When the decision was made to grow Las Vegas, outward growth of the suburban model was implied, not upward growth with increasing urban population density. Reasonably priced suburban housing of the subdivision model required fairly large scale conversion of public land to private property. A tradeoff was that some of the money would be transferred to conservation efforts with the implication that both large tracts of single family housing and whole, intact, functioning desert ecosystems could exist together. This is the hypothesis we are testing, now that the subdivisions exist on the landscape; many upside down on their bank mortgages.
With the increasing human population came many of the benefits and problems the public land managers are now dealing with: gangs, graffiti, trash, illegal off-road travel, invasive species and so on. Some of the funding is used simply to clean up after these activities. More of the funding is expended on projects that are essentially perpetual maintenance needs, such as invasive species control. Other projects gather information, so that we know what the situation is. But there the project ends and actual mitigation requires significant additional funding. Gradually, then, but inevitably mitigating the effects of urban growth becomes dependent on continued urban growth.
Some trends are easy to track. The outward expanse of Las Vegas jumps out on satellite photos. The expenditure of SNPLMA funds is accounted for and the number of deliverables counted. Some trends are not so simple but seem real. The number and status of threatened and endangered species seems to be getting worse. The number and status of invasive species seems to be deteriorating. The health of ecosystems, if such a thing could be measured, doesn’t seem to be improving. Although cause and effect is impossible to prove, it seems based on the evidence that mitigation money doesn’t actually prevent adverse effects of large human population concentrations on desert ecosystems. No net unmitigated loss of habitat may be a good slogan but it’s not a fact |
