Who Is Salmon Valley Stewardship?
Salmon Valley Stewardship (SVS) is located in Salmon, Idaho. Their website states it began with “assistance” and “funding” by the Sonoran Institute in 2004 and a Sonoran staff member, Adrienne Blauser, became the SVS Coordinator. In 2005 Ms. Blauser attended a White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation along with multiple other non-governmental organizations (NGO). This conference followed an executive order that “directed federal agencies to promote cooperative conservation in partnership with states local governments, tribes and individuals”. It was nothing more than giving power to NGOs.
The SVS website states Sonoran donated two years of seed money for the SVS start-up, the funding ending in 2006. Along with Sonoran, other participants in the creation of SVS included the Nature Conservancy and Brainerd Foundation.
While SVS states no further funding was received from the Brainerd funded organization Sonoran, funding merely shifted from Sonoran to Brainerd in 2006 once SVS was created. Gina Knudson became the SVS Executive Director (ED) in 2007, leaving that position in 2016 to become the Salmon-Challis National Forest (SCNF) Collaboration specialist. Ms. Knudson has been involved in the Great Northern Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GNLCC), the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition (RVCC), and National Forest Foundation (NFF). Other SVS participants have included NGOs, foundations, and federal, state, and local agencies.
Perhaps the most disturbing activity Ms. Knudson participated in as the ED is the Heart of the Rockies Initiative (HOTRI), with its participating NGOs. She also participated in the HOTRI facilitated group, the High Divide Collaborative (HDC). SVS is considered a HOTRI “collaborative partner“, along with the government, foundations, and land trusts. The HDC has multiple NGO and land trust participants, along with state and federal agencies. The only collaboration going on is between these groups.
In 2010, the HOTRI developed a plan for cooperative conservation. HORTI is using the High Divide as a linkage area that includes Lemhi and Custer counties. Their intent, “develop and implement a collective strategy to ensure that, by working with willing private land owners, the most significant private lands in the High Divide are conserved in perpetuity.” With the government and NGOs, SVS is listed as a participant in the High Divide Focal Area Workshops specific to conservation in Salmon-Lemhi.
In 2016, with NGOs and government agencies, Ms. Knudson attended a HDC workshop to discuss “their vision for the desired future condition of the High Divide Landscape”, “build trust and credibility within the collaborative and among stakeholders”, “express their vision for the desired future condition of the High Divide Landscape”, and other conservation strategies. Ms. Knudson spoke on wildfire threats, stating more fire was needed on the land, and logging operations were not feasible. The term “stakeholders” is an arrangement between NGOs and the government, not citizens, and governments are at the table with every NGO making these plans.
Ms. Knudson, while serving in her new role as USFS Collaboration Specialist, also attended the HD workshop in 2017, and discussed the beginning stages of the SCNF plan revision collaboration while “Alex Dunn, the Environmental/NEPA Coordinator for Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest then talked about examples of stakeholder led collaboratives that can lead to all lands conservation at large scale.”
Toni Ruth became the SVS ED in 2016, participates as an HDC coordinating committee member, attended the 2017 HD workshop, participated as a panel member on the 2018 HD workshop agenda, and is on the list of attendees at the HDC hosted 2019 celebration with Kim Trotter, Y2Y U.S. Program Director, by her side, even though the SVS website states it is not a participant in Y2Y.
Created in 2015, the Central Idaho Public Lands Collaborative (CIPLC) is another SVS front group to insert HDC objectives into forest planning. The initial group was comprised of almost half NGO, state, and federal individuals and included many of the 2016 HDC workshop objectives. By 2019 that list had grown as “diverse” members were added resulting in increased confusion about the group’s role. CIPLC is nothing more than another group to promote the false pretense that citizens are involved, used as a means of promoting a phony narrative of consensus, overpower citizen input, and implement NGO objectives. It should be no surprise Ms. Knudson was selected as “Collaboration Specialist”, the USFS has been working with her for years on the same HDC objectives. Creating a “diverse group of citizens” really means diverse government and NGO members.
Other conservation initiatives focusing on the High Divide are the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), Y2Y, and previously the GNLCC. As part of their objective to prioritize routes for grizzlies and wolverines, they intend to secure “protection of those routes from development” including purchasing private land, establishing conservation easements, preclude development such as timber harvest, oil and gas development, mineral extraction, and road building, limiting hunting, guiding land development with regulations, educating the public and children on connectivity”, and the list goes on. SVS has participated with these groups for the same objectives.
At the 2005 White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation, the federal government deliberately placed NGOs at their table. Collaboration is between them, a deceitful way in which NGOs are used to implement their agenda for our land. Like a cancer cell replicating itself, these NGOs continue to grow themselves with new front groups in partnership with the government. It is one way the government has grown itself and the agenda is controlling land use. NGOs call it “capacity building“.
All of these NGOs have only one goal in mind, conservation of land, mapping out and planning how they think the land should be managed and used, called landscape conservation design. Using money from foundations and your tax dollar, their goal is taking land for permanent protection, using wildlife and other environmental aspects to create corridors, targeting private property and unprotected land for linkage areas between protected areas for connectivity, and interfering in local land use plans to insert conservation regulations.
Our Republic does not operate on collaboration and consensus, decisions are made by local government jurisdictions and citizens, not “stakeholders”. Locally elected Representatives are responsible to citizens and how they want their jurisdiction and land managed. Those decisions do not belong with individuals or groups from outside of the area, especially when they are working with the government, and laying contrived plans for redesigning the land for conservation. NGOs and the government are buddies, admit it.
