Trespassers Keep Out: The Loss of Public Access to Nature

Summer is in full swing here in the Northwestern United States. Seattle is in bloom, the skies are clear, the sun is shining, and with the 4th of July weekend coming up, people all over are flocking to the waterfronts. Unfortunately, there are very few places the public can go to enjoy the waters of Puget Sound. Except for a few parks, one of which is a toxic waste dump, there are few places one can go. Nearly all the waterfront property is privately owned with no public access.

Let the words of my mouth,
the meditations of my heart
and the actions of my life be as one,
that I may live each day in harmony
with Mother Earth. Amen
-- Jennie Frost Butler

Every day, children are born onto this Earth into dynamic participation with the natural world. The air, the water, and the ground beneath their feet are all innately understood to be parts of their lives. They know nothing of political or private property boundaries.

Yet these children will never get to visit many parts of their world as the affluent homeowners, businesses and industries are allowed to buy up the access to lakes, rivers, and beaches.

Private ownership of our forests, meadows, beaches, riverbanks and lakefronts has reached epidemic proportions in some states. Access to these natural areas has nearly been eliminated in many communities and "No Trespassing" signs are the new badges of achievement for the affluent.

The United Nations has recognized this as a worldwide problem for some time. In 1976, the first UN Conference on Human Settlements was held. Although there have been many such conferences since, the first one described in its final report the conflicting values of property ownership versus public rights to access.

"Land, because of its unique nature and the crucial role it plays in human settlements, cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market," the UN report said. "Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes."

But in our market driven society, the affluent get the pick of the land. Parks and recreation departments at the city, state or federal level cannot compete with the skyrocketing land values.
Discussions of private property rights often go astray with talk of the Founding Fathers and the intention of the U.S. Constitution. Organizations like the Property Rights Congress list the words of James Madison and John Adams at their website and claim, "America's founding fathers understood that without the individual's right to own and control property, no other rights can be protected from government tyranny."

Some analysts of the motivations of the framers of the U.S. Constitution, however, suggest that the language of our Constitution and Bill of Rights was not crafted to be egalitarian. Because those documents forbade government interference in private property, the wealthiest citizens of the new nation had free rein to use their wealth to acquire large tracts of land.

Steven Hill, director of the Center for Voting and Democracy, writes that because the government could not prevent privatization of lands, the richest citizens, including the Founding Fathers themselves, could now "buy, manipulate and otherwise gain control over the democratic process and government itself. This had the net effect of protecting the privileged minority who already owned property, wealth, speech, and the press from the clamoring of the majority who were trying to acquire these same rights and freedoms."

Carkeek Park in Seattle, one of the few remaining coastal access points. (Photo © Jackie Giuliano)

Today, those decisions have resulted in situations where hundreds of miles of coastland and huge tracts of potential parkland are owned by wealthy individuals who deny access to everyone.
Critics of the practice of leaving some land in the public trust often claim that a community's tax base is increased by developing property, not preserving it. But development projects usually result in an increase in infrastructure and public service requirements. Very quickly, the cost of providing these services often outweighs any additional tax revenue. Environmental costs mount as our rivers, lakes, and oceans are used as waste dumps by many of those who live adjacent to them.

Owners of million dollar homes perched precariously on coastal bluffs will usually deny any access to the splendid views. However, the same landowners will be quick to claim public funds to repair or rebuild their homes when erosion or other geologic forces make them tumble down the hill.

The Surfrider Foundation said in a 1998 article in their publication "Making Waves, "Property rights advocates tend to be conservatives who demand that individuals be held responsible for their actions. Yet they shirk accountability when faced by a dilemma brought on their own poor land management practices."

Lack of contiguous access to natural areas affects much more than recreational needs. The forests and ecosystems of the world are becoming increasingly fragmented. Private property purchases are creating tiny islands of nature that often cannot exist on their own.

Wildlife biologists fear that the breakup of habitats into small, isolated patches are often too limited to maintain a species. Fragmentation also results in more edges to the property and these edge habitats are often unhealthy for life. These edges expose an area to weather that the ecosystem was not designed for and the additional sun, wind, and rain is often detrimental.

In Seattle, it is very difficult to find open stretches of beach or forestland. Choice views of Puget Sound, Lake Union, and Lake Washington are available from only a few parks in town. But since 1907, hundreds of acres of forest have been off limits in a gated community known as The Highlands. Located about 15 minutes north of the city, The Highlands has been the home of families with old money such as the Boeings and the Nordstroms. Designed in 1907 by the Olmstead brothers, who also designed other parks in town, it is off limits to all but residents.

Gatehouse, The Highlands (Photo © Jackie Giuliano)

When we first moved to Seattle, my family and I thought we would drive to The Highlands. The map we had only showed the vast forest and coastal vistas of the region. When we arrived - the entrance is only 10 minutes from my house - the armed guard at the gate changed our plans.

But there can be no finer example of how the public gets the leftovers than Gasworks Park in Seattle. The site of an old coal gasification plant that turned coal into natural gas, the site, located on the shore of Lake Union, is a recongnized toxic site where the contamination in the soil from years of toxic dumping is well known. But since it is nearly the only public access left around the lake, thousands of people picnic there each year. The city periodically puts new soil on top of the toxic layers and then looks the other way as children roll an play on the poisonous ground.The

The Wyoming Wildlife Federation says that in their home state, some private landowners intentionally buy up private lands surrounding vast tracks of public land, and then deny access to the public. There have been cases where the public land is then turned into a private hunting preserve and marketed by boasting of its remoteness and lack of other hunters or hikers.

The Texas Water Resources Institute reports that few people can get to its many rivers, since most of the riverbank property is under private ownership.

Private organizations like the Nature Conservancy will use donated funds to purchase unique tracts of land and protect them from development. The public is often given access to these lands, but the Conservancy can only afford to protect the truly special and unique.

California has aggressively addressed this issue with the California Coastal Act. The Coastal Act mandates that development not interfere with the public's right of access to the coastline. Yet homeowners still try to claim the beaches for their own.

The U.S. government began to address this issue years ago. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management that addresses public access. They say that over 180 million Americans visit the coast each year, many of whom can't find access.

Some property owners attempt to provide access, but most do not. These affluent property owners are powerful, often commanding the ear of local government officials. Many have banded together in organizations, such as the now defunct United Property Owners and Defenders of Property Rights, specifically to find legal ways to deny public access. They are very clever at teaching their members how to manipulate the Constitution and lobby Congress.

The time may have arrived where we need to reexamine the idea that access to lands that belong to all of us is controlled by whoever lives in front of them. Riverbanks, beaches, and lakefronts should be public property, and land owners should have to live back a few hundred yards. With recreation sites becoming overcrowded, local governments should follow California's lead and remove the stranglehold that has been placed on our most beautiful lands.

RESOURCES

1. Visit the UN Centre for Human Settlements.

2. The Wyoming Wildlife Federation.

3. The Conservation Fund is trying to create Greenways that connect our fragmented lands.

4. The NOAA Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management.