Four Bold Ideas To Save Greater Yellowstone (And Certain To Make Some Squirm)
Lee Nellis first wrote in Mountain Journal about the failures of conservation. Now he wants to provoke a real discussion about how not to become Colorado. Are we ready to take aversive action?
by
When planners pursue growth without any regard given to the natural processes that hold wild and pastoral landscapes together, communities that count such things as part of their character are destined to lose them. What good is "open space" if it vacant of inhabitants that used to live there? Poorly planned growth and development first rubs out wildlife migrations and then fragments agriculture and ultimately results in disjointed human spaces that have no memory of the actual place that drew them there. This is just part of problems that Nellis gets at in his essay. You can't save the essence of communities by adhering to consumptive models that failed in other places. Photo of a community along the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies courtesy Doc Searls/Wikipedia 2.0 Generic CC BY 2.0