Last year, former New Jersey Governor, Jon Corzine nominated me for the Pinelands Commission. I had hoped to serve in this nonpaying job, that demands extraordinary time, because I thought I could help this important commission. My colleagues at Pinelands Preservation Alliance, who nominated me, felt optimistic after a two-year effort. Unfortunately, at the final hour one state senator from southern New Jersey killed my appointment because, as he told the Atlantic City Press, he was “trying to save jobs”. I was not surprised by the failure, but his justification stung. Do conservation scientists, and by extension all conservation, cause job loss or is the opposite true? Can a rural economy survive without conservation?
For too long the rural south Jersey economy has suffered between two extreme views. The one offered by most politicians, real estate agents, developers, the seafood industry and big agricultural interests suggests we must develop our land and exploit natural resources, because we need the jobs and taxes. They tell us we must bear the environmental impacts of overdevelopment, overexploitation of fisheries and intensified agriculture — depleted water supplies, salt water intrusion, unhealthy water quality, declining fish species and many unproductive hours spend in traffic jams — for the sake of the economy. Lost to them are the real outcomes.
Most construction jobs are ultimately temporary, overexploited fisheries crash, punishing fishermen who must resort to other occupations, and industrial agriculture provides fewer jobs. Icing the cake for NJ residents, all those new houses require more services than the homeowners pay in taxes forcing property taxes even higher. Many south Jersey communities, especially those outside the wealthy barrier island communities, pay taxes equal to those in north Jersey but on much smaller assessed values and they receive virtually no services.
At the other extreme, environmentalists naturally argue the opposite — we must tie up vast areas of the Delaware Bayshore and Pinelands communities before they are gobbled up for development. They argue that south Jersey and Delaware Bayshore ecological communities must be saved for our children’s benefits if nothing else. These acquisition efforts also have unintended outcomes, the farm land becomes less productive, forestry is virtually nonexistent and local tax boards must eat the decrease in tax receipts caused by nonprofit or government ownership. Regulations meant to encourage conservation often end in a morass of red tape that makes smart development unprofitable.
Both ideologies rely on narrow choices that are put to the public as the only choices. The inevitabe outcome of this unstated, conflict is a rural south Jersey economy that has the lowest per-capita income of any other place in NJ — now and before the great recession.
In fact, both views are important to the local economy and conservation of natural resources. Smart planning favors housing development that is appropriate and supported by existing infrastructure. Smart conservation embraces market forces, protects landowners, and avoids punishing local economies for the sake of state-wide conservation goals. Smart resource-use allows for profitable operations based on sustainable practices. Ultimately, smart local economies embrace the interests of all stakeholders and moves forward with deliberate actions. Cutting out conservation scientists from this discussion, as suggested by our southern NJ Senator, is as bad as cutting out market economists and engineers. In the end, it doesn’t benefit anyone interested in a local economy that is both productive and sustainable.
