In years past we didn’t think about it.
Nature. Animals, plants, insects, fish — we didn’t consider our impact on these things.
We built things because we could. We had figured out the engineering, and it was almost a matter of meeting a challenge to prove that we could bring them to fruition.
So we built causeways and bridges, skyscrapers and megaships. We redirected rivers and diked off wetlands or filled them in entirely so we could build houses, shops and parks. After all, a marsh was just unusable land, right? We dredged lake and ocean foreshores for harbours and more. Nature and everything in it were there for us to conquer, to use for our ‘development’.
No thought was given to the functions these things were already serving and the mind-boggling interconnections that we are only now beginning to understand, from the smallest fish to the soaring eagle to the elk. They all depend upon each other, and we upon them.
And while nature is astoundingly adaptable, we have managed to destroy more than we will probably ever know in our ignorance and arrogance.
We are starting to wake up. We are starting to understand that plants are not separate from animals, which are not separate from birds. And we are not separate either.
Some still look to the past and wonder why we cannot continue. Why we cannot, say, just build a gazebo in a riparian zone. Who’s it going to hurt?
It’s the same attitude that has people abandoning their derelict boats in bays and coves, leaving them to sink to the lake bottom with no regard for the pollution it causes and the potential harm.
This is not to say that we should stop all building and all development and not enjoy our shorelines and properties.
But we must do our due diligence first, and make sure our shed or fence or earth moving isn’t going to throw an unexpected spanner in the works.
Riparian regulations are there for a reason. In many cases we’re only starting to undo some of the damage we’ve caused in the past. Everything we do has consequences for the world around us. We must consider what those consequences will be and weigh our choices. We can’t just ignore them like we used to. Our eyes are open now. We can’t pretend they’re still closed.