Enjoy and learn from this fact and linked post by Guest Author Steve Busch from his websitehttps://oldmanoftheski.com/ OMOTS
Who Owns AMERICA? Identifying Threats to Private Property
July 15, 2025 by Steve Busch
The fundamental right of the average citizen to own property is under siege. Threats to private ownership include a net reduction in the amount of property available due to government land acquisitions, increasing foreign ownership of both residential and agricultural land, plus onerous government taxes and regulations.
The imposition of Conservation Easements restricts how millions of acres of private property can be used. Increased regulations coupled with the net reduction in supply has contributed to rapidly rising costs in the agricultural and residential sectors. The average working American can no longer afford to buy a house, while small family farmers continue to struggle with unfair competition from foreign markets.
So who owns America? Or perhaps a better question, who is buying America?
The first thing the reader should understand is that a quick internet search using any number of popular search engines, (including the newest AI software such as GROK), will bring up incomplete and/or misleading information. For example, the chart I’ve included here is one that typically pops up when entering the search terms “largest U.S. land owners” into a GOOGLE search box…
The fact that the information above is incomplete and misleading becomes obvious when one scratches the surface a little deeper. For example, public tax records reveal that the Nature Conservancy, (a 501c3 non-profit corporation), owns just under 3 million acres of tax free American real estate while controlling another 2.5 million acres in conservation easements.
Conservation easements allow private land owners and/or corporations such as the Nature Conservancy, to receive lucrative government tax benefits in exchange for permanently conserving land. To complicate matters even more, corporate land ownership often makes identification of individual land owners nearly impossible.
FACT: The Nature Conservancy received $175 million in Federal grants and contracts for fiscal year 2024, plus additional funding from communist China and many other foreign countries. Conservation organizations like the NC control more private property under easements, over 61 million acres, than any other entity. The Land Trust Alliance has set a goal of placing conservation easements on an additional 60 million acres of private land by the end of the decade. Yet none of these conservation groups, or their shadowy corporate counterparts, ever appear on lists cataloging America’s largest land owners.
Another glaring omission is the failure to clearly identify foreign investment in U.S. real estate, which surpassed $1.2 trillion in the last 15 years, with foreign ownership of agricultural land going up by 50% since 2017. Last year alone, international buyers purchased $42 billion worth of U.S. residential property. One of these foreign purchases recently made headlines when it was discovered that a wealthy Chinese businessman acquired 200,000 acres of Oregon timberland using his investment company to disguise the purchase.
According to USDA records, foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land now tops 45 million acres. This number surely represents a gross under estimation, as data compilation via the Agriculture Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) is subject to reporting discrepancies, omissions, and legal wrangling resulting in a backlog in data collection and serious questions about the accuracy of the data.
Canada, considered a “friendly” country, tops the list of foreign ownership with over 16 million acres of American agricultural land. Communist China is considered an “unfriendly” country, but Chinese investors have still managed to acquire at least 500,000 acres of U.S. farmland, some of which is situated near sensitive military sites. While the Trump administration and some Congressional Representatives are showing growing concern over this issue, there is currently no State or Federal law that prohibits foreign ownership of U.S. territory. In fact, foreign ownership of both residential and agricultural land is widespread across America, with certain states, such as Washington, actively promoting the practice.
Individuals, corporations, and governments may have very different interests when it comes to land use. If we really want to know what’s happening with land management in the United States, we need to understand the role of GAP Analysis, and how this powerful mapping program is used as a tool to categorize land while also being used as a weapon to target private property.
GAP Analysis was unveiled during the Clinton administration and is the primary mapping tool used to categorize property. All land, everywhere, without exception, has a GAP Status Code attached to it. GAP Status Codes range from 1-4. The numerical Code identifies the property’s status. A GAP Status of 1 to 3 identifies “protected land” with varying degrees of protection. GAP Status Code 4 identifies “unprotected” land, a.k.a “private property”.
As per the goals of the 2015 U.N. Sustainability Treaty (signed by President Obama and the leaders of 193 other nations) and a plethora of subsequent global agreements, governments around the globe have committed to securing 30% of their territory under the “protected lands” category by the year 2030. To put this into perspective, America’s protected lands currently amount to 16% to 20% of our total land area. I arrived at this figure by using the PAD-U.S. database and combining all U.S. land and waterways within the protected category identified by GAP Status Codes of 1-3. This total may sound impressive, but we still have a long way to go before we meet our international obligation of permanently protecting 30% of all land within the United States by 2030.
For the sake of clarity, but at the risk of oversimplification, GAP Status Code 1 identifies land that is under the strictest government protection, such as designated wilderness, wildlife preserves, and National Parks. GAP Status Code 2 and 3 are lands such as National Forests and BLM lands, which allow for limited resource extraction but are generally recognized as “protected” by the government to varying degrees. Private land can also earn a protected category rating provided it has a permanent conservation easement on it that restricts any type of development.
