Government Land Grabs, from ‘Natural Asset Companies’ to Agenda 2030: Margaret Byfield

American Thought Leaders

“They’re trying to create this new asset class ... and they get to arbitrarily decide how much they are valued. So, it’s not that the marketplace is going to value them. It’s going to be a bureaucrat sitting in a room saying that the air you breathe is worth X, and the air I breathe is worth Y.”

Margaret Byfield was raised on a 7,000-acre ranch in Nevada. For nearly 30 years, her family fought the federal government to maintain ownership of their property and its resources. But ultimately, the government prevailed.

“The federal government was never supposed to own the land. In fact, that was one of the big conflicts after our Revolutionary War,” says Ms. Byfield.

Today, she is executive director of American Stewards of Liberty, working to protect the production of food, fiber, minerals, and energy from agendas that seek to erode individual property rights.

“Agendas like 30 by 30, well it’s going to really harm our food production. How are we going to feed our nation and the world? Well, that’s not a problem to them because their belief is there are too many of us and therefore this is just the way to get rid of part of us through starvation,” she says. “Either you have the right to own property, or you are property.”

We discuss Natural Asset Companies, ecosystem services, the United Nations’ sustainable goals, and other government land grabs being carried out in the name of conservation and protecting the environment.

“Fifty percent of the West is owned by the federal government. So, the East is privately settled, which is how our country was supposed to be settled,” says Ms. Byfield.