Schweitzer blasts Bush's public land sale proposal

By SCOTT McMILLION, Chronicle Staff Writer

The Bush administration Friday unveiled a list of more than 300,000 publicly owned acres it wants to sell to provide cash for states and counties.

The list includes 13,948 acres in Montana, most of them in national forests west of the Continental Divide.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, called the proposed land sale a "wrongheaded" idea proposed by a "U.S. government that is living beyond its means."

He compared it to a rancher who keeps selling land to buy new pickups and tractors, a man who lives well until he eventually finds himself broke.

"It's a damn poor way to run a ranch and it's a way worse way to run a government," Schweitzer, a third-generation farmer, said Friday in a telephone interview.

President Bush wants the land sales to generate about $800 million, which would be granted to states and counties affected by the loss of U.S. Forest Service payments.

The Forest Service has traditionally given part of its timber receipts to local governments for schools. The amount of money has decreased as logging has declined.

The whole idea of selling land -- a permanent asset -- to generate cash "to meet this or that budgetary goal" is a bad idea, said Dick Dolan, of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.

The potential impacts on forests in the Yellowstone National Park area appear to be comparatively small, he said, but the whole concept sets a bad precedent.

It might make sense for the Forest Service to get rid of some parcels, but it should try to obtain other permanent assets, like habitat or access, instead of cash to be spent quickly, he said.

On the Gallatin National Forest, headquartered in Bozeman, only 220 acres are listed for possible sale.

They include:

€ a 40-acre parcel in the southern Crazy Mountains that is surrounded by private land and has no legal access;

€ a 20-acre parcel in the Elkhorn Ridge area of the Bridger Mountains that is surrounded by private land;

€ and a 160-acre parcel in the Big Creek drainage south of Emigrant.

Sale of the Big Creek parcel could attract attention if the president's budget proposal is approved by Congress.

A public road crosses the land, which includes three recreational homesite leases and a fishing access site. It is a popular recreation area and the parcel abuts the Mountain Sky Ranch, an upscale guest ranch.

Bob Dennee, the lands specialist for the Gallatin, said it's unclear how matters like leases and fishing access would be handled.

"I don't know what guidelines or procedures we'll be following," he said Friday.

He did not know if sales would be offered directly or by bid.

"These are things yet to be decided," he said.

He noted that the budget must be approved by Congress before the land sales could take place.

"The president has presented his budget and now the Congress will weigh in," he said.

On the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, about 425 acres are listed for possible sale, most of them in the Butte/Anaconda area.

Other states are looking at the potential of much larger sales of public land. The administration's list includes 85,000 acres in California; 25,000 in Idaho; 21,000 acres in Colorado; 21,000 acres in Missouri; and 18,000 acres in Wyoming.

The entire list, a state-by-state breakdown and legal descriptions are online at http://www.fs.fed.us/land/staff/spd.html.

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