[Mb-civic] An article for you from an Economist.com reader.

Mon Feb 20 19:31:35 PST 2006

- AN ARTICLE FOR YOU, FROM ECONOMIST.COM -

Dear civic,

Michael Butler (michael at intrafi.com) wants you to see this article on Economist.com.

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TODAY'S WOOD, TOMORROW'S SPA
Feb 16th 2006  

The left's latest cause for rage

AMERICAN environmentalists could be forgiven for throwing up their
hands and heading north. This month Canada announced the creation of a
16m-acre conservation park along the Pacific coast. Meanwhile, the Bush
administration wants to sell some 300,000 acres of national forest land
in 35 states, mostly out west. That is about 0.2% of America's forest
system--but it would be the biggest such sale in living memory.

The proposal, which is in George Bush's budget, now goes to Congress
(the public will also get a chance to comment). The $800m or so in
proceeds would go to support rural schools to make up for the cash they
used to get from timber sales on federal land. Environmentalists are
beside themselves. Suzanne Jones, a Colorado-based director of the
Wilderness Society, accuses the White House of selling off the public's
land to balance the national budget. There are also howls from
Democrats, including Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and
Montana's cowboyish governor, Brian Schweitzer.

Auctioning off smaller bits of public land is common and (thanks to
rising property prices) lucrative. The Bureau of Land Management
recently sold off 4,500 acres around Las Vegas for $1.3 billion. The
new proposal involves lots of small bits of Forest Service land: mostly
just odds and ends cut off from America's main national forests, says
the Bush administration.

Greens, currently poring over maps, say that is no defence. Ms Jones
points out that "Just because a parcel is isolated doesn't mean it
doesn't have important values." The tracts could be home to rare plants
or animals: now, in Colorado, they "will no doubt be covered with
condos". 

The main worry for greens is not the land in question, but the
precedent a sale would set. "If they get away with it, they'll probably
go back for more," says Bob Clark, a Sierra Club leader in Missoula,
Montana. The Senate recently rejected another tidying-up reform
proposed by Richard Pombo, a Republican congressman much feared by
greens, that would have included selling off 15 national parks and
would have collected a lot of cash for the Treasury.

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