Liberty
Matters News Service
September 30, 2004
UN or US to Decide Forest Management?
The U.S. Forest Service is currently accepting public
comments to determine how to change the Clinton-era Roadless Area Conservation
Rule to allow timber harvesting in our nation's forests. But, if the United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD) successfully pushes through
a newer, bolder version of the International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA),
the United States may not have much say about timber management within its own
boundaries. In 1999, the U.S. signed the UN measure that created the ITTA,
which was developed to establish a timber market that is "fair" to all nations
and support sustainable use of natural resources, giving more weight to the
environment than the needs of humans. Members of the organization are divided
into two voting sections; timber producers and timber consumers with the U.S.
labeled as the latter. This puts America at a disadvantage because the votes of
producer countries, such as Indonesia and Malaysia, carry more weight than
consumer nations in determining global timber harvest policies. The UNCTD plans
to launch an expanded version of ITTA by 2005, which will give the
international community even more power to regulate forest management. The new
version ITTA2, will increase "political attention on forest governance,"
"interest in monitoring and regulating the international trade," and "interest
in managing natural forests as ecosystems." If the U.S. doesn't reject this
latest agreement our vast forest resources may be forever lost.
UN Threatens to Trump US Land Policy
Widow Sues Government
A Great Falls, Montana woman
is suing state and federal government agencies charging their mismanagement of
grizzly bears resulted in the death of her husband, Timothy Hilston, in 2001.
Mary Ann Hilston said in her charge that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and
the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks failed to warn hunters that
grizzlies were becoming a serious threat to elk hunters in the Blackfoot
Clearwater Wildlife Management Area. Court documents state: "The defendants
knew that bears were becoming accustomed to gunshots and that bears were using
the sound of gunshots as a 'dinner bell.'" Mrs. Hilston said the agents
received reports that an aggressive sow grizzly and her two cubs had taken over
a hunter's elk carcass in the area on October 27, 2001, yet failed to warn her
husband and others of the danger. Mr. Hilston was killed by the grizzly and her
cubs on October 30, three days later. Wildlife managers eventually killed the
sow and her cubs, fearing they had picked up too many bad habits from their
mother. Mrs. Hilston is seeking a jury trial and unspecified damages for the
wrongful death of her husband.
Suit Filed Over Hunter's Death
From Farmland to Swamp
A 7,000-acre Illinois farm will soon decay
and disappear under the murky waters of a dismal swamp now that The Nature
Conservancy has taken control of the 80-year old operation. TNC paid $18.5
million for the property in 2000 and plans are under way to demolish the
outbuildings and homes to be replaced by wetlands, sort of making a sow's ear
out of a silk purse. Nature Conservancy ecologist, Doug Blodgett, thinks it
could take three years to destroy 80 years of production agriculture at
Emiquon. Blodgett says it is no longer necessary to use marginal ground for
crops. In fact, he says, [K]eeping them in use as farms causes a whole range of
negative environmental effects." TNC has been in the swamp restoration business
since 1999, when they turned the 1,700 acre Swampy Bottom place into a haven
for snakes and frogs. The planners hope their efforts will be duplicated by
others seeing more farmland replaced by swamps. Donald Hey, a senior vice
president of the Wetlands Initiative, another backwards-looking group, said he
believes the farmland to swamp concept can be replicated in river basins from
the Cheaspeake [river] to the Sacramento.
Future of Illinois Farm May Lie in Swampy
Past
$70 Million for Land Grabs
Interior Secretary Gale
Norton has announced the federal government is distributing more than $70
million of public funds to twenty-eight states and one territory for
acquisition of habitat for endangered plants and animals. The money will go a
long way in furthering EarthFirst! founder Dave Foreman's vision of the
Wildlands Project of rewilding 50 percent of our nation. The grants are funded
through the Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund, the Habitat
Conservation Plan Land Acquisition Grants Program, the Habitat Conservation
Planning Assistance Grants Program and the Recovery Land Acquisition Grants
Program. "These grant programs are some of the many tools we have to help
landowners conserve valuable wildlife habitats in the day-to-day management of
their lands," said U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Steve Williams. The
grants will allow states and/or non-governmental organizations to keep
landowners from using their property without supervision. A quick review of the
grants reveal millions of acres of private property will be acquired to provide
large tracts of land for wildlife corridors, a key provision of the Wildlands
Project. In some cases the Nature Conservancy will buy entire ranches and then
sell portions back to the government. The Bush administration has provided an
unprecedented amount of money for land acquisition under the cloak of
conservation resulting in a rapid escalation of the radical environmentalists'
dream of "the end of industrial civilization," and a return to "October
1492."
DOI Awards
More Than $70M in Grants to Support Land Acquisitions and Conservation Planning
for Endangered Species