Rur­al landown­ers who desire to use their own prop­er­ty are shocked when they learn new reg­u­la­tions increas­ing­ly restrict them from doing almost any­thing. These reg­u­la­tions osten­si­bly pro­tect endan­gered species, view­sheds, open space, or a host of oth­er rea­sons for lim­it­ing the own­ers rights to use their land. Although the envi­ron­ment and soci­ety alleged­ly ben­e­fit from the reg­u­la­tions, it is the landown­er who pays the price through low­ered prop­er­ty val­ues. Rarely does the prop­er­ty own­er receive just com­pen­sa­tion for the soci­etal benefit―as required by the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion and almost every state con­sti­tu­tion. Rather the prop­er­ty own­er is required to pay the entire cost, even though all of soci­ety sup­pos­ed­ly benefits.

Essen­tial Back­ground Reading
Why Prop­er­ty Rights Matter
The Prob­lem With The Endan­gered Species Act
Inter­na­tion­al Dom­i­na­tion of US Envi­ron­men­tal Law and Pri­vate Property
The Wild­lands Project

These reg­u­la­tions are usu­al­ly devel­oped by plan­ners or oth­er pro­fes­sion­als who have no real-life expe­ri­ence in rur­al liv­ing. Because they have no real under­stand­ing of what is required to devel­op exploit nat­ur­al resources, they estab­lish ide­al­is­tic arbi­trary and capri­cious rules that make farm­ing, ranch­ing and tim­ber grow­ing increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult and less prof­itable. When some resource users find they can no longer farm, ranch or pro­duce tim­ber prof­itably they are forced to sell their prop­er­ty at a great­ly reduced val­ue because the same reg­u­la­tions deval­ue the land. Those who own prop­er­ty near an urban area face an added bur­den when their ad val­orem tax­es sky­rock­et due to the grow­ing poten­tial for devel­op­ment. Yet, when they try to sell their land for devel­op­ment they find their prop­er­ty val­ue has plum­met­ed because reg­u­la­tions requir­ing open space and oth­er soci­etal ben­e­fits severe­ly lim­it the abil­i­ty to devel­op the land and there­fore its value.

Prop­er­ty own­ers in Amer­i­ca have always accept­ed the need for reg­u­la­tions. Com­mon law since the time of the Magna Char­ta has always allowed the gov­ern­ment to restrict prop­er­ty use that would oth­er­wise cause prob­lems of safe­ty, health, harm or nui­sance to the com­mu­ni­ty or the prop­er­ty own­er’s neigh­bors. How­ev­er, the impo­si­tion of reg­u­la­tions to pro­vide vague ben­e­fits to soci­ety or the envi­ron­ment is rel­a­tive­ly new in Amer­i­ca. This new process is called sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. With sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, no longer do prop­er­ty own­ers in the Unit­ed States have unalien­able prop­er­ty rights, as penned in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and pro­tect­ed in the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion’s Bill of Rights. Instead, gov­ern­ment impos­es on prop­er­ty own­ers what are termed “usufruc­to­ry rights.” Since unalien­able prop­er­ty rights pro­vide the foun­da­tion to lib­er­ty and wealth in Amer­i­ca, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment por­tends dire con­se­quences to all Americans.

By def­i­n­i­tion, usufruc­to­ry rights are the rights to use and enjoy the prof­its and advan­tages of some­thing belong­ing to anoth­er, as long as the prop­er­ty is not dam­aged or altered in any way. Con­cep­tu­al­ly, it is sim­i­lar to rent­ing or leas­ing some­thing with­in lim­its set by its true own­er. The usufruct sys­tem of prop­er­ty use is derived from the Latin word usus­fruc­tus. Orig­i­nal­ly it defined Roman prop­er­ty inter­ests between a mas­ter and his slave held under a usus fruc­tus (Latin: “use and enjoy­ment”) bond. The Romans expand­ed this con­cept to cre­ate an estate of uses in land rather than an estate of pos­ses­sion. Hav­ing seized lands belong­ing to con­quered king­doms, the Romans con­sid­ered them pub­lic lands, and rent­ed (usus­fruc­tus) them to Roman sol­diers. Thus the emper­or retained the estate (pos­ses­sion) in the lands, but gave the occu­pi­er an estate of uses.

The grow­ing moun­tain of envi­ron­men­tal and oth­er reg­u­la­tions that sup­pos­ed­ly ben­e­fits the pub­lic good in the Unit­ed States today has stripped Amer­i­cans of the unalien­able right to pos­sess land. Instead, Amer­i­cans increas­ing­ly have only the usufruct right to use the land and pay tax­es (rent). As with the Romans, the gov­ern­ment retains the right to deter­mine how the land is used.

