In its final days, the Bush administration is preparing to change U.S. Forest Service easements to "make it far easier for mountain forests to be converted to housing subdivisions," by allowing logging roads to to paved, Karl Vick reports for The Washington Post.
Vick reports that Mark Rey, a former timber-industry lobbyist who is the agriculture undersecretary overseeing the Forest Service, negotiated the change "behind closed doors with the nation's largest private landowner," Plum Creek Timber Co., which transformed itself from a logging firm into a real-estate investment trust and is building subdivisions in the Rockies, primarily in Montana, where President-elect Barack Obama campaigned against the idea after journalists reported on it and county officials opposed it.
Michael Jamison of The Missoulian reports that officials in Missoula County officials, where Plum Creek owns 57 percent of the private land, that the change "could pave the way for wholesale rural development -- along with all the attendant costs, as taxpayers struggle to deliver urban infrastructure and firefighting" to newly developed areas.
"The uproar last summer forced Rey to postpone finalizing the change, which came after 'considerable internal disagreement' within the Forest Service, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report requested by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.)," Vick writes. "The report said that 900 miles of logging roads could be paved in Montana and that amending the long-held easements 'could have a nationwide impact.'" (Read more)
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