by Brian Seasholes
...The Hopkins family started acquiring timberland, mostly in southeast
Georgia but some in northeast Florida, over 100 years ago. The family’s
outstanding stewardship has created a haven for wildlife, including
deer, turkey, gopher tortoise and the endangered red-cockaded
woodpecker. Among the Hopkins’ landholdings are 3,500 acres that are
part of the fabled Okefenokee Swamp, most of which is a federal wildlife
refuge, seven miles of forest and swamp along the St. Marys River that
creates a border between Georgia and Florida, and 500 acres occupied by
the woodpeckers.
The Hopkins family leases most of its land for hunting, and, in the
spirit of civic-mindedness and generosity that characterizes many
landowners, allows Boy Scouts to camp and launch canoes along the St.
Mary’s River, hosts educational forestry tours, and provides hunting
opportunities free of charge for wounded military veterans.
As thanks for their exceptional environmental stewardship and
generosity, the Hopkins family has been or may be punished by laws and
regulations that have negative environmental consequences. The “big
three” are all federal: the estate tax, Endangered Species Act and Clean
Water Act.
Most people are unaware of the estate tax’s effect on the
environment, but the tax is “highly regressive in the sense that it
encourages the destruction of ecologically important land in private
ownership,” according to Michael Bean, senior Interior Department
official. “In order to pay estate taxes, cash-poor inheritors of
ranches, farms, and forests must often liquidate timber assets,
subdivide the property, or otherwise destroy ecologically valuable land
that had been cared for by owners who had truly loved it.” Land is
generally of less environmental value if it is subdivided.
In the 1960s and 70s the Hopkins family was hit by the estate tax
four times, and each time the family had to pay significant taxes on the
same pieces of land — all of which led to thousands of acres of forest
harvested prematurely to raise funds to pay the tax. This “destroyed our
forest management plan because we had to cut stands we didn’t want to
cut” according to Joe Hopkins, managing partner of the family
partnership lands. The family is anticipating another massive estate tax
bill when the last member of Joe’s father’s generation passes away. An
agreement called a conservation easement could lower the family’s estate
tax liability, but “we are not interested in easements because we’ve
given enough,” states Joe, such as when his father died in 1961 while
reforesting the land, and easements can complicate management.
The Endangered Species Act is generally thought of as protecting
magnificent species like the bald eagle, but the sad reality is the
Act’s penalty-based approach creates strong incentives for landowners to
make their property inhospitable to species. The Hopkins family
receives no compensation for its 500 acres, worth more than $1,000,000,
locked-up due to the Act’s protection of an endangered species — which
is often regarded as a public good. The Hopkins family has little
incentive to allow other trees to mature to the point where they will
attract red-cockaded woodpeckers...
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