Park Service Plans Massive New Land Grabs!

The Park Service can't even come close to running what they've already got. How are they going to manage more? JUST SAY NO!!!

American Land Rights Association - Land Rights Network
PO Box 400 - Battle Ground WA 98604
Phone: 360-687-3087 - Fax: 360-687-2973 - Email:
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http://www.landrights.org
Legislative Office: 508 First St SE - Washington DC 20003
Phone: 202-210-2357 - Fax: 202-543-7126 - Email: landrightsnet@aol.com

Republican Appointees in the National Park Service are hatching a new attack on private property rights!

A May 1, 2002 article in the Portland, Oregon newspaper, the Oregonian, shows how the Park Service seems to be out of control in the Bush Administration. FULL ARTICLE PRINTED BELOW.

At a meeting of Park Service superintendents in Portland this week the land grabbers were setting their sights on your land and other lands between national parks across America. The proposal uses soft words and invokes children and wildlife to hide the real agenda, a huge land grab of private and Federal land.

The first thing that occurs when parks are created is that large areas are designated off-limits, roads are closed, campgrounds shut down, public services reduced and the public limited to using as little as 5% to 10% of the land area of the park to recreate. For example, 95% of the new Death Valley National Park is wilderness, closed to the public!

A current proposal to force people to use busses in Yosemite is one example. If the Park Service gets its way, the public won't be able to visit Yosemite unless they are willing to ride a bus and stuff all their camping equipment on a bus. People do not leave their urban area to be forced into another urbanized area. The public is going to support parks less if they can't go there.

See article below - using a sea lion as an illustration with no barriers in the ocean is exactly what the superintendents really want with the park corridors -- no barriers. That means the loss of private land, grazing, farming, forestry, recreation and many other multiple uses that take place adjacent to the parks. It means local communities losing tax base and economic support for schools and roads, often used by park personnel.

This new initiative has support from Park Service Director Fran Mainella, a liberal Democrat. How did a liberal Democrat get appointed to a top job in a Republican Administration????? Simple - her former boss was Jeb Bush, the Governor of Florida and the President's brother.

Mainella has, as you might expect, appointed two liberal Democrats to help her to trash private property rights and restrict recreational access to the parks. Here they are, the National Park Service's two deputy directors:

Deputy Director Randy Jones is was brought in after serving as Park Superintendent in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. His claim to fame at Rocky Mountain was that he was opposed to any private land in the park and refused to set foot on private land if it was inside the park boundary. He even attempted to prevent a 73 year old widow from repairing a bridge to her property, but was overruled by the Corps of Engineers. Jones's anti-private property stance is now guiding the Park Service.

The other new Deputy Director is Don Murphy. His claim to fame is spending the past four years running an outfit called Americans for Heritage and Recreation (AHR). This was the umbrella group the ran the campaign to approve CARA, the Condemnation and Relocation Act, the infamous $47 billion land acquisition trust fund!!!!

Here is what Murphy thinks of private property rights. This is the "Guiding Principles" from which he ran AHR:

"AHR adamantly opposes any restrictions on the Land and Water Conservation Fund, especially those that limit acquisition, employ arbitrary geographic restrictions on the use of funds, require new authorizations, or prevent condemnation."

Believe it or not, these are the liberal Democrats appointed by Interior Secretary Gale Norton to run the National Park Service. Anti-private property rights, anti-recreation.

The Park Service should be actually following the supposed Bush Administration agenda that they want to take care of the existing parks. It looks to us like the Park Service is spending more time on how it can expand the parks!

ACTION ITEM: Urge them to question the funding for massive "wildlife" connecting corridors and additional expansion plans by the Park Service. Wildlife is just being used an excuse for land use controls. Tell them to force the Park Service to take care of what they already have, instead of expanding their empire.

You may call any Congressman or Senator at the Capitol Switchboard -- (202) 224-3121 or the temporary FREE NUMBER (800) 648-3516.

Spectacular national parks such as Crater Lake and Mount Rainier may be icons all by themselves, but they will lose their value to people and wildlife if they become lone refuges all by themselves, said national park superintendents who gathered Tuesday in Portland.

Park superintendents from around the West focused on a Bush administration goal of building "seamless networks" of parks around the country. It does not involve creating new parks as much as building connections among famous and lesser-known national parks, plus the state parks, playgrounds and inner-city parks that may be the first place many children enjoy the outdoors.

