Speaker says growth is risky but manageable
The rapid growth that has marked the last two centuries or so on the history of the American West has the potential to be dangerous and to continue uncontrolled, but there is hope, a Utah State University professor said.
Professor Craig Johnson of the USU Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning department spoke Thursday at the 26th annual Honors department Last Lecture.
The Last Lecture is the only teaching award chosen entirely by students, Honors Director David Lancy said. The faculty member chosen by student nominations and interviews is given the opportunity to give students the lecture they would like to give if it was the last lecture they would ever give.
Johnson, who has been teaching in the LAEP department since 1966, said growth brought on by the burgeoning population in the West has had a dramatic effect on wildlife and landscape, but in many places, corrective measures are being taken.
The West has seen a lot of infrastructure development to accommodate the growth, which started largely in the 1840s by trappers who “didn’t consider themselves to be part of the community,” and that such development perpetuates growth.
“The interesting and disturbing thing” is that growth leads to sprawl, which spurs more growth, Johnson said. “It’s the ‘Field of Dreams’ – ‘If you build it, they will come.'”
Johnson said European settlers in the late 1800s began spreading across the landscape, and by 1900, most of the forests in the West had been cleared, thousands of acres of habitat had been converted to agricultural and urban uses, and the stream flow of most creeks and rivers had been modified to create irrigation.
He said such growth flourished when the end of World War II brought prosperity and “all the ingredients for the urban explosion across the landscape.”
Johnson said the phenomenon of the breaking up of large patches of habitat is called fragmentation.
Such fragmentation, he said, separates populations of species and limits the genetic exchange necessary for healthy wildlife.
The result, Johnson said, has been that the land has reached “a subtle kind of equilibrium,” an ecological balance that could be disrupted if growth continued uncontrolled.
“It’s having a profound influence on wildlife,” he said. “There’s all kinds of money out there to support” expanding infrastructure.
In the past five years, 50,000 acres of original habitat have been lost in Utah, Johnson said. He said species in affected areas are “living on borrowed time.”
Johnson said the question of why humans should care about the effect of growth on the land can be answered several ways.
“I think it’s a fair question,” he said.
He said humans have thought about their relationship with the natural world since “the advent of human consciousness.”
Native Americans saw plants and animals as relatives, and “you always care about your relatives,” Johnson said.
He said in Judeo-Christian thought, St. Benedict encouraged conservation in the 6th century, and St. Francis of Assisi in the 13th century proposed democracy among all God’s creatures – a view that was seen as heresy and nearly cost him his life.
“In the 13th century, that was not politically correct,” Johnson said.
Today, he said, a more secular view of nature also encourages conservation for several reasons, including the environmental services the landscape provides, the need for habitat, social reasons and economic benefits.
Johnson said programs are in place around the world to “reconstruct” the landscape, including planning development so it allows patches of habitat to remain connected so species can spread their genetic diversity.
In Utah, two programs are in place that Johnson said take the first step toward conservation.
Those programs are called the Envision Utah Project and 21st Century Communities.
He said graduate students in the LAEP department have also prepared plans that are currently in use to restore wetlands along the Jordan River in Murray.
“These are clearly visionary plans,” Johnson said of such programs in Florida and between Yellowstone National Park and the Yukon. He said it’s worth the effort and time it will take to develop these visions.
“I don’t think any of us would like to entertain what the alternative is,” he said.
He pointed to a recent Discovery Channel program he watched, in which an American Indian woman said of the reintroduction of bison onto her reservation, “Would you be willing to wait 100 years for your people’s prayers to be answered? We were.”