"My father made him an offer he couldn't refuse," Michael Corleone tells his girlfriend Kay in perhaps the most famous line from "The Godfather." Three decades after Mario Puzo's fictional saga of a New York crime family first captured the public's imagination, the expression "to make someone an offer he can't refuse" has come to characterize those less than voluntary decisions people sometimes are forced to make.

Sadly, such "offers" have long been a staple of U.S. environmental policy. For years, property owners in rural America have been confronted by unpleasant choices in which the thing they least want to do-sell their land-becomes the only option open to them. Selective enforcement of the Endangered Species Act, arbitrary application of wetlands regulations, massive government land purchases, or protracted disputes over grazing and water rights-these are the things that traditionally pit powerful federal bureaucrats against unsuspecting farmers, ranchers, and other property owners.

In this unequal battle, federal agencies not only have hordes of government lawyers at their disposal, they also have powerful, well-funded allies in the environmental movement who have mastered the art of putting the squeeze on the hapless landowner. Cloaking themselves in the mantle of environmental protection, these groups know how to turn environmental laws against property owners, coordinate their land-grabbing schemes with friendly federal regulators, and employ their vast financial resources to intimidate landowners.

The tactics these organizations use vary widely. Some purchase private land and sell most of it to the government for a profit - a lucrative practice for some environmental organizations that creates a perverse incentive to target private property. Others promote direct government purchases of private land in the guise of "protecting" it. Some bring suit either against the government or against the property owner with the goal of forcing the landowner to sell his property. Still others allow property owners to keep their land but seek restrictions on its use. But regardless of the approach taken, the big environmental groups' wealth enables them to attack property owners from different directions.

Indeed, the amount of money pouring into the nation's roughly 8,000 environmental organizations is nothing short of staggering. In his landmark five-part series for the Sacramento Bee, appropriately titled "Environment, Inc.," Tom Knudson reported that U.S. green groups took in $3.5 billion in 1999, up 94 percent since 1994, and that individuals, companies, and foundations gave an average of $9.6 million a day to environmental organizations in 1999. Knudson, whose series appeared in the April 22-26, 2001 editions of the Bee, pointed out that such is green largess that the salaries for CEOs at the ten largest environmental groups averaged $235,918 in 1999, the latest year for which figures are available.

Something else Knudson's exhaustive research turned up is the unequal distribution of the money flowing into the coffers of environmental organizations. Citing data on file with the IRS, he found that 20 of the nation's 8,000 green groups took in 29 percent of all contributions to environmental groups in 1999. Indeed, the top 10 environmental groups earned spots on the Chronicle of Philanthropy's list of America's wealthiest charities.

Because space does not allow for consideration of the tactics and strategies of all key players, this article will focus on the activities of three of the most successful organizations: the Nature Conservancy, the Conservation Fund, and the Wilderness Society.

The Nature Conservancy
Of the most powerful green organizations, none is more flush with cash-or more astute at using its wealth in the service of its political agenda-than the Nature Conservancy. Founded in 1951, the Nature Conservancy has grown from modest beginnings to become what property-rights advocates Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb have correctly labeled "the richest of all environmental groups." In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2000, the Conservancy reported total revenue and other support of $786.8 million. In addition to its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, the group has eight regional offices, along with 50 state chapter offices.

The Nature Conservancy boasts a membership of 1,029,012 people who pay a minimum annual membership fee of $25. In addition to the membership dues and contributions that generated $357.4 million in fiscal year 2000, the Nature Conservancy earned $60 million from government awards, $14 million from private contracts and $161 million from investment income. The Nature Conservancy also reports that it received "gifts of land" in 2000 worth $90 million.

The group is certainly not exaggerating when it describes itself as "the world's largest private international conservation group. "Working with communities, businesses and people like you, we protect millions of acres and waters worldwide." To date, the Conservancy has acquired more than 12 million acres of land in the U.S. that is organized into more than 1,400 preserves. There is no reason to doubt that the Conservancy will be able to continue its aggressive acquisition of land. Last year alone, donations increased more than $60 million, helping it add more than 500,000 acres to its network of sanctuaries. The Nature Conservancy is currently waging a "Campaign for Conservation" to raise $1 billion to "save the world's Last Great Places." As of September 2001, the Conservancy was well on the way to meeting that goal, having raised $817.5 million.