Such connections may be as simple as attracting children from Portland's city park programs to Crater Lake to admire its pristine water and wildlife, or as elaborate as a parklike path for people to Rollerblade from Mount Rainier to Puget Sound.

By building such connections, park managers will inevitably create corridors that also serve wildlife, they said. Without them, isolated national parks will become overcrowded final refuges for wildlife and an increasingly urban society trying to escape the development and sprawl that go with it.

"That's the future of Mount Rainier if we don't save all that stuff from Mount Rainier to Puget Sound," said Jon Jarvis, superintendent of Mount Rainier National Park. "It becomes the last place wildlife has to go, but also the last place for recreation."

The new initiative has support from National Park Service Director Fran Mainella and Interior Secretary Gale Norton, said Randy Jones, deputy director of the Park Service. They and park managers see it extending the reach of national parks to city residents who otherwise may lose touch with such natural places and the reasons for protecting them.

"We have enjoyed tremendous support for the parks, but we have to make sure the parks remain essential to what is becoming our new and diverse constituency in this new century," said Chuck Lundy, superintendent of Crater Lake National Park.

Studies in California have found that wildlife uses even tenuous links between park and forestland that involve crossing bridges over an interstate, said John Reynolds, regional director of the Park Service. A sea lion tagged at Point Reyes near San Francisco turned up in Russia this year, evidence of long-distance connections between wildlands, he said.

The Bush administration has made national parks the core of its environmental strategy, vowing to repair the backlog of almost $1 billion worth of decaying buildings and potholed roads.

But Liz Raisbeck of the National Parks and Conservation Association told superintendents Tuesday that her group is concerned "the pendulum may be swinging heavily" toward more intensive uses of parks that could damage them. She mentioned administration moves to compromise policies that could have banned snowmobiles and Jet Skis in parks.

Donald Leal of the Political Economy Research Center, a free market think tank in Bozeman, Mont., said parks could control such uses by charging higher fees to account for the noise and pollution they may emit.

"Don't send the idea that recreation is free -- it does have costs; it does have impacts," Leal said. "There is no mechanism in place that tells people who are using the parks, who are using the snowmobiles, that they have to bear some of the cost."

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*NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

OK Kids. Can you see the "corridors" connections from the Wildlands Project in this?

All by our "conservative" president and his Administration.

It's sick out there and getting Sicker!!!!!

'Pod

Oh no there you go with that Bush bashing again! Don't you know that he is the savior and the source of all that is good? (sarcasm off)

Where are the Bushies now? Are you all going to come out and bash this story because it is from the 'liberal press"?

Show me ONE instance where the Bush administration has actively undone a government land grap. EVERYTHING that has been won back so far has been because of court action....

OK Kids. Can you see the "corridors" connections from the Wildlands Project in this?

I sure can. Maybe it's time for a repost of those infamous maps detailing these corridors for all the new folks at FR who may never have seen them.

Believe it or not, these are the liberal Democrats appointed by Interior Secretary Gale Norton to run the National Park Service. Anti-private property rights, anti-recreation.

Why shouldn't I believe it her policies are real killers. Need Water for fire? Ask EPA first. I once debated another Freeper on how bad it was to put Liberals in Cabinet positions. Liberals like Norton, Whittman, ect. I was given a reply of what can they hurt they have been put in career ending jobs. Well they continue to carry on their Liberal agenda it appears to me.

Well, the reason behind every land grab is the United Nations, and foreign debt. If I bought 100 acres, and found Oil under it, I couldn't develop the land legally. Of course I would have my land confiscated, and cordoned off so that way NOBODY could use the land. Why? Because mineral rights, are eminent domain, and if your government sees you have valuable land, you can lose it in a heartbeat if they feel they need it for the good of the nation.

That would probably be okay, if they actually used the land to help our nation, but more or less it's just to offset foreign debt, as that is the only thing that is real collateral. Not to mention the fact that we seem to be importing refugees from other countries, and sponsoring them to live here. I've seen it. I've waited in line behind Somalis and they get paid to live here. Yes, your tax dollars are paid to these people to live in our country. Ironically, we as a nation don't know that these people are deliberately imported in by our government. I asked a Somali how he got here. He said he was flown in by our government. The same can be said of many others.

I'm infuriated at this point because I know the only reasons Land Grabs happen are to seize land to hedge foreign debt, or to give land to immigrants who are flown in, so that they can have their own lands here.

