Nature Conservacy or Nature Conspiracy?
From the January 2008 Idaho Observer: By Anne Wilder Chamberlain
While the Democrat Clintons were in the White House, the erosion of private property rights through the congressional passage and executive enforcement of federal acts was one of our most front-burning issues. Since the Republican Bush took up residency in the White House, our attention has been diverted, to say the least. While we have been preoccupied with 9/11, diminishing civil liberties, perpetual war, anticipation of new attacks, pandemic diseases and economic collapse, the land grabbing by GOs in cahoots with NGOs has been ongoing. You are about to understand why government is recklessly racking up public debt and how the bankers have managed to gain control of about one-third of the world’s land mass and a disproportionate amount of its resource wealth.
By Anne Wilder Chamberlain
In his new documentary End Game, Alex Jones claims that environmental groups are working in cahoots with the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bilderbergers to buy up wilderness areas for the sake of forcing the people into urban areas where it will be difficult for them to raise their own food, drink clean water and where they can be easily poisoned by aerial spraying for "West Nile virus," the "light brown apple moth," chemical toxins for weather control or some other unspecified reason. In the documentary, the logos of certain environmental groups popped up, including those of the World Wildlife Fund, the Sierra Club—and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). Finding this hard to accept and believing it possibly to be a "conspiracy theory," I put it in the back of my mind. Over Thanksgiving, I was handed a Nature Conservancy magazine in which I found a story about how TNC is planning on "Conserving the World’s Largest Intact Forest...In Canada, an alliance of Industry, First Nations and conservation groups is working to set aside half of the largest intact [oil, gas and resource-rich] forest in the world." The forest to which TNC refers includes most of Alaska, Yukon, Northwest Territory, Manitoba, Ontario and about half of Quebec, Alberta and Saskatchewan, covering 1.4 billion acres.
TNC forest management practices
In the same edition of Nature Conservancy (Summer 2007) , is an article entitled "The War on Weeds," where Scott McMillon explains how TNC contractors are spraying the thistles growing in Hell’s Canyon, Idaho, with herbicides. They fly over the canyon with helicopters and then land and spray the weeds. It’s apparently not important how the weedkiller affects the rest of the environment TNC is "conserving." In 1995, Mobil Oil gave TNC a 21,300-acre piece of low-producing land because it was "one of the last known breeding grounds for the endangered Attwater prairie chicken." Instead of saving the bird, TNC went to work restoring oil and gas production on Mobil’s field, sinking new wells and grazing "Conservation Beef." TNC has earned $5.5 million from the field and so far hasn’t spent any of it "saving" the prairie chicken. In New Hampshire TNC continues to log its million acres of acquired timberland.
The birth of "nature’s landlord"
Range Magazine, in the article, "Nature’s Landlord" (Spring 2003) covered this issue well: The founders of TNC discovered in the ‘50s that really big money from charitable organizations like "Sun Oil," the Rockefeller Foundation, General Motors, the Ford Foundation, Hewlett Packard, Pew Charitable Trust (sugar and banking industries) rarely, if ever, goes to poor people. Rather it finances secondary groups that produce seemingly altruistic results without altering the imbalance of power between the wealthy and the poor. TNC provided a perfectly useful purpose, not only "saving" stretches of nature, but then transferring the land to the government for "public" purposes.
Soon the TNC governing board consisted of bankers, investors and foundation heads themselves. Less than half a century later, TNC would be the most powerful environmental organization in history, capable of manipulating governments, including that of the United States. Key members have held posts in the Clinton administration’s Council for Sustainable Development and Council on Environmental quality. Trustee members have included former Attorney General Janet Reno, General Norman Shwartzkopf (Ret.) and Gerald Levin, head of Time Warner, Inc.
TNC has held $750-a-plate dinners to entice the cream of national media. Endowed with assets of nearly $3 billion and an annual income of over $780 million, TNC controls 90 million acres worldwide, 12 million of those in the U.S. They are exempt from paying taxes but receive over $6 million in tax dollars from the U.S. government annually.
