The Globalization of United States
Domestic Land Use Policy

By Congressman Don Young
(R-AK)

The Constitution gives Congress the power to dispose of and make all
needful rules and regulations governing lands belonging to the
United States.  Yet over the last 25 years, 68 percent of
America's National Parks, Preserves and Monuments have been
designated as a United Nations
World Heritage Site,
Biosphere Reserve or both by Executive Branch action
with virtually no Congressional oversight or approval and out of the sight of
the public scrutiny.

World Heritage Sites are natural sites or
cultural monuments recognized by the "United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization"
(UNESCO) under "The Convention Concerning Protection of
the World Cultural and Natural Heritage."

U.S. Biosphere Reserves are part of the
"Man and Biosphere Program," a worldwide program
operated by UNESCO. Biosphere Reserves
operate without legislative direction and are not authorized
by Congress, nor is the program part of an international treaty.

What is a biosphere reserve?  The model UN biosphere reserve
is actually a federally zoned laboratory where social engineers have
real life subjects to use in studies to testing their theories on
biodiversity, conservation and sustainable development.  The reserve
consists of:

a core area, such as a national park, which has strict legislative
protection and is used for scientific monitoring of minimally disturbed
ecosystems;

a "managed use area," surrounding the core area, where allowable land
uses and human activities are strictly regulated; and

an "area of cooperation" having an undefined boundary and managed for
"Sustainable" production and uses in harmony with the biosphere reserve.

The "area of cooperation" is a sort of utopian
neighborhood where, according to the State Department,
"managing agencies, local governmental agencies, scientists,
economic interests, nongovernmental organizations,
cultural groups, local citizens and other biosphere reserve
stakeholders educate one another in the process of linking conservation,
economic development and cultural values."
The "area of cooperation" includes
non-federal property.

Dr. Jeremy Rabkin, professor of
government at Cornell University, argues: "Lands of
private owners, lands owned by state
or municipal governments and U.S. government land seem to be
thrown into this warm, bubbling stew of cooperating
'stakeholders' where actual owners seem to have no more status than
advocacy organizations from outside, where 'local citizens' have no
more status than 'cultural groups' from the other side of the
country."  Rabkin adds,
"The whole point of that amorphous term 'stakeholder'
is to blur distinctions between owner and spectator and between citizen
and outsider."

Federal agencies use international land reserves to control
and orchestrate local and state land use policy and steamroll the
property rights of private land owners.  This problem is
illustrated by the "New World Mine" project located
three miles beyond Yellowstone National Park,
a World Heritage Site.  The boundary of the
World Heritage Site coincides exactly with the national
park boundary.  The Department of Interior (DOT),
which wanted to stop the mine, brought in the
World Heritage Committee to "inspect" the
project, parading the Committee around Montana and Wyoming as if they had an
important say in the development of the mine.

Ninety percent of the New World Project is located on
private land and the remainder is in a National Forest.  Under
U.S. law, private land cannot be included in a
World Heritage Site without the consent of the owner, and
the owner of the mining project never consented to be included in the
World Heritage Site.  DOI's action also
trampled on the decision made by Congress to manage Federal lands included
in the project as part of the multiple-use National Forest System -- not as
protected land in Yellowstone National Park.

DOI had no authority to invite a foreign entity to
interfere with a domestic land use decision.
D0I bureaucrats ignored U.S. law and infringed on
personal private property rights by involving the
World Heritage Comniittee in a project located on private land.
They exhibited no concern or interest about protecting rights of
U.S. citizens or respecting the decisions of Congress.  These
bureaucrats were incapable of seeing how these actions compromised
U.S. sovereignty.

Why should we even think about involving an international body in making
land policy decisions for lands within the United States?
Congress must act to keep international commitments from interfering
with Constitutional constraints.  Otherwise, the rights of our
citizens and the boundary between public land managed by government and
private property can be too easily ignored.