Why do people purchase property in the countryside, claim they love the forest and then rape the land and turn

Question

it into strip mall suburbia?

Countless times in my life I've witnessed people who moved from cities to rural areas, claim they moved there for the beauty of nature they find there, only to witness them strip trees, harass and kill wildlife and do everything possible to turn their new surroundings into the kind of crowded, concrete suburban wasteland they left.

Arkansas, my home state is called "The Natural State" on our license plates. In the past decade I have witnessed more of that nature disappear than in the previous 40 years COMBINED and that is NO exaggeration. Is it like this where you are?

What can we do to stop this?

Today I'm in a state of grief over a 1/2 mile swath of hickory/oak forest that has disappeared over the past 48 hours. I can still hear the saws ( they're less than a 1/2 mile from here now)

Private owners have a legal right to do this with their property, so what is the answer?

Answer 1

Shopping areas, restaurants etc. are good for us. Sure there can be too many but when there are they will not be able to compete and some will go out of business. You have personally witnessed undeveloped areas turn into concrete and asphalt. I have too, but I have also seen the opposite. I know of two malls in the state where I live that have closed down due to competition from Walmart and Costco etc. The buildings stood empty for a few years until their structural decline became more economical to tear them down than to rebuild. They came down and the lots covering over ten acres or more have reverted back to trees and grass because it isn't cost effective for someone else to build and try to compete.  Someday in the future a developer with enough money may come along but it's going to be a long time before it happens. How many malls will go under the wrecking ball in the meantime.

  Anecdotal I know, but your examples are too. Don't get me wrong, I love trees and forest much better than concrete and steel but we need those things to live the lives we have been accustomed to. Would you rather live in a tent 100 miles away from a hospital or grocery store? I wouldn't and neither would most people. But I don't want to live in a world without greeways and wildlife either. So there has to be a happy medium somewhere, that's the question.

  Please do not fear or let your heart be troubled, there will always be plenty of nature to enjoy, Mother Nature will see to that. The earth takes care of itself and we as humans would be very arrogant to think that we could destroy all of nature. We can't. Not only that, but we are nature. We are mammals and we are part of the natural order.

  One more fact to take into account is that there are more trees in the US today than what would be if humans didn't inhabit it. Whenever nature causes a forest fire, happens all the time in dry conditions, man, a lowly mammal has developed the technology to put the fires out and in fact, man, has died in his efforts to save the forests from fire. So when nature causes a forest fire today and you hear about a million acres burning up before it was able to be controlled (by man) think of how many acres would have been destroyed if the lowly mammal, man, had not intervened.

  I could give many more examples but I'll leave it with just one more. The city I live in has a law that everytime a developer builds a shopping center or housing development they must designate a percentage to parkland. They have to donate the land to the city and the developer is responsible for it's upkeep even though the city is the new owner and the land can never be developed.

  Take heart, the earth will be fine until it decides it doesn't want to be.

Answer 2

Hey my friend, I also live in Arkansas and I know exactly what you are saying. We have been looking at building a home in the near future and everytime we think we have found a good place to build, they start building more homes and making more apartments and it is just plain sad. Arkansas is a beautiful state and I have been here for 10 years but am thinking now of going back to my home state of Texas when we build our home as my sister has a ranch and NO ONE will be doing to her property like they are doing here. I don't understand why they build so many houses here, especially in NW Arkansas as we have new homes sitting and have been for 2 or 3 years because no one can afford the price they want for them, but they keep building anyway. But I hope it gets better for you as I am like you, I want my land, my privacy and no neighbors to come and steal or bug or get in my way. I am old enough to just want peace and quiet when I get home from work as my kid is grown and I don't want to live by a bunch of people. And I love the wildlife and birds, I photograph them so this is sad to me when they start not being around because of this kind of thing

Answer 3

i live in the country, Knox

Indiana and i love the

freedom. we have lots of trees, wild animals etc!

i don't like hunters its a useless sport. i am a tree hugger.

i think your property should have a lot of trees so no one will cut them down.

and you can join daily green or green peace and fight for the rights's

of the trees, and wild life.

thank you

laney god bless

Answer 4

I have always hated seeing that sort of thing, even when I was a kid.  Unfortunately, that's how some people make a living.

