Biden is bypassing Congress once again using its administrative muscle to designate new federal land acquisition boundaries that are one-thousand times larger than existing National Wildlife Refuges.
This can be done in every state with or without the state or landowner’s consent.
Last fall, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) was forced to publicly reveal their plan to create the Missouri Headwaters Conservation Area in Montana. They created a 5.8 million area federal acquisition boundary around the 53,000 acre Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. Their plan is to conscript 250,000 acres of this into the refuge using conservation easements in perpetuity.
Included within the boundary area are 500,000 acres of State land, 3.7 million acres of Federal land, and 2 million acres of private land. Neither the State or landowners were aware of the plan. It was being quietly facilitated by the Service and two land trusts: The Nature Conservancy and Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partners.
There is significant local opposition, so the land trusts have taken a new tact. They are holding private gatherings with landowners to explain the benefits of conservation easements. Staff of the State’s elected officials have been told they cannot attend. Anyone with a contrary opinion of conservation easements is unwelcome.
They need to sell the dream of forever protecting the land and passing it on to the children without anyone in the room who can speak to the downsides of conservation easements (learn what these are here). The landowners are being enticed with the promise of a significant payday. It is later, after they have already figuratively spent the money on a better future, that they are shown the contract and restrictions. The environmentalists know this is how they can reel them in.
Last month, the Service released a Land Protection Plan for the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. The Refuge is 6,440 acres in the South Plains of Texas. The new federal acquisition areas is seven million acres — one-thousand times the size of the existing federal site.
The Service plans to acquire 700,000 acres of this in fee-simple or through conservation easements in perpetuity, or a combination of both. The 20 Texas and New Mexico Counties were never directly noticed of the plan. The Nature Conservancy, The Conservation Fund, Texas Parks and Wildlife and New Mexico Game and Fish Department are the only entities listed as supporting the plan.
Not coincidently, the acquisition area is the same sought for the protection of the Dunes sagebrush lizard and Lessor prairie chicken, two species the Administration recently listed as endangered. Those two species were not listed because they were in peril; they were listed because their protection could lead to the shutdown of the productive Permian basin oil and gas industry while the federal government takes control of the region.
In Montana, the Missouri Headwaters Conservation Area sits in the middle of a triangle of permanently protected lands, most notably Yellowstone National Park. This new acquisition area helps to fill in that circle, setting it up to be permanently withdrawn for protection as a National Monument, with the stroke of Biden’s pen.
Environmentalists know the power of the Antiquities Act. Earlier this month, they delivered a petition with 800,000 signatures calling on the President to designate nine new national monuments in seven states and expand two already established in California.
The more private land the federal government can acquire, the more opportunities the President has to permanently protect the area through Monument withdrawals, and reach its 30×30 target.
