Dear HCN,
I read with interest
and growing dismay your recent article by Ed Marston, “Restoring
the West, goat by goat” (HCN, 6/24/02: Restoring the West, goat by
goat). The foreign invader that is actually sucking our landscape
dry is Western civilization.
Tamarisk is a
rugged survivor, living on land where the native species have
already been killed or destroyed. It has been scapegoated for
problems that actually stem from the most destructive exotic of
all, our culture.
I read the same day that
Intel, centered in Albuquerque, is drawing 4 million gallons of
water a day from the Rio Grande aquifer. The amount of water one
tamarisk “sucks” from the ground (thereby robbing our hot tubs,
toilets, swimming pools, golf courses and manufacturing processes)
is debatable, but the figure of 200 to 300 gallons per day is
ridiculous.
The reason that cottonwoods and
willows do not line our streams at present is not because they were
shouldered out by the evil Asian tamarisk, but often because they
were bulldozed or axed as “water thieves.”
I
have nothing against goats, and I applaud Ms. Barclay for refusing
the generous bulldozing offer of the New Mexico Game and Fish
agency. People of good will focus on an enemy they can fight,
thereby giving them the satisfaction of activity and the illusion
of effectiveness. However, nature is never the enemy. We are
nature, and the sooner we accept that fact, the better our chances
for survival as a species will become.
Laura
Weisberg
Cedar Crest, New Mexico
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Nature is never the enemy.
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