budget calls for a 68 percent increase in logging, from 2.1 billion board feet in 2006 to 3.5 billion board feet in 2008. To reach that goal, the budget provides for an increase of $41 million to the Forest Service’s Timber Program.

At the same time, the Recreation, Wilderness & Heritage Program is looking at a $30 million cut, severely undermining its ability to provide and maintain trails, campsites and public facilities. The Wildlife and Fish Program faces a $14 million cut.

The overall proposed FY2008 Forest Service budget is $65 million less than the estimated 2007 budget, that already was the lowest since 2003. Some see the White House strategy as prodding the Forest Service to come up with its own money and stop relying quite so heavily on federal funding.