[Argus]

On the one hand, I favor property rights. On the other, I'm sick of watching more open space in California and elsewhere plowed under for yet more housing and mall development. We need rational land use planning and in its absence we get ridiculous exploitation of technicalities like this.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

This is ridiculous! Plants and animals face extinction all the time. If their populations are reduced to tiny amounts, living in a tiny area, they are probably about due for extinction.

[concentric circles]

The problem is primarily with elected officials. Most counties and municipalities have general plans that look good on paper, balancing the interests of residential developers, industry, agriculture, and open space advocates. Officials then issue special use permits or other exceptions which defeat the intent of the general plan. There is a reason developers make donations to the campaigns of elected office holders.

[cpdiii]

Here in Central Texas land owners have been known to light fires in caves on their property to kill anything in it so the damned environmentalist do not find a "new" endangered species and thus make their land worthless. It makes perfect sense. The outcome is that species that would have lived are killed because of the virtual expropriation of a mans private land. When you have valuable land near Austin, Texas and discover an endangered species on it, you have just lost your land to any development but the government is kind enough to still make you pay the taxes on it but you can not build on it. This defacto confiscation of your property without just compensation.

[conservative cat]

On the one hand, I favor property rights. On the other, I'm sick of watching more open space in California and elsewhere plowed under for yet more housing and mall development. We need rational land use planning and in its absence we get ridiculous exploitation of technicalities like this.

I totally agree. We are in the same situation in Washington- watching beautiful areas getting plowed under to build a bunch of generic McMansions with no yards or trees left over.

[ccmay]

On the other, I'm sick of watching more open space in California and elsewhere plowed under for yet more housing and mall development. We need rational land use planning and in its absence we get ridiculous exploitation of technicalities like this.

What we really need is for tyrannical busybodies, who want to impose their aesthetic sensibilities on the community at someone else's expense, to open their own G** D*** wallets and buy the land they want to see preserved. Failing that, they should press for the government to purchase such property at fair market value.

"Rational land use planning" that places the burden of preservation on the backs of individual property owners should be resisted with armed violence.

-ccm