Putting public lands in private hands

Where I grew up in the Midwest, the only thing we could remotely consider public land was the city park.

If you wanted to go hunting or fishing, you had to know someone who owned land. And you could forget taking any long hikes. That can put a big crimp in your outdoor excursions.

But I didn't know any better, at least until I moved West.

It was here that I was introduced to public lands. I went hunting and fishing more times in my first year in the West than in the last 10 in Kansas, and didn't have to beg permission one time.

So when I heard recently that the Bush Administration wanted to sell off close to a billion dollars of U.S. Forest Service land, my first reaction was the same as for all those other privatization schemes.

But when you take a close look at this proposal, it makes sense.

The Forest Service has lots of land, much of it beautiful country that needs protecting. But the agency also owns a plethora of parcels that really don't need protecting, and that hinder the protection of the more deserving tracts.

Take a look at a detailed Forest Service map sometime and you will see the patchwork of lands that have to be administered. It makes sense to consolidate the lands that need protection, and to shed the parcels that don't. The Forest Service is already under-funded and has a hard time taking care of the land that it has.

The proposal lists 2,700 acres in Nevada to be sold, and 85,000 acres in California. That may sound like a lot, but it's a very small piece of what the Forest Service administers. And those thousands of acres are spread out all over the region, little pieces here and there.

One of the reasons given for this sale is to fund an existing program to help rural schools. While I like the plan in general, this part is really dumb. You don't sell off assets to fund an ongoing expense. This was simply a political ploy to make the sale more palatable.

But there is more benefit to the public than just the revenues from the sale itself. When this land is sold into private hands, the local and state governments will start getting property taxes for it. That is one of the real problems for communities in the western U.S. With so much public land, it really cuts down on tax dollars to fund things like police, fire and other public services. By selling off some of these lands, you can turn an expense into a revenue source.

Of course with this plan, the devil is in the details. I'm sure there are going to be parcels tucked into this program that will benefit someone somewhere, whether that be tracts of forest sold off to lumber companies to be clearcut, or parcels that will become country estates for certain campaign contributors.

But with the local involvement called for in this proposal, I think that a lot of the abuses can be limited, at least in theory.

It would also help if the government took better care of our assets in the first place. They could start by making sure we don't just give away forests to lumber companies, spending more on the sales than we take in. Or, making sure we collect the approximately $100 million dollars in oil and gas royalties the public gets cheated out of every year.

In a state that is 87 percent owned by the federal government, we should look at any move to sell off some of that land as a good thing.

n Kirk Caraway is Internet editor of the Nevada Appeal. Write to him at kcaraway@nevada appeal.com, or comment online at nevada appeal.com.