Re: NANFA-- economic environmentalism

Moontanman_at_aol.com
Sat, 15 Jun 2002 18:15:31 EDT

In a message dated 6/15/02 10:32:28 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
archimed_at_netdoor.com writes:

<< Sorry Jeff, I just don't buy your arguments. But lots of seemingly
useless habitats DO in fact have economic value. Such as, say,
coastal wetlands. Properly cared for they make great sites for
hotels, casinos, and gated retirement communities.
/ >>
Now this is a subject I can really get upset about! Around here the so called
laws protecting wetlands don't mean a thing if you have the money. Even more
insulting is the ability for a company to destroy a wetlands as long as they
create new wet lands somewhere else to replace them! What a crock, I have
seen this being done and it doesn't even qualify as a joke. Recently several
acres of wet lands were drained to build houses, the land was prime habitat
for insect eating plants like Venus fly traps and sundews but it didn't
matter. The water table was drained and now you have hundreds of expensive
homes. Even worse was the North end of Wrightsville Beach. It used to be an
area of large sand dunes and nesting shore birds. They didn't even want
people walking on the dunes much less let 4 wheel drives use established
paths to go surf fishing. Then out of the blue they developed the area,
bulldozed the dunes and replaced them with beach homes. The law doesn't mean
anything if you have the money. They even built a large hotel on the beach
and when the inlet migration (a natural occurrence) started to threaten the
hotel they built a totally illegal sea wall to protect the hotel and
eventually managed to get the state to pump in sand to correct the problem.
God help any habitat that is desirable to build houses on because humans
won't.

Moon
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