Responsibilities of Land Owners

Now that you own a large chunk of the Earth, what are you going to do with it? Will you maintain the current quality or improve the land for which you now have a responsibility? And, if you choose to improve it, how will you define improvement? Is it better to make the land more productive or more beautiful? Is it better to enhance and increase the populations of wildlife or livestock? All these decisions are personal ones. 

However, there are some basic truths that can not be ignored no matter what a human's goals for the land are. These are that the soil must not be eroded and end up silting and polluting the water that runs off the land. The vegetation present must be as healthy and deeply rooted as the climate allows. The production goals must be tied to long term land health and not to short term economic cycles. This last is difficult to do because it requires a different way of thinking and in fact a subordination of legitimate human needs to legitimate land needs. In other words, you might not make as much money from your land as you would like and as your neighbors with short term goals will. However, your land will be healthier and improving and your descendants (or other buyers' descendants) will benefit from your responsible land use practices. Your land will be more valuable to your children, the next buyer and to the ecosystems which support us all.

Land is not ours to abuse, even though we have to a great extent. Even though our land ownership laws allow us to abuse our land, this does not make our abuse right or ethical. It is time for humans to reconsider the benefits provided to them by healthy lands and create a new use ethic that is sustainable for as many generations as our imaginations can foresee. Because, there will be future generations of humans and we have an obligation to them and the other inhabitants of the earth to protect our small part of it. With that said, lets get down to the business of protecting our lands. We have to protect the soil, the water falling on or flowing through, the living animals and the living plants. We have to protect them in the smaller spatial sense – on our property - and the larger spatial sense – the larger ecosystem of which we are a part. We have to protect them through the changing climates of drought and times of plenty or flooding. We have to protect them during the changing seasons and the associated changes in growth and migration patterns. This is no easy task and in fact, open to a great deal of scientific inquiry and discussion. We don't really know the best ways to protect our land in all these changing environments. Because of this lack of knowledge, we should be cautious and humble in our approach to management. Above all, do no harm.

This is not to say that we should do nothing, because to do nothing ignores the fact that the larger systems of which we are a part are also being damaged and creating harm to our parcel through pollutants and invasion by exotic plants and animals. The best defense is a good offense. Plant native plants that are suitable for your soil type and climate. Leave wild areas that are habitat for creatures you don't even know exist in addition to the more obvious ones like foxes and butterflies. Let go of the need for an orderly, homogeneous, neatly cut, straight row landscape and look to wild ares for an example of what your land should look like.