URGENT - The Nature Conservancy Is Striking Again - Please Forward - Quilcene Washington private property being bought up by the state

To: Private Property Owners Especially in Washington State

This is a must read from one our strongest property rights advocates and principles of Olympic Stewardship Foundation http://olysteward.org/ in the Olympic peninsula Washington state for you out of staters.

This is exactly how the eastern extreme work together with all of their partners in government around the world. This is atypical of how the green extremes take our private and public lands behind our backs, in closed door uninvited sessions and by shear persistence betting that the eye of the public will grow weary of their hammering upon US.

Please post whereever possible and help us get this word out to support Norman and all private property owners and anyone who does not want their own private and public lands shut down in the future. This green taking is a cancer that is terminal if we don't kill it now with radiation and chemo therapy by exposing it.

Attention - Jeff Wright (CAPR); Ron Ewart (NARLO) - Consider sending this out to your extensive email list.



Extract from 1st message below

"Folks, things have changed, and they continue to change rapidly.
The only reason Jefferson County is going to get the $4+ million from the Secure Rural Schools Act funding this year is because it was rolled into the $810 Billion bailout bill that was supposed to rescue the markets . . . which continue to tank spectacularly all around the world.
It had come to a vote in the U.S. House three times this year . . . and had been rejected every time.

Extract from 2nd message below

Jim could you please forward the following to the group. Apparently the state is having a meeting and we property owners down here have not yet been invited yet! I received the below from a "friend". As you can see the nature conservancy types are packing the seats and we could use a little help ourselves. Property is being bought up by the state down here and "forever" being removed from private ownership. They are erecting dead trees in the valley, getting rid of the small amount of open space and actual privately held small parcels of land. The hidden thing is that when enough private land is gone then regulation will end all private ownership, anyway would be nice to have some friendly faces in the crowd if anyone has the time.

Thanks...


