I'm beginning to think that's one of the best things one could do for the planet right now.
The healthy middle ground is something like the native Americans maintained - a kind of “gardened wild”. It requires active management to nudge nature towards a healthy, sustainable state. Pragmatic, spot treatments of chemicals can be useful in this scenario — it’s the endless acres of monuculutes, airdropped with chemicals, that cause the kinds of problems we’re seeing from agricultural chemicals.
If this is something anyone is interested in pursuing — buying land to “re-wild” it — check out your local natural resource conservation program.
Land needs to be actively managed - if you want it in its natural state, it needs time, money, and effort.
In my (biased) opinion, the best thing we can do for the planet is to spend more on research, so we can understand and counter problems. Spending on agricultural science is falling world-wide, just when it's needed the most. That isn't good.
Here is one (that I know about because my employer currently offers an option to use some of our open source contribution rewards for that): https://www.helsinkifoundation.org/
Most of these situations the land is placed in a thing called a 'land trust', at least that is the structure I see most often. These are generally then set out with an elected governing board, and a set of bylaws and rules about the lands. Often these rules can require a voting majority of everyone who placed in money on the land to make decisions about the land. Usually there is a minimum amount of land you personally must purchase in the larger purchase to constitutes a "share" like 1 acre.
If someone has a change of heart later down the line the trust actually is a very hard entity to get around even if you are on the board of a small 5-10 person land trust. There have been examples of such boards being flipped and sold, but more often than not what you encounter is: one of the board members is interested in selling off the land and is utterly unable to because of how the trust is structured. They can be pretty robust.
The only difference between buying land and creating your own trust and foundations like this is, the foundation ultimately controls all the board seats of land trust generally.
For example: My friend has a trust that was structured such that, he was allowed 5k for graduating high school, and 5k for graduating college, and then he was not allowed any other access to his fund. He will not be allowed any other access to his fund until he turns 40. Any other expense has to be deemed an emergency and signed off on by a board of his trust which includes only bank employees, and his trust manager, he has virtually no influence over them. There have been times that he really needed his money and they deemed that he did not, and voted against giving him access to his own funds. So in short, YES what you are being sarcastic about is how trust often work.
I suspect based on your tone you are trying to be sarcastic and snarky and don't actually care about the intricacies of trust structures. I won't answer any of your questions directly, because they are unclearly written, but will instead suggest that this information is very easy to find with a quick search.
The wonderful thing about the system that's already in place is that you can contribute to it without being wealthy, just by visiting any of them for a day and paying the entrance fee. As an additional perk, you get to visit all of that protected wilderness, while other people have maintained it for you, and you get to increase the total visitation numbers which in turns helps to keep this and other protected wilderness secure for the future.
Go out and enjoy your local public lands.
https://www.outsideonline.com/2399402/trump-fourth-of-july-p...
"The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is a land conservation program administered by the Farm Service Agency (FSA). In exchange for a yearly rental payment, farmers enrolled in the program agree to remove environmentally sensitive land from agricultural production and plant species that will improve environmental health and quality. Contracts for land enrolled in CRP are 10-15 years in length. The long-term goal of the program is to re-establish valuable land cover to help improve water quality, prevent soil erosion, and reduce loss of wildlife habitat." [0]
[0] https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/conservation-...
I thought you might enjoy this video about "kill your lawn" and native Illinois prairie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz9I2YwmV8M
You are not going to rid the South of Kudzu. The only thing you can do is facilitate a ecological equilibrium in which Kudzu is now a part.
Ecosystems change. Species move. We assume a constant that is likely imaginary. I also think you are overemphasizing the harm.
I'm not sure if "you" there was supposed to mean me or GP, but I had already explicitly challenged the concept of "natural" before you showed up (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20668387). Be careful of putting words in others' mouths, and especially of flinging terms like "bullshit" at others. Some might conclude that your own jeremiad better deserves that label.
> The only thing you can do is facilitate a ecological equilibrium in which Kudzu is now a part.
In the specific case of kudzu, perhaps. More generally, it's much more complex than that. "Only minor changes from how it is now" is as broken as "like it was 100 years ago" and for much the same reason. Other outcomes have proven possible, many times. Invasive species have been eliminated, once-native species reintroduced (locally of course). We might not know exactly what does and does not constitute a "natural" state after hundreds (or thousands) of years of human influence, but there's no reason to assume that the state resulting from passive neglect would be optimal in any sense. By many measures, such as species diversity or health/longevity, it's often objectively worse than alternatives.
> I also think you are overemphasizing the harm.
Interesting, since I didn't actually predict any harm. I predicted outcomes which you yourself categorize as harmful, even as you advocate for (in)action which makes them inevitable.
As others have pointed out it's not enough to let the land alone, it needs at least minimal stewardship.
In Canada particularly, climate is an issue for growing crops. Wheat takes 100 days to mature. The growing season in the prairies is 110 days. If the climate drops 1 degree Celcius you lose 10 days off your growing season. If your growing season is delayed by cold or flooding, you don't get a crop that year. In the prairies it takes about 10 acres to sustain 1 cow year round. Throughout Canada there are all kinds of restrictions about how many houses and people you can have on your land. The concept of "starter house" and "starter farm" doesn't exist anymore. There is the nobility, and there are the serfs. We just don't call them that.
I heard an Interview with the founder of the ecosia search machine yesterday, and they are looking for tree planting initiatives constantly..
1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulownia_tomentosa is also rapid to spread, which may turn out too rad for local flora or neighborhood politics thereof, while
2) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulownia_elongata seems not to spread on its own and thus may need active help for that.
You'll end up with a lot of soft wood from these relatively fast (10 years?). That should be used in some way that does not release the CO2 back.
I have no studies nor experience in biology nor gardening and all of this is only based on what I've been reading on the internet.
Trees are good for the soil (help against erosion), the microclimate (shadow, humidity, temperature) and help in times of climate change. I assume a mixture of trees and not too narrow planting (as is sadly common in many parts of the world).
Many farm lands had trees in them before these lands were cultivated
see for example: http://theconversation.com/chernobyl-has-become-a-refuge-for...
As a charity cause, sure, but that is not something that the current financial environment encourages particularly.
Perhaps because they have much more money than they personally need and are wise? Surely there are some wise VCs out there.