Last time we discussed the origins of the "conservation" movement. You will recall conservation was used to close land to human settlement, restrict access to natural resources in the western United States and erode America's national sovereignty. Associated with the term "conservation" was a fledgling eugenics movement whose purpose was to engineer a reduction in the human population of the world.

In 1968 an International Biosphere Conference urged the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to establish a program that would manage the world's natural resources on a biosphere basis. UNESCO's program became known as Man and the Biosphere (MAB). A biosphere reserve or "eco-region" is a huge tract of land of several million hectares set aside for the exclusive preservation of nature--read natural resources. Over time human occupation and economic activity are gradually eliminated. While Canadians might participate in the management of these areas, policy is determined by UN treaty while Canadian sovereignty is severely eroded. Eventually private property is regulated out of existence. The economic benefactors include the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who later participate in running the bio-region, unelected bureaucrats, academic sycophants and transnational resource cartels.

In Canada, The Niagara Escarpment, Ontario; Long Point, Ontario; Riding Mountain, Manitoba; Mont. Ste. Hilaire, Quebec; Waterton Lakes, Alberta and Isabella Bay, Baffin Island, North West Territories (NWT) have been declared part of UNESCO's World Network of Biosphere Reserves. Across Canada, more reserves are in the planning stages including one that is trans-boundary that covers central British Columbia from Canada's Yukon Territory to major parts of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. As you will discover in a future article, a second trans-boundary biosphere reserve is to be the outcome of the Ontario government's "Ontario's Living Legacy."

Wildlands will affect everyone in North America. According to Charles Mann and Mark Plummer writing in the June 1993 edition of "Science" magazine, Wildlands "calls for nothing less than resettling the entire continent. It calls for a network of wilderness reserves, human buffer zones and wildlife corridors stretching across huge tracts of land -- hundreds of millions of acres; as much as half the continent." Mike Coffman, Ph.D., President of Environmental Perspectives and author of Saviors of Earth says, "Under the plan, one quarter of (Canada and) the United States would be turned into wilderness where all human activity would literally cease. Another quarter of the land would be set aside in buffer zones where human activity would be severely limited." The migration habits of large mammals--wolves, bear, lynx or so-called endangered species--are employed as the reason to cease human activity in these bio-regions.

In the October/November, 1996 issue of The Ottawa Times, an article entitled World Eco-Congress Suggests Depopulation restates the goal of Wildlands, "is to return at least half of North America to wilderness. . . " Reporting on Harvey Locke's presentation to the Eco-Congress, The Times said a map presented to Locke's audience indicated that "Calgary and Edmonton, [Alberta Canada,] fall within a buffer zone and would, therefore, have to be significantly depopulated and their industrial and technological activity severely regulated."

According to Wild Earth, an environmental magazine published by Foreman and his partners, "it exists to remind conservationists that . . all lands and waters should be left to the whims of Nature, not to the selfish desires of one species who chose for itself the misnomer, Homo Sapiens. Does The Wildlands Project advocate the end of industrial civilization? Most assuredly. Everything must go."

In 1996, The Seville Strategy, integrated The Wildlands Project into UNESCO's international Man and the Biosphere (MAB) program, linking it to the 1992 Earth Summit's Agenda 21 and the Convention on Biological Diversity. These two UN treaties bind the world to global governance as spelled out in the UN's Report of the Commission on Global Governance. [Oxford University Press, (1995)] Currently, Wildlands is now being implemented across North America as an integral part of MAB.

In October, 1997, Prince Philip presented the North American Conservation Assessment/ North America's Living Legacy to a Washington D.C. news conference. After months of digging, a copy of the press package was obtained and a copy of the report was reviewed at WWF's Toronto, Ontario office. The document was prepared by the United States and Canadian branches of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). What we found was alarming. The WWF document is a plan that would carve North America into 116 biosphere reserves or "eco-regions", in effect Balkanizing Canada and the United States. Most of the 116 "eco-regions" cut across one or more political boundaries, international, state or provincial. When implemented, Canada and the United States would cease to exist as sovereign nations.

The nearly 600 pages of the WWF report describe each "eco-region", its major habitat type, the size of the planned area, the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) responsible for pushing the agenda forward and a number of other details relating to the biogeography and biodiversity of the region.

WWF's "Living Legacy" report refers to Ontario's plan as "eco-region 8". It covers more than 346,700 sq. km. (214,969 sq. mi.) of the resource-bearing lands of the southern Canadian shield in Ontario and Quebec and parts of western New York and eastern Vermont. Shortly after completion of Lands for Life, it was announced that a connecting corridor designed to facilitate the passage of larger herbivores would be established between Ontario's Algonquin Park and New York State's Adirondack State Park. This would become the second major trans-boundary biosphere reserve between Canada and the United States. Ontario has renamed Lands for Life, calling it "Ontario's Living Legacy."

Interestingly, the WWF report assigns the task of implementing their "eco-region 8" to The Wildlands League, the WWF, The Federation of Ontario Field Naturalists, the ultra radical Earthroots and several other lesser-known environmental NGO's.

Next, we will discuss what we have learned about how these "eco-regions" are being used in other countries in our hemisphere and in Africa. The public has been deceived not only by the Ontario's Harris government, they have been used as pawns to help implement revolutionary international programs. The strategy used is classic: the agenda is set by top down international treaty obligations; then upward pressure is applied by NGOs and a tiny segment of a well intentioned but dangerously misinformed public supplying the orchestrated "grassroots" support. Appropriately, it is called, "the pincer" strategy.