In all honesty, we should do away with most of the government we have so that local and state governments can serve their citizenry better, and look out for their interests first.

uh, everyone, did you notice the article never really asked WHAT does the fedgov NEED all this land for, and what do they do with it?

but try to find out-you cant-because the areas are closed and patrolled.

but wait, BOTH parties do it. now, why do you patrol empty land, which you just seized and closed access to? SOMETHING, right? not empty space in death valley. you tell me, if you think you know, but just shut up if all you have is sophmoric accusations of a conspiracy nuttiness. (9/11 WAS a conspiracy-of terrorists. conspiracies exist-regardless of denial, and wtc is all the proof you'll ever need to see that)
if you cant see something is up, youre still asleep.

There are three schools of thought on this:

(1) Since we are doubling the population every 40 years, we ought not to lock up the land, as there is money to be paid building housing for immigrants and urban-flight yuppies.

(2) Since we are doubling the population every 40 years, we'd better lock in expanded parks while we can.

(3) Maybe we should control immigration.

I lean towards #3, but from the tenor of recent reporting about events in France and the Netherlands, I guess that makes me an extreme right wing, proto-fascist, racist threat to the decency of the universe.

The public is going to support parks less if they can't go there.

THAT is the point of their actions. They have removed, closed, or restricted nearly every campground at Lake Tahoe, a place where I grew up camping. They've already removed several popular campgrounds at Yosemite, another place I'd like to take kids camping. THEY DON'T WANT US TO USE THE PARKS. The more uncomfortable they make it, the less we use it. Mission accomplished. And, no, I don't need a tinfoil hat for THIS one.

It's getting to be time for the people to have a little "discussion" with the Federal Government about it's unending usurpation of our rights. I don't see this new land as being part of the Constitution's definition of "needed" land. Klamath Falls was a rehearsal to gauge public reaction.

I think that they may just get invited to a Tea Party should they keep this up. Come on, President Bush, you have a 1600 acre ranch yourself - how would you like it if the Park Service were to claim "Emminent Domain" on your property? Wouldn't you get a little angry? Then imagine how angry "We the People" feel when we get locked out of huge parcels of land we use for recreation. We - as the little guy - don't have the luxury of a 1600 acre ranch. When we want to get away from the cities, we go to the woods. Now they're getting locked away from us. Think about that.

And to all you "Bush bashers" in here, I'd like to remind you of what the alternative to President Bush was - Al Gore. Now if you would rather have that POS as President, I suggest you go back to DU where you belong. No administration is perfect - but the alternative in this case would have meant the end of America as we know it.

Or do you just need something - anything - to bitch about? Grow up.

In the CARA Compromise of 2000 Congress made a committment to 100% fund($900 million yearly) the the Land and Water Conservation Fund(Title 2 of CARA) for 7 consecutive years and thus far have honored that committment. The same committment was made to the Urban Park & Recreation Recovery Act Fund($125 million yearly) and National Historic Preservation($100 million yearly). It is likely that other Titles within CARA were also funded. And perhaps new ones as well. In as much as support for this in Congress is extremely high, the only influence Bush might possibly have is how the money is spent since it is administered by Interior. But he surely would'nt take a chance on stepping on the toes of a congressman.

To Bush's credit, he was able to convince Congress to fund his environmental programs. These are grants to private property owners to manage their property in consideration of listed species or invasive species, or etc. In the FY 2002 budget he got about $ 50 million out of the $450 million federal portion of LWCF. He is asking for $100 million in FY2003.

You can bash Bush all you want but it only shows that you don't know what you are talking about. If you want to stop the Feds from buying private property, you need to talk to Congress.

I truly believe that these land seizures by the feds are just the cover story for the fact that these areas have been designated as collateral for our national debt. The debt owed to the private (quasi-fed'l my a$$) Fed'l Reserve bank and Lord knows who else, far exceeds most of the human capital that's pledged to date. Thus, the feds are seizing land full of precious metals as well as minerals at a record pace to pledge as collateral in order to keep the fiat money presses rolling pumping the FRN's.

People do not leave their urban area to be forced into another urbanized area.

I haven't been to Yosemite in years, but my understanding is that it has gotten very crowded with people and cars. I am not saying buses will help. I am just saying that it's my understanding that the problem cited above already exists. Have you been there recently? I was only there once and it was a dozen years ago. I went to Arches Nat'l Park in Moab, Utah and Rocky Mountain NP in Colorado this year and they were both excellent parks. I had a great time.

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