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"If you want to 'save' it, buy it!"

The Nature Conservancy follows that emininently conservative principle....which is free market property rights respecting to the core.

Many conservatives may not know that real enviromental wacko/weenies, such as the Sierra Club, the Green party, Enviromental Defense Fund, etc. regard the TNC as traitors to their cause... since TNC does actually does purchase land--respecting private property rights...rather then zone or regulate people out of their property rights--and as pointed out above, the TNC respects hunting, logging, even oil drilling--when done responsibly.

People...this was a left wing hit piece on the most democratic and American of all enviromental groups. No doubt the author of the book reviewed see's TNC as way too freemarket and capitalist for his pink/green vision of the world.

What bothers me about TNC is that they make sure that they get favorable conditions via legislative fiat before they start engaging in "free market capitalist" solutions.

Long before TNC starts spending money buying land, they make some strategeric campaign donations, and the land they want suddenly gets zoned as open space--and hence unusable. No one is going to buy it, except for TNC. When you have only one customer, you pay what the customer offers, or you don't sell--and you pay property taxes based on the last sale price, many times what the land can actually be sold for.

After TNC buys the land, they sprinkle a few more donations, and all of a sudden, that virgin, untouchable land can be logged, mined, or used for "low-density habitation' (read: a luxurious lodge can be built for occupancy by TNC bigwigs and their cronies).

Sorry, the TNC is not all-American. They go into situatons like those created in Klamath by their environmental/leftist/judicial allies and offer to buy beleagured farmers land for pennies on the dollar. Those who feel thay have no other option sell-out.

Fortunately, in Klamath much of this was avoided (but not all) by the actions of local and regional private citizens who helped their neighbors get through.

The net result for the land that is bought up, either by TNC or other imilar efforts (some by our own government) is that productive, free-market land is taken out of the system ... and it just so happens that much of the land so decommissioned is right in line with the UN Agenda's I referenced above.

That's not an accident. I believe the TNC is an official NGO with the UN.

Either way, I have seen them in action, as has Grampa Dave and many other FRreepers out here in the west, and they are no friend to the free-market or our way of life.