Here at Backyard & Beyond, we get excited by a woodchuck, some muskrats, and a dozen cattails sprouting from a roof. The return of seals to New York Harbor puts a spring in our step. Yes, we celebrate, but that’s because we’re starving, and starvation, the best of all sauces, makes every scrap at the table a feast. (The very well-received New York Times Op-Art by Anzelone and Hollender, bittersweetly depicting the city’s lost wildflowers, is more proof of that.)
“When baselines shift, each new generation subconsciously views as “natural” the environment they remember from their youth. They compare subsequent changes against this “baseline,” masking the true extent of environmental degradation, even to the degree that they no longer believe anecdotes of past abundance or size of species. […] The idea of shifting baselines is familiar to us all and does not relate only to the natural environment. It helps explain why people tolerate the slow crawl of urban sprawl and loss of green space, why they fail to notice increasing noise pollution and why they put with longer and longer commutes to work. Changes creep up on us, unnoticed by younger generations who have never known anything different. The young write off old people who rue the losses they have witnessed as either backward or dewy-eyed romantics. But what about the losses that none of us alive today have seen? […]The greater part of the decline of many exploited populations happened before the birth of anyone living today.” ~ Collum Roberts, The Unnatural History of the Sea
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