Jack Venrick
Enumclaw, Washington


----- Original Message -----
From: Norman MacLeod
To: various
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2008 9:54 AM __,_._,___
What are we talking about here?
The state is proposing to expand the Dabob Bay Natural Area Preserve from its current 195 acres to as much as 3200 acres.
When adopted, the expanded boundaries allows the Department of Natural Resources to work with willing landowners to achieve “protection in perpetuity” for the expanded area. This “opportunity boundary” focuses DNR on protecting (placing new use restrictions) this land.
The last two steps still needing to be completed are this upcoming final public meeting and formal adoption by the State Lands Commissioner.
If this goes through, the landowners within the newly defined boundary will come under focused attention to participate in achieving the desired levels of protection. There will be pressure to participate. $5 million was appropriated by the state legislature for this purpose in 2007. There is, of course, no guarantee that the money will remain available, given the economic situation we are being plunged into at the moment.
The email conversation included below was forwarded with a request that it be forwarded on further. The issue is the expansion of permanently conserved lands in the Dabob Bay area. The initiating point of this particular e-conversation is an email sent to the regional membership of The Nature Conservancy . . . amounting to an admission that they stacked the meeting in May, and pleading for a much expanded stacking for the upcoming October 23 public meeting.
That message was sent to TNC members, who by and large do not live in the area surrounding Dabob. In fact, it would not be a stretch to assume that a good share of the fannies warming the seats at the Quilcene High School will be arriving from the I-5 Corridor.
They are doing this in anticipation of a larger group of locally concerned citizens learning about what happened in May . . . and responding by coming to this meeting, and in the hope that they will be able to drown you out with their advocacy for permanently “preserving” thousands of acres in Quilcene. (Pay especially close attention to the highlighted portions of the TNC rally call.) What do you think removing that land from availability will mean at a time when news of economic catastrophe in the stock markets around the world rolls in by the day . . . by the hour . . . sometimes even by the minute?
Folks, things have changed, and they continue to change rapidly. The only reason Jefferson County is going to get the $4+ million from the Secure Rural Schools Act funding this year is because it was rolled into the $810 Billion bailout bill that was supposed to rescue the markets . . . which continue to tank spectacularly all around the world. It had come to a vote in the U.S. House three times this year . . . and had been rejected every time.
We have to prepare for the worst, and get ready to live on our own resources . . . just in case. If we can do that, then we can get through whatever is coming for the next several years. In order to do that, we need all of our available land to remain available to us. We cannot afford to lock any of it up to meet somebody’s Pugetopian vision of “the way things should be”. I’d dearly love to be proved wrong on this . . . but I’d feel a whole lot worse if we allowed anyone to take away the resources we might need to keep our families warm and fed.
Too many people are trying to press forward with a “business as usual” attitude. Economic conditions are no longer “as usual”. Since the slide began, our markets are off by at least a quarter. They are not falling gracefully. One of Port Townsend’s restaurateurs recently opted not to renew his lease. The rapidly rising number of shared entrees with water as the beverage was his cue. I was recently in an excellent waterfront restaurant in Poulsbo on a Saturday evening during the dinner hour. At one point, we were the only party in the place, and the owner told me that his business is off by well more than half compared to this time last year. The cracks are growing.
These folks from the TNC and the other highlighted groups are coming to Quilcene with a “business as usual” attitude. A few of them live in our area . . . but only a few. We need to be there in greater numbers, with the needs of our families in mind, and we need to politely and eloquently inform the state and our environmentally concerned mostly-distant neighbors that they will need to wait on locking up our local resources until after economic good times return and we have a new perspective on the values that those lands actually hold for the totality of farms, fish and people. With that context in hand, we will be more than willing to discuss what lands should be permanently set aside and removed from what will then hopefully be an expanding tax base.
In the meantime, I think we can also be sensitive to the needs of Dabob’s ecosystems, and that we would be more than willing to make sensitive use of the land when it is necessary.
Remember, this needs to be a gathering where we are calm, peaceful, well reasoned, and each take our turn to speak, so that all of our comments are entered into the public record. Bring written comments to submit to the officials, so that they, too, will be included in the public record.
We’re sorry, but we simply cannot afford to foreclose on our ability to feed our families when it looks like conditions dictate that we may need to make some use of some portion of those lands to help keep our children healthy.
From: Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 7:04 PMTo: Cc: Subject: RE: Please Forward - Quilcene private property being bought up by the state
Dave
I’ll work to get some word out as soon as possible. I’d like to have some more specifics if you can provide them so I can be factual in what is going on.
-Jim
From: Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 6:47 PMTo: Subject: Re: Please Forward - Quilcene private property being bought up by the state
Jim could you please forward the following to the group. Apparently the state is having a meeting and we property owners down here have not yet been invited yet! I received the below from a "friend". As you can see the nature conservancy types are packing the seats and we could use a little help ourselves. Property is being bought up by the state down here and "forever" being removed from private ownership. They are erecting dead trees in the valley, getting rid of the small amount of open space and actual privately held small parcels of land. The hidden thing is that when enough private land is gone then regulation will end all private ownership, anyway would be nice to have some friendly faces in the crowd if anyone has the time.
Thanks...
Below is the copy of what I guess is a nature conservancy request:
On Sep 30, 2008, at 2:10 PM, Fayette Krause wrote:
Dear Folks: We finally have an announcement of the public hearing on the proposed expansion of the Natural Area Preserve/Natural Resource Conservation Area boundary at Dabob Bay. As indicated, the date is October 23. The location is the Quilcene High School -- the same venue as the informational meeting back in May of this year. Time is as follows:
5:30 Doors open.6:00 Meeting begins.6:30 Public testimony is accepted. I anticipate more people who oppose the expansion will be attending than was the case at the first meeting. In May, those who opposed or were skeptical of the expansion were very surprised at the turn out that NW Watershed Insitute, Jefferson Land Trust, Admiralty Audubon, and TNC helped to generate. They have had time to contact people on the other side of this issue, so we need to be prepared with increased numbers of supporters. I hope that all of you who participated in the initial, informational mtg -- and those of you who weren't able to attend -- will attend this public mtg. It is our last opportunity to fashion a project that truly will protect Dabob for decades to come. It can also be an opportunity for us to put in place a model that will help rejuvenate Puget Sound. Please put the date on your calendar and invite your friends to attend and support Dabob Bay, too. We can have an expansive protected area at Dabob if we all take one more night and make certain our voices are heard. Thanks for your support. FayetteThe Nature Conservancy