Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
We have forgotten the flocks of passenger pigeons that blotted out the sun, the herds of bison that shook the ground, and the untamed places in which we destroyed them. This is ecological amnesia. This capacity to forget, this fluidity of memory, has dire implications in a world dense with people, all desperate to satisfy their immediate material needs. Yet, the way forward is land and water protection and regeneration, permaculture, and community reconnection with the wild.
Tejon Ranch Centennial Specific Plan (or Centennial) is a massive planned city in a unique, rare, fire-prone wilderness of grasslands and mountains, a residential and commercial development in LA County. Nick Jensen from the California Native Plant Society, and Jack Eidt from Wild Heritage Planners and SoCal 350, discuss the dangers to urban sustainability, fiscal health of LA County and the impacts on wild and endangered plants and animals with host Jessica Aldridge.
Facing a major Coastal Commission decision, Newport Banning Ranch developers should adopt staff’s recommendation that all environmentally sensitive habitat should be protected and could be integrated in a vision for a small-scale visitor-serving development through Regenerative Design.
Washington State’s move to extirpate an entire pack of wolves near the Canadian border for the infraction of killing a few alien domestic cattle grazing public lands is reprehensible. That wildlife agencies would kill any wolves to benefit the profit margin of private businesses utilizing public resources is an outrage. George Wuerthner writes how the tragedy of this slaughter of wild predators repeats itself over and over throughout the West.
Wild bison will be allowed to migrate out of Yellowstone National Park and stay in parts of Montana year-round under a move by Gov. Steve Bullock. The decision won’t end the slaughter of some bison that roam outside of the park, yet pushes against the collusion between cattle ranching interests and wildlife managers using the threat of brucellosis to justify private property and development rights over the spirit of the wild.
Cuba may have been restricted politically and economically for the past 50 years, but its borders have remained open to wildlife for which Cuba’s undeveloped islands are an irresistible draw.
While stopping short of full endangered species protections for the Greater Sage-Grouse, the Obama-era Fish and Wildlife Service implemented land use plans to restrict energy development and grazing in the expanse of northwestern U.S. desert called the Sagebrush Sea, depicted in a 2015 documentary. The Trump Interior Department attempted to amend that plan to open up more commercial activities. We feature here an essay on Wyoming’s core plan attempts to salvage the state’s last populations in a landscape dominated by energy development.