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February 28,
2006
LOS PADRES LANDS ARE REMOVED FROM
PLAN TO SELL OFF NATIONAL FORESTS
Lands in Santa Barbara and Ventura
Counties Are No Longer Listed
Today, the U.S. Forest Service
announced that it has cancelled a plan to sell 430 acres of the
Los Padres National Forest. The sale was originally announced
earlier this month.
The controversial sale was part of
the White House’s proposed budget for FY 2007. In it, the
administration planned to raise $800 million by selling over
307,000 acres of national forest land across the nation. The
proposal included three parcels on the Los Padres National
Forest totaling 430 acres in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
“This proposal was part of a
troubling trend to privatize America’s public lands,” said Jeff
Kuyper, executive director of Los Padres ForestWatch. “We’re
relieved that our Los Padres National Forest will not be sold
off to developers and oil companies.”
The Forest Service today published
in the Federal Register an updated list of the parcels
the agency will offer for sale, and announced a 30-day comment
period. California leads the pack with 79,362 acres eligible
for sale, mostly in northern California. The forests in
California that are hardest-hit by this proposal include the
Klamath (30,676 acres), Plumas (19,523 acres), Lassen (12,053
acres), Shasta (5,237 acres), and Stanislaus (4,063 acres).
The proceeds would be used to
extend the Payment to States program for another five years.
This program currently requires the agency to give 25% of its
annual revenues from logging and other resource extraction
activities to rural counties that contain national forest
lands. The administration is proposing the land sale as a way
to fund this five-year extension.
The Los Padres lands removed from
the sale include a 216-acre parcel in the Hungry Valley State
Vehicular Recreation Area in Ventura County. The Forest Service
has previously expressed an interest in exchanging this property
with the State of California in order to help acquire more
valuable lands and add them to the national forest system.
ForestWatch supports land exchanges as a way to acquire more
valuable property, but opposes outright land sales to balance
the overall budget.
Also removed from the list were
two parcels in Santa Barbara County’s Cuyama Valley – a 40-acre
site in Branch Canyon and a 76-acre plot in Bitter Creek.
While relieved that no Los Padres
lands would be sold, ForestWatch and other conservation groups
across the country continued to criticize the sell-off plan.
“Our national forests should not be subject to the whims of the
real estate market. There are far more effective ways to
balance the budget than selling off our public lands to the
highest bidder,” said Kuyper.
ForestWatch would like to thank
the Los Padres National Forest staff for listening to the
concerns of local communities and removing the parcels from the
sale list.
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