If you’re confused about President Joe Biden’s 30 x 30 initiative, you’re not alone.
State legislators, officials with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, research staff and advocacy groups remain largely perplexed and cautious about the federal plan, which aims to protect 30% of U.S. lands and waters nationally by 2030.
Details on the proposal still are largely unknown, despite the fact that President Joe Biden issued an executive order on the matter in January and a report on the plan — with few specifics — was released in May.
The result has been spreading fear and misinformation about the 30 x 30 project and a fledgling, unrelated effort to establish a National Heritage Area in north-central Kansas and southern Nebraska. This prompted state legislators to convene a special committee on the matter to see what, if any, action should be taken.
Farmers and legislators at the state and federal level have deemed 30 x 30 to be a land grab, although the Biden administration has insisted it will be based on voluntary initiatives. Republicans in Kansas’ Congressional delegation, meanwhile, have sought to block it via legislation.
And while agriculture groups and others say there are items potential positives in the proposal — including an expansion of voluntary conservation programs that farmers and ranchers already use — they caution more information is needed.
“Our minds wander,” said Ryan Flickner, senior director, advocacy division, for the Kansas Farm Bureau. “And our constituents, they don’t know if it is a true conspiracy, is it made up, is there something else that maybe this administration has against private landowners. Until we have those specifics, we need to ask this administration a lot of very specific questions.”
Brad Loveless, secretary of the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, noted the agency has been blunt with the Biden administration that their messaging has left something to be desired.
Instead of focusing on the 30% threshold laid out in the proposal, he said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies should instead use state entities like KDWP to work with private landowners via existing programs that are voluntary and incentivized.
“That is a very simple formula that we know from past experience will work in Kansas,” Loveless said. “Unless you put money in these landowners’ pockets — they are trying to make a living and scrape by. And unless you can incentivize this, you won’t be successful. The simple point: put your money where your mouth is.”
Loveless noted the 30 x 30 proposal wouldn’t be a bad thing if it could enhance the work the agency was already doing.
With more federal funding, the state could hire seasonal workers to go door-to-door and speak with farmers and ranchers to see how conservation work could overlap with helping improve crop yields or the quality of their land for grazing.
It is unclear how much funding could be available or where the money might go, however. Existing federal programs, such as the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to take land out of use and convert it to vegetation cover, could be in line for a boost — which is not a bad thing, agricultural groups say.
And state-level efforts, including a program that compensates farmers who allow hunters on their private land, might get more money as well.
Highlighting that and not letting people’s imagination run wild, Loveless said, was important, adding federal agencies should have been clearer to emphasize that using eminent domain to acquire participating land, for instance, was not in the cards.
“They knew what they didn’t intend, but they didn’t state that,” he said.
Meanwhile, a separate, nascent effort to start a National Park Service support program for a swath of north-central Kansas and south Nebraska has been lumped in with the 30 x 30 debate.
But while national heritage areas are supported financially by the NPS, they are not like a national park. A local group, either a state or local government, nonprofit or private corporation, is charged with administration of the heritage area and land remains in private hands and is not transferred to the federal government.
The effort to create the Kansas-Nebraska National Heritage Area dates back to 2016 and was initially led by the Wila Cather Foundation and University of Nebraska-Lincoln with an eye towards boosting tourism and economic development.
The project was largely dormant and flew under-the-radar until the 30 x 30 plan was announced, residents raised concerns that the NHA would pave the way for increased federal oversight and even seizure of the land.
“This could be trouble in the future,” said Angel Cushing, a Lyon County resident who has campaigned against NHAs. “Is it now? No. Has it been in the past? Nuh-uh. But with the 30 x 30 looming over the top? Oh boy.”
A host of counties in Kansas have passed resolutions opposing the proposed heritage area. And five counties have even approved language encouraging Congress to shrink the size of Kansas’ lone current national heritage area, Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area, which covers 29 counties in east and southeast Kansas, as well as a dozen Missouri counties.
Kent Glasscock, a former Republican speaker of the Kansas House and ex-member of the Freedom’s Frontier board, noted he would not have been a part of the group if it had infringed on private lands.
Instead, he said the group was a way of coordinating promotion and support for museums and historical sites related to Kansas’ contributions to the Civil War. Landowners or site operators must opt-in to participate and can leave at any time.
Programs include engaging high schoolers to learn more about history, as well as making otherwise invisible sites more attractive for tourism.
“I think folks are getting confused about 30×30 and Freedom’s Frontier or National Heritage Areas,” Glasscock said. “They don’t have anything to do with one another, but I think it is easy … to conflate the two.”
But Rep. Doug Blex, R-Independence, said he was disappointed there wasn’t a clearer sense of the economic benefits the heritage area brought to the state, calling it “fairly loose knit.”
“It seems to me like there are a lot of unknowns about these things,” he said.
Uncertainty about the 30 x 30 plan means it is also unclear what, if anything, the legislature might be able to do to push back on the plan.
Agricultural groups say they are frustrated them or their national parent organizations were not consulted by the Biden Administration in drafting the plan and want to air concerns before any programs or policies are finalized.
“When you exclude on of the largest groups of landowners, who hold private lands and take care of private lands … that is a cause for concern,” said Aaron Popelka, a lobbyist for the Kansas Livestock Association.
But Zach Pistora, lobbyist for the Sierra Club, noted the vagueness of the document could wind up being a good thing for Kansas.
Because there is no language that 30% of land in every state be conserved, it is likely, he said, that western states with large swaths of federally controlled territory will play a heavy role in the program.
Instead, states like Kansas can use the flexibility to strengthen their own programs and implement policies that reflect their own values.
“We can fill in the blanks,” he said. “It should be up to us, our elected leaders and stakeholders to work together to try and see what we can gain.”
Indeed, there was little disagreement among Democrats and Republicans on the Special Committee on the 30 x 30 Federal Initiative on the value of conservation.
“We’re being asked to make a decision about something we know very little about … in the state, we’re caught in the middle,” Blex said.
Rep. Ken Rahjes, R-Agra, and chair of the House Agriculture Committee, said the issue would be taken up when legislators return for their annual session in January.
The likely endgame, he said, would be a resolution expressing concerns about the proposal.
In the meantime, he underscored for the dozens of members of the public who showed up to the committee, many in opposition to 30 x 30, that fact finding on the matter would not be a quick process and patience was warranted.
“We have gotten to the point where we think everything needs to be solved in 47 minutes and commercial breaks,” Rahjes said. “It doesn’t happen that way. It is not pretty.”
