North American conservation and preservation

[Eric]

One of the things I truly regret about North America is the... abuse nature has been subject to from 1800 to 1900 in general and from 1860 to 1890 in particular. North America once had a wilderness to rival the Serengeti savannah in Africa for beauty and grandeur. It was a wild land and a rugged land. But Man pressed west, 'taming' the land with rifle and plow. The enormous herds of Bison, once stretching across the horizon, were replaced by herds of cattle. The once mighty Grizzly Bear, the Bruin, was forced into the remotest corners of the North, the Wolf and Coyote nearly so.

What I would like to do is to... restore some of the once mighty Prairie wilderness of North America. The Great Plains are sparsely populated, some large areas have barely two people per square mile. There are more than 6,000 abandoned ghost towns in Kansas alone. Since these regions are being depopulated anyways, farms and small towns abandoned by succesive generations, why not put that land to use by making a vast Conservation Area, a natural preserve much like Serengeti National Park and the Ngrongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania, Africa.

I believe that a chunk of the Prairies should be carved out, cleared of human influence and returned to a natural state. I believe 22,000 square kilometers (the size of the two above-mentioned Tanzanian preserves combined) of the more thinly populated part of the Prairies would be not great blow to the economies of the involved provinces and states. I can't speak for the American states, but I know that Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the combined Canadian Bread Basket, have an area of over 1,896,000 square kilometers, 22,000 sq km would be no great blow.

Ideally, this chunk of land left to 'go wild' as it were, would be situated on the cusp of the Rockies, for the maximun ecological variety in its ecosystem. Some place in central Alberta, but on the border of B.C, would be perfect, with both open prairie and the foothills and forests of the Rockies. It could be a place for herds of bison to roam wild, as they once did. It would be a sanctuary for the Prairie Grizzly, now extirpated in all but a few corners of Alberta, to recover their former strength and numbers. All the plants, the animals and the birds that once inhabited the magnificent North American wild, they could recover some semblance of what they once had. What's more, in this more ecologically responsible and conscious era, we could accurately study this Prairie ecosystem, which we had so senselessly eroded and destroyed in the push to the West.

[zznɟ ǝɥʇ]

There's two ways to do this:

1. Get the public to overwhemingly support the motion.
2. Find a rich guy with a mission and buy the land peice by peice and set it up as whatever you need to in order to prevent people from mucking with it, ever.

Personally I don't think it's doable, but it'd certainly be good. My father works with a rich guy that sends him out to look for good natural areas, or places that would be good once restored, and as him offer the current owners a sale. After the sale takes place, the land is designated as a natural area in whatever legal sense there is, so no one can do certain things to the land, even the owner. Forgot the term.

[Chaigidel]

isnt ted turner doing something like that privately?

[Simetrical]

North America is less despoiled than Europe, at any rate.

[Senno]

Hmm, quite a lot of the US is undeveloped.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Con...y/farmland.htm

The first Presidential conservationisthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor...onservationist was Teddy Roosevelt. Quite the product of his times, Teddy was.

We are not as denuded as Europe is. The great forests no longer exist there.

[Farnan]

Yea a good part of Pennsylvania is not very developed. I can walk down the street a bit and enter the forest and walk for hours without leaving it. Except for small towns and small cities that dot the landscape, along with some farmland most of Central PA is woodland.

[Senno]

Here in the Central Valley of CA, the largest Wetlands Reclamation in history is taking place.

This is the same Valley that feeds the nation. If the Central Valley were a separate state, it would still rank first in farm production. We all have to eat.

In the mountains surrounding are National Parks, California state parks and much otherwise pristine land.

There is quite a lot of conservation going on.

[Pontifex Maximus]

I tend to disagree with that. We already have massive nature preserves in Alaska and the midwest. If anything it is just going to impede inevitable human growth into these areas (not necessarily in our generation). We are already disallowed from drilling in Alaska for oil because of the nature preserves there.

I think it should be among the top priorities of the government to preserve and cultivate the lands of the nation. We can't see every pocket becoming urbanized and filled with waste and pollution, but gross and fanatic institutions of reserves will only serve to slow down progress.

We shouldn't actively destroy the environment, that would be irresponsible. Maybe a better solution would be to build more parks so that human interaction in a relatively 'green' atmoshere could be harbored. At least then it would be practical.

I don't see the use of setting aside 30,000 acres of land for a "no humans allowed" zone. Sure, let's conserve what we have and work to preserve nature, but let's not seperate ourselves from it. How would we enjoy it if it is closed off and not navigable in the first place?

I think we have enough areas set aside for this, but maybe something along the lines of parks (not like Yosemite, but recreational parks) would be more practical.

[Farnan]

We already have 84.4 million acres (put together that equals about the size of Germany and doesn't include state parks) in the National Park System, 30,000 is just a drop in the bucket.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...rvice_holdings

[Pontifex Maximus]

That figure just further demonstrates the point.

