Fourteen fire fighters died on Storm King Mountain, Colorado in 1994. In 2000 Americans witnessed in blazing color on television 6.6 million acres of forestlands incinerated while U.S. Forest Service biologists argued over whether they could permit fire lines and fire retardant slurry drops to contain the fire. Four firefighters died in Washington the following year as biologists once again prevented desperately needed slurry drops. Why? Because the fire retardant slurry might harm the endangered Bull Trout. Meanwhile, the streams in which the trout lived were vaporized by over 3 million acres of fires! By 2002, over 6 million acres were burned taking 14 lives.

      In spite of the billions of dollars spent to advance this preservationist plan to protect the ecosystems of the earth, it is not working. In his book, Playing God in Yellowstone, environmentalist Alston Chase found that instead of creating healthy ecosystems, the preservationist approach utilized in the Wildlands Project and Convention on Biological Diversity was destroying them. “I fully expected,” reflects Chase, “to find that [ecosystem management] did indeed preserve natural values. Instead I discovered that Yellowstone was losing critical vegetation and wildlife, and that the cause of this decline was precisely the ‘environmental’ philosophy itself..”⁵² Why? “By 1987…the ‘hands-off’ form of preservation was unofficial U.S. policy, wreaking havoc on a host of plants and animals”⁵³ that require grassy, brushy and young forest habitats that follow man-caused disturbances.

      This nature knows best philosophy has almost caused the extinction of species such as the California condor which lives from Santa Barbara to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Every possible effort has been made to save the species. Since it is a very shy animal, wilderness areas were created to keep human activity away from the birds. Without disturbance the grass and low brush grew into tall brush and scrub oak, eliminating the very habitat that was critical to the condors. By 1965 the wild population of condors had dropped to 80 -120 birds. By the spring of 1986 only six remained, with just one breeding pair. By “seeking to ‘preserve habitat, conservationists diminished the early successional conditions — open meadow and savannas — on which the bird depended.”⁵⁴ The only thing that saved the condor from certain extinction was a captive breeding program launched in 1980s with the last wild bird taken captive in 1987 — against fierce opposition and lawsuits by environmentalists led by the National Audubon Society.⁵⁵ The breeding program has been very successful and by 2002 there were nearly 200 birds with 70 released back into the wild — 30 of which were released in Arizona.⁵⁶

 

 A Better Way

      Happily, there is a better way to attain sustainability other than the fatalistic nature knows best concept of ecosystem management. Contrary to the popular belief that property rights cause ecological harm, every evidence suggests that property rights can enhance sustainable development. Only when ignorance prevails or land is cheap and abundant, will the self-interest and greed of man result in unsustainable ecological harm. Why? If land is too expensive to replace and a landowner depends on his land year after year to generate a living, he or she will naturally take care of that land to ensure that it will continue to produce a living in perpetuity. Even if the landowner plans to sell his land, he will desire to maximize the selling price by making sure that the land is in the best possible condition and producing at a maximum rate.

      Ignorance can be erased with education. UNESCO estimates that illiteracy in the developing world has fallen from about 75 percent in the early part of the 1900s to below 20 percent among the youth of today.⁵⁷ Farmers and land managers in developing nations can be taught how to manage their land to minimize ecological damage with minimal bureaucracy and cost. The second reason for past damage to ecosystems — cheap and readily available land — is now a thing of the past. Land is too expensive to treat with callous disregard — except, it seems, when it comes to use of public land. Almost all environmental damage during the past fifty years is not from misuse of private land, but from state infringements surrounding the issue of property rights.

      While environmentalists have historically blamed greed and the self-interest of property owners for causing environmental harm to America’s air and water, that is not accurate. Ironically, it was because no one owned the air or waterways that they were polluted. It was because no one owned the land that America’s national forests and parks were grossly mismanaged a hundred years ago. It was the natural consequence of the Tragedy of the Commons, in which no one owns anything. Theoretically, everyone owns the commons. But since there was no pride of ownership, there was no motivation to care for or optimize property that was held in common with the millions of other citizens. There was no reward for doing a better job or being more creative, so there was no incentive to do a better job. Everyone sinks to the lowest common denominator, the economic structure stagnates, and the infrastructure collapses.

