I'll wade in, as this argumant looks REAL different depending on what side of the fence you live on.

Any person I know who owns a large chunk of ground, myself included, invested an awful lot of money on it. There are some pieces of property coming onto the market that are legacy family owned properties which sometimes can be quite large and are essentially the "estate" of the deceased. From the outside it is easy to point fingers and call "greedy" but on the inside you have real people with real lives and real debt and challenges. When they "sell" they have 3 legit options, what the government can scrape together and the red-tape and timeassociated with it, a development firm or to individual investors.If you can't step up to play and bid on that land, what gives you the right to criticize any of the players? Because you want open space and hunting lands? If you REALLY wanted it for that you'd be working harder and saving more so you could buy it yourself. If you think it is the governments job to do it and the rest of the tax base's job to buy it and keep it open for you then you need to move to some ultra Socialist society and stand in the bread line on Thursday and take your hand outs. This is America, and the OPPORTUNITY to buy is given to us all. If you lack the resources or desire to take part, you are just a bystander on your 1/4 acre spot and your voice isn't worth squat.

The original point of the article was the government's attempt to use "zoning" and land use restrictions to limit what property owners could do with thier land. There are already very specific laws and rules related to building and land use set in place to control environmental impact. What the government was trying to do is control what and how land owners could use their properties, not to protect the environement but to preserve open space and to appease certainconservation groups. For anyone who doesn't think that land and property is an investment, you are dead wrong. Old time farms were purchased for the revenue potential and long term benefit of the families that owned them. Now that their value is less than their actual land value by 1000 times, why do you think it would be wrong to sell them for the same exact reason they were purchased in the first place?

Now, before you rip into me for looking at this without emotion, but essentially a purebusiness transaction, there are choices and options for those who care. A very powerful thing is a group of like minded people with some financial resources. Buy the land, or in the case of the town I live in, we contribute to a "fund" that allows us to quickly move on open space land at the speed and with the funds of a land developer. If we can't afford it or the value is not worth it, we must pass. I think the real problem isn't the people selling the farms, or the developers buying the land.. but the hordes of people sitting on the porches of their 1/5 acre lots moaning about the lost open space but not caring enough to do anything about it and "hoping" for the government to handle it. I call people like that useless sheep..... and you deserve Hillary when you get her.