Absurd ramblings.
I’ve had the pleasure? recently of contemplating land use, conservation, and budgets: working with a company for whom pristine land keeps their costs down but whose vast land resource appears to create in the short term a way to keep user fees down (by selling said land). Since keeping said user fees down is mandated by law….the end result is that as long as all costs associated with the land are paid for by the land, the land is tolerated. (That without the land, the user fees would go through the roof is politically inconvenient and thus ignored, also ignored is that without the land the resource in question would be a good deal scarcer….). It does, however, demonstrate that land can ‘pay its way’. If you own enough that is and the taxes don’t go up.
Then there are the families, maybe all of retirement age, who want to do something else. A hundred odd acres of prime land for sale, some of the nicest I’ve seen. (not in any way connected with this family) Conservation would be nice, cash would be nicer and is necessary. Can one really blame them? I don’t know. I have to admit, looking at those acres; that I would prefer to see them actively managed. We can’t afford a land use pattern split solely between houses and untouched open space. Not here at least. It doesn’t work either ecologically or financially.
But somehow, we have lost the idea of active land stewardship. Maybe because, aside from a gargantuan scale, the finances don’t work (take care of the land, it takes care of you), maybe it is cultural. Not mind you that we need subsistence farming for the majority, I’ve studied enough history to know that ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ doesn’t have a romantic bone in it. Though it has a lot of bones. But the great British estates (Clearances aside!!) are an interesting model. Except they sort of need an expansionist empire….
I have it. Land conservation requires the space programme! 🙂
Acair Fearann 
And, in my particular case, land conservation might go better with some contact information so that I can actually get discussions started on putting an easement on Yellow Mountain. As for how best to use land . . . I think we still have a ways to go on figuring out how to, globally, given population pressures, use land “sustainably”. We’re not quite at the point of being able to move the majority of folks to Mars so that we can sustainably use the land on this planet :). Of course, if we don’t figure out something within the next few generations, who knows? There may be a lot fewer humans around . . .
🙂 Betsy
Consider the saying; “think globally, act locally”. Perhaps if we achieve good answers here at home the rest of the world will also find solutions.
Incidently the land referred to in Anne’s rambling above is a beautiful parcel in another part of town which she recently had to find/make time to walk as part of her local action; not a part of her normal or expected routine.
The great British estates had another characteristic which we (and they!) have lost: time. Their planning horizon was on the order of decades, if not centuries. That we really have lost (with the possible exception of a small demented family on a hill top in New England?)
Quite, and certain other people working in an out of way offices.
…land use split solely between untouched open space and houses doesn’t work ecologically or financially. . . your ramble has finally stated so clearly what has been bothering me about my Connecticut suburban home in a homeowners association that mandates exactly that. We have rules about intensively maintaining our yards and rules that say the abutting commonly owned areas must “remain wild” (i.e. never be managed). It makes no sense, as you state, for land conservation or for economic land use, and it even makes no sense aesthetically. Bah!
Laurrie,
It is frustrating, especially in suburbia. The end result is all too often lawn monoculture bordered by a tangle of invasive species (with ticks). Neither are, IMHO, particularly attractive to people and that leads to a further distancing of people,especially young people, from the land.