Wildland-Urban Interface: Is There a Happy Medium?
Since Europeans began colonizing North America, humans have
been continuously replacing natural ecosystems with man-made structures and
communities. The challenges of managing shared urban-wild spaces are many, and I
would assume a majority of them boil down to the fact that human activity
degrades the environment and destroys or alters habitats in ways that species aren’t
adapted to coping with. As we have progressed through the centuries and our
expanse and technological capabilities have accelerated, it has started to feel
like there really aren’t any parts of nature that are safe from us. One of the
most glaring examples of how civilization does not value nature to the extent that
it should is the continual deforestation of the Amazon (NPR), the most diverse
ecosystem on the planet.
One challenge of managing shared urban-wild spaces that
comes to my mind is pollution monitoring and control. It is no secret that we contaminate
the air and the water with a whole host of pollutants and synthetic chemicals. As
we continue to expand into ‘wild’ places, pollution is going to be really
critical to keep under control. There are a lot of contaminants entering the
environment that we still do not know how will impact human health in the long
term. The impacts they could have on animals are also understudied, but toxins
can wreak havoc in a food chain through bioaccumulation (BBC). Monitoring
pollution is really important for growing urban-wild interfaces and while a
single home might not pollute that much or emit anything that dangerous,
development can happen quickly and it does not take long for pollution to get
out of control.
Being from the Bay Area, one place I have been thinking about
during this module is Lake Tahoe. A destination location for vacation homes due
to its pristine lake and proximity to ski mountains, I was curious how development
has been impacting nature in that area. Lake Tahoe has actually had a strong history
of pro-environmental movements and awareness, with the prominent example being
the grassroots organization Keep Tahoe Blue forming in 1957. One interesting
thing I read about is that Lake Tahoe has implemented ‘Urban intermix parcels’
into some areas, which are parcels acquired for the purpose of maintaining forest
spaces. In the figure below, the green/blue parcels are owned by organizations
like the National Forest and other agencies, and are maintained as forested
areas. The Black dots represent developed parcels.
The figure below shows the same neighborhood, but without
these urban intermix parcels.
While it is not perfect, the first neighborhood design is
definitely preferable to the second. I don’t see this country implementing any substantial
laws that prohibit people from building homes where they want to, so the
increase in wild-urban interfaces will continue to increase. Mitigation
strategies like this will help preserve some areas of natural habitat and will have
environmental benefits like limiting pollution from impervious surface runoff.
One major issue with this that relates back to course content from this week is
that it creates a lot of individual patches that probably aren’t great habitats
for animals, especially those that are sensitive to disturbance. A patch of
forest between two residential homes will not have the same ecological success
as a forest patch surrounded by other forest. A better solution might be to
create larger patches of non-developed areas that are more connected.
In my opinion, wild-urban interfaces are not inherently bad.
Having people out in nature is a positive for society and I hope that more
people are able to spend time outdoors in some capacities. Moderation and
making a conscious effort to mitigate impacts of development are the name of
the game. A perfect happy medium likely does not exist because human activity is basically synonymous with disruption, but we can still work to get as close as possible to a happy medium where humans and natural habitats can coexist without severe environmental degradation. Rapid, mindless development that we have seen in the past is a recipe
for destruction of our remaining natural spaces. I have hope that we learn from
our past behavior and take better care to preserve nature in future
development. It is not simple, but a wild-urban interface can exist that does
not completely destroy nature.
Sources:
Brazil's
Amazon deforestation climbed 22% in a year : NPR
Images:
Lake
Tahoe Basin Mgt Unit- Resource Management (usda.gov)
I think what is also important is that what we considered "wild" was in fact heavily manipulated by native people for thousands of years. Granted, the level of ecological destruction and fragmentation is incomparable, to today's issues brought on by European colonization, but there was always human influence on the land.
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