Stop! We are on the wrong road. Look, I have been hunting here for 20 years and this does not look right! We were supposed to turn where there were three huge yellow pine trees. I have seen nothing but some old dead snags. I think they changed the road just to confuse me. Why can’t they just leave things alone and let Nature stay like it was?
That is the mantra I have been hearing for a number of years now. That raises the question of “what was nature like, back when?” Here in the Four Corners, they think man was here living and using the natural resources around 200-300 A.D. That has continued ever since, with man being an integral part of the natural environment, after all, that is how God created it to be. The current move to make a federal “natural” landscape of 30-50 percent of all land and oceans to be protected from man would be contrary to Creation and destructive to the environment. Somehow, they believe, this protection will magically stop “climate change” of the Earth and put an end to changes in the environment. Well, that is an interesting idea but it just doesn’t hold any water. Change in the environment just happens regardless of man. It is happening daily, always has and always will. What you see today is different than it was yesterday and will be different tomorrow. The whole earth and all life hereon are in constant change, nothing is static.
When we look at past changes, look at Mesa Verde landscape; it is composed of sedimentary sandstone and shale layers that at one time were under water. Today it is 6,000 to 8,500 feet above sea level, just maybe there was some change that took place, ya think? The trees that are there today are not the same ones that were there when the early people built and occupied the area. Changes occurred in the vegetation and environment during the near 600 years of occupation as they were utilized as “renewable” fuel and shelter. The vegetation there today is the result of natural and man-involved change over extended time. What was the “natural” landscape and vegetation before the first recorded man settled there? It doesn’t matter, there are still trees and wildlife there in spite of 600 years of burning trees and killing wildlife before abandoning the area around 1300 A.D., and it has continued to change daily for the 800 years since.
So the natural changes back then are all old history and the environment is all settled down and stable now, right? Actually not! For example, there are around 1,400 earthquakes happening every day around the world, and last year in the USA there were over 100 every day shaking things up. Last year (2020), Colorado had 40 “shakes” of varying intensity. Fortunately, our little corner has no recorded fault lines. Next, consider the volcanoes that the “natural” environment tosses out. There are over 1500 “active” volcanoes around the world, with 50-80 of them popping off every year. Here in the good old USA there are 169 “active” ones, mostly West Coast, Alaska and Hawaii. They consider “active” as any that have erupted in the last 10,000 years. In the Continental USA, which includes Colorado, there are 65 “active” ones with five very active and watched closely. I remember when Mt. St. Helens blew her top in May of 1980, totally ruined a beautiful day, turning it into a very dark gray day with volcanic ash settling on everything for days. Around 22,000 square miles of environment were affected and changed without a NEPA study ever being conducted. The federal control of the mountain did not protect it from change!
There is all this talk about man causing climate change by driving cars and working to have a good life while raising cows that give off flatus and belch methane. That must be stopped to “save the planet.” Well, let’s go back to Mesa Verde, why is it not still under water? There is a lot of theories, but to start you thinking, take your magnetic compass and see where North is. Hopefully you know that the compass does not point to the North Pole, but rather to the “magnetic” North Pole, which is heavy in iron. The magnetic pole is constantly changing. In fact it is moving by about 55 km per year and appears to be speeding up, according to some that watch that stuff. In fact they claim the North and South magnetic poles actually swapped places around 45,000 years ago, for a time, before changing back. That must have been interesting.
Consider the fact that we are standing on the outer crust of a ball of churning molten minerals 1,800 miles below us. That would be like flying from Four Corners of Colorado to Washington, D.C., straight down (that seems oddly appropriate). The “magnetic” poles are maintained in place by the spinning of the Earth. Slight variations would result in sloshing of the molten magma and cracking of the “crust” as earthquakes, sometime resulting in volcanoes blowing out, and voila, change has occurred in the surface environment and man did not cause it and the government did not protect it from happening.
Change just happens in and on the Earth, always has and always will. There is not a thing little man can do to stop it, only those with a self-created “god complex” think they can. God created it all and gave man, not governments, the responsibility to manage and use it wisely with good stewardship, not lose it. The federal government’s proposal of “30×30,” which is “taking 30 percent of land and waters by 2030” from man’s use is contrary to the Constitution and contrary to God’s creation design. They have changed the name to “America the Beautiful” program. The objective is not to protect the environment. It is for full control of the lands and resources by governments.
Dexter Gill is a retired forest manager who worked for private industry, three Western state forestry agencies, and the Navajo Nation forestry department. He writes from Lewis, Colo.
