LAND SWAP - Desert Sun Newspaper wants to hear from hikers

[Blue]

Hi,
K. Kaufmann reporter for the Desert Sun has a piece on their website wanting to hear from Skyline/Garstin/Henderson/Shannon hikers, in advance of the upcoming scope meetings that BLM is holding.

I'm going to paste the text since it's short and the Desert Sun site changes a lot:

Coachella Valley hikers have been opposing a proposed land swap between the Bureau of Land Management and the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians that would put parts of the Skyline and other area trails under tribal control.

The BLM has scheduled a scoping meeting to hear public comment on the swap from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. March 22 at The Spa Resort Casino, 100 N. Indian Canyon Drive, Palm Springs.

A second scoping meeting is scheduled from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. March 27 at the BLM's Palm Springs-South Coast Field Office, 1201 Bird Center Drive, Palm Springs.

In addition to the Skyline, other trails in or near the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument that might be affected by the swap include the Henderson, Wild Horse and Palm Canyon trails.

Desert Sun reporter K Kaufmann would like to speak with valley hikers who have hiked these and other trails in the monument. Share your experiences and thoughts on the swap by contacting k.kaufmann@thedesertsun.com or (760) 778-4622.

[cynthia23]

I wrote her, and I urge others to do so as well. Everyone will have their own particular concerns, but I think it's very important to hammer home the basic financial impropriety of this deal--i.e. 'exchanging' thousands of acres of very valuable land (estimates of value range around eighty million dollars; I think it ultimately could be more, if it gives access to the plateau behind Murray, which is highly suitable for building thousands of high end homes) for a much smaller parcel of grossly less value--perhaps as little as two million dollars. The basic question is, why? If those numbers are right, that's seventy eight million dollars that could have gone into local schools and police departments. (Or, of course, we could hold the land as is, for future generations to enjoy--which is priceless.) Either way, this is grand theft. We need to make the public aware they're being ripped off, big time.

[Perry]

The latest:
http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a ... 2203180321

Usually somebody else beats me to these newspaper articles, but here I am today posting them first. Cy, are you on vacation?