Are prairies disappearing to the plow?

NATHAN DESCHEEMAEKER

Recently the American Prairie Reserve (APR) sent out a letter soliciting donations to match a $100,000 donation from Sanjeev Mehra who serves as Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors of The World Wildlife Fund, and serves as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The World Wildlife Fund co-founded the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef designed in part to align corporate finance and other powerful NGOs to decarbonize the American Beef Industry, which they acknowledge is already significantly more efficient than the rest of the world. This explains why Sanjeev Mehra would contribute to APR’s initiative, because what better way to reduce beef emissions than by removing them from millions of acres of public grazing lands? APR’s original application in 2017 for BLM grazing allotments requested the removal of livestock as an option for a class of livestock for the permit once a single indigenous animal is stocked.

But do these lands need to be protected, and whom are they protecting these lands from?

Multi-generational ranching is the reason these lands are largely intact. The APR points to WWF’s plow print which claims the prairies are disappearing to the plow. But most of the APR’s targeted region is chiefly valuable for grazing and is not suitable for large scale farming. Yet WWF’s 2023 plow print publication targets private lands with policy and claims that the “The destruction of grasslands across the Great Plains continues at an unsustainable pace,” and that “In total, 32 million acres have fallen to the plow since 2012.” APR points to this document as a justification for the need to protect these lands.

In spite of these claims that there is a significant loss of prairie grasslands and habitat to farming, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) data show a large decline in crop and pastureland, from 552 million acres in 1982 to 489 million acres in 2017. This data shows a 63 million acre decline in cropland in the last 40 years, which apparently WWF did not consider. Surely an entity with $600 million in assets has access to this data. Much of this is predicated on a narrative driven by the environmental community that undeveloped land and wildlife are disappearing. This narrative is used to justify programs that expand government land ownership and the regulation of natural resources. Referencing government data from the Natural Resources and Conservation Services (NRCS) and other agencies, Rob Gordon’s (former deputy secretary of the interior) comprehensive report — Lands and Habitat in the United States: A Reality Check — challenges this narrative stating: “Contrary to the familiar, agenda- driven narrative, development or conversion of natural landscapes to agricultural and urban use in the United States is not rapidly growing, nor are all U.S. species generally becoming ever more endangered. Left unchallenged, misinformation regarding the environment provides undue support for those who wish to impose wrong-headed, economically harmful polices upon an already enormous government estate, to enlarge it even further, and to impose economically destructive and burdensome regimes on those private lands that escape. Americans should be generally optimistic about the state of our lands and wildlife.”

Many papers supporting APR’s initiative shed light on their approach. They are relying on wholesale policy changes within administrative law as much as “willing sellers.” One reference is a 2019 publication in the Natural Resource Journal on APR’s grand scheme to rewild a massive area, James L. Huffman a PERC board member states: “If and when grazing lands become more available for conservation purposes, it will be important for the BLM and Forest Service to eliminate regulations and procedures intended to serve grazing management objectives” — James L. Huffman, “American Prairie Reserve: Protecting Wildlife Habitat on a Grand Scale,” 59 Nat. Resources J. 35 (2019) Donating to American Prairie Reserve is a donation in support of multi-national corporate and non-governmental environmental agendas to consolidate a vast region of lands subjecting state and local governments to a foreign and powerful influence. As Isaiah 5:8 says — “Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!”

NathanDescheemaeker and his family raise registered feeder calves in East-Central Montana, and he is a Research Specialist and Policy Analyst specializing in historical policy research, technical writing, and advocacy for property rights.

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