As Brent Martin stared down the barrel of an impending tug-of-war over WNC’s national forests, he dreaded yet another round in the same old fight that’s played out time and time again in his decades as an environmental advocate.

Loggers versus wilderness lovers. Horseback riders versus hikers. Hunters versus environmentalists.

A sweeping review of the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests will get under way in a matter of months, a behemoth, multi-year process that will layout a new blueprint for how the forests are managed for the first time in 20 years.

Environmentalists have been prepping for the forest plan for more than five years already. After all, the fate of 1.1 million acres of public land in the mountains hinges on the vision mapped out in the forest plan.

The proposed sale of U.S. Forest Service land to find money for counties who have lost revenue from declining timber sales is just a bad idea, a product of the Bush Administration’s fiscal indulgences rather than well thought-out land management policies.