Daily News

By William H. Schlesinger

For the Salisbury Post

The chorus keeps on growing — Gov. Mike Easley, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, and U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor, to name a few. Almost everybody who’s anybody in North Carolina is joining with others around the country to voice opposition to a legislative effort that would sell more than 300,000 acres of Forest Service land in 41 states as a temporary fix to provide money for rural schools. Over 9,000 acres of North Carolina’s pristine woodlands would be at risk.

Now’s the time for all of us in North Carolina to join the chorus opposing the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, a Bush administration proposal that offers a quick fix for the longterm school funding problem at the expense of our treasured natural resources. Rural schools need our help, but this is something that should be funded from general tax revenues, rather than at the loss of our national heritage and natural lands. Schools need long-term continuous funding; natural land and the goods and services it provides, once lost, are gone forever.

The administration has promised that local land trusts will have first crack at the parcels identified for sale. However, without major, immediate fund-raising, the land trusts in North Carolina don’t have the money to purchase more than a small portion of the total. Most likely, developers will acquire much of the land, ensuring its loss as a recreational, aesthetic and ecological resource for further generations. A loss of 9,000 acres of Forest Service land is a poor first step to the urgent need for North Carolina to preserve up to 10,000,000 acres of land to ensure sustainable ecosystems and a vibrant economy for our future — as concluded by the Horizon 2100 Committee of Environmental Defense last year. (more…)

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