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![handle is hein.cbhear/fdsysafrn0001 and id is 1 raw text is: AUT-ENTICATED
US. GOVERNMENT
INFORMATION
GP
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRON-
MENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPRO-
PRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008
U.S. SENATE,
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS,
Washington, DC.
NONDEPARTMENTAL WITNESSES
[CLERK'S NOTE.-The subcommittee was unable to hold hearings
on nondepartmental witnesses. The statements and letters of those
submitting written testimony are as follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE ALABAMA TRAILS ASSOCIATION
The Alabama Trails Association appreciates the opportunity to submit written tes-
timony concerning the appropriation of funds for USDA, U.S. Forest Service land
acquisition projects for the fiscal year that will begin October 1, 2007. The Associa-
tion requests that Congress appropriate $1,650,000 which will leverage another
$550,000 in private funds to buy a key 1,100 to 1,200-acre inholding along the
Pinhoti Trail corridor on Rebecca Mountain in the Talladega National Forest.
The Alabama Trails Association is a membership organization that was founded
in 1985. The major reason behind the founding of the group was to work toward
linking the Pinhoti Trail in the Talladega Mountains of east Alabama to the Appa-
lachian Trail and to expand the Pinhoti Trail to cover the full 140- to 145-mile
length of the Talladega Mountains. The link to the Appalachian Trail will complete
the vision of Benton MacKaye, the founder of the Appalachian Trail, whose plan for
the famed AT was adopted at the first meeting of the Appalachian Trail con-
ference in 1925 and included an extension trail running into Alabama from the
Appalachian Trail in north Georgia.
Working with the Georgia Pinhoti Trail Association and other trail organizations,
the Alabama Trail Association is on the verge of completing the link to the Appa-
lachian Trail. Since the late 1980s, the Pinhoti Trail effort has received considerable
support from Congress in both funds appropriated to acquire land for the trail cor-
ridor and funds appropriated to construct trail. Those appropriations have led to the
protection of over 6,000 acres and over 20 miles of mountain ridge crest in Alabama
and to the construction of over 100 miles of trail in both Alabama and Georgia. The
first acquisitions in this long-term project took place in the 1989-1990 time. The two
most recent acquisitions are closing this spring, and the U.S. Forest Service in Ala-
bama is acquiring two tracts that lie along the crest of Rebecca Mountain a few
miles east of the 1,100 to 1,200-acre tract involved here.
With those two closings, only the 1,100 to 1,200-acre tract involved in this request
for funds is needed to complete the acquisition of land for the Pinhoti in the
Talladega National Forest of Alabama. This tract includes around two and a quarter
miles of the 8-mile long ridge crest of the portion of Rebecca Mountain that lies
south and west of Bull Gap and Alabama State Highway 148. If this tract is ac-
quired, the Pinhoti Trail can be completed along the crest of Rebecca Mountain
which is the southernmost mountain in the Talladega National Forest range and
one of the southernmost mountains in the entire Appalachian Range. Acquisition of
this tract will complete U.S. Forest Service ownership of all but two quite small por-
tions of the 8-mile long Rebecca Mountain. Further, the tract involved is native
habitat for a rare mountain-top long-leaf pine community and is bounded on three
sides by U.S. Forest Service lands which the U.S. Forest Service plans to manage
and restore the long-leaf pine community.
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