In 50 years of "protecting the last great places," the organization cannot legitimately claim to have saved anything that was facing certain extinction.
At what price?
As TNC "saves" land with your money, communities perish. Virginia. Along Virginia’s eastern shore lie 18 barrier islands that used to provide seafood and sea vegetable industry livelihoods for 45,000 people. The beaches were unspoiled and only reachable by boat. In the 1970s, the "Smith Island Development" corporation threatened to build a bridge connecting the mainland and the 18 islands. TNC stepped in to "save" them from the threatened development. The first place "rescued" was the seafood processing plant on the big island, putting many people out of work when it was shut down. To replace it, expensive homes "compatible" with nature (as defined by the Virginia Coast Reserve and duck hunting clubs) began to appear. The Virginia Coast Reserve was created by TNC, as was Offshore Islands, Inc., a supposedly independent company that bought parcels of land from the increasingly impoverished locals and sold it to TNC. TNC then "fixed" the self-created economic disaster on the islands by infusing $2.25 million into the eastern offshore economy for "compatible" businesses in tourism. This also failed as $millions were lost in bad investments. The locals got poorer and TNC ended up owning 14 of the 18 islands, which now serve as opulent showplaces for the rich; they are unaffordable and, therefore, off limits to most people in the region. Nevada. The U.S. Congress voted in 1997 to support Nevada Senator Harry Reid’s bill to protect 25,000 acres of the Carson River sink, a wetlands and duck-hunting ground, at the expense of the water rights of local farmers. TNC sent in a smooth young operator, whose doctorate was in political science—not conservation or biology—who convinced the failing farmers to sell their land. TNC was not interested in the land, just the water, which was funneled down to Las Vegas to support the building of Bugsy Siegal’s next hotel. Pale, lifeless fields are all that is left of once beautiful farms. Washington/Oregon. In 1986, President Reagan signed the Columbia River Gorge Scenic Act into law. The act administratively dissolved 85 miles of the Oregon/Washington border between Troutdale and Biggs Junction and created the Scenic Gorge Commission to oversee all land use issues in the 292,500 affected acres. As the federally-managed Scenic Gorge was taking shape in the early 90s, the spotted owl controversy was also raging. Property values plummeted because the land could not be used; owners were going broke and the field of potential buyers was limited to groups such as TNC and the Trust for Public Lands (TPL). Desperate to sell, property owners, hamstrung by the Gorge Commission, sold out to TNC/TPL for pennies on the pre-gorge act land value dollar. County records show in dozens of cases that, within 10 minutes of "buying" properties from desperate families, TNC/TPL "sold" them to the U.S. Forest Service for a 10 percent to 30 percent profit. Since the 90s, government has been building roads, restaurants, camping and interpretive areas, museums and other structures in the Scenic Gorge area with unregulated abandon to attract revenue-generating tourists. In contrast, private pursuits such as living, farming, ranching, logging and mining in the area have been regulated into near extinction. Private property owners, what few remain in the region, must ask permission from the Gorge Commission before painting their house, putting a light on their garage, planting a garden or pasturing livestock. Tropical paradises. TNC’s spin-off corporation, Conservation International, has acquired tropical forests under exclusive agreements with Starbucks’ international operations. Private real estate, including farms, are available from "Nature’s Landlord," at the right price. TNC has apparently determined that the best way to preserve nature is to price it so common people can’t afford any of it. Unless we as a people are willing to accept the continued loss of not only private property and individual rights, but of large portions of our national culture and customs as well, the Nature Conservancy must be brought to heel. Right now, it is a well-fed and generally admired beast leading us in a wild run that is as destructive in its seemingly friendly character as it is in its seldom-seen attacks. This is no errant clumsy puppy we can finally calm. It is a runaway predator that will turn on us in defense of its territory. The Nature Conservancy is the wolf we raised ourselves, the grizzly we fed from the table. The monster we made with indifference. If it is left to go on growing, it will be the master and we the obedient slaves. ~Tim Findley, Nature’s Landlord