Sorry, Zenster. Reasoning with your average knee-jerk Libertarian isn’t likely to get you much satisfaction.
Though you’re taking the right tack in explaining how someone’s actions on their own property could affect the value of their neighbor’s land.
When you purchase property, unless you have made specific arrangements with your neighbors, you have no particular right to demand that they refrain from activity on their own property because it might affect the value of your own. If the damage predicted or actually caused is great, you have an excellent case for civil litigation. Criminal laws regulating plant life on private property are clearly a case of over-legislation.
Sorry Zenster, but I am no druid. No tree-worship here.
Private property is just that: Private. If I wanted to cut down acres and acres of trees, so I can fulfill my dream and start a lawn-flamingo ranch, well…You’ll learn to deal with it.
The only Man O’ War I know of is a jellyfish. Are you referring to a stockade?
He did make an arrangement. It was called “buying land where you’re not allowed to deforest it without prior approval, as determined by county law”. The law is there because the community has decided that their ability to enjoy trees is more important to them than their ability to cut them down. He didn’t like it, California’s a big state. Suck it up.
And in Ventura County, you’ll learn to deal with jail time. Somehow, I think Zenster comes out ahead in that deal.
I’m wondering, you “libertarians” who think, “man owns land, man can do what the fuck he wants,” – where do you think this man got this land. What he bought it? From whom? Where did that person get the land from?
Somewhere down this chain someone declared that land theirs. By what charter? Once it was not owned, then it was. Was this arbitrary declaration a libertarian act?
Brutus, someday, after you’ve gotten over your case of severe rectal-cranial insertion you’ll, perhaps, get a glimmering of why there are these sort of laws detailing just when and where any individual (not just property owners) may or may not cut down a tree that easily could have taken longer than your own puny lifetime to grow.
You seem rather immune to the fact that once a tree is cut, it cannot be immediately replaced. I look forward to the day when your own neighbor clear cuts their property. This will give you a golden opportunity to find out just how critical root systems are in preventing mudslides. For instance, ones that might wash your house into the nearest gully. We’ll not go into the niceties of hearing birds sing or seeing chipmunks (the squirrels have another task) gathering acorns. I can’t imagine you’d deem such observations important to the raising of your children.
Time for a clue or three;
We no longer live in the Wild West and resources are no longer plentiful. Population densities are sufficiently high where the electorate decided that the good of the majority overrode certain degrees of individual rights in how personal property can be managed. I don’t hear you carrying on about zoning laws. Do you believe that everyone has the right to prop up tarpaper shitshacks, dig unlimed pit outhouses and grow a front yard full of weeds and junked cars throughout any city in America? Should businesses that purchase the land they build upon be able to set up open pit waste processing next door to your housing tract? Would you like an outdoor pistol range in the middle of your neighborhood, say, next door to your child’s school?
There have long been limits on how, when and where property can be developed by individuals owning said land. Protection of heritage trees is but another small feature in the landscape of municipal and county codes covering protection of hard-to-replace resources and property management in general.
All better?
PS: Myrr21 and The Great Unwashed, thanks for trying.
Man O’ War (aka Ship of the Line)
~mourns the oak trees~
That’s a tragedy…Oak trees are some of the most amazing trees I’ve ever seen. (I’m not sure if the ones in CA are quite the same as in GA, but they have to be comparable)
Oak trees, as stated by the OP can have extensive root systems, and pulling up so many at one time cannot have positive consequences on the land, especially on the West Coast. When I lived out there, mudslides common, and very dangerous. (Of course, that was in WA where it rains a good deal more than most parts of CA)
And I have to go with Lynn…62 dogs…SIXTY TWO dogs? When I had 2 I had too many.
~J
Let’s not forget one of greatest racehorses of all time, either.
Even private properties are governed by laws. Do you REALLY think that because a property is deemed as “private” that you can do with it as you want? Of course there are some places like this, but to my knowledge they are few and far between. Right here in my community, we are NOT allowed to cut down trees on our properties unless the tree is dying.
This issue is wrong on several levels that have been adequately outlined in previous posts. I just don’t see how anyone can reasonably argue this point…???
Double d’oh!
Thank you.
Anyone do any research at all? He intended to put up avacado trees (he purchased 340 of them. That’s right, Ventura county is threatening to send this man to jail because he prefers avacado trees to elms. In fucking California.
This is why militias exist.
Hey, asshole, I live in one of the oldest areas of San Jose that has always been houses. These homes were in place during the same period that big orchards were planted around here. Besides “orchards” have nothing to do with this particular crime. Kaddis cut down wild oaks that were growing naturally.
Your stinking maple saplings have nothing to do with this thread either. Did the cited article mention “oak saplings?” No, it said “oak trees.” If you are totally unaware of heritage tree laws, you may wish to get edumacated. That way you won’t find yourself on the receiving end of a massive fine when you trim the wrong old tree.
Manny, this person might possibly have gotten permission to uproot the oaks and plant his avocado orchard, had he first applied for permission. However, there are many good reasons why people are not allowed to summarily rip out old growth trees. If the guy is some sort of farmer, he should have been more than well aware of regulations pertaining to this.
