The Wildlands Project

By Henry Lamb

Editor's note: The following is a series of four articles published in 1994, from more than 300 newspaper columns in our Members' Section. In 1995, the U.N. identified The Wildlands Project - by name - as the ideal land management scheme for the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity. It is sobering to see how effectively the plan has been implemented.

"Our vision is simple:" says Dave Foreman, convicted eco-terrorist,

"we live for the day when Grizzlies in Chihuahua have an unbroken connection to Grizzlies in Alaska; when Gray Wolf populations are continuous from New Mexico to Greenland; when vast unbroken forests and flowing plains again thrive and support pre-Columbian populations of plants and animals...."

Foreman has been babbling about his ecotopian dream of converting North America to wilderness since before he founded Earth First! His dream is no longer eco-babble; it is a well-funded, nationally organized campaign called the North American Wilderness Recovery Project, and described in detail in a special edition of Wild Earth, the journal of Foreman's newest organization, the Cenozoic Society.

Editor, John Davis, says:

"Wild Earth exists in part to remind conservationists that in the long run all lands and waters should be left to the whims of Nature, not to the selfish desires of one species which chose for itself the misnomer homo sapiens. Does the foregoing [the plan] mean that Wild Earth and the Wildlands Project advocate the end of industrial civilization? Most assuredly. Everything civilized must go...humanizing of landscapes must stop now and be reversed."

The centerpiece of the special edition is a strategy developed by Dr. Reed F. Noss, a research scientist for Idaho's College of Forestry, and Stanford University. According to Noss, the plan was prepared "...on contract with the National Audubon Society and The Nature Conservancy," two of the richest and most respected environmental organizations in the world.

Simply put, the Wildlands Project proposes to put humans in small urban islands within a wild continent. How much wildland is needed? Noss says 1000 grizzly bears are needed to sustain the species and he has determined that 1000 grizzlies need 242 million acres, or 378,000 square miles. That's an area larger than New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska combined. And that's for only 1000 grizzly bears.

Noss says:

"I suggest that at least half of the land area of the 48 conterminous states should be encompassed in core reserves and inner corridor zones...within the next few decades...assuming that most of the other 50 percent is managed intelligently as buffer zone."

The Noss plan identifies large "core reserves" surrounded by "inner buffer" areas, which are surrounded by "outer buffer" areas, which are all connected by "inter-regional corridors." He says: "Eventually, a wilderness network would dominate a region ...with human habitations being the islands."

Buffer zones, according to Noss, should be managed for the wildlife to insulate the area from human uses.

"In many cases, private lands will need to be acquired and added to national forests and other public lands in order to serve as effective buffers."

As preposterous as this plan may sound to ordinary, hard-working Americans, it is no longer the pipe-dream of an eco-zealot. Peter Kostmayer introduced the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA), which was co-sponsored by several Congressmen. This bill established a bioregion, a "core reserve" as Noss calls it, with buffer zones and connectors that reached from Wyoming to Canada. Kostmayer was not reelected, and the bill has not yet been adopted.

The Wilderness Act was adopted in 1964, after nine years of effort by wilderness advocates. The law set aside nine million acres forever as wilderness. Since then, an annual series of bills have been proposed, and now, more than 90 million acres have been set aside as wilderness. Dozens of bills are now under consideration that would designate even more land as wilderness.

The Wildlands Project may sound "wild" to most Americans, but it is a plan that is being implemented throughout the country by hundreds of organizations. And Congress appears only too willing to oblige.

Wildlands Project: Implementation Strategy

The Wildlands Project seeks to convert half of the land area of the lower 48 states to wilderness, and the other half to "intelligently managed" buffer zones which separate "islands" of human habitation. The project is described in detail in a special edition of Wild Earth, the publication of the Cenozoic Society, created by Earth First! founder, Dave Foreman. "We are concentrating on the big picture," Foreman says, "vast landscapes untrammeled and unencumbered by industrialization."

In his description of an Adirondack wild region, editor John Davis provides insight on intelligent management:

"Far from diminishing the economy, declaring the park a motor-free zone could create thousands of jobs: closing roads, dismantling dams, removing exotic species, packing in food and supplies for the remaining residents, monitoring water quality, reintroducing extirpated species, guiding birdwatchers, and such."

For years, these ideas were dismissed as ecobabble; today, they are being systematically implemented. The strategy was developed by Dr. Reed Noss, funded by the National Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy, and is moving forward steadily.

The Noss plan calls first, for "reconnaissance," defined as "field inventory." Secretary of Interior, Bruce Babbitt has issued Secretarial Order 3173 creating the National Biological Survey (NBS). Congress appropriated $65 million for the project, even though the enabling legislation was apparently killed by property rights protection amendments. Babbitt has said the NBS is his highest priority which he will implement without legislative guidelines.

The next step is control and intelligent management of the land, which according to Dave Foreman means: no grazing, no logging, no mining, road closures, and no off-road vehicles. Government already owns 40 percent of the land. More than 700 organizations similar to The Nature Conservancy are buying or acquiring land as rapidly as possible, much of which is resold to the government at a profit. The private land that remains is subject to ever-expanding government control.

Grazing, logging, mining, and off-road recreation is being systematically eliminated on federal lands. The Endangered Species Act, prolific propaganda produced by environmental organizations, particularly by the National Audubon Society, and third-party law suits filed by environmental organizations, are pushing people and "industrial civilization" off government lands.

