August 31, 2022
Washington, DC
President Joe Biden’s “30 X 30” initiative threatens to be the biggest federal land grab since Congress passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973. Executive Order 14008 on “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad,” signed by President Biden on 27th January 2021, directs the Secretary of the Interior in section 216 “to achieve the goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.”
Although roughly 640 million acres (or 27%) of America’s total land mass are already owned by the four federal land agencies, the Secretary of the Interior’s initial report, titled “Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful,” makes it clear that 30 X 30 will target massive amounts of privately-owned land for government control as well as eliminating natural resource production (including oil and gas, hardrock minerals, timber, and livestock grazing) on National Forests and public lands owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Radical preservation groups and other proponents of 30 X 30 have stated emphatically that locking up the West and Alaska, where most of the federal lands are, is not sufficient; instead, they insist that 30% of each “eco-region” must be under federal land-use management. This will necessarily require regulating hundreds of millions of acres of private land.
Conservatives strongly oppose 30 X 30 for the following reasons:
- Property rights and widespread ownership of private property are essential foundations of limited government and ordered liberty. The current extent of federal land ownership and of federal land-use controls already threatens these vital constitutional underpinnings. 30 X 30 constitutes another step on the regulatory road to serfdom.
- When government owns or controls most of the land in rural America, government then controls the rural economies and the lives of rural Americans. Rather than adding another layer of federal regulation over rural America, the President and the Congress should be repealing or reforming existing federal land-use controls and radically reducing the amount of land owned by the federal land agencies.
- The federal land agencies are more often than not terrible stewards of the environment. For example, the catastrophic wildfires that have destroyed millions of acres of forests in the West and the wildlife living there are fires that start and spread on federal land because of misguided preservationist policies. Private land owners, on the other hand, have strong incentives to take care of what they own through active management. Existing federal controls on private land, such as endangered species habitat designations, have created perverse incentives and thereby damaged the environment. Imposing another layer of federal land-use control can only lead to further environmental degradation.
- There is no existing legislative authority for 30 X 30, and the 117th Congress has taken no steps to authorize 30 X 30. No hearings have been held by the House and Senate committees of jurisdiction, and no bills to authorize a 30 X 30 program have been introduced. In fact, the only bill that has been introduced, by Representative Lauren Boebert, would prohibit implementation of 30 X 30.
We encourage all Americans to oppose this illegal, immense, and catastrophic expansion of federal control over our property and our lives.
The Honorable Edwin Meese III
Attorney General
President Ronald Reagan (1985-1988)
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Chairman, Conservative Action Project
Chairman, CNP Action, Inc.
The Honorable Becky Norton Dunlop
White House Advisor
President Ronald Reagan (1981-1985)
Myron Ebell
Director, Center for Energy and Environment
Competitive Enterprise Institute
The Honorable Bob McEwen
U.S. House of Representatives
Former Member, Ohio
The Honorable Morton C. Blackwell
President
The Leadership Institute
Kelly J. Shackelford, Esq.
President and CEO
First Liberty Institute
The Honorable Jim DeMint
Chairman, Conservative Partnership Institute
Member, US Senate (SC 2005-2013)
Ed Corrigan
Vice Chairman, Conservative Action Project
President & CEO, Conservative Partnership Institute
The Honorable T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr.
Chief Domestic Advisor
President Ronald Reagan (1987-1988)
Tom Jones
Co-Founder
American Accountability Foundation
The Honorable Paul S. Teller, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Advancing American Freedom
Terry Schilling
President
American Principles Project
Alfred S. Regnery
President
Republic Book Publishers
Lisa B. Nelson
Chief Executive Officer
American Legislative Exchange Council
The Honorable Matt Schlapp
Chairman
CPAC
Chad Connelly
Founder and President
Faith Wins
The Honorable David McIntosh
President
Club for Growth
Scott T. Parkinson
Vice President for Government Affairs
Club for Growth
L. Brent Bozell III
Founder and President
Media Research Center
Thomas Fitton
President, Judicial Watch, Inc.
President, Council for National Policy
Jenny Beth Martin
Chairman
Tea Party Patriots Citizen Fund
David N. Bossie
President
Citizens United
Noah Wall
Executive Vice President
FreedomWorks
The Honorable Tony Perkins
President
Family Research Council
William L. Walton
The Bill Walton Show
Resolute Protector Foundation
The Honorable Russ Vought
Director
Office of Management and Budget (2020-2021)
David Bozell
President
ForAmerica
Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin (Ret.)
Executive Vice President
Family Research Council
Wesley Denton
Chief Operating Officer
Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI)
Lori Roman
President
ACRU Action Fund
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
Executive Chairman
Center for Security Policy
The Honorable Brooke Rollins
President and CEO
America First Policy Institute (AFPI)
The Honorable Ken Cuccinelli
Former AG of Virginia & Asst. Deputy Sec.,
Dept. of Homeland Security
Center for Renewing America
The Honorable Ken Ivory
Representative
Utah House of Representatives
The Honorable Scott Walker
President
Young America’s Foundation
The Honorable James C. Miller III
Budget Director for President Reagan (1985-1988)
The Honorable Donald Paul Hodel
U.S. Secretary of Energy (1982-1985)
U.S. Secretary of Interior (1985-1989)
Rod D. Martin
Founder & CEO
The Martin Organization, Inc.
