timberlands and real estate
Missoula County Asks Mark Rey to Halt Plum Creek Talks
By Matthew Frank, 5-08-08
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| Click the image for a PDF of the letter Missoula County Commissioners sent Wednesday to Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey. | |
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Wednesday the Missoula County Commissioners sent a letter to Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey asking him to drop consideration of the forest road easement amendment until the documents proposed for amendment have been identified and made available to the public.
The commissioners wrote: “...the failure to identify, review, and properly reference the easements to be amended will make the proposed Easement Amendment legally void, and the process leading up to your expected approval fatally flawed.”
Rey, overseer of the Forest Service, said during a meeting last week with officials from western Montana that he would not make the paperwork available and invited a lawsuit, which appears imminent.
At the crux of the controversy is the 1964 Forest Roads and Trails Act (FRTA) that set the framework for how reciprocal access between public and private lands is negotiated. The question is whether FRTA authorizes Plum Creek road access only for resource extraction, or whether it encompasses road uses for residential and commercial development. It’s an important distinction for Plum Creek, the largest private landowner in the country that’s aggressively pursuing real estate as its timber business follows industry-wide declines.
In the letter (click here to download a PDF), the commissioners said the amendment is problematic because it may interfere with forest plan revision processes for numerous national forests, including the Bitterroot, Lolo, Flathead and Kootenai.
They also argue that the amendment should trigger National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act processes because it’s a “federal action.”
And the commissioners proposed changing the easements amendment’s language to, among a number of other suggestions, make it consistent with the standard format for all cost-share and non-cost-share road easements that expressly exclude “the right to use the road for access to developments used for short or long-term residential purposes...”
Stay tuned for Rey’s response.
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Comments
From 1992-94 Rey served as vice president, forest resources for the American Forest and Paper Association. He served as executive director for the American Forest Resource Alliance from 1989-92. He served as vice president, public forestry programs for the National Forest Products Association from 1984-89. From 1976-84 he served in several positions for the American Paper Institute/National Forest Products Association, a consortium of national trade associations
From Rey, Bio, Us gov.
From 2006:
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration on Friday detailed its proposal to sell more than 300,000 acres of national forests and other public land to help pay for rural schools in 41 states....
But Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who directs forest policy, said the parcels to be sold are isolated, expensive to manage or no longer meet the needs of the national forest system. The administration expects to have to sell only about 200,000 of the 309,000 acres identified Friday to meet the $800 million goal, he said.
"These are not the crown jewels we are talking about," Rey said in an interview. The public can review the land parcels that are up for sale on the Forest Service's Web site, Rey said; Maps of just four national forests were posted as of Friday, but Rey said all the properties should be posted by month's end
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2006/Bush-Land-Sales10feb06.htm