Update on Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest Land Adjustment Bill

In December of 2018, the U.S. Congress passed the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest Land Adjustment Act (S. 571, H.R. 1434).  This new law will improve management and public access at Georgia’s National Forests, explains Steven Bekkerus, Public Affairs Officer for the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests.  “This was legislation that was in Congress for nearly ten years before it was passed and had several Congressional hearings on it. This legislation provides authority to the Forest Service to be able to sell 30 identified tracts that are specific and discrete in terms of their boundaries and where they are located.  There is a map on our website that shows exactly where these are and these tracts were identified through a process where we worked through the Nature Conservancy and the Conservation Fund and several other of our environmental groups looking at what tracts don’t really meet our forest landscape needs in terms of a National Forest.  These are tracts that are isolated, maybe difficult to access, but just don’t provide that resource value that we are looking at in terms of conserving an entire landscape and being able to manage that landscape without having to deal with borders, neighbors, and homes that we have to worry about because when we go out and try to do management we’re doing a landscape level.  We’re trying to do prescribed fire, we’re trying to do timber and forest health management. So, if you have a tract that is surrounded by a neighborhood it is much more difficult to do that and it is really not providing that landscape-level conservation that a National Forest is intended to provide.”  The U.S. Forest Service is still in the information gathering stage of the new law, adds Bekkerus.  “So, now we’re in the process of actually going out on the ground, doing surveys, looking at these areas, and determining is this, in fact, something that we want to do.  The public is part of that process. We want to hear from the public because we haven’t done a public process and we want to hear and know if there are things out there that we’re not aware of, we are asking folks to share that with us.  To visit the local District Ranger’s Office there in Lakemont, let them know if they have some insights or observations that we might not be aware of, so we can look at that and determine what we should do.”  The proceeds from the sale of these lands, 30 parcels, totaling 3,841 acres of the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests, will go into a federal account that the Forest Service may use only to buy critical lands from willing sellers within the National Forest’s boundary.  To learn more, visit the U.S. Forest Service’s website at https://www.fs.usda.gov/main/conf and click on Land Adjustment Act.