The Nature Conservancy=TNC
In 2000, the tax-exempt TNC received $786 million in revenue, as much as its six nearest rivals combined, with assets of $2.8 billion, and it claims to have 92 million acres under its control. It claims to be a “private-sector, free-market” organization whose mission is saving environmentally sensitive land. In fact, much of its income is derived from taxpayer “grants”, income from securities and lucrative “flips” of purchased land to government agencies. In 1989, the Bureau of Land Management paid TNC $1.4 million for land it had simultaneously purchased for $1.26 million. Ken Smith, of The Washington Times, reports TNC bought the land with a $100 purchase option. “Wall Street investors in jail for insider trading never got a $140,000 return on a $100 investment.” Shades of Hillary Clinton’s cattle futures deal?
In 1992, the US Department of Interior’s Inspector General investigated land trust deals made by groups such as TNC and found that Interior had spent $7.1 million more than necessary between 1986 and 1991. In 1991, Missouri state auditors found the state had “paid $500,000 more than necessary on six land purchases from the Conservancy”. The auditors claimed there was a conspiracy to jack up the sales prices in violation of state financial regulations. In Texas, the Attorney General, Dan Morales, stripped TNC of its tax-exempt status because of similar activities.
Recently, the California chapter of TNC paid $35 million for the purchase of the 9,200 acre Staten Island, a privately owned corporate farm in the Sacramento area which is under intensive cultivation for crops and vegetables. TNC calls it a “demonstration farm” of little environmental significance, and will continue normal, for-profit commercial farming operations. CalFed, a state/federal agency, is putting up taxpayer’s dollars for the purchase. There will be little or no public access. Critics, including other environmental groups, question if there will be any public benefit. In fact, such taxpayer funded purchases are closer to fascist/socialistic exploitation of the land at the expense of truly private, free-market landowners.
http://www.vlrc.org/articles/45.htmlReselling parcels of land to federal agencies. "On June 30, 1990 TNC showed it held $53.5 million in land 'for resale' to the government. By 1992, TNC ledgers showed the organization had received $90,693,000 for sale of land to government agencies".
http://www.4x4wire.com/access/education/nm_twp/nm_twp_pt8.htmAre nonprofit land trusts taking advantage of the public's trust?
http://www.vlrc.org/articles/8.htmlLand Trusts or Land Agents?
http://perc.org/articles/land-trusts-or-land-agentsLosing its Mission:
The Nature Conservancy considers itself to be “the world's best conservation science organization,”[9] and it claims to have 550 professional scientists on its staff.[10] However, some Nature Conservancy scientists have complained that the organization has failed to keep its commitment to the “best available science.”[11] According to the Washington Post, in an internal 2001 Conservancy study, one TNC scientist wrote: “Science is not understood or supported by senior managers and state directors. [The] entire focus is on land deals.”[12]
Land Deals:
According to R.J. Smith, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, the Nature Conservancy bullies private citizens from their land in order to sell that land to the federal government. Smith explains:[13]
The Nature Conservancy is one of the most feared environmental groups throughout rural America … While promoting itself as a ‘private’ conservation group, small landowners, family farmers, ranchers and tree farmers know it as a strong-arm real estate agent for the federal government. It acquires land at fire-sale prices from landowners bankrupted by environmental regulations, then turns around and sells most of it to the federal government at inflated prices. The last thing America needs is more range and forest land for the federal government to mismanage and burn down.
Ties with Corporate America:
In 2002, the Capital Research Center named the Nature Conservancy one of the top ten non-profit recipients of corporate contributions.[14] Corporate donations to the Nature Conservancy increased from $1.8 million in 1993 to $225 million by 2002.[15] In 2003, the Nature Conservancy had over 1,900 corporate sponsors.[16] The Nature Conservancy has received funding from oil companies such as British Petroleum, Phillips Alaska and Exxon Mobil.[17] General Motors has also been a major donor.[18]
In 2003, the Washington Post reported that Nature Conservancy had sold or rented its logo to be used for goods manufactured by its corporate donors.[19] For example, General Mills has used the Nature Conservancy logo on its Nature Valley granola bars.[20]
David Morine, the former head of TNC’s land acquisition program and, according to the Washington Post, one of the TNC executives who helped the group develop corporate ties, told the Post in 2003 that “t was the wrong decision to get so close to industry. Business got in under the tent, and we (TNC) are the ones who invited them in.”[21] Morine added, “[t]hese corporate executives are carnivorous. You bring them in, and they just take over.”[22]
Land Development:
Many environmentalists oppose commercial and residential land development.[23] The Nature Conservancy, however, has had close ties with Centex Corp., a large residential construction firm.[24] Centex has provided free Nature Conservancy memberships to thousands of its homebuyers.[25] This arrangement has yielded more than a million dollars for the Nature Conservancy.[26]
In the past, the Nature Conservancy has also been close with two of the nation’s biggest tree consumers, the Georgia-Pacific Corp. and International Paper Co.[27] Georgia-Pacific, then a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange,[28] donated $3 million to TNC in 2000.[29] In 1998, International Paper Co. sold 185,000 acres of Maine forest to TNC for $35 million.[30] Shortly after the exchange, TNC logged 136,000 of the original 185,000 acres in order “to help offset costs.”[31]
Interconnected Dealings:
A 2003 Washington Post report uncovered interconnected deals between the Nature Conservancy and its leadership. The report stated:[32]
The charity engages in numerous financial transactions with members of the Conservancy family -- governing board members and their companies, state and regional trustees, longtime supporters. The nonprofit organization has bought land and services from board members’ companies, and it has declined to release property appraisals from the deals. It has sold choice Conservancy land to past and present trustees through its “conservation buyers” program, which offers steep discounts in exchange for development restrictions. It has lent cash to its executives, including $1.55 million to its president.
