I Don't Own My Yard

November 25, 2002

Last winter, there was quite a battle that went on over the juniper bush in my yard. The bush is right in front of my kitchen window, so I had a front row seat.

An American Robin fought over the juniper bush’s berries with several Cedar Waxwings. The Cedar Waxwings would come to the bush to eat the berries, and soon enough the robin would show up to chase them away. It would frantically hop around on the bush, chasing after the waxwings, until they were all gone. On some days the robin would just sit on the bush, eat a few berries, and appear to be patrolling for interlopers into its territory.

Who is the rightful owner of that bush? Well, legally, my name is on the title for the 50 by 50 foot lot where the bush is growing, therefore it is my bush and I can legally do anything I want to it. I can cut it down, I can prune it, and I can leave it alone if I wish. My neighbors might care about what I do, and how my yard looks, but aside from giving me advice, and aside from applicable laws, they really have no say in what I do on my property.

In a deeper sense, however, I think it is not my property. Not fully. If we consider property to belong, ethically, to whoever needs it most for survival, then it didn’t belong to me. I had no interest in the bush for my survival. The robin and waxwings, on the other hand, did have a survival interest in that bush. It was important enough for their survival to expend energy fighting over it.

Ethically, this seems to be the best way to look at ownership. If a rich person bought all the food in a small town’s market, and no one in town had any food to eat, I think that it makes very little sense for that person to rightfully own that food. Maybe they own it in a legal sense, but if that ownership causes people to die of starvation, then the legal principle that grants them ownership over that food is no longer serving its purpose for society. The system has been corrupted, and is being used for unethical purposes--to kill people. The people should revolt and take what they need for survival.

There are two competing values, then: that of property ownership and that of satisfying survival needs. Both are important. Without property ownership, you have the tragedy of the commons, and a lack of motivation to accomplish anything. Without satisfying survival needs, you have death. The latter value has a higher priority--it is more important to survive than to own property. Everyone has the right to fight for their survival, and if a value such as private property stands in the way of someone’s survival I say they have the right to violate that property right. If the owner of that property is a decent human being, then they should want to see their property help provide for the survival needs of this person.

That is an easy concept to support when it comes to people, however, what about when it comes to other creatures? If we held to a strict interpretation of this concept, then no habitat for anything should be developed, since it all supports the survival needs of whoever’s habitat it is. Since we obviously need to take habitat and energy from ecosystems to survive, we have a competing survival need that generally should have priority. There must be a balance.

One could argue that Native Americans lived in such a balance, where they took what they needed and left the rest for other creatures. European invaders then came and took what the Indians needed to survive, and thus killed off the Indians. So now we are left with this horrible legacy, but we aren’t doomed to repeat history.

What about when it gets beyond survival--we now have plenty. But we gobble up ecosystems and habitat at an astounding rate. Even if we own the property, we don’t need to do this to survive. This is wrong. It steals not only from the inhabitants of those ecosystems, but from future generations of humans who could have enjoyed those habitats and the ecosystem services that come from those habitats. Of course there is a balance, and right now things are way out of balance, weighted toward development. At least we have the endangered species act which draws a line in the sand--if our activities will lead to the extinction of a species, then we can’t do those activities. As it should be--the survival of a species, just like the survival of a human being, is more important than property rights.

In the case of my juniper bush, I don’t know if the robin or the waxwings needed it more. It wasn’t for me to decide--ecology decides such contests. But I know it wasn’t my bush--that bush belonged to the birds.