Laura Erickson's For the Birds

Back in the 80s, when I was serving as President and then conservation chair of Duluth Audubon, one of the issues that our organization spent years working on was protecting the pine trees at Park Point. Park Point is unique in several ways, being the longest freshwater natural sandbar in the world. Its location on a lake as wild and potentially ferocious as Lake Superior makes Park Point uniquely vulnerable to erosion. And its location at the western tip of the Great Lakes also makes it one of the heaviest inland migration pathways in North America. But Park Point also happens to be the site of Sky Harbor Airport.

It’s too late to question the logic of building an airport in such an important natural area And since there is an airport there, protecting airplanes from bird strikes and allowing an unobstructed view for a large enough area to allow safe takeoffs and landings are critical for human safety. But year after year, decade after decade, the issues between the airport and the people who use the public land surrounding the airport are never fully resolved. Just how much land outside of the runway is the airport allowed to denude of old pine growth? How far from the runway should the airport be allowed to build its fences to keep hikers and birders out?

As planes get bigger and more powerful, the airport wants an ever increasing buffer zone. It’s a constant that the trees they take out are never enough, from their point of view, and it’s a constant that the trees they take out are always too many, from the point of view of birders and environmentalists. And it’s a constant that once the airport cuts down a stand of trees, they won’t let them grow back.

The general public, which always tries to find a happy medium and doesn’t pay a lot of attention to this particular small local issue, won’t get up in arms no matter which side wins, or no matter what compromise may be struck. So one by one the trees disappear, and one by one environmentalists adjust to the loss and move on to the next battle.

And there always IS another battle. Duluth International Airport is certainly big enough to accommodate all the air traffic in Duluth, but naturally the people associated with Sky Harbor Airport want all the business they can get. And they see the issue strictly in the peculiarly soulless way that businesses in the modem world look at things. Short term capital gain is everything. Trees stand in the way of progress and growth. Environmentalists are nothing but obstructionists who care more about birds or trees than they do about human beings.

Sadly, environmentalists aren’t usually very good about articulating how deeply their concern for trees and birds is rooted in their love for human beings. How the quality of life for our children and grandchildren will depend far more on having a rich supply of trees and birds and clean air and clean water than it will on the bottom line for Sky Harbor Airport. We need jobs in Duluth. But a nature center at Park Point could easily have employed as many people as the airport does, and increased air traffic at Duluth International might have relocated jobs there.

Of course now the airport is a given. But it has been operating safely for decades with the old growth pine trees where they are right now. Why are things different in 2002 than they were in 1982, that they must enlarge their turf yet again at the expense of beloved public land?

This is just one little local issue. In the city of Duluth right now there is another little local issue in the matter of the Spirit Mountain Golf Course. Again, the developers selected a unique natural site–one of the few places left with old hardwoods, and the unique birds and flowers that live in that special habitat, when there are plenty of other spots in the city that could actually be improved by building a golf course. Although the developers frame the question as an either/or situation, with those obstructionist environmentalists trying to keep golfers from their sport, it’s really a question of finding the best place to build a golf course, taking into account a wide range of human values besides the money the developers want to make at that particular site.

People do, indeed, need money, airplanes, and recreation, including golf. But we also need things that money can ‘ t buy. Little by little, the natural world is suffering death by a thousand cuts. No one local environmental issue is important enough to concern the general public. No one local environmental issue is going to cause mass extinctions. But one by one, these little local environmental issues are inching us closer and closer to the edge of irreparable environmental destruction. The question is, do we join together and say “Stop!” before we reach that edge? Or do we wait to say “Stop!” until we’re plummeting into the abyss?