Navy OLF and Property Rights - of birds?

The Navy wants to seize 30,000 acres and 74 homes to build an 8,000 foot runway in North Carolina. It will serve as an outlying landing field (OLF) for F-18’s. The Navy claims the OLF is necessary to train carrier landings. The OLF will displace over 300 men, women and children from their homes. They are fighting the Navy for their homes and their property.

The affected people are teamed with environmentalists to fight the OLF. The OLF will adjoin the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. It is the home for thousands of Canada geese, snow geese, whistling swans, mallards, pintails, black ducks, teal and American widgeon during the winter months. Mallards, black ducks and wood ducks make the refuge their summer home. Herons, egrets and shorebirds are frequently observed in the area. Environmental groups are fighting the seizure for the rights of the birds to live without the noise and threat of air intakes from F-18s.

The people who are threatened with the seizure of their homes and property won a small victory recently as a result of a court decision in which a US District Court Judge wrote in a recent ruling that the Navy badly underestimated the harm the aircraft maneuvers would have on wildlife. The Navy, the judge wrote “distorted its environmental assessment of the site and must halt the process until a proper review is conducted”. It was all about the birds.

Do you see the irony? If it not for the actions of the well funded environmentalists, these people would not have stood a chance. Their rights of property have already been assumed away by the federal government. It’s the rights of the birds that are being argued to save the property of the families threatened by the OLF. While the right of eminent domain was recognized in the constitution, it is beings used more frequently to deprive citizens of their property for the “collective good” as defined by government. It is a shame we all buy into, when we worry about the birds more than the rights of an individual to life, liberty and property.

In Europe and in most totalitarian states the core concept is primacy of the state over the individual. America reversed that system. Free men and ideas flourished and they produced and lived free of odious oversight by the state. Individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system in the US. The US Constitution limited the power of the state, and protected the individual against the brute force of the collective. Might was subordinated to right in our country. I fear that may no longer be true.

One last question. Why does the Navy want to build an 8,000 foot runway to practice carrier landings given that a carrier’s landing area is about 1000 feet?