The New Land Rush

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Marichiko cheats. The bulk of Mari's post covers a very different sort of problem than selling public lands. Cutting of timber on Federally owned property is an example of "the tragedy of the commons", which occurs when nobody owns the land they are working.

The tragedy of the commons is usually described as: "When cattle are raised on the public square the farmers let them overgraze it; when cattle are raised on private farms this is never permitted to happen." Ironically, Mari's post is an argument for private ownership of land.

UT didn't read the OP:

National Forest Service officials said they want to sell about 200,000 acres to raise about $800 million over the next few years to pay for schools and roads in rural counties hurt by logging cutbacks on federal land.

Why are there logging cutbacks on federal land? Because it is the environmentally sound thing to do. If a private timber outfit were to buy those lands, there would still be logging cut backs because the land needs time to recover from past tree harvests. A tree has the same rate of growth on the day after it is sold to a private outfit as it did the day before.

The feds have something called the US Forest Service which is staffed by professionals who have studied forestry for a minimum of 4 years. They know all about conducting reasonable timber sales and replanting afterwards. Unfortunately, politicians jump in the middle and scream free enterprise and at the same time cut funding for care of the land. The reswult is the destruction of forests that you find in many areas out West.

Come out to Colorado and I can show you some forests that ARE being quite well managed by the Forest Service since they were never clear cut in the first place. These forests are carefully harvested for their timber, have good regeneration, and are used by the general public for recreation like hunting and camping, as well.

Private timber concens do maintain vast tree farms. Weyerhauser comes to mind. However, Weyerhauser doesn't allow people to go traipsing around on its tree farms and that's what they are - farms and not ecosystems.

The "tragedy of the commons" is about too many people attempting to use too little land. The problem here is an irresponsible federal land management system where politicians are destroying your and my public lands and then using that destruction as an excuse to sell those federal lands out from under us. I read no where in the OP that the feds will sell these lands to anyone in particular - they most likely will go to the highest bidder. The article mentioned land in California. Depending on WHERE in California, most timber outfits would not be especially interested because California has the same problem as Colorado - a dry climate not conducive to the brisk regeneration of forests.

You would absolve the federal government of all responsibility and have OUR public lands sold off to what most likely will be private developers. Again, its a short sighted solution to the problem. Once all that land is sold where is the money coming from for the next government boondoggle?

Originally Posted by Griff

Many of the lands out West were managed for timber for many years, then enviros normally from away with no economic stake come in and for good or ill change the purpose the lands are managed for. Privately held land is easy to manage for a specific purpose.

Lands out west here were MIS-managed for timber by your politician from Boston for years until the havoc this caused was apparent to everyone who lives out here. The Forest Service then managed to start a few environmentally sound policies which have been disrupted by the likes of James Watt and now Bushco. Privately held land will be managed to extract the maximum commercial profit. In the Rocky Mountain West, this will not be timber sales, but the parceling out of land into ranchette subdivisions. This practice will NOT generate jobs for the locals. The hypothetical community of Bumfuck was not based on a viable local industry of timber harvesting, but a short sighted desire by logging outfits to extract everything they possibly could for a one time only commercial gain. It can take 50 years or longer to regenerate a forest in the Rockies. The logging town of Bumfuck has no business ever being created as a logging town in the first place.

The cattlemen's association wants to pounce on federal lands here and run sheep and cows on them. They are PO'ed because the Forest Service won't issue the grazing permits that would allow them to re-enact UT's tragedy of the commons.

And if anyone wants to see what great stewards of the land private outfits are, I invite you all to go visit Uravan, Colorado, a mining community on the Colorado-Utah border that no longer exists. The big uranium mining concerns owned quite a bit of land and uranium mines out there in the 50's. Uranium was mined without a second thought as to the consequences of unsound mining procedures. The entire town of Uravan had to be closed down and dismantled thanks to contamination from uranium tailings. The heavy metals from the mines has leached into the rivers making the Dolores River (well-named) one of the spookiest rivers I have ever seen in my life. There are no fish in it, no aquatic insects, not even algae. The Dolores is dead for a good 100 miles. Go look at it and then contrast it with the neighboring San Miguel River Basin which was not subjected to the tender mercies of private land owners. The San Miguel is a vibrant living river and the communities that were built near its banks are still in existance.

Busterb, my quotes were taken after Beestie's habit of making up imaginary quotes in various other threads.