Land conservation sells, but who's buying? How much (and for what) of your tax dollars are going to 350 Colorado?
Land conservation sells, but who's buying?
A reader sent in a tip to look up a gentleman named Andrew Currie** and a recent land deal. After looking into the land deal, something occurred that I thought worth sharing, a new angle on funding land conservation in this state.
Mr. Currie--a wealthy, environmentally-minded and politically-active entrepreneur, see screenshots 1 and 2 for his most recent campaign contributions from the Secretary of State's TRACER page--has a website where he outlines his various projects.
The individual projects Mr. Currie lists on his page are different, but they all have the same theme, what could reasonably be called (playing off Mr. Currie's own term on his site) "environmental entrepreneurism". That is, how to make money while pushing environmentalist causes.
Among the projects is a land preserve named "Raven's Nest Prairie Wildlife Reserve". This is a roughly 5000 acre tract in Bent County, Colorado that he and other investors he worked with sold to the Southern Plains Land Trust. The page where Mr. Currie outlines his Raven's Nest project is linked first below, the second link is to the Southern Plains Land Trust's page listing it as one of their preserves.
I took an excerpt from Mr. Currie's page on Raven's Nest and attached it as screenshot 3. Quick note: the grey font on Mr. Currie's page didn't work well as a screenshot, so I excerpted the text into Google Reader so that it came out in black and white. The same text is there, it's just a more readable (for my old eyes anyway) color.
In short, Mr. Currie formed a corporation, gathered a group of investors ("conservation buyers"), which bought land. They sat on it and then later sold out to the Southern Plains Land Trust, making a pretty tidy 10% profit. If you're interested, Mr. Currie's currently seeking more investors.
I could find no evidence of a plan or of any involvement of government money or grants in the project. It's therefore not right nor fair to assume any.
Still, this effort brings up a lot of questions.
Will this sort of effort become a common way to do land conservation, that of making syndicates to buy land and then give or sell to foundations?
Will the government ever become involved in the sense that foundations take grant or tax money to then buy land from such syndicates? Such foundations then turning around and capitalizing on tax incentives and selling carbon indulgences (carbon credits) to recoup some of their investment? See the third link below for an example.
Will this lead to some form of pseudo-speculation on conservation land? Should I get a syndicate together to buy up land that borders the Southern Plains Land Trust's current preservation areas in the hopes of selling out for my 10%?
What kind of transparency about the transactions and government involvement will we get? This will be especially important if tax money is involved.
Time will tell I suppose. In the meantime, I'll keep my eyes and ears open. If you hear more, please share.
https://www.andrewcurrie.info/prairie-wildlife-reserve-in-colorado/
https://southernplains.org/en/our-preserves/
https://southernplains.org/en/buy-carbon-credits/
Related:
A newly-built Denver hotel and their carbon indulgences program.
https://www.cpr.org/2024/10/22/carbon-positive-populus-hotel-tree-planting-project-dead-seedlings/
How much (and for what) of your tax dollars are going to 350 Colorado?
350 Colorado being a group that "advocates for the elimination of conventional energy use" according to Influence Watch (see the first link below).
Jon Caldara's recent op ed, linked second below, talked about how Colorado's newly-minted Colorado Office of Environmental Justice gave a $173,700 grant to 350 Colorado. What he wrote about what they're planning to do with that money got me curious.
I did some digging and records requesting to fill in the details and wanted to share.
Let's first go to CDPHE's own Office of Environmental Justice page, the one where they detail their recent grants. That is the third link below. A lot of the grants are the typical progressive government feel-good kinds of projects. But then there's 350 Colorado's.
I took a screenshot of their blurb and attached it as screenshot 1. Clearly not fans of fracking, those 350 Colorado people.
Besides that, however, what do we know about them? I referenced their Influence Watch page earlier, so what you see next will be coming from that page. Quoting,
"350 Colorado advocates for legislation that places taxes and limits on carbon emissions, divests government funds from fossil fuel companies, and transitions state infrastructure to rely on environmentalist energy. Additionally, it demands that the legislation it advocates for 'dismantle[s] oppressive systems that enable poverty, racism, and inequity.'”
and
"350 Colorado is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and does not have to disclose its donors. In 2018, 350 Colorado reported a total revenue of $173,413, with only $149 not coming from contributions. It reported $5,000 in grants paid, $50,000 in salaries, $62,183 in professional fees to independent contractors, and $139,634 in total expenses."
And lastly, because it was too long to copy and will be discussed shortly, I took a screenshot of Influence Watch's "People" section and attached as screenshot 2.
Looking into the 350 Colorado big wigs from the Influence Watch page, you see the pattern that has become so common in Colorado. Whether it's animals, environment, or social policy, big money liberals are heading nonprofits, making good-sized political contributions to Democrats and Democrat-affiliated groups, and they are big time recipients of grants from the Democrat-controlled state government. It is the web I mentioned earlier when talking about Polis and wildlife.
I took screengrabs of the most recent political contributions from the Secretary of State's TRACER page for the 3 big wigs mentioned above. Those are attached as screenshots 3 through 5.
What exactly is 350 Colorado doing with your money, the work deemed vital enough by CDPHE's Office of Environmental Justice to drop $173K on? How thorough a vetting did they get before being handed a pile of your money?
I requested copies of the contract between the state and 350 Colorado along with the rubrics that the people in the Office of Environmental Justice used to score 350's application. Those are links 3 and 4 below.
A quick note. Link 3 below is actually several documents all scanned and sent as one document. There is a lot of legal boilerplate on top of a lot of CDPHE's grant application. I recommend downloading the document and then using the page numbers I provide if you want to follow along. Trying to navigate by the page numbers in the lower right will not work.
Page 20 of the downloaded version is where 350 Colorado's description of their program and how they'll spend the money begins.
I will leave it to you to read up on both the contract and scoring rubric (if 350 Colorado were a student, they'd be quite pleased with their grades on this assignment), but I can offer some thoughts in summary.
350 Colorado is taking money from the state to (quoting from p 21) " ... mobilize thousands of Coloradans to takeaction on urgent climate issues across the state to ensure a safe and healthy future for all." This mobilization is listed as being against "fracking" due to the health effects of fracking and the wells built to extract the products of same.
Here's the thing: the kind of oil and gas we have in this state necessarily requires fracking to be profitable. I.e. without fracking we would not be able to extract oil and gas here. CDPHE is paying 350 Colorado to get people mobilized to stop oil and gas drilling.
They'll be doing this by using tax money to hold a series of events around the Greeley, CO area. They will also be using tax money to develop promotional materials to share. If you're curious, the deliverables they list (the measures of their success) are in screenshot 6 attached.
I was curious to know more about CDPHE's thoughts on how this sort of grant would appear to someone like myself, so I wrote to their media person and asked the questions you see in screenshot 7.
As of this writing, I've not gotten a response. If and when I do, I'll follow up.
I also plan to follow up and share the results of The Office of Environmental Justice's checkup on 350 Colorado. I'll update there as I have more to share.
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/350-colorado/
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2024/10/09/caldara-taxpayers-subsidize-progressive-war-on-affordable-energy/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15Fm_Q8W5B3uUETwGvM2ZW1X2SxCHZVDA/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mhsADMxxI-iBGDeasPv8XsNPbeQxlc_W/view?usp=sharing