SVS is the poster organization for how the federal government has developed a methodology to take and control land use in their partnership with NGOs, operating without full disclosure to citizens. “Stakeholder” is an empty word meant only for NGOs and their cronies, and a slick way to hide the lack of citizen involvement. Citizens are never given a legitimate place in the conversation, behind the scenes planning, or at the “collaborative” table. This is a statewide problem. It is the exact same playbook that NGOs and the governments use elsewhere.
The foundation of our Republican form of government should be reinstituted. The USFS is a public servant, responsible to citizens, and should only be working with those who live in the forest plan revision area and locally elected representatives. Citizen perspectives should be given priority, not from some group created “consensus” which is intended to dilute citizen voices. It is time this long game is ended. There is no shared stewardship which is used only for erasure of jurisdictional boundaries. Our Republic does not operate that way, authority lies with the people in the local jurisdiction.
SVS, their NGO partners, and the government should disclose what they are really doing, the work they have engaged in together for years, and their planned landscape conservation design to be executed on local communities. It should also be brought forth their interfering with local land use plans that include regulatory restrictions on land and inserting themselves into forest revision plans for their conservation objectives.
To SVS and their NGO and government pals, don’t underestimate the intelligence of citizens, or their ability to recognize when they are being manipulated or dismissed.
It is time for citizens to take the narrative back and exercise their authority.
Heart of the Rockies Initiative 2010 PDF
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One of the problems citizens confront is the supreme complexity they face regarding the NGO-“stakeholder”-government cabal. As the article says, a seemingly unending stream of non-profits are created with warm and fuzzy names to bamboozle the public into thinking all of this is harmless at worst and great policy at best.
I experienced this 1st hand in CA as a citizen ‘stakeholder’ trying to save an historic bridge in Coloma California. All the other ‘stakeholders’ were business interests or government representatives, and all of the ‘meetings’ were heavily Delphied.
For those who don’t know, the Delphi technique is where the meeting is organized and conducted such that there is only one possible outcome…the one the organizer wants. Since all of the ‘stakeholders’, NGO’s, and government want the same outcome, I as the single ‘citizen’ even though calling them out on their tactics was powerless to stop them. So they claim they have citizen buy-in when nothing could be further from the truth.
What isn’t mentioned in the article is that once the NGO’s get control of the property, they often sell it to the State or the Fed, which then removes it from the local property tax rolls. Over time this substantially impacts local revenue, especially when it comes to fire protection in rural areas…just one of many negative effects.
It is difficult to mobilize people over an issue that is as complex as land transfer/ownership, especially when there are so many complex links and the issue ends up in court so often. Lavoy Finnicum gave his life over property rights yet where is the clear, short paragraph Constitutional statement of why?
If we are to win our Constitutional rights back we need to get back to basics – simple things similar to what the Hong Kong protesters have in the way of demands. The demands themselves state the problems, and are simple to understand. That becomes the slogan to fight for, and is based in solid Constitutional logic.
With that people can understand and rally to follow, fight, and win. Without it we continue wandering down the drain.
“It is difficult to mobilize people over an issue that is as complex as land transfer/ownership, especially when there are so many complex links and the issue ends up in court so often.” Especially when the progressives have set up vehicles for those court cases that are dependent on your tax dime.
Hopefully people are reading this thread, because I’m going to illuminate the most effective tools of the progressive agenda.
I’m betting that most of you have navigated the scant listing of a board meeting of concern, to show up and find out that the facilitators have hijacked the whole process…usually in the name of efficiency. Even more telling is that you looked across the aisle and recognized the 100;1 disadvantage you had encountered. How the heck did they “Mobilize” that many people in such a short period? Simple, someone privy to the meeting had a database already populated to “Mobilize” a huge contingent interested in the Progressive Agenda…Make no mistake, these motherclumpers will fall in line, not even knowing what the subject de jour really is. Here’s what it looks like when they perfect their evil deeds. https://www.libertyparkpress.com/this-is-what-happens-when-a-citizen-invests-time-and-money-to-have-their-voice-heard-by-politicians/
Common to the progressives is the “narrative.” In fact, they so commonize it, that they create one narrative, and pass out several copies with pens to mark the progress during the hearing. This way, when the facilitators give each speaker 1 minute, then 60 progressives can push out a 60 minute narrative, by continuing where the last one left off. We prepared just such a technique against a group we knew would show up. They spoke first, but we started doing exactly what they were doing and the council shut down both sides and forced us all to enter our narrative into the record. In other words they had already made a decision and the hearing was for show. I can give you an example of the Snake River Dams that would blow your mind, but I digress. The point is, “They Mobilize via Database, and Condense the Message.”
Would you believe they have information on this very topic? https://www.pageonepower.com/linkarati/effective-outreach-guide
For a brief stint, I got talked into heading up a group here in WA State. We had no money, and most of the membership was reaching or in retirement. There were a couple of individuals that kept screaming the money must be “Grassroots.” What they were really saying, “it needs to come out of these finite resourced people’s pockets.” One in particular that I will elude to in a minute.
Here was my answer to the problem, before we had the National financial support. Create a printing company, that can create those huge banners you see the progressives sporting at most of their venues. All, the while creating a database of information by becoming the Liberty go to for printing. Underhanded? Maybe, but not as underhanded as the progressives. After the Boston Bombing, they set up a “Thank Your First Responder” web site to collect “Donations” and “Populate a Database.” Here’s what happened.
The individual I mentioned got a hold of the leadership and somehow convinced them that I was trying to undermine the National Leadership. You can’t make this up. Here’s something you also can’t make up, this individual has a company located in Lacy, WA, which is where the WA Dept. of Ecology is located. The nature of that business would put them in contact with that agency on a regular basis, you make the call. There are 5th column people everywhere pretending to be what they are not. Be Aware!
Excellent work!
Here’s a group that is presumably involved, and is based in a college town.
https://www.friendsoftheclearwater.org/