Discussion of the principal cause of the loss of natural areas to development in the U.S.
“The natural landscape of the American West is gradually disappearing under a relentless march of new subdivisions, roads, oil and gas production, agricultural operations and other human development.”
Rogers is citing a new report at http://www.disappearingwest.org posted by Conservation Science Partners, a nongovernmental research group with offices in Truckee, California; Seattle, Washington; Flagstaff, Arizona; Fort Collins, Colorado and Bozeman, Montana. According to Disappearing West, an area of natural habitat the size of a football field is lost to concrete, asphalt, subdivisions, strip malls and drilling pads every two and a half minutes.
In the decade between 2001 and 2011, a combined area of 2.8 million acres (4,321 square miles) – 15 times the combined size of San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco – was developed in the 11 Western states. By far, California lost the most open space of all of them.
Yet there is a gaping hole large enough to drive a bulldozer through in both the Disappearing West website and Rogers’ article about it: the role of human population growth in driving all this development and loss of open space. Various wildlife population sizes are mentioned in the Disappearing West report, but there is not one mention of human population size and growth. Why this glaring omission?