>>1268406The house you live in, the grocery store where you shop, the doctor's offices and hospital that will take care of you if you're sick, the post office where you collect your mail, the building where you work (if you even do), and the roads you drive on were all once wild land. Your very existence reduces wild areas. This is probably manageable if we set aside wild areas. But some think they should get to make OTHER people who buy land keep it wild for their benefit, instead of choosing to build on it and live there themselves.
I really don't get why this is such a difficult concept for some to grasp. If you value wild areas, vote to have your (and other people's) tax dollars pay for the government to buy them for that purpose. Remember that there is a finite amount of money to be spent, and some people will want to use it instead for more public housing, more food stamps, more welfare, more community centers, more publicly funded education or healthcare, more after school basketball programs for at risk urban youth, etc. If you make your voice known that you don't give a shit about those things but do care about having wild areas, then you've had your say and you might sway that finite pool of resources in your direction. Otherwise, someone else will buy that land, and they may choose to keep it wild, or build a house on it, or a pharmacy or a strip mall. At that point, it belongs to them, and telling them they can't use it is like telling you that you aren't allowed to live in YOUR house anymore, because we need to herd the entire population into a few urban high rise centers to minimize the environmental footprint, and leave everything wild. (By the way, this doesn't minimize the environmental footprint anyway, as people need services and where there are people, even densely concentrated, there needs to be agriculture and schools and police and grocery stores and fire departments and courthouses...etc.)
