NREPA: Land off-limits to people
by Vern Westgate, May 14, 2009
Here’s the basic issue. The (misnamed) Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA) is a huge Northwest American land grab. It is being pushed through Congress right now as HR 980. This bill proposes that 24 million MORE acres of land (about 38,000 square miles) in five northwestern states be given over to the Wildland’s Project. The intent is to drastically reduce human presence on the land.
The land’s resources currently provide jobs and recreation. This land grab also includes private property. For example: HR 980 lists Skitwish Ridge as an “inventoried roadless area in the Panhandle National Forest.” That’s about 12 miles from Coeur d’Alene. The claim is this is roadless. It’s not roadless, in fact there’s a home for sale there. If you Google map Skitwish Ridge and select Satellite view, you’ll see miles of roads including Interstate 90! We use those roads for recreation and jobs.
Who leads this ripoff? Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-New York who represents Manhattan. She’s been at this since 1993 and introduced this bill again. The representation on the committee is 21 Democrats, 14 Republicans. Of the five states targeted only three are represented on the committee and nobody from Idaho.
Here’s the size of the land grab: Oregon, 1,087,00 acres; Washington, 754,800 acres, Wyoming, 3,266,000 acres; Idaho, 9,800,000 acres; Montana, 8,256,000 acres.
HR 980 includes these details:
* The plan forbids development of public land in the five states by removing over 6,000 miles of existing roads, (from a roadless area?)
* The plan supposedly creates about 2,300 jobs for a “sustainable economic” base. That means government related and controlled jobs.
* In Idaho alone it threatens 20,000 existing jobs in logging and more in recreation, hunting, mining, ranching, etc. These are real jobs that have been genuinely sustained since 1900.
Why should you care? Under UN Agenda 21, use of natural resources is to be reduced dramatically, and all private property ownership is to be completely eliminated for the good of “Mother Earth.” How is this going to be accomplished? Legislation like HR 980 will end state and US sovereignty through various international and regional trade and cooperation treaties.
A few pandemics and economic crises will be “fixed” by a reduced population living in tightly controlled, highly concentrated population centers with large areas of our country/state off-limits to humans.
The bill is in front of the National Parks, Forests and Public Lands subcommittee right now. If you want to know more and find out who to contact, take the time to learn of the full impact and text of this bill. Here are web sites:
http://www.savethewest.net/nrepasummary.htm
www.freedomadvocates.org