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SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
BLM WANTS TO AX HUGE LAND SWAP
DEAL INVOLVES AGENCY LAND, BUT
MANAGERS LEFT OUT OF DISCUSSION
Tuesday, March 30, 1999
Section: MAIN NEWS
Edition: IDAHO
Page: A1
BYLINE: By Ken Olsen Staff writer
Memo: Cut in Spokane edition

These 2 sidebars appeared with the story:

1. BACKGROUND

Cost of exchange

The large land trade is being proposed because the costs of the appropriate
environmental analysis, appraisal and other pre-swap work are becoming too high to
make small exchanges work, Clearwater Land Exchange says.

In the mega-exchange, private companies will help fund such work - essentially a
free service to cash-strapped public land management agencies.

2. DETAILS

Proposed land swap

Here are the latest parcels identified for trading in the 2 million-acre land swap
proposed by Clearwater Land Exchange:

The 12,000-acre Snow Peak Wildlife Management Area, a critical piece of elk
habitat now managed by Idaho Fish and Game in Shoshone County, would go to the
Forest Service in return for money for sportsmen's access or other wildlife habitat.
Fish and Game ranches on the Middle Fork of the Salmon would go to the Forest
Service.

Some Forest Service lands in North Idaho would be sold to buy public easements to
the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, or the parcels would be transferred to the
Idaho Department of Lands.

The state of Idaho would transfer land within national forest boundaries to the U.S.
Forest Service in return for timber and land.

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Forest Service land in the Lolo Creek drainage, between the Clearwater National
Forest boundary and the Clearwater River, would be transferred to the BLM.

All BLM land north of New Meadows, about 240,000 acres, would be transferred
to the Forest Service. On the Idaho Panhandle National Forest, scattered BLM land
would be sold to private industry.

The Twin Falls District and Burley District of the Sawtooth National Forest, about
630,000 acres, would be transferred to the BLM. Some BLM land would be sold to
private companies or traded to the state.

The 47,600-acre Curlew National Grasslands would be transferred from the Forest
Service to the BLM.

Private owners with land completely surrounded by public land would trade their
ground for more accessible property.

Private land critical to endangered species would be transferred to public land

management agencies.

The architects of a proposed 2-million-acre land exchange never have mentioned the
plan to the Bureau of Land Management even though the federal agency is the
second-largest land manager in Idaho.

BLM officials are angry. And they say the public would lose in the massive trade,
which Clearwater Land Exchange of Orofino, Idaho, has been contemplating for five
years.
``I'm miffed these people haven't, to this point, ever had the courtesy of asking the
Bureau of Land Management to help them work up any kind of a proposal,'' said
Fritz Rennebaum, BLM district manager in northern and central Idaho.

``I've even been around some of (Clearwater's) folks on a one-on-one basis on

different occasions in different towns, and there has never been a comment made to
me,'' Rennebaum said.

Other BLM managers also have not been contacted, Rennebaum said. ``I think
(Clearwater) should have come to all of the players that were involved, with a clean
slate, and said, `We have a vision. Can you participate?'''

Instead, the BLM learned about the proposed exchange - which involves selling
BLM land to private companies, turning BLM land over to the U.S. Forest Service
and making other changes - through news reports.

But Clearwater Land said it simply hasn't had the opportunity to talk to the BLM.

``You can only talk to so many people at a time,'' said Darrel Olson, one of
Clearwater's founding partners. ``We will talk to the BLM soon about the idea. It's
just not that far along. Remember, this is an idea ... and it's everchanging.''

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Clearwater Land did pitch its idea to the Idaho Fish and Game Commission three
years ago. Clearwater also presented a briefing paper to Forest Service officials last
July and have consulted some environmental groups, members of the Idaho Land
Board, congressional staff and private companies that would obtain land.

In some cases, Clearwater has talked about specific parcels it wants to make part of
the exchange, say people who have attended the briefings.

``There's no excuse for them not to get the cooperation of'' the BLM, said Janine
Blaeloch, executive director of the Western Land Exchange Project, which opposes
the swaps. ``If this is going to serve the public interest, they need to get the public
involved now.''

Clearwater Land says the giant trade would make government land management
more efficient by eliminating mixed private-public ownership, consolidating isolated
parcels into seamless management or ownership blocks, and eliminating pieces of
private land located in the middle of national forests and BLM districts.

BLM says the trade will hurt the public by transferring into private hands prime
recreation access or wildlife habitat that the agency has worked long and hard to
acquire.

It also means selling or transferring into private hands BLM-managed land that could
be better used to trade for public access to places like Lake Coeur d'Alene - where
just 3 percent of the shore is public land, Rennebaum said.

``There's no sense to just block up land and fill up some doughnut holes in national
forest (ownership) when the thing that goes begging is access to lakes and rivers,'' he
said.

Meanwhile, the BLM, Forest Service and several other state and tribal agencies have
worked out cooperative agreements that make it possible for them to manage one
another's lands when it makes geographic sense. That negates the need for a
complicated, expensive exchange, Rennebaum said.

``To me, Clearwater (Land Exchange) has the basic purpose to provide themselves
with a commission,'' he said. ``That's the number one reason for them to pursue
something of this magnitude.''

Clearwater Land, meanwhile, emphasizes its fees are not paid from public coffers.
Any fees are paid by private parties - such as timber companies - that end up with
some of the land.

That's no comfort, Blaeloch says.

``The way the private parties can afford to pay Clearwater to make the exchanges is
to make out like bandits on the exchanges,'' Blaeloch said. When land goes from the
Forest Service to the state or private industry, logging is done more aggressively and

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with less citizen oversight, she said. In Idaho, for example, citizens can't appeal state
timber sales.

Clearwater Land says the benefits in the megaexchange will become clear as the
proposal unfolds. And people will have plenty of time to analyze and comment. Until
then, such debates ``are premature,'' Olson said.

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