I know a lot of you feel strongly one way or the other about the Salt Creek tiger beetle and efforts to protect it from extinction. I, on the other hand, still haven't figured out what I want to do about the little critters. But that doesn't matter any more. Now there is a plan, and it involves setting aside 1,933 acres as "designated critical habitat".
Now I don't know a whole lot about saving endangered species, but an amount of land just shy of 2,000 acres doesn't sound like a whole lot to me. Considering alternative plans called for setting aside as much as 36,000 acres, the selected plan feels like little more than a way for those involved to be able to say "Well, we did something". Settling for doing "something" is the worst of all possible solutions. More often than not you wind up with the economic hit of action, but the environmental cost of inaction. Few will care in the long run. Both the economic and environmental impacts are minuscule.
It will be interesting to see how the tiger beetles fared this winter. At last count there were fewer than 300 adults remaining. That's pretty much zero for an insect species. There's a nonzero chance we'll find out this summer that this decision is moot.
Comments
See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.
No comments yet! Be the first.
Share your thoughts with the community.
Commenting is no longer permitted on this post.