What a wonderful way to operate a ranch. I hope to have an opportuntiy to go there, perhaps as a videographer.

Nice story, Barbara. Can you imagine the Douglas Lake Ranch or the Gang Ranch star-gazing for profits?

I thought private ownership was the root of all evil?

Nice story and quite inspiring. Profit and responsibility need not be enemies. My cousin went organic with his apple orchard. I asked him why, he said that it's a better market and, as a new dad, he hated the thought of having any more toxic chemicals around the farm. I'm wondering about the bobcats and javelinas though. Why would they not be able to do their thing if the area is subdivided? They're talking about hobby farms, not putting condos on the land. Wouldn't the basic terrain be the same whether owned by one rancher or many?

This response is a wide area perspective... Whether it is explicit or not, a sense of history, the current situation and a projected vision of what comes out of those two in the future are part of each and every attempt to portray 'the situation' honestly by journalists. That is: we are historians, accountants of current dilemmas, and futurologists. The very professional Barbara McClintock rates among the finest after an outstanding career in the puzzling field of contemporary journalism. When she writes, we should all have a look and consider what she says. I talk each and every day with a wide variety of people in business, politics and on the street. The issues of the day are often front and center in an open way, so the rolling issues of the dialectics of past, present and future are also front and center in control of what is claimed as 'fact' and what is obviously 'intepretation of fact'. In B.C. I gesture in the heat of discussion OUT THERE... and proclaim: "When I worked in the Ministry of Economic Development we controlled the statistics branch. Every professional of population growth made by government is LOW. It underestimates what actually happens." The point being made is that we must account for the popularity of our country to the masses who want a new start. Immigration and growth are directly related. We are now not replicating ourselves with fornication and baby creation. More startling is that we could DOUBLE B.C.'s population in 25 years if rates of growh continue to climb with positive international news about the value of natural resources. Look around you, folks. Place another body beside each and every person you encounter. Double the housing base, at least. Watch small towns and mid-sized cities in the Interior, South and North and eastern B.C. start to grow at startling rates as people sell out and banks some money, buying into equivalent or better homes in these places at half the cost of the property sold. Our history is a roller coaster ride. Our political commentators constantly ride the extreme in statements. Doom and gloom from the opposition gave the CCFers and then New Democrats excellent training in being critics. With Dave Barrett the New Democrats had to be 'the government of all the people' and all kinds of people had to learn the disciplined and law-defined processes of administration, which is management pure and simple. Now the replacement for the Socreds, the Liberals, is taking what it learned in opposition and trying to forget its absurd claims of disaster. The disjunction between statement and achievement is immense. The discussion of rational civic discourse requires us to ask large questions of the PUBLIC vs. PRIVATE dialectics we face and know so well, as the world does since the issue isn't set within neat borders and boundaries. It's global and philosophical. Careful conservation is not about ONE SIDE of the ideological framework winning or losing, and vice versa. It must always be about true CONSERVATION of precious land itself, however it is done. Righteousness is a poor substitute for fact, result and wisdom. Private solutions that work for the public good may well be good things. Historically owners of precious sites such as the one discussed by B. McClintock have not been just stewards that assured public interest. Often, as with government or public decisions about resource management, the conclusions have been disastrous as decades of mismanagement of fish stocks on eastern and western seabords displays clearly. Conclusions within political process always shape both individual effects along with collective effects. You cannot shape a society that has no individuals; any group of individuals makes a society. Obvious, of course. But a necessary corrective to the blind adherence to either/or. The grand diaspora described by anthropologists, as groups crossed the Bering strait or came by ship from Asia to North America, or even those that came long ago to Newfoundland's shores, interfered with 'the land'. Once here, with populations rising, there could be no return to pre-human presence. And yet we hear the wistful echoes of the wish to return in many comments about our interventions on 'the land', or land development. Social and economic development are not two things, but a single thing. A political party that genuinely confesses public rights and private rights will do better than one that claims only public officials can know what is good for us. And one that confesses this fusion of rights as inevitable will also do better than one that says private ownership is the sold legitimate and moral foundation for public and private decisions. Command and control models about land use that claim special rights for 'them that has' are no smarter than such models that claim only the general population has rights, as filtered by the thinkers of the day. Why not open up our minds and be freethinkers with people such as Christopher Marlowe and William Blake? Why not balance and judge with a view to historic fact and equity, instead of proclaiming special rights for one view over the other? Greed-driven private decisions have been disastrous to large blocks of 'the land'. Public decisions have authorized much of this, and often public decisions have been equally disastrous. Mistakes are mistakes. The results are toxic in both a technical sense and with reference to the impact on the commonwealth we presume to live in. Toxic? People assume they know what it means. Check it out. Too much water can be 'toxic', as scientists define the term. That is, a good thing can be a bad thing. It puts you in mind of the great puzzler Heraclitus who declared, "You can't step into the same river twice." And, "The way up is the way down." He might in our time have said something such as: "The private way is public; the public path is private." We have to examine much more closely this long-held battle in our civic discussions about EXACTLY what we mean when we use these concepts. History hates sloppy thinkers. Barbara McClintock is not one of them, and she is thanked for her efforts. erg

Please change spelling of Barbara's name to McLintock in previous submission. thanks... factchecking deficient this morning...

Please change spelling of Barbara's name to McLintock in previous submission. thanks... factchecking deficient this morning...

This is exactly the kind of "out of the box" thinking we need to embrace more fully. Realize that private enterprise can be successful while embodying responsible corporate citizenry. Ninety-nine percent of what I see reflected in the media (Tyee included) is the left and right demanding one drop all of their ideologies and adopt the mantra of the other. It's time to stop pandering to and blindly following the leaders of either side. Instead we should be taking the best of both worlds, and finding innovative ways to advance everyone's interests.It's possible to achieve success in both business and conservation simultaneously.

Let's see if I got this right. A private philanthropist, referring to public protections of the commonwealth ecologies, calls it "philanthropy to preserve the environment". Then says, having taken all the trees and put em in a tree museum, that she can charge the people a dollar and a half just to see em.

Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?

I wonder if the eco- tourists will need a place to park?

And I left out the best part. The paradise she's preserving is her own private oil patch. This is just too rich. It's too soon for April fools, guys.

What About A conservation easement on the property?? You can get major tax benifits by establishing one, especially on a parcel of the described acreage.

Dear Ms. McLintock; I apologize for my snotty little dismissal above, Your story is an interesting report about an interesting phenomenon. It's a personality flaw of mine that once you feed me a straight line, I just can't resist it.

Now I read it, it's really quite unfair.