      The Tragedy of the Commons explains to a large degree explains why Communism and Marxism have been such dismal failures.⁵⁸ In communism, there is no motivation whatsoever to protect the environment – as was evidenced by the environmental devastation found in Eastern Europe and Russia once the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s. America’s waterways and air, like Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, have not been managed under a rigorous system of private property rights, and they too suffered the fate of the Tragedy of the Commons. Rather than admitting this obvious reason, however, environmentalists and policymakers in the late 1960s and 1970s pushed for “forced compliance” by imposing strong governmental controls and denying property owners just compensation for the government’s regulatory takings of the value of their private property.

      Without the right of private, transferable, unencumbered, legally protected  property, a person cannot have liberty, build wealth, leave something for their children, get bank loans using land or property as collateral, or build real prosperity.  It has been argued that there can be no true freedom for anyone if people are dependent upon the state for food, shelter, and other basic needs. When the fruits of the citizens’ labors are owned by the state and not individuals, nothing is safe from being taken by either a democratic majority or a tyrant. As noted in the book, Saviors of the Earth, “Ultimately, as government dependents, these individuals, as government dependants, are ultimately powerless to oppose any infringement on their rights…due to the absolute government control over the fruits of their labor.”⁵⁹

      Nowhere is this more apparent than in the former Soviet Union, where all property belonged to the state. No one could speak out against the government for fear of their family being evicted, or their job taken away by the local Communist commissar. The founding fathers of America recognized this fundamental principle and John Adams said, “The moment that the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be sacred or liberty cannot exist.”⁶⁰ (Italics added for emphasis) Perhaps Noah Webster said it best: 

       For people in developing nations, there are two prerequisites to having political power: electrical power and property. Sustainable development precepts as envisioned by Agenda 21 and the UN would deny them both. Controlling property rights shifts all power into the hands of UN bureaucrats and their NGO partners. Without property rights, the world’s poor will forever be impoverished, diseased, miserable, and dying early, powerless to do anything to improve their lives.                                 

      James Madison also understood this principle and said that “Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well as that which lies in the various rights of individuals.... this being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures, to every man, whatever is his own.”⁶² As a consequence when the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution were ratified, the Fifth Amendment was included to guarantee protection of private property: “…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The government could take private property through eminent domain, but it had to pay for it. Instead of protecting its citizens, however, environmental law has been used to systematically strip landowners of their right to use their property without payment of any compensation — often with enormous loss of property value to the owner.

      The freedom to own property and develop it for the benefit of its owner is a key reason for the prosperity and economic strength of the United States. The right of private property allows creativity, innovation and risk taking to find a “better way” to do or make something in a manner that cannot be done in a controlled, heavily regulated society. In a controlled society, just because a politically powerful minority does not like urban sprawl, or because some environmentalists believe increasing human activity overloads the ecological system, laws are passed for the “public good” that deny landowners who happen to have the last remaining open space the right to develop their land to its full economic potential. As a result, these landowners unjustly bear the total cost of what the rest of society demands or has in some way created. If society wants a public good, such as preventing urban sprawl, or protecting the environment from the cumulative effects society has created, it should pay for it. The responsibility should not be borne on the backs of a few hapless landowners. 

 

Protecting Ecosystems

      At the heart of “sustainable development” is the concept of biological diversity. Advocates of this concept argue that in order to main­tain bio­diversity, sustainable practices must be employed. Conversely, to have sustainability, biodiversity must be maintained or enhanced. From that circular logic it is incorrectly assumed that urban sprawl, increased population pressure, and other human activities result in the destruction of biodiversity, which in turn imperils the sustainability of ecosystems and therefore the earth. As noted in the discussion of poverty above, Germany and England have some of the highest population densities per square kilometer in the world, yet have healthy, non-natural habitats. Why? Because healthy ecosystems don’t have to be “natural” or pristine.

