USA: Last minute Timber Lobby Law turns federal lands into roads to gated “communities”
U.S. Forest Service agreements that would make it far easier for
mountain forests to be converted to housing subdivisions. Mark E. Rey,
the former timber lobbyist who heads the Forest Service, last week
signaled his intent to formalize the controversial change before the
Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. As a candidate,
Obama campaigned against the measure in Montana, where local
governments complained of being blindsided by Rey’s negotiating the
policy shift behind closed doors with the nation’s largest private
landowner. The shift is technical but with large implications.
It
would allow Plum Creek Timber to pave roads passing through Forest
Service land. For decades, such roads were little more than trails
used by logging trucks to reach timber stands. But as Plum Creek has
moved into the real estate business, paving those roads became a
necessary prelude to opening vast tracts of the company’s 8 million
acres to the vacation homes that are transforming landscapes across
the West. Scenic western Montana, where Plum Creek owns 1.2 million
acres, would be most affected, placing fresh burdens on county
governments to provide services, and undoing efforts to cluster
housing near towns. “Just within the last couple weeks, they finalized
a big subdivision west of Kalispell,” said D. James McCubbin, deputy
county attorney of Missoula County, which complained that the
closed-door negotiations violated federal laws requiring public
comment because the changes would affect endangered species and
sensitive ecosystems. Kalispell is in Flathead County, where officials
also protested. The uproar last summer forced Rey to postpone
finalizing the change, which came after “considerable internal
disagreement” within the Forest Service, according to a U.S.
Government Accountability Office report requested by Sen. Jon Tester
(D-Mont.). The report said that 900 miles of logging roads could be
paved in Montana and that amending the long-held easements “could have
a nationwide impact.” Tester and Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who
chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, then asked for an
inquiry by the inspector general of the Agriculture Department, which
includes the Forest Service. “I think we need another set of eyes on
it,” Tester said Friday. “I don’t think that’s running out the clock.
If this is a good agreement, then what’s the rush? Why do it in the
eleventh hour of this administration?”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/03/AR2009010300720.html
— Posted to http://forestpolicyresearch.com via gmail to posterous and
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