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Representative Ryan Zinke introduced his bipartisan Wildlife Movement Through Partnerships Act which, if passed, will codify the Interiors Wildlife Movement and Migration Corridor Grant Program. Some of the sponsors of this legislation have already been working behind closed doors using wildlife corridor mapping to establish massive acquisition boundaries around the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Southwestern Montana. Zinke’s political maneuvering endorses these clandestine processes.
Wildlife corridors and their elements of all scales include moderate to severe land and water use restrictions. Various statutes mandate achieving a balance between the human and natural environments. The imposition of wildlife corridor systems and ecoregion planning renders compliance with that balancing mandate impossible within the boundaries of wildlife corridors and their surrounding buffer zones.
State and federal agencies simply do not have the statutory authority to evaluate the presence, absence, or quality of values that occur on private lands and are incapable of predicting future uses throughout a geospatial region composed of dozens of individual landowners.
Landscape-scale conservation initiatives layered over multi-jurisdictional lands tends to create a regulatory bias against unencumbered private lands within Core Areas. These initiatives blur multiple county and state jurisdictions expanding across state and national borders with the sole focus on fish and wildlife. Sole-purpose agencies and their partner special interest groups benefit while private lands, private ranches, private farms all take a back seat to the quest for agency control and consolidation of lands.
Wildlife corridors and habitat connectivity have been adopted by numerous federal departments and their agencies as part of the national climate change policy without noticeable concern for the statutory noncompliance issues they raise, nor for the impacts to the human environment where the corridors are imposed.
These exist at all scales from site-specific to the developing continental-scale “wildways” where human access and use come under varying degrees of administrative control. Wildlife corridors are one mechanism regularly used to impose landscape scale conservation goals and timetables which includes permanent conservation of 30% of lands and waters by 2030.
The Biden-Harris White House have issued guidance through the Council on Environmental Quality to facilitate wildlife corridors in order to accomplish international biodiversity objectives including the 30x30 agenda.
Currently, most of this is being promulgated via executive edict without clear and express Congressional authorization. Zinke’s wildlife corridor bill will endorse these activities and add to the already millions of dollars allocated for land acquisition and biodiversity objectives through the National Wildlife Refuge System and other federal programs.
Much of this is predicated on a narrative driven by the environmental community that undeveloped land and wildlife are disappearing. This narrative is used to justify programs that expand government land ownership and the regulation of natural resources. Referencing government data from the Natural Resources and Conservation Services (NRCS) and other agencies, Rob Gordon’s comprehensive report — Lands and Habitat in the United States: A Reality Check — challenges this narrative stating: “Contrary to the familiar, agenda-driven narrative, development or conversion of natural landscapes to agricultural and urban use in the United States is not rapidly growing, nor are all U.S. species generally becoming ever more endangered. Left unchallenged, misinformation regarding the environment provides undue support for those who wish to impose wrongheaded, economically harmful polices upon an already enormous government estate, to enlarge it even further, and to impose economically destructive and burdensome regimes on those private lands that escape. Americans should be generally optimistic about the state of our lands and wildlife.”
In spite of the claims that there is a significant loss of prairie grasslands and habitat to farming, the Natural Resources Conservation Service data show a large decline in crop and pasture land, from 552 million acres in 1982 to 489 million acres in 2017.
Zinke’s political maneuvering with this legislation is out of touch with the bulk of his constituency, and fails to address real issues Montanans face. This legislation is sponsored by a long list of Environmental NGOs including Yukon to Yellowstone Conservation Initiative as well as the Nature Conservancy and Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership who worked behind closed doors to develop the 5.7 million acre Missouri River Conservation Area in order to massively expand the refuge system.
This bill will simply endorse and keep sole-purpose agencies and their partner special interest groups in the driver’s seat regarding land use planning and policy development. It would be good to contact Zinke’s office and oppose wildlife corridor legislation.