The Link Between Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment and The Wild­lands Project

The usufruct prin­ci­ples of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment first became pub­lic at the 1976 Unit­ed Nations Con­fer­ence on Human Set­tle­ments (Habi­tat I) held in Van­cou­ver. For instance, the Pre­am­ble of Agen­da Item 10 of the Con­fer­ence Report states that:

Land…can­not be treat­ed as an ordi­nary asset, con­trolled by indi­vid­u­als and sub­ject to the pres­sures and inef­fi­cien­cies of the mar­ket. Pri­vate land own­er­ship is also a prin­ci­pal instru­ment of accu­mu­la­tion and con­cen­tra­tion of wealth and there­fore con­tributes to social injus­tice; if unchecked, it may become a major obsta­cle in the plan­ning and imple­men­ta­tion of devel­op­ment schemes. The pro­vi­sion of decent dwellings and healthy con­di­tions for the peo­ple can only be achieved if land is used in the inter­ests of soci­ety as a whole. Pub­lic con­trol of land use is there­fore indis­pens­able.…” (Ital­ics added)

Through­out this UN doc­u­ment the social­ist mod­el for pri­vate prop­er­ty rights are set forth as the basis for future Unit­ed Nations policy:

Pub­lic own­er­ship or effec­tive con­trol of land in the pub­lic inter­est is the sin­gle most impor­tant means of…achieving a more equi­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of the ben­e­fits of devel­op­ment…. Gov­ern­ments must main­tain full juris­dic­tion and exer­cise com­plete sov­er­eign­ty over such land…. Change in the use of land…should be sub­ject to pub­lic con­trol and regulation…of the com­mon good. (Ital­ics added)

State con­trol over pri­vate prop­er­ty has been cen­tral to every inter­na­tion­al treaty since the 1970s. The Unit­ed Nations’ World Com­mis­sion on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment for­mal­ized this into inter­na­tion­al pol­i­cy when it pub­lished its report Our Com­mon Future in 1987. This land­mark report helped trig­ger a wide range of actions, includ­ing the UN “Earth Sum­mits” in 1992 and 2002, the Inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Change Con­ven­tion, The Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty and world­wide “Agen­da 21″ pro­grams. Agen­da 21 is a 40 chap­ter mas­ter plan to reor­ga­nize nation­al laws to the social­ist prin­ci­ples of cen­tral con­trol. The Unit­ed States signed Agen­da 21 dur­ing the 1992 Earth Sum­mit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Chap­ter 15.3 requires “urgent and deci­sive action” be tak­en “to con­serve and main­tain genes, species and ecosys­tems, with a view to the sus­tain­able man­age­ment and use of bio­log­i­cal resources.” To do this chap­ter 15.4 requires that “Governments…should:

(a) Press for the ear­ly entry into force of the Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty, with the widest pos­si­ble par­tic­i­pa­tion; and
(b) Devel­op nation­al strate­gies for the con­ser­va­tion of bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty and the sus­tain­able use of bio­log­i­cal resources.

Chap­ter 15.5 of Agen­da 21 con­tin­ues by stat­ing that “con­ser­va­tion of ecosys­tems and nat­ur­al habitats…should include the rein­force­ment of ter­res­tri­al… pro­tect­ed area systems…and promot[ion of] envi­ron­men­tal­ly sound and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment in areas adja­cent to pro­tect­ed areas with a view to fur­ther­ing pro­tec­tion of these areas.” The Unit­ed Nations and its inter­na­tion­al allies designed the Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty to be the work­horse in ful­fill­ing these require­ments. The treaty was mere­ly a 18 page out­line of what need­ed to be done. Sen­a­tor Jesse Helms (R‑NC) cor­rect­ly called it “a pre­am­ble false­ly described as a treaty.” The imple­ment­ing lan­guage was to be added after enough nations rat­i­fied it to put it into force. Even so, Arti­cle 8 of the treaty uses almost iden­ti­cal lan­guage used in Agen­da 21:

(a) Pro­mote a sys­tem of pro­tect­ed areas or areas where spe­cial mea­sures need to be tak­en to con­serve bio­log­i­cal diversity;
(e) Pro­mote envi­ron­men­tal­ly sound and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment in areas adja­cent to pro­tect­ed areas with a view to fur­ther­ing pro­tec­tion of these areas.”

