The Nature Conservancy joins forces with the US Corps of Engineers

The Illinois Leader ^ | 6-23-2004 | Joyce Morrison

[madfly]

OPINION -- The Mighty Mississippi River is truly unique - it is the main artery dividing the East from the West. This magnificent river is multi-purpose.

The river supports habitat for all kinds of plant and animal species on its many islands and along the extensive shoreline. There are hundreds of little fingers and coves where recreation abounds, while co-existing with many species that call the river area their home.

Long overdue legislation has been introduced authorizing 1200 foot locks to be built on the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers to replace the outdated 600 foot locks. The shipping industry, commercial and agricultural businesses in Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and states bordering the rivers are looking with anticipation to the much-needed updates.

A major boost for the region’s economy will be the 48 million man-hours estimated to complete the 15 year project.

What is interesting about the legislation is half of the $2.4 billion in infrastructure improvements for the lock extensions would be paid for by the shipping industry through the Inland Waterway Trust Fund. The fund is made up of fees paid by shippers when they purchase their fuel.

The other half of the update cost, $1.2 billion, would be the government’s share which is actually an investment with an economic return.

The $5.3 billion needed for the ecosystem by the environmentalists would be funded primarily by the federal government. For years, environmentalists have blocked the updating of these badly-needed lock and dam improvements and it has cost the taxpayers millions of dollars for the delay. This project is now allowed to move forward, but with excessive ecosystem structures being demanded and an agreement that The Nature Conservancy be a partner.

It is not clear whether the shipping funds or the federal government will pay for fish passages, floodplain restoration, water level management, backwater restoration and wing dam and dike restoration. But what is clear is The Nature Conservancy has partnered with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help maintain the Mississippi River’s ecosystem even though the Corps has their own environmentalists.

"That vision resulted in last month’s announcement that the corps’ Mississippi Valley Division and The Nature conservancy had signed a regional cooperative agreement to promote collaborative water management of the Mississippi," according to Alton Illinois' paper, The Telegraph.

People along the Illinois River need to keep watch on TNC’s participation because they come on board with an agenda.

The following story reports on how The Nature Conservancy restores Illinois River deals with the huge land acquisitions they have made along the Illinois River.

The Illinois chapter of the Nature Conservancy had gathered to begin charting the largest river-restoration project ever undertaken in the state. The non-profit environmental group wants to bring back the lakes, marshes and forests that once thrived in this area, reconnecting them to the Illinois River, which is now barricaded from the land by a 20-foot tall levee.

The Nature Conservancy calls its project key to restoring the Illinois a river that some have described as near death and habitat that has been disappearing at an alarming rate. By restoring the land and the way it interacts with the river, scientists hope to improve the river's water quality and re-establish homes for many species of plants and animals, some rare and threatened.

They also want to revive some semblance of the rhythm of flooding and recession that nature uses to control rivers more effectively than any levee ever built. The 7,600-acre swath of manicured farmland that the scientists eyed from their perch is a common example of how the modern world has transformed the Illinois and other large flood-plain rivers.

The Illinois River used to boast 400,000 acres of flood a plain-vast stretches of land that absorbed rising waters and spread them wide. It was a thriving system that diffused the river when it swelled too big and rejuvenated the land that had grown dry in its absence.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and to farmers, looking at 7600 acres of beautiful corn and beans the "scientists eyed from their perch" would be far more beautiful than swamps. Corn, beans and wheat taken from these fields would help to feed a hungry world.

A review of Genesis will show that Adam in his role as gardener had to tend the garden by the sweat of his brow. If this required building a levee or draining the land, I’m certain he did what was necessary along with removing the thistles and brush. No doubt he depended on this garden to produce food for Eve and the family.

What TNC fails to tell you about the 400,000 acres of floodplain that was a thriving system (and virtually of little use to mankind) has been farmed for well over a hundred years. And for over a hundred years land lying along the rivers has been some of the richest farmland in the nation and is still producing high quality products.

Malaria is known to have taken many lives in the wetland areas before the land was drained for production. Now we are faced with West Nile Virus. Do we want to add numbers to species like mosquitoes or should we be concerned about the lives of people and the food production that comes from the breadbasket of America?

With rare exceptions, areas of farmland along the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers have been safely protected behind the levees since the early 1900s. The Great Flood of 1993 was a 500 year flood.

Americans eat the safest and cheapest food in the world. As land is taken out of production for conservation easements, wetlands, endangered species and all the other reasons, will we become dependent on third world countries for our food?

FEMA no longer permits building in floodplain areas and brings counties into compliance with the threat they will lose their flood insurance program if they do not abide. Could the next step be that this land can no longer be farmed?