      Biodiversity is comprised of four primary features above and below the ground level; 1) the species present, 2) their horizontal organization, 3) their vertical structure, and 4) the mixture of the three over a broad landscape. Plant species define the horizontal and vertical components which then provide the habitat and niches for other plant, animal and fungi species. Therefore, an ancient forest is not necessary to produce the habitat needed for species that are found in ancient forests. The forest conditions merely have to duplicate the horizontal and vertical structure needed by other species to live.⁶³

      Species extinction is incorrectly used to justify state control of sustainable development. Predictions of the extinction of 40,000 species a year are in many federal and United Nations documents. Yet, that number was picked out of thin air by Norman Myers in his book The Sinking Ark: A New Look at the Problem of Disappearing Species:

…Let us suppose that, as a consequence of this man-handling of natural environments [the clearing of tropical forests], the final one-quarter of this century witnesses the elimination of 1 million species — a far from unlikely prospect. This would work out during the course of 25 years, at an average extinction rate of 40,000 species per year, or rather over 100 species per day.⁶⁴

       So Myers picked 40,000 species per year right out of the air. There is absolutely no supporting evidence. None. On the other hand, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has determined that prior to 1600, the background extinction rate was estimated by a number of investigators to be about two species a decade. This increased to thirteen to twenty from 1600 to 1850, then skyrocketed to over 100 per decade from 1850 to 1950. Strangely, it then plummeted in the last half of the twentieth century to just over a dozen per decade and then down to three after 1980.⁶⁵ The drop after 1950 came before the Endangered Species Act in the U.S. and had far more to do with educating people to be sensitive to the importance of endangered species than any law. Today, while we must remain diligent, the threat to endangered species is manageable. Rather than fraudulent 40,000 extinctions annually that is frequently cited as fact, the number is more like 3-5 per decade! Yet, the United States continues to impose a very harsh Endangered Species Act that is used to arbitrarily deny people the use of their property without any compensation from the society that created the problem in the first place.

      Such harsh laws are not needed. As long as the mosaic of different habitats is found over an entire landscape, most species will continue to flourish. Neither biodiversity nor sustainability is threatened.⁶⁶ Even when a natural forest is clearcut, biodiversity and sustainability are not necessarily harmed. Harm can result if the area is turned into a shopping mall, but if it is allowed to regenerate either naturally or artificially, it merely turns into another type of biodiversity. The natural forests of an area, for instance, may have had less than 5 percent in open grassland or meadows, more in coniferous forests and the majority in hardwood forests. [1] As the area was farmed and pastured, grasslands may now occupy 85 percent, while hardwood and conifer woodlots make up the balance. The percentages and the species living in them have changed dramatically, but the various habitats found in the landscape can still be healthy.

      Within cities, ornamental trees and shrubs in residential areas can provide an amazing amount of habitat. City parks and golf courses provide even more. Golf courses are becoming increasingly important as management regimes are devised to minimize water, fertilizer and pesticide use while providing tremendous vertical and horizontal diversity between fairways. This kind of vertical and horizontal habitat structure often cannot be produced in city parks because of human safety considerations. When considered with the fact that urban areas occupy less than 5 percent of the United States landscape, urban sprawl has little impact on sustainable development of the entire nation.

