I came home from work last night to find that all the beautiful old trees along my street have been ripped out. Huge, mature trees have been pulled up by their roots and scattered along the roadside waiting for the wood chipper. I am disgusted. And why did they do such a terrible thing? Simple, they need to widen the street. Apparently two lanes is not enough and well...as you know, progress must take precedence. I was awful to see all the dead trees and I was a bit angry. Then I saw the creek. They are also pulling out trees along the creek that don't even come near the road. And now I'm pissed.
We chose this house because of it's proximity to the creek and the wooded area that borders the townhouse compound. I love that I get deer in my yard some evenings, either foraging or simply laying down. I can sit out in my front yard and watch tons of birds and the occasional animal. To see them tear out some of these beautiful trees just makes me ill. Add this to the fact that I had to spend some time on the DNR's website yesterday and happened to find their wildlife report. I thought that would be interesting reading. I could read about the reintroduction of peregrine falcons or how we are starting to see more mountain lions returning to the region. But a good chunk of the document instead covered deer. More specifically how well the herd management program was going.
And that, combined with the trees, just made me furious. Why are we the only species that doesn't watch it's population size? Our population has almost tripled in the last sixty years. From 2.5 billion in 1950 to an expected 7 billion shortly after 2010. We plow and pave gigantic sections of the world making them only habitable for humans. We call rabbits and deer pests when they eat the flowers we plant or when they step in front of our cars. And we can't understand why they would do that. Perhaps those roads cut off access for them to food sources. Perhaps the flowers we plant are regular food staples for them. I'm scared to see how many deer will die on the newly expanded road in front of my house. And that will only bring more legislation on herd management. We won't seem to see our involvement. We drive out creatures who are only looking to survive so that we can expand.
I'm not having children for a number of reasons. Some are selfish, some are not. But one of the reasons is that I feel that we humans have grabbed a little two much of the planet for ourselves. We push animals into small stretches of land and then get angry when they step back into the ever larger chunks that we steal for ourselves. I see other creatures constantly forced to make do with our scraps while we build ever larger freeways and push our cities out into the farmland. I hear of nature preserves losing funding and that extra money going toward bringing in new construction to destroy even more land. And sadly it seems never ending. According to a forecast done by the US Census Bureau, the world population will reach 8.5 billion during my lifetime. And I wonder what will be left of the planet to support them. And with 8.5 billion, will there be enough room for the other species.
One of the comics I read daily is Non Sequitur. Wiley Miller does some incredibly funny stuff but he can also be incredible poignant. He did this comic almost a year ago and I had to save it. It fits so perfectly with some of my thoughts. (for a larger size go here, I know it is hard to read)
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