Guillermo J. Aragon
Chief Strategy Officer
Martin Capital
Christina Murphy Lusk
President
The Martin Foundation
Lourdes Cosio
Campaign for the American Future
Sherri R. Martin
Executive Vice President
The Martin Organization, Inc.
Shawn A. Mitchell
Former National Chaplain
National Federation of Republican Assemblies
The Honorable Stephen Stockman
U.S. House of Representatives
Former Member, Texas
Anne Schlafly Cori
Chairman
Eagle Forum
Ron Pearson
Executive Director
Conservative Victory Fund
Dr. Virginia Armstrong
Natl Director, Law & Worldview Program
Eagle Forum
Tim Throckmorton
President
Lifepointe Ministry
The Honorable Peter Hoekstra
Member of Congress 1993-2011
Ambassador (Ret)
Joan Holt Lindsey
President
Lindsey Communications
Richard D. Hayes
Partner
Hayes, Berry, White & Vanzant, LLP
Jack Park
Conservative Activist and Donor
Mario Navarro da Costa
Director, Washington Bureau
Tradition, Family, Property
Judson Phillips
Founder
Tea Party Nation
Thomas Pyle
President
American Energy Alliance
The Honorable Jake Hoffman
President & CEO
AlignAct.com
G. Eric Georgatos
Executive Producer
America Can We Talk?
Tom DeWeese
President
American Policy Center
Paul Gessing
President
Rio Grande Foundation
Caren Cowan
Executive Director
Protect Americans Now
Don L. (Bebo) Lee
President
New Mexico Federal Lands Council
Joseph A. Morris
Partner, Morris & De La Rosa
Chairman, The Heartland Institute
Dr. Paige Patterson
President
Sandy Creek Foundation
The Honorable Mike Hill
Former Member
Florida State Representative
The Honorable George K. Rasley Jr.
Former Assistant Director
U.S. National Park Service
Gerard Kassar
State Chairman
NYS Conservative Party
The Honorable Gail Griffin
Representative
Arizona
Ed Regan
Former Resource Manager (1995 – 2021)
RY Timber, Inc.
Dr. E. Calvin Beisner
President
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
Ambassador Henry F. Cooper
President Reagan Chief Defense and Space Negotiator
Former SDI Director
Elaine Donnelly
President
Center for Military Readiness
Rod Vandenbos
CEO
R2 LLC
Sean Noble
President
American Encore
Tim Macy
Chairman of the Board
Gun Owners of America
Michelle Easton
President
Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women
C. Preston Noell III
President
Tradition, Family, Property, Inc.
Don Woodsmall
President (Interim)
Center for Security Policy
Martha Boneta Fain
President
VAF
Ashley Baker
Director of Public Policy
Committee for Justice
Michael J. Petersen
State Representative
Utah House of Representatives
Seton Motley
President
Less Government
Kristen A. Ullman
President
Eagle Forum
Carl Albrecht
State Legislator
Kay R. Daly
President
Coalition for a Fair Judiciary
Melvin Adams
President
Noah Webster Educational Foundation
Mark Fitzgibbons
President of Corporate Affairs
American Target Advertising
Andresen Blom
President
Hawaiian Values
Kevin Freeman
Founder
NSIC Institute
Richard Rounsavelle
Trustee
MRC
Nancy Schulze
Founder, CEO
RCW Speakers
Sal Russo
Co-Founder and Chief Strategist
Tea Party Express
Penna Dexter
Co-host
Point of View Radio
The Honorable Diana Denman
Presidential Appointee
President Ronald Reagan
Richard Manning
President
Americans for Limited Government
Eaton Hopkins
President
Liberty Surgical, Inc.
The Honorable Peter J. Thomas
Chairman
The Conservative Caucus
Ralph A. Rebandt II
Candidate
Ralph Rebandt for Governor
James Edwards
Executive Director
Conservatives for Property Rights
Dr. Jerome Robert Corsi
Founder and CEO
DrJeromeCorsi.com
Darrell A. Henry
Executive Director
Western Caucus Foundation
The Honorable Terrence Scanlon
Retired Chairman and President
Capital Research Center
Chris Wright
Executive Committee Member
Potomac Tea Party
Willes K. Lee
Vice President
National Rifle Association of America
The Honorable Cheryl K. Acton
Representative
Utah House of Representatives
Allen J. Hebert
Chairman
American-Chinese Fellowship
Kent Glesener
President
Paradigm Construction & Engineering, Inc.
Floyd Brown
Founder
The Western Journal
Alan Gardner
Chairman
American Lands Council
Greg Walcher
Former Executive Director
Colorado Dept. of Natural Resources
Saulius “Saul” Anuzis
President
60 Plus Association
James L. Martin
Founder/Chairman
60 Plus Association
Heather R. Higgins
CEO
Independent Women’s Voice
Carrie L. Lukas
President
Independent Women’s Forum