National Cattlemen's Beef Association wants seat at the table; winds up in bed with torture, rape, and murder

By Tom DeWeese

Below is an article by an associate of Tom DeWeese at the American Policy Center, Kathleen Marquardt, the Center's vice president.

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The National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) has said they need a seat at the table with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in order to beef's interest. You have to ask yourself, why would the NCBA, a meat producing organization, want to be aligned with and organization which has stated that "to save the Earth it is demanded that we change human consumption habits away from beef."

Forget the seat at the table. Forget stopping people from eating meat. The question becomes, "Why would the NCBA want to crawl under the covers with an organization that is up to its eyeballs in torture, rape, and murder.

Consider this new report on WWF. BuzzFeed News, according to Wikipedia is seen as a left-leaning site, so this story cannot be called a hit-job by the right. At the behest of Survival International (SI), they have been investigating reports about WWF's actions in Africa.

SI's concerns for the actions of WWF are based on SI's viewpoint that "the model of conservation imposed by big NGOs (like WWF, Wildlife Conservation Society, African Parks, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, etc) in Africa and Asia is "colonial conservation." ' SI contends colonial conservation "is based on the idea that indigenous and tribal people can't be trusted to look after their land and that those best placed to protect the environment are Western conservation organisations and their "fortress conservation" model." There are another six points of this definition that you can read here.

More on the Survival International story later, I would like to offer up some background facts on WWF. This information is from Ron Arnold's Trashing the Economy, published in 1993:

• The powerful WWF is one of the wealthiest groups in the international arena. That shouldn't be too surprising for an organization that gets 20% of its income from your federal tax money, and another 10% from industry, and half from foundations. (At that time Prince Philip was President the World Wildlife Fund.)
  
  
• William K. Reilly, former head of EPA, was named by Laurance Rockefeller to be executive director of the Task Force on Land Use and Urban Growth, where he was editor of its report, The Use of Land: A Citizens Policy Guide. This 1973 report urged policy makers to use environmentalism as a stalking-horse for federal land use controls.
  
  As Insight magazine reported, "The trick was to assert federal control without compensating owners for the uses they would lose.
  
  
• The report said, "It is time that the U.S. Supreme Court re-examine its precedents that seem to require a balancing of public benefit against land value loss . . . and declare that, when the protection of natural, cultural, or aesthetic resources or the assurance of orderly development are involved, a mere loss in land value is no justification for invalidating the regulation on land use.
  
  Reilly's report laid out the basics of using 'biological diversity' as a rationale for growth management, i.e., limiting The Two Nasty Things, single-family housing and commercial agriculture, or virtually any economic use. (Remember, this was 1973.)
  
  
• Reilly then went to the EPA. There he spoke his mind even more freely. "The land market . . . is the principal obstacle to effective protection of private open space. Open spaces should be insulated as completely as possible from the market forces that now press them into development. One way to accomplish this . . . is for owners of open spaces to give up or sell part of their property rights.
  

Being the Number Three Economy Trasher in Arnold's great reference book, there are almost 30 pages of information on the WWF. I recommend reading it.

All this tells me that WWF has long been a tool in the globalist's box of tricks to do away with property rights, and that includes ranching, obviously. Therefore, there can only be nefarious reasons for NCBA to be a tool of the WWF.

Back to Buzzfeed's reports.

I have given a short précis of each report below, with links, and recommend that you read the reports – especially #8. And if anyone can show me where I and BuzzFeed are wrong about WWF, please let me know.


Part 1. Last year, BuzzFeed News did a series of stories on WWF, starting with the first one titled, "WWF Funds Guards Who Have Tortured And Killed People." These several paragraphs should give you the gist of the piece:

"An autopsy showed seven broken ribs and "blue marks and bruises" all over his body. Seven eyewitnesses corroborated his wife's account of nonstop beatings. Three park officials, including the chief warden, were arrested and charged with murder.

"The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) had long helped fund and equip Chitwan's forest rangers, who patrol the area in jeeps, boats, and on elephant backs alongside soldiers from the park's in-house army battalion. Now WWF's partners in the war against poaching stood accused of torturing a man to death.

