Owens Valley Tragedy :: Environmental California Essays

Earths Seemingly Irreparable LandscapeTime and while again it has been seen that human interaction with his/her environment and its ecosystems has shown to be increasingly arrogant and self-serving. These endless accounts are proven by the amount of important biologic diversity that is being lost to the surrounding environment due to these threats of human development and population growth. There are two forms of these losses of diversity by human hand direct and indirect. Direct losses would be the destruction of an line of business 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 area also needed for the same requirements but the areas commodities which are valued, water, food for thought, land in general, is needed elsewhere. These losses are few in number compared with those of direct losses yet they are of the greatest importance. They a re important because they involve the remotion of resources of an area in which other inhabitants are dependent upon. A great example 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 Great Basin. ahead of time 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 floor 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 migr ated to the region from the east following the Western mines (Sauder, 1994). With this colonization came agricultural expansion as well, which include cattle production and various farming crops. Of course, confrontation, the beginning of a lifetime of fight over Owens Valley, was spurred with the Paiutes over ownership of this rich valley abundant in usable resources. Due to the Paiutes simple and peaceful attitude, the early pioneers took over the valley and every one of its resources, placing the Paiutes out in the cold, where they proceed urbanization and agriculture of the landscape.