Note the double standard that this story reveals:
It took 12 snakes and almost five years for Bill Carity to turn raw land into a subdivision.
The Butler’s garter snake, a protected species in Wisconsin, was discovered on his property in Menomonee Falls in 1999, and afterward, he struggled to satisfy the competing demands of the Department of Natural Resources and getting his project off the ground.
“The Butler’s took me completely by surprise,” said Carity, of Carity Land Corp. of Brookfield. “For a long time, it was a painful process.”
If only they were humans who legally owned the property and had constitutional rights; then Menomonee Falls could simply have used eminent domain to remove the squatters from the government’s land–and with eminent domain, gentle reader, all land is government land–and could have given the land to developers.
But since the Butler’s garter snakes are reptiles with their bellies in the soil, the government will protect them from rapacious developers.
Professional courtesy? :)