As Logging Fades, Rich Carve Up Open Land in West

[XemaSab]

William P. Foley II pointed to the mountain. Owns it, mostly. A timber company began logging in view of his front yard a few years back. He thought they were cutting too much, so he bought the land.

Mr. Foley belongs to a new wave of investors and landowners across the West who are snapping up open spaces as private playgrounds on the borders of national parks and national forests.

In style and temperament, this new money differs greatly from the Western land barons of old — the timber magnates, copper kings and cattlemen who created the extraction-based economy that dominated the region for a century.

Mr. Foley, 62, standing by his private pond, his horses grazing in the distance, proudly calls himself a conservationist who wants Montana to stay as wild as possible. That does not mean no development and no profit. Mr. Foley, the chairman of a major title insurance company, Fidelity National Financial, based in Florida, also owns a chain of Montana restaurants, a ski resort and a huge cattle ranch on which he is building homes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/us/13timber.html?em&ex=1192507200&en=bdc081b831bca81c&ei=5087%0A

I'd rather a timber company owned and managed the land than a ski resort developer. :puke:

[Gregorian]

1. I was discussing this article with someone today.

They called me because they know that I've spent years playing around the edges of this kind of stuff. In fact I just sold my home a year ago because of logging in my front yard.


Here's something interesting that just happened last week. Pacific Lumber is in bankruptcy. They just took 21,000 acres and split it up into 160 acre "kingdoms", as they call it. And to top it off, they want $5.5 million for each one. I happen to know the acreage intimately, and it's pretty odd, because there is no buildable land there. I think it's just a ploy to satiate the stockholder into thinking the company is going to come out of bankruptcy.

So here's the interesting part. Last week the Humboldt county board of supervisors put a moratorium on all building on TPZ zoned lands. That means that all of the property that Palco is trying to sell, along with the lands that people have bought, that is zoned for timber production, cannot be built on. And this is the very land I've spent the last year trying so hard to buy. I'm one of those people who really wants to get away from neighbors. You could say I'm one of "them". But not really. I'm small time.

We may begin to see zoning and building changes that keep people from taking lands and altering their uses. Again, I say this is all due to population. I wouldn't be seeking a place to live if I could tolerate the home town I grew up in. But I can't. The hoards in their Lexi are just too disgusting for me. I grew up in a town with dairies and fields. And now it's just houses and concrete and noise. So what will we do?