Posted on 07/23/2002 4:06:13 AM PDT by kattracks
I saw a list of the Conservancy's property ownership in Southern Oregon, and I was amazed, it was numerous large tracts of land, most of which they then shut down to hunters, hikers, farming and mountain bikers. I asked the person who showed me the list if they have similiar properties throughout the country, and she said "We own land all throughout the USA."
I was kinda spooked out by it!
Ed
I can agree that the NC may be up to nefarious dealings. In the strict sense of addiction, the Government is the enabler, the NC is the addict. Look at ANWR, and imagine being an Alaska state legislator...
If there were no Federal Government, the NC would not be able to do these things (with public money), therefore, in my opinion, the Government is the problem.
Take away the 'flipping' of properties (which, if true, is a liberal's dream), and I have no problem with the NC's dealings.
It's private property...
That's not really true.The Nature Conservancy and any other eco group that wants to can put their land holdings into a "conservation trust" then it becomes "tax exempt" (at least here in California)so we taxpayers are paying more.It seems like everyday I hear that the schools don't have enough money or some program will be cut what a crock!
I used to believe in alot of things, and some of them was how good the NPS, Fish and WildLife, etc. and so on were, not! I also used to believe in the Tooth Fairy-----my point is not to be a smart a** but to get you to please look at some of the sites you have been given.....these sites do provide you with facts of how this NGO is abusing the funds of which folks like you contribute too.....I doubt very serioulsy you would have little old ladies thrown off their lands because of "undue influence" such as TNC can and does use!
Alot of agencies and organizations all started out with good intentions, but have fallen by the wayside once they get the almighty dollar behind them which of course is power----and as we all know, Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely!
Please look at the sources provided to you.
...and the flip side of that coin is that some "conservationists" want to turn a lot of the land into "grasslands" through "prescribed burns":
"November 2001:
Bush Administration signs a Memorandum of Understanding with The Nature Conservancy to jointly manage the nation's National Forests
The U.S. Forest Service and The Nature Conservancy announced a watershed memorandum of understanding (MOU) on November 16 to share the management of the entire National Forest system. The agreement includes inventorying, monitoring, protection and restoration of forest, grassland and aquatic habitat for fish, wildlife and plant resources. According to the official press release, the underlying goals of the memorandum of understanding include preservation of biodiversity and ecosystem management, rather than production of raw materials to feed the nation's economy. Two key MOU directives are to utilize prescribed burns and to combat invasive species. The MOU can be expected to reinforce the previous administration's road closure policy. http://www.prfamerica.org/UpdatesIndex.html
From the same website, by Carol LaGrasse:
".......Imagine an encumbrance on your property that is not on file at the county seat but is instead secretly kept by government, exempt from freedom of information law, and only accessible to law enforcement agencies or to you in the course of processing a building permit.
You cannot find out about this encumbrance on land when you are considering purchase, yet it can be used by government to stop use of your land as surely as any easement, mapped wetland, flood area map or minimum lot size.
This encumbrance is the record of special wildlife species and their habitats being accumulated by DEC and a private not-for-profit land trust [i.e., they pay no taxes on the huge profits they make on flipping private property into the hand of government, paid for by dollars extorted from you, the public], The Nature Conservancy (TNC) under a joint program that is in place in New York and every other state of the Union under similar arrangements between TNC and each state environmental agency...........TNC is the largest environmental organization in the United States, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, with 1994 assets of just over one billion dollars. In 1994, TNC received $237,779,000 from sales of land to government, while expending $76,046,000 for this purpose......" http://www.prfamerica.org/NYsNaturalHeritageProgram.html
In addition to taking property off the tax rolls, raising the tax burden on everyone else, thus forcing MORE sales by owners unable to keep up, the "regulation by government", or some such term, was [and this may be outdated by now] required in order for the IUCN, one of the land collectors for the U.N., to exert international control over what was formerly private property. (I think I read this at Henry Lamb's website or at discerningtoday.org, Michael Coffman's site.) In other words, the property goes from private hands to The Nature Conservancy (or some other front group) to local/state/federal government and eventually, to the U.N. which assumes sovereignty. (Also, once the UN has sovereignty over property, by placing it on an "endangered list", the land can be closed off to the unwashed masses to "protect it".)
See UN Influence on Domestic Policy http://www.discerningtoday.org/UN_influence.htm.
