Wayne's View III

Green "PACMAN" Devouring
America's Property
Rights !

Quietly, almost unnoticed, private
property is disappearing throughout
America at an alarming rate.

Through an almost unintelligible maze of
federal, state, county and local
environmental laws, regulations,
programs and taxes - combined with a
concerted effort by highly-funded and
politically-powerful environmental groups
- property owners are disappearing like
the dinosaurs of another era.

Using regulations and programs like: the
Endangered Species Act, wet lands
regulations, government land acquisition
programs, Clean Air Act, the Biological
Service, forest regulations, land trusts,
water shed protection, Heritage
Corridors, green ways and eco-regions,
the federal government is rapidly carving
up the nation. In its wake, industries,
farms and American dreams are being
destroyed.

The main enforcers of these policies are
the National Park Service, the Army Corp
of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service,
National Forest Service, The
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
and 800,000 lawyers. These are aided by
the advance troops of environmental
radicals who infest every local community
by scouting out possible targets, and by
creating controversy and legal attacks on
businesses, property owners and
developers. No stone is left unturned, no
scare tactic is too outrageous for these
highly funded, politically sophisticated,
fanatical societal misfits.

Groups like the Sierra Club, the Audubon
Society, the Nature Conservancy, National
Wildlife Federation, the Wilderness
Society, National Resources Defense
Council and the Environmental Defense
Council provide the legal research and
courtroom advocacy to force property
owners into submission. These groups
have become so powerful and feared that
most major businesses will pay them
"green mail" and capitulate to their
demands without putting up a fight.
Smaller property owners, farmers,
ranchers and family businesses have little
chance to hang onto their property once
the attack begins.

This "ecologarcy" is funded through
federal tax dollars and through private
foundations like the Rockefeller
Foundation, the Mellon Foundations, Ford
Foundation, Pew Charitable Trust, W.
Alton Jones Foundation, University
grants, the Environmental Grant makers
Association and through the selling of
taken land - the booty of their legal
assault.

As this violence to America's most
fundamental right - private property -
grows, however, the average American is
unaware of the rapid decline of private
property ownership. That's because the
news media manages to either ignore the
latest government taking, or describe it in
glowing terms as a boon for the
environment. Children in classrooms are
taught that protecting the environment
must take precedent over any human
activity. All of this is backed up by a
constant flow of unfounded "scientific"
reports declaring environmental
Armageddon through ozone holes, global
warming and human consumption.

The result of this massive assault on
America's most precious freedom is the
steady retreat of property owners into
what could one day become predetermined
human habitat areas, as environmental
plans call for more than 50 percent of
American territory to be designated
wilderness areas - off limits to any human
activity.

If all of that sounds too incredible to be
even considered in a serious debate, then
the reality of what has already been
accomplished toward those ends or is well
along in the planning stages will truly
astound you.

DISMANTLING AMERICAN
SOCIETY

To sustain the highest standard of living
the world has ever known, America needs
its farms to grow our life-giving crops,
ranches to provide beef, mines to provide
minerals and timber to provide the
materials to build homes and paper to
print text books. Without these basic
human needs civilization is impossible. It
is no coincidence that these vital
commodities are the targets of
environmental radicals and the federal
regulations they've created.

But outright banning of these industries
would meet with too much resistance.
Instead, regulations, guidelines and
punitive taxes are used to slowly diminish
and then drive out businesses. As an
industry disappears from a region, the
land it occupied ultimately is removed
from any further such production. It will
then join millions of other newly
non-productive acres under control of the
National Park Service or the U.S. Forest
Service. Once there, no human use will be
permitted.

Because of federal environmental
regulations, very little timber is now
permitted to be taken from federal lands,
and the numbers shrink every year. This
ban even includes the removal of dead
trees or those downed by storms. While
the sawmills go empty and jobs disappear,
the dead trees attract insects and disease,
affecting the remaining healthy trees, and
endangering the forest more severely
than any possible threat from competent
logging practices.

As the number of forest acres which
permit logging diminishes, prices
increase. Environmental restrictions
account, on the average, for over 30
percent of the cost of capital construction
in the forest industry. In upstate New
York, in just one year the cost of raw
hardwood jumped 60 percent.

Such a jump drastically affects paper
costs, thus

increasing prices in all segments of
American society. Housing costs are
skyrocketing as well, resulting in building
slumps as fewer people can afford new
homes. That result is just fine with
environmentalists since their stated goal
is to stop as much development as
possible.

Meanwhile, as the timber industry reels
under the regulations and more and more
forests become untouchable to human
hands, the land holdings of the federal
government grow in proportion.

