To the Editor:
I offer this in relation to the current 40B / 40R proposals concerning the land across Rte. 128.
David Carroll wrote this in the Swampwalker’s Journal, casting "a despairing eye over his shoulder at his fellow man."
It is beyond ironic that we can all but never say no to the housing project, shopping mall, hotel, highway, golf course, or expansion of agriculture, but that after the habitat has been fragmented, funds, agencies, and groups can be drummed up to cage the final nests, relocate buckets of eggs, fast-forward hatchling turtles in aquariums, and dump them into encircled habitat remnants. The most direct, simple, and viable solution, to simply leave the place alone, has no place in the debate. It is rarely a matter of whether or not a project is to go forward but how it is to go forward, with various token, ecologically meaningless compromises and mitigations, together with management plans for the lost landscape. We look to feel good when we should feel ashamed. “Wildlife Management” is a sorry contradiction in terms. There already is a management plan. It has been unfolding since life's appearance on earth.
Kitty (Clare) Parsons Weaver
Manchester
