If you see a woodpecker in your tree, cut the tree down (Rare woodpecker ...*).
Over the past six months, landowners here have been clear-cutting thousands of trees to keep them from becoming homes for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.
The chain saws started in February, when the federal Fish and Wildlife Service put Boiling Spring Lakes on notice that rapid development threatened to squeeze out the woodpecker.
Here is what I thought about this about a month ago:
If the value of the preserve (sic) land is greater than the cost (the value of the developed land), then the government should raise the money via taxes, purchase the land and protect the preserved land benefits from development. "Takings" via regulation don't (sic) seem the right approach to me.
I like to indent and italicize my own quotes to make them seem more important.
Here's more from the article:
The agency issued a map marking 15 active woodpecker “clusters,” and announced it was working on a new one that could potentially designate whole neighborhoods of this town in southeastern North Carolina as protected habitat, subject to more-stringent building restrictions.
Hoping to beat the mapmakers, landowners swarmed City Hall to apply for lot-clearing permits. Treeless land, after all, would not need to be set aside for woodpeckers. Since February, the city has issued 368 logging permits, a vast majority without accompanying building permits.
The results can be seen all over town. Along the roadsides, scattered brown bark is all that is left of pine stands. Mayor Joan Kinney has watched with dismay as waterfront lots across from her home on Big Lake have been stripped down to sandy wasteland.
“It’s ruined the beauty of our city,” Ms. Kinney said. To stop the rash of cutting, city commissioners have proposed a one-year moratorium on lot-clearing permits.
And, I guess, my thoughts haven't changed much in the past month. Even if I'm agreeing with the folks over at reason.com:
I've pointed out a couple of times--here and here--that this is exactly the kind of reaction that Endangered Species Act provokes. Instead of persuading landowners to treasure and protect endangered species, the ESA transforms them into pests. If the public values endangered species (and most of us do), then it seems only fair that we fully compensate the people on whose land they live for taking care of them for us.
The problem, of course, is that the potential takings via the ESA creates an inefficiency. In my semi-professional life I don't care much about the inequity since economists don't know any more about this than anyone else. It is a value judgement. The preemptive development of undeveloped land. Some compensation added to the mix might preserve some of this undeveloped land, save a woodpecker and increase the efficiency of the allocation of scare resources.
*Hat tip: Joshua.
