The Nature
Conservancy and the Wildlands Project
By Marion Campbell
February 1, 2005
In the 1950s, The
Nature Conservancy was a small Virginia-based organization, funded by
its members in order to preserve land for botanical and zoological
study. It remained that way until Patrick Noonan took over in 1970. It
was he who changed the focus of the organization to the secretive,
manipulative, land-grabbing entity it is today.
Acting in secret, and with money obtained from grants from wealthy
family foundations, Noonan bought 14 of the 18 Virginia Barrier
Islands, by creating a bogus front company. It was his idea to develop
them into upscale vacation homes.
To make way for the acquisition of the ocean-front lots for these
homes, TNC "saved" the islands by "protecting" the
shores from human intrusion, so that those who lived nearby lost their
livelihoods, when their seafood and vegetable processing plants were
forced to close. This caused an economic disaster and deepening
poverty, as opulent homes replaced what the locals had had before.
TNC further exacerbated the situation by creating another front
group called Virginia Eastern Shore Corporation, which vowed to
"fix" the problem by creating tourism businesses, craft
shops, and small real estate businesses. It was an utter failure,
millions were lost, and poverty only deepened.
The area lost taxable property to conservation, and the locals were
prevented from accessing the islands. Since then, TNC has been taken
over by the big money interests, and has developed a network of
wealthy family foundations such as Rockefeller, Mellon, and duPont,
plus others, as well as industry giants such as Amoco, Ralston-Purina,
and more.
Under its present chairman, Steve McCormick, head of its Board of
Governors, it has become the wealthiest and most powerful land
acquisition agent in the world. Famous people, from all walks of life,
retired politicians, and much of the national media support them.
The Nature Conservancy is also the richest environmental
organization in the world, with approximately $3 billion in total
assets. Much of this has been accumulated from sales to the
government, and others, of strategically-acquired lands, and every
penny they make from their land deals is tax-exempt.
This wealthy environmental organization controls more than 90
billion acres of land worldwide, with more than 12 million acres in
the U.S. alone. Much of this land was acquired during the 1990s with
the cooperation of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and their Department of
Interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt.
A Clinton executive order ensured that activist environmental
organizations, such as TNC, were immune from all lawsuits.
The stated mission of TNC is:
"To preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities
that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the
lands and waters they need to survive."
With the help of private grants, TNC was able to leverage matching
government funds in order to increase their power and control over the
people, by purchasing, then locking up the land. As with all radical
environmental organizations, they "save" the environment,
and destroy the people.
In 1974, The Nature Conservancy science division developed a
database that collected information on specific tracts of real estate,
biodiversity inventories, areas in need of protection, biological
legal monitoring, and critically threatened species.
This databank operates as a network of information that can be
accessed by governments, natural resource agencies, corporations,
researchers, academics, and others from all over the world. TNC is now
able to spread, worldwide, their gross misrepresentations of the truth
to city people, in order to continue to diminish the rights of private
landowners and resource workers.
Since their first success in Virginia, TNC has always worked
quietly behind the scenes, while politicians and land-use bureaus,
both federal and state, become their front men. In every community
targeted for land acquisition or economic destruction, a TNC operative
moves in.
They are well-educated and charming, and their job is to seek out
the weaknesses that they can exploit. They become close to the people
in the community, join their clubs, and volunteer in social programs -
all the while making their plans to betray the people's trust. When
the land is acquired through sale, coercion, or condemnation, they
leave. Behind them, they leave economic ruin, desolation, and human
despair.
The Nature Conservancy and other "Wildlands Project"
activists are using the United Nations and other socialist-leaning
nations, to manipulate the entire human population that will be forced
to evacuate their homes and live in small, confined colonies, while
animals run free.
As they have done since their inception, "saved" areas
are taken over by wealthy elites, who will enjoy the freedom of big
game hunting, fishing expeditions, ecotourism, and private real
estate, including farms, all at the right price, of course, for those
who can afford it. Their atheist/socialist belief is that nature can
be protected if the "common" people can't afford any of it.
There is a definite comparison between TNC's actions involving the
Virginia Barrier Islands and what has been developing within the
Katahdin Region, and beyond. For more than a decade, they have worked
hard to bring down natural resource economies from Alaska to the lower
48 states. Now, it's Maine's turn.
As in the other places TNC has "saved," they are working
with politicians, corporations, state and federal land-use agencies,
and other environmental groups, while their front organizations, as
well as their well-educated, charming operatives have been given their
orders. Their target is, as it has always been, the resource economy
and the citizens of this region.
The Nature Conservancy is very good at what it does. Mr. McNeil, a
member of TNC's Board of Trustees, and other board members of MAGIC
have been meeting secretly with TNC and the Wilderness Society, even
as they claim that MAGIC is there for the region's "growth and
development."
Most area people now realize that the board of this so-called
development organization has provided very little of either growth or
economic development, since the mills went down.
Could it be that this is a TNC front group that has been set up to
stop economic growth in the region? The Pine Tree Development Zone
designation and the grant monies do not seem to be used for the
benefit of local people. Where has the money gone? Why is the area
regressing, despite the self-congratulatory "success"
stories in the newspapers?
On another front, why is it that Matthew Polstein has been accorded
the privilege of purchasing his lease, plus an adjoining parcel of
land, while the rest of the camp owners of Millinocket Lake, and the
rest of the Pemadumcook chain of lakes have been refused the same
privilege?
I am sure that area people have plenty of questions of their own
that need to be answered. The place where they need to be asked - and
asked often - is at Council meetings.
If the citizens of the area do not become proactive in planning the
area's future, we could well experience the "fix" that
destroyed Virginia's coastal communities, as well as many more
communities, in other rural areas of the country.
As in every community that TNC takes over, the community is
destroyed, and the wealthy elites move in. An elderly person who has
lived in the community for more than 90 years said recently,
"Piece by piece, they are taking away everything that we
had."
Despite the denials by MAGIC's members of the truth of this
statement, most people do know what is being done to them.
Marion Campbell is a columnist for the "Magic City Morning
Star" of Millinocket, Maine
This article was reprinted with permission from the Magic
City Morning Star
