The Forest Service senior management has lost their way.

Yes, you are so right! We enjoy our wildlife, and cannot fathom that a government agency, on that is supposed to PROTECT wildlife and open space, seeems bound and determined to invade it, and disperse that wildlife!

Also, selling a portion of the N Cache property to DO this diminishing of the wildlife and increasing density – by more than 200% – ??? Is a puzzlement!

If indeed, the sale was “ordered ” by the Forest Service Regional office, is not that a violation of the EIS? That is supposed to be a document whose options are ALL available until a final decision is made … and the “no action” is now eliminated by the order to sell.

Again, is a puzzlement. How is this allowed to proceed???

Thank you!

Please do not take away what you have worked so hard to preserve.

Darby Eagan

The Forest Service will take that money; build a new administration building up Cache Creek (we have 8 acres there) along with employee housing. They will put their fire station and more employee housing at the end of the Fall Creek elk refuge feed grounds (Now that’s handy).

I fear this is a Forest Service “BAIL OUT”. Let’s not fix it. Let’s just sell the publics’ land and throw money at the problem. Perhaps there will even be bonuses. Let’s not clean up our crap and tuck it in. Let’s spread it all over the valley.

I’m confused. When I went to the Forest Service web sight their motto stated:

-Advocate a conservation ethic

-Listen to people and respond to their needs

-Protect and manage Nat’l Forest and Grasslands

-Teach stewardship and quality land management

fs.fed.us/aboutus/mission.shtml (I kid you not)

Eleven acres on North Cache Street is a sizable piece of ground. North Cache has its own wet lands but it is no longer in the NRO, not in a migration corridor, and wildlife winter range is the Elk Refuge across the fence. Do you realize the amount of employee housing you can put on 11 acres of land or how many forest service trucks and fire fighting equipment you can store?

Capital improvement funds (CID), come down the Forest service pipeline on an erratically regular bases. What in the hell have they been doing with that money for 40 years?

This equates to selling my house because my daughter won’t clean her room.

Cindy Hill Stone

Does anyone but me feel betrayed by our local Bridger-Teton National Forest Service which plans to sell 11 prime acres at North Cache to fund their new facilities? The problem is the Forest Service Facility Realignment and Enhancement Act (FSFREA). Passed in 2002 & 2005, it allows public land donated to the Forest Service to be sold privately to the highest bidder. Profits of the sale are then used for “maintenance improvements” for their administrative buildings with very few guidelines. If we allow public land to be used as a commodity, then we have lost the basic concept of preserving public lands.

While the legal aspects of this Act are documented, where is the moral compass of our local Forest Service? Ms. Hamilton states that “sale of land is appropriate and necessary if we are to replace the facilities”. My business experience tells me long range budget planning for replacement of facilities is appropriate and necessary. Selling assets to pay for short term expenses is not good business practice.

In a letter written by Mayor Barron on November 11, 2009, the council pledged unanimous “support to identify a funding source other than the sale of public lands” to accomplish these goals. What better endorsement of an entire town could an agency receive? Our priorities in Jackson remain strong with commitments to our open spaces and wildlife. For the Forest Service to counter those objectives is beyond betrayal. How many of us have made donations to the park throughout the years, only now to be told by Ms. Hamilton that she is the “decider” in this process, dismissing town’s leadership and community support. Community support helped fund the new Bridger-Teton visitor center, bike paths and bear boxes of late. Where is the loyalty from Bridger-Teton to its neighbors?

It is astounding that while the P & Z committees and Commissioners spend countless hours struggling to revise the Comp Plan in town’s best interests to uphold open space, Bridger-Teton Forest Service plans to sell our public lands to fund their needs with impunity. This moral compass needs a major Realignment.

Linda Aurelio

The Forest Service Facility Realignment and Enhancement Act of (FSFREA) of 2002 , which Ms. Hamilton references, and which she would use to sell our Forest land on North Cache street to the highest bidder, also makes very clear that exclusions from land sale or conveyance are warranted when those sales are not in the public interest (FSFREA Section 503.d.3.A/B/C).

While I fully understand, as do many other residents, the need for facility and housing upgrades, we also see housing opportunities that currently exist in Jackson, not mentioned by Ms. Hamilton to date, as a possible alternative to new development. We also see our land on North Cache as a precious commodity, that once sold to commercial development, as is her plan, would be lost forever as a possible site for Forest Service housing, Supervisor’s Office expansion, District Office expansion, Fire cache, or Teton County Search and Rescue cache. Once sold to the highest bidder, our land is gone.

I have, throughout this process, been sadly disenchanted with the lack of public communication, and honesty, that the Forest has shown to us, as a community, about plans for our public lands. We deserve a more honest discussion, and more honest involvement in this critical decision.

Sincerely,

Chuck Harris

When we first heard of the ill concieved plan to sell many acres of land on the already developed part of town–on the ROUTE to the park area she is supposed to be serving and destroy the environment on the residential side of town, leaving an appropriate flat building site for a hillside site in the forest, I thought my great- grand father in Montana, a founder of the Forest Service, would be appauled!!

Who are these people who have become such arrogant, selfish beaurocrats who have completely lost the mission of the “Forest Service,” which pays them and the people who treasure the land they are supposed to be preserving.

Does she need business expertise to help her figure this out??? She obviously has no skills for managing land or money—or fear of losing her job.

Sincerely,
Curtis and Carol Kayem
485 Henley Road