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The Bush administration's top lawyer for the U.S. Forest Service is leaving to take a job with the nation's leading timber industry lobbying group.

Jan W. Poling, associate general counsel for natural resources at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will be the new general counsel for the American Forest and Paper Association, the organization said Friday.

She is the second member of the administration to go to the industry group this year. In February, Dave Tenny, deputy undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment, became vice president of forestry and wood products, a title formerly held by Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey.

"Poling's experience managing complex legal issues will add great value to AF&PA and its public policy mission," AF&PA President Donna Harman said in a statement.

The government also announced it is buying 9,000 acres in seven Western states, the first such purchases under a 2000 law intended to help land managers patch up fragmented national parks, forests, refuges and other public lands.

Among the 19 places being purchased for $18 million from private landowners are lands around the Coachella Valley in California, the North Platte River in Wyoming, the Santa Fe River in New Mexico and the Snake River in Idaho. Other states where the government is buying lands under this program are Arizona, Colorado and Oregon.

The lands will be added to those overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service, all part of the Interior Department, and by the Forest Service, part of the Agriculture Department.

Officials say the purchases also will help protect bighorn sheep, desert tortoises and other species, along with recreation and cultural resources such as hiking trails and prehistoric rock paintings.

"What we're increasingly trying to do is to create unfragmented landscapes, and this will help do that," Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett said in an interview Friday.

Congress established the fund in 2000 for the government to buy private "inholdings" from people willing to sell lands that are surrounded by or next to public ranges, forests, parks or refuges managed by those four agencies.