A month after the Washington Post uncovered the Nature Conservancy’s dealings, TNC’s board “said it would end the practice of buying or selling land along with board members, trustees and employees, to avoid any conflict of interest.”[33]
Oil, Gas and Pigs:
In 1999, the Nature Conservancy drilled for oil and natural gas on a wildlife preserve in Texas City, Texas.[34] Some endangered birds on the preserve were killed.[35] Mobil had given TNC the land with the expectation that TNC would protect the wildlife.[36] Immediately after the incident was disclosed, TNC suspended what it called its “resource extraction activities.”[37]
In 2005, the Nature Conservancy supported an initiative to eradicate wild pigs living on Santa Cruz Island off the southern coast of California.[38] The slaughtering of pigs was done to protect an endangered fox species.[39] The situation angered animal rights groups and “forced the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy, which co-own the land, to explain why groups dedicated to protecting animals instead paid $5 million to kill them.”[40] The Nature Conservancy’s project director Lotus Vermeer explained, “t’s not just about killing pigs, it’s about saving a native species… What we’re choosing to do here is save biodiversity.”[41]
Funding
According to Discover the Networks, “etween 2001 and 2004, TNC received more than 1,200 grants from scores of liberal charitable foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, the Blue Moon Fund, the ChevronTexaco Foundation, the Columbia Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Educational Foundation of America, the Foundation for Deep Ecology, the Vira I. Heinz Endowment, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Minneapolis Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Prospect Hill Foundation, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Simons Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and the Turner Foundation.”[42]
http://www.groupsnoop.org/The+Nature+ConservancyOver time, however, as numerous land trusts have grown in size and number, so have their association - and influence - with government. This has been the case particularly with the large, national organizations that obtain enormous sums from federal funding. For many of these land trusts, what used to be a close working relationship with private landowners has been replaced by a closer relationship with government agencies. Increasingly too, the mission has evolved from protecting open lands through private stewardship to aiding government agencies in acquiring private lands. In these troubling arrangements, land trusts have operated more like government agents, acquiring easements from private landowners, only to turn around and quietly sell them - sometimes for a profit - to state or federal governments. These methods certainly are not practiced by all land trusts, but nor are they isolated cases.
Given the rapid growth in land trusts and the rising use of conservation easements over the past decade, along with increasing involvement with government in the arrangements, easements could become a far-reaching means for public land acquisition. That is, easements, absent reforms, could evolve into the prevailing method for government to shift lands unobtrusively from private to public control under a pretense of private stewardship.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA569.htmlConservation Easement: The Primary Tool for the Government Acquisition of Rural Lands
http://www.agenda21course.com/conservation-easement-the-primary-tool-for-the-government-acquisition-of-rural-lands/?print=1How The Nature Conservancy Secures Government Land Grabs
Read more at NetRightDaily.com:
http://netrightdaily.com/2011/04/how-the-nature-conservancy-secures-government-land-grabs/#ixzz3BzntkScvThe NATURE CONSERVANCY (TNC)
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=7221The Nature Conservancy
Then there’s the real estate. TNC say it owns or has under conservation easement 1,177,000 acres in its private preserve system. Good. TNC also says it has protected 10.5 million acres in the United States. Good. If they own only 1.17 million of that 10.5 million, what happened to the other 9.3 million acres?
They sold a lot of it to the government.
Whoa.
The Nature Conservancy bought private land from private owners who thought it would remain in private hands and sold it to the government?
Yep.
Isn’t that illegal?
Nope.
The government asks them to do it some of the time.
A letter from the Deputy Regional Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to the Nature Conservancy dated August 30, 1985, reveals a long-standing government agreement for TNC to buy private land: "We are appreciative of The Nature Conservancy’s continuing effort to assist the Service in the acquisition of lands for the Connecticut Coastal National Wildlife Refuge."
In this and numerous other letters, the government clearly agrees to pay TNC "in excess of the approved appraisal value."
Similar agreements for the federal government to buy TNC property at top-dollar prices exist all over the nation.
One federal officer who conducted such excess-cost purchases, Robert Miller, a chief of the realty division of the USFWS, was later hired by TNC at a high salary.
The Nature Conservancy is a conduit for the nationalization of private property. Nearly ten million acres so far.
Is it still going on?
According to the most recent figures available, in 1996 TNC received $37,853,205, or 11% of its total income, from sale of private land to federal, state, and local governments for use as parks, recreational areas, and nature preserves. Such land goes off the local tax rolls.
On top of that, The Nature Conservancy gets government grants and contracts worth millions each year. Green welfare. In 1996 they got $33,297,707, or 10% of their total income, from government contracts.
So Nature’s real estate agent, which asks you to join up for 25, 35 or 50 bucks, was already in your taxpaying pockets to the tune of $71,150,912 in 1996.
Read more @
http://www.undueinfluence.com/nature_conservancy.htmSENATE POISED TO VOTE ON HUGE LAND GRAB In truth, The Nature Conservancy buys private land from owners (usually at drastically reduced, land-grab prices) who think it will remain in private hands and then sells it to the government! In fact, TNC has sold more than 9 million acres to the government at a nice profit.
http://www.newswithviews.com/your_govt/your_government52.htm 