"WWF's staff on the ground in Nepal leaped into action – not to demand justice, but to lobby for the charges to disappear. When the Nepalese government dropped the case months later, the charity declared it a victory in the fight against poaching. Then WWF Nepal continued to work closely with the rangers and fund the park as if nothing had happened.

"As for the rangers who were charged in connection with Shikharam's death, WWF Nepal later hired one of them to work for the charity. It handed a second a special anti-poaching award. By then he had written a tell-all memoir that described one of his favorite interrogation techniques: waterboarding.

"Shikharam's alleged murder in 2006 was no isolated incident: It was part of a pattern that persists to this day. In national parks across Asia and Africa, the beloved nonprofit with the cuddly panda logo funds, equips, and works directly with paramilitary forces that have been accused of beating, torturing, sexually assaulting, and murdering scores of people. As recently as 2017, forest rangers at a WWF-funded park in Cameroon tortured an 11-year-old boy in front of his parents, the family told BuzzFeed News. Their village submitted a complaint to WWF, but months later, the family said they still hadn't heard back."

Part 2 A Leaked Report Shows WWF Was Warned Years Ago Of "Frightening" Abuses. It included these points:

• A BuzzFeed News investigation exposedon Monday how the beloved wildlife charity WWF has for years funded and equipped paramilitary forces that have tortured and killed villagers living near the national parks it supports.
  
  
• The explosive 2015 report was prepared by an indigenous expert hired by WWF to review its operations in Cameroon, who found staff there were "gravely concerned" about the abuses they were witnessing. After obtaining the report, BuzzFeed News contacted its author, Diel Mochire Mwenge. He said that the charity did not acknowledge the findings of his report publicly "because it incriminated them."
  
  
• BuzzFeed News can also reveal that WWF opened another investigation last summer into allegations including gang rape and murder by eco-guards at Salonga, a massive national park it co-manages in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The charity confirmed after inquiries from BuzzFeed News that several rangers have been suspended or fired based on its findings. However, WWF declined to answer questions about its ongoing support for the park's anti-poaching patrols.
  
  
• But secret budgeting documents show how closely WWF's staff have worked with the government forces. The charity has helped train them, paidtheir salaries, and built them homes. It has bought them radios, satellite phones, TVs, 4x4s, and boats. And it has allocated a significant portion of the millions in donor money it spends at Lobéké to "enforcement" activities, including patrols and raids. The park's management plan says WWF will help organize raids, known as "coups de poing," on local villages suspected of harboring poachers. Strader was stunned by this casual admission. "Literally WWF is right there," she told BuzzFeed News, "and he's telling me that 'we torture people.' It was appalling to me that the WWF would stand for this juxtaposition."
  

Part 3. WWF Says Indigenous People Want This Park. An Internal Report Says Some Fear Forest Ranger "Repression."

The World Wide Fund for Nature claimed indigenous people supported a new national park in a filing to European Union funders. The EU agreed to send WWF 1 million euros for the proposed new park in an area of the Republic of Congo, known as Messok Dja, on the basis that it would seek the consent of indigenous people. But omitted from a copy of a WWF filing to the EU in 2018, obtained by BuzzFeed News under Freedom of Information laws, were passages of a consultant's confidential report that found some locals vehemently opposed the park. . . some villagers were worried the park would drive them off their ancestral land, prevent them gathering food for their families, and subject them to mistreatment by forest rangers, known locally as "eco-guards."

The charity continued backing eco-guards even after higher-ups became aware of evidence that they were abusing indigenous people.

. . . .when governments create national parks, indigenous communities often lose access to land they have long relied on for food and shelter. According to the WWF consultant's report, turning Messok Dja into a national park would affect about 8,000 people and nearly 50 communities – including 17 villages that are in part inhabited by the indigenous Baka people. . . . the sections of the report describing the consultant's visits to the villages where locals opposed the park weren't in the EU filing. Fears of forest ranger abuse were nowhere to be found. Nor was a section titled "Difficulties."

