Most of the places that should be protected do not belong to federal lands. More than half of the country’s forests are privately owned
By Jordan G. Teicher, TheBaffler
When the billionaire John Malone became the country’s largest private landowner in 2011 with the purchase of nearly a million acres of forest in Maine and New Hampshire, it sparked a great deal of curiosity in the press. Why, reporters wanted to know, did a then-seventy-year-old media tycoon want to own 2.2 million acres of land—an area roughly half the size of Lake Ontario?
Malone has offered a variety of mundane reasons over the years, including his Irish heritage, his wife’s horseback riding hobby, and the joy he takes in being “out in the open.” The most creative among them, though, came during a CNBC interview, when he described his decades-long land binge as a kind of affliction, a “virus” passed on to him by his friend, CNN founder Ted Turner—a fellow billionaire who, after Malone’s 2011 purchase, became merely the second-largest land baron in the country.
If a lust for land among the billionaire class is a virus, it has become something of an epidemic recently. In 2007, the nation’s hundred largest private landowning families owned a combined 27 million acres of land—an area, as the Washington Post reported, the size of Maine and New Hampshire combined. By 2017, they’d increased their haul by nearly 50 percent to encompass an area equivalent to all of New England minus Vermont. In the pages of The Land Report—a magazine that covers land ownership—wealthy readers can browse new potential additions to their territory: a mountain range for $60 million, a collection of watersheds and creeks for $68 million, a “combination of landscapes” for $96 million.

If a lust for land among the billionaire class is a virus, it has become something of an epidemic recently. In 2007, the nation’s hundred largest private landowning families owned a combined 27 million acres of land—an area, as the Washington Post reported, the size of Maine and New Hampshire combined. By 2017, they’d increased their haul by nearly 50 percent to encompass an area equivalent to all of New England minus Vermont. In the pages of The Land Report—a magazine that covers land ownership—wealthy readers can browse new potential additions to their territory: a mountain range for $60 million, a collection of watersheds and creeks for $68 million, a “combination of landscapes” for $96 million.
Recent Posts
Many See Democracy In Peril As U.S. Celebrates Independence Day
July 4, 2022
Take Action Now Nearly 60% of Americans think the U.S. is becoming a less democratic country. By Eric…
Amazon Doesn’t Care About Its Workers Who Are Veterans
July 4, 2022
Take Action Now Amazon is posing as a friend to veterans who need jobs when they return home from military service — while mistreating those…
After Abu Akleh’s Murder, Media Continued To Obscure Israeli Violence
July 3, 2022
Take Action Now The U.S. promised a full investigation, but nothing has happened so far despite overwhelming evidence showing she was…
The ACA Marketplace Is A Scam Covered With The Veneer of “Choice”
July 3, 2022
Take Action Now Purchasing health insurance on the marketplace is so confusing that it is impossible for consumers to make rational…