2004-02-21
conservation ethics lost to poor leadership | I read recently of a woman who called a well known bowhunter | She lived in or near a large city in a restricted, gated community | She was upset that a herd of deer were eating her ornamental flowers and defecating on her driveway | She wanted to know what he could do to "...make them go away..." | But she didn't want the herd, already fiercely competing due to overgrazing in suburbia, to be thinned | In fact, when he suggested the obvious, that is, for the gated village to authorize a limited hunt to thin the herd, she got irate | "I want you to take them away~! I didn't say they should be killed!" |
There's something wrong with this picture | It reminds me of a New York Times article some yars back where an exclusive neighborhood in Arizona [also a gated compound] complained bitterly to it's property managers about snakes running wild in the settlement | Some were poisonous | The parents were afraid for their children, they said |
Finally, a third example, much more devastating and extreme, namely, the fires last year in San Diego county | In that scenario, exclusive and high priced settlements were placed and sold with expansive, breath-taking vistas, but in the middle of scrub pine, eucalyptus and other species with highly volative oils in their plant systems | Oh yeah, one final matter there, in the near desert, an arid expanse that gets hardly any rain waterfalling the entire year |
Again, something wrong with these pictures | What would that be, you ask? | Quite simply | The encroachment of people who haven't a clue about nature and her rythyms, plopping themselves down in the middle of a landscape that is, and has been, thriving quite well without human habitation or incursion |
Simply put, seems that when urban kulture leaders, movers and shakers (some of whom are the same, but not always) make decisions about use of the land, then we get caught up in some lame arguement that's wrapped up in the "property rights" blanket, but is really about the right to make really stupid decisions | And that's wrong | We need to stop selecting leaders because they'd make good frat house posterboys, and to start choosing according to whom is likely to make sound, thoughful, aware of the long term outcome and larger picture |
Someone who is in touch with the rythyms of Nature |
Makes me wish for the return of land perservationist Edward Abbey | Not that I expect the rigged electoral system shall provide anyone like him | Hell, Abbey was derided and called an ecoterrorist for placing a higher value on Earth preservation objectives over Eco-catastrophe |
And who do our supposed leaders wish for us to listen to? I'm afraid it is those who wish to be in power but who want mediocre decision-makers below them | Another blogger had this to say of that: His own version of the Law of Dimishing Returns | (come to think of it, he and I could be working at the same place) | ¶ 08:41
There's something wrong with this picture | It reminds me of a New York Times article some yars back where an exclusive neighborhood in Arizona [also a gated compound] complained bitterly to it's property managers about snakes running wild in the settlement | Some were poisonous | The parents were afraid for their children, they said |
Finally, a third example, much more devastating and extreme, namely, the fires last year in San Diego county | In that scenario, exclusive and high priced settlements were placed and sold with expansive, breath-taking vistas, but in the middle of scrub pine, eucalyptus and other species with highly volative oils in their plant systems | Oh yeah, one final matter there, in the near desert, an arid expanse that gets hardly any rain waterfalling the entire year |
Again, something wrong with these pictures | What would that be, you ask? | Quite simply | The encroachment of people who haven't a clue about nature and her rythyms, plopping themselves down in the middle of a landscape that is, and has been, thriving quite well without human habitation or incursion |
Simply put, seems that when urban kulture leaders, movers and shakers (some of whom are the same, but not always) make decisions about use of the land, then we get caught up in some lame arguement that's wrapped up in the "property rights" blanket, but is really about the right to make really stupid decisions | And that's wrong | We need to stop selecting leaders because they'd make good frat house posterboys, and to start choosing according to whom is likely to make sound, thoughful, aware of the long term outcome and larger picture |
Someone who is in touch with the rythyms of Nature |
Makes me wish for the return of land perservationist Edward Abbey | Not that I expect the rigged electoral system shall provide anyone like him | Hell, Abbey was derided and called an ecoterrorist for placing a higher value on Earth preservation objectives over Eco-catastrophe |
And who do our supposed leaders wish for us to listen to? I'm afraid it is those who wish to be in power but who want mediocre decision-makers below them | Another blogger had this to say of that: His own version of the Law of Dimishing Returns | (come to think of it, he and I could be working at the same place) | ¶ 08:41