Corcoran elaborated: "The Conservation Fund, working with the Park Service, decided they were going to start picking up properties outside the boundary of the park. The Park Service did not have the right to tell them to pick up private properties outside the legislated boundary, for the purpose of selling them to the National Park Service. "One of those properties would have surrounded me and put my farm in the park, and we purchased the property to save ourselves from being included with a national park boundary expansion. Once private property comes inside the boundaries and becomes an inholding, it is eligible to be condemned by the Park Service."

Corcoran noted that Conservation Fund lobbyists made repeated attempts in Congress to find a senator who would support an expansion of the park's boundary. "But there are sixteen homeowners who would get stuck as inholders inside the park, and they're scared to death." Fortunately, Corcoran and her neighbors banded together and blocked the Conservation Fund's maneuvers at Antietam.

The Wilderness Society
Founded in 1935, the Wilderness Society says its mission is "to protect America's wilderness and to develop a nationwide network of wild lands through public education, scientific analysis, and advocacy." Headquartered in Washington, DC, the Wilderness Society has eight regional offices and over 200,000 members. In 1999, it had a budget of $14.3 million and generated more than $18.8 million in revenue, almost all from donors. Individuals accounted for $14.8 million of the revenue, foundations for $2.5 million and corporations for $265,000. Leading philanthropic donors to the Wilderness Society include the Ford Foundation ($225,000 in 1998), the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ($150,000 in 1998), the David and Lucile Packard Foundation ($50,000 in 1999), and the Town Creek Foundation ($75,000 in 1998).

The Wilderness Society occupies a unique position. "It has steadfastly rejected the acquisition and ownership of private property for its own self-management, unlike the Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, and the National Farmland Trust," note Arnold and Gottlieb. "Instead, the Wilderness Society prefers to advocate only government ownership and management of natural resources.

"In keeping with its pledge to "develop a national network of wild lands," the Wilderness Society is one of many environmental organizations involved in the "Wildlands Project." Described by Science magazine (June 25, 1993) as "the most ambitious proposal for land management since the Louisiana Purchase of 1803," the Wildlands Project calls for "a network of wilderness reserves, buffer zones, and wildlife corridors stretching across huge tracks of land-hundreds of millions of acres, as much as half of the continent."

According to Science, the long-term goal of the Wildlands Project "is nothing less than a transformation of America from a place where 4.7 percent of the land is wilderness to an archipelago of human-inhabited islands surrounded by natural areas." Quietly launched in 1991, the Wildlands Project has been guided by David Foreman, formerly with the Wilderness Society and founder of Earth First!; Michael Soule, professor emeritus at the University of California at Santa Cruz and a man considered the father of "conservation biology"; and Reed Noss, an Oregon-based scientist and prominent conservation biologist. By 1999, the Tucson, Arizona-based organization had a full-time staff of eight and a budget of $1.6 million.

The project aims to return fifty percent of the continental United States to a "natural" state. It calls for establishing systems of core wilderness areas where human activity would be prohibited. Biological "corridors" would link the "core areas," serving as highways allowing nonhumans to pass from one core to another. And buffer zones would be established around the core areas and their interlocking corridors. Only outside the buffer areas would human activities such as agriculture and industrial production be permitted. The goal is to overcome what conservation biologists Soule and Noss refer to as the "fragmentation of habitat." In this ecocentric view of the world, the survival of flora and fauna takes precedence over all other considerations. "Our goal is to create new political realities based on the needs of other species," the Wildlands Project's Foreman told Science News in 1993.

