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The Largest Human Consequence
I think it’s extremely important that we be able to put a human face on environmentalism – the public at large cannot be expected to care about environmental issues unless they’re framed so people understand that bad environmental policy hurts humans. I’ve become pretty well-versed in the human consequences of problems from climate change to biological invasion to the loss of global biodiversity. This, however, is a consequence that had never before occurred to me:
[Marlene] Braun had come to the Carrizo Plain three years earlier, after the U.S. Bureau of Land Management placed her in charge of the new national monument — 250,000 acres of native grasses and Native American sacred sites, embraced by low mountains, traversed by the San Andreas Fault and home to more threatened and endangered animals than any other spot in California.
About 120 miles northwest of Los Angeles, Carrizo Plain National Monument is largely unknown to the outside world. But in Braun's short tenure as monument manager, the plain had become a battleground between conservationists and the Bush administration over the fate of Western public lands.
[...]
Braun's suicide is the latest chapter in a century of conflict between cowboys and conservationists in the drought-plagued Southwest, where livestock compete with wildlife for sparse vegetation, and hungry animals can turn grassland into desert.
The full article is a long read, but one that manages to be fascinating, terrible, and beautiful at the same time. It’s a fitting eulogy for an all-too dedicated environmentalist if ever I read one.
