Montrose - Daily Press

Matt Hildner

Daily Press Writer

MONTROSE — President Bush’s 2007 proposed budget could lead to the sale of up to 309,000 acres of U.S. Forest Service land, including more than 700 acres from the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests.

Advertisement

Corey Wong, a public service staff officer for the forest service, said the parcels are a small portion of the more than 3 million acres that make up the GMUG.

“Every one is isolated in that they’re surrounded by private lands. Most of them are pretty small parcels from our standpoint,” he said.

“Most of them don’t have legal access so the public can’t get to them to enjoy them,” Wong said.

The proposed sale would include two parcels of land on the Uncompahgre Plateau in Montrose County: a 40-acre site near Transfer Road to the south of Oak Hill and another 80 acres of land in Sanborn Park, roughly five miles northeast of Norwood.

The proposed sale drew concern from Andrea Robinsong, chair of the Western Colorado Congress’ public lands committee.

“The idea of selling more land instead of acquiring more land is not the direction we think the government should be going in order to establish a healthy landscape,” she said.

Robinsong noted that Mountains to Mesas, a report authored in conjunction with three other conservation groups, urged the Forest Service to acquire more land from private inholdings.

The president’s proposal would put more than 21,000 acres up for sale in Colorado. The Pawnee National Grasslands in northeastern Colorado would sell 6,740 acres, the largest amount of any of the Forest Service’s administrative units in the state.

The money raised from the sale would go toward funding the continuation of the secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act of 2000. Lawmakers drew up that measure as a way to stabilize funding to counties with declining revenues from timber, minerals and grazing fees.

Funds from the land sale would go to the program for a five-year period, beginning in 2007.

At a Friday news conference, Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said the White House expects to have to sell only 200,000 of the 309,000 proposed acres to meet the goal of raising $800 million, according to an Associated Press report.

While U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests, supports the rural schools measure, he expressed some caution about the details of the land sale.

“Public lands are an asset that need to be managed and conserved,” he said in a written statement last week.

The Forest Service intends to display maps of all of the proposed parcels on its Web site by the end of the month. The agency will begin taking public comments on the proposal on Feb. 28.

Contact Matt Hildner via e-mail at matth@montrosepress.com

Comments

marqthompson wrote on Feb 1, 2010 3:21 AM:

" This is a wonderful article. The things given are unanimous and needs to be appreciated by everyone.
--------
marqthompson
Noosa real estate "




Report Abuse

Kaitlyn Heichel wrote on Nov 3, 2009 2:01 PM:

" My dad was Robert Heichel and i just wanted to thank again everyone that helped looked for him. It was over 3 years ago that he died, but i will never forget him. I think about him still every single day and life without him is so hard. Thank you everyone who spent time looking for him. I wish this could have been a happy ending but life isn't fair. My dad died when i was 12 and i am now almost 16. Thank you again for everything you guys have done. Your amazing. "




Report Abuse

Sarah Bond wrote on Jul 13, 2009 5:31 PM:

" It really makes me sick that people lie about certain events to make themselves look better than they really are... Just to set the record straight, one of those stories is extremely false. Email me if you want the real story from the person who was actually there. "




Report Abuse