California environmentalists oppose Bush plan to sell forest land

The L.A.Daily News reports:

Environmental groups sharply criticized the Bush administration's proposal to sell up to 85,000 acres of national forests in California to pay for rural schools, saying the loss of protected land in an already crowded state would be devastating.

California would lose the most acreage of any state under the plan, which calls for the sale of more than 300,000 acres in 34 states. The list includes up to 500 parcels in 16 national forests located across the Golden State, with the Central Valley and Northern California potentially losing the most open space.

The plan also lists possible, smaller, sales in seven national forests in Southern California, including the Los Padres, Angeles and San Bernardino forests.

The proposal would help raise $800 million over the next five years to pay for schools and roads in rural counties hurt by logging cutbacks on federal land. The Bureau of Land Management also plans to sell federal lands to raise an estimated $250 million over five years.

In California, environmentalists and politicians decried the plan, saying the state can't afford to lose more public land, particularly in crowded metropolitan areas such as the Riverside-San Bernardino area and the Central Coast.

"The urban population in Ventura County and the surrounding area is skyrocketing and the infusion of people in the national forest is just increasing," said Alan Sanders, conservation chair of the Los Padres Chapter of the Sierra Club.

We did a related post on this earlier.Read both posts and the articles.You'll notice that some people want to artificially limit the supply of land.Those people like Dianne Feinstein don't want middle class people to be able to afford to live anywhere.That's Blue America for you.