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President Biden was expected to release a report on the 30x30 initiative this week—the bold plan to protect 30 percent of American lands and ocean by 2030. Instead, he went even farther, unveiling a 10-year “America the Beautiful” campaign built on locally-led efforts to conserve and restore parks and nature.
America the Beautiful is based on eight principles, putting local, collaborative, and inclusive approaches to conservation at the forefront. It recognizes the importance of Tribal nations in conservation, as well as voluntary stewardship efforts of private landowners. Finally, it commits to using science as a guide while building on the wide variety of existing tools to make the outdoors more accessible to Americans.
Jennifer Rokala, the executive director of the Center for Western Priorities told reporters that America the Beautiful “shows how community- and Indigenous-led conservation efforts can ensure our lands and waters are conserved and accessible for generations to come—protecting wildlife, restoring damaged forests, and mitigating the effects of climate change.”
“Protecting 30x30 is not something the U.S. government can do on its own,” Rokala added. “It will take from-the-ground-up efforts in every state, using many different forms of conservation, to get there.”
30x30 disinformation makes it to Congress
Meanwhile, the anti-government extremist group American Stewards of Liberty (ASL) has brought its disinformation campaign to the halls of Congress, according to HuffPost. Trent Loos, who stood alongside Ammon Bundy at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, is helping lead the campaign. ASL head Margaret Byfield, the daughter of scofflaw ranchers who illegally ran cattle long before the Bundy family, has compared 30x30 to a 1939 mass starvation in Ukraine. At one of American Stewards' training sessions, Loos likened it to Adolf Hitler.
Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas appears to have taken up ASL's disinformation, saying “The idea of taking 30% of Kansas farmland and pastureland out of production would literally ruin, end the Kansas economy.” The Biden administration has never suggested seizing private property, and today's announcement makes it clear that voluntary private conservation efforts are the backbone of America the Beautiful.
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