Lack Of Concern Today Will Haunt Us Tomorrow

Once again a wild animal makes its way into the city. Last month a female moose made her way down Sprague and Trent all the way to the old lumber mill on east Mallon.

This time, by chance, I was lucky enough to be able to participate in the capture, even though my help was limited to giving a hand loading the animal into the trailer for the trip back to the mountains.

Department of Wildlife officers and biologists do an outstanding job in capturing these animals. They display both professionalism and sincere concern for their safety.

As we lifted the tranquilized moose into the trailer for the trip back to the mountains I could not help but see the fear in her eyes; a fear that went deeper than the fear of not knowing what the group of humans huddled about her were going to do.

Maybe the fear she was showing was the fear of what is happening to her home. As humans continue to push the boundaries of the cities deeper and deeper into the forests and continue to tear down the wilderness and wildlife habitat to build housing developments wildlife is forced to move. Not always knowing which way to go, sometimes running out of places to turn, the animals can end up in the city as this moose did.

Management of timber and other necessary natural resources is helping to better allocate their use and to assure that we will still have them for generations to come. In turn we also need to better manage growth in our rural areas and not only take a closer look at water quantity and quality, air and noise pollution but to also consider the impact growth will have on wildlife.

Those who feel wilderness and wildlife are not as important as people continue to place the dollars they can earn or the tax revenue that may be generated ahead of what we are doing to our environment.

Nature has suffered for decades in the name of progress. But what kind of progress are we making by pushing animals from their homes and destroying everything in our way just to make ourselves more comfortable?

When our grandchildren and great-grandchildren ask us where all the animals have gone, who wants to be the one to say we ran them off with our greed?

MEMO: Your Turn is a feature of the Wednesday and Saturday Opinion pages. To submit a Your Turn column for consideration, contact Rebecca Nappi at 459-5496 or Doug Floyd at 459-5466 or write Your Turn, The Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210-1615.