Upper Lochsa Land Exchange

For years, the Nez Perce Tribe and conservationists have sought to obtain the checkerboard Plum Creek sections in the upper Lochsa. The Forest Service was a late arrival in this effort. This is a crucial area in the heart of the Clearwater and forms an important corridor between the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness to the south and the wild country of the North Fork Clearwater to the north.  Nonetheless, most of these square miles that Plum Creek previously owned have been heavily logged and are in dire need of road removal and other restoration actions to restore the watershed.

The upper Lochsa land ownership pattern is the result of fraudulent dealing by the railroads many decades ago when they gained land grants from the US government (US citizens) in the 1800s.  The railroads at that time largely failed to meet the conditions under which the scattered parcels were granted from the government. As such, these lands should have been returned to the public long ago.

Unfortunately, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land trades often involve trading ecologically important lands to mining, timber, grazing, and development interests in return for damaged private lands. Too often, the trades are initiated by the private party, not the agency, with the intent of seizing public resources for extraction or development. In this case, the current owner of the upper Lochsa parcels approached the Forest Service about a land trade. The upper Lochsa parcels, though important for long-term restoration, are cut over.  Recent reports from the Government Accountability Office show that land trades are rarely in the public interest and that there is usually no overall plan or goal for an exchange program.

Because the upper Lochsa land is so cut over and not worth anywhere as much as the national land, the alternatives in the first draft EIS looked at exchanging, at most, around 18,000 acres of national forest for the 39,000 acres of land in the upper Lochsa. However, this proposal would trade 45,000 acres of national forest for 39,000 acres in the upper Lochsa. Federal law requires that land exchanges be value-for value, in other words, they must be in the public interest. For example, it would not be l legal to trade away one acre of national forest valued at $10,000 for one acre of private, cutover land valued at $1,000 dollars. Only Congress could enact such a one-sided deal. As such, the supplemental EIS is a waste of time and money, the new alternative casts serious doubt on the integrity of the process, and the process is now an impediment to obtaining the upper Lochsa checkerboard land in public ownership.

View the supplemental DEIS here: http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/clearwater/Projects/PALS_Project_Content.htm?pro.... Scroll down to project documents and under analysis there are several documents. The documents germane to the comment period are titled Supplemental Draft EIS. They are pdf files and can be downloaded.

Written Comments Can Be Sent To:

Teresa Trulock

Project Manager Upper Lochsa Land Exchange

Clearwater National Forest

12730 Highway 12

Orofino, ID 83544

Electronic Comments Can Be Sent To:

comments-northern-clearwater@fs.fed.us

Put Upper Lochsa Land Exchange in the subject line.

All comments are due by February 15th.