Siskiyou Co's 6,400 sq miles (size of Hawaii) is 60% Fed owned. For this now, we get about 2 million annual PILT payment. I'm sorry to say that the original PILT formula was slashed to bare bones by Reagan in 1982. If I got the math right...that is 50 cents an acre. The private landowners (timber holdings in the county) are paying on average...10 to 20 times that amount...plus an additional tax on timber harvested. Be careful who your neighbors are, the USFS is not a good neighbor. Two years ago, an uncontrolled forest fire on Fed land was threatening me and neighbors property. I quickly got permission to act from the neighbors and cut a dozer line from Fed boundary to the highway...never once actually getting the Cat on Fed property. Wind shifted thankfully, but not before some uniformed dickhead informed me I could be arrested for interfering (?) and asked me why we hadn't evacuated when ordered to. They have recently changed the law though, and now you can defend your property legally.
