President George W. Bush's administration has proposed selling more than 300,000 acres of surplus U.S. Forest Service land to continue funding the rural schools and roads program. However, San Bernardino National Forest officials are quick to point out none is scheduled for auction inside the borders of the local forest.

A check of national web sites shows several parcels just outside the boundaries of the San Bernardino National Forest are among the surplus properties suggested for sale. The total acreage is roughly 388 acres including approximately 10 acres near Deer Creek in the Rancho Cucamonga area.

The largest parcel is 378 acres in the San Gorgonio Pass area followed by a 116-acre parcel in Riverside County near Cherry Valley's Bogart Park.

About 85,000 acres are proposed for sale in California to boost the coffers over the next five years for rural schools to offset shrinking revenues from timber harvests that normally provide funding for the program. The Forest Service manages 20 million acres in California, or about one-fifth of the state's landmass.

Nationally the Forest Service is considering selling 2,900 parcels that cover 309,000 acres to try to raise $800 million needed for the next five years. Even with the additional money from the land sales, payments to counties are likely to be cut in half, Mark Rey, an undersecretary in the Department of Agriculture, told reporters in a conference call held Monday.

“Our objective Š will be to give everyone involved the ability to look at each and every tract (of land proposed for sale), to satisfy themselves if they want to, that these tracts are worthy of what we are proposing,” Rey said. “These are not the crown jewels we are talking about.”

The agency has posted a list of all the properties on its Web site www.fs.fed.us/land/staff/

rural_schools.shtml) and will be identifying them on maps shortly, Rey said. It will soon open a public comment period on the property list.

The number of parcels on the list could be pared down after study and others won't likely be added, he said.

Rey said he doubts the agency would need to sell all 309,000 acres nationwide to raise the $800 million for the next five years. A more realistic figure might be 175,000 acres, he said.

The public comments and adjustment of the list will occur before it is sent to Congress for consideration, Rey added.

Rey said it would be up to a future administration to determine how to fund the program after the $800 million is spent.

The administration's proposal immediately drew fire from members of Congress and environmental organizations.

In a statement issued from the office of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, California's senior senator stated: “California's remaining wild lands are diminishing at a rapid rate and we need, at the very least, to keep what we have, not to sell them off to the highest bidder.”

Senator Feinstein's press release indicated she was committed to finding funding sources for the schools program, which generated $69 million last year for the state's rural counties.

Feinstein called the Bush plan “a terrible idea based on a misguided sense of priorities.”

“I think it's a bad precedent to arbitrarily select lands in a hasty manner,” said Craig Thomas, executive director of the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign, “and trade important public land to buy asphalt to fill potholes on county roads.”

The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act is set to expire Sept. 30. In 2005, the program pumped $67 million into California, which was distributed, to the state's counties with national forest land.

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