Surely you can sell the land for much more money if you haven't ruined it?
Making money by destroying your own property is in general not doable.
Making money by destroying your own property is in general not doable.
It might not make sense but it is what it is, I guess.
As such, nature areas - especially when they have a protected status - will be worth less than areas where the trees can be harvested commercially.
A piece of land will have value proportional to how much (say) timber it can produce in the future. OP talked about turning it into "spent pesticide laden land", which to me sounds like nothing will ever grow there again.
And commercially, dead land like that has no value.