SIERRA CLUB

THE RACE FOR SPACE

Rex Burress

With the human colonization of most earthly living spaces, there have been conflicts between natural conditions and the activities of mankind.

We have seen the contentious issue of space-use in the Oroville Cemetery dispute over established trees and P.G.E. gas lines. Trees are valuable to our existence and wildlife's needs wherever they grow, and the majestic sycamores bordering the cemetery were/are additionally prized as a historical living presence of beauty in the link with graves of the dead.

The Pacific Gas and Electric Company contended that their space for the pipeline was being endangered by the trees' roots, although that condition wasn't evidently considered when the pipes were placed. Such land-use conflicts have raged since the expansion of the human race began.

Not only did people spread in Europe and succeed in chopping down most of their forests, but the event of the Pilgrims reaching American shores started a slow decline of the eastern hardwood forests. In the name of agriculture, deemed necessary for the survival of mankind, the woodlands were cut and stumps removed to make space for corn and other crops. Trees were thought of as an obstacle to progress, and the trend was continued right on to the West as settlers chopped down trees along the river riparian zones to make cabins and boats, gather firewood, and feed their livestock the fibrous inner bark of cottonwoods.

The changes weren't noticed much at first, but as human populations expanded, the land-clearing zest was extended right into California--right into the redwoods--right into the oak woodlands that covered much of the Sacramento Valley. It was said that prior to the agricultural takeover, valley oaks were so prevalent that Spanish explorers in 1820 traveled in full armor from the Sacramento River to the Chico region and were in the shade of oak groves all the way!

In present times, you speed across the valley on paved roadways and see spacious farmland stretching to the horizon with maybe a few isolated oaks, but the norm is one continuous field free for the big soil machines to make an uninterrupted run from one end to the other. When some old monarch oak dies, it is not replaced, and it took up to 400 years to reach its upper status.

Replanting is central to maintaining our wild arboretums, but attaining that space in the farmlands is nigh impossible. Consequently for natural habitats, croplands, deemed a necessity to feed a populous world, has replaced woodlands and flower fields in many places. Even if vital for food and livelihoods, it is regrettable to lose space for wild-lands...at least to those who in the love of nature hold communion with her various forms. The fracking issue intrudes on the land, too, and maybe decreases the ecological quality of habitats. Plus hikers need space to hike!

We occasionally get a glimpse of Californian times as it was before the invading horde of Spanish herds, gold-miner destruction, and real estate claims came into being. Except for parks and refuges, nearly every inch of the state...of the nation...is now in private hands and exploitable.

When John Muir came to California in the spring of 1868, he crossed the valley from San Francisco to Yosemite on foot, and he said you couldn't take a step across the entire distance without striking a flower. That of course, was before fences parceled off the land and before the plow opened Mother Earth to full exposure and agriculture...and before the trees were slaughtered.

We can only lament about land over-run in the past and protect what little wild space is left. Are we preserving enough space on earth for trees to grow and animals to live? Bears, lions, elephants?

Once there was a five-mile swath of giant redwoods in the Oakland, CA hills--some of the ancients being 32-feet in diameter--and within a decade in the late 1800's, every towering relic was cut. Thus the mountain Sequoias would have been totally cut if Muir and other defenders of wildlands had not helped to establish park protection. “Habitat is home. Give them a home and they will come.”

“Going to the woods is going home.” --John Muir