Owens Valley Tragedy :: Environmental California Essays

Earths Seemingly Irreparable Landscape eon and time again it has been seen that human interaction with his/her purlieu and its ecosystems has shown to be increasingly arrogant and self-serving. These endless accounts are proven by the occur of important biological diversity that is being lost to the surrounding environment due to these threats of human development and population growth. There are twain forms of these losses of diversity by human hand estimate and indirect. enjoin losses would be the destruction of an playing field needed for human requirements be it social or economical. Examples of these losses would be housing, agriculture, and others. Indirect losses would be those caused by the destruction of an airfield also needed for the same requirements only if the states commodities which are valued, water, food, land in general, is needed elsewhere. These losses are few in number compared with those of direct losses just they are of the greatest importance. They are important because they involve the removal of resources of an area in which other inhabitants are dependent upon. A great congressman of this regrettable indirect expansion is the loss of the rich habitat of the area known as Owens Valley. Owens Valley HistoryOwens Valley lies to the east of the sierra Nevada mountain and west of the White-Inyo mountain ranges, just to the west of the U.S.s capacious Basin. Early settlers to this area, as all other immediate surrounding areas originally, were Indians, one of the Paiute tribes. This tribe lived by a simple and direct policy in terms of living with the environment. Their food supply was derived from seasonal crops of wild seeds and roots, fishing, and hunting of the deer, antelope, mountain sheep, jackrabbit, and waterfowl which flourished along the valley al-Qaida and hillsides. They took only what they required for food and trade. Unfortunately, pioneer expansion soon took precedence with the majority of them being miners who migrated to the region from the east following the Western mines (Sauder, 1994). With this village came agricultural expansion as well, which included cattle production and motley farming crops. Of course, confrontation, the beginning of a lifetime of fight all over Owens Valley, was spurred with the Paiutes over ownership of this rich valley abundant in usable resources. overdue to the Paiutes simple and peaceful attitude, the early pioneers took over the valley and either one of its resources, placing the Paiutes out in the cold, where they continued urbanisation and agriculture of the landscape.