In Washington State, heart of the
Northwest timber industry, almost 50
percent of the state is now owned by
either the federal, state or county
governments. Only half of the land
remains in private hands. The total
acreage of public land in Washington is
42,606,080. Of this, 2,599,250 acres are
controlled by the U.S. Forest Service,
25,492 acres are in the Department of
Natural Resources (DNR) Natural Area
Preserves and 46,892 acres are in DNR
Natural Reserve Conservation Areas.
Citizen access to these federal areas is
severely restricted or prohibited.

Meanwhile, under a green-driven 1990
program called the Washington Wildlife
and Recreation Program (WWRP) the
state government is in an all-out drive to
buy or take more and more land.

On the Great Plains the battles for water
rights and grazing rights (the bedrock of
the ranching industry) is little understood
but potentially devastating to America's
ability to feed itself.

Water and grazing rights are guaranteed
to those ranchers who operate on public
lands. Those agreements go back over one
hundred years to the days when the
western territories became states. They
cannot be negotiated away and are just as
sacred as any homeowner's deed.

Yet today, the Department of the Interior
is pushing to raise grazing and water fees
to levels that would destroy ranching and
farming in the areas. If the battle is lost it
will mark the end of America's cattle
industry and destroy family farms. The
land where those ranches and farms now
stand will become unproductive, baron
wilderness controlled by the federal
government.

Without them, can America continue to
feed itself, let alone the rest of the world?
Meanwhile, in tandem with this federal
assault on cattle ranching, the greens
advocate the elimination of meat
consumption. This too is no coincidence.

While land is taken and turned into
wilderness, many roads, bridges and even
some dams are closed and eliminated in
the drive to destroy any evidence of man.
But, with industry being eliminated and
productive land removed from private
hands, where will the tax base come from
to sustain such programs? It's not a
question the greens seem to care about -
with "public good" at stake.

Piece by piece each of these moves by the
federal government, aided by the
environmentalists, dismantles American
infrastructure.

RAILS TO TRAILS

During the 1800's, as the nation fought to
create a national railroad system, farmers
and other property owners leased
portions of their land to the new
enterprise. It was the only way to ensure
enough right of way for the railroads and
it provided extra income to the land
owners. The land was still privately owned
and was to revert back to the owner's use
if ever the railroads ceased to need it.

But as railroads began to disappear and
old tracks rusted in the countryside, much
of the land didn't revert back to the
owners, because federal legislation,
supported by environmentalists,
overstepped the property owners in favor
of the popular Rails-to-Trails program.

The hiking and bicycle crowd knows or
cares little about the history of the
property rights involved. The greens, on
the other hand, have found a bonanza of
land that has literally been stolen from
property owners to add to the growing
behemoth of federal control.

The land is then eliminated from
productive use and development.
Moreover the trails have become the
"blood vessels" feeding the land-control
efforts. A tiny path winding through an
area is a foot in the door for the demand
that more of the land be used for "public"
need.

More than 36,000 miles of such trails now
crisscross the nation under the direct
control of the National Park Service. Long
forgotten are the land owners who paid
for and supported the land before seeing
it stolen for "public good."

HERITAGE CORRIDORS

Picture a national park 2,500 miles long
and two counties wide, passing through
ten states from the Canadian border to
the Gulf of Mexico. Inside that area there
can be no commercial development, no
housing and no communities. Now picture
that area as the mighty Mississippi River,
the vital waterway that divides our entire
nation and provides crucial commercial
traffic, hauling goods and services to keep
the nation moving.

Does that sound too radical. Well,
Congress has already designated the
entire 2,500 miles as a single "Mississippi
River Corridor" for a monumental study
to make a unified federal program to
control the ten-state area. In news items
published last summer, it was reported
that house boat dwellers who have lived
on the river for fifty years were being
removed from this "public" reserve.

Worse, there are at least sixty eight
designated Heritage Areas and Corridors
across the country ranging through
nearly every state in the Union. All of
them will come under the control of the
National Park Service.

Heritage Corridors represent the worst
examples of the poison that
environmental regulations are seeping
into American culture. Landowners are
driven from their homes, business are
shut down and whole communities are
turned into ghost towns.

How do they do it? One small step at a
time. In the Mississippi River area, for
example, historical studies are being
conducted to determine the farthest
recorded distance the river has flooded.
That distance becomes designated as
"river" and it represents the new
boundary. Environmentalists are now
encouraging insurance companies to deny
flood insurance to those who live in such
areas. Without flood insurance
homeowners and businesses and even
entire towns can't survive. They move.
Their homes become federally controlled
property. The land becomes wilderness.

Currently two bills, H.R.1280 and
H.R.1301, are pending in the Congress
intended to speed up the designation of
Heritage Corridors. Incredibly, H.R. 1280
is sponsored by Republican Joel Hefley of
Colorado, whose state has been a prime
testing ground for environmental
assaults. In the Senate, newly adopted
Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell is
the chief sponsor of S.1110, called the
National Heritage Act of 1995.