"............The IUCN's strategy is brilliant. First, the IUCN helped create both the "science" of conservation biology and the Society of Conservation Biology. The leadership of the Society, along with David Foreman (co-founder of Earth First! and Director of the Sierra Club), then dreamed up the granddaddy of all earth protection schemes--The Wildlands Project, which demands that up to one-half of America be put into wilderness reserves and corridors, with the remaining land as buffer zones. Second, credibility for the pseudoscience of conservation biology was bought with foundation funding of conservation curricula within universities, and by strong acceptance by federal agencies belonging to the IUCN. Finally, the IUCN wrote or helped write Agenda 21, the Conventions on Biological Diversity, Desertification, Sustainable Development as well as the President's Council on Sustainable Development's (PCSD) report in which, surprise, surprise, supporting documents like the UN Global Biodiversity Assessment name The Wildlands Project as the template for protecting biological diversity! What seem to be totally independent programs and activities are in reality a masterpiece orchestrated by the IUCN.
Through the IUCN, government agencies such as the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, the EPA and other federal agencies can huddle in private with the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Federation, National Audubon Society, Society of Conservation Biology, UNEP, UNDP, UNESCO and many others to develop strategies to implement their "ecospiritual" agenda on the ground by changing US policy -- without any knowledge of Congress or the people who will be affected......." http://www.discerningtoday.org/iucn.htm.
"The IUCN Programme is described in the document "Stepping into the New Millennium".
The Union's innovative and comprehensive conservation programme wil be implemented over a four year period (2001-2004) in 180 countries. The Programme is based on delivering results in three major areas:
KNOWLEDGE - IUCN's core business is generating, integrating, managing and disseminating knowledge for conservation and equitable use of natural resources.
EMPOWERMENT - IUCN uses that knowledge to build capacity, responsibility and willingness of people and institutions to plan, manage, conserve and use nature and natural resources in a sustainable and equitable manner.
GOVERNANCE - When knowledge is available and people are able to use it, the most important steps can be taken - systematic improvement of laws, policies, economic instruments and institutions for the conservation and sustainable and equitable use of nature and natural resources.
It was developed through a consultative planning process and then approved at the World Conservation Congress in Amman, Jordan (October 2002)(?). View resolutions adopted at the Congress.
The programme includes the activities carried out by IUCN's six Commissions and the Secretariat. By focusing the IUCN programme on two conservation goals and seven Key Result Areas we have integrated the work of the Commissions and the Secretariat. The diagram below shows the programme framework...............(blah, blah, blah)" http://www.iucn.org/about/programme.htm.
The IUCN (aided by such groups as the Nature Conservancy) is helping the UN to implement Agenda 21 and the Convention on Biological Diversity (basically, the Wildlands Project, US included - Map at discerningtoday.org): http://www.iucn.org/themes/biodiversity/.
Membership of The Nature Conservancy in the IUCN can be seen here: http://www.iucn.org/members/directory.cfm.
See also "The Juggernaut of Private Not-for-Profit Interest Groups" http://www.prfamerica.org/Juggernaut.html, listing many of these groups, including the Nature Conservancy, and many more articles here (many are reasonably short): prfamerica.org articles regarding The Nature Conservancy.
According to the official press release, the underlying goals of the memorandum of understanding include preservation of biodiversity and ecosystem management, rather than production of raw materials to feed the nation's economy. Two key MOU directives are to utilize prescribed burns and to combat invasive species. The MOU can be expected to reinforce the previous administration's road closure policy.
It is my understanding that the national forest system was intended at its inception to be managed national resource, entirely different from a national park, and not closed off from the public, which I am assuming is a part of this "road closure policy". If that includes closure also of trails, camping and hunting areas, then this is a plan that we should oppose, and I would join you.
Good managed timber lands are not incompatible with good habitat practices... I support fully a blending of habitat, timber harvest and recreational use. Anything less I will not support except in the very few areas such as national parks where utter wilderness was established long ago for it's own sake. The two distinct types of national lands should not be confused or blended together in my humble opinion. The rest of your post shall have to wait until tomorrow, hope you do not mind my questions as I get to it.
While I too love animals, aren't human beings just animals as well?...
And isn't anything and everything we do natural?...
The problem with the Greenies is they are so bereft of human contact that they lose themselves in the 2002 cats back home!!...
