Questions and Answers on the
National Natural Landmarks Program
This article was originally published in The Land Rights Letter, February 1992.
Copyright © 1992, Erich Veyhl, All Rights Reserved

• What is the National Natural Landmarks Program?
  The Landmarks program evaluates and inventories "natural" areas ranging in size from one to millions of acres, and officially designates them as "nationally significant." There are 587 "designated" Landmarks and over 3,000 more "potential" Landmarks in an open ended "backlog," all encompassing over 60 million acres so far.
  
  
• Who owns Landmarks?
  Consideration of ownership is ignored in inventorying Landmarks, which are based on "ecological" areas. About half include private owners; the rest are already publicly controlled at some level.
  
  
• What is the program used for?
  The Landmark evaluation process is a feeder program used to justify Federal, State or Local acquisition and control in order to preserve areas in a primitive state. The government tells the public that the program entails no restrictions on land use, claiming the program is to "honor" landowners who volunteer to preserve their land. Such cooperation, where it exists, is used to buy time while the National Park Service (NPS) and preservationists lobby for more direct control or acquisition. The National Parks and Conservation Association calls Landmarks "Ladies In Waiting."
  
  
• How do they get control of the land?
  The Landmarks program provides inventories and assessments used by other units and levels of government to justify taking control; it does not yet directly acquire or control land itself. The NPS seeks political action on "damaged" or "threatened" Landmarks through annual reports to Congress. It also uses Landmark evaluations, for both "designated" and "potential" sites, in what it calls the "reconnaissance" phase of planning new areas for National Park System acquisition. Landmark evaluations are also used to justify acquisition or condemnation by other agencies. Claims of "national significance" in evaluations are used politically to block permits required for land use and to influence restrictive zoning on the local and state levels. Use of Landmarks is affected by the National Environmental Policy Act, the Mining in National Parks Act, and the Coastal Zone Management Act. Preservationists and the NPS are lobbying for increased funding for acquisition and for the National Heritage Conservation Act granting direct Federal and State control over sites declared to be "significant," together with buffer zones around them. NPS considers Landmarks to be "damaged" or "threatened", and therefore in need of intervention, if it suspects their natural features are or might be affected "by human activity, intervention, or intrusion."
  
  
• Who runs the Landmarks program?
  The Landmarks program has been run since 1961 by a small group in the NPS in collaboration with State and private preservationists, such as the Nature Conservancy, who make most of the decisions and write the evaluations. The Federal bureaucracy designates the sites they choose as "nationally significant" and maintains the files. The program is thus a mechanism for preservationist activists seeking an official sanction -- via the official acceptance of environmentalist "studies" and arbitrary administrative decisions of "national significance" -- for subsequent government control over other people's land.
  
  
• Who are these people accountable to?
  The Secretary of the Interior routinely approves the decisions by the NPS bureaucracy, which are based on the evaluations, covert monitoring and suggestions for new sites by environmental activists, euphemistically called "scientists." In 1990 the National Park Service Advisory Board was authorized to advise on new designations, but has no authority. Congress or other elected representatives have no role, and the NPS ignores landowner objections. The program ran until 1980 with no regulations at all, and since then has frequently been caught ignoring them.
  
  
• Where do they get the authority to do this?
  There is no legislation authorizing the program, which started in 1961 in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy. The NPS claims authority under a memo of approval it requested from the Secretary of the Interior in 1962, and under the 1935 Historic Sites Act. NPS claims that natural areas qualify as "objects" under the Act's reference to authority "to preserve for public use historic sites, buildings and objects of national significance." There is implicit Congressional sanction through references to the program and ongoing appropriations of funds. The Landmarks Program first wrote regulations for itself in 1980 (36 CFR 62).
  
