I wish you luck in preserving this but it always gets me that people suddenly become outraged that this happens. Unless you (or some sort of conservancy) owns the land you enjoy so much it's not safe from development. Why do people wait until it's almost too late to do something about it?
This happens all the time. People move into an area (or grow up in an area, whatever) and love it because of the great views, the excellent trails, etc, and they just assume it's there for them and always will be (not saying this is you lurkette, just a general statement about other situations). Then someone comes along that wants to do something with it. All of a sudden that developer is the big evil guy.
We had a piece of land in the town where I grew up that was an oil distribution facility. Not a big piece of property, right alongside some train tracks, and it only had one small tank on it. It was for sale my entire youth (20+ years). No one was interested even though it was right in the center of town. They announced a few years ago that they would start some limited passenger service along those tracks (previously only used for freight trains twice a day) and that they would turn that piece of property into a train station. The neighbors were outraged. My god, they're going to ruin our community. Big legal battles, big PR fights, etc. It all could have been avoided if someone had just bought the damn property in the past.
Sorry, if I'm hijacking the thread a bit. I really do wish you luck in preserving it but just wish others out there would look around their own towns and if there's something that they want preserved, work with the nature conservancies, the open space commissions, private individuals, etc to save it before it becomes an issue. It will be cheaper, it'll be easier, it'll be better for everyone.
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