To promote the concept of urban sprawl, they say that sprawl is taking all the farmland. While it is true that some is taken, it is not taken in nearly the proportion than it is through other programs.

The Nature Conservancy has a vision for the Refuge Complex area, a joint venture among several states, to preserve 9,118,884 acres of habitat capable of supporting an annual breeding duck population of 1,542,000 by year 2013. That is just a tiny piece of The Nature Conservancy’s vision. They also want 532,7ll acres of habitat on migration focus areas and to protect and/or increase habitats for wetland and associated upland wildlife species in the Joint Venture.....and that is still a beginning.

Holding about $3 billion in assets, The Nature Conservancy is often referred to as the real estate agent of the Federal Government. TNC owns millions of acres . . . much of which has been purchased with the help of government grants.

It should make landowners along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers very uncomfortable to know TNC, acting as a real estate agent, partnering with the U.S. Corps of Engineers on such an important project, have their scientists "sitting on perches" eyeing their land.

Jim Beers, well known writer and former biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife writes,

TNC buys land to stop land uses by private owners from ranchers to home builders. While couched in terms of preservation, the result is always less privately owned land and more Federally owned land since TNC resells (at a profit) millions of acres to the Federal government. Say what you will, this also means less use of our environment from natural resources and recreation to the raising of families and strengthening of communities. Given the current scale of such acquisitions, this means a weaker United States of America.

[Issaquahking]

Bert, don't be duped! The red diaper commy nature conservancy is anything but the good guys! Perhaps in your media works you should log in to the Klamath Bucket Brigade org. TNC has an agenda from hell and sucks everyone in, till they discover the truth. Perhaps you should try some of the links out of my profile page. RURAL CLEANSING Environmentalists Goal: Depopulate the countryside By Kimberley A. Strassel Wall Street Journal -- July 26, 2001 Commentary Federal authorities were forced to cut off water to 1,500 farms in Oregon's and California's Klamath Basin in April because of the "endangered" sucker fish. The environmental groups behind the cutoff continue to declare that they are simply concerned for the welfare of a bottom-feeder. But last month, those environmentalists revealed another motive when they submitted a polished proposal for the government to buy out the farmers and move them off their land. This is what's really happening in Klamath -- call it rural cleansing -- and it's repeating itself in environmental battles across the country. Indeed, the goal of many environmental groups -- from the Sierra Club to the Oregon Natural Resources Council (ONRC) -- is no longer to protect nature. It's to expunge humans from the countryside. The Greens' Strategy The strategy of these environmental groups is nearly always the same: to sue or lobby the government into declaring rural areas off-limits to people who live and work there. The tools for doing this include the Endangered Species Act and local preservation laws, most of which are so loosely crafted as to allow a wide leeway in their implementation. In some cases owners lose their property outright. More often, the environmentalists' goal is to have restrictions placed on the land that either render it unusable or persuade owners to leave of their own accord. The Klamath Basin saga began back in 1988, when two species of suckers from the area were listed under the Endangered Species Act. Things worked reasonably well for the first few years after the suckers were listed. The Bureau of Reclamation, which controls the area's irrigation, took direction from the Fish and Wildlife Service, and tried to balance the needs of both fish and farmers. This included programs to promote water conservation and tight control over water flows. The situation was tense, but workable. But in 1991 the Klamath basin suffered a drought, and Fish and Wildlife noted that the Bureau of Reclamation might need to do more for the fish. That was the environmentalists' cue. Within two months, the ONRC -- the pit bull of Oregon's environmental groups -- was announcing intentions to sue the Bureau of Reclamation for failure to protect the fish. The group's lawsuits weren't immediately successful, in part because Fish and Wildlife continued to revise its opinions as to what the fish needed, and in part because of the farmers' undeniable water rights, established in 1907. But the ONRC kept at it and finally found a sympathetic ear. This spring, a federal judge -- in deciding yet another lawsuit brought by the ONRC, other environmental groups, fishermen and Indian tribes -- ordered an unwilling Interior Department to shut the water off. The ONRC had succeeded in denying farmers the ability to make a living. Since that decision, the average value of an acre of farm property in Klamath has dropped from $2,500 to about $35. Most owners have no other source of income. And so with the region suitably desperate, the enviros dropped their bomb. Last month, they submitted a proposal urging the government to buy the farmers off. The council has suggested a price of $4,000 an acre, which makes it more likely owners will sell only to the government. While the amount is more than the property's original value, it's nowhere near enough to compensate people for the loss of their livelihoods and their children's futures. The ONRC has picked its fight specifically with the farmers, but its actions will likely mean the death of an entire community. The farming industry will lose $250 million this year. But property-tax revenues will also decrease under new property assessments. That will strangle road and municipal projects. Local businesses are dependent on the farmers and are now suffering financially. Should the farm acreage be cleared of people entirely, meaning no taxes and no shoppers, the community is likely to disappear. Nor has the environment won, even at this enormous cost. The fish in the lake may have water, but nothing else does. On the 200,000 acres of parched farmland, animals belonging to dozens of species -- rabbits, deer, ducks, even bald eagles -- are either dead or off searching for water. And there's no evidence the suckers are improving. Indeed, Fish and Wildlife's most recent biological opinions, which concluded that the fish needed more water, have been vociferously questioned by independent biologists. Federal officials are now releasing some water (about 16% of the normal flow) into the irrigation canals, but it doesn't help the farmers or wildlife much this year. Environmentalists argue that farmers should never have been in the "dry" Klamath valley in the first place and that they put undue stress on the land. But the West is a primarily arid region; its history is one of turning inhospitable areas into thriving communities through prudent and thoughtful reallocation of water. If the Klamath farmers should be moved, why not the residents of San Diego and Los Angeles, not to mention the Southwest and parts of Montana and Wyoming? All of these communities survive because of irrigation -- water that could conceivably go to some other "environmental" use. But, of course, this is the goal. Environmental groups have spoken openly of their desire to concentrate people into cities, turning everything outside city limits into a giant park. A journalist for the Rocky Mountain News recently noted that in June the Sierra Club posted on its Web site a claim that "efficient" urban density is about 500 households an acre. This, in case you're wondering, is about three times the density of Manhattan's most tightly packed areas. And it's not as if there were any shortage of open space in the West. The federal government already owns 58% of the western U.S., with state and local government holdings bumping the public percentage even higher. Balanced Stewardship Do the people who give money to environmental groups realize the endgame is to evict people from their land? I doubt it. The American dream has always been to own a bit of property on which to pursue happiness. This dream involves some compromises, including a good, balanced stewardship of nature -- much like what was happening in Klamath before the ONRC arrived. But this dream will disappear -- as it already is in Oregon and California -- if environmental groups and complicit government agencies are allowed to continue their rural cleansing. Be informed! Don't allow yourself to be snowed by CARA. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help support this site. Buy a t-shirt or sticker. Back to Environmental Issues list Back to Environmental Issues & Property Rights Bulletin Board Read this

