By Lucy White

Designating the Berryessa Snow Mountain region a National Conservation Area (HR 5545/S 3375) is wasteful and irresponsible use of our money, creating a heavier burden on our system and suppressing our potential. The additional agenda, should the bills stall in Congress, is to make Berryessa Snow Mountain a national monument, bypassing Congress and going directly to the president for an executive order.

“Permanent” conservation areas are dangerous and destructive, locking up lands with a single purpose. They eliminate choices in the future, and any economic potential. That is national self-destruction.

The National Conservation Area designation is a colossal land grab for lands that are currently federally managed. Deceitfully, a 2008 map had been provided to all those who reviewed and/or supported the bills. The expanded May 2012 map includes extensive private property — ranches, subdivisions, towns and outlying rural areas.

These newly classified “inholdings” are essentially properties destined for federal acquisition. The most significant long-term disaster is the “permanent” lock-up of billions and billions of dollars of our assets — the natural resources that rightfully belong to the people of California.

The federal government has possession of one-third of all the lands in the United States — nearly 700 million acres of the total 2.3 billion acres! Two-thirds of those lands are in the Western states, the 13 states west of the Rocky Mountains, with an average of 50 percent of the lands in each of those states. Other states average 4 percent of their land in federal possession. In California, the federal lands are 48 percent. Something is wrong here!

This is socialized ownership of land, making the U.S. in the company of the former U.S.S.R. and China. The U.S.S.R. is gone, and China has released its collective farms. This means the United States has the most socialist lands on the planet — and growing, through obsessive takings by the federal government. This is a huge threat to our freedom, private property, the education of our children and our nation’s ability to compete in the global market.

When he was president, Ronald Reagan zero-budgeted the Land and Water Conservation Fund, stating that the government already had too much land. Today, all land acquisitions need to be halted. We need to keep private lands in private hands. Gale Norton, secretary of the interior from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush, has said that private landowners are often the best stewards of the land.

If we are a free society, we need a free economy that is founded in freedom of choice and the ability to use our resources.

Robert J. Smith, author of “Earth Resources: Private Ownership vs. Public Waste,” coined the phrase “free-market environmentalism” for the use of the institutions of a free society to protect the environment rather than continued reliance upon regulation and central planning.

Smith said we need “to wake up the American people on the issues that we are having with the loss of private property. Americans need to hear that the loss of private property not only discourages freedom but it ends up destroying the environment, and that we need to return to the vision of our founding fathers and have a system based on private ownership of land and resources.”

Why is the Department of Interior perpetuating the myth that the federal government should manage more lands when it is failing to manage lands it already has? Why is Interior acting as a self-government? Why are Interior and our representatives manipulating the laws as the means to their ends? Why are Interior and representatives allowed to cause irreparable harm to people’s lives and our nation’s economy? These actions call for investigation, and a halt to activities.

Decisions for this nation need to be made in favor of the people, not against the people. Over government is the enemy that has waged war on America and the principles on which it stands. We need to be a thriving nation utilizing resources that can better our lives, while strengthening our nation and independence.

Whether state or federal, our land use must meet the criteria of appropriateness in our times. No designation should be “permanent.” Logic and responsibility should guide the future.

— Lucy White is a Calistoga resident.

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