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Sunday, February 19, 2006
Environment - "Groups oppose timber sale"
The Louisville Courier Journal has an extended version of an AP story today on a plan for logging in the Hoosier Natinal Forest. Some quotes from the beginning of the story:
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Southern Indiana conservationists said they expect Indiana's environmental groups to band together to oppose a federal plan to sell off nearly 870 acres of the Hoosier National Forest.The land sale is part of a national plan to sell about 200,000 acres of federal property to fund a rural schools and roads program. Last year, that program funneled some $380 million to rural schools around the nation, said Hoosier National Forest spokesman Franklin Lewis.
But Indiana forest advocate Andy Mahler calls the plan an "outrageous proposal." He said most of the money generated by the land sales would go to logging states, with more than half of it going to Oregon.
"The local schools here in rural Indiana will get virtually nothing out of these sales," he told The Herald-Times. "It will be the real estate brokers making the money."
Mahler, whose Orange County home is on property adjacent to the Hoosier National Forest, said he expects environmental groups to mount a strong protest to the proposed sale.
"I think you will see virtually every organization that works on forest protection issues doing what they can to raise awareness about this," he said.
Lewis said the U.S. Forest Service has historically paid counties a portion of the proceeds from timber sales generated from local land because the federal government does not pay property taxes on the land.
But Congress created the new program as timber cutting declined from about 12 billion board-feet a year in the early 1990s to just 3 billion board-feet last year.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 19, 2006 08:09 AM
Posted to Environment