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"Then, around the turn of the 20th century, nature’s barriers began to crumble. Forests began to fragment," It's impressive how wrong that statement is. 1900 i
by Causality1 7y ago
"Then, around the turn of the 20th century, nature’s barriers began to crumble. Forests began to fragment,"
It's impressive how wrong that statement is. 1900 is when forests stopped fragmenting, not when they started. Between 1630 and 1900 forested area of north America declined from 46 percent to 34 percent. That declined only slightly to 33 percent in 1997 and has since increased to 36.2 percent.
- ceejayoz 7y agoFragmenting and loss of overall area are not the same thing. A fragmented drinking cup may weigh the same as an intact one, but one of them is a lot better at holding water. A power line through a forest, for example, incurs minimal deforestation, but provides a highway for animals to transit through the surrounding forest.
- chrisco255 7y agoI would think that power lines are a minimal impact. What probably really hurts is some species have roam areas of dozens to hundreds of square miles. With the introduction of roads and urban areas to break up some of the ecosystems that spanned multiple states, for example, had to have a much more dramatic effect. Fencing, road barriers, etc. Create choke points and make it harder especially for large predators to thrive. The Florida panther was not even an especially large feline but it did occupy a central place at the top of the food chain in Florida and now its population has been decimated due to fractured ecosystems and each one needing about 75-150 square miles of roam area.
- chrisco255 7y agoYeah shortly after 1900 we got the national park movement and more state forests and wildlife reserves started getting set up. Conservation was not a thing in the 1800s. It became one in the 20th century.