Tragedy of the Commons

Food for Thought, How does this concept apply to Staffordshire….?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

As for me, this phenomenon helps explain why some people in our community think it’s ok to take a chainsaw out to our commons and “prune dead trees” or “clean up a fallen tree” or whatever… without considering the impact of their activities on the other members of Staffordshire.

It might also explain why we were subjected to undisclosed amounts of herbicide on our commons. (Pesticide Investigations by Oregon Department of Agriculture are ongoing…)

I ran for and finally won a seat on the SHOA/SWS boards based upon protecting the common areas from further exploitation, working together to preserve what little natural resources we have remaining and actually managing the natural resources in the common areas near the river.

We can protect and possibly restore our natural resources for now and the future prosperity of generations who will live in Staffordshire Estates.

BTW, this mission requires much more commitment, planning, implementation and monitoring than our present HOA governing structure can accomplish. This is yet another reason for the existence of “Friends”; with the help of “Friends”, Staffordshire HOA can address the “Tragedy of the Commons” that has (LITERALLY) been occuring in our own “back yard”.

But Wait! There’s More: Maybe there is no Tragedy of the Commons? As usual, most issues are much more complicated than we’d like to admit:

(My point is, in order to REALLY be stewards of the 100+ acres Staffordshire Estates is blessed with, we must do our homework.) But who amongst us has the time or the requisite background to make sense of all of this? As I said before, this is food for thought.)

This is a good place to introduce “permaculture” to Staffordshire:

(There are so many good references on this subject; I chose this link because I respect Oregon State University to “get it right”.)

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