A Field Work Site That No Longer Exists
The perils of being a field biologist---you see how quickly open spaces are destroyed.
One of the tragedies of my line of work is that we can go to a field site and know that how we see it when we delineated the area for wetlands is that it is absolutely going to change drastically the next time we see it. You go out and find cool plants and interesting insects and habitat, and the next thing you know there are box stores and parking lots on top of it. It’s the name of the game in sprawling suburban areas. Leave no empty field undeveloped!
There is a conflict for folks who get degrees in the biological or environmental sciences with post-graduation and the ability to come out to find jobs that both pay a living wage and also feel like they are doing something worthwhile with their degree in regards to protection of the environment. It isn’t like there are millions of jobs in the non-profit or government sector for all of these graduates to fill. We can’t all be park rangers or patrolling beaches for nesting sea turtles (or can we??). To some extent, these jobs you find in the private sector can be considered environmental protection, or at least in the form of helping other private entities to follow the laws appropriately. But then you have these jobs where you die a little inside every time you do them because even if all of the environmental regulations are followed, developers can raze them anyway. No wetlands or sensitive species on the property? Pour the cement! It doesn’t matter if it was a habitat for thousands of insects and other wildlife. They weren’t special in the eyes of government regulation. And if it isn’t you, the biologist, out there surveying these sites, it would be another biologist and consulting firm. Or worse, there would be zero regulations and land owners would raze everything without consequence, which some do already when no one is looking.
This particular site is adjacent to new highway construction, formerly housed a church and some empty land behind it. We surveyed this site a year ago and a year later the church is gone, and at least one big box store has been built as well as a new parking area with more construction to come. The perils of two highways intersecting and sprawling Houston growth. No anomaly, just business as usual in every corner of the country and world.
It wasn't the most exciting site and certainly not a pristine piece of nature that was some kind of magnificent, functioning ecosystem you’d see in larger in-tact sites in rural areas, but there was plenty going on. Little parcels of land, fragmented as they may be, still serve a purpose and mean a lot to the animals and plants that do live there. Did we really need a new flooring store here?
I think the one thing I would like people with plant (ecosystem) blindness to know is that even these little parcels of land hold interesting life forms. We drive by them all the time at 70mph and they look like tracts of forests or empty fields. Of course those fields are sometimes mowed within an inch of their lives and look pretty barren, but often times lots of interesting plants are hiding in there. I often think about the vast tracts of private land holding who-knows-what and the owners most of the time don't even know what kind of biodiversity they have. You likely have a special place you relish seeing as you move around town, whether it is a parcel of undeveloped land amongst the cacophony of an urban area or a special tree you enjoy seeing and I would guess you have also felt the heartache of something you loved privately being destroyed. I don’t know how we resolve the destruction that comes with a capitalist economy, but we need to be sharing our private joys and heartaches with our friends and family so that they too understand the importance of nature.
*This post originally ran on my blog here.