      Whether so-called "natural processes" are occur­ring, or whether there is "old growth" in these stands has little to do with optimiz­ing diversity and sustainability. In fact, research has shown that valuable and potentially threatened species requiring grassy or brushy fields can be lost or diminished because natural processes leading to old-growth is occurring!⁶⁷ Biodiversity, and therefore sustainability can actually be enhanced by human disturbance. Sometimes the greater the disturbance the better. Holistic Resource Management,⁶⁸ for instance, has produced spectacular results in arid habitats. In many cases the management plan requires the number of cattle or level of harvesting be increas­ed in order to improve habitat health. Had the preservationist "solut­ions" called for the Convention on Biolog­ical Diversity been appl­ied (see above) in those situations, ecological decline would have resulted.⁶⁹

Principles

Current solutions contained in various international treaties and United Nations goals are often based on incorrect biological principles and will threaten rather than help species and ecosystem heath. This is because they depend upon a central command and control system of protection and management that is diametrically opposed to time proven application of private property rights.

 Sustainable development practices calling for vast tracts of wilderness and a reduction in human activity are usually not necessary, and can actually be harmful and counterproductive. There is little basis for creating vast tracts of interconnecting wilderness as most current sustainable development practices recommend. Biodiversity and habitat health can be optimized using existing scientifically proven management practices. Research clearly shows that application of good management practices on forest and range habitats enhances biodiversity and habitat health.

 In the limited cases where wilderness habitat is necessary, it is a societal problem and society should compensate the landowner. In almost every situation that requires total human withdrawal, it is the result of too many people impacting a limited or fragile habitat. Since society caused the problem, and preservation is for the benefit of society, society should pay the landowner for its protection. 

Property rights of landowners actually enhance sustainable development while common ownership or control through regulation diminish it. As thoroughly discussed by Hernando de Soto (see page ) full property rights are not only a cornerstone of freedom and liberty, they also provide landowners an incentive to not harm their land so they can derive their living or goals in perpetuity. Property rights also allow them be creative in finding new ways to use their land while simultaneously sustaining it. The wide diversity of goals and management practices utilized by the full range of landowners usually results in a good cross section of biodiversity and thus sustainability.

Conversely, public ownership of land or its control through regulation often invokes the “Tragedy of the Commons” in which no one is responsible for, or benefits from good management, so minimum management is applied resulting in environmental damage. The preferred solution in such instances is to use regulatory force to make people employ management practices that supposedly protect the environment. These laws, however, provide no incentive to also “find a better way” to produce either a better product from the land, protect the environment more effectively and cheaply, or both. Conversely, there is no negative incentives for public land managers or NGOs when their unproven practices burn up millions of acres of forests, destroy wildlife habitat, and otherwise harm the environment.

 Urban sprawl is not a threat to sustainable development — especially in the USA. Urban areas occupy less than 5 percent of the United States. This can be seen by anyone flying across the U.S. and in most parts of the world. While some may not like the appearance and driving requirements that urban sprawl can create, residential areas offer a rich diversity of habitat conditions that provides more diversity than might otherwise be assumed. Most urban areas are surrounded by rural or semi-rural land that completes the biodiversity requirement for any given region, even in highly populated nations.

 All national and international environmental law should be written to protect both the environment and people. The laws must be designed to truly protect the environment while meeting the intent and letter of each person’s God-given inalienable rights. Land taken or whose use is restricted through regulation must meet the definition of common law “harm and nuisance” whereby a person cannot pollute or throw their trash on their neighbors land.

Intergovernmental environmental laws must be based on the same common law principle noted above. Local governing units, such as cities, are accountable for cleaning up their own pollution before it is released into the air or water in a way that causes scientifically demonstratable (using the peer-reviewed scientific method) harm to the environment, or forces other governing units to clean it up before they can use it.

Regulations designed to benefit the “common good” of society should be applied through the principle of eminent domain with corresponding just compensation for the true value of the property lost. In all cases, the power brokers and regulators must be directly accountable to the people who they regulate.

Less, not more land should be made public. Over 40 percent of the United States and a variable amount in other parts of the world is commonly owned or controlled by government. Except for land areas specifically targeted for a specific environmental use, history has dramatically revealed that publicly controlled land and water is often mismanaged, resulting in environmental harm.

 Policy Recommendations