[bert]

..... from the Sierra Club to the Oregon Natural Resources Council (ONRC).....

The subject is the Nature Conservancy, not the groups you mentioned.

In my part of the world they selectively purchase land that has some specific use in preserving something natural.

For instance, on Roan Mountain they purchased several tracts to maintain a buffer on either side of the Appalachian trail. They negotiated a fair price with the heirs to whom ownersip fell.

More recently, they purchased land bordering the Clinch River that is home to several species of rare mussels. The tracts are relatively small and were purchased by the private Nature Conservancy.

Generally, they do not have the hard assed political agenda of the groups you mentioned. They quietly gather donated money and spend it to purchase something they consider worthwhile. Buying land is not a political crime.

I may be wrong in my view, but I see them in a different light than the genuine bad guys in the Seirra Club and other such. I don 't have any good words for organizations that are the home of Clintonite dropouts.

By the way, the groups you mentioned held an AP publicized tree clmbing event in the Jefferson National Forest last week. The tree climbing terrorists have moved east and recruited the mushed brained female advocates who posed for pictures in rapel harness and hard hats.

[Issaquahking]

Bert,

Sorry about the poor formatting on the previous cut and paste.

I applaud your activism work here at FR, as to the nature coservancy, we don't see eye to eye. I would invite you to get on Farmfriend's ping list and Check out Carry_okie's profile page. I tend to buy into the bibical refrence of "beware of wolve's dressed in sheep's clothing". Trust me on this, the more you research them, the worse the agenda. I'm sure they have some people that are trying to do good, but watch where their leadershio is truly headed. Just like the democrat's - at one time they were the "working man's party"; now they are the far left, commy scuz of the earth as of late, but there are still good democrats such as John Breaux.

[bert]

I will do as you recommend. My awareness is local and the actions are far removed from the purely political actions of the Sierra club et al.

[Osage Orange]

I live a few miles from a 36,000 acre Nature Conservancy. When this place was formed they had much bigger plans. If it wasn't for some very vocal, active land owners...( My cousin and her husband with their 500 acres, included..) they would have had their land basically confiscated...against their wishes. In my neck of the woods....that's not a way to describe "good guys".

I could go on. I can personally attest to be true, some of the very things you could be reading on this thread.

FWIW-