[stochtastic]

A cautionary tale from personal experience: My parents retired to a rural area and wanted to ensure that their area would remain a healthy old growth forest. They have been actively involved in a land trust that has successfully created large, continuous corridors throughout the area. One of their contributions was a continuous strip of about 20 acres. Their community has stitched these together to create wonderful cycling/walking paths through the woods, linking up different areas.

At the start of the pandemic, a developer bought up a large (~200 acre) tract neighboring them and the corridor. They immediately clearcut the whole thing, and are building hundreds of tract houses, cheek by jowl, and have consequently forced the local government to build additional roads. Guess the big selling point they use in their website and listings? 'Neighbors a wilderness trust with extensive woodland paths.'

Knowing all of this, I'm not sure whether I'd still go through with the land trust purchases or not. They couldn't have afforded the 200 acre parcel, and who knows if the developer would have bought the other 50 acres. All I can say is that it is dispiriting to see people doing the right thing and having a net increase in clearcutting at their doorstep.

[h0l0cube]

> a developer bought up a large (~200 acre) tract neighboring them and the corridor. They immediately clearcut the whole thing

Make the land private and only allow access to conservation workers, volunteers and financially contributing members. The less joggers disrupting the ecosystem the better, and it's a way to fund more purchases of land, and encourage people to volunteer.

[ttyprintk]

I know this may not help now, but to approve such a development, many counties would require that it is not down range from a historical or even prospective shooting range. You might offer every new resident subsidized membership because they live downrange.

[imtringued]

You do know that this is essentially what Henry Geroge was warning about? People invest in their community and then some private land owners capture all those public benefits and turn them into cold, hard, emotionless cash.

[dogman144]

Well rural living and by extension preservation has to be joined with land ownership maps. First thing to check with a rural purchase must be what it borders. The more BLM/federal/state/county land, the more likely stuff like the above doesn’t happen. Same issue for building trusts.