At the other end of the spectrum are Gap Status Code 4 lands, which for the sake of simplicity, refers to “unprotected” land that is currently available for agricultural, residential, or industrial use and/or development. GAP Status Code 4 lands are officially defined as lands that have been, or can be, converted to “unnatural conditions” thus impeding biological connectivity. In other words, GAP Status 4 lands refer to what most of us would call “private property”.
That said, it should be noted that GAP avoids using the term “private property”. GAP uses terms such as “stewardship” or “managing entity” instead of “property owner” in order to emphasize that all land designations are temporary constructs. This distinction is more than just semantics. GAP was created and exists to identify and mitigate “gaps” in biological connectivity. According to the founding principles establishing the program, specific parcels of unprotected private property often present barriers to biological connectivity and are to be targeted (where practical) for conversion to one of three protected categories by government acquisition, increased regulation, or the imposition of conservation easements.
An interactive map showing the current GAP Status Code of all land in the United States is available on the PAD-US website. If you are a property owner holding land that borders or is located between areas of protected land, your property may become a target for connectivity mitigation.
The Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund spends $1 billion dollars every year to purchase private property and convert “unprotected” lands to one of three “protected” categories. But the government doesn’t have to acquire land in order to add it to the protected lands inventory. There are over 61 million acres of privately owned lands which have already been removed from GAP Status Code 4 by the imposition of “voluntary” conservation easements. Even though these lands are not government “owned” and continue to be “stewarded” by private entities, they are considered permanently protected lands.
While the U.S. Federal government is obviously the single largest land “owner” in America, the government does not technically “own” any land at all. Our “public” lands are supposed to be held in trust for the American people and managed by Federal agencies for the benefit of all Americans, including future generations. But the fact is, that in the eyes of our governing authorities, pursuant to global agreements, GAP Status Codes are all that really matter. This is why Federal land holdings, as well as lucrative tax benefits for private land Conservation Easements, are increasing every year while the amount of private property is shrinking. After all, we must fulfill our international obligations, and GAP Analysis is the necessary tool that will get us there.
So lets step in a little closer and take a look at what’s happening in our local region. Land in the “protected” category already comprises about 45% of WA State. Protected lands constitute over 77% of neighboring Idaho, which leaves Idahoan’s a paltry 23% in private hands.
According to the USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture, Washington State has approximately 13.8 million acres of farmland. As of 2023, foreign investors held approximately 1.74 million acres of agricultural land in Washington, representing about 8.1% of the state’s privately held agricultural land. Much of that land is being converted from agricultural production to wind farms, and/or is being placed under conservation easements, as foreign investors are especially keen to take advantage of government subsidies and lucrative tax incentives.
The 2025 Washington State Habitat Connectivity Action Plan was developed through a partnership between the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). The purpose for developing the Washington State Habitat Connectivity program is to enable targeting of privately held lands (GAP Status Code 4) for acquisition and/or regulation in order to facilitate “connectivity conservation actions”.
The WSHCA plan incorporates various implementation strategies affecting public and private land use to insure that “…local jurisdictions incorporate habitat connectivity into land-use planning under the Growth Management Act—through comprehensive planning, zoning codes, critical areas regulations, and countywide planning policies—to protect and restore corridors within and across local jurisdictions.”
To create the plan, GAP Analysis was used to identify land in Washington State that has a “high value for biological connectivity” as well as identify any current barriers or “gaps” in connectivity. The goal of the plan is to increase GAP Status 1-2 lands and reduce GAP Status 3-4 (moderately protected or unprotected lands) where uses such as timber harvesting, residential development, or recreation, may conflict with biological connectivity goals.
Well, there is much more that can be discussed and should be addressed here. However this article is already a lot longer than I intended. I am currently developing a comprehensive power point presentation on land ownership in America. The information contained in this article is just a teaser, merely the proverbial tip of the iceberg. There are many more charts, graphs, and action plans, including some proposed legislation and timely Presidential directives worthy of discussion. Stay tuned.
Sources for this article include:
https://www.theregreview.org/2024/08/31/navigating-foreign-investments-in-united-states-real-estate/
https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/csp2.12901
https://wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/habitat-recovery/connectivity/action-plan
https://business.defense.gov/Resources/FOCI
https://www.fsa.usda.gov/resources/economic-policy-analysis/afida
https://www.usgs.gov/programs/gap-analysis-project/science/pad-us-data-overview
https://www.usgs.gov/programs/gap-analysis-project
https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/who-we-are/accountability/annual-report/2024-annual-report/
July 18, 2025