The project is so audacious that it easily could be dismissed as little more than a green pipe dream. Yet the Los Angeles Times took the Wildlands Project seriously enough to do a feature on it in September 1999, even reproducing a map courtesy of the Wildlands Project. As the Times noted, the Wildlands Project goes beyond setting aside land. "The group also envisions 'rewilding' parts of the West by winning government approval to bring back major carnivores like mountain lions, wolves and grizzlies to maintain ecological checks and balances." Needless to say, introducing carnivores into rural areas might so frighten local residents that many would leave-exactly what Wildlands Project supporters want.

To launch the scheme, the Bullett Foundation gave the Oregon Natural Resources Council, a Wildlands Project member, $95,000 in 1993 and 1994 for "advocacy work based on good science, agency monitoring, and appeals." The Pew Charitable Trusts also gave the project a boost. In 1993, it named Noss its Pew Scholar for Conservation and Environment, providing him with $150,000 for the next three years. Many donations have gone directly to the Wildlands Project, but others are made to one or more of three dozen organizations that are part of the project's grassroots network. Friends of the Bow/Biodiversity Associates, for example, is dedicated to "protecting" and connecting the Medicine Bow National Forest of Wyoming and Colorado, the Black Hills of South Dakota, and the northern portion of Colorado's San Juan Mountains. The group vigorously opposes logging and mining activities in the region and supports U.S. Forest Service attempts to mandate roadless areas in the national forests. Its donors include the Wildernes Society, Sierra Club, Foundation for Deep Ecology, National Rivers Coalition, Fund for Wild Nature, Harder Foundation, and Reraam Foundation.

The Wildlands Project has enjoyed the enthusiastic support of the Wilderness Society. "It's the right vision, it's the vision we have to pursue or say good-bye to Mother Nature," said Mark Shaffer, the group's former vice president of resource planning and economics. In this spirit, the Wilderness Society in July 2001 joined the Sierra Club and the Colorado Wilderness Network to urge Congress to designate for wilderness protection 1.6 million acres of "wildlands" held by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and adjacent U.S. Forest Service land. The proposal, they explained, "offers a balanced alternative to the threats to these special places from increased oil and gas development, mining, logging, and unregulated off-road vehicle use."

Such proposals should not be viewed in isolation. Each acre of land so "protected" becomes part of a larger mosaic that activists put together piece by piece. They have a vision of where they want to go and how to get there. Supporters of the Wildlands Project may never realize their goal of creating interlocking cores, corridors, and buffers across the North American continent. But enough private land is lost in the United States to pose a threat to our nation's character. Every bureaucratic land grab undermines the right to own property and produce wealth-wealth that sustains philanthropy.

The Human Cost of Land Grabbing
Dave Fisher is a third-generation cattle rancher at Ord Mountain, near Barstow, California. Fisher's ranch has been in his family for 75 years, and he has permits from the BLM that allow him to graze cattle on government-owned lands adjacent to his property. Fisher's ranch, located in the California Desert Conservation Area, is subject to unique climatological conditions prevailing in that part of the Mojave Desert. It's also subject to federal regulation. Like other ranchers in the area, Fisher's livelihood depends on his ability to use his own land and to acquire the grazing allotments he leases from the BLM.

In 2000, three environmental groups-the Center for Bio-Diversity, Sierra Club, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility-sued the BLM in federal court over its conduct relating to threatened or endangered species protection in Southern California. The BLM settled the case out of court. Without consulting its inholders-the landowners whose property is surrounded by government-owned land-or its lease holders who hold BLM grazing permits, the BLM declared its lands and those under private ownership in the affected area to be "critical habitat" for the desert tortoise. It also agreed to a series of stipulations on how critical habitat could be used. Especially onerous to ranchers like Fisher, the BLM drastically reduced the number of days cattle could graze on BLM allotments. On May 15, 2001, Fisher was given 15 days to remove his 307 head of cattle from the BLM land for which he had grazing permits. He was also told to remove the cattle from his own land. Fisher appealed the decision.

