Wampum

Via a diary by The Southern Dem at MyDD, we learn that the comment period for the Bush Administration's proposal to sell off over 300,000 acres of National Forest Land (ostensibly to "fund rural schools") is closing on March 30th. NC bloggers have been tirelessly working to get the word out to try and prevent the pending sale, as 10,000 acres of the land earmarked is located in North Carolina's National Forests.

Rebecca Elkins of the University of North Carolina at Asheville provides a detailed description of the scope of the sale.

Blue NC has been running daily action plans. Last Tuesday, they provided talking point and instructions on emailing comments to the USDA:

Send your email to SRS_Land_Sales@fs.fed.us or your fax to (202) 205-1604. You may also mail a letter to USDA Forest Service, SRS Comments, Lands 4S, 1400 Independence Ave., SW., Mailstop 1124, Washington, DC 20250'0003, however electronic submissions are preferred.

The directions from the USDA: If you submit your comments by e-mail or fax, you do not need to send a paper copy by mail. Your comments may address the entire list of parcels identified in the President's proposal, or an individual parcel or parcels on that list. If you are commenting about a specific parcel on the list, it would be helpful to provide the parcel’s number from the list and all information specifically related to the sale of that parcel.

I plan on doing more research on this over the next few days, and will probably follow up with addition Action Item of the Day posts. For Eric and I, this is very personal, as we spent a large chunk of our time on the road last year camping on National Forest lands.