CFACT collegians continue to shape the national conservation conversation—not just through campus activism, but through the written word. This month, one of our students McKrae Masters of Washburn University, succeeded in getting an op-ed published, bringing CFACT’s message of property-rights-driven, incentive-based conservation directly into public discourse. Her piece challenges heavy-handed federal land-use restrictions and champions the common-sense stewardship practiced by America’s landowners every day. You can read the student’s full op-ed as originally published by The Osage County Herald-Chronicle here, as well as below:
“We all care about the environment. Whether you live in a metropolitan hub like New York City or on a small family farm in Kansas, we all want to protect the animals and land around us. However, right now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is making a decision that could prove that good intentions can lead to disastrous policies.
The FWS is considering putting an animal—a small, fascinating reptile called the Southern Hognose Snake—onto the list of threatened species. That sounds like a worthy goal, but it’s the fine print of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that affects every single one of us.
The problem with federal environmental rules is that they are often rigid and top-down. They ignore the most effective partners we have: private landowners. Here in Kansas and across the country, the families and businesses who own property are the ones paying to keep the land healthy. They are the best natural stewards. However, when the government imposes tight and inflexible rules on routine private land maintenance—like prescribed burns to clear dry brush or thinning trees to limit the reach of wildfires—simple land management can be prohibited as a “take.”
In simple terms, “take” is the federal word for harming or killing protected wildlife. Currently, the government expands that word to mean anything that modifies an animal’s habitat. If your family’s normal land use is suddenly considered a “take,” the FWS can force you to get a special permit or face fines, imprisonment, or harassment. This process is called an Incidental Take Permit, and it’s where the system completely breaks down.
Getting one of these permits is a nightmare. It means years of delay and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for lawyers and consultants. For a small landowner, this isn’t a conservation effort—it’s a financial penalty that can bankrupt a family or kill a small business project. This system forces people to choose between protecting their property and protecting wildlife. That creates a terrible incentive: landowners are actually encouraged to reduce or remove natural habitat just to avoid the hassle of regulation—a huge loss for conservation.
That’s not how good environmental policy should work. It’s not just unfair—it’s counterproductive. When compliance becomes too burdensome, landowners often clear or modify land to avoid future regulation. We see the same reaction from businesses overwhelmed by red tape: they downsize or move production abroad to escape punitive rules. In the same way, the ESA can end up destroying the very habitat it was meant to protect.
There’s a better way forward—one that reflects common sense and the free-market principles that make true conservation possible. We need a system that uses incentives and voluntary partnerships, not mandates. Instead of forcing landowners into legal traps, the FWS should reward stewardship. Programs that use incentives, voluntary conservation easements, and cooperative agreements have proven far more effective than regulatory boards. When landowners are partners, not targets, wildlife actually wins.
We can look to examples like the North American waterfowl recovery effort, where hunters and private landowners voluntarily restored millions of acres of wetlands without a single top-down order from Washington. The same is true for the bobwhite quail, pronghorn antelope, American alligator, and bison—all of which rebounded thanks to private initiative and local conservation efforts. These successes happened because local people were empowered to act, not because they were threatened with fines or jail time.
If the FWS truly wants to protect the Southern Hognose Snake and other vulnerable species, it should craft a rule that encourages partnership and respects property rights. Instead of forcing landowners to pay huge fines and file complex paperwork, the agency should partner with them—perhaps even compensating them through tax breaks—to continue their good stewardship. The final ruling must be changed to exempt all routine, low-impact land management activities from crippling “take” restrictions.
By trusting the people who live and work on the land, we can achieve true species recovery and prove that good conservation practices and the American way of life can thrive together.”