The drastic BLM action prompted San Bernardino County Sheriff Gary Penrod to revoke a three-year-old Memorandum of Understanding between his office and BLM's law enforcement branch. In an April 17, 2001 letter, a copy of which was provided by Fisher's lawyer Karen Budd Falen, Sheriff Penrod told the federal agency that it was acting in an "arbitrary and unreasonable fashion in threatening to remove cattle from grazing lands situated within the County of San Bernardino."

"This action," he wrote, "will directly and negatively impact the very livelihood of California cattlemen, and may result in physical resistance by cattlemen attempting to preserve their stock." Penrod added: "I do not wish to be associated with any Bureau of Land Management Law Enforcement personnel who may be precipitating possible violent range disputes."

On August 24, Administrative Law Judge Harvey C. Sweitzer ruled that the BLM violated its own regulations by failing to engage in "consultation" with Fisher and six other ranchers affected by its order. Judge Sweitzer remanded the BLM order back to the agency and instructed it to afford Fisher and the other ranchers "a real opportunity to contribute information and shape the actions to be taken for the future benefit of all parties."

However, on September 7, the agency simply resurrected its May 15 decision and slapped strict limits on Fisher's use of his lands and lands within the grazing allotment. When the decision goes into effect, Fisher will have just 48 hours to remove his cattle from the 154,848-acre allotment he leases from the BLM. What's more, if Fisher's livestock stray into the closed areas, even though there are no fences, he could be charged with trespassing and lose all or parts of what is left of his grazing privileges.

Because there isn't enough private pasture to feed his herd, it's ruinous to Fisher to have the BLM reduce by 44 percent the number of days he is permitted to graze livestock on his allotment. And it's physically impossible for Fisher to remove his cattle from the huge area in 48 hours. Moreover, by including some of his own land in the exclusion area, BLM denies Fisher the use of his property without compensation. If these actions stand, Fisher will lose his ranching operation.

Judge Sweitzer's instruction that BLM allow Fisher to participate in the grazing decision is less supportive than it at first appears. His only opportunity to participate was a BLM "workshop" scheduled for September 6-7. Fisher was given less than one week's notice and because of a prior commitment could not attend. BLM ignored his request to reschedule it for the following week. Ironically, it was rancher stewardship of the land that attracted the desert tortoise. It was not until the Fisher family drilled water wells on its own land that the desert tortoise became prevalent in the California Desert Conservation Area. The tortoise attracted the attention of the environmental groups, and they used it and their influence with federal officials to push Fisher and his neighbors off the land.

Ending a Way of Life
Sadly, the tragedy befalling Dave Fisher is duplicated across the country. As these lines are written, 1,400 farmers and farmers along the California-Oregon border are facing a similar disaster. A severe drought has prompted the Bureau of Reclamation to divert water intended to irrigate crops in the arid region, called the Klamath Basin, to rivers and lakes that are home to to two species of sucker fish, which the Fish & Wildlife Service considers endangered species. Without the life-sustaining irrigation, the farmers' potato crop will wither in the field.

In a pattern that has become all too familiar in rural America, environmental organizations, among them the Oregon Natural Resources Council and Water Watch, filed the lawsuits that triggered the federal government's decision to cut off the farmers' water. Like Fisher, the Klamath Basin farmers and farmers are on the verge of losing their livelihood because the Endangered Species Act protects a species other than their own. Many of the Klamath Basin's residents are descendants of World War I and World War II veterans who settled the region after the government promised them they would have water for irrigation. Indeed, many veterans had deeds -- signed by various U.S. presidents -- granting them and their heirs water rights into perpetuity. As their prospects for economic survival dwindle, there is talk of having the federal government or environmental groups buy them out. But the proud residents of the Klamath Basin don't want to be bought out; they want to farm and ranch just as their grandparents did.

Farmers and ranchers are being urged to accept an offer they can't refuse. They may have little choice but to salvage what they can. But if it comes to that, another bit of rural America will have surrendered the promise of prosperity and forcibly be returned to the wild.

Bonner R. Cohen, Ph.D, is a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. A former editor of EPA Watch, he currently serves as Washington editor for the Earth Times.