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Show Moss Introduces Legislation to Ease State Park Acquisition ? Legislation to remove a stum-' stum-' bling block to the development i; of an adequate state park system A for Utah was introduced in the Senate by Senator Frank Moss (D-Utah). The bill would remove the 640 ; acre limitation on the transfer of : federal lands to the states for ' state park purposes, and would provide that such transfers be ' without cost to the states. The i Recreation law already allows lands for historic monuments to be conveyed without cost, Sen. Moss noted. Pointing out that the Bureau of Land Management is now administering ad-ministering over 17G million acres in 26 states and 298 million acres in Alaska, be stated that the federal government should make a small portion of thesij lands available to the states for recreational and scenic use. "Mr. President, the need for legislation such as I propose is I highlighted by the situation in my own state. Utah, which is one of the largest states m the nation, has a total of 52,701,440 acres. Some 74 per cent of it is federally owned. Federal holding includes two National Parks, eight National Monuments and seven National. Forests. How-(Continued How-(Continued on Page 8) Moss Introduces Legislation to Ease State Park Acquisition (Continued from Page 1) ever, some of the state's finest scenic, geologic, archeological, and historic sites are on the 24,-679,361 24,-679,361 acres administered by the Bureau of Land Management, Manage-ment, and there is no recreation program for them." "The Utah State Park and Recreation Rec-reation Commission has included 1,646,174 acres of Bureau of Land Management land in its projected state park program. While the Bureau of Land Management Man-agement is cooperating in assisting assist-ing in the purchase and transference transfer-ence of some BLM acreage to Utah for state park use, the acreage acre-age limitations must be removed, as my bill would do, if many desirable areas are to be acquired." |