By August of 1993 the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion accept­ed Agen­da 21’s chal­lenge when it direct­ed “nat­ur­al resource and envi­ron­men­tal agencies…develop a joint strat­e­gy to help the Unit­ed States ful­fill its exist­ing inter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions (e.g. Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty, Agen­da 21)…the exec­u­tive branch should direct fed­er­al agen­cies to eval­u­ate nation­al policies…in light of inter­na­tion­al poli­cies and oblig­a­tions, and to amend nation­al poli­cies to achieve inter­na­tion­al objec­tives.” This effort became the pri­ma­ry rea­son for the need for vice pres­i­dent Gore and pres­i­dent Clin­ton to rein­vent gov­ern­ment.

To accom­plish this, pres­i­dent Clin­ton also cre­at­ed the Pres­i­den­t’s Coun­cil on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment. The coun­cil was com­prised of green-ori­ent­ed indus­tri­al lead­ers, nat­ur­al resource cab­i­net heads and lead­ers of major envi­ron­men­tal groups. The coun­cil pro­duced a host of social­ist guide­lines to imple­ment Agen­da 21 in a series of doc­u­ments under the ban­ner of Sus­tain­able Amer­i­ca from 1996 to 1999. These became the offi­cial poli­cies of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and were heav­i­ly pro­mot­ed by envi­ron­men­tal non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions (NGOs) and foun­da­tions. All are cen­tered on the usufruct con­cept of property.

The Unit­ed Nations intend­ed that the imple­ment­ing lan­guage for the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Treaty be tak­en from the Glob­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Assess­ment (GBA), a 1040 page tome that osten­si­bly sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly defined the rea­son and the method­ol­o­gy for pro­tect­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty. The GBA estab­lish­es the need for the usufruct concept,

• Prop­er­ty rights are not absolute and unchang­ing, but rather a com­plex, dynam­ic and shift­ing rela­tion­ship between two or more par­ties, over space or time. Sec­tion 11.2.3.1.2
• One option for ensur­ing against exces­sive species deple­tion is the allo­ca­tion of prop­er­ty rights in order to cre­ate mar­kets. Sec­tion 12.7.5
• A com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tic of many ecosys­tems is that resources are non‑exclusive in their use: they are in the nature of local pub­lic goods. Prop­er­ty rights can still be allo­cat­ed to the envi­ron­men­tal pub­lic good, but in this case they should be restrict­ed to usufruc­tu­al or user rights. Har­vest­ing quo­ta, emis­sions per­mits and the devel­op­ment rights are exam­ples of such rights. Sec­tion 12.7.5
• “The point here is that the real­lo­ca­tion of prop­er­ty rights implies the redis­tri­b­u­tion of assets.” sec­tion 12.7.5 (Ital­ics added)

The usufruct con­cept of prop­er­ty had to be in place before any part of Agen­da 21 and the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Treaty could be imple­ment­ed. Per­haps the most chill­ing, how­ev­er, is that in order to pro­tect bio­di­ver­si­ty, the GBA called for plac­ing vast areas into wilder­ness and pro­tect­ed from human use:

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive areas of all major ecosys­tems in a region need to be reserved.… Reserved “blocks should be as large as pos­si­ble.… Buffer zones should be estab­lished around core areas and cor­ri­dors should con­nect these areas. This basic design is cen­tral to the Wild­lands Project in the Unit­ed States (Noss, 1992), a controversial…strategy…to expand nat­ur­al habi­tats and cor­ri­dors to cov­er as much as 30% of the US land area.” (Sec­tion 13.4.2.2.3)

In oth­er words, the Wild­lands Project was designed to be the cor­ner­stone of the Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty. Although the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty was stopped in the U.S. Sen­ate in 1994, explained below), mil­lions of dol­lars are spent annu­al­ly to imple­ment it with­out ben­e­fit of the treaty. It has already destroyed the lives of thou­sands of peo­ple. Even­tu­al­ly, every Amer­i­can will expe­ri­ence its severe consequences.

The Wild­lands Project

The ref­er­ence to Noss, 1992, in the GBA is to a spe­cial issue of Wild Earth, a pub­li­ca­tion of the Ceno­zoic Soci­ety, a NGO com­mit­ted to re-wild­ing the Unit­ed States. In this issue, Dr. Reed Noss lays out in detail the land con­ser­va­tion strat­e­gy to imple­ment the Wild­lands Project.1 The Wild­lands Strat­e­gy calls for estab­lish­ing core wilder­ness reserves that are inter­con­nect­ed by wilder­ness cor­ri­dors, all of which would be sur­round­ed by buffer zones man­aged to pro­tect the wilder­ness areas (See Fig­ure 1).

The Wild­lands Project calls for estab­lish­ing thou­sands of core reserves and inter­con­nect­ing cor­ri­dors from Alas­ka and the North­west Ter­ri­to­ries to Chile and Argentina.

