In December of 1997, Senator Rockefeller helped the US Forest Service (USFS) and Allegheny Wood Products (AWP) sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) about Blackwater Canyon.

The MOU would allow John Crites, owner of AWP, and the USFS to exchange land in the Canyon for acreage within the Monongahela Forest, not an acre for acre basis, but on a "value for value" basis.

The West Virginia Highlands Conservancy’s Blackwater Canyon Committee opposes any land swap as we believe the entire Canyon must be preserved if it is to continue to function as an ark for rare, threatened and endangered species, and as a treasure chest for Tucker County and West Virginia tourism. In addition, a land swap would further fragment the Mon Forest, to its ecological and recreational detriment.

The district forester in charge of these MOU proceedings, Jim Knibbs, recently said the planning process is ongoing, as specialists gather info on what parcels of the Mon Forest could be considered for the swap, and as a federal appraiser assigns "values" to both AWP land and Mon Forest tracts. Once all the information is in, the public will have a chance to make comments.

It’s interesting that the USFS is proceeding with this land exchange idea here in the East, while out West the Service has agreed to launch internal reviews of three land appraisals conducted for land exchange programs. Western Land Exchange Project (WLXP) Director Janine Blaeloch wrote to USFS Chief Michael Dombeck urging the Service to investigate whether appraisals for three exchanges were fairly conducted.

WLXP found that the appraisals applied huge million dollar-discounts to federal timber values, while, tens of millions of board feet were under-tallied and hundreds of acres of federal timber were unaccounted for in timbered acreage calculations. They also found that the public input part of the process was pretty much a sham.

On the last days of September and into the first days of October, The Seattle Times (www.seatlletimes.com) ran a series on land exchanges, noting that often the public takes big losses when the USFS and corporations swap land. Stand by to comment on the proposed land swap for Blackwater Canyon/Mon Forests. The recommendations could be available for public comment in about five weeks.