Connecting Past and Present
March 29, 2025 By: Agambir Bandesha
The first piece of recent media comes from the National Park Service and ties into the unit 3 topic of conservation. At the national level, environmental historians have identified three major historic strands of conservation thinking and action that have provided historic foundations for the modern environmental movement. These are natural resource management, preservationist conservation, and wildlife habitat protection. Issues of increasing concern in the 20th century include suburbanization, fragmentation of wild areas through road building, and patterns of development called sprawl. Protected open space has become an important component in community and regional planning initiatives with a wide array of benefits. The contemporary greenway movement is one example. Greenways create linear linkages between open spaces, and provide a combination of recreational, ecological, and cultural amenities. Watershed associations, local and regional land trusts, and local conservation commissions continue to work to protect scenic, recreational or ecological resources, often in partnership with other organizations and with state and federal agencies (Chapman, 2020).
The second piece of media comes from AP News and is related to the unit 3 topic of urbanization. In Detroit, urbanization is causing increased exposure to wildlife in urban environments. As we’re changing the habitats of coyotes, foxes, raccoons and skunks, we’re also expanding the footprint of urbanization. Climate change is coming and we are facing an equally important biodiversity crisis. Detroit’s sprawling metro area illustrates how human actions can boost rewilding, intentionally or not. Hundreds of thousands of houses and other structures were abandoned as the city’s population fell more than 60% since peaking at 1.8 million in the 1950s. Many were razed, leaving vacant tracts that plants and animals have occupied. Nonprofit groups have planted trees, community gardens and pollinator-friendly shrubs. Conservation efforts have been successful due to an organic approach, as things got better environmentally native species have come back. Urban rewilding can encourage natural processes that serve people and wildlife by increasing tree cover to ease summer heat, storing carbon and hosting more animals (Flesher, 2022).
References:
Chapman, A. (2020, July 7). American Conservation in the Twentieth Century (U.S. National Park Service). Www.nps.gov. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/american-conservation-in-the-twentieth-century.htm
Flesher, J. (2022, December 7). Extinctions, shrinking habitat spur “rewilding” in cities. AP NEWS. https://apnews.com/article/science-detroit-animals-wildlife-coyotes-963ec92dd29e74f1fad6c439e6ac348f