ECOLOGIAL RESTORATION
ER
AT CEDAR LAKE POINT BEACH (AND BEYOND)
When I see this . . . I can't help but see this And so I did this. To try to create more of this, healthy Cottonwood stands What is the value of nature?It's vexing. How do we as a community express our appreciation and value of nature? I am reminded of the story about the blind men and the elephant. It's a resource for food, timber, stone and other goods. It's a place of amenities for leisure and recreational activities. It produces clean air, decomposes waste. Nature and natural areas are undeniably valuable. But there's such a lack of shared information to describe much less enumerate its value. I've been reading the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board proposed budget. Through and through, I'm reading about asset management. Great! But through and through, I can't find anything that assigns some kind of economic value to our park system's thousands of acres of natural areas. What gets counted counts. What doesn't get counted doesn't count. Nature is not pricedI look at the native trees that are being strangled and starved to death in our Minneapolis park system's natural areas, and there is death and destruction. There is depreciation of economic value. There is the human toll imposed upon nature due to disregard, neglect, and distraction, not to mention over-development. Our park budgets are focused on asset management; life expectancies, capital improvements, repair and maintenance of "hard" capital assets such as roads, bridges, buildings, parks, playgrounds, and infrastructure. But too little on protecting and being stewards of nature and natural areas. A fraction of the thousands of acres of natural areas are considered "managed" areas. Why? Perhaps it's because we don't have a system to assign an economic value to nature. How much is that tree worth? Better yet, how much does that stand of Burr Oaks worth? I've attended Park Board workshop discussing how much trees cost to plant, and the need to water them. But what about the mature trees that have been standing for longer than any of us? More so, how much is that stand of trees worth that warrants our protection? Unmanaged areas are being consumed and their value depreciated by invasive trees such as Buckthorn, and in the case of Cedar Lake Point Beach, Mulberry trees. And the stewardship of invasive species is largely yielded to the initiates of community volunteers who work under an agreement that reads more like a permit than a cooperative agreement. Economist Sir Partha Dasgupta explains a lot of this in The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review and in an episode of the The Overpopulation Podcast where he states, "Nature is not priced. It is invisible, silent, and mobile." As a result, "depreciation is not picked up. We need to do that." The 600+ page Review report is a bit of a sandwich to bite into, but it appears to be an amazing resource to answering how we might begin to account for the value of nature, and in turn consider what kinds of investments are appropriate to protect this asset. After all, according to the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the economy is a subset of nature. There are plenty of economic reasons to conserve and protect nature and ecosystems. How wonderful would it be if our Park Board looked at Asset Management that valued natural areas, and as a result invested more strategically and cost-beneficially on protecting our ecosystems. That's the thread I'll be pulling on in the winter months ahead when not plucking Buckthorn.
2 Comments
Alex
11/21/2023 03:50:59 pm
It’s looking really good! I never realized what a problem mulberry trees are. Thanks for making Cedar Lake better!
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Steve
11/21/2023 06:13:23 pm
Thank you. This became news to me too. It was only after the process of eradicating Buckthorn that the level of infestation of Mulberry trees revealed itself. And now I can add Mulberries to the trees in nature I can't unsee. Regrettably, most of the Mulberry exceeds the diameter limitation established in the Park Stewardship Agreement. So we're at a bit of a stalemate that I hope we can remedy.
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March 2024
AuthorI'm Steve Kotvis, volunteer Park Steward for the Minneapolis Cedar Lake Point Beach peninsula who has a newfound love of restoring this natural area and more. I'm learning as I go, and enjoy sharing that with those who have an interest. I'm also a photographer, so the photos in this blog are mine unless otherwise labeled. |