land, nature preserve, greenbelt, wilderness area, greensward, community garden, or park. It’s undeveloped land set aside for people’s enjoyment. As numbers of the world’s least-endangered species—mankind—continue to multiply, open space vanishes. The consequences are great, affecting the psychic and spiritual well-being of people, as well as the very existence of animal and plant species.
Here in the United States, more than 1,200 land trusts make gigantic efforts to preserve land from development. In some communities, voters are asked to foot the bill for open space. (An example: a twenty-five-million-dollar program to save land and farms in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, just ninety miles from New York City and Philadelphia.) Unfortunately, such tax proposals sometimes fail.
Meantime, people fight over existing open space . It may be a pocket park in New York City; a five-acre chunk of space in a fancy Denver suburb that residents thought would remain their private enclave; or historic garden allotments that are being plowed up for housing in a British city. In the booming American West, gargantuan struggles have erupted among municipal officials with different agendas: Some want to buy up all the land they can to keep it out of “development,” while others argue that development helps keep the lid on taxes.
The people concerned about this include both the big guns, such as the international group that helped fight a plan to mine gold at the edge of Yellowstone Park, to single individuals with a mission. Environmentalists climb redwoods and make their homesthere to keep the woodcutters away. Environmental terrorists destroy parts of a plush ski resort, allegedly to save the endangered lynx. The U.S. president earns both praise and blame for touting open space, and setting up projects such as the Grand Escalante National Monument, which take vast acreages out of private use.
Is there enough room for animals and plants? Even with these conservation efforts, what is to become of us and our environment as people’s need for housing space continues to grow? And what of the plants and animals that must try to exist in skimpier habitats? In the world, one of every eight plant species, ten percent of bird species, and more than twenty-five percent of mammals are threatened with extinction. Speaking for preservation of species and conservation of resources are organizations such as the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Fish and Wildlife Service; plus the many land trusts, The Nature Conservancy, the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, and The John Muir Society. Congress, on the one hand, may limit the scope of the Endangered Species and Clean Water acts; and yet it is highly sensitiveto public concern for the environmental. In the 104th Congress, it voted more money for the 514 parks in the national wildlife refuge system. Each has a specific mandate to preserve an endangered species or a critical habitat for waterfowl or animals, including certain songbirds, swans, panthers, white-tailed deer, and crocodiles.
The conservator: The Nature Conservancy adds its efforts by purchasing tracts of land in all the fifty states, and certain foreign countries as well, carefully going about its work while avoiding confrontation with private landowners. The Conservancy, with more than 800,000 members, holds three million acres of land, the largest private conservation holding in the U.S. It claims to have protected 9.3 million acres since its foundation in 1951.
In the end, the using up of open space will be at the price of more plant and animal species. Protection has brought some, such as the bald eagle, back from near-extinction. Unprotected, so far, is the prairie dog, and debate over this tan rodent has become a metaphor for the clash between rural and urban value systems. It even made the cover of an issue of
National Geographic
. The animal gives headaches
Here in the United States, more than 1,200 land trusts make gigantic efforts to preserve land from development. In some communities, voters are asked to foot the bill for open space. (An example: a twenty-five-million-dollar program to save land and farms in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, just ninety miles from New York City and Philadelphia.) Unfortunately, such tax proposals sometimes fail.
Meantime, people fight over existing open space . It may be a pocket park in New York City; a five-acre chunk of space in a fancy Denver suburb that residents thought would remain their private enclave; or historic garden allotments that are being plowed up for housing in a British city. In the booming American West, gargantuan struggles have erupted among municipal officials with different agendas: Some want to buy up all the land they can to keep it out of “development,” while others argue that development helps keep the lid on taxes.
The people concerned about this include both the big guns, such as the international group that helped fight a plan to mine gold at the edge of Yellowstone Park, to single individuals with a mission. Environmentalists climb redwoods and make their homesthere to keep the woodcutters away. Environmental terrorists destroy parts of a plush ski resort, allegedly to save the endangered lynx. The U.S. president earns both praise and blame for touting open space, and setting up projects such as the Grand Escalante National Monument, which take vast acreages out of private use.
Is there enough room for animals and plants? Even with these conservation efforts, what is to become of us and our environment as people’s need for housing space continues to grow? And what of the plants and animals that must try to exist in skimpier habitats? In the world, one of every eight plant species, ten percent of bird species, and more than twenty-five percent of mammals are threatened with extinction. Speaking for preservation of species and conservation of resources are organizations such as the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Fish and Wildlife Service; plus the many land trusts, The Nature Conservancy, the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, and The John Muir Society. Congress, on the one hand, may limit the scope of the Endangered Species and Clean Water acts; and yet it is highly sensitiveto public concern for the environmental. In the 104th Congress, it voted more money for the 514 parks in the national wildlife refuge system. Each has a specific mandate to preserve an endangered species or a critical habitat for waterfowl or animals, including certain songbirds, swans, panthers, white-tailed deer, and crocodiles.
The conservator: The Nature Conservancy adds its efforts by purchasing tracts of land in all the fifty states, and certain foreign countries as well, carefully going about its work while avoiding confrontation with private landowners. The Conservancy, with more than 800,000 members, holds three million acres of land, the largest private conservation holding in the U.S. It claims to have protected 9.3 million acres since its foundation in 1951.
In the end, the using up of open space will be at the price of more plant and animal species. Protection has brought some, such as the bald eagle, back from near-extinction. Unprotected, so far, is the prairie dog, and debate over this tan rodent has become a metaphor for the clash between rural and urban value systems. It even made the cover of an issue of
National Geographic
. The animal gives headaches
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