The more land is consumed and exploited, the greater the profit will
be gained from exploiting any land not YET consumed. If you bought
a parcel of land for a little park near the San Francisco Bay in 1865,
the value of that land will have skyrocketed by 1994. Who could resist
the profit in selling it off, little by little, when things got tight?
What's left in the world now are largely the flood-plains, the deserts,
the tundra, the cliffs, the "impenetratable" jungles which were thought
useless. Now all the good seats are taken, but people are still looking
for places to sit.
> life. If it were possible to make these habitats as financially valuable
> to all the people as they're ecologically valuable there would be no
> problem. In the USA it is a matter of convincing people that bog
> front property is as desirable as any other lake front or beach
> front. Once the profit is there the developers will start bending
> over backwards to fake it and charge even more for the real
> thing. In south east Asia if the people were taught to harvest
> propagating material in a sustainable manner from all the desirable
> species not just the Cp. bring them under cultivation and distribute
> them to a global market there would be $ for the people and there
> government and a reason to protect the habitat. CITES needs to
Unfortunately, once a few good clones are established in cultivation, it
will be easier to propagate from cultivated plants. The wild plants
will have lost thier value as "stock plants".
> Hungry people NEED to eat and feed their families. they are every where
> and cannot be ignored or told not to do this or that unless your ready
> to provide them with a better alternative.
I think the burden is on us "well-off" persons to try to convince people
who ARE hungry that the last thing they NEED is to create a family of
increasingly dependent and hungry children in their shrinking country.
Unfortunately the social ramifications of this need a lot of work.
Sorry to serve up such a downer!
Michael