While all sides seem to support taking care of nature, subjecting nearly a third of America to federal conservation rules is hardly what many state and local officials have in mind.
Pete Ricketts, governor of the heavily agricultural state of Nebraska, was among the first to raise questions about the plan.
The administration considers about 12 percent of American land and water to be currently in conservation. If that’s to become 30 percent, a chunk of land roughly the size of Nebraska would have to be added every year for nine years, Ricketts pointed out.
“What we’ve asked from the administration is for more information, because their math doesn’t work,” he said on June 24, announcing an executive order opposing the “30 x 30” plan.
“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.”
Aside from practical considerations, Biden’s plan also concerns Ricketts on a more fundamental level.
“Your personal property rights are being eroded when the federal government has the ability to start regulating,” he told The Epoch Times.
Ricketts’s order bans the state government from supporting federal conservation programs without the governor’s express authorization, among other measures.
Ricketts and 14 other governors sent a letter to the administration in April with a request for more details on the plan. They pointed out that the federal government has no authority to unilaterally take land for conservation.
“We are deeply concerned about any effort to enlarge the federal estate or further restrict the use of public lands in our states,” they said.
Realization of the plan would be “infringing on the private property rights of our citizens and significantly harming our economies,” the letter states.
Ricketts said they haven’t heard back from the administration.
The White House and the U.S. Department of Agriculture didn’t respond to requests for comment.
As Ricketts sees it, local landowners are already doing a good job taking care of the land.
“Farmers and ranchers were the original conservationists,” he said during a June 24 town hall in Pickrell, Nebraska.
The federal report acknowledges this, too, saying “there is a strong stewardship ethic among America’s fishers, farmers, ranchers, forest owners, and other private landowners.”
“If that’s the case ... all agricultural land would be considered in conservation,” said Tanya Storer, one of the commissioners of Cherry County, Nebraska, during the town hall. “So that can’t be what they mean.”
The report suggests that the “30 x 30” plan can be enacted without new laws, on a voluntary basis, while taking into consideration local input.
“Though President Biden’s national conservation goal is ambitious, it can be achieved using the wide array of existing tools and strategies,” it says.
The government already has an arsenal of conservation programs, including some that have been in place for decades. But if all those programs so far only achieved 12 percent conservation, how does the administration plan to push it to 30 in just 10 years, Ricketts asks.
“I don’t believe that the federal government is going to try to come out and just take land, through eminent domain for example,” he said. “I believe the way they’re going to try and cover these goals is by creating more ways that they can regulate you and take your private property rights away.”
Ricketts suspects the government will try to cajole people into signing conservation agreements in which they surrender some of their property rights in exchange for financial compensation. In a series of press conferences and town halls, he’s been warning Nebraskans to “read the fine print” of any contract they may be offered by the government to make sure they understand the commitment.
Some such agreements—conservation easements, for instance—can even be permanent, he said.
The government may set up the agreement in a way that allows the owner to keep using the land, even for agriculture, Storer said. The trick is, if the owner wants to do something new, suddenly the federal government may have a say in it.
“You create a baseline. So whatever you’re doing now, you can continue to do, but—just a quick raise of hands: How many farmers here do things the same way you did them 20 years ago?” she asked.
Nobody raised their hand.
Nebraska land is currently 97 percent private. Subjecting 30 percent of it to federal restrictions “would be devastating for small towns and rural communities,” Ricketts said during the town hall.
The effect on urban areas would be minimal, since those are “already developed,” he said.
“It’s here. We’re going to pay the price for that, if that land is restricted. And that’s why I’m so concerned about this plan. Because it will impact so many of us in rural areas.”
Conservation easements would also hike up property taxes, he said. Once a piece of land is restricted, its price goes down and the local assessor has to reflect that on property rolls. That means the owner is levied a lower tax and all the other owners have to pick up the slack.
Restricting land also boosts prices of all the unrestricted land, making it harder for young people to get into farming, the governor said.
He stressed that he’s not against conservation per se, but urged Nebraskans to be vigilant about the government’s attempt to sneak in new regulations.
The rancher was reading his agreement with the Agriculture Department (USDA) and found a clause “that he had to protect the habitat of the swift fox,” Ricketts said.
“Now he says, ‘I’ve never seen a swift fox on my land.’ And he goes to the USDA and says, ‘What does this mean? What do I have to do?’ And the USDA could not tell. So he declined to sign the Conservation Reserve Program ... because he did not want to sign up for something that the USDA could not tell him what he had to do.”
