The Bush administration is preparing to ease the way for the nation's largest private landowner to convert hundreds of thousands of acres of mountain forestland to residential subdivisions. Full Story »
Posted by Melva Hackney
The very last paragraph finally gets to the topics I know about from seeing rural land around me developed. Development becomes a drain on local government because they must provide services to outlying areas. Homes like these have been burned by the hundreds by the wildfires that increasingly ravage the West during longer droughts. And this land is no longer available for timber production, just as we've built over thousands of acres of farmland that will never again produce food for our growing population. In the meantime, we have millions of vacant housing units all over the country. And we're doing all this so some rich guy can have pictures of wildlife sent to his Blackberry in France? Why not just set up a service in a National forest and leave the land for the endangered species?
