Billionaire-funded eco group quietly taking farmland out of production in rural America
The American Prairie (AP), a conservation project in Montana, has quietly scooped up more than 450,000 acres of land with the help of its billionaire donors and the federal government.
The little-known project aims to create the largest “fully functioning ecosystem” in the continental U.S. by stitching together about 3.2 million acres of private and public lands, according to the American Prairie Foundation, which founded the reserve more than 20 years ago. The group has recorded 34 transactions spanning roughly 453,188 acres of land throughout central Montana — much of which were once used for farming and grazing — since 2004 and continues to aggressively expand.
“Our mission is to assemble the largest complex of public and private lands devoted to wildlife in the lower 48,” Pete Geddes, AP’s vice president and chief external relations officer, told Fox News Digital in an interview. “For comparison, about 25% larger than Yellowstone.”
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“We’re not asking the federal government to create anything, we’re not asking the federal government for any money,” he added. “Instead, we’re engaged in private philanthropy and voluntary exchange by buying ranches from people who would like to sell that to us.”
Cattle are pictured during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Fox News)
The American Prairie Foundation has raised tens of millions of dollars in recent years, according to recent tax filings, thanks in large part to its donors, which include well-known Wall Street and Silicon Valley magnates. Hansjoerg Wyss, a Swiss financier and mega-donor of liberal causes, deceased German retail mogul Erivan Haub, John Mars, the heir to the Mars candy fortune, and Susan Packard Orr, daughter of the Hewlett-Packard Co. co-founder, have all donated to AP, Bloomberg previously reported.
The AP said about 3% of its contributions have come from international donors.
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“It’s an area that doesn’t have a lot of people in it and has been depopulating for a long, long time,” Geddes said. “So, the thinking was, perhaps there’s greater potential for less conflict over conservation in this part of the world.”
However, AP’s plans have faced increasing pushback from top state officials and local ranchers who argue such a nature reserve would remove key land from production and negatively impact surrounding privately-owned lands. Using its donor funds, the group has purchased about 118,000 acres of private land and leased another 334,000 acres of public land owned primarily by the federal government.
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GUNS N GEAR
Evil plot or eco-restoration – don’t know.
But for upland bird hunters, we and our dogs _might_ just reap a bounty if habitats that were converted to fields reverts to the “wild”.
Both.
They are executing the cull and terraforming / re-building the environment as they’d like to see it after things settle down from the cull.
This maybe the same Group that in the ’90s started buying up Rangeland with the idea of re-creating ” The Traditional Buffalo Range ” stretching from Montana down through to Central/ southern Texas. Regardless no good can or will come of this.
Prairie Rats. Anti human ideologues, tools of the trans humanist globalists.
Unfortunately, they aren’t the only ones doing this. Nature Conservancy has been doing the same thing for decades now. And don’t think that any of us “peons” will ever get any use out of that land once it is bought up. The whole idea of buying it up is to exclude human use of that land unless you are one of the “elite.”
“The Nature Conservancy, which since its founding in 1951 has protected some 120 million acres of land around the world, is being rocked by a vast scandal…”