I undershot that quite a bit it would seem. (of course I was speaking hypothetically)

[Kleos]

One of the things I truly regret about North America is the... abuse nature has been subject to from 1800 to 1900 in general and from 1860 to 1890 in particular.

While agreeing with the general theme of your post, I must pick with the dates you have set, which mirror European expansion in North America. While not denying the massive impact of Europeans on the ecology of North America; this viewpoint ignores the impact of the first inhabitants of the Americas. For instance; look at this list of extinct mammals of North America.
The pre 1500AD list includes such natural wonders as American Lion, American Cheetah, Dire Wolf, Giant Short Faced Bear, Mammoth, Giant Beaver, and Glyptogon.

As for the ideas raised in your post (Re-wilding), I completely agree. The Rewilding Institute is a great place to go if your interested in reading about the subject, while I reccomend to anyone who is interested to search for Twighlight of the Mammoths by Paul Martin.

But of course it easy for me to sit on a little island and tak of wild animals - but in my defence I would love to see the Wolf, Bear, Wisent, Auroch, Moose and Lynx roaming Britain again; selfishy even more so than lion or cheetah in North America.

I tend to disagree with that. We already have massive nature preserves in Alaska and the midwest. If anything it is just going to impede inevitable human growth into these areas (not necessarily in our generation). We are already disallowed from drilling in Alaska for oil because of the nature preserves there.

Inevitable? Far from it, as this highlights, fertility rates for American women -in common with many other developed western nations- hovers between 2.0 and 2.1; a rate that is actually below that needed for full population replacement. It is only because of immigration that the USA's population continues to increase. By removing the effect of immigration (i.e. zero net effect, not zero) the USA population would remain steady/decrease very slowly.

I don't see the use of setting aside 30,000 acres of land for a "no humans allowed" zone. Sure, let's conserve what we have and work to preserve nature, but let's not seperate ourselves from it. How would we enjoy it if it is closed off and not navigable in the first place?

You are missing the critical point of ecological protection - if we can enjoy it, if we can utilise it, if it is economically expolitable is not what matters: what does is the protection of the natural diversity billions of years of evolution has created. Natural life has a value in itself, not because we can make use of it in some way.

We already have 84.4 million acres (put together that equals about the size of Germany and doesn't include state parks) in the National Park System, 30,000 is just a drop in the bucket.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...rvice_holdings

But those parks are fragmented - and for a truly effective conservation system you need large and interconnected areas; to allow self sustaining populations that can absorb impacts of localised events (such as forest fires) by migration; and flow of genetic material between currently isolated poulations. These animals didnt evolve to live in small fragmented environments and nature doesn't stick to boundaries drawn on maps; hence problems like bison leaving Yellowstone Park trying to enter Montana for their winter grazing.

[Simetrical]

You are missing the critical point of ecological protection - if we can enjoy it, if we can utilise it, if it is economically expolitable is not what matters: what does is the protection of the natural diversity billions of years of evolution has created. Natural life has a value in itself, not because we can make use of it in some way.

Depends on your ideology, really. Personally I see no value in ecology for its own sake. It's pure anthropocentric economics to me. Eventually I expect the utility of non-human wildlife for humans to end, and at that point I have no issue with just destroying it all (minus whatever people want to keep as zoos and safaris and so forth).

[Pontifex Maximus]

Inevitable? Far from it, as this highlights, fertility rates for American women -in common with many other developed western nations- hovers between 2.0 and 2.1; a rate that is actually below that needed for full population replacement. It is only because of immigration that the USA's population continues to increase. By removing the effect of immigration (i.e. zero net effect, not zero) the USA population would remain steady/decrease very slowly.

I don't think it's good to close off vast areas of land purely for "a look but do not touch" type area. Nature is beautiful, it should be respected, but we cannot go to the extreme with this. A driving force behind the conservation effort are ideas such as "Pretty soon, it will all be gone!" But if what you say is true, we don't need to worry about that because the US population will never reach those levels, therefore new lands wouldn't be needed for growth purposes.

You are missing the critical point of ecological protection - if we can enjoy it, if we can utilise it, if it is economically expolitable is not what matters: what does is the protection of the natural diversity billions of years of evolution has created. Natural life has a value in itself, not because we can make use of it in some way.

I think that nature should be protected, after all, since our species is dominant, we have a responsobility to protect and defend the other species. I am forced to think practically though. Look at what we have done in Alaska. Alot of land is currently being conserved in Alaska. While this is a good thing, I think that way too much land is currently being barred off. Oil prices are so high right now. Well, we are partly to blame. Oilwells are virtually untapped in Alaska and this would curb our reliance upon the middle east for our supplies. Even just a little. But no, we aren't allowed to drill there because the land is being conserved for the sake of the caribou. Caribou are great animals, but I put the wellbeing of humans in front of them.

Conservation and reserves are a great thing, but in moderation only.