Friends of Celery Bog

focb April 23rd, 2008

[NOTE: Les Booth comment, posted to Russell Allison's Letter to the Editor in the Lafayette, IN Journal & Courier for Wednesday 19 March 2008 ]

Celery Bog Losses - Sadly Uncessary

Russell Allison has raised a very important set of points. The recent destruction wrought against the Celery Bog and the community has revealed several losers. Saddest of all, it need not have even occurred.

1) The Natural Resource Lost Valuable Habitat

Far wider ranging that just the Celery Bog proper, local (resident/pass-through) wildlife has lost valuable standing trees. Habitat that was currently being used - and would have been used due to the number of healthy living trees - for at least two more decades.

Even through the best restoration efforts possible, recovery - near a level of what was destroyed - will not be realized for at least another 10-15 years. Yes, that’s with best efforts.

The ‘recovery plan’ thus far revealed to the public, will never recover the losses as a result of the clear-cutting of the standing trees.

As Allision points out, the resident/pass-through beneficiaries of the clear-cut tree area, include an alumni of a very exclusive fraternity: rare, endangered and/or threatened wildlife; birds specifically.

Sure there are more trees on the west bank that is Celery Bog Nature Area and on those lands not owned by Purdue, but they are as much an endangered resource commodity as those who met with the chain saw’s teeth.

All of the resource combined is but a minuscule amount - far less than either what was or should be. It cannot be whittled upon recklessly and expect to remain vital for us or, vastly more important, the resident/pass-through wildlife.

For humans the Celery Bog is a source of education, rejuvenation and recreation. For the wildlife, it is essential for their existence. We can survive without it. They, however, cannot.

2) Purdue Has Lost Credibility.

With the establishment of the Celery Bog Nature Center and Preserve, the recognition of the Celery Bog as a valued education, recreation and preservation element/tool-set in our community, as adjacent landowners Purdue accepted the responsibility to thoughtfully and respectfully provide, and care, for their part in the Celery Bog’s safety and sustainability.

We now are left to wonder. Is the use of powerful proactive words and phrases, such as …

• environmental responsibility
• conservation
• preservation
• sustainability
• green awareness
• environmental integrity
• synergistic achievement

… mere ‘buzzwords’ to lull us into a sense of false cooperation?

How can Purdue balance the action taken against the Celery Bog with the
creed of their own Center for the Environment:

“protecting environmental integrity is essential to prosperity and the quality of life”
Purdue Center for the Environment — http://www.purdue.edu/dp/environment/

Clear-cutting the habitat at the Celery Bog was not - in any conceivable manner - ‘protecting the environment’. That is - unless one defines ‘environmental integrity’ with a dictionary biased against nature and natural order. Anyone who makes regular use of the Celery Bog’s adjacent paths, can tell you the ‘quality of life’ - the visual appearance, loss of aesthetic; visual barrier between natural cover and manicured cover; and sound barrier between human and mechanized activity and natural sounds - has definitely been diminished, not increased.

3) The Community has lost confidence.

• Confidence in the security of its actions to preserve and protect what has become a fleeting ghost, a rapidly shrinking vestige of natural resource treasures, for current and future benefit is now in question.
• Confidence in the community leaders to take serious the need to protect the community’s interest and desire for preservation of the natural resources has been damaged.
• Confidence in the promises of powerful influences to be good neighbors and stewards are now shaky.
• Confidence in a system that continually reveals its ethic is tied more to ‘bottom line’ response than to personal and community responsibility.

It is so sad. Where a tremendous opportunity became available, a reckless sense of ego prevailed. It would have been so easy to show a solid sense of integrity and community responsibility, by securing the input from local wildlife and ecology professionals and the community-at-large. But instead, those who committed this devastating act, did so with no input but their own agenda driven egos. What could have been a uniting WIN-WIN-WIN, has instead become a total loss for all parties concerned.

And the most troubling part… it’s that the perpetrator(s), also a big looser, see themselves -somehow- as victor in a pointless confrontational engagement. In their delusion they don’t grasp the losses they initiated are the same losses they too, are condemned to endure.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.“
George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

J. Leslie Booth
O’fieldstream Journals
Friends of Celery Bog
West Lafayette

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