{"id":9089,"date":"2019-11-06T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2019-11-06T19:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/?p=9089"},"modified":"2024-09-23T23:01:06","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T05:01:06","slug":"high-divide-collaborative-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/high-divide-collaborative-threat\/","title":{"rendered":"The High Divide Collaborative Threat"},"content":{"rendered":"

The High Divide Collaborative, (HDC<\/a>) held a\u00a0webinar<\/a> in August 2019, facilitated by Bray Beltran and Emily Harkness from the Heart of the Rockies Initiative (HOTRI<\/a>). The webinar started with the claim that the HDC is a \u201ccommunity based collaborative\u201d that works across jurisdictional boundaries. There is nothing community-based about this group.<\/p>\n

A few webinar highlights will be pointed out but the full webinar should be listened to in order to understand this massive, government-sanctioned, agenda against Idaho, primarily central Idaho.<\/p>\n

The High Divide area only exists \u201cconceptually\u201d, encompassing 25 million acres for\u00a0connectivity, including private property that depends on grazing allotments, and that land is needed for their connectivity agenda. This and recreational land is seen as necessary for the ecological and social \u201cintegrity\u201d of the area.<\/p>\n

Funding for their agenda came from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF<\/a>) in the amount of $30 million dollars between 2016-2018 as an \u201cinvestment\u201d in restoration projects for conservation. What did they do with part of that money? Purchased\u00a0inholdings<\/a>, more private property under government control. The question HDC now has is how to \u201cprotect\u201d that investment. It means exactly what it says, \u201cprotect\u201d from disturbance, practices, and use they don\u2019t find acceptable.<\/p>\n

\u201cShared priorities\u201d within the collaborative include linkages with working ranches \u201cnationally\u201d, the importance of recreation land, and \u201copen land in wildland\u00a0urban interface<\/a>\u201d among others. These are not community-based priorities, they are shared environmental group and government priorities. This is validated by the graphic shown in the webinar that is loaded with only federal and state governments, land trusts, Tribes, and non-governmental organizations (NGO), many of which do not even live in the area or Idaho. That is who comprises the HDC with the government list being quite extensive.<\/p>\n

The new ruse is \u201clistening\u201d to landowners, but it is really the \u201cact\u201d of listening, not actually listening, and by doing so \u201cearning\u201d our trust. They also encourage this facade by asking questions. Don\u2019t be fooled by any of it. For some unknown reason, they think it is their job to \u201cconserve a safe place for wildlife and families\u2026and the community\u2019, and provide a \u201csafe place\u201d to voice differences. Listening is a pretense. HDC and the rest need to be told to stay out of our communities and there will be no participation with them.<\/p>\n

With \u201cconflict reduction\u201d comes their answer for how they want us to manage our land. As they continue to pursue unreasonable high Grizzly populations, we humans must make way to avert conflict with them and plan for conserving their right to passage. Planning includes removal of dead wildlife in their path, composting sites for those dead animals, human presence on the range watching for problems (like there is the manpower and time to do this by private landowners), and using bear-resistant garbage cans. Telling us how we should manage land is the ultimate goal.<\/p>\n

Finally, a few questions were answered, one of which was pointing individuals in the HDC hold the same ideology, where is there room for the voices that disagree? Some fumbling and stumbling for an answer on that one was interesting. Another question was about land trusts buying land outright in which the moderator disagreed, stating using conservation easements (CE) was for \u201ckeeping people on their land\u201d, especially those who were struggling to keep their land and could \u201ctake advantage\u201d of CE tax breaks.<\/p>\n