SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Lines are being drawn in the fight over plans to sell thousands of acres of public land in Utah managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.

About 5,400 acres of Forest Service land in Utah would be sold under a proposal by the Bush administration to sell some 300,000 acres nationwide.

Money from the sales would bring a projected $800 million over five years into a fund for rural counties and school districts near Forest Service lands. Utah received $2 million from the fund in 2005.

Federal officials said the sales will rid the agencies of relatively small, isolated tracts that are too costly to manage. They said the sales will also bolster rural economies and help replenish the nation's coffers - 70 percent of the BLM's sale proceeds will go to the treasury.

Opponents said the sales could hurt important wildlife habitat and cut off access to larger Forest Service and BLM holdings. The sales also set a bad precedent, they said. The plan must still go before Congress.

"A lot of the sections are in areas that could be subject to exurban sprawl, so they are valuable in terms of real estate value. The problem is, a lot of it is also critical big-game winter range that needs to be protected," Kevin Mueller, executive director of the Utah Environmental Congress, told The Salt Lake Tribune.

The Forest Service's preliminary plan calls for selling 46 Utah parcels. Most are in Wasatch-Cache National Forest, which covers the Wasatch Range from the Idaho state line south to Utah County, as well as the north slope of the Uinta Mountains. The remaining parcels are in Uinta, Manti-La Sal, Fishlake and Dixie national forests.

No parcel is larger than 600 acres, with most ranging between 80 and 160 acres. Some, such as a 7-acre tract located in the middle of Provo, have little value to the Forest Service mission. But others could be much more problematic, according to environmentalists.

A Forest Service project description said a tract in Provo Canyon is next to "a large holding of (the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources) and is in critical winter range." Another Forest Service description said a 160-acre plot in the Little Diamond area of Uinta National Forest, is "adjacent to National Forest System Lands. The forest would like to fill in the area by acquiring other private parcels of land."

Some sportsmen's groups have given the idea a thumbs down.

"There are probably some federal lands that could be sold off and benefit the treasury and not impact wildlife. But we are seriously opposed to selling off critical winter range for big game or parcels that provide public access for hunting and fishing and hiking. There's not an abundance of public land," said Don Peay, founder of Utah's influential Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife. "Our position is, we need more, not less."

The Forest Service has not yet opened the public comment period on the sales.

What kind of greeting the plan will receive in Congress is unclear.

Utah Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson called the Forest Service plan another in a long line of "troubling proposals" by the administration.

Republican Rob Bishop, meanwhile, said it is a sound idea.

"I've always believed the feds own and control too much land in our state, so I think a proposal to transfer a certain, limited number of parcels has merit," Bishop said. "This deals with only one-half of 1 percent of certain federal lands, so we're not talking about a major land sale here."

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, also supports the concept of selling some public lands - but only to a point. "I don't endorse the idea that this is any way to balance the budget," he said.

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Montana, who chairs one of the committees that would likely have to approve the proposal, said last week the plan is "dead in the water."

Burns, head of the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, said he does not support the plan and has "no interest in including (it) in my Interior bill."

Under the Bush proposal, the BLM - which currently has 121,000 acres available for sale in Utah - will seek national sales of $30 million in the first year, building to a five-year sales goal of $260 million, according to budget projections.