The Wall Street Journal reports today on conflicts between Tasmania's beekeepers and forestry companies: In Tasmanian Forests, A Battle Breaks Out Over Bees and Trees [subscription required for link to work]. Beekeepers object to logging practices that destroy a local flowering tree vital to producing a distinctive honey. Missing from the story is discussion of who owns the land in question; most forests in Tasmania are government owned. Moving the land use decision from the political marketplace to the real marketplace by privatizing the land would surely reduce the conflicts, as entrepeneurs sought to gain the profits from managing the land to allow both beekeeping and logging. The account of how property rights enhanced conservation in a similar situation in the U.S. is described in PERC Reports.