Opinion: Humans – the most invasive species

A couple of weeks ago, having received both my COVID vaccinations, I decided to risk a plane flight and went to San Diego. After flying across the mostly unoccupied areas of western Colorado, Utah, and eastern Nevada, we went over Las Vegas. I was looking down at the tall buildings in the casino area, and had the thought that they looked like a huge termite hill surrounded by a sprawl of peripheral sub-nests. It was as if a new species of giant insect had invaded the area.

As we approached the coast of California, the same sensation came over me, like I was seeing another form of this species’ home, with a lower but more clearly rectangular pattern. Anyway, I think you get the idea – what I was imagining seeing was the takeover of the natural environment by a highly successful species that had transformed huge swaths of land into a form that works for it.

These experiences did not have any feeling of negative judgment. It was more one of those epiphanies that we all get sometimes, when a completely new perspective emerges totally by surprise. So I experimented looking at my surroundings to see what this species had modified versus what was there before. And, of course, most of what I saw – streets, buildings, lawns, etc. – were the work of this species. In vast areas, there is pretty much nothing left of what was there before, other than where there are ocean, mountains, or deserts.

While on this trip, I was reading “No Beast So Fierce”, by Dane Huckelbridge. It’s an account of the hunt for the Champawat tiger, which killed over 400 people, and an in-depth look at the environment that led to the emergence of man-eating tigers in India and Nepal. The story of this hunt was originally told in “Man-eaters of Kumaon”, a book by the famous hunter, Jim Corbett. I read this as a kid, and have read multiple times since. Corbett, in his later years, helped create reserves for tigers, a valuable attempt to correct for the damage done by humans.

One of the topics I found most interesting in Huckelbridge’s book was a discussion of British colonialism’s disruption of the ecology of the Terai, the moist lowlands below the foothills of the Himalayas. The indigenous people there, the Tharu, lived in disbursed settlements, and because of their relatively few numbers, were in balance with the vast undisturbed jungles and wetlands, as well as with the tigers.

As large-scale farming took over and the natural environment was disturbed, the tigers were displaced. And some of them turned to humans, which they had formerly avoided, as their food source. Of course there were other factors, such as injuries to the tigers, some of which were caused by hunting, a popular upper class British recreation. I’m not trying to cover all the details in this fascinating book, but just to point out that humans have lived in balance with a largely undisturbed environment.

Since then, I’ve been trying to maintain the perspective I discovered – looking at my immediate environment to see what is natural versus what has been taken over by humans. For example, driving back from DIA, there is virtually nothing visible that has not been disturbed, other than the mountains. We humans have invaded it all, so to speak. We are the most highly successful of the invasive species. Again, I’m not passing judgment, just observing.

It’s well worth looking a graph of human population over the millennia (e.g. https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth). Human population grew very slowly from 10,000 BCE until around the 1500’s. Since then it has increased by almost 16 times from around half a billion to close to 8 billion (and multiplied seven-fold just since 1800), creating massive scarcity.

As a result we spend much of our time sorting out the effects of our invasion. We spend an inordinate amount of energy and lives dealing with and fighting over scarce resources, like land and water, what it produces, and who gets control of ever diminishing per capita benefits.

But we also have built into us a desire for the natural, undisturbed environment. We have created a National Parks system to preserve some of the most spectacular parts. We want to live where there are green things growing, not just pavement, and where we have views and access to the hills, forests, and meadows, not just to buildings and concrete. And we struggle with each other over who gets the shrinking remaining bits.

Popular Posts

Opinion: Opportunity for the new Boulder City Council

Congratulations to the four new Boulder City Council members! You have a great opportunity to make a contribution to the Boulder community, but it will take a lot of work to do it responsibly; the learning curve is pretty steep. Here are some suggestions for you (and other Council members) that may help improve the process. Read the Charter. It is the document that governs how you, city staff, and board and commission members operate, and how you relate to each other. It defines the limits of your and their power, and can only be amended by a citizen vote. You don’t have to remember every word. But just knowing what’s there makes you more self reliant and less at the mercy of others’ opinions. For example, relative to the recent meeting discussion over diversity, the council does  not  have the power to suspend the rules as to when the mayor is selected. Charter Section 14 specifies, “The mayor shall be chosen by the council from its own number, upon the convening of t...
Read more

Opinion: Is this the end of Boulder as we know it?

Much of what has made Boulder such a great place to live has been the work of people half a century ago. These people recognized what I call the “ ratchet effect ,” that bad development decisions cannot be undone, so policies needed to be put in place to prevent, or at least limit, the damage that a growth-at-all-costs majority of the council could do. These policies include charter limits, like the Blue Line that prevents city water for development from being supplied above a certain altitude, the 55-foot height limit that has prevented high-rise development from cutting off our views, and the open space referendum process that allows a 60-day window for citizens to challenge disposals of open space. Other constraints include the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan’s requirement for Planning Board agreement for land-use changes in the area inside the city limits (Area I) and additional agreement by the county commissioners and county Planning Commission for urban development further...
Read more

Policy Documents: Impact Fees and Adequate Public Facilities

I am writing this to correct some of the apparent inaccuracies put forward at the 10/14 CC/PB study session about charging growth for its costs. I do not claim to be an expert in the field, but I have studied it long enough and consulted with enough supposed experts and legal types to understand most of the basics. In addition, I have found that the experts don’t necessarily know everything and won’t necessarily put forward the most appropriate solutions. The fundamental rule, both legal and equitable, is that growth should pay to address its impacts so as to maintain existing levels of service (LOS) for existing residents and businesses. But growth cannot be required to improve levels of service. LOS is measured in all sorts of ways depending on the facility and/or service being measured. For transportation, it could be total VMT, travel time, intersection waits, access to transit, etc. For schools, it might be square footage per pupil, etc. For water, it could be water righ...
Read more