The U.S. Senate is holding hearings today on the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act of 1999 (S510), which will be televised on C-SPAN at 2:30 p.m. EST. The measure passed the house last week, despite several efforts to kill, or weaken it. The bill is expected to meet stronger opposition in the Senate. Sponsored by Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Co., the bill would require that all 47 U.N. Biosphere Reserves, and 16 U.N. Ramsar Wetlands sites (named for Ramsar, Iran, where the treaty was signed in 1971), be approved by Congress by 2003. Any future U.N. designation would also have to be approved by Congress.

Opponents of the bill have consistently sidestepped the controversial issues surrounding the U.N. land designations, choosing instead to characterize the bill's supporters as "conspiracy theorists," or "extremists." Congressman Jay Inslee, D-Wash., said the bill should be entitled "the American land paranoia act."

Few people are even aware that since the 1970s, the United Nations has designated 47 Biosphere Reserves, 16 Ramsar Wetlands sites, and 20 World Heritage sites on American land. Even fewer people know what those designations mean.

Originally, the World Heritage Sites were authorized by the World Heritage Treaty, and intended to identify places of global significance. The Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell, and Yellowstone National Park are among the World Heritage Sites. These sites are subject to the provisions of the treaty and are of considerably less concern than biosphere reserves and wetlands sites.

There is no treaty that authorizes U.N. Biosphere Reserves. The program was initiated by UNESCO in 1971 through its Man and the Biosphere Program. The United States entered into an Executive Agreement to participate, and set up its own Man and the Biosphere Program in the U.S. State Department in 1973. With no congressional involvement at all, the executive branch has allowed the United Nations to designate 47 Biosphere Reserves in the United States. The bill now in the Senate would require that the executive branch ask Congress to review and approve each of these designations -- and all future designations.

Why should Congress approve such designations? Because Congress has the constitutional responsibility for managing federal lands, not the executive branch. The executive branch is responsible for executing the land management policies enacted by Congress, not those policies dictated by UNESCO. Moreover, the U.N. Biosphere Reserve land management policy threatens private property rights, and, indeed, private property ownership in America.

Here is where the bill's opponents scream "extremist," and "paranoia." But, one of two things is true: the opponents either do not know the published land management policies of the U.N. Biosphere Reserve Program, or they do not want their constituents to know.

America's 47 Biosphere Reserves are only a part of a network of 328 reserves in 82 countries around the world. At the first Conference of the Parties of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (also referred to as the Biodiversity Treaty), held in 1995, Peter Bridgewater, chair of the International Biosphere Reserve Council, told the delegates that UNESCO's Biosphere Reserve network would be the starting point for implementation of the treaty. The U.S. Senate did not ratify the treaty.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) then published the "Global Biodiversity Assessment," an 1140-page instruction book for the implementation of the 18-page treaty. Page 993 of this massive document clearly states that "The Wildlands Project" is "central" to the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Wildlands Project, written by Dr. Reed Noss (with grants from The Nature Conservancy and the Audubon Society), seeks to set aside "at least" 50 percent of North America as "core wilderness areas," off-limits to human beings, and then "manage" most of the rest of the land as "buffer zones" around the core areas.

Extreme? Absolutely, but the extremists are those who support such measures, not those who want to protect private property that now lies in the path of these expanding Biosphere Reserves.

The Southern Appalachian Biosphere Reserve was one of the first designations. Originally, it consisted of 517,000 acres within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Today, the U.S. State Department publishes maps that show the reserve, including two types of buffer zones, to stretch from near Birmingham, Ala., to Roanoke, Va. Continual expansion of the core wilderness areas, as well as expansion of the buffer zones, is the published policy of the U.N. Biosphere Reserve Program.

The executive branch is currently implementing the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity through what it calls the "Ecosystem Management Policy." Congress seems to be oblivious to the similarity between the administration's ecosystem management policy and the requirements of the un-ratified treaty. The American Land Sovereignty Protection Act will force Congress to review each of the U.N. designations and see exactly how much influence the United Nations has already exerted over domestic land use policy. Biosphere Reserve designation does not give the U.N. ownership or direct control of U.S. land. It does, however, set the land use policies for designated areas, which the executive branch has agreed to follow. Congress must get involved, and reclaim its right, and meet its responsibility to manage federal land, and protect private lands from U.N. land use policies.

Land use management policies that are subject to the World Heritage Treaty and the Ramsar Treaty are being revised to embrace the policies set forth in the Global Biodiversity Assessment. A gold mining operation on private property near Yellowstone National Park was shut down by the administration, which called upon UNESCO to visit the site and pronounce Yellowstone to be "endangered." The mining company had already spent nearly $30 million attempting to comply with the permitting requirements. Once private property falls under one of the U.N. designations, its use must be brought into conformity with the policies established by the U.N. The administration uses its ecosystem management policy -- and a variety of other regulatory mechanisms -- to restrict private property rights far beyond what America's founders envisioned.

The U.N. policy on land use was established in 1976 at the U.N. Conference on Human Settlements (HABITAT I). This excerpt from the preamble sets the tone for 65 pages of specific policy recommendations: "Land ... cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice. ... Public control of land use is therefore indispensable. ..."