Subdivisions and American Agriculture
Across Wyoming and the West, you can see miles and miles of undeveloped land. However, in the next 100 years will that be true? This once-frontier land has had massive growths in population. For retired people, the West and Midwest are becoming more attractive due to the cheap land that is less populated. Subdivisions are moving farther and farther out into the country. From 1990 to 1995, the counties in the Rocky Mountain region increased three times faster than the rest of the United States (Theobald, Miller, and Hobbs 26). Due to this increase, other areas in the environment have been negatively affected. Numerous problems have surfaced as a result of 5 acre plots. Wildlife habitats have been disturbed through construction. In conjunction with the disturbance of wildlife, plant population and landscape have also been removed and disturbed. The recent building increases have also sparked arguments over water rights and ground water.
From “Ranching the View: Subdivisions versus Agriculture,” the authors suggest subdivisions can have profound impacts on rural areas. This is primarily due to the organization of the subdivisions to gain the most housing sites possible, the subdivisions have been arranged into small plots. The houses then take up a large amount of acreage and are compacted. However, separately each individual plot is around 5 acres. And this is especially relevant if the subdivisions are located near protected areas. With an increase in human population more housing is needed. Valuable farmland, range land, and grassland have been constructed into subdivisions. Besides the subdivision layout problem, subdivisions also bring roads, fences, wells, lawns, and buildings. Ano...
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Throughout the nineteenth century, Americans advanced westward at an unparalleled pace. Motivated by greed, these pioneers plundered through the previously plush territory, believing the nation’s resources to be inexhaustible and failing to contemplate possible consequences. In particular, anxious lumbermen and ranchers rapaciously ravaged the land in pursuit of instant profits. Fortunately, a few prudent people recognized the need for protective legislation. This nascent environmentalist movement was officially recognized when the federal government claimed responsibility over the preservation of the nation’s natural resources in 1877, with the passage of the Desert Land Act. Though this legislation was insignificant in itself, its creation
Hasse, John & Lathrop, Richard. "New Jersey Landscape Change Research" Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis. http://www.crssa.rutgers.edu/projects/lc
It all started back in 1989 when Home Savings of America announced to build a giant new community consisting of 3,050 homes, two schools, two hotels, two golf courses and 400,000 square feet of commercial and industrial areas on the 5,400-acre Ahmanson Ranch located at the eastern end of Ventura county, adjacent to Los Angeles County. Even though the Ahmanson Ranch has been owned by Home Savings of America since 1963, the nature remained undisturbed all these past years. The ranch has become one of the important habitats for barely surviving native organisms including threatened or endangered species. For this and other important reasons, an organization, Friends of Ahmanson Ranch, was formed to stop the development with the support from other environmental organizations, local legislatures, politicians and public. Almost seven years have passed since the beginning of this issue, but the conflict still remain unsolved. What is interesting about this issue is the diversity in the reason which the Friends of Ahmanson Ranch claims for protecting the Ahmanson Ranch from development. They point out a variety of reason, and they are not necessarily environmental opinion.
thought about going to the meat department of your local grocery store and there is no meat, but
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The Western forests are drastically different from what they were like before the European settlement. In pre-European time, the forests were open and park-like with only 25-35 trees per acre surrounded by areas of open grasslands. One could easily ride a horse through the spacious forest. This, however, is not possible in today's forests. Today, for example the Ponderosa pine forests, have over 500 trees per acre, creating thick dense areas of trees, brush, and bushes (President Bush, 4). The pre-European forests were subject to frequent low inte...
Farmers everywhere in the United States during the late nineteenth century had valid reasons to complaint against the economy because the farmers were constantly being taken advantage of by the railroad companies and banks. All farmers faced similar problems and for one thing, farmers were starting to become a minority within the American society. In the late nineteenth century, industrialization was in the spotlight creating big businesses and capitals. The success of industrialization put agriculture and farmers on the down low, allowing the corporations to overtake the farmers. Since the government itself; such as the Republican Party was also pro-business during this time, they could have cared less about the farmers.
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A table was constructed to highlight the focus of each study by comparing habitat, geographic location, species, method used to assess effectiveness and the outcome of the study. Economic costs and community involvement are also considered as Wilson highlighted the challenge of creating “socially accepted corridors that allow people to coexist with nature” (Hiss, 2014).
It is no secret that people need three things to survive: food, water, and air. All three of the basic necessities of life are benefitted by the rural lands of Texas. In 2014, rural lands formed 83 percent of Texas’ land mass, meaning a large percentage of the land is allocated for working lands or forests. Although 2014 was only a few years ago, there has been a long- term declining trend of rural lands in our state. From 1997 to 2012, Texas lost over 1 million acres of rural land (Vanetta & Satjia, 2014).With the advancement of technology and growing suburbanization, this number will continue to grow.
Habitat loss causes loss of biodiversity, which adversely affects the health and economy of human life. We as humans need to take more measures to preserve Earth’s habitats and biodiversity.... ... middle of paper ... ... WORKS CITED Bennett, Jeff. A.
First and foremost, wildlife conservation, as defined above, intends to preserve the habitats of animal species; therefore, wildlife conservation has been used to save those habitats and in turn has helped save many endangered species. Agricultural expansion, industrial development and urban sprawl are all the main roots of habitat destruction (Habitat Conservation 101, 2013). As the world population grows, more land is needed for farming; more forest is cleared for road construction. Moreover, some species are also faced with habitat degradation, which is caused by pollution from agricultural pesticide and so one. This leads to severe damages to the natural habitat; as a result, animals are also threatened. However, great effort has been put so that all forms of threats to wildlife and its habitat can be cut off. One of the solutions to habitat loss which was defined by The World Conservation Union is to set aside 12 percent of the world’s land ...