ANTI-DEVELOPMENT UPSTATE STAKEHOLDERS

The New York City Watershed Economic Impact Assessment Report. Rep. N.p., May 2009. Web. <http://dcecodev.com/documents/NYCWatershedImpactStudy-FinalReport.pdf>.

PG 39-47

Upstate New York counties have a relatively higher employment rate than NYC. Most of this employment is proprietorship. However, high proprietorship also indicates that the region “does not offer enough viable employment opportunities, which forces people to create their own businesses.  Delaware County’s unusually high proprietary employment rates when coupled with lower income rates indicate that the county’s job opportunities may be low. This could also be the result of the given nature of a rural county that is highly reliant on natural resources and agriculture.  This may be the case in Delaware County as both the natural resource and agriculture sectors have a disposition toward proprietorships and lower earnings.”

Many of the small businesses are doing well, however they heavily rely on natural resources for their business and are vulnerable to new environmental changes like the land acquisition by NYC for water filtration.

The infrastructure supporting agriculture has declined significantly over the past few decades and will continue to decline. Agriculture is a demanding industry that is labor intensive and requires high capital investments.  It remains a high risk for personal and financial safety. For these reasons the average age of farmer’s increases as young adults, who are willing to become farmers, do not take on the line of work because of all the burdens.

NYC’s plans for upstate watershed land acquisition have increased the demand for land. Not only does this increase the price for land, it also limits farmers from purchasing land for their agricultural business. Due to these reasons, agriculture has been decreasing in the upstate region. It is traditional for farmers to own the land they farm on in order to stay in business. Without the ability to own land, young farmers are leaving upstate NY county areas in search of cheaper and readily available land in areas like Pennsylvania. Farmers in these areas have expressed their concerns about the agricultural situation as they have had friends and family leave the County to farm elsewhere in recent years.

Manufacturing in the Delaware County is the largest economic sector in the area. It has remained relatively stable however recent flooding from NYC’s water filtration systems “has increased concerns about the sector’s concentrated nature and the potential disruption to the economy.” The most recent data on increases in unemployment has shown that the majority of job loss has occurred in this sector. “While the sector is the economy’s largest generator of jobs, it also faces some of the greatest challenges in terms of growing global competition. The general lack of diversity within the sector itself is another cause for concern as the sector has a small number of large enterprises, any one of which could create considerable local disruption if it were to encounter further difficulties or reduced profitability.”

1. Why do you think this idea of Pleistocene rewilding came about when it does not even seem like a plausible idea?

2. Do you think that big businesses would be willing to create conservation plots since many  companies spend extra money just to keep their surrounding “green plots” to look a certain way?

3. I agree that focusing conservation efforts on big parks like Yellowstone and the Amazon is futile, but do you believe that we still need to conserve or “fence” off some of these areas?

4. The Duwamish RIver seems like a model conservation/industrial river, but are there other rivers or areas that can do the same?

Marris’ The Rambunctious Garden gave a very in-depth detail about modern ecology. She talks about the pollution humans are leaving behind, conservation ideas to help these problem, and new projects that will help humans and wild life as a whole. However there are many things that Marris says that do not seem realistic or unnecessary.

Her last chapter is meant to give us a list of goals she believes are necessary for the future of conservation, however, I felt the chapter lacking. Some of the points she mentioned didn’t seem like they could be realistic, and some unethical. Here are points that I found necessary to comment on.

The land ethic is a term used to describe “soils, waters, plants and animals, ” and the moral obligations we have toward these creatures.  That we are all interconnected in a web of species where id one is disturbed can cause drastic consequences. She also talks about giving plants and animals a moral status. Though she makes it sound like she wants animals to have human’s rights, animals and plants deserve to have mutual respect from humans. This specifically includes the livestock that we butcher. Humans are part carnivorous animals and it is understandable, and essential for us to eat meat. However the rate at which we consume it is unnecessary, especially since most animal farms keep animals in the worst of condition. By creating a healthy environment for animals in slaughterhouses could be a way for meat prices to raise and keep us from over consuming it.

