Eco-Terrorists: Keep Your Hands Off Our Habitat.
It's Worth Something
from the Coast News
September 2003

By Jerome Stocks
Mayor of Encinitas, California

Memo to the FBI agents investigating the recent eco-terrorism in University City: These arsonists either live here, or drove here, but they could not have flown into San Diego.

Not if their big complaint was urban sprawl, as they wrote on the banner found at the burned out site. Because anyone flying into Lindbergh Field from the east knows that just minutes outside of San Diego is nothing but open spaces as far and wide as the eye can see.

And if that plane happened to fly over the University City area, these eco-criminals would have noted that this burned down apartment complex was smack dab in the middle of the urban core  -- right near the roads, and jobs, and infrastructure that made this project a model of smart growth.

Not only are there miles and miles of open spaces in the East County, there are more and more areas being preserved closer in as well.

The eco-arsonists are probably not familiar with the county's Multiple Species Conservation Plan either. Under this plan, meaningful sections of critical San Diego habitat have been set aside over the last ten years. In return, other areas have been set aside for development.

Arsonist-types and their sympathizers clearly don't care. They say all the land should be saved, and none developed. They  also probably don't like a new way we are saving some of that land - ways that are getting attention as models throughout the country.

The new way was created when landowners found that, in return for certain development rights, they were required to buy or set aside equal or greater habitat elsewhere.

That means that the same dirt that just a few years ago was worth less than nothing is today worth $40,000 to $50,000 an acre  as habitat . And more. And this land has value not because you can use it to generate rents, but because it can never be used for anything but homes for birds and bushes and plants and animals, endangered or otherwise.

This new economic dynamic has transformed the way landowners treat their open space. Here's why: A few years ago, a landowner with open space had to figure out a development scheme to create value, and knew that the longer he waited to develop his property, the more likely environmental objections would surface.

This encouraged them to use their property as quickly as possible, even if the economic use was only marginal, such as a strip mall, or parking lot, or farm, or any or the other uses where you can make a quick, albeit smaller, buck or two.

But according to SDSU economics professor Ed Balsdon, the new value of open space and habitat has changed all that.

Now that open space has value on the market place, landowners don't have to worry about getting rid of it so quickly. In fact, they can hold on to it, knowing that the value of their habitat will only increase as demand for it increases from other landowners.

Once habitat acquired value, San Diego acquired a whole new generation of conservationists. The more expensive it is, the more incentive they have to preserve it.

This has caused a little heartburn with the public agencies that are occasionally in the market for open space. And short term, they are right: More expensive habitat means they will be able to buy less of it. But long term, the more expensive it is, the less local government will have to buy because there will be more incentives for private preservation.

To those accustomed to trying to drive down the value of land so it can be acquired more cheaply, this new trend is hard to grasp. But more and more are recognizing that high land prices will save far more habitat than even the most generous government can ever buy at low prices.

Eco-criminals must really hate that. Their dogma is that the market place is the enemy of the environment. More than loving the environment, these eco-terrorists loathe the market place and any good that can come of it.

Final note to investigators: Maybe that is why they chose San Diego.