Now while I "own" or more acurately room with a cat, I will never stop eating meat and I'd be afraid to keep the occasional meat snack (ie... Roast Beef) from the animal; namo Blinky, don't ask me I adopted him from the NY City Sanitation Yard in Coney Island and that's what they called him, in fear that he might decide to take a chunk of John-Boy!!
All I can tell you is we two animals get along well!
Now if the Greenies were real they would get out there and hate humans for merit, not just in theory!!
That is the WHOLE POINT of buying the land in the first place: protection of environmentally sensitive land from development. If there were no restrictions,many local governments would sell off this land to developers.
I would hope even the most devoutly conservative person would realize we need something on this earth besides blacktop !
Now with that said, there are times that lands should be open to the public, however, I do not think that any lands that have historically belonged to families for generations should be unless of course these families truely chose to sell their lands to such agencies! I do mean true willing sellers, not ones that are forced into becoming "willing sellers". Did you know that if condemnation occurs, that once all the paper work is done and recorded, that the landowner, no matter how hard they fought against such, is listed as a "willing-seller"? TNC can buy all the land they wish, that is not my problem with them, if they do so without undue influence and they can do with their property anything they wish....however, this organization alone is very influential to government agencies having the funds to use and abuse eminent domain! They are many times like the vultures on the fence post!
If you will also look at our website, http://www.newriverfriends.org you will see where we landowners may be forced from our lands and heritages because we supposedly pollute a "view-shed".....these lands have been held for over 200 years! The original land patent promising the land to the heirs and assigns in perpituity(sp)--forever---was signed by then the governor of the Common Wealth of Virginia----James Munroe! I think the "view-shed" is the same as it was 200 years ago.....that of settlers using and enjoying their lands!
http://www.nationalcenter.org/dos7128.htm
Dossier
A publication providing succinct biographical sketches of environmental scientists, economists, "experts," and activists released by The National Center for Public Policy Research.
Environmental Activist: The Nature Conservancy Founded in 1951, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is indisputably the wealthiest organization in the environmental movement with an budget approaching $300 million per year. The group's mission is to save environmentally valuable land through private acquisition. This private sector approach has earned The Conservancy praise from liberals and free market advocates alike. But The Nature Conservancy's approach to the environment is not as free market and mainstream as the group would have its supporters believe. Over the years, TNC has developed cozy relationships with conservation agencies at all levels of government. Not only have these relationships allowed The Conservancy to finance many of its supposed "private-sector" land purchases with taxpayer money, but, according to numerous accounts, it has allowed the group to profit handsomely from such deals. According to a June 12, 1992 Washington Times report, U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials paid The Nature Conservancy $4.5 million in 1988 and 1989 for land in the Little River National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma, $1 million more than the land's appraised value. In 1989, the Bureau of Land Management gave The Conservancy $1.4 million for land the group had purchased for just $1.26 million in a simultaneous transaction. Washington Times author Ken Smith noted, "Up to the point of the transaction, The Conservancy had forked over exactly $100 for a purchase option agreement on the land. Wall Street investors in jail for insider trading never got a $140,000 return on a $100 investment." No doubt the deal was lucrative enough to make even Hillary Clinton, who turned a $1,000 investment in cattle futures into $100,000, green with envy.
Revelations that land trust groups such as The Nature Conservancy had made big profits off government land deals led to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Interior's Inspector General in 1992. The investigation found that the department had spent $7.1 million more than necessary on 64 land deals between 1986 and 1991.
There have been other government reports critical of Nature Conservancy land deals as well. In 1991, the Missouri state auditor found that the state "paid $500,000 more than necessary on six land purchases from the Conservancy," according to a June 19, 1994 Newhouse News Service report. "The auditor claimed there was a conspiracy to jack up the sales price on these tracts to help the organization regain $400,000 in losses claimed on two state park deals that went sour. That was a violation of state financial regulations..."
The Nature Conservancy's favorable land deals may be more than mere coincidence. William Moran, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife whistle-blower reported to Congress that his superior continued to handle land deals with The Nature Conservancy while applying for a job with the organization. In another apparent case of conflict of interest, a director for a state office of the Bureau of Land Management presided over complex land deals involving The Conservancy while serving a member of the Conservancy's state board of directors.