The strat­e­gy nor­mal­ly is accom­plished in five steps:

1. Iden­ti­fy exist­ing pro­tect­ed areas such as fed­er­al and state wilder­ness areas, parks, nation­al mon­u­ments, refuges and oth­er des­ig­nat­ed sites. They should be from 100,000 to 25 mil­lion acres in size. These are already wilder­ness or close to it. Such tracts would serve as “core reserves” com­plete­ly off-lim­its to human activity.

2. Iden­ti­fy oth­er mul­ti­ple-use gov­ern­ment land that can be polit­i­cal­ly forced into wilder­ness sta­tus. Road­less areas are high­est pri­or­i­ty, but exist­ing roads can be closed if road­less areas are not available.

3. Cre­ate wilder­ness cor­ri­dors along streams, rivers and moun­tain ranges that inter­con­nect the core reserves.

4. Pur­chase, con­demn or reg­u­late pri­vate prop­er­ty to fill in the gaps where pub­lic land did not exist. Usufruct reg­u­la­tion is pre­ferred because the gov­ern­ment would not have to pay for the land.

5. Cre­ate buffer areas around land not in core reserves or inter­con­nect­ing wilder­ness to man­age them sus­tain­ably so they pro­tect the core wilder­ness areas.

Wild­lands Project co-author Reed Noss explains that in the core, cor­ri­dor and buffer areas, “The col­lec­tive needs of non-human species must take prece­dence over the needs and desires of humans.“1 The Wild­lands Project (now Wild­lands Net­work) is the mas­ter plan for both Agen­da 21 and the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Treaty, and rep­re­sents a grandiose design to trans­form at least half the land area of the con­ti­nen­tal Unit­ed States into an immense “eco-park” cleansed of mod­ern indus­try and pri­vate prop­er­ty. Says Noss;

One half of the land area of the 48 con­ter­mi­nous [Unit­ed] States be encom­passed in core [wilder­ness] reserves and inner cor­ri­dor zones (essen­tial­ly exten­sions of core reserves) with­in the next few decades.… Half of a region in wilder­ness is a rea­son­able guess of what it will take to restore viable pop­u­la­tions of large car­ni­vores and nat­ur­al dis­tur­bance regimes, assum­ing that most of the oth­er 50 per­cent is man­aged intel­li­gent­ly as buffer zone… Even­tu­al­ly, a wilder­ness net­work would dom­i­nate a region and thus would itself con­sti­tute the matrix, with human habi­ta­tions being the islands.2

The Wild­lands con­cept is large­ly the work of Dave Fore­man, the prin­ci­pal founder of the eco-ter­ror­ist group Earth First! and a for­mer mem­ber of the board of the Sier­ra Club. Fore­man describes the Wild­lands Project as an effort to “tie the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent into a sin­gle Bio­di­ver­si­ty Pre­serve.” Fore­man sum­ma­rizes Wild­lands as “a bold attempt to grope our way back to 1492” — that is, to repeal a half-mil­len­ni­um of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, with its unique bless­ings of mate­r­i­al pros­per­i­ty, tech­no­log­i­cal progress, pri­vate prop­er­ty and indi­vid­ual rights. Indeed, the vision state­ment of the Wild­lands Project is stun­ning in scope;

Our vision is sim­ple: we live for the day when Griz­zlies in Chi­huahua have an unbro­ken con­nec­tion to Griz­zlies in Alas­ka; when Gray Wolf pop­u­la­tions are con­tin­ues from New Mex­i­co to Green­land; when vast unbro­ken forests and flow­ing plains again thrive and sup­port pre-Columbian pop­u­la­tions of plants and ani­mals; when humans dwell with respect, har­mo­ny, and affec­tion for the land…3

John Davis, edi­tor of Wild Earth, acknowl­edges that the Wild­lands Project seeks noth­ing less than “the end of indus­tri­al civ­i­liza­tion.… Every­thing civ­i­lized must go…“4

In this bizarre scheme, human civ­i­liza­tion must be rad­i­cal­ly recon­fig­ured, mines would be closed, roads torn from the land­scape, tim­ber har­vest­ing stopped and human pop­u­la­tions relo­cat­ed. All of this is to be done, accord­ing to Wild­lands co-founder Michael Soulé, in har­mo­ny with a prophet­ic vision: “The ora­cles are the fish­es of the riv­er, the fish­ers of the for­est and artic­u­late toads. Our nat­u­ral­ists and con­ser­va­tion biol­o­gists can help us trans­late their utter­ances. Our spokesper­sons, fund-rais­ers and grass-roots orga­niz­ers will show us how to imple­ment their sage advice.“5

