March 4, 2003

By Joyce Morrison joyce@illinoisleader.com

The Illinois Leader

http://illinoisleader.com

To submit a Letter to the Editor: jill@illinoisleader.com

Mobile Corporation sold an oil field to The Nature Conservatory thinking it was to protect the Attwater Prairie Chicken. Instead, this "not-for-profit" organization continues to drill for oil and raise "conservation beef" on the land.

Pitching in with a few bucks to environmental groups like The Nature Conservancy (TNC) makes you feel good about helping keep the Earth "pristine" for future generations. The reality is, you might as well treat your family to a good dinner because your money is like a single drop of rain in an ocean.

We are talking about big bucks when we are dealing with TNC and some of the other environmental groups.

According to Range magazine, "The governing board of TNC was formed of bankers, investors and foundation heads themselves."

TNC appears to be a "for profit" agency with a "not for profit" status. Ron Arnold's books, Undue Influence and Trashing the Economy tell about "wealthy foundations, grant-driven environmental groups, and zealous bureaucrats that control our future." These books will give you an insight on how much money is involved and how it is used.

According to TNC's fiscal year ending June 30, 2000, their income revenue was $784,263,611 with expenses of $392,799,844, showing a net gain of $391,463,767. Not bad for a charitable organization. Organization heads are very well paid.

Tim Findley of Range magazine reports, "Altruism (consecration to the good of others) was part of what prompted Mobil Oil Corporation in 1995 to give TNC a 21,300 acre field of low producing oil and gas reserves, which also turned out to be one of the last known breeding grounds for the endangered Attwater Prairie Chicken.

With gift in hand, TNC did not set out to save the bird.

It went to work restoring more oil and gas production on Mobil’s forgotten fields, sinking new wells, putting pumps back in operation and grazing 'Conservation Beef' among the dipping machinery plunging into the earth.

TNC has earned at least $5.5 million in royalties so far from the field and there is no evidence that any major expenditure has been put in to 'saving' the prairie chicken.

And in New Hampshire, TNC has acquired at least a million acres of timberland. TNC continues to log most of that land in what it says is 'sustainable practice.'

Isn't it strange -- all of a sudden the word "sustainable" makes it okay to drill for oil and cut timber?

Those poor little supposedly "endangered" critters are not important at all.

It's all about money and control.

People living along the Mississippi River and the lower Illinois River well remember the "Flood of 1993." Thousands of homes were flooded. Many thousands of acres of tasseling corn and soybeans lay under the deep waters as the rivers topped their levees for the first time since the levees were built in the early 1900s.

The government cleared the river corridors by buying out most of the homes that had been lived in safely for decades -- until 1993. There is only a rare indication that a home was ever on the land. Those people who lived there over the many years did not destroy "Mother Earth."

Sometimes I think back to the people who lived in those homes. How the kids rode their bicycles up and down the gravel roads with only an occasional vehicle passing by. You could take a walk to your neighbor's house and enjoy the beauty of nature along the way. Now the homes and families are gone.

Somehow people don't understand that nature abounds in rural areas. It does not have to be put into "quarantine" like TNC and other groups make you believe.

If you live in the city, you cannot comprehend what we in the rural areas take for granted daily. They want you to think there is no more "nature" without them. Tim Findley said in his report, TNC is "Nature's Landlord."

TNC lays claim to some 76,000 acres in Illinois. One acquisition is 2,026 acres called "Spunky Bottoms," located in west-central Illinois along the west side of the Illinois River in Brown County. This land did not flood in 1993.

In the Spunky Bottoms, 1,157 acres was obtained in 1997. According to TNC, this property is in the natural floodplain of the Illinois River but was leveed in the early 1900s and since that time has been used for extensive rowcrop agriculture. A total of 872 acres of tillable land at the preserve has been enrolled in the Natural Resources Conservation Service's Wetland Reserve Program through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

This is over 1100 acres of prime farmland -- not flooded in 1993 -- made into wetlands with your tax dollars helping. Conservation dollars are taking this land out of production and making it a wetland. Wetlands are a natural habitat for -- mosquitoes. Guess what spreads West Nile Virus?

An 833 acre tract acquired by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources brought the Spunky Bottom acreage up to 2,206 acres. The Conservancy will work in joint partnership with the IDNR to restore this new tract.

When I hear about urban sprawl taking farmland, I can't imagine sprawl taking land out of production as vast as these environmental organizations and the government are making wetlands and conservation areas out of farms.

Another area belonging to TNC is called "Emequon," which is located in Fulton County about 40 miles southwest of Peoria near Havana. This was a 7,000 acre farm which also sits along the Illinois River.

Often times TNC bids the highest price to the landowner. While it is good for the seller, it prevents local farmers from competing to buy the land, and another piece of farm ground is gone forever.

Illinois is known to be a great agricultural state. But if we put every piece of land back into the wetlands that it was before it was drained and made farm land, and put the uplands back into prairie grass, there would be very little land left to feed the people.

Copyright 2003, The Illinois Leader. 

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