Answer 5

The small city I am from, also in the South, passed an ordinance that businesses could not cut down trees with certain specifications -- if they were decaying or needed to go, then yes, but if they were healthy, then the business would have to build their parking lots and buildings *around* the trees. So they have these bricks that go around the roots so that they can breath and get water, but cars can drive on them. The roads are pretty windy and it's easy to get lost (hardly anything is at right angles), but is it ever shady and the moss is beautiful!

Answer 6

Oh, mama p, I really feel for you.  This is so distressing, and I don't understand how it can happen.  Even here in the UK, where (because we have so much less land, much greater population density) we have pretty strict planning laws which make it less likely that this will happen, we still have road-building and house-building programmes that callously destroy 'sites of special scientific interest' (a UK designation meaning land that has particularly interesting flora, fauna [often insects] or geology).  And creeping suburbanisation of our rural villages and towns happens all the time - down the road from me, among fields, is a house where the previous owners planted a whole lot of ornamental evergreens - completely out of keeping with this wild moorland landscape.  It's a blight - and if the next house, and the one after, do the same, there is a real change in the whole 'feel' of the area.  

I am deeply appreciative of the efforts of some younger people in this country who have tried to halt (and occasionally succeeded in halting) major road and house building programmes by camping out in trees, in burrows in the ground etc.  Other than that, lobbying for the proper enforcement of planning laws can help.  In the USA - I honestly don't know.  There is much more of a free-for-all, I know.

I'm so sorry for the loss of the trees.  I don't know how anyone can do this - and not seem to realise the generations it took to create that environment and habitat.

Answer 7

That problem is everywhere.   My little town was "discovered" a decade ago.   Now it has half as many people living in it year round, but twice as many houses.   When they flock to the town in the summer its crazy; police need to be broght in because the locals are all "crazy" supposedly and the summer people don't feel safe.   Good, we don't like you!   Go away and leave our town alone; it did perfectly well for 250 years without you!

Answer 8

i was from fargo before i moved to ms.after they made the movie "fargo"everybody and their freaken grandma started moving there. I think it is terribly sad.  I have been worried about this for a long time. it has to do with overpopulation. this earth doesn't have the means to support soooooooo many humans! why do you think we have a food shortage? because all theese huge, monstous cities gobble up all the countryside around them, swallowing farms,natural habitiat, and grazing lands, in the process. there is less and less "people free"land everywhere and the gaps between cities are growing smaller. pretty soon the world will be one big city and, people will be fighting over what to do with the natural parks(yellowstone,yosemite ect...)shuold we use them for housing or farmland?no matter what we do, god gave us enough rope, because he knew we'd hang ourselves with it.

there is nothing you as one, poor, person can do about it. I have thought about ways to stop this and there's no way. if i were rich i'd buy a huge chunk of land and turn it into my own private park. and noone is allowed to take it and corrupt it. give the deer and birds(ect...) somewhere to live when all the other trees are gone. the only thing you can do is move way the f*** out in the boonies and hope the world ends before the cities eat that up too. i think what God intends to do is let us hang ourselves with our corrupt civilization, and then lake nature take the world back, over again.

Answer 9

You should buy the property you want protected, and turn it into a park for everyone to enjoy.

Answer 10

First of all, the people who buy property in the countryside do not "rape the land and turn it into strip mall suburbia.  They build homes and make the land more usefull.

If you really have such a problem with this stop driving your car on roads (because trees are cut down inorder to make the road) stop going to these evil malls, stop walking on concrete sidewalks, and go back to living in the stone age- unless you're willing to do that, stop with your hypocrisy.

If private owners have a legal right to do with their property as you wish then there is nothing you can do... except to buy their property from them- and at a good enough price you can start with buying mine... before I rape the forest behind my house.

Good grief people- get a life!