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This is the opposite of a useful perspective. Someone, definitionally, owns all the privately held land in the US. Large landowners in rural areas are on avera

by stouset 24d ago

This is the opposite of a useful perspective. Someone, definitionally, owns all the privately held land in the US. Large landowners in rural areas are on average more politically connected and wield more political power in their communities. Telling them that any sort of work on their own land—no matter how small—requires extensive oversight might be well-intentioned but pisses off a lot of people who will then become bitter opponents of even well-designed environmental legislation. Telling them they should have made better purchasing decisions just motivates them even further. What actually ends up happening is these people then do it anyway with zero oversight, because the amount of land involved is too vast to enforce these things on. You also get large concerted efforts to overturn any and all environmental protection.

AngryData 24d ago
You act like it is impossible to use land that beavers live on without destroying the beaver dams or removing the beavers, and yet there are plenty of people that do that very thing their entire lives without a problem. I didn't say they can't do anything with their land, but if you live on land with beavers you should know how beavers and beaver dams work so you don't do something stupid, like building a structure in the flood path of a stream or river full of beavers, or killing the beavers so that you can and then complaining about the beavers coming back. Complaining about how beavers work and what beavers are doing on your land is the same as building on a historic floodplain and then complaining about it flooding. Or building in hurricane territory and complaining about hurricanes. Or building in the woods and complaining about deer eating your plants and trees falling on your driveway. One person's lack of foresight is not and should not be everybody and everything else's problem. Do your research before you buy things. Only an asshole buys and/or builds next to an area with long established feature X and then complains about feature X existing and how its "unfair" they can't have it taken down or destroyed at will.
- stouset 24d ago
  No, but I do believe that the people who actually own these lands almost universally think that the government unnecessarily interferes with their ability to make small improvements that don’t meaningfully impact wildlife. I agree with this kind of oversight. But as someone with a friend who is both an environmentalist and does own land adjacent to a river and land managed by the national forest service, the latitude for what you can actually do without serious oversight is essentially nothing. Luckily what he wants to do is essentially nothing, but even the very minimal bits he does want to do—which includes making fire breaks in a populated area which is wildfire-prone—is questionable. It’s been eye opening to see the lengths he’s had to go to in order to stay on the right side of things. And it’s given me a decent perspective on the burden it puts on even those who want do to be responsible landowners. It’s also been interesting to learn about the perverse incentives it does put on those who own this kind of land. One example is that new paths generally can’t be cleared, except when a wildfire happens, if you can justify it as part of firefighting or fire prevention efforts. So if and when there is a fire nearby, bulldozers come out in droves. I’ll leave you to connect that to what might be the root cause of some of these fires.
- cucumber3732842 24d ago
  The problem isn't the beavers. The beavers bring water with them. With water comes wetland rules and regulation and setbacks and, and, and, and.... and all your plans for whatever you were gonna do with the land go up in smoke. Doubly so if you were planning something cheap and minimal impact. A couple cabins in the forest don't justify huge regulatory expenses to fight this stuff. Whereas BigCo's development can absorb that cost. Bonus points if the locals show up to the planning meeting for the BigCo project and say things like "we don't want things like this here, we want rustic cabins and campgrounds and agriculture and small business". Wetland regulation also acts like a ratchet. The soil will change from being underwater and so land that would have been considered upland before the beavers will be considered wetland after them even if the plants go back to how they were before the beavers. Pretty much all the "hey, that's obviously dumb and non-optimal why the F does that make financial sense" stuff you see in land development comes from the massive third rail that is wetlands.

by stouset 24d ago

AngryData 24d ago

You act like it is impossible to use land that beavers live on without destroying the beaver dams or removing the beavers, and yet there are plenty of people that do that very thing their entire lives without a problem. I didn't say they can't do anything with their land, but if you live on land with beavers you should know how beavers and beaver dams work so you don't do something stupid, like building a structure in the flood path of a stream or river full of beavers, or killing the beavers so that you can and then complaining about the beavers coming back. Complaining about how beavers work and what beavers are doing on your land is the same as building on a historic floodplain and then complaining about it flooding. Or building in hurricane territory and complaining about hurricanes. Or building in the woods and complaining about deer eating your plants and trees falling on your driveway. One person's lack of foresight is not and should not be everybody and everything else's problem. Do your research before you buy things. Only an asshole buys and/or builds next to an area with long established feature X and then complains about feature X existing and how its "unfair" they can't have it taken down or destroyed at will.

stouset 24d ago
No, but I do believe that the people who actually own these lands almost universally think that the government unnecessarily interferes with their ability to make small improvements that don’t meaningfully impact wildlife. I agree with this kind of oversight. But as someone with a friend who is both an environmentalist and does own land adjacent to a river and land managed by the national forest service, the latitude for what you can actually do without serious oversight is essentially nothing. Luckily what he wants to do is essentially nothing, but even the very minimal bits he does want to do—which includes making fire breaks in a populated area which is wildfire-prone—is questionable. It’s been eye opening to see the lengths he’s had to go to in order to stay on the right side of things. And it’s given me a decent perspective on the burden it puts on even those who want do to be responsible landowners. It’s also been interesting to learn about the perverse incentives it does put on those who own this kind of land. One example is that new paths generally can’t be cleared, except when a wildfire happens, if you can justify it as part of firefighting or fire prevention efforts. So if and when there is a fire nearby, bulldozers come out in droves. I’ll leave you to connect that to what might be the root cause of some of these fires.
cucumber3732842 24d ago
The problem isn't the beavers. The beavers bring water with them. With water comes wetland rules and regulation and setbacks and, and, and, and.... and all your plans for whatever you were gonna do with the land go up in smoke. Doubly so if you were planning something cheap and minimal impact. A couple cabins in the forest don't justify huge regulatory expenses to fight this stuff. Whereas BigCo's development can absorb that cost. Bonus points if the locals show up to the planning meeting for the BigCo project and say things like "we don't want things like this here, we want rustic cabins and campgrounds and agriculture and small business". Wetland regulation also acts like a ratchet. The soil will change from being underwater and so land that would have been considered upland before the beavers will be considered wetland after them even if the plants go back to how they were before the beavers. Pretty much all the "hey, that's obviously dumb and non-optimal why the F does that make financial sense" stuff you see in land development comes from the massive third rail that is wetlands.