What about the uplands?

Okay, so we have some Federal and State laws to protect wetlands and waterways. So what about the uplands? Should we accept the photo on the right as the normal situation, where if we're lucky narrow corridors along some waterways are left with some vegetation while everything else is completely stripped and bulldozed? We need to live, work, and shop somewhere, but we should be able to do it while respecting the land. Rape and scrape, mass grade developments should be outlawed, unless absolutely necessary. County governments should be required to come up with well considered land use plans that consider the lay of the land, natural resources, and future requirements, forward thinking basically. SOmething that I think would be useful would be to place values on the type of existing habitat and tax accordingly for a developer who wants to develop a piece of property. For example, a developer who wants to redevelop an urban area might get a tax credit, one who wants to build on an old fallow agricultural field might have no tax, while one who wants to develop a piece of land with old hardwood forest might have to pay a per acre fee. Basically, who stand to profit from destructive behavior should be made to consider what they are taking from our ecology and from future generations.