They Paved Paradise

Dated: 18 Nov 2008

Posted by admin

They Paved Paradise

By Frank Schiavone

I know, I know - this is a lyric from a 1970 Joni Mitchell ditty. I always thought it was a pleasant little tune but never realized just how prophetic it was.

Sprawling land development is gobbling up America at an alarming rate - around 365 acres per hour according to government figures. In most communities the amount of developed land is growing faster than the population.

This pattern of growth forces us to be overly dependent on automobiles, increasing the pollution and damage they cause. It also destroys farmland, open spaces and critical watersheds. At the same time it contributes to a range of serious social problems, particularly for urban populations left behind. Further, by spreading pavement across critical watersheds, sprawling developments greatly contribute to polluted runoff that eventually finds its way to the ocean.

Make no mistake about it: expanding our communities at rates many times faster than population growth, is not good for the environment.

Reversing this trend will be critical since the U.S. population is expected to grow by half in the next fifty years. That anticipated growth of some 150 million people is greater than the current populations of France and Germany combined. From about 7 million in 1940, California’s population has grown over fivefold to 37 million residents today and projections estimate a population of 49 million in 2025 and 60 million in 2050.

Where will these new citizens live, work, and shop? How important is it that we, as concerned citizens, bring resources to bear to shape America’s, California’s, and our own future urban development?

There is plenty of evidence that we place a high value on exactly those benefits that we are losing. In public opinion polls, respondents overwhelmingly cited “the beauty of nature” as a reason for wanting to protect the environment.

Although the negative effects of sprawl are sometimes hard to quantify, they are real. The loss of undeveloped landscapes threatens economic as well as societal values.

Over 130 million Americans enjoy the outdoors experience. The nature-oriented tourist industry amounts to billions of dollars annually (the new Bass Pro Shop mega, mega store is testament to this fact). Surveys and government polls consistently find that large majorities of Americans enjoy some form of wildlife-related recreation and that “natural beauty was the single most important criterion for tourists selecting outdoor recreation sites.”

Independent of recreation and tourism, proximity to open spaces has been found to raise the value of residential property by as much as a third in some cases, raising property tax revenues in the bargain.

Outranking all other factors, however, sprawl imperils 188 of the 286 California species listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act, or 66% of the state’s listed species. This finding highlights why sprawl is one of the most important natural resource issues confronting California communities. Sprawl threatens entire ecosystems in California.

Close to home, the coastal sage scrub found in our foothills is an incredibly diverse and sensitive habitat that supports many imperiled species. Urbanization’s impact on coastal sage scrub is among the most important of all natural resource issues facing Southern California.

This natural community is currently on life support, the victim of a thousand cuts. Numerous sensitive animal and plant species are now at risk of being lost forever.

Here’s what the San Bernardino County Museum says: “It is estimated that 75% to 90% of all Coastal Sage Scrub habitats have been extirpated from Southern California and the Etiwanda Fan is one of three remaining expanses of Alluvial Fan Sage Scrub.”

Sprawl also fragments habitat when housing is built in the middle of undisturbed land. New developments there block migration routes and cut off wildlife from food sources. Thus, habitat fragments take on the characteristics of island ecosystems. Smaller habitat islands generally have less species diversity and are more vulnerable to extinctions due to disease and other catastrophic events. To keep small fragments of habitat viable it is critical that migration or movement corridors remain open.

At present, a virtually uninterrupted wildlife movement corridor exists along our mountain front. But this last vestige is now seriously under attack. In the foothills above Rancho Cucamonga, major developments are being eyed on County-owned land, literally hundreds of acres belonging to We, The People.

Decision makers need to understand that interspersing relatively high-density hillside residential development within this corridor adversely affects the last of the last. Its permanent loss will impoverish all of us.

Joni was right. “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Development is insidious. It creeps up on you when you’re not looking.

Frank Schiavone
fschiavone@verizon.net