After congregating in the desert with their most elite donors and favorite politicians, the Koch brothers are making moves in their campaign to privatize and profit off America’s public lands.
According to The Salt Lake Tribune, last week, Federalism In Action brought on a founder of the American Lands Council, Utah State Rep. Ken Ivory, to lead their “Free The Lands” campaign. Federalism In Action (FIA) is funded by the Kochs through their many dark money channels. FIA was created by the State Policy Network and State Budget Solutions, a member of the Koch-funded legislative group ALEC which received more than 1.7 million from the Donor Capital Fund.
This latest move by FIA makes it clear that the Kochs’ are once again turning their attention to their malicious public lands agenda, and Ivory is the perfect spokesman. In 2012, he sponsored a bill in the Utah House that demanded the federal government give the state the titles to 31 million acres of land and has since lead the American Lands Council.
On Wednesday, [Ivory] released a mass email recruiting land-transfer sympathizers to head “local leadership teams” to spearhead the land-transfer cause at the grass-roots level, vetting candidates for public office and training neighbors to champion land transfer.
While handing federal lands over to the states sounds harmless enough, it is the first step in the Kochs’ plan to take over and exploit America’s natural resources. Their campaign says that giving federal lands over to the states would increase state revenue; however, most states cannot afford to take care of those lands and would likely be forced (and encouraged) to sell off most, if not all, of the property to companies like Koch Industries.
Koch Industries has an abysmal environmental record — they will use the land to increase their profits, not caring what land marks and ecosystems are destroyed along the way.