THE ENVIRONMENT AND PROPERTY RIGHTS

Walter Jacob

QUESTION: My family owns a tract of land adjacent to a national park. This land is also part of a major watershed and is among the few old forests left in this region outside national parks. The government would now like to purchase this land in order to protect the park itself. We would like to hold it and eventually develop it as a tourist site. I know that this matter will be adjudicated in the federal courts, but am interested in seeing what Judaism has to say about environmental protection versus property rights.(C.D.S., Philadelphia , PA )

ANSWER: The Jewish tradition has very little to say about wild lands. While it deals with protection of nature, it concerns itself exclusively with developed areas. That is true of the famous sec­tion in Deuteronomy (20:19f.), which demands that fruit trees not be destroyed in a time of siege. In other words, although there is temporary advantage to be gained by the destruction of fruit trees, both in making the siege easier and in depriving those settled in the city of access to food, this destruction is to be denied in order to protect the land for the longer term. What is at stake here is not really an interest in the natural world, but a desire to look at long-term human concerns versus immediate gain. Fruit trees, after all, in contrast to wheat and barley fields, take years to mature and so should not be destroyed.