List of National Forest Land to Be Sold

The Forest Service hopes to raise $800 million by selling 300,000 acres of national forest land in “isolated parcels” to secure funding for rural schools. That amounts to 469 square miles and is less than 1 percent of the National Forest Land. By contrast Rhode Island is 2,000 square miles and Manhattan is 31 square miles. Here’s a calculator.

Amazingly Missouri ranks fourth in acreage identified for sale behind California (85,000), Idaho (26,000) and Colorado (21,572). Since I’m originally from Missouri I’ll break down the numbers further. The 21,000 acres in Missouri amounts to approximately 34 square miles. The City of St. Louis consists of an area of 61 square miles.

The National Forest says most of the land is “orphan” non-contiguous with other Forest property and thus hard to manage. The Highpointers Club ran into this problem when it tried to donate Jack Longacre’s property on Taum Sauk to the State of Missouri. Missouri won’t take it because it doesn’t adjoin Taum Sauk State Park or the Missouri Department of Conservation Land. The Club is now considering going it alone.

Here’s a list of national forest land to be sold sorted in descending order by Forest Region:

Here’s My Spreadsheet

Bush administration moves to sell national forest land
February 9, 2006
Kight Ridder

Official National Forest list of the land to be sold.