Lyons Peak, South Cuyama Oil Field, Deer Canyon Wash, Mais Canyon, Luckett Mountain, Johnson Flat, Mill Creek, Cane Spring, Rancheria Fire Station, Salt Spring, East Fork of the Chowchilla River, Hunter Creek, North Fork of the Mokelumne River, Licking Fork, South Fork of the Mokelumne River, Dutch Creek, Middle Fork of the Mokelumne River, Schaads Reservoir, ONeil Creek, Toutch Mill Site, Sullivan Creek, Yankee Hill, Big Creek, Truckee Marsh, Union Hill, Pollock Pines, Brushy Canyon, Hazel Creek Park, Hazel Valley, North Fork of Weber Creek, Sly Park, Jenkinson Lake, Sunday Ridge, Grizzly Flat, String Canyon, Spring Canyon, Spring Flat, South Fork of the Cosumnes River, Dark Canyon, Nelson Canyon, South Fork of the American River, Wisconsin Gulch, North Fork of the Cosumnes River, Farnham Ridge.
If the Bush Administration gets its way, you could soon be the proud owner of one of these places. These lands are currently public land owned by all Americans.*
The Bush Administration has proposed selling National Forest Land (85,000 acres in California alone) to pay for half of the rural school and road funding payments that are expiring this year. It has no plan for replacing the other half. Say goodbye to half of your funding and thousands of acres of public land. Why is this bad idea even wasting our time?
The Forest Service says these are isolated tracts of land, inefficient to manage, do not include land vital to wildlife or recreation, and no longer meet Forest Service purposes.
Well, lets take a look at a few of these parcels. I located on National Forest maps all of the proposed sale parcels in California National Forests south of Lake Tahoe. I chose these forests because they are areas with which I have some familiarity.
Angeles and Cleveland National Forests
Starting with the Angeles and Cleveland National Forests, the
first thing that comes to mind is how will development of these parcels affect
the wildland/urban interface--fires, wildlife habitat, recreation. Are we
causing some new problems here? And why sell the land where the "Lyons Peak
Radio Facility" is located--I'm not sure I want to own a hill full of
transmitters. But maybe a telecommunications company does.
Los Padres National Forest
Moving north, we see that the entrance to the Hungry
Valley State Vehicular Recreation Area is up for sale--about a 1/2 square mile
chunk of ground right where the entrance road comes in. Now, I'm not that into
vehicular recreation, but I have some friends that are, and they might be
concerned about what the new owner would want to do with the land. Building a
resort complex, for example, might lessen your outdoor experience a little. Or
maybe it would become an ATV sales and rentals superstore...
There are some parcels in the South Cuyama Oil Field. This is just south of New Cuyama, where California Condors pick up scraps on the school playground after lunch. A condor release site is just uphill. This makes a lot of sense--privatizing habitat right in the middle of an endangered bird's range. But I'm sure Bush's oil buddies will appreciate it.
San Bernardino National Forest
Moving on to the San Bernardino National Forest, the main question that
comes up, again, is wildland urban interface, but more importantly, wildlife
corridors. These edges of wild land under development pressure can use all the
protection they can get. And sure, it is difficult to manage outlying parcels,
but the value of not having condos on them outweighs this difficulty, in my
opinion, and probably in the opinion of anyone that has to deal with traffic,
stormwater runoff, or fighting fires in the area.
Inyo National Forest
On to the Sierra Nevada. A couple of parcels near Lone Pine, astride the Los
Angeles Aqueduct, with BLM land to the west and LADWP land to the east. Now,
maybe L.A. wants to own this land covered in roads and the aqueduct, but really,
would anyone else want this? Or more importantly, what would they want it for?
Would they propose an inappropriate development, the likes of which locals are
already fighting at nearby Whitney Portal Road? And my main overarching public
lands policy question comes up here: why sell land when you can trade it for
something you want? The USFS wants to acquire sensitive lands, in areas like the
Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area, and instead of selling lands elsewhere,
why not trade it for the lands you want? Land trades are often controversial
enough, but at least the public gets something it wants, instead of selling off
its domain to pay the bills. How will we pay the bills when we've sold the last
acre of public land? And where the heck will we go for a hike or a nice view?
Sequoia National Forest
As we move up the west side of the Sierra, in the foothills, we start
selling off our rivers. Parcels where creeks converge, springs amidst a sea of
private land--islands where wildlife gets a fighting chance to come first. Cane
Spring. The top of 3181-foot Luckett Mountain. I hate selling mountains to pay
the bills. And just imagine the oak woodlands that are endangered by development
all along the foothills--almost all of these Sierra parcels are in this
endangered ecosystem.