Charismatic mega fauna, which are the really big animals that humans do not want to go extinct, is something that can help provide more support for conservation.  By telling people that the habitats for certain animals will lead them to extinction would have them (hopefully) more involved and considerate for nature. It may sound like this is targeting only a select few; however by saving environments these mega fauna inhabit will save the same homes the smaller wild things live.

Deep ecology sounds like an interesting idea. It means to look at the intrinsic value of nature and work at this by looking after the world as an extension of us. Saving genetic diversity seems to be the best way to look at diversity. Saving species that are very different from each other is perhaps better than saving one species and its subspecies, and its very closely related one. It would be best to have the one Picasso, one Rembrandt, and one Leonardo Da Vinci, than just the three Rembrandts. Species from very similar animals will soon enough go through evolutionary processes and will continue to differentiate. Losing a very different animal as a whole however cannot be brought back.

Conserving biodiversity will perhaps save the aesthetics of nature by maintaining a balance amongst the complex relationships of flora and fauna, however Marris does bring up that we do not know how the relationships work, and they may have been an accident that learned to stabilize. Conserving ecosystem for ecosystem service will not only save biodiversity, but will also maximize our resources from them (hopefully not too much to make them go extinct.)

Saving nature wholly for the aesthetic aspect is something would like to invest in because people still want that serenity they get from it. However with an expanding human population, matters like these might lose validity, and designer ecosystems could be the new fad.

Perhaps people look to the serene because it is something that we have recently began too lose. But when we think of central park, we know it is man made, but it has been a designer ecosystem that has worked out. Human collaborated, or artificial nature does not seem to be a problem, or thought of as taking away from serenity. Most of our nature has become artificial since humans in many ways have polluted most. Artificial clean up will try to clean up the mess we did in the beginning.

According to the articles, anthropocene can be defined as our present geological era marked by the advent of the Industrial Revolution, where humans have had a massive and dominant impact on earth’s various ecosystems. People have argued the negative and positive impact of the anthropogenic imprint, and how we must also understand urban ecology, human interactions with nature in urban communities, to solve the many problems we have. Both articles argue opposing sides to the “conservation of nature” argument; Vitousek arguing that “human alteration of Earth [has been growing so substantially]” in a detrimental way that it may lead to an extinction of our natural world unless extensive conservation is practiced, while Kareiva claim that the human population is growing and needs the natural resources on earth, and there is no slowing down these rates.
Vitousek et al point out in their article as they discuss the impact human dominance has had, and the facts they give are compelling enough to want to begin your own conservation movement. Almost 39 to 50% of the land has been transformed or degraded, a large percentage compared to the few hundred years it took to change it. Since I have a penchant for marine life, the fact that “commercial marine fisheries around the world discard 27 million tons of non-target animals annually” is upsetting, and a cause I would fight for. I also love to eat fish, but “as of 1995, 22% of recognized marine fisheries were overexploited or already depleted, and 44% more were at their limit of exploitation” makes me want to avoid fish even more than the mercury factor. Extinction of animals has also been severe with almost 20% of mammals going extinct and 11% of birds.
Though Vitousek makes good points, I do not completely agree with him. His article had been written about fifteen years ago during a time when people were stringent about our need to conserve natural ecosystems, and also enough time to change the mindset of most conservationists. That is why I like and agree more with the recent article Kareiva et al article that claims that we have made significant changes in the past decade conserving the earth, and human starvation is a bigger problem. And their idea that it is best to use the Earths land and resources to help the starving in developing worlds is better than leaving them untouched for the few who can access preserved (gated) areas.
Scientists have seen the effects of the damage we have done in the past centuries, and action has been taken. We now have solar, wind, water, and other cleaner sources of energy. The only problem is for making these sources of energy more economical. And another point that Kareiva et al brings up is the fact that the Earth knows how to heal itself. The damage we have done has been cleaned up like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (which I was surprised would happen). Rather than preserving natural landscapes to be untouched, I think it is better to use the resources to help mankind.