Maile Pham

English 2010
December 04, 2016

Changing Laws and Ways to Help Save Wild Life

Take a step outside, look around you and think about what you see,
what do you hear, how do you feel? Now imagine yourself in the mountains,
what do you see, what sounds are you hearing? Imagine a world with no
more wildlife, no natural resources, no creeks, no natural beauty, your world
is all material and industrial. Can you imagine your life not being surrounded
by the mountains or not having wildlife around, a life where everything is
made in a factory, no lakes to swim in or nowhere to go and relax?

This is an image that I took while on Vacation in Wyoming at a lake hidden in the
Mountains Near Alpine, Wyoming.

Our Natural land and wild life has been depleting at a rapid rate. Brad
H McRae and his team conducted a study Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, they researched how the landscape has changed and
reasons wildlife is moving into cities and how it has been effected by the
warming of Earth. They stated that only 41 percent of the natural land area
in the United States retains enough connectivity to facilitate species tracking
their preferred climate conditions as the global climate changes. Since we
are only using 41 percent of land we have made new laws to preserve our
wild life and Natural resources.

Why we have Laws

We have been changing laws to preserve wildlife and to help stop
contamination of our natural resources. In the world today we are living in a
technologic world, where we are creating bigger and better settlements and
expanding our living spaces and industrial spaces into areas where wildlife
used to flourish. We have been making our way into these areas where we
forget that there were smaller eco systems and animals that lived there and
we push them out to make way for us.

A group of people in India making

their way home after working, shortly
behind them is a wild Tiger following
them home.
Photo: Joydip Suchandra Kundu

These tigers are being killed

for killing people and it begins
changing the circle of life and the balance of nature. This has been causing
animals to move into rural areas and eating people off the street. In Russia
there was a domestic dog disease and nearby tigers would come around and
hunt the dogs. When they would finally get the chance to eat one, the tigers
would contract the fatal disease from the dogs and it began to change their
fear responses essentially making them ultimately fearless. In 2014 India
was having a problem, a good portion of the roughly estimated 1,700 wild
tigers were walking the streets and hunting humans as prey. In a two week
span 17 reported deaths were caused by wild Tigers.

When we are taking more land for industrial usage, residential usage we are
taking homes away from animals and bugs that help us pollinate our
farmers fields. Disneys Pixar movie Wall-E is a great example of this with
waste. Paramounts Bee Movie shows what happens to a city where the bees
no long inhabit and shows the importance of having wildlife. What would you
do if everything you ate was all artificially made? Think of the life that your
future grandkids are going to live in. This was just one example, think about
around the world, we have our own problems in Utah.
(Trent Nelson, The Salt Lake Tribune) The oil wells in Nine Mile Canyon,
Utah.

We have been using the natural land that we have here in Utah for oil
and it is causing us to take away the shell rocks to extract the oil that lies
beneath our crust. We also have been expanding living space into the
mountains and into part of the natural land that should be preserved with the
money we are taxed and it isnt happening. In this article from the Salt Lake
Tribune, Values of the Resource' Is Focus of Utah Lawmaker's Plan for
Managing 31 Million Acres of Coveted Public Land a powerful section stood
out to me. It stated "What is going on in Utah has to be stopped. You are the
men we have elected to stop that. Without your help, without your support,
without your recognition of what's happening, there will be bloodshed.
People will not be pushed against a wall, they will not have their lands taken
from them, their rights taken from them. Their access their rights as citizens

of this state, I see it coming now. It's the worst I've ever seen in the 40 years
I've lived in this area. I represent 10 counties. Everyone is impacted by an
entity that doesn't represent me. It doesn't represent any of those citizens.
They are here under false colors, they are here under false jurisdiction."
There has been a lack in preservation and we have to start making
laws to help conserve the natural resources we have because they are
volatile and have been beginning to enforce such laws to protect the wild life
and other resources like minerals. Even if we were to be able to live in an all
industrial world, life wouldnt be the same as we know it now.

Laws We Have Begun to Enforce

In Utah we have recently been enforcing watershed laws. These laws
have been placed to preserve the minerals that are contained in our soil. In
the mountains we humans have been disrupting the flow of the water and
have been causing more and more minerals to be washed away into the
ocean and we are losing it. They introduced the watershed laws that protect
the land, waters and it prohibits us from stirring up the minerals in the dirt of
streams state wide. Not only are we wasting these minerals they are going
into our drinking water and making the quality of it diminish and we are
using more energy to purify the natural water that should be clean. They
have been enforcing them to ultimately to protect the water. We have had
the problem with mercury in all water supplies but we are starting to lack in
ones we need here.

This image is showing the

areas where we have had
problems with an over
population with Coyotes
versus the Mule deer
population.

Utah has also had its struggle with wildlife. We have had big numbers
of coyotes and other predators and have had to do special hunting seasons
for those predators. They began a program called the Utah Predator Control
Program and this is when they pay hunters to shoot coyotes to help keep the
balance of prey and predators at a normal rate. We have been seeing an
increase in predators and there hasnt been enough food causing them to
come into the cities and attacking humans just like the Tigers in India. I was

able to take a field trip up to the Cottonwood Canyon in Salt Lake City, Utah
and there was evidence of my much change and the evidence from Lake
Bonneville along with evidence that our natural resources are coming to an
end.
These are just a few examples of what we are doing to help preserve
the wildlife and how to control the rates of predator vs prey. There are many
more ways we can help save our natural lands, natural resources and
wildlife. We as humans are not being mindful and we are wasting some of the
most precious things we have in life by not preserving the natural and
wildlife by making our world more industrial than ever. This isnt just the
beginning of change, were in the middle of it and we need to make the
change to save the Earth and life contained here.

Work Cited
Hausheer, Justine E. "Species On the Move: Mapping Barriers for Wildlife in a
Warming World." Cool