Sierra National Forest
The 160 acres surrounding the Rancheria Fire Station (CDF). Yeah, we need more
houses there, and more cars clogging roads around the fire station. That will
help their response times when they are driving to save the houses already built
in fire habitat. Salt Spring--I kind of want to go visit it and see what it is
like, now that I know we all own it. If these spots actually sell, I want to
visit a bunch of these places before the "Private Property" signs go up. I
suppose I can always bring my outdated map and claim I thought I was on public
land--a problem all the new owners may want to think about when considering the
price the land is worth.
Stanislaus National Forest
You don't pronounce the last "s", in case you were wondering. Derived from "Estanislao",
a prominent Native American in the Spanish mission days. Anyway, here we plan to
sell off just about anything that isn't within the National Forest's contiguous
boundary line that is fairly arbitrarily drawn on the map. I could easily draw a
different line that would include many of these parcels and exclude a lot of
private land that is currently within the boundary. If the line were drawn that
way, many of these wouldn't have made the list. That is a bureaucracy for you.
The most interesting thing here is that we want to sell about 3 miles of the south bank of the North Fork of the Mokelumne River. Why it is interesting is that the opposite bank, across the boundary line in the El Dorado National Forest, is not for sale. Now, I suppose these two Forest Supervisors don't get together and have coffee together every morning, but you'd think that you could coordinate something as important as that. As it stands, both river banks are in public ownership, and I'd like to see it stay that way. Especially when you consider that this is downstream from a dam, and the public ownership provides CONSIDERABLE additional protection to that stretch of river.
Let's see, we also want to sell Hunter Creek and all the wildlife connectivity those parcels provide. Some parcels for sale are contiguous with BLM land--obviously there was no coordination there either. Some of the BLM land is contiguous with the main forest boundary--again, redrawing some lines would make this proposal appear absolutely ridiculous. The wildlife and scenery don't follow the lines on the map.
The creek that runs through Columbia State Historic Park is not named on the Stanislaus National Forest Map, however we are going to be selling some of the creek upstream and on Yankee Hill. There are also parcels identified that aren't even shown as National Forest on the map--which means that there is more connectivity between National Forest lands than a glance at the map would suggest.
And while we are at it, lets sell both streambanks of the Middle Fork of the Mokelumne River for 2 miles upstream of Schaads Reservoir and Campground. We promise there will be no impact to recreation. Really.
My opinion is that so far, the Stanislaus National Forest is the poster child for why this is a bad idea.
Eldorado National Forest
Believe it or not, there is not supposed to be a space between "El" and
"Dorado". Go figure.
As far as I can tell, we want to sell the Truckee Marsh, where the Upper Truckee River enters Lake Tahoe. Now, raise your hand if you can tell me why this is a bad idea. Yes, you in the back with the "Keep Tahoe Blue" bumper sticker on your forehead...
Okay, we can also call this proposal the Pollock Pines Development Project. I'm sure sorry for the residents of that area--you are going to have a bunch of new neighbors crowding your streets. Union Hill, Brushy Canyon, parcels near Sly Park Campground next to Jenkinson Lake. Hazel Creek, the North Fork of Weber Creek. Some of these parcels contiguous with the rest of the National Forest. We are pretty much trying to abandon most National Forest land south of US Highway 50 around Pollock Pines. I wonder if Pombo or Doolittle have something to do with this... it is their territory, I believe.
The Carson Pass National Scenic Byway has a slender tendril of National Forest land running along both sides of it as it descends in elevation from the main part of the forest. Not all contiguous either. As you head downhill, turn left off of Hwy 88 at Dewdrop, and just beyond Black's Station there are a couple more isolated parcels for sale, touching the road, that have no obvious challenge to manage greater than the parcels up the byway a bit. Why not sell the other ones too? Maybe they'll sell those next year to pay for Social Security.
The final point I want to make is that many of the watershed and riverbank lands for sale are upstream of reservoirs. One of the primary purposes of National Forests is to provide a safe and reliable water supply. Selling these watershed lands upstream of reservoirs is a bad idea, and if I got my drinking water from them I'd be taking a lot more action than just writing this. Click on the proposal to find out where to send your comment letter during the 30-day comment period (ends in late-March 2006).
* In some cases the nearest landmark to the parcel is named.
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Gregory J. Reis