  
• How much money do they spend on this?
  No one knows the total expenses since funding and personnel are quietly transferred from other NPS programs off-budget. The program also exploits funding for State Heritage Programs, which act as surrogates for NPS, and there is evidence that funds are channeled through The Nature Conservancy. Congress directly appropriated $.9 million for 1992, a 5 1/2 fold increase over the previous year.
  
  
• How are sites chosen? What is "national significance?"
  Preservationists choose the sites as the ones they like the best. NPS has subjective criteria for "national significance" which are broad enough to encompass almost any politically motivated identification of natural features. Sites are supposed to represent the best examples of "natural themes" represented within 35 ecological "Provinces" mapped without regard to State or other political boundaries. Selections are claimed to be "scientific" because environmentalists make the decisions.
  
  
• Can you prevent the government from putting your land into this program?
  First you have to know that you are targeted. The NPS told Sen. Cohen (R-ME) in 1989 that it would "cease processing" any site as soon as it learns of landowner objections, but then refused to stop when landowners in Maine objected. NPS also told the Inspector General in 1991 that an evaluation would require landowner consent under new regulations. New regulations proposed in Nov. 1991, however, say the program will not "designate" land as part of an official "Landmark" without owner consent, but that under a double listing scheme they will continue to evaluate and designate sites as "nationally significant" in the Landmarks program regardless of owner consent. The procedures are being publicly challenged nationwide.
  
  
• How do you know if your land is included?
  If evaluators sense potential opposition, you usually aren't told. After 1980, the regulations required written notification of owners before an evaluation of their land begins, and at two additional points in the process. Following public criticism of illegal secret evaluations, however, an Interior Inspector General audit reported in Dec. 1991 that the regulations are frequently ignored. NPS maintains a "Centralized Computer Listing" of targeted sites, but ownership and size statistics are understated. Names of owners are sometimes listed in evaluation reports, but NPS does not know who all the owners are and has maneuvered to block access to its lists under Freedom of Information Act requests.
  
  
• Hasn't anyone complained?
  Public complaints following the discovery of secret and unwanted Landmark evaluations in 1988 led to a national moratorium on the program in Nov. 1989 when Sens. Cohen and Mitchell demanded an immediate review of program irregularities. Journalists such as national environmental columnist Alston Chase, the Better Government Association of Chicago, and the TV documentary produced by Preview Media have exposed the program. The Interior Inspector General concluded in its Dec. 1991 report that "The property rights of over 2,800 private landowners may have been infringed upon because the Park Service did not properly conduct the evaluation, nomination, and designation processes." Congress, however, naively believes NPS assurances that it only needs more money -- and continues to provide it.
  
  
• What Can You Do?
  The Federal bureaucracy and its environmentalist surrogates have an empire building "mission" mentality to control every so-called "significant" region in the nation. They will continue to ignore and abuse the civil rights of landowners until Congress reigns them in. That won't happen until enough members of Congress see their constituents objecting.
  
  -- Most Congressmen do not yet realize there is a problem, partly because they naively believe NPS and preservationist whitewashes of National Park Service abuses. YOUR CONGRESSMEN NEED TO HEAR your views so that they realize there is a problem.
  
  -- Written COMMENTS on the NPS's PROPOSED NEW REGULATIONS are due by Feb. 19, 1992. Send comments to NPS at PO Box 37127, Washington, DC 20013-7127. Call NPS at (202) 343-8129 for a copy of the regulations.
  
  [Note - September 1999: After a storm of protest nationwide against the proposed regulations they were quietly shelved with no comment from the government. After waiting for seven years for the controversy to die down, in May 1999 the Clinton-Gore Administration formally released the regulations in the Code of Federal Regulations with no announcement or public comments allowed and openly reactivated the National Natural Landmarks Program. Despite the protests, the new regulations are substantially the same as those proposed in 1992.]
  
  -- For the INSPECTOR GENERAL Dec. 1991 report (92-I-204) on Landmarks call IG at (202) 343-8129.


Also see Land Rights Letter issues of February 1991, August 1991 and January 1992.