Bush's brilliant idea #256: sell off national forests to pay for education!

Here in north central Florida, we have some of the most beautiful parkland in the country.  I often take 3 day bicycle-backpacking trips through it, traversing the 100+ miles from my hometown to my parents' through the Ocala National Forest.  I spend the days biking along two lane roads along stretches of rolling hills bordered with pine trees and scrub oak, stopping on bridges that overlook rivers and swamplands and chatting with local and fishers hunters at bait shops.  At night I camp at one of the popular public campgrounds and swim in beautiful crystal-clear springs.

Now Bush, in his infinite wisdom, wants to sell 973 acres of this land because in his budget proposal for 2007 he can't seem to find any money for education. I wonder why?

"Up to 300,000 of the 193 million acres of federal forest land nationally could go up for sale if Congress approves the plan, said Denise Raines, spokeswoman for the Tallahassee office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service" according to an article in the Gainesville Sun.

Florida's Democratic Senator Bill Nelson opposes the proposal.  According to his spokesperson,

"The administration has raised a huge deficit. It is a $2.5 to $3 trillion budget and selling off acreage on lakes in the Ocala National Forest is not a solution to the budget crisis."

Good for him!  (Hefty, hefty, hefty!).  And...

"The good thing is it is just a proposal so we will have the opportunity in Congress to have it debated and hopefully defeated."

Representative Cliff Stearns on the other hand is waiting until after the public comment period is over to make his position known.  (Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy!) That 30 day public comment period will begin after the proposal is officially entered into the Federal Register.  (I'm not sure when that is)   At that time they'll also publish an official map of the areas to be cut.  Will a forest near you be affected?

[Crossposted at Bring it On!]

Comments

[HumanityCritic]

great post.

[barb]

thanks.

[John]

Get over your self!! Natinal land is sold all the time,which includes natinal park land.

It is done for varius reasons. Now you are all over our President for wanting to have money for education were does it stop with you liberals.

[barb]

John, the whole idea of national parkland is that SOMEthing should be sacred from the ruthless pursuit of profit.

Two quotes from the Conservation President who was also by the way a Republican:

"There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children's children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred."

and

"In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it."

Theodore Roosevelt

[nicole]

When I read about this in the local news paper it brought me to tears. I can't imagine our Ocala National forest being auctioned off like that, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of other national forests across America that would be put in this danger.
What can we do? How can we protest this horrible law? We, as Americans, have to stand up for our beautiful country, protect it from the money hungry Bush administration, let them know we will not allow them to put our land in danger.
Please let me know what I can do.
~Nicole