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LEGISLATIVE UPDATE 14
Constituents--Just wanted to share an excellent editorial concerning the
Upper Lochsa Land Exchange written by Marilyn Beckett.
Rep. Tom Trail
Courtesy of today's
(September 13, 2010) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with a VERY special thanks to Marilyn Beckett of Moscow.
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HER VIEW: Land exchange not in the public interest
By Marilyn Beckett
Marla Bieker of Western Pacific Timber supports the Upper Lochsa Land Exchange (Daily News, Her View, Sept. 6).
Western Pacific
Timber (aka: TWJ Holdings), originated the proposed exchange with the U.S. Forest Service of 39,317 acres of checkerboard Upper Lochsa for 28,212 national forest acreage throughout northern Idaho. From south to north,
identified lands for exchange are in the areas of Silvers (Riggins), Elk City, Lolo Creek, Pierce, Dent, Elk River, North Fork of the Clearwater River, Dworshak, Bovill, Harvard/Potlatch, Skyline Drive, Mullan, Highway 3/Bull
Run, Spirit Lake and Highway 41.
These "scattered parcels" Bieker calls them, are spread across the northern region, but her assertion they are "already surrounded by private land" is false and
misleading. For instance, the Dworshak parcel is bordered by state land and the Army Corps of Engineers. If exchanged as proposed, the USFS is left with an even more "small, isolated parcel" since it exchanges only
part of its parcel, further fragmenting their holdings and increasing management difficulties.
Bieker targets the value of returning the Lochsa to USFS ownership.
She purposefully fails to mention the
value of lands leaving USFS ownership once traded away. This is why nearly every county with lands involved in the exchange, district representatives to the Idaho Legislature and the general public have fought for nearly two
years to stop any exchange. The people recognize their area lands won't be valued appropriately, and costs to the public can't be balanced by exchanging for the Lochsa.
From 28,212 acres on the trading table, 24.5
square miles is from the Palouse Ranger District, 15 percent of the district. That much land lost from the smallest district in the Northern Region leaves it extremely vulnerable to complete elimination by fragmentation through
future exchanges. It will be much easier for subsequent forest supervisors to justify eliminating the Palouse District. The likelihood of this happening is illustrated by earlier attempts to consolidate the Upper St. Joe
checkerboard in the Panhandle. Panhandle USFS administrators are watching what happens with the Upper Lochsa Land Exchange very closely, arming themselves for the next exchange, where they can cherry pick more "scattered,
difficult to manage parcels" to trade off. Why is the USFS disposing of our land?
The Palouse District has been managed for "multiple use" for generations - investments in roads, silviculture and
timber management where the soils and climate allow trees to grow twice as fast and provide an invaluable resource base. These soils offer potential that the Lochsa lands cannot match. Bieker's Lochsa has "well stocked
timber plantations," a remnant of Plum Creek Timber that stripped the Lochsa and subsequently planted some low elevation sections. The rest is high and steep - what survives does so under severe conditions.
The Rocky Mt. Elk Foundation, a co-sponsor of this exchange, collaborates on the basis of reinvigorating elk calving grounds in the Upper Lochsa. Yet their local membership is skeptical - they know the vast elk populations in
our lands, because they are part of the public who access these "scattered" parcels and see the prolific herds. Would privatization of our lands negatively affect the elk herds here? Is that what happened in the
mangled, clearcut Upper Lochsa supposedly "well managed for more than a hundred years?"
Private industry in Idaho does not have a strong forest practices act. We invite businesses here on the cheap at the
expense of the people and land. WPT retains Bieker - she doesn't write as a "citizen who recreates on federal lands." If she cared about people who recreate (and survive) on the federal lands resource, she'd quit her
job.
There's much more to this story, one that means everything to "the American people, who really own our nation's forests." Many private and federal foresters with decades of experience concur - this exchange is
not in the public interest.
Marilyn Beckett of Moscow is a friend of the Palouse Ranger District.
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Thanks again, Marilyn, one of the many friends of the Palouse Ranger District.
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