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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- President Bush's budget proposal calls for raising more than $1 billion over five years by selling off public lands deemed to have little scenic, recreational or mineral value, drawing criticism from environmental groups.
U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management officials say the sale of parcels, including isolated tracts that can be hard to manage, will allow them to operate more efficiently and generate new revenue for operations.
Most of the proceeds would go to the federal treasury.
"When Western residents wake up to the fact that the Bush administration has a ... scheme to divest the public of its lands, I don't think people are going to like that very much," Dave Alberswerth, a public lands expert with The Wilderness Society, told The Salt Lake Tribune.
Other activist groups objected Wednesday to a lease auction planned later this month of public lands in Utah for oil and gas development. The sale will offer drilling leases for parcels off the Green River in Labyrinth Canyon, a popular stop for river runners, and in the San Rafael Desert, a remote area of narrow slot canyons, shifting sand dunes, sculpted rock and miles of roadless expanse.
"Once again, the BLM and the Department of the Interior are rushing to lease and develop as much public land as they can, as fast as they can," said Stephen Bloch, staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "BLM is selling off public treasures that are of great historical and natural significance."
In Colorado, the BLM has drawn criticism over an oil-and-gas auction planned on Thursday that was to include parcels nominated for wilderness protection and land used for community watersheds.
Leasing is one thing, but environmental groups say it's another to sell off chunks of public land. Congress gave BLM the authority in 2000 to use the proceeds from the sale of some surplus land to buy new land valued for its wildlife habitat, but the latest proposal calls for the sale of land simply to raise money.
BLM budget officer Mike Ferguson said his agency has about $25 million in a land acquisition fund from earlier sales. In 2005, the BLM sold off 8,409 acres for $16 million.
"We probably don't need to acquire as much additional land as we're disposing of and we have a lot of other needs in terms of managing the lands we do have," Ferguson told the Tribune. "It's nice to be able to find a revenue stream that will help meet some of the other discretionary programs."
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
