Effort to sustain endangered tarplant launches in Santa Cruz – Santa Cruz Sentinel: The city receives $22,000 grant from US Fish and Wildlife, that will fund 1,000 tarplant plantings at Arana Gulch.
This sounds like a good idea, a positive approach to an endangered species.
But is it?
Is an endangered species in a zoo the same as an endangered species on its own in the wild?
Is a tarplant zoo ecosystem the same as a natural, wild ecosystem?
Is a tarplant that has been planted in a greenhouse, germinated and transplanted outdoors the same as a tarplant that grows naturally in its own environment?
Different is not the same.
Human controlled plants are not the same as naturally growing plants.
This project to grow tarplants at Arana Gulch originated as a requirement for the construction of the Broadway-Brommer bicycle-pedestrian project, the paved bike road that destroyed more than an acre of rare federally threatened and state endangered tarplant habitat.
The propaganda disseminated by the City of Santa Cruz and its Parks, Open Space and Recreation Department claimed that building the paved bike road through critical habitat was the only way to save the tarplant. In government speak: “We must destroy the village to save the village.”
Follow the path of destruction at Friends of Arana Gulch.
So that’s what they did. Now the City of Santa Cruz has the obligation to “save the tarplant,” even if that means growing plants in a greenhouse and planting them at Arana Gulch. At great expense. With no guarantee that the plants will survive and reproduce on their own.
Humans think that we can control everything, from climate to disease to species threatened and endangered by human growth and industrial development.
This turns out not to be the case.
The only way to insure the survival of species other than Homo sapiens is stop destroying their natural habitats!
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