I Flinch When I See Nature Being Destroyed
As i was riding through my favorite stretch of trail this morning i couldn't help but make a comment to the other riders on how spectacular this path was and how i find it beautiful, no matter what time of year i find myself on it. Then i heard the news,that made my blood run cold.."well then, enjoy it while you can".
Underneath this particular section of trail is a drain. A drain, which is there to carry excess water from surrounding crop fields and dump it into the nearest waterway. It was installed decades ago to drain the swampy forests and convert them into very fertile fields. Close to 85 % of our area's forests were drained this way. 85% of our area's natural ecosystem was lost. But Nature is Nature and sooner or later things revert to the natural order of things. Left alone, forest reclaimed the land above the pipe.
Since the economy is not really humming here at this point, many government projects are just invented in order to keep people working. And so the maintenance of the drain, and consequently clearing of the woods along that beautiful trail, is one of those projects. And since it runs through privately owned land , the owners were told that if they don't agree to that they will be held liable for any flood damage to the crop fields. They don't really have much choice, do they.
The thing that gets me is the short-sightedness of this whole thing and total lack of knowledge about how our ecosystem works. Vegetation and especially trees hold enormous amounts of water. I don't know how anyone figures that clearing the woods along the drain will help make drainage any better. To me that's just insane.
I don't even want to think about the all the life that will vanish in the name of short term employment creation and supposedly saving GMO crops. Makes me want to cry
Underneath this particular section of trail is a drain. A drain, which is there to carry excess water from surrounding crop fields and dump it into the nearest waterway. It was installed decades ago to drain the swampy forests and convert them into very fertile fields. Close to 85 % of our area's forests were drained this way. 85% of our area's natural ecosystem was lost. But Nature is Nature and sooner or later things revert to the natural order of things. Left alone, forest reclaimed the land above the pipe.
Since the economy is not really humming here at this point, many government projects are just invented in order to keep people working. And so the maintenance of the drain, and consequently clearing of the woods along that beautiful trail, is one of those projects. And since it runs through privately owned land , the owners were told that if they don't agree to that they will be held liable for any flood damage to the crop fields. They don't really have much choice, do they.
The thing that gets me is the short-sightedness of this whole thing and total lack of knowledge about how our ecosystem works. Vegetation and especially trees hold enormous amounts of water. I don't know how anyone figures that clearing the woods along the drain will help make drainage any better. To me that's just insane.
I don't even want to think about the all the life that will vanish in the name of short term employment creation and supposedly saving GMO crops. Makes me want to cry
By:
trailguide
Age:
36-40
,
Female
