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This plan was first published in the United States in 1992 by
Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First! and now a director of
the Sierra Club. Even though the plan was written by Dr. Reed
Noss, and funded by The Nature Conservancy and the Audubon Society,
no one took it very seriously. After all, who could take seriously
the idea of locking up half the country beyond the reach of people?
The Department of Interior took it seriously, as did the Environmental
Protection Agency. Both federal agencies, under the direct instruction
of Vice President Al Gore, dramatically changed their policies
relating to land management. Both agencies adopted the idea that
human beings were to be considered a “biological resource,” and
that ecosystem protection would be elevated to the same priority
level as “human health.”
The United Nations took it seriously. Foreman’s plan is named
specifically, as “central” to the biodiversity protection scheme
required by the Convention on Biological Diversity, in an official
U.N. publication entitled Global Biodiversity Assessment. Sadly,
private landowners are now taking the plan seriously, even though
they have no idea that the plan even exists. In South Florida,
Jared Figley is being pressured by a state agency to leave the
land his family has ranched for four generations. In Pennsylvania,
Bob Learzaf’s land, purchased by his great-grand-uncle in 1923,
is being taken from him by the feds–without compensation. From
one end of the country to the other, people are being squeezed
off their land under some pretense of protecting the environment.
What we are now just beginning to see is hardly the tip of the
iceberg. Dozens of federal programs have been launched to implement
Foreman’s plan incrementally. The U.S. Man and the Biosphere Program
(USMAB) is working to expand 47 U.N. Biosphere Reserves in the
United States, each of which consists of wilderness areas, “managed”
areas, and “zones of transition,” which are used to continually
expand the area under government domination.
Al Gore’s Clean Water Initiative, and Clinton’s Land Legacy Initiative,
are both designed to extend federal jurisdiction over private
land in the name of protecting the environment. At the same time,
the President’s Council on Sustainable Development is waging war
on urban sprawl by promoting “visioning councils” to transform
American cities into “sustainable communities.” Without any public
announcement, without any congressional debate, and certainly
without the consent of the governed, the federal government is
transforming America to conform to the plan Foreman published
in 1992.
“No,” say the feds, “we’re just trying to protect the environment.”
That’s the same “feds” who for six years denied using pyrotechnics
at Waco, led by the chief fed who “... did not have sex with that
woman.”
Many, if not most, of the state and federal field workers have
no idea that the policies they are implementing are even related
to a grand plan to transform America. They are just doing as they
are told, often defending the integrity of their agency, while
being used by their superiors to subvert the very foundations
of American liberty.
Private property rights are constantly under attack as the major
obstacle to “institutional environmental management.” Property
rights advocates are also attacked as “anti-environment” activists.
Private owners are, by far, the best caretakers of the land. The
problem is, private owners may not care for their land in the
same way that the government thinks it should be cared for. By
bringing the awesome power of government to bear on landowners
individually, through its myriad programs, the government is succeeding
in transforming America. Should private landowners wake up, and
realize that what’s happening to their neighbors will soon be
happening to them, there may well be an uprising.
Henry Lamb is executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation
Organization (ECO), and chairman of Sovereignty International. |
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