Sunday, August 21, 2005
Editorial: Diminished wildlife, a diminished Virginia
Declining species attest to the harm done as the state balks at reducing pollution and sprawl.
From the RoundTable blog
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It's official: Virginia is making the ark unlivable for the animals.
According a draft report from the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, 925 species of wildlife are declining in number or jeopardized by human activity in the state. Natural factors such as weather variations may contribute in some cases, but the blame mostly falls to people:
n People plowing under wild habitat for housing developments and shopping malls.
n People demanding idyllic but grossly inefficient home sites far from established population centers, services and infrastructure.
n People polluting the soil, air and water and reluctant to pay for their cleanup.
n People overfishing and overharvesting.
That encompasses pretty much all of us, which is only appropriate, because all of us share the potential consequences.
Virginians depend heavily on the environment for jobs, resources and quality of life. Yet many voters, businesses and politicians have traditionally had lukewarm regard, at best, for the state's environmental health and conservation of its wild places.
Greed, indifference, ignorance, parsimony and blinding ideology often close the door to effective solutions, which tend to be expensive or to require regulation of the free market.
Virginia's wildlife species are paying the price. Even the Blue Ridge ecosystem, though subject to significantly less environmental abuse than the Northern Virginia and Tidewater regions, is seeing species decline. They include namesakes such as the Roanoke logperch and Roanoke bass, the Shenandoah and Peaks of Otter salamanders, the New River shiner and the Roanoke hog sucker.
Among the most imperiled are animals integral to the region or particularly attractive to the wildlife watchers who play a big part in Virginia's multibilllion-dollar tourist industry. Wood turtle and bald eagle populations alike are troubled.
Game and Inland Fisheries warns of repercussions: The Endangered Species Act might come into play and affect local property rights. That wildly understates the dangers.
Failure to clean up the Chesapeake Bay puts tourism, fishing and clean water at risk. In failing to curb sprawl and protect scenic amenities such as ridgelines, localities put their budgets and quality of life at risk.
Companies such as Omega Protein, which last week cut off cooperation with scientists after a state board restricted its menhaden catch, endanger their own long-term health as well as the Atlantic fisheries by fighting regulation.
The wildlife report does not reflect simply the misfortune of a few lizards and birds. An ark that can't support some animals now may not support human beings very well later.
