Dogwood Alliance

Photo is of a female box turtle hatchling who had attempted to make a very dangerous walk across a busy Asheville street just this afternoon. Unplanned timing is everything! Votes: +1

http://www.hsus.org/wildlife/a...e_day.html Votes: +0

I have previously confessed that I brake for turtles. When I see one crossing the road, I stop and help it on its way.
Last summer, I pulled over and stepped out of my truck, intent on rescuing a handsome, yellow-and-black box turtle. Instead I watched, helpless, as another truck sped by and smashed it into the pavement. Blood and organs were splattered amid a pile of crushed shell. I felt nauseated, riven by a fundamental sense of injustice at the death of a stalwart creature who had crawled through fifty years of summer heat and winter hibernation to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. I seethed with anger at the driver who hadn’t even tried to miss the plodding reptile. Once again—and intensely—I connected with the sense of loss that’s always sitting on my shoulder, ever ready to whisper Dante’s lament, “Abandon hope.”
The things I love are dying.
I don’t suppose that desolate feeling will go away. In fact, the next thirty years of my life will probably make the last thirty seem like a party, as our planet is crushed beneath wildly proliferating human numbers.
Once, I gazed out from my house at nighttime darkness; now, more than a dozen porch lamps and security lights have crept up the valley. Not long ago, I awoke to morning bird calls in the quiet breeze; now, barking dogs and machine sounds filter even into dawn.
The farm at the foot of my hill has been subdivided and subdivided again. Roads have been widened, woods have been cut, traffic has increased. Litter, smoke, horns, sirens, jets and helicopters and friendly realtors bearing beckoning signs sidle ever closer.
They tell me that my home gains in value when more houses spring up nearby. They don’t remotely comprehend that the only value that makes any sense to me is being destroyed forever.
The same week I saw the turtle killed, I received a phone call from a person upset about bears. It seems that a mother and three cubs had been getting into her garbage, and she wanted someone to remove the offending beasts. My best suggestion was to build a sturdier garbage enclosure or haul it away more frequently. Both ideas were rejected. The family doesn’t have time. They can’t afford it.
Since meat scraps are the strongest garbage lure for bears, the simplest solution would be to stop eating dead animals. But having offered that idea to folks in the past, I know it is a non-starter.
The problem is not bears—it is people moving into bear territory. This person’s land backs up to nationalforest land. Where else could you possibly take bears to give them a chance to survive? Why move to the edge of wild land and then complain about the wild? Polls suggest that most folks want to protect the environment. Do they imagine we can save the whole without saving all of the pieces?
A constant sense of loss. Reintroduced wolves are shot. Japan resumes whaling. The governor wants more highways. Hog farms poison rivers. Another oil spill. Another baby every other second. Dogwoods, spruce, hemlocks and beeches are dying. Detroit makes bigger cars that use more fuel because an “environmentalist” nation demands sport-utility vehicles—to drive more miles into more wild places, to plant more lawns to spray with more diazinon. Put the bears in a zoo: bottled wildlife watching people drinking bottled water. Let them eat cake.
I saw a green snake this summer—a first for me in the Carolinas—about sixty seconds after it was disemboweled by a car tire. Sic transit.
I try to harden my shell and get beyond the pavement that surrounds. I try to nurture hope. “See this! There is beauty here! There is life!” But the rampant machine looms large and fast, fueled by ideas and purposes that don’t include me. My very hope seems puny and slow, feeble dreams of a 46-year-old, bony bubble stranded on life’s highway—unsure whether to tuck or run.
Three days later, I saw that turtle again—just a stain on the pavement, and a few bits of shell. No one coming after will even recognize that tiny tragedy.
No one coming after will know./ Votes: +1

FYI... the Gopher Tortoise Council (GTC) is a super organization that is doing fantastic work on education and conservation efforts for the gopher tortoise species and its endangered habitat. And related to Dogwood Alliance's work, GTC is interested in information on herbicide use and how it affects wildlife in the longleaf pine ecosystem. If anyone is interested in contributing, check them out at or via myspace at Votes: +1

... to contact GTC, check their myspace page by searching "gopher tortoise council" or check their website at gophertortoisecouncil dot org ...

thank you,

tf Votes: +0