For decades now, the green extreme has argued the industries that develop the nation\u2019s natural resources for commercial use ought to be forced off the West\u2019s \u201cpublic\u201d lands.<\/p>\n
And they didn\u2019t seem to much care which tactic did the job. If threatening huge \u201cpermit processing fees\u201d or massive levies for \u201cenvironmental cleanup\u201d could shut down the mines and idle the miners that once gave America her needed lead, nickel, silver, and other minerals and metals, victory was declared.<\/p>\n
Cattlemen? Just brand them \u201cwelfare ranchers\u201d and \u201cdespoilers of the land\u201d — ignoring the fact that there always seemed to be more deer, birds, and other wild species on ranched arid lands than on the adjoining unused desert acreage.<\/p>\n
If sawmills could be shut down and whole towns thrown out of work to supposedly \u201cprotect\u201d the spotted owl or some other \u201cthreatened or endangered\u201d fish or creature — or even some small local populace of an animal species found in abundance elsewhere — that effort was \u201cgood to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
There have even been efforts to get investors to stop buying the stocks of firms that \u201crape the earth,\u201d peddled under any number of \u201cecologically sensitive\u201d monikers.<\/p>\n
In Missoula, Montana, the environmental extremists appear to have pretty much won that battle. The Plum Creek Timber Company still owns 8 million acres of mostly forested land nationwide, including 1.2 million acres in the mountains of western Montana. But they don\u2019t cut trees on a lot of that land now. Instead, the former logging company has turned into \u201ca real estate investment trust,\u201d The Washington Post reports.<\/p>\n
And what do real estate investment trusts do with forested land, if it\u2019s no longer judged politically or economically rewarding to cut those trees for lumber?<\/p>\n
Plum Creek\u2019s lawyers approached Mark Rey, head of the U.S. Forest Service, for \u201cclarification\u201d of the firm\u2019s rights to cross public land. In a series of private negotiations, Mr. Rey says the law required him to acknowledge the firm\u2019s right of access across Forest Service land — even to pave some of the old logging roads running into areas controlled by Plum Creek. But Mr. Rey says Forest Service lawyers managed to extract promises from Plum Creek that \u201cfire wise\u201d measures would be taken to reduce the danger of summer wildfires as they proceed with their new plans for the land — building forest homes for rich people.<\/p>\n
Are the environmentalists happy that they\u2019ve finally convinced the loggers to do something else with those lands?<\/p>\n
What do you think?<\/p>\n
Critics including some local officials were \u201cstunned and outraged\u201d at a deal \u201cstruck behind closed doors,\u201d the Post reports. Although Plum Creek has sold off only 3,000 acres in the past five years and plans to sell less than that in the next five, the local Jacobins have dubbed the planned homes \u201cMcMansions,\u201d pointing out most new houses in the area are now second, third, or even fourth homes for wealthy newcomers who have transformed the local economy — the Post breathlessly reporting 40 percent of the income in Missoula County is now \u201cunearned,\u201d a term apparently favored by the anti-capitalists to describe investment returns.<\/p>\n
(For the record, I can think of only three kinds of income are \u201cunearned\u201d: money you find on the sidewalk, money that\u2019s been stolen, and redistributed tax money. OK, that\u2019s only two kinds.)<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that Plum Creek is getting out of the timber business, we\u2019re kind of missing the loggers,\u201d Ray Rasker — executive director of Headwaters Economics, a non-profit research outfit that studies land management in the West — told The Post. \u201cA clear-cut will grow back, but a subdivision of trophy homes, that\u2019s going to be that way forever,\u201d Mr. Rasker now laments.<\/p>\n
Those darned human beings. Isn\u2019t there ANY way to get rid of them?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have 40 years of Forest Service history that has been reversed in the last three months,\u201d squawks Pat O\u2019Herren, an official in Missoula County, which is threatening to sue the Forest Service for failing to call for environmental assessments and public hearings to help decide what the private landowners shall be allowed to do with their own lands.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, this is kind of an arterial bleed,\u201d whines Melanie Parker, executive director of Northwest Connections, an environmental group in Swan Valley, 60 miles northeast of Missoula.<\/p>\n
Rich people building fancy houses in the woods. Oh, the humanity!<\/p>\n
Some environmental groups are responding ethically — not lobbying politicians to block Plum Creek from using its land in any legal permitted manner, but instead ponying up market rates to buy what they see as the most desirable parcels.<\/p>\n
Since 2000, the Nature Conservancy has paid Plum Creek — presumably a willing seller — market rates to secure 280,000 acres in the area.<\/p>\n
Others, of course, want the taxpayers to fund their anti-human whims. Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus \u201cforced into the farm bill, which survived President Bush\u2019s veto,\u201d $250 million in tax dollars to back bonds to buy more Plum Creek lands that might otherwise be developed.<\/p>\n
Will those lands now be taken off the tax rolls, saddling the owners of the county\u2019s remaining private land with higher bills? Or will the environmentalists find themselves owing local taxes on those lands — an expense that might require them to make some of the same tough choices other landowners face when it proves necessary to earn some return on an investment by, say … selling some of those parcels for residential use?<\/p>\n
\u201cEnvironmentalists, to their surprise, found that timber and mining were easier on the countryside,\u201d reports Karl Vick of The Post.<\/p>\n
Imagine that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For decades now, the green extreme has argued the industries that develop the nation\u2019s natural resources for commercial use ought to be forced off the West\u2019s \u201cpublic\u201d lands. And they didn\u2019t seem to much care which tactic did the job. If threatening huge \u201cpermit processing fees\u201d or massive levies for \u201cenvironmental cleanup\u201d could shut down […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-extreme-green","category-private-property"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-1n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}