I strongly suspect this peckerwood was operating on the, “t’is easier to beg forgiveness than seek permission” premise when he did this. Well, that shit doesn’t work when you are hacking down hundreds of old growth trees. Quite rightly, the county officials are probably concerned that a large grove of avocado trees will not sustain the same levels of biodiversity that the previous oak forest had done. You may not be aware that avocado trees are regarded as “trash” trees due to the heavy ground cover they create from all of their fallen leaves. This cover kills off any competing vegetation and creates a “monoculture” environment that is incapable of sustaining anywhere near the same populations of flora and fauna that existed previously.
IN FACT, it turns out that Kaddis was perfectly aware of the illegality of his acts and proceeded in complete disregard of the law. I refer you to the following article.
Some excerpts:
" … He bought the land in July 2001, and county planning officials told him about the tree ordinance, which required him to get permission to remove the trees, Wold said. In August, Kaddis hired Aviram Soltes, allegedly to bulldoze a large group of trees on the land. By October 2001, 301 trees were gone, making it one of the largest unauthorized tree-cuttings ever in Ventura County.
Wold showed Superior Court Judge Kevin McGee before and after photos of the property, shots of the sap-soaked bulldozer that suffered $4,000 damage and a receipt that shows Kaddis bought 340 avocado trees shortly after the oaks disappeared.
He has pleaded not guilty to 13 misdemeanor counts, including altering a stream bed, felling protected trees, violating a hillside erosion-control ordinance, filing a false police report and maintaining an illegal dog kennel. He waived a jury trial, so McGee will decide the case …"
“… If convicted, Kaddis faces more than three years in jail and millions of dollars in fines.”
[sub]BOLDING ADDED[/sub]
You don’t face years in jail and “millions of dollars in fines” for an “oops, I cut the wrong tree down” sort of incident. This was a malicious and egregious violation of known and existing regulations directly affecting the property in question. His post facto purchase of the avocado trees shows that this was a premeditated act. I have no sympathy for this asshole and find it hard to imagine why anyone else would.
manhattan: He intended to put up [avocado] trees (he purchased 340 of them. That’s right, Ventura county is threatening to send this man to jail because he prefers [avocado] trees to [oaks].
You are kidding yourself if you think that planting new trees after clear-cutting several hundred existing ones means that you didn’t do any damage to the environment that you need worry about.
Ventura County’s got a population density of about 8 persons per acre of urbanized land. One property owner’s choices can have a significant environmental impact on other people. That’s why environmental regulations exist.
I notice none of you cowboy libertarians seem to be complaining about the illegality of this guy’s also keeping 62 dogs on his property, by the way. Why is it so terrible for county legislators to apply some regulation to private property concerning trees but not concerning dogs?
There is practically nowhere on the planet these days where “private property” means “property I can do absolutely anything I like with, without asking anybody’s permission”. We’ve learned enough about ecology to realize that all human activity has consequences. The more significant the consequences are, and the more people who are affected by them, the more likely it is that the activity will be legally regulated.
If you can’t endure the prospect of that, I’m afraid that what you really need is not a militia, but a time machine. Go back to the pioneer days when you could chop down 300 trees and nobody would even notice. But if you’re going to live in this century, particularly in a densely populated area, what you need to do is to grow up, stop whining about intolerable infringements of your mythical absolute property rights, and start checking out what the laws are before you purchase property or start trying to “improve” it.
Feh. I hope you’re both jailed for having the wrong kind of grass on your lawns.
WOW! Now that’s a responsive answer from a moderator who prides himself on being right.
Lawn grass = oak trees [insert roll eyes smilie >here<]
Cumulatively, that’s exactly right. What’s the difference between this guy cutting down 300 oak trees on his property and the the thousands that were cut down to build the houses of the very people who passed this law? What we’ve got here are a bunch of people who think that they were the very last people entitled to mess with the ecosystem, and that everyone after them has to keep things the way they were the day after they moved in.
I’d be willing to bet that cumulatively, the non-native grasses brought in for all these peoples’ lawns is much more harmful to the environment than one guy’s oak trees.
Anyone who knows anything about my posts and associates me with “mythical absolute property rights” is actully, clinically an idiot. But jail? For replacing trees? In an area that’s already densely populated? Feh. That’s not ecology. That’s a bunch of whiny NIMBYists who want their pretty view.
[sup]BOLDING ADDED[/sup]
Um, Manny, didn’t you mean “avocado” trees?
Believe it or not, I almost agree with you about the immense environmental damage that lawns represent. The TONS of excess fertilizer, weed killers and maintenance equipment pollution being delivered into our environment on a daily basis for the sake of lawn upkeep is unconscionable. However, the huge amount of animal life deprived of sustenance by Kaddis’ illegal acts will have a severe impact on that area for years to come. Avocado trees and oaks are NOT interchangeable. Please do not even attempt to convey such a notion as it is entirely wrong headed.
