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May/June 2007
Volume I; Issue 2
Special Report:
Conservation Easements

Uncle Sam Wants You(r) Land

By Marty McElhaney

The Army is embarking on a new mission to enroll recruits. Its new full-color Power Point presentation poster is not aimed at enticing new soldiers to join its ranks, but rather to entice private property owners to relinquish control of their land.

ARMY COMPATIBLE USE BUFFER PROGRAM (ACUB). Partnership for Protection. “Teaming to protect natural resources and sustain operations.” The words scream from the page.

The poster depicts soldiers dressed in combat gear slipping through the dark while two antelope watch cautiously. Two young boys nearby are looking at stars through a telescope, or maybe at the helicopters and parachutes in the night sky that have captured their attention. In the distance, illuminated by a full moon, stands a vast modern city.

The poster attempts to show that even though the Army controls its neighbors’ land, civilian life can go on uninterrupted and wildlife that lives on U.S. Army property will enjoy the protection of advanced military technology.

The U.S. Army, concerned that encroaching civilization will limit or severely curtail their training operations, has engaged in a campaign to secure surrounding property by outright purchase, acquisition of conservation easements, or the use of eminent domain.

Army public relations experts use the “Partnership for Protection” slogan to convince a skeptical public that the military is just trying to protect its ability to train its soldiers while conserving the environment, and has no designs to command and control private property. So far, it has been a hard sell.

The folks living around Fort Carson, near Colorado Springs, are a little gun-shy when it comes to the Army, and with good reason. Twenty-five years ago, the Army went on a land-grab rampage, sucking up 285,000 acres to expand the mobile infantry headquarters. Half of those acres were taken by eminent domain. It could not have been worse for the lifelong residents than if a foreign invader had swooped down and confiscated everything they had spent their lives building. When the dust settled, a few ghost towns were all that remained of what were once thriving rural communities.

Now, Fort Carson is seeking to expand its boundaries again, this time to encompass 2.5 million acres, according to sources. This time there will be no heavy-handed land grabbing, the PR people say; instead, they will only buy from “willing sellers.”

No doubt the Army has learned some new tricks from its distinguished partner, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), well-versed in the nuances of liberating people from their property rights. TNC has joined forces with Fort Carson and other military bases around the country, using its expertise to secure the conservation easements the Army wants for its expansion program.

In 2003, Congress supplied the tools for the Army’s land acquisition program when it passed enabling legislation (10 U.S.C. §2684a, Agreements to limit encroachments and other constraints on military training, testing, and operations).

Based on the legislation, the Army issued the memorandum, “Army Compatible Use Buffers (ACUB): a legally binding agreement between an Army installation and another party (non-governmental, state, or local government) that enables the other party to acquire land or interest in land from a willing private landowner in the vicinity of Army training areas.”

Aside from Fort Carson, eight other installations are currently enrolled in the “Active Conservation Buffer Program: Camp Blanding, Florida; Camp Ripley, Minnesota; Fort AP Hill, Virginia; Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Fort Stewart, Georgia; and Oahu, Hawaii. Fort Lewis, Washington; Camp San Luis Obispo, California; and Fort Riley, Kansas, have plans in development, while Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and Fort Hood, Texas, have other “conservation partnership activity.”

The federal government has made millions of taxpayer dollars available for conservation projects through a number of grant programs, including the Neo-tropical Bird Conservation Grant Program and the North American Wetlands Conservation Act.

Conservation easements and land acquisition are abundant through such programs as the Landowner Incentive Program that provides funding for cooperative programs between state fish and wildlife agencies and non-government organizations or individuals. The Forest Legacy Program supplies money to state governments and their appropriate partners (NGOs) to purchase private forestland.

Federal agencies are not eligible for many grant programs, but that is not a problem since the programs are written to provide non-government organizations that partner with the government easy access to as much money as the law allows.