Defeat­ing the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Treaty

All of this could be dis­missed as flat­ly ridicu­lous were it not for its cen­tral role in the UN Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty and its near reli­gious sup­port by near­ly all of the envi­ron­men­tal NGOs. Agen­da 21 and the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Treaty would per­mit a restruc­tured and unac­count­able UN Trustee­ship Coun­cil to reg­u­late any human activ­i­ty that presents poten­tial harm to bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty. Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Kofi Annan’s July 18, 1997 UN Reform plans, “[the Trustee­ship Coun­cil will] be recon­sti­tut­ed as the forum through which Mem­ber states exer­cise their col­lec­tive trustee­ship for the integri­ty of the glob­al envi­ron­ment and com­mon areas.… At the same time, it should serve to link the Unit­ed Nations and civ­il soci­ety in address­ing these areas of glob­al concern.“6 In prin­ci­ple, this man­date would cov­er all human activ­i­ty, giv­en that almost any­thing humans do is deemed as harm­ful to bio­log­i­cal diversity.

THE BIODIVERSITY TREATY WOULD PERMIT A RESTRUCTURED AND UNACCOUNTABLE UN TRUSTEESHIP COUNCIL TO REGULATE ANY HUMAN ACTIVITY THAT PRESENTS POTENTIAL HARM TO BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY

The Sen­ate was asked to autho­rize the cre­ation of imple­ment­ing “pro­to­cols” that would be writ­ten after the treaty had been rat­i­fied and would be bind­ing upon the sig­na­to­ries. The “fac­tu­al” infor­ma­tion upon which the imple­ment­ing lan­guage was to be based was found in a 1,140-page UN Glob­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Assess­ment (GBA) that was in draft form when the Sen­ate was con­sid­er­ing the treaty.

The Sen­ate was poised to rat­i­fy the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Treaty in Sep­tem­ber 1994, when the Amer­i­can sheep indus­try obtained a por­tion of the draft GBA from the Inter­na­tion­al Union for the Con­ser­va­tion of Nature (IUCN) in Switzer­land, the orig­i­nal author of the treaty. As not­ed above, the GBA specif­i­cal­ly cites the Wild­lands Project as the tem­plate for pro­tect­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty. It was the smok­ing gun.

The draft GBA, along with maps pro­vid­ed by Envi­ron­men­tal Per­spec­tives, Inc. depict­ing what this would look like when ful­ly imple­ment­ed, arrived the day of the vote and was tak­en to the Sen­ate floor by Sen­a­tor Kay Bai­ley Hutchin­son (R‑TX) a mere hour before the sched­uled clo­ture vote for the treaty. The extreme­ly con­tro­ver­sial UN infor­ma­tion caused then-Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader George Mitchell (D‑ME) to with­draw the treaty from con­sid­er­a­tion. It was nev­er vot­ed on.

The con­nec­tion between the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Treaty and the Wild­lands Project was not a coin­ci­dence. The treaty was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by the IUCN in 1982, about the time it was pro­mot­ing a new sci­ence called con­ser­va­tion biol­o­gy, which, in turn, pro­vid­ed the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Treaty. Two of the key pro­mot­ers of this unproven sci­ence were none oth­er than Reed Noss and Michael Soulé who, along with Dave Fore­man, co-authored the Wild­lands Project. Although few Amer­i­cans have even heard of the IUCN, this orga­ni­za­tion has its fin­ger­prints on just about every alleged envi­ron­men­tal prob­lem in Amer­i­ca today. Read the Inter­na­tion­al Dom­i­na­tion of US Envi­ron­men­tal Law and Pri­vate Prop­er­ty for more infor­ma­tion on this connection.

____________________________

1Reed Noss. “The Wild­lands Project, Land Con­ser­va­tion Strat­e­gy.” Wild Earth, Spe­cial Issue, 1992, pp. 10–25.
2Ibid, p. 15.
3Dave Fore­man, et. al. “The Wild­lands Project, Land Con­ser­va­tion Strat­e­gy.” Wild Earth, Spe­cial Issue, 1992, pp. 3.
4John Davis. “The Wild­lands Project, Land Con­ser­va­tion Strat­e­gy.” Wild Earth, Spe­cial Issue, 1992, pp.9.
5Michael Soulé. “The Wild­lands Project, Land Con­ser­va­tion Strat­e­gy.” Wild Earth, Spe­cial Issue, 1992, pp.9.
6Documents ‘Track I’ (A/51/829) of March 17th, 1997, and ‘Track II’ (A/51/950) of July 14th, 1997.