In an attempt to understand what is going on in my backyard regarding the selling of some parcels of National Forest land, I found information on the following sites that was useful:
(1) The Coastal Conservation League's website. More specifically, they have a link regarding the Francis Marion National Forest and stresses on the forest due to Mt Pleasant expansion pressures, as well as a link which allows you to respond directly to the US Forest Service (they are accepting comments until Thursday, 30 March 2006).
(2) The USDA Forest Service's website. This site has a link to "lands potentially eligible for sale by State and National Forest." For South Carolina, this is 4,656 acres in the Francis Marion and Sumter National Forests. The size of these parcels range from 4.43 acres to 373.51 acres (for a pdf of Francis Marion parcels potentially for sale, click here).
I also ran across a washingtonpost.com article (dated 21 March 2006) on the selling of National Forest land with this chilling quote:
"A recent U.S. Forest Service study predicted that more than 44 million acres of private forest land, an area twice the size of Maine, will be sold over the next 25 years. The consulting firm U.S. Forest Capital estimates that half of all U.S. timberland has changed hands in the past decade. The Bush administration also wants to sell off forest land, by auctioning more than 300,000 acres of national forest to fund a rural school program."
Okay, I'm all for funding rural school programs, hell, I'm for funding just about any school program. But have we gotten ourselves into such an economic mess that we can only sell our National Forests in order to educate our children well? I certainly hope not.
But so far, it's still an emotional issue for me. I think the land should be protected, not sold. In case you're wondering why a forest is so special anyway, take a look at this site that I saw linked on www.musetomuse.com.
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