Besieged ranchers sitting in Fort Carson’s target area are flanked by the Army’s might and The Nature Conservancy’s deep pockets. TNC’s Charles Bedford said, “The conservation easements prevent development which can encroach on military training, allow[ing] ranchers to realize the value of their development rights, while keeping the land in production and protect[ing] important wildlife habitat to prevent future restrictions on both public and private landowners. In short, TNC is working with the Department of Defense to preserve the benefits working ranch lands provide for conservation military readiness by compensating ranchers for their stewardship.” Despite the flowery rhetoric, this ends up being a classic case of everybody wins except the landowner.

If there were any doubts that TNC was in cahoots with the Army, TNC president Steve McCormick laid them to rest in a speech at the White House Cooperative Conservation Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, in August 2005. It was there that McCormick openly bragged about TNC’s partnership with the Pentagon to acquire private land and funding for buffer zones around military bases.

Although TNC has billions of dollars in assets, it prefers to use taxpayer money for its land purchases. Colorado’s Republican Senator Wayne Allard and Republican Rep. Joel Helfley helped TNC acquire a $7 million grant to secure a buffer zone south of Colorado Springs to protect the fort’s northern borders. “Sen. Allard’s Fort Carson Conservation Act of 2005 vaguely blocks condemnation but puts TNC in charge of buffer zones that ‘will help maintain Fort Carson training objectives, ensuring its own survival while also ensuring the survival of critical habitats.’”

Kimmi Lewis has lived on the Muddy Valley Ranch all her life, where she raised her six children. She is not giving up her home and way of life, even for the U.S. Army. She has led the charge to oppose plans to convert much of the Front Range into off-limits, no-man’s-lands and has succeeded in recruiting her neighbors for the battle. When the Army held meetings last winter and spring to calm the natives’ nerves, Kimmi had a little surprise waiting.

The first thing that greeted Karen Edge, the public relations expert, and Army public affairs officer Lt. Colonel David Johnson, was a full-blown map of the area the Army coveted. They reacted with shock and surprise, trying to dismiss its importance by explaining that it was just an “old” map.

A mysterious stranger left a phone message for Kimmi, saying he had something that would interest her. He provided her with the map, which proved what many had long suspected: the Army denied it had designs on its neighbors’ lands, but like the old rancher who said, “I don’t want all the land, just what borders me,” the Army wanted it all.

The map was dated 1997, and detailed the huge expanse of land the Army had in its sights: 2.5 million acres. Furthermore, the legend stated that the Army would begin the process of buying up targeted properties in ten years, by 2007.

In response to the many complaints from Coloradans about the Army’s plans to militarize the southern half of the state, State Rep. Wes McKinley introduced and passed House Bill 1069, which prohibits the Army from using eminent domain to expand the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site (PCMS) northeast of Trinidad. The bill reverses the 1910 legislation that allows the federal government to use eminent domain for military purposes. As of this story, the Governor had not signed the bill.

Fort Carson spokesman, Lt. Colonel David Johnson said he thinks Rep. McKinley and the Army are on the same page. “Rep. McKinley wants what we want,” he said, “willing sellers.”

Lewis knows this will be a long and hard battle and they may not be able to stave off Fort Carson and its partners in TNC for long, but they will continue to fight as long as resources permit. She and her friends and neighbors are facing the sad reality that their homes may be taken to “preserve” them for future generations.

“The TNC will likely end up with these ranches,” Lewis said, “Then they’ll do these big buffer zone easements. It is so frustrating that we can live out here and pay taxes and keep the communities strong, then they’ll come in and ‘preserve’ it for wilderness or open space; it’s open space now. If we can just maintain productive agriculture we can have open space and pay our taxes at the same time, we don’t have to take it off the tax rolls.”

Lewis added, “The other people who haven’t had this happen to them yet don’t get it, because it’s not their place. Until their ox is gored, they will ignore it.”

One day as she stood in line at a Wal-Mart pharmacy, Lewis spoke with a woman from a neighboring ranch. Like Lewis, she had raised her five children on the ranch and just wanted to be left alone to continue her work of caring for the land and the livestock.

Tears ran down her cheeks as she said, “Kimmi, I have lived on that ranch all my life. My parents worked that land and cared for it and my grandparents before them. It has been in our family for 100 years and it still looks the same. Now these people come along and tell us that they want our land to ‘preserve’ it. What can they [The Nature Conservancy] do to it that we haven’t already done?”