Easley protests Bush's plan to sell N.C. national forest land

[struggle4progress]

03/14/2006

By PAUL NOWELL / Associated Press


Gov. Mike Easley issued a formal protest Tuesday against the Bush administration's plan to sell nearly 10,000 acres of national forest land in North Carolina, saying "selling our valuable natural land is not the answer" to the long-term challenge of financing rural schools.

"You are proposing to sell 9,828 acres in North Carolina, or nearly 9 percent of our total National Forest acreage," Easley wrote in a letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey and national park officials. "This proposal comes at the very time when North Carolina is in the midst of a decade-long effort to conserve land and add to our system of public parks and forests."

Last month, the Bush administration proposed the sale of more than 300,000 acres of national forests and other public land to help pay for rural schools in 41 states. The land sales, ranging from less than an acre to more than 1,000 acres, could reap more than $1 billion and would be the largest sale of forest land in decades. <snip>

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