continuity of parks

The folks from the White House began in early February 2006 to detail some notions they had, as part of their 2007 budget proposal, to auction off over 300,000 acres of public land--"small tracts of forest land"--in order to keep making payments for rural roads and schools. The Bureau of Land Management was also set to begin auctioning off key properties in its portfolio.

The Forest Service budget was to be trimmed by $160 million in the coming year, they hoped, to $4.1 billion (with Congress' approval, of course). Meanwhile $82 million were to be earmarked for increases in "domestic surveillance efforts and to improve preparedness and response capabilities," in the war on Avian Influenza (formerly known as Asian Bird Flu), as well as another $62 million "to enhance surveillance and monitoring activities" as part of the $540 million, government-wide Food and Agriculture Defense Initiative.

Said Mark Rey, undersecretary of Agriculture, "Education of rural schoolchildren, that's an investment in the nation's future as important as any other investment we could make."