The Drafters of our Constitution were uncommonly wise men. They suffered mightily in order to develop a document providing to a central government only those limited powers necessary for protection against foreign powers and necessary for commercial interchange.

If they knew that by 1996 a team of federal employees, acting outside the scope of congressional authority, would be putting together a plan for land use control that would spread across the entire country, they would have packed and gone home. They were in Philadelphia to draft a document which would forever prevent such central control.

But, the Clinton Administration, with total disregard for the Philadelphia document known as the United States Constitution, is now implementing the Eastside and Upper Columbia River Basin Ecosystem Projects, encompassing over 75 million acres of land that include the Cascade Mountains east to Montana and parts of Utah and Wyoming and Canada south to Nevada engulfing all of Idaho.

The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which they propose, spreads a spidery web of federal land planning never before condoned by a Congress of the United States. It is just the beginning of an integral project which envisions control over every square mile of this country. The EIS consists of 19 separate volumes containing over 5,000 pages of convoluted information that defies meaningful public review.

In 1993, twenty federal agencies signed a Memorandum of Understanding that initiated a plan for development of ecosystem management projects. For each project, an ecosystem would be designated and studied through data collection and analysis, goals for land use would be established, and through "ecosystem management," land would be regulated to achieve the established goals.

Such projects have never been authorized by Congress. Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution empowers only the Congress "to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States." No doubt the agency initiation of ecosystem management projects, without congressional authorization, constitutes an executive usurpation of legislative authority.

To the current administration, constitutional limitations appear meaningless. The agencies continued their unauthorized plan by siphoning off funds and staff time from statutorily mandated duties.

No section of the nation is spared from ecosystem designation. In 1994, the Government Accounting Office reported that the Fish and Wildlife Service planned ecosystem designations coast to coast. Planned ecosystems are so expansive, and the driving land use control concept is so restrictive of human use that the process appears analogous to the wilderness corridors proposed by the Wildlands Project supported by the United Nations Environment Program.

The Wildlands Project proposes to encompass at least half of the 48 contiguous states in wildlife preserves and corridors off limits to humans. The project claims that "[T]he native ecosystem and the collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans."

That same concept was embraced in the 75 million acre Columbia River Basin Ecosystem proposed by the BLM-Forest Service last June. It contends that changes may have to be made in human operations connected with existing "water rights, mineral leases, mining claims, rights-of-way, livestock grazing permits, awarded contracts, and special use permits" in order to meet the objectives of ecosystem management.

There should be real concern about the impact of these ecosystem designations and ensuing regulations on private land lying adjacent to and intermixed with the federal land. The designated ecosystems contain land, both federal and private, long targeted for restriction of use by anti-logging, anti-mining, anti-livestock grazing and anti-recreation organizations.

The EIS documents acknowledge that the ecosystem study included "private as well as public lands in order to give us a more complete picture of what is happening on adjacent lands, how our actions affect our neighbors, and vice versa." Yet the agencies claim that federal regulatory decisions will apply only to federal lands. Not even a casual observer of land use regulatory practices can accept such a claim.

Regulations designed to restrict commercial and recreation usage and to protect species will, by necessity, impact private land within the ecosystem. If the regulations were not designed to cross property boundaries, they would be ineffective tools for the federal effort to restrict human land use.

Obviously, when habitat protection for a species is developed under ecosystem management, habitat will not end at the boundary of private property. The agencies admit in the recently released documents that "[T]he issues we face transcend human-drawn boundaries, and so must our vision."

Attempted regulation of water usage will definitely impact private property rights. The EIS claims "that the right to use water for management of the public lands was reserved by the United States when the national forests, wilderness, wild and scenic river areas, national recreation areas, and certain BLM administered lands were established." That claim is inconsistent with private water rights.

The EIS further states that minimum instream flows must be maintained in order to meet the federal needs. Obviously, regulations designed to maintain instream flows to regulate water use and water quality will impact adjoining private land dependent upon the water source.

Beyond Common Sense

Adverse effects on private property are inevitable. The Sweet Home decision from the United States Supreme Court confirmed our fears that federal species regulations can impact private property. In U.S. v. Lindsey, 595 F.2D 5 (9th Cir. 1979), campers were found guilty of having violated a Forest Service regulation even though their act occurred on non-federal property.

More recently, a federal judge enjoined logging on private land stating that a pair of northern spotted owls nesting on federal land about a mile away might fly over the private land. Another federal judge permanently enjoined timber harvest of old growth redwood on private land because the harvest might have negative impact on future populations of the Marbled Murrelet.

Private property within the designated ecosystem may be impacted adversely by regulations issued by any of the 20 federal regulatory agencies participating in ecosystem planning. The impact is frightening when one recognizes that some of the participating agencies include the EPA, Forest Service, BLM, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Mines, Bureau of Reclamation, National Biological Survey, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Federal Highway Administration, National Park Service, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

During the past several years, warnings of impending federal control through ecosystem management have been sounded. Owyhee County, Idaho set forth a lengthy warning in a report to Representative Helen Chenoweth (R-ID) who began, and has continued, a spirited effort to curtail the ecosystem management projects.

Allan K. Fitzsimmons of Balanced Resources Solutions has warned that "[F]ederal management of ecosystems would significantly expand federal control of the use of privately owned land and lead to increased restrictions on the use of the nation’s public lands for economic purposes." Tom McDonnell of the American Sheep Industry Association warned that if the ecosystem scheme "is fully implemented, a centralized government will have the authority to intrude into almost every aspect of American life."

The warnings must continue. All interested in protecting private property rights should familiarize themselves with the ecosystem projects, review at least the summary of the "Eastside" and "Upper Columbia" documents, contact their representatives in Congress and protest the spread of federal land use control. The federal "hit" has already struck the west. It is only a matter of time before ecosystem management invades every American home.