Private lands are controlled by a maze of environmental laws. It is the objective of the Wildlands Project to squeeze people off private land onto "islands of human habitation." Using the Endangered Species Act, wetland regulations, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Heritage Corridors Act, park expansion, growth management, greenlining, buffer zones and an array of other federal, state, and local regulations, landowners are already at the mercy of the biocentric wildlands advocates.

To stifle the political backlash from property rights advocates, the wild earth crowd has devised an insidious strategy.

The Watershed Approach

Dr. Michael Soule is the chair of Environmental Studies at University of California, Santa Cruz, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Wildlands Project. He says: "The key is thinking big, both in space and time." Soule describes property rights and wise-use advocates as "enemies of the land." His strategy is to avoid toe-to-toe combat with landowners by becoming partners with them in the "planning process." He suggests bringing the owner of an important tract of land into the planning process and allowing the owner to continue his land use, but to encourage him to consider donating the land to a conservancy after his death. Soule points at the tax benefits that might be offered as incentives.

Gary Snyder is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. His contribution to the Wildlands Project suggests that the watershed, with "...watershed councils, become the building blocks of a continent-wide bioregional/ecosystem governance."

It is not a coincidence that both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Soil Conservation Service have adopted the "Watershed Approach to comprehensive integrated resource management." A watershed is defined by elevation and gravity. It is the area drained by a common water outlet. Every watershed is a part of a larger watershed. Thousands of watersheds comprise a river basin. The watershed is the basic hydrologic unit. Ecosystems and bioregions are defined by watersheds. It is now official EPA and SCS policy to define the watershed as the basic planning unit for "comprehensive integrated resource management." It is not a coincidence that the first step in the planning process is to identify a watershed council.

Participants on the watershed council are identified as "stakeholders," which are defined to be government entities, environmental organizations, industry, and interested individuals. Watersheds do not respect city limits or county lines. Watersheds frequently cross state boundaries and may encompass several government entities, hundreds of industries and thousands of interested individuals. The watershed approach fails to define how the councils are to be formed, what authority they will have, or exactly what they will do, or who will be in charge.

The watershed approach clearly sets the stage for a collision between local government interests and federal authority. And it provides a forum for bringing selected landowners into "the planning process." For the last two years, the EPA has worked to control resource management at the watershed level. Without a law to prescribe it, the EPA has wrangled its way administratively to exert the regulatory authority to control resource use, period. Led by the EPA and the Department of Interior, the federal government has become the facilitator for the Wildlands Project.

The Wildlands Project is coordinated nationally, but implemented at the local, watershed level, by hundreds of environmental organizations. Typically, the watershed council is loaded with environmental organizations and "interested individuals" who are functionaries of environmental organizations. The watershed council, as Gary Snyder suggests, can be the building block on which the nation is turned over to the grizzly bear.

In Deep Ecology, Gary Snyder says:

"There are now too many human beings and the problem is growing rapidly worse.... If man is to remain on earth, he must transform the five-millennia long urbanizing civilization tradition into a new ecologically-sensitive harmony-oriented wild-minded scientific/spiritual culture. Nothing short of total transformation will do much good."

The Wildlands Project: A Cure

Dave Foreman is the primary force behind the Wildlands Project. He is probably quite sincere when he says in his book, Confessions of an ECO Warrior: "An individual human life has no more intrinsic value than does an individual grizzly bear life." Or, when he says: "We can see that life in a hunter-gatherer society was on the whole healthier, happier, and more secure than our lives today as peasants, industrial workers, or business executives."

Dave Foreman is sincerely wrong!

The ultimate goal and logical end of the Wildlands Project is to strip industrial technology from civilization and return society to its pre-agricultural condition of cave-dwelling tribes that must be real eco warriors just to survive.

Value is a human concept. Nothing has value until a human assigns it value. If Dave Foreman wishes to assign equal value or ultimate value to a grizzly bear, that is his prerogative. He cannot, however, assign value for anyone other than himself. He may, however, persuade other people to subscribe to his system of values. And he is.

Tragically, far too many people refuse to think about the conflict of values until the consequences of Dave Foreman's value system emerges as the Endangered Species Act which prevented California residents from clearing a fire break around their homes. Or until the Clean Water Act prevents a landowner from plowing his pasture. Or until a Growth Management Act prevents a businessman from expanding his business.

The cure for the Wildlands Project is simple: wake up!

Dave Foreman's ecobabble has permeated the federal government, and America, not because it is a new, dynamic, righteous, idea, but because decent, hard-working people have not bothered to look behind the slick television programs, or challenge the twisted, unfounded news reports.

Actions have consequences. For twenty years, Foreman and his biocentric zealot cronies have been at work. The Wildlands Project is one of the consequences of their actions. If those who believe that the value of human life is superior to that of a grizzly bear or a cockroach continue to do nothing, Foreman's value system will prevail. If those who believe that life today is better than it was when tribes of people lived in a hunter-gatherer society continue to do nothing, Foreman's value system will strip automobiles, TVs, electricity, and food from the rest of us.

The cure for the Wildlands Project is simple: take action!

Band together with others who celebrate human life, and strive to make it better through the technology created by human brain power. Get in the face of local and federal decision makers and say no to expanded federal control. Say no to stupid ideas and unsubstantiated claims of environmental disaster. Say yes to politicians who champion individual freedom, free enterprise, and property rights for individuals.

The ultimate cure for the Wildlands Project is really simple. America has already designated more than 90 million acres as wilderness, exactly as prescribed by the Wildlands Project. Every person who supports the project should be provided free transportation to the wilderness area of his choice - and forbidden to return to civilization.