U.S. Senator supports purchase of new land in Oconee National Forest
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U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff recently issued a statement encouraging the U.S. Forest Service to support a nonprofit organization in its effort to acquire new property for public use, including possible land acquisitions in the Oconee National Forest near Athens.
The Land and Water Conservation Fund is negotiating for the purchase of land in the Oconee forest, according to a report from Capitol Beat News Service in Atlanta. The Oconee forest is a massive tract that has acreage in eight counties south of Athens including Oglethorpe, Greene and Putnam counties.
Besides the potential purchase of land there, Ossoff’s office reported he supports a proposed Dugdown Mountain Corridor project located northwest of Atlanta that would would acquire land to link the Paulding/Sheffield Forest to Talladega National Forest in Alabama.
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“There is significant demand for public use for both projects,” Ossoff wrote in a letter to the Forest Service. Ossoff was not specific on the potential land acquisitions in the Oconee forests.
“I can say there are tracts of land in the Oconee portion of the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests that we have become involved with,” Andrew Schock, a spokesman for the Land and Water fund, said.
However, because there are no contracts for the parcels, Schock said he was not at liberty to disclose where the land is located.
The Land and Water fund has been in existence for about 37 years, he said, as the organization helps public agencies, such as the Forest Service, acquire land it would like to own.
If they don’t have the money, the organization can negotiate with the landowner to purchase the property and hold it until the public agencies have money available for the purchase, according to Schock.
Often the acquisition of property adjacent to the national forest, he said, helps eliminate issues for hunters and makes it less expensive for the forest service to manage the land as they don't have to mark boundaries or create berms.
Ossoff said 3 million people visit the Chattahoochee-Oconee forests each year while 46% of all hunters and anglers in Georgia visit the Dugdown Corridor, Capitol Beat reported.
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Possible land purchases in Oconee National Forest supported by Ossoff