BIOSPHERE RESERVES

The grandaddy of all federal land grabs is
the Biosphere Reserve. A biosphere is an
area of wilderness that contains all
aspects of biology in a specific area.
According to environmentalist theory, if
even an insect in the biosphere is
damaged then the entire ecosystem is
damaged causing immeasurable
environmental harm and leading to
possible environmental Armageddon.

Of course, so the theory goes, all human
activity is damaging to the biosphere. In
order to protect such vital and delicate
global balance, human activity must be
heavily regulated or removed.

What a perfect tool in the
environmentalists drive to stop
development. Of course none of this
amazing theory is driven by an ounce of
sound scientific theory, but , none-
the-less, it is the very basis for the
Clinton Administration's environmental
policies.

A biosphere Reserve works like this: A
core area is chosen, usually a current
wilderness area, perhaps in the middle of
a national park. In that core area, no
human activity is allowed.

Around the core is placed a buffer zone.
The buffer area may contain some
development, some housing and some
human activity. However, no new
development will be permitted.
Eventually, it is planned that existing
activity will be strangled and eliminated.
Once accomplished, the core area will be
expanded to swallow up the buffer and
become untouchable to all human activity,
including recreational. Humans simply
will not be allowed in that area.

Surrounding the buffer zone is a
"transition area" where some human
activity like tourism, even certain types of
limited human settlements may be
permitted. But here again, the boundaries
of the transition area are not stable. They
can be constantly expanded.

Like an insatiable game of "pac man" the
transition area grows, and the buffer area
grows accordingly and, so grows the core
area. It's like a science-fiction monster
movie. But the horrible result is that
human habitation of the countryside
grows smaller and smaller, literally
herding human activity into specifically
designated areas.

Biosphere Reserves are not, however,
just some environmental pipe dream or
part of a wish list. They are being
implemented in legislation and policy right
now. Both the United Nations Convention
on Biodiversity and the President's
Council on Sustainable Development
mandate that government be organized
into bio-regions. The bio-region plan is
the basis for the government's drive to
control larger and larger blocks of land.
Already, almost unnoticed, people are
being moved and development cut off in
direct preparation for the biosphere
programs.

In upstate New York, for example, a
major fight is being waged to stop the
implementation of a biosphere reserve
called the Northern Forest Lands. This
massive project would create a wilderness
that stretches from Maine through New
Hampshire through Vermont and into
upstate New York. More than two-thirds
of the state of Maine would be made off-
limits to human activity, plus one third
each of Vermont, New Hampshire and New
York. Similar battles are going on all over
the nation.

The Sierra Club announced in its national
magazine last year that it was devoting its
entire effort toward the implementation of
the biosphere agenda. The magazine
contained the Sierra Club's new map of
America, broken down into eighteen
bio-regions nationwide.

The Clinton Administration, within the
next few weeks, will announce its report
on the President's Council for Sustainable
Development. That plan will become the
basis for Clinton's environmental policy. It
will be based on bio-regions and will call
for the "rewilding" of at least 50 percent of
all of the land in every state. That means
there will be no human activity in half of
every state in the United States of
America.

AND THEY CALL THEIR
OPPOSITION "EXTREMISTS"

These plans as described not only exist,
but are rapidly being put into place by, not
only the Clinton Administration and their
allies in the environmentalist movement,
but also by the new Republican-led
Congress. As mentioned earlier,
Republicans are the driving force behind
the implementation of Heritage Corridors.
More than one-hundred such Corridors
have been proposed on state, federal and
private property.

Some courageous Congressmen like Helen
Chenowith, John Shaddag, Richard Pombo
and Don Young are working around the
clock to stop this horrifying assault on
America's very core of existence.

For their efforts they have been labeled
"extremists" by radical greens and the
Clinton Administration. That could be
expected from such sources, but the
labels have caused the likes of Republican
leaders including Newt Gingrich and Bob
Dole to back off from attempts to restore
property rights and common sense to
environmental policy. Gingrich has slowed
progress on the Pombo/Young efforts to
fix the Endangered Species Act and
refused new votes on additional property
rights legislation.

Meanwhile, it's business as usual for the
greens as they continue their unabated
grab of private property and their
implementation of the biosphere reserve
programs.

The media continues to ignore this green
holocaust as those who strive to sound the
alarm are accused of being "puppets" of
big business seeking only to "pave the
nation."

Can America survive such a massive
change in its structure? Can the
Constitution have a shred of meaning if
property rights and free enterprise are
eliminated? Is an America in which its
citizens are literally herded into special
"human habitat areas" without industry,
without technology or without joy, a
country in which we would care to live?

Most Americans would answer no. But
most Americans would also say such an
idea is simply ridiculous. It will never
happen. Americans, they say, would never
stand for it. They would rise up in revolt
to save their property and way of life if
the government tried to turn 50 percent
of the nation into wilderness.

So ask yourself just one question: where
have those protests been as we've lost the
first twenty five percent?

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