Subject: Wildlands

Date: 6/20/2005 1:28:45 PM Pacific Standard Time

Hi Kent – I saved this down back in 2001 during the FMD crisis in UK. It dawned on several of us that the areas of the most intensive culling seemed to match the areas designated to become wilderness areas – or Wildlands.

This site will let you search any country and get a listing of every Bio-sphere / Wildlands.

http://www2.unesco.org/mab/br/brdir/directory/database.asp

Also

http://www.ruralcleansing.com/articles/article017wildlands.htm

Excerpt:

Simply put, the Wildlands Project proposes to put humans in small urban islands within a wild continent. How much wildland is needed? Noss says 1000 grizzly bears are needed to sustain the species and he has determined that 1000 grizzlies need 242 million acres, or 378,000 square miles. That's an area larger than New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska combined. And that's for only 1000 grizzly bears.

Noss says:

"I suggest that at least half of the land area of the 48 conterminous states should be encompassed in core reserves and inner corridor zones...within the next few decades...assuming that most of the other 50 percent is managed intelligently as buffer zone."

The Noss plan identifies large "core reserves" surrounded by "inner buffer" areas, which are surrounded by "outer buffer" areas, which are all connected by "inter-regional corridors." He says: "Eventually, a wilderness network would dominate a region ...with human habitations being the islands."

Buffer zones, according to Noss, should be managed for the wildlife to insulate the area from human uses. "In many cases, private lands will need to be acquired and added to national forests and other public lands in order to serve as effective buffers."

As preposterous as this plan may sound to ordinary, hard-working Americans, it is no longer the pipe-dream of an eco-zealot. Peter Kostmayer introduced the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA), which was co-sponsored by several Congressmen. This bill established a bioregion, a "core reserve" as Noss calls it, with buffer zones and connectors that reached from Wyoming to Canada. Kostmayer was not re-elected, and the bill has not yet been adopted.

The Wilderness Act was adopted in 1964, after nine years of effort by wilderness advocates. The law set aside nine million acres forever as wilderness. Since then, an annual series of bills have been proposed, and now, more than 90 million acres have been set aside as wilderness. Dozens of bills are now under consideration that would designate even more land as wilderness.

The Wildlands Project may sound "wild" to most Americans, but it is a plan that is being implemented throughout the country by hundreds of organisations. And Congress appears only too willing to oblige.