And in the State of Maine, one of the preeminent issues right 

 now is the question of how to work with the private sector to main- 

 tain private sector ownership of land, but yet develop conservation 

 easement strategies. There has been some issues with respect to 

 the Forest Legacy Program, and, again, it is rather contentious in 

 Maine right now because the Federal policy is to require the land- 

 owner to convey title and fee simple to the Federal Government 

 having a conservation easement then given back. 



Some of us kind of have some problems with that approach. We 

 would like to see more retention of ownership but preservation for 

 conservation. But I am balancing that against, if you will, the 

 shortage of publicly devoted land, I guess is the term I would use, 

 oriented toward conservation issues versus the 6 or 700 million 

 acres largely in the West that are owned by the Federal Govern- 

 ment. 



Has anyone looked at or are there any studies that deal with the 

 question of Federal landownership and management and whether 

 there might be a system by which some of the areas of the country 

 where there is perhaps an overabundance of federally owned and 

 managed property that might be reduced and potentially revenues 

 developed and then those funds may be used in other parts of the 

 country to build up the conservation issues? Have you looked at all 

 at the question of Federal landownership and whether there isn't 

 a significant resource there that could be devoted to conservation 

 specifically in different 



Mr. Ashe. I don't know of any- 



Mr. LONGLEY. You know what I am getting at. 



Mr. Ashe. Yes. I am not aware of any study or research that has 

 been done into the kind of particular question that you ask of kind 

 of on a large scale looking at kind of the divesting of lands where 

 there is high public landownership and then investing — reinvesting 

 in areas where there is low Federal landownership. I personally am 

 not aware of that. 



But we do look at these issues more or less consistently, and the 

 process of exchanging Federal lands between land managing agen- 

 cies and between Federal land managers and State managers or 

 private managers is a fairly well-developed concept in public land 

 management. 



And right now, for instance, there is an effort underway to effec- 

 tuate a major land transfer which will trade lands in Oklahoma — 

 forestlands in Oklahoma between the Weyerhaeuser Corporation 

 and the Forest Service and the BLM, and we will be the bene- 

 ficiaries of that with a 25,000-acre addition to the refuge system in 

 Arkansas. 



So that concept of trading lands and taking advantage of oppor- 

 tunities on a regional or national basis is a fairly well-developed 

 concept, and where we have those opportunities, we take advan- 

 tage of them. But I am not awau^ of any kind of comprehensive 

 look. 



Mr. LONGLEY. Well, I recognize the issue I am raising is an ex- 

 tremely sensitive issue from a lot of different perspectives. But it 

 strikes me that having visited the Northwest that a lot of the con- 

 troversy that exists in some of the western states, you know, be- 

 tween developmental versus preservation ideals stems from the 



