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Governor urges vigilance in combating 30x30 ‘land grab’
McCOOK, Neb. -- The fight to preserve private land rights has come to Nebraska, no longer the province of “25-year-olds in cubicles in Washington D.C.”
Radical environmentalists have promised to use every tool in their tool chest to put more land under government control, but those attending a “30 x 30 Land Grab” event Wednesday night were offered a set of tools of their own.
“We’re going God’s work,” said speaker Trent Loos told the crowd, estimated by organizers at 300, after leading an opening prayer. “The fight is coming to Nebraska and it’s important that we all get engaged.”
Loos, a national speaker and sixth-generation farmer now living in Loup City, Neb., said those 25-year-olds, who have never seen a cow, are putting the consumer at risk, threatening America’s safe, low-cost food supply.
Ninety-seven percent of Nebraska property is in private hands, Gov. Pete Ricketts said, and the 30x30 plan is fundamentally in conflict with the property rights recognized by the nation’s founding fathers as central to human rights.
“If you were going to take 30% of Nebraska away, the only people to take it away from are private landowners,” the governor said.
The 30x30 plan has its roots in a United Nations biodiversity convention in 1992, which set a goal encouraging governments to put 17% of land in a natural, undeveloped state.
In 2019, the Center for American Progress published a paper that proposed setting aside 30% of land and water by 2030, an idea later embraced by now Vice President Kamala Harris and introduced as Senate Resolution 372 in January 2020, Ricketts said.
The paper claims a third of species are going to go extinct over several decades, and that we are losing a football field’s worth of natural land every 30 seconds, he said.
Even if the United States is losing 1.1 million acres of habitat a year, which Ricketts doubts, “why would you need to set aside 440 million acres, wouldn’t that last 400 years?”
“There’s no scientific basis for why they pick 30%” and the paper refers back to “the same sort of radical environmental groups and their press releases.
“And if you think that if they got 30% they would stop, you’re kidding yourself.”
But “it’s important to know the president has no constitutional authority to do it,” Ricketts said, “the president can’t take 30% of the land in the United States and have it put into permanent protection of a natural state.”
After Ricketts and a group of governors questioned the president’s authority, “they came back with the America the Beautiful plan which is basically a 30 by 30 rebrand, because I think they figured out that 30 by 30 is probably not good marketing and which everybody now associates with a land grab.”
Nebraska has already done a good job of preserving natural resources, he said, with the Ogallala Aquifer within one foot of the level it was in the 1950s.
In fact, U.S. News & World Report recently wrote that Nebraska has the sixth best national environment in the country.
“You know who’s got the sixth-worst? Delaware,” Ricketts said. “The president’s home state. Maybe the president should go worry about Delaware and leave us at home in Nebraska.”
He urged local residents to support elected officials who oppose the plan, including county commissioners, like Red Willow County who have passed resolutions in opposition, and Nebraska’s congressional delegation, Sens. Deb Fischer and Ben Sasse, as well as U.S. Reps Adrian Smith and Don Bacon. That was with the exception of U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, who has declined to go on record in opposition.
“We need to present a united front.”
Ricketts urged landowners to use several tools of their own to fight the “land grab,” namely avoiding “perpetual easements” at all costs, as they are devastating to future options for landowners.
He said the Conservation Reserve Program offers another avenue for government control, citing one farmer who was forced, as a condition of participation, to protect habitat for the swift fox, without being told exactly what that habitat is.
“When you have a connection to a federal program, they can start pushing environmental rules on you,” Ricketts said.
Proponents will use expansion of state and national parks and recreation areas to extend government control, and try to “divide and conquer” by enlisting outdoors organizations to put more land under federal control.
He warned that the National Heritage Area proposed for south-central Nebraska and northern Kansas offered another opportunity for government intrusion, citing the requirement for a full environmental study for a simple expansion of Highway 75 from a 2-lane highway to four lanes.
He urged landowners to use zoning regulations to fight attempts to control their land, and to keep an eye on any “conservation” programs that might restrict private land use.
“The fight is here in Nebraska, it’s not distant anymore,” Ricketts said. “We’re in the trenches right here -- if we don’t fight for our state, nobody else is going to fight for us and we don’t need the federal government to tell you how to take care of our state. Nobody cares more about the land or water or air in our state than we do.”