Groundbreaking set for bridge billed as world's largest wildlife crossing
abc7.com
abc7.com
Needless to say, hitting a moose at highway speeds ends poorly not just for the moose but for the occupants of the vehicle as well.
We all knew the correct pluralization, which is why using the wrong one was funny. The fact that it annoyed sticklers to proper form was just icing on the cake.
Is the bridge itself territory for any territorial animals? Is it a dangerous bottleneck, where predators have an upper hand? Etc.
Narrow passages between large habitat areas exist in nature, but they're quite rare.
We see this sort of thing a lot in our many national parks (namely terrain bottlenecks, particularly around watering holes).
You're quite right about territorial and / or predatory animals exploiting these.
What helps is to keep bush trimmed and to eliminate any dense foliage.
So long as there's clear visibility at and around said bottlenecks, it tends to reduce (but not completely eradicate) the tendency for hunts.
They look like county road crossings over the interstate but are completely overgrown with trees and bushes.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wildlife-crossings-creatu_b_1...
Sally has been on a diet for two weeks. Already, she looks visibly better. Her face is less puffy, complection has improved, etc. She feels more energetic.
"You see! I told you. Diet is not that hard. You look so much better. It's such a pity that you spent your twenties being a fat slob."
A pat on the back is productive. The above is counterproductive.
It's just at some point, we gotta question our ability and willingness to double down on narcissism. We build structures and technology that do horrible things to the environment for our own "good" or preference, and then we pat ourselves on the back when we do something about reducing the effects, usually decades later (and usually when it starts to affect us). The lesson learned is that we have got to start asking ourselves about downstream effects of our technology, rather than simply stopping once technology solves the narrow problem it was designed for.
As I mentioned, I do think it's great that these natural bridges are becoming more popular. I sincerely feel the separation we've done to animal populations every time I drive on highways and roads, especially when I see animals that have been killed by cars. The fact that some animals have been able to survive amongst destruction of their habitat is quite amazing. Obviously, many were not able to adapt due to their evolutionary path.
That said. I think there's a pseudo-principle in here someplace.
Behind that bridge are people, and work those people did. Someone fought for budgets. Someone did wildlife research. Someone overcame planning difficulties. Politicians, scientists, activists, etc.
The sentiments you expressed are negative reinforcers. If enough voices sound like yours, that leads to doing less.
I do think that it's a self defeating pattern in personal, social and public realms.
Do something good = trivialise it; shoulda done more, earlier. You sick. We suck. Negative reinforcement.
Do something bad = comfortable, instinctive negativity. Of course we did bad. We suck. All is as it should be.
It's a pattern of thought and communication that promotes and enables stagnation, and wallowing in bad places.
Taking a retrospective look could in fact be argued to be optimistic. It means we can learn from our past mistakes and do better in the future. In other words, take the idea that we have the capacity to change for the better and not the capacity to get worse. I view the "whelp, this is the best we could do" approach to be pessimistic. A retrospective isn't trivializing anything. It should be: we did something bad, we've corrected for it, don't over congratulate and act like our hands are fully clean, ask ourselves how we can prevent this in the future in other endeavors. We will never be proactive problem solvers of downstream problems created by our immediate solutions as a species if we don't address these ideas and perspectives. We'll just keep rinsing and repeating.
Do you view team retrospectives in industry as "negative reinforcers"?
> If enough voices sound like yours, that leads to doing less.
I highly disagree because you seem to continue to be misinterpreting the "voicing". It isn't about being negative. It's about being honest.
Anyway, this is gone down a diversion. Just trying to provide a perspective of reframing in that we have the capacity, at least I hope we do, to prevent the need for these scrambles in the future. For the third time, it's really great this is being done and hopefully propagates to other areas that likely desperately need them.
Edit: It should be clear, but I'm referring to we as a collective. And it's almost always more expensive and difficult to retroactively fix things. I'm saying take this good development, which it is, and proactively apply its ideas to new projects.
You’re just some person on the side shitting on people who didn’t do things in the first place without encouraging the people who are actually doing good. You’re not helpful, you’re just dumping negativity around the actual good going on.
This article, “look at this cool solar farm Sally built that made her community net negative on carbon.”
You, “not to be pessimistic, but this is just fixing shit that was done before.”
52.1347152, 8.1685640
0: 49.972706, 8.272086
> Groundbreaking set for bridge billed...
And
> Groundbreaking is set for next month...
It only made sense once I listened to the video:
> The groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for next month...
Ohhh.. "groundbreaking" is used as a noun. I would write that as "ground breaking". "Groundbreaking" is an adjective.
In the UK we have bat bridges: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bridge
> The research documented 112,678 mule deer successful passages through or over the seven crossing structures. Combined with an overall success rate of 96% of mule deer utilizing the structures, these results indicate that the project has been highly effective in accommodating mule deer movement.
I learned everything I wanted to know about this story in 20 seconds. Impressive.
Then we can leave the surface space for more important things, like natural spaces and humans.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Wallis+Annenberg+Wildlife+Cr...
Apart from the animals, the motorists, and the contractors who will build this, who else stands to gain? Someone must be expecting some huge savings or returns considering the $90 million price tag, right?
Other than that, this news gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
The politicians who ran on being "green" and want to "save" the climate. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure the rest of us who are sane would rather have more public transit or more lanes on the highway with that 90 million.
“Building a hospital in our town just caused more hospital visits. Stop building hospitals!”
People don’t walk into hospitals in 100+ square foot bubble suits for fun
> There is a limited number of people who want to drive on the road at a particular time and if you build to that, there will be no more demand. If you’re not convinced, just look at the empty highways at night.
Do you realize you just described the importance of recognizing induced demand? If you just ‘build roads to capacity’(and what even is ‘capacity? 0 traffic?), you end up with ‘cities’ that are just miles of parking lots with 10+ parking spaces for every person. You end up with highways that cost literally billions to build, billions to maintain and billions to extend every few years as the new peak amount of cars gets higher.
You missed the point or don’t understand what induced demand implies.
> Do you realize you just described the importance of recognizing induced demand?
“Induced demand” is just supply and demand, there is nothing special. You didn’t understand supply and demand in the first place if you think this isn’t regular supply and demand curves.
Make a new passenger train that goes from LA to Vegas that takes 16 hours. Check the ridership. Now make it take 2 hours and check again.
Neither train “induced” the demand. It was already there because people travel between the cities (see the flights).
People who hide behind “induced demand” as an excuse just don’t want to admit that the demand is already there and they are just NIMBYs who don’t care about lower income people with families who need to commute for work. That’s fine, but at least admit it.
This part threw me off because it seemed to contradict your argument. But I’ll try to get past that.
What your saying here is that demand for roads will always be fixed at X cars per minute between 7am to 9am, for example. So if a road between a city and a suburb was built to handle 1.5 * X cars per minute, then there would be no traffic jam between the two places from 7am to 9am.
But that’s assuming this new capacity won’t encourage city dwellers to move out into the suburb especially if the latter is cheaper, has more access to greenery, etc.
In addition, there could be commuters who, realizing that said road now has greater capacity, will start commuting within the 8am-9am period instead of earlier/later because it’s more convenient.
In both cases, wouldn’t that, in effect, be a case of induced demand?
Increasing the biodiversity raises the attractivness of the area for people to live in (higher prices for land) and tourists to visit. So among other buisness opportunities, more taxes (in the long run).