Part 4. Leaked Report: WWF-Backed Guards Raped Pregnant Women And Tortured Villagers At A Wildlife Park Funded By The US Government

World Wide Fund for Nature backed anti-poaching park rangers who "gang-raped women, tortured villagers by tying their penises with fishing lines, and killed one villager according to the charity's own investigators. WWF told its partners to treat the findings in a "non-public fashion."

Rep. Raúl Grijalva, the Democratic chair for the House Committee on Natural Resources, and ranking Republican Rep. Rob Bishop, said the findings were "horrific and disturbing" and the investigation would now be "aggressively pursuing these allegations and the role U.S. taxpayer dollars may have played in supporting activities resulting in these atrocities."

Part 5. WWF Is Investigating Two More Alleged Murders At A Park Where Rangers Are Accused Of Rape And Torture

"The World Wide Fund for Nature is investigating another alleged atrocity – this time, a brutal double murder – at a troubled park the charity manages in the Democratic Republic of Congo."

Part 6. The US Government Spent Millions Funding WWF-Backed Forces Accused Of Torture and Murder

Grant records show WWF planned to use the funding to pay for "special arrest teams," "rigorous" anti-poaching ranger trainings, "patrol strategy," "intelligence sharing," and "informant networks." WWF has also provided rangers with drones, helicopters, night vision goggles, and K-9 units, records show. Some of the funds went to parks where WWF knew guards were accused of brutal abuses against local villagers – not the international poaching kingpins the charity says are its target.

The agency listed evidence that WWF has provided detailed instructions for finding and cultivating informants, which would "be in direct contradiction to the terms of the grant awards and federal law." BuzzFeed News reported in March that WWF had organized, financed, and ran dangerous and secretive networks of informants, including within indigenous communities, to provide park officials with intelligence – all while publicly denying working with informants.

Part 7. WWF Executives Were Warned Of Widespread Atrocities By Anti-Poaching Rangers The Charity Funded This is probably the most revealing and damning report.

A report sent to the global mega-charity's director and board raised alarm about "accelerating" allegations of abuses being carried out "in connivance with and under the watchful eyes of WWF staff." The report, by Paul Chiy of De Jure Chambers, is the first concrete evidence that WWF's leadership in Switzerland had been warned about atrocities by anti-poaching rangers before abuses were uncovered in March.

WWF has downplayed the allegations, claiming that BuzzFeed News' reporting does "not match our understanding of events."

BuzzFeed News has revealed that WWF-funded forces in Asia and Africa have tortured and killed indigenous people. But when asked about the contents of the Chiy report, WWF acknowledged that the charity was "well aware" of the "challenges" it faces in Cameroon.

Over the next decade, WWF received various complaints from other NGOs claiming that eco-guards were terrorizing indigenous people in Cameroon. In 2015, the charity commissioned an internal report on the region, obtained by BuzzFeed News, which found that locals were "victims of human rights abuses and violations" by eco-guards and that perpetrators were backed by "considerable technical, logistical and financial support" from WWF.


Part 8. WWF Has Suspended Support For Rangers At A Major Nature Reserve After A Suspicious Death

Guards at Salonga National Park, backed by the global mega-charity, have been accused of gang rape and torture. Authorities there are now investigating a "tragic" discovery. An ongoing BuzzFeed News investigation has found that the beloved global mega-charity funded, equipped, and worked directly with anti-poaching forces that have been accused of torturing, sexually assaulting, and murdering scores of people at parks across Asia and Africa. At Salonga National Park, which WWF has comanaged with the Congolese government since 2015, the charity kept evidence of brutal crimes by forest rangers – including the gang rape and torture of pregnant women – under wraps.

Now tell me I was wrong.

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About Kathleen Marquardt

Kathleen Marquardt has been in the freedom movement since before it was called that. She was founder and chairman of Putting People First, a non-profit organization combatting the animal rights movement. Her book, AnimalScam: the Beastly Abuse of Human Rights, was published by Regnery in 1993. Kathleen has been Vice President of American Policy Center since 2000 and is the Agenda 21/Sustainable Development expert for Rocky Top Freedom Campaign. She was a contributing writer and researcher for Freedom Advocates.

© Tom DeWeese