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Editorial
Déjà
vu: Private Property and the Northern Forest
 By
Robert Maynard
This week’s Vermont news
section of True North carries a Burlington Free Press article that gives
me a sense of déjà vu. You know, the experience of thinking
that a new situation had occurred before. The article in question is entitled
"New England scientists call for forest conservation" by Candice Page.
In reference to the Northern Forest that runs through the northern parts
of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, it covers a group of New
England scientists call for the "permanent conservation of 90 percent of
the region’s 33 million acres of forest".
The last time we ran into
this argument was in 1998 when Senator Patrick Leahy tried to push through
a bill entitled the "Northern Forest Stewardship Act". I was involved with
Citizens for Property Rights at the time, who joined another Vermont group
"Property Owners Standing Together" in an effort under a national coalition
led by the "American Land Rights Association". As Chuck Cushman, the founder
of ALRA, explained at the time the Northern Forest Stewardship Act, affecting
areas in New York, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire, "would take 26 million
acres, put a green line around it and effectively lock it up, and begin
to gradually convert it to government ownership as national forest."
This time, instead of a single
bill that could be targeted, the effort is to be carried out piecemeal.
As the Free Press points out, "this conservation effort would depend largely
on private conservation easements, government incentives
and voluntary actions by landowners". Of course "The greatest proportion
of protected land would lie in northern Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont,
where forest cover is most extensive". Although not as obvious, the goal
would still appear to convert land that is currently under private ownership
to government ownership.
A quick look at the "National
Wildlife Federation" website shows that they see private ownership
as a threat to the Northern Forest. Under a section entitled "Threats
to the Northern Forest" they point out that timber companies owned the
land for much of the 1900’s and kept the forest in tact. The problem occurred
when:
"In the mid-1990's,
the region began to change as the large timber companies sold their rights
to forest lands they had owned for decades. They fragmented larger
parcels and sold them off piece by piece to private owners. Each
landowner makes separate decisions about the management of their land,
sometimes without thinking about the larger needs of the surrounding forest
habitat. More than 80 percent of the Northern Forest is now privately
owned, and may not have legal protection".
It is clear that they see private
ownership where "each landowner makes separate decisions" as a problem
to be solved. Is it then unreasonable for property rights activists to
conclude that, by whatever means, the ultimate goal of these "preservationists"
is to ensure that private ownership and separate decision making are no
longer possible?
None of us want to see the
wilderness despoiled, but are we to assume that centralized government
bureaucrats would be better stewards over the land than private owners
who actually live there? Such assumptions are the height of arrogance and
they fly in the faced of actual history. As the Free Press article points
out: "After dramatic deforestation by settlers and lumbermen in the 1700s
and 1800s, much of New England’s woodlands had grown back by the late 20th
century. Vermont, for example, is 75 percent forested".
This did not happen because
of centralized government decision making over land management policies.
It happened because, as we moved from an agrarian based economy to an industrial
one, we did not need as much land to support our activities. Heating oil
replaced firewood to heat homes and machinery replaced horses and oxen
as a means of transportation and plowing fields. In other words, the free
market created efficiencies that allowed us to do more with less. Are we
to allow our constitutionally guaranteed right to private property ownership
be trampled on because of the dubious promise that centralized government
planning can do a better job?
Robert Maynard is the
Editor of the True North website
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