[Coral-List] Trading reef destruction for progress

[Phil Dustan]

This in Sunday's NY Times concerning the dredging fiasco off Miami.
http://nyti.ms/18rofPD

​It really is not a surprise seeing how the economy and "progress" always
trump conservation​. What is a surprise is that it finally got some
national press. The premier government agencies overseeing this economic
development project  (NOAA and the Army Corps) can't  chalk this one up to
global warming or climate change. Anyone who has a basic understanding of
reefs and their ecology could have predicted this would happen......

What is so sad to me is the way our government agencies get away with
duping the nation into the allowing economic progress to overwhelm our
natural infrastructure over and over and over.........
  Pete Seeger asked "where have all the flowers gone" and the same question
can be asked about  reefs..............and forests, and marshlands, and
someday humans?
  In a time when people become outraged about email servers and sexual
preferences maybe, just maybe there could be a little more outrage and
action to cease and desist the destruction of our home Biosphere.

Warm wishes to the people who allowed these permitting decisions,
    Maybe their wisdom won't shine on Fort Lauderdale quite as brightly?
       And maybe, hopefully, just maybe, the community of  coral reef
science community will begin to speak out with more unity, conviction, and
political pressure.

         Phil

-- 
Phillip Dustan
Department of Biology
College of Charleston
Charleston SC  20401
Charleston SC
843 953 8086 (voice)
843-224-3321 (m)

*"When one tugs at a single thing in nature *
*he finds it attached to the rest of the world."*
*   John Muir*