“This land is your land, this land is the federal government’s land, from California to the New York island,” the Woody Guthrie tune goes.
Wait, what?
You read that right. The Biden administration’s conservation plan is raising serious concerns that the federal government really just wants to control more land nationwide.
The plan vaguely outlines a goal to “conserve” 30 percent of land in the United States by 2030 to combat the “climate crisis.”
President Joe Biden issued an executive order in January entitled “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.”
The Epoch Times reported that on page nine of the order, federal agencies are directed to submit a report on “strategies that will encourage broad participation in the goal of conserving 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.
“The report shall propose guidelines for determining whether lands and waters qualify for conservation, and it also shall establish mechanisms to measure progress toward the 30 percent goal.”
Naturally, the nebulous language is raising red flags for many governors, especially in the West.
“What we’ve asked from the administration is for more information, because their math doesn’t work,” Republican Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts said in June, according to The Times. “Either they’re going to fail to get to 30 percent, or they’re not telling us something else about how they’re going to get to 30 percent.”
Adams County has passed a #Stop30x30 resolution!
More and more Nebraska counties are speaking out against President Joe Biden’s 30 x 30 land grab.
Contact your county commissioners today and urge them to step up and make their voices heard. pic.twitter.com/S7hRLzOqhK
— Gov. Pete Ricketts (@GovRicketts) July 7, 2021
Ricketts not only signed an executive order of his own countering the cryptic “conservation” plan, but he also led 14 other Republican governors in writing a joint letter to Biden highlighting their concerns.
“We are deeply concerned about any effort to enlarge the federal estate or further restrict the use of public lands in our states,” the April letter stated.
“We oppose any increase in land use restrictions on lands under our state jurisdiction. Assuming there is some authority which would allow the program, obtaining the 30 percent goal from state or private lands would require your Administration to condemn or otherwise severely limit the current productive uses of such lands, infringing on the private property rights of our citizens and significantly harming our economies.”
The Biden administration’s lack of clarity in this matter is certainly cause for concern.
The federal government is allowed to forcibly seize private property if it compensates the owner — perhaps one of the “strategies” that could soon become common under Biden’s executive order.
On top of that, the Biden administration could subject farmers and ranchers to new regulations if the land they work on is considered “conserved.”
How convenient. Get ready for expanded federal power in the name of “tackling the climate crisis.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
