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Editor's ViewpointMeditations Of A Minnesota Mossback |
Wilderness Refresh Button
There is no wilderness refresh button.
I grew up on a remnant of my great-grandparents' homestead north of Seattle. It adjoined the farms of other Swedish relatives who homesteaded in the North Creek Valley in the late 1800s.
My late grandfather, Andrew Anderson, recalled that when he was young, the salmon were so thick in the small stream behind his house that, during spawning, he could walk from bank to bank on their backs without ever touching the streambed.
Half a lifetime later, the salmon disappeared from Silver Creek. For over ten years, my father, a high school biology teacher, raised fingerlings in a small box hatchery behind our house in an effort to bring them back. He dumped buckets and buckets of fingerlings in Silver and North creeks to no avail: the salmon did not return.
If there's one thing I've learned, it's that once something precious is gone, it's often impossible to replace.
So I spend time thinking about these things, how the world has changed, how it doesn't seem to be as simple as once I thought it was.
Long ago, issues had only two sides. These days, the big questions require a strong pot of tea.
Case in point: two guys have owned property in the city of Columbus, just north of Lino Lakes, for 30 years. The land lies next to the Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area (WMA), a popular destination for metro-area hunters and nature lovers. All but 15 acres of the property is wetland, and nobody has wanted to buy it - until now. The willing buyer? The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
Biologists have reportedly found some significant remnant native plant communities on the parcel. One DNR spokesperson said, "That which is rare is precious; shouldn't we carefully consider what we should do with it?"
Some metro-area counties have held referendums to raise taxes to buy open space and here, in Anoka County, the DNR is saving us all the trouble.
Pretty simple? Not so fast.
Of 48-square-mile Columbus, 65 percent is water or wetland. The city isn't anxious to see the DNR gobble up more property from their tax rolls - Mayor Mel Mettler recently characterized it as a "Pac-Man mentality" (the fact that I understand his reference dates us both).
The Anoka County Board has some say in the matter; it voted 5-2 last week to block the sale. The parcel is one of over a dozen around the WMA that the DNR would like to buy. Commissioner Rhonda Sivarajah was quoted as saying "[The DNR] would basically consume the city."
But the DNR has taken a lot of heat in the past, some of it in Hugo, for not being more proactive in acquiring buffers around the public's recreation and hunting areas. As development moves out, conflicts occur between hunters and people who don't enjoy digging shotgun pellets out of their siding.
Native plant communities are rare. So is high ground in Anoka County.
Where's Solomon when you need him?
I believe that, in general, whatever government can do, the free market can usually do more efficiently. It's true that future taxes on undeveloped land can be viewed as an asset. But the free market is also an asset. It plays out within the framework of the values of those who live here.
Based on what I see, their values are changing.
Voters in Washington and Dakota counties supported an increase in taxes to preserve open space.
Land is being set aside by forward-thinking conservationists like the late John Edstrom and his wife, Harriet, who chose to preserve their Scandia farm as a Washington County regional park.
People understand that when the wild places disappear, they're gone forever. There is no wilderness refresh button.
I think we need to choose to support taking land out of development when we can, and especially when there is a willing seller and a willing buyer. It might even inspire us do a better job with the land that remains.
After all, it's all downstream from here.