OPINION -- The Wildlands Project, which proposes to make 50% of the continent of North America uninhabitable, appears to be going "wild" all across the nation. Reports from California, South Carolina, Virginia, and almost every state in between are reporting huge chunks of their state being designated.

It is difficult to envision a wilderness in Illinois. Yet there is an area called the Chicago Wilderness, which is governed by a very prestigious steering committee. In 1996, a coalition of approximately 140 organizations launched Chicago Wilderness.

Their vision: "a thriving mosaic of natural areas [200,000 acres of 'private,' local, state, and federal protected lands connected by greenways and wildlife corridors] embedded within the Nation’s third largest metropolitan area. It stretches from southeastern Wisconsin, through northeastern Illinois and into northwestern Indiana," according to their website.

This group hopes this 200,000 acres of protected land will become a United Nations Biosphere Reserve. Private property owners beware.

The leader of the Chicago Wilderness organization, Elizabeth McCance, wants the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to protect ecosystems.

Said McCance, "There is a surprising number of high quality habitats in the Chicago area," adding she has "no idea how large it [the Biosphere] will be."

Stephanie Fulk of Chicago Wilderness said, "We are recognizing natural resources here in an urban environment."

Biodiversity simply means biological diversity. It is the variety of natural communities, plant and animal species, and even genes that exist within a particular place.

A United Nations Biosphere Reserve is an area of biological diversity protected by the UN.

Webster’s Dictionary says a wilderness is, "wasteland; uncultivated region; forest." Wooded areas are not uncommon in Illinois, but somehow it seems strange to call them a wildlands or a "wilderness." A wilderness usually comes under the Wildlands Program.

Most of us think of a wilderness as the land where Moses wandered for 40 years. There was no meat or plants or people living in the desert where Moses and the Israelites wandered. It was barren country.

When I look at pictures of western states where thousands and thousands of acres have been burned, I am reminded of the wilderness and Moses.

Note the picture below from the Wildlands Project website and what do you see [http://www.twp.org/]?

"A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." - The Wilderness Act of 1964 [http://www.sierraclub.org/wildlands/wilderness.asp].

Many are beginning to ask the question, "Why do we need the United Nations to protect biosphere reserves and other protected areas in the United States? Don’t we have enough layers of federal, state, and local government without adding global?"

We do not elect environmental leaders or United Nation officials, and yet they are in charge of this massive program.

Research this for yourself. It may be a little heavy if this is the first time you have heard about the program.

The question we should be asking is, "If Smart Growth or 'growing sensibly' says we should all live in stacked housing in sustainable communities, and we are not to have urban sprawl - and the Wildlands Project says we can’t live there because it belongs to the wild animals, where are we supposed to live?"

Just this week numerous sources are reporting the Wildlands Project popping up all across the nation, and it is moving fast. What seems strange is a program this powerful and unbelievable is not reported on television or in your local newspapers.

http://www.wildlandsproject.org/roomtoroam/connected will take you to a map that shows where vast corridors of land are to be protected from you and also show where the wild animals can roam. How will a bear or wolf know he is out of his corridor and in your territory?

"Mexico-to-Yucon Conservation Proposal Unveiled" is an article by Mead Gruver, an Associated Press writer. He says, "A conservation group unveiled a strategy... for protecting a continuous area from Mexico to the Canadian Yukon with the goal of preserving wildlife migration routes." He quotes Jen Clanahan, the group’s regional director, who said, "Large animals such as wolves and bears require lots of space - as do natural processes like wildfires and floods."

It appears he is saying there will be a long corridor between the Yukon and Mexico where people will not dare to go, as it will be for bears and wolves and other wild animals. We should ask, what do they intend to do with the people who live there?

What really jumped out in this statement was the natural processes of wildfires and floods. We know about the needless wildfires. But we must assume they mean the removal of dams and levees for the flooding, which has been a dream of the environmentalists.

"From the Yukon tundra to the high deserts of Mexico, bears, wolves, native trout, and other wild animals are struggling. The West is being fractured into small slivers. Logging, mining, real estate development, oil and gas drilling are destroying habitat and stranding wildlife in isolated islands of backcountry [http://www.wildlandsproject.org/roomtoroam/endangered/].

It has long been known the environmentalists want to do away with mining, timber cutting, agriculture, oil drilling, and any type of harvest of natural resources, even if they are renewable.

They will be biting the hand that feeds them because these same people drive cars, fly in airplanes, live in wood houses, and eat. These resources are the backbone of America. We have let their extremism shut down our factories. Next it will be our resources.

"But if you think about the 'synergy' that is going on between with the laws and the legislation, the regulation that we already have, we don’t need to pass Wildlands regulation," according to Thomas M. Bennett, from Maryville, Tennessee, when he spoke at the Sixth Annual New York State Conference on Private Property Rights.

"Push for Delmarva Wildlands Project Heats Up," by L. M. Schwartz, Chairman of the Virginia Land Rights Coalition, says Delmarva stands for a $500,000,000 plan for a 64,000 square mile Chesapeake Bay area of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. The 2002 Farm Bill provided funding for this project as a new federal "pilot" program. "It allows the Secretary of Agriculture to direct conservation program funds on a priority basis to the most economically and ecologically valuable land on Delmarva."

"The U.N. vision of natural resource control, being implemented in Delmarva by the Wildlands Project clone, the Delmarva Conservation Corridor Inititive, is diametrically opposed the Founders’ vision of individual liberty and private ownership of America’s land and resources," according to Schwartz. "The true goal of the Delmarva Conservation Corridor Initiative is control. Acquisition and control of land and natural resources, including human resources."

Kay McClanahan, the lady from South Carolina whose horse was shot and she received personal injury because she dared to stand up for her property rights against Smart Growth, recently received another shock. She discovered that a few years ago part of the area where she lives was quietly made a UN Biosphere Reserve without the knowledge or input of local residents, and it was not voted on by Congress.

The area can be expanded by restricting huge buffer zones through appropriate zonation on miles of private property around the Congaree Swamp/Reserve where, according to the UN, human use and activities will be managed.

Kay is asking for help in writing to oppose Congressman Jim Clyburn and Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina’s HB2580 and S1313 to change the 22,000 acre Congaree Swamp National Monument in Richland County, South Carolina, into a national park and enlarge it by 4600 acres with possible further expansion later on.

San Francisco is home area to two million acres that have been designated the Golden Gate Biosphere Reserve, only one of the 47 Biosphere Reserves in the United States protected by United Nations.

"Food is Power! We use it to control behavior. Some may call it bribery. We do not apologize?" stated Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program, speaking at the UN World Food Summit, November 1996.

If land is taken out of production and grazing is no longer permitted - and people are removed from these areas to make "wildlands," will we be controlled with no apology?

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