[North Carolina] Mr. Rey flew to Carteret County to defend the proposal [to sell 309,000 acres of National Forest land across the country] before Dave Holland’s sixth-grade science classes Thursday morning. He told a dubious young audience sitting cross-legged on the floor that the sale was designed to help raise $500 million to $1 billion to pay for rural schools in heavily forested counties like theirs. But he said the amount of land likely to be actually sold to raise the needed money would be cut to nearly half, or 175,000 acres. When the national forests were carved out by President Theodore Roosevelt, the government promised to repay the counties most affected by the loss of their tax base. The original source of that compensation, timber sales, can no longer meet the obligations, Mr. Rey said.

News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes
www.southernsustainableforests.org