Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
use our national forests as a gauge, then an additional twenty million acres of
trees could absorb another 1 percent to 2 percent of our national carbon emis-
sions. In this accounting, every little bit helps!
Realizing what trees are doing for birds and climate helps people under-
stand how their actions af ect their ecosystem. Understanding can build re-
spect, perhaps allowing some subirdia residents to overcome a fear of snags,
frustration with blocked views, or the drudgery of cleaning needles and leaves
from their gutters. Trees and the understory beyond grass that they support
are the foundations of subirdia, and a sponge that helps us clean some of the
ecological damage caused by an addiction to coal, oil, and natural gas.
As we develop more biologically diverse cities, we will be confronted with
many dii cult ecological lessons. Today, as a few species attain dense popula-
tions because of our inattention to the importance of diversity, many residents
of subirdia are battling, rather than embracing, nature. The numbers of sub-
urban deer, for example, have skyrocketed because of abundant food and few
predators. Now they pose life-threatening hazards to drivers in the eastern
half of North America, their hunger challenges gardeners and ground-nesting
birds, and their ticks act as vectors for diseases that sicken some and scare
many more.
To me, broadening our conservation ethic means that we must also learn to
recognize and accept that in cities some wildlife that we cherish will also need
to be humanely managed. Without their natural predators, abundant grazers,
such as deer and geese, may need to be culled. Such decisions cannot be made
in haste, nor should we avert our eyes from their consequences. Simply hiring a
hunter and washing our hands of the problem teaches an incomplete lesson.
Rather, I would encourage neighbors to work together to determine whether the
health of their land would be improved by controlling overgrazing, and then put
