Protect our wildlife habitat

Mankind dominates the Earth. Other species, whether they are plants or animals, have had the rug pulled out from under them. They have no place to live, no place to hide.

On land they try to make do with ditches, fence rows, wetlands, edges of the sea, secluded islands, brutalized forests, rocky mountain tops.

The sea, until recently, impenetrable and filled with an incalculable variety and number of plants and animals, is being drained of species. Sea life formerly soaked up carbon dioxide and transformed it into fairy lands of corals which served as the nurseries, refuges and food of other species and, incidentally, helped to keep the atmosphere of Earth in equilibrium. There was no over heating of the planet. These reefs are now dying at a rapid rate.

Science and engineering coupled in an unholy alliance with short-term thinking have caused all this.

“It’s good to catch more to feed people. It’s good to have stronger and longer nets and make more money. It’s good to scrape the sea bottom for shrimp, scallops. It’s good to map the seas, find out what’s in there, how it works so we can be more efficient.”

The seas, now pierced by sonar, radar, peering satellites offer, once again, no place to hide for all the life that calls it home.

If anyone anticipated that this great explosion of science and engineering unrestrained by the wisdom of thinking long term could lead to ricocheting deadly effects on all life on the land and in the sea – they did nothing about it.

Scientists who study life are today reduced to catalogers of decline, whether in the rainforests of Brazil, the depths of the oceans, the Alaskan tundra or the skies filled with migrating birds that fly from pole to pole. Without exception all are dying out.

In a belated effort to “help” the other life on Earth survive, scientists capture creatures ranging from salamanders to tigers and burden them with microchips and radio devices so they can be tracked, leaving them, once again, with no place to hide.

And why is this done? So that we can know how far they can be pushed out of the way of human activity, on how small a piece of ground or area of the sea can they still survive and we, humans, will take the rest.

In 2006, concern for the depletion of species in Maine moved Maine’s legislators to set aside buffer zones between human development and “significant wildlife habitat” of 250 feet. Based on review of the science and their own observations the Department of Environmental Protection’s specialists had determined that the species of concern could survive with this protection.

In 2007, 50 legislators with the arrogance born of ignorance have determined that they know better than the scientists and they would set the protective buffer at 75 feet and permit the felling of trees and brush in other protected areas for views and harvesting.

Pressured by our governor to do something to quell the uproar from special interests, the DEP has caved in accepting the 75 feet if only they can have their upland restrictions. It’s not a pretty picture!

The governor could have supported the DEP and promised to veto any bill that destroyed the 2006 law. But no. Ignorance and short-term thinking. Only a mighty uproar from Mainers who value life on this planet can save this law.

Elizabeth B. Duncan of Monroe lobbied on open-government and environmental issues for 20 years in Georgia.