I was shocked to read the article about the Ripleys in the Sun Journal (Dec. 6). The loss of control of private land in Maine to snowmachines and four-wheelers makes rules regarding usage of private property completely unenforceable in Maine for the entire year.

Landowners can put signs up — that will be torn down; you can confront violators, but they will laugh at you — and you can call law enforcement, but they will show up too late because the state makes hundreds of millions of dollars on those activities while the value of your land plummets.

Think of it. In a country where ownership of private property is a fundamental proposition of the U.S. Constitution, laws do not support exclusive use of land in any meaningful sense. The reason? The state makes too much money from the land’s involuntary use.

There seem to be only two solutions to this problem: forming local landowners associations to help individuals to work together as teams in a Neighborhood-Watch fashion, and to lobby legislators to pass and enforce private property rights in Maine.

I am exploring a third option: federal intervention to preserve the rights to private property owners in Maine. Maybe the U.S. government still believes in private property.

Robert Hamm, Mexico