Conservationists Vie To Buy Forest Habitat By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer

A recent U.S. Forest Service study predicted that more than 44 million acres of private forest land, an area twice the size of Maine, will be sold over the next 25 years. The consulting firm U.S. Forest Capital estimates that half of all U.S. timberland has changed hands in the past decade. The Bush administration also wants to sell off forest land, by auctioning more than 300,000 acres of national forest to fund a rural school program.

“The nation has never seen anything like this,” said Conservation Fund President Lawrence A. Selzer, whose 20-year-old group is hoping to raise $48 million in the coming months to buy the 16,000 acres that make up Big River and Salmon Creek. “It has the potential to permanently and profoundly change the landscape of America.” …

Today, a third of the U.S. land mass is forest — the same proportion as in 1907 but just 71 percent of what existed before settlement by Europeans — and 57 percent of it is privately owned. But competition from cheap imported lumber, soaring land prices and pressure from Wall Street are now prompting timber companies to sell. …

The forest sales have sparked a sense of urgency among conservationists because the holdings constitute much of the remaining intact ecosystems outside of public lands, he said: “It’s sort of like Humpty Dumpty. If they’re sold, we’ll never get them back together again.”