When you're a child you remember playing in a certain forest or hanging out at a certain river, lake, or an ocean area. The memories are so vivid that you feel that moment will never change – it will be there forever. The connection of physical with emotional is so great that you feel a massive sense of loss when you return to see change of your favorite spot – view – pathway, etc that you take offense and a part of you is scarred. Take this thought – this feeling that you can agree with and think about how development affects not only our connection to our childhood but to the animals that have been displaced too. I once had a spot that as a child we would always know where to go depending on the season. The season that I remember most would be spring when new beginnings occur and new life starts to surface in many forms. There was an amazing forested area near our home – just a hop, skip and jump away. For some reason us kids would be drawn to this spot and have to walk through this forest to reach a clay ground that held the spring run-off to become a nursery for the local toads. So you may be able to guess it but yes there would be tadpoles everywhere! It was great to see the different stages in one large pooled area from very young to ones that had the legs and tail. We did this every year until – yes you guessed it again developers came in and created a large parking lot and strip mall. I still think of this memory and realized that no children will know this in the future and I always wonder what exactly happened to the toads. You can take a globe of the planet earth and spin it fast until it stops or you press your finger on to it. Wherever your finger presses to stop the globe I can almost bet you that it has had some impact of development of a small to a grand scale! Development sounds like a simple word – and it is – however it creates such heartache to human and non-human sentient beings and even further to the alterations of the environment. From a city you can see so much change with rich farm lands being filled over with concrete and asphalt to subdivisions popping up on any and all open land displacing many species from deers, foxes, groundhogs, to birds and squirrels for examples. Even the mining/oil industry can come into a rural area and develop so much that changes are extreme and sadly the remnants left behind are unnatural and continue to kill for decades forward. My research has shown me that development has just gone out of control! As our global population continues to increase – the land that is unused by humans and is housing for nonhuman animals is being taken at great leaps. The industry doesn't see these areas as an environment of its own but as money and profits. These animals cannot speak and demand their homes to be saved and the people in these areas do not know – do not care – or are too poor to fight! With development brings people with unlimited amounts of money to make sure they get what they want. The seven species of turtles in the ocean come to mind when thinking of development. They are a nonhuman animal and all species are endangered – development is one of the man-made issues on this subject. Turtles are birthed on beaches throughout the world and are slow to sexual maturity where they return to the exact same beach they made their first steps 25 years earlier. This is when the “Development” problem comes into play. Many different types of development projects can change the beach area drastically. The shoreline could have been developed to create a foundation to build beachfront stores – restaurants – or condos. Also it's these buildings that create a second issue for the turtles – the lights. Turtles are guided to the beach of their birth by instinct but will not come on to the beach if its too bright for one example – and the hatchlings after digging themselves out of the sand follow the moonlight to the ocean unless over powering lighting lures them the wrong way. This wrong way can be detrimental to the survival of these hatchlings as they end up crossing busy roads and allowing them to be food to surrounding birds, crabs, etc. Developers have disconnected their thinking to the survival of the nonhuman habitat within their plans and money becomes the bottom line. Development created decades ago was something people strived for to remove poverty, lessen unemployment, and improve visuals. Now I see development as something that can bring out some frustration and anger within myself! Every time I see a new sub-division or condo being put up I just think “Why?” and do we “Really need it?” I can hear people getting mad at the Canadian Geese landing in parking lots of new businesses but they have been coming to that area for decades since it used to be a marshland for hundreds of species that are now gone. When do we stop? Where do we go when all the land is developed and the species that lived there once in a balanced ecosystem are displaced or extinct? I guess my aim within my lifetime is to connect with like-minded people and start to develop our own foundation to create a new direction and stop the manufactured changes. Allowing the habitats left to thrive to their fullest before we tip the scales of no return. ** Bob Timmons is a Canada-based animal activist and proponent of animal rights throughout the world. BM
