Wild Shores Vanish With Death of a Thousand Development Cuts

The creeping loss of natural shoreline evolves over time with careless human development. Though public lands exist for the many, for the poor and middle class, there are those that feel they as private citizens have some inalienable right to exploit the common heritage of mankind for their exclusive personal enrichment.

Just because some western public lands have low population density it doesn't mean that the hundreds of millions living in major cities have less right of ownership of those lands than local exploiters on-the-spot that would plunder anything worth a buck and then pave it over. It

It isn't always the case that the locals, illegal aliens, recent immigrants from underdeveloped countries and international predators are evil and unconcerned about the survival of the ecosphere in a healthy condition, sometimes they are simply stupid and /or ignorant and don't know any better.

Wrangell Alaska is an example. With a plentiful supply of sand available in the nearby wild Stikine River delta-one of the final great wild river systems in the U.S.A., it is too tempting for business not to fill in substantial areas of Wrangell Island's northernmost shoreline region facing the delta. Filling in the wetland and natural shoreline with a berm, rock and gravel to make a larger industrial docking area does make it less useful for the wildlife that formerly used it such as sea lion, deer and seals.

I usually I have no ecospheric concerns to write about. Since the Wrangell mill closed in 1994 and I was financially compelled to sell my 'lem' in 2008 I grew less interested in local insults to the wild habitat. With about 3/4s of a million people in the entire state of Alaska and with select global corporations in paying for state government one can get real economic reprisals for writing environmental conservation stuff publically. Yet even a modest social philosophy activity should comment on environmental trends affecting life on Earth.

S.E. Alaska and the Alexander Archipelago is comparable loosely to the Maine shoreline plus 50 miles inland. Imagine if it could have remained undeveloped and a wildlife refuge until today. Life on the East coast would be much better. A light rail from Boston and New York could take hikers, campers and backpackers to great fishing and viewing areas. There probably would still be a good commercial fishery in New England. S.E. Alaska is an endangered intact coastal wilderness in reasonably good health. The crass commercial interests that would tear it down piece by piece have the full support of the state legislature of course. Too few comprehend what piece by piece cuts-small cuts to the wilderness map do to erase it over time.

I used to put my boat ashore after rowing several miles when visiting town for supplies 20 years ago. I wrote a letter to the editor complaining about the loss of wetland near the grocery store on the other side of the north end of the island about 20 years ago too . I think the same people and insiders get state and federal government contracts as insiders to build things. They want 5 million to renew a decrepit small boat harbor; yet who would get that money I wonder (there are fewer than 2000 people that live here).. In the approx. 20 years I owned a retirement lot on the island year with only a small construction shed on it that would wait until I retired as an educator (that never happened) I earned fewer than $200 dollars here. I have no interest in the Wrangell economy and long ago got used to travelling outside to earn money painting as far as Florida, South Carolina and Texas before returning. I rode 25 or 30 thousand miles on a bicycle around the U.S.A. looking for work. Time passes and one becomes realistic about things.

The area being slowly buried for progress is rather scenic yet profit calls and cheap sand for making concrete requires cheap support structures. The current 'reclamation' of the healthy shoreline for industrial use is south of the airport a little. The airport is also on a filled in area. The river is two or three miles away over shallow water that could one day be bridged with a causeway to access the Stikine River corridor to the Canadian interior and highway system. Most of American rivers have been converted into drainage ditches. The Houston Texas storm water runoff canals have fish about as large as chum salmon such as can't be caught well from the shore any more with too much commercial fishing. Stikine River salmon are shrinking in size and numbers too. Maybe one day it will be a drainage ditch as well.

Developing a roadway to the Stikine would be another environmental abomination, yet nature has a losing record against human developers. Dull, thoughtless cheap profit takers for-themselves run roughshod over the wild areas of the world advancing a collective habitat loss. Already islands up the delta have been sliced up for housing developments. Farm Island is one where subdivisions are taking hold. The gradually destruction of S.E. Alaska's wild health will produce a large loss for Americans. If one takes a look at the northern hemisphere from space any summer, the S.E. coastal region is one of the few places on Earth besides the shrinking polar ice cap, Greenland and some melting glaciers in the Himalayas with much ice and snow. It is unlikely that human life will outlast by much the loss of most wild habitat. The ecospherically profligate just keep going at it like termites. Miners in Canada are already going ahead with a huge waste water and mine tailings reservoir up the river. Metal is valuable, yet so are fish and all the wildlife that need a healthy waterway. Look at Puget Sound and what a pitiful, ugly mess it became. S.E. Alaska is destined for the same. In the absence of rational environmental leadership by narrow minded, ignorant environmental savages the evolution of doom of life on Earth at least profits those with the worst environmental consciences.