Our public land heritage should not be for sale

Recently the Forest Service announced a preliminary decision to sell some public lands. The agency wants to sell some of our hunting, fishing, hiking and camping land.

This is a not a new idea by any means, but tends to get rediscovered every few years, only to be shot down in flames by an irate public, who love our public lands.

Since the Forest Service pays no property tax on the 16 million acres of national forest land in Montana, our federal legislators created an alternative called the 25 percent fund.

Basically, 25 percent of all timber sale receipts and other income collected on national forest lands were returned to counties to support local schools and roads.

Back in the good old days when the Forest Service cut lots of timber, those annual payments were as high as several million dollars every year to counties with large acreages of national forest land. Counties viewed those payments as entitlements.

Then new environmental laws made it more difficult to sell timber from national forests. As timber sale receipts dropped, so did the payments to counties. So Congress changed the payment formula, sending counties federal taxpayer money instead.

With huge federal deficits, surplus cash is scarce, so someone came up with the not-so-new idea of selling off some federal lands.

We can't blame any local Forest Service officials because this land sale proposal came from the top down. There apparently was little thought that scattered public land might still have public values.

This land-sale scheme proposes to sell about 300,000 acres nationwide, including nearly 14,000 acres in Montana and nearly 3,000 acres locally.

Let's look at some of these "unneeded" public lands.

A check of land ownership along the Flathead River between Flathead Lake and Columbia Falls shows that about 95 percent of all riverfront lands are privately owned. The token amount of public land includes only a few small tracts of land owned by Fish, Wildlife and Parks and three tracts of national forest land.

It is true these tracts of federal land are scattered and are not contiguous to other national forest lands. Most have river access only. But that does not mean they do not have tremendous public value for fishing, camping, hunting and picnicking. Yet these lands are on the sale list.

One 80-acre Forest Service tract on the river has road access. Three years ago Flathead County abandoned the county road to that public riverfront property. Flathead Wildlife Inc. - a local sportsmen club in which I have been a longtime member - challenged the road move. A district judge set aside the road abandonment and restored public access to that public river frontage.

Now that public riverfront property is on the auction block.

West of Kalispell, there is a little jewel called Hidden Lakes. It is a small, isolated 200-acre chunk of national forest land. But it has lots of public value. This land includes a deep scenic canyon with a creek, small lake and ice caves.

When local hikers get an early spring itch to take a hike, this is the place to go. It is snow-free weeks ahead of our surrounding mountains. This is a great little chunk of public land that ought to stay in public ownership.

The Forest Service has spent well over $20 million of public money to buy thousands of acres of key lakeshore, riverfront and forest lands in the Swan Valley during the last 10 years. Those new public lands are now open for public use. Now the government proposes to sell several tracts of land in the Swan! That doesn't seem to make much sense.

Next month the Forest Service will start a public involvement process. I predict Flathead citizens will speak loudly and clearly to leave our public lands alone. Our public land heritage is not for sale at any price.