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Saving Muir Woods
http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2012/02/saving-muir-woods
What a difference from the story that had somehow been in my head, which is that conservationists had gotten the federal government to protect the grove from loggers! In the National Park Service's version of the story, the land had already been protected — by a private businessman who purchased the property — before government even entered the picture. When government did enter the picture, it was to aid a private company threatening to use the state power of eminent domain to seize the private property for public use. William and Elizabeth Kent, in other words, were the Susette Kelo of their day. I love the California Redwoods, and it's hard not to be stirred by their height and age and by the sounds and smells of a redwood forest. Maybe if the Kents had managed to hold on to their property, their heirs would have sold it to loggers, or maybe fewer members of the public would have access to the trees. But the National Park Service sign made me look at the whole story in a new way, recognizing the role of private landowners, rather than the federal government, in the original move to preserve the giant redwoods, and recognizing the threat that eminent domain — government-backed seizure of private property for "public" use — posed to the trees. Go to a National Park expecting environmentalist propaganda and instead you get something worthy of a post in FutureOfCapitalism or a piece in the libertarian Reason magazine. Who knew? The story reinforces one of the points in yesterday's post about the sign at the California Academy of Sciences praising Costa Rica. The idea that land in private hands is unpreserved, while land in government hands is preserved, is faulty. Some private landowners may value the redwoods, as the Kents did, while the government may want to assist other private landowners in seizing the land and cutting the trees down to build a dam and reservoir. by Editor | Feb 21, 2012 at 9:08 pm receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list Reader comments on this item
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