Me, waking you up at two am: hey, do you ever think about how we live in a culture of rejecting our local “wild places” in favor of fetishizing and romanticizing the distant and different?
There’s this overwhelming rhetoric we’re fed that the only nature worth protecting is Grand and Huge and most of all Somewhere Else.
Nobody thinks about the wetland behind their local Walmart that is in Desperate need of protection, or the little remnant prairie in a cemetery, because they’re too focused on the abstract and often flawed concept of “wilderness” somewhere else.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to travel to see something new and unique, but the way I hear people talk about our own backyard, the way the last remnants of what we have here are ignored or outright rejected, breaks my heart.
My professor has spent his entire career in the Midwest trying to protect wetlands from housing developments and new superstores, but he almost always loses, not just because the developers have money, but the community doesn’t care enough to do anything about it.
Afterall, what’s a few old oak and birch trees in a little puddle of a swamp compared to miles of marsh in Scandinavia? What’s a grassy hill to a distant mountain range?
Well, to the duck, to the heron, to the bluebird, and to precious few people, I’d say it’s Everything.
I love to travel myself, and I know people probably don’t know that when they say “why is our wildlife/plant life etc. so lame” that they’re contributing to an attitude of rejecting what unique beauty we do have,
But
I hope one day people can see the wonder nearby and fight to protect it. I hope there’s something left to protect.
Anyway…..where do u keep your cups I want some water.
I feels so strongly about this. I live in California which has both massive development and some of the most beautiful natural spaces imagineable. And like people don’t realize that the ho-hum natural spaces in their city are often contiguous with natural spaces that host important biodiversity which are then connected to…
Death Valley.
Yosemite.
The eastern Sierras.
The central coast.
The Redwoods.
Anza-Borrego.
The Antelope Valley poppy preserve.
Lake Tahoe.
Joshua Tree.
Literally, people have thrown away wetlands that support biodiversity because it’s coastal property that brings in big money and yet…. that biodiversity is critical to the overall health of our wildlands. Like? Really?
And don’t even get me started on the desert. Everyone heads out to Anza-Borrego during wildflower season, but then some assholes go out and wreck desert pupfish habitat because it was a fun thing to do when they were drunk. I’ve seen photos of Joshua Trees ripped out of the ground because they were in an inconvenient place. And the Poppy Preserve? We literally had to set aside land for seasonal wildflowers or it would have been developed over, destroying a diverse environment that’s only beautiful for a few weeks of the year (but is healthy and supports wildlife all year long).
Anyway… [waves arms about my TED talk so this sounds remotely like kids these days]
Thoughtfulfangirling 