Letter to the Editor: Reps. Jones, George could have protected Colony Farm Orchard

The Western Herald correctly noted that Governor Granholm signed HB 5207 recently. The bill removed the restriction that the Colony Farm Orchard should be used for open space, public park, or recreation or, by legislative action, could be used for some other public purpose.

The effect of HB 5207 was to kill that covenant, potentially allowing WMU to use the land for anything, without asking anybody.  The Herald story lists a few of the many people who share the blame for stripping the conservation covenant. Listing all would make a long story – and a long letter – but Kalamazoo’s two elected legislators should be given special recognition, because either could have stopped the process. Representative Bob Jones (D-Kalamazoo) could have said no when WMU handed him the bill.

He could have said yes when conservationists asked him to withdraw it from consideration. He did neither.  Senator Tom George (R-Kalamazoo) could have killed the bill at any time during the months it sat in the Senate. A word from him would have been a death sentence because of the convention in the legislature of deferring to the position taken by the Senator from the affected district (professional courtesy – so to speak).

But Tom George did not say the word. In fact, his position as given by the Herald is that as times change, so should laws and deeds.  This is precisely the difference between the exploiter mentality and that of the conservationist–the difference between the polluters, clear-cutters, and mountaintop blasters, on the one hand, and Teddy Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold on the other.

It is the mentality that would make permanent protection of any conservation land impossible. The times have changed, says the exploiter; we’ll change the laws, we’ll change the deeds. This natural land is now expendable.  It’s a mentality to reject.

Though the restriction on the Colony Farm Orchard is gone, the land is the same, still providing essential ecosystem services to Asylum Lake Preserve and to all of us, and still deserving permanent protection. The only difference is that now the protection will have to come, not from a legal constraint, but from the knowledge, good judgment, and conscience of the WMU board and administration. Let us follow their actions closely.

Richard Brewer
Professor Emeritus, WMU Department of Biological Sciences