The Conservancy has other ways of tapping into taxpayer funds as well -- and for purposes that have nothing to do with land acquisition. In 1993, for example, the group received a $44,100 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for a Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary outreach program. This "outreach" included developing and directing a "plan to counter opposition's push for county-wide referendum against the establishment of the sanctuary" and recruiting "local residents to speak out against the referendum at two Board of County Commissioners hearings." In other words, The Conservancy used taxpayer dollars to lobby. So much for the group's moderate reputation.
But government land deals and grants aren't the only controversies surrounding The Nature Conservancy. The group has frequently been accused of using intimidation tactics to force private landowners to sell their land. In one of the most flagrant cases of intimidation, a state director for The Conservancy threatened to have the government condemn a landowner's property if he refused to sell it for annexation to the Cypress Creek National Wildlife Refuge. "If your land is not acquired through voluntary negotiation, we will recommend its acquisition through condemnation," wrote The Conservancy's Albert Pyott in 1993 to the landowner, Professor Dieter Kuhn, a resident of Marburg, Germany.
Perhaps the greatest controversy involving The Conservancy occurred in 1994 when the group was found guilty by a federal judge of undue influence over a dying man. The man, Dr. Frederic Gibbs, a medical researcher who developed the electroencephalograph and conducted research in epilepsy, willed a 95-acre farm to The Nature Conservancy. Officials with The Conservancy apparently assisted Gibbs in changing his will after he had become mentally incompetent.
Despite its much-vaunted concern for preserving the environment, The Nature Conservancy nonetheless accepts contributions from such environmentally-harmful businesses as oil companies. The group is not particularly a friend of America's most disadvantaged Americans -- minorities. In 1990, it teamed up with the National Audubon Society to oppose a sheep grazing program by poor Chicanos in New Mexico even though the grazing was essential for an economic development project.
Selected Nature Conservancy Quotes
A Nature Conservancy official explaining how The Conservancy helps government agencies circumvent democracy....
"We do work closely with USFWS (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). We buy these properties when they need to be bought, so that at some point we can become the willing seller (to government). This helps the government get around the problem of local opposition." -The Nature Conservancy's William Weeks quoted by syndicated columnist Warren T. Brookes, January 23, 1991
The Nature Conservancy making a German landowner feel at home -- in Nazi-era Germany, that is...
"If your land is not acquired through voluntary negotiation, we will recommend its acquisition through condemnation." -Albert Pyott, former Illinois state director of The Nature Conservancy, threatening Dieter Kuhn of Marburg, Germany, quoted in The New Orleans Times Picayune, June 19, 1994
Apparently you did not read my post; I was asking for information, and I have an open mind. Asking for information is an admission that one does not have all the answers and is willing to learn.
I was mainly trying to point out that some of the information you requested was already provided in the posts I listed for you. They are enough to convince me to be opposed to the TNC. I could see if they kept all the land but cannot support how they are acting as an enabler to government takeover of land with taxpayer money while permanently restricting use of the land the taxpayers bought.
The problem I think is that the bureaucrats WANT to buy the land WITH the restrictions. When you buy land you want as few restrictions as possible. If an agent buys land for you they should negotiate for as few restrictions as possible. If a bureaucrat buys land with a wink to TNC saying please give me restrictions, then TNC is enabling the government to act against best interest of the taxpayers and future voters who may want to use the land in other ways. The profits to TNC when the goverment pays them high prices is suspect as well.
It bad enough when the government just buys up land., but at least it can always sell it back to the private sector if voter sentiment changes. But with the TNC the government has figured out a way to lock future voters out of deciding how to use the land they paid for.
Like others, I agree with the concept of buying land and owning it to keep it undeveloped. I just don't like TNC based on what I have read here.
Smith is not a knee-jerk conservative on environmental issues. He is a dedicated environmentalist (and once served as president of the Sierra Club). Part of Smith's anger against the NC, is that it is stealing the limelight from several praiseworthy, but little known, free market oriented environmentalist organizations who do not engage in strong-arm tactics or sleazy "partnerships" with bureaucrats.
While I share with your fear of knee-jerk attitudes, we need to be equally on guard against the danger of being "suckers" for environmentalist organizations, such as the NC, which misrepresent themselves.
You have to be careful about adding too much logic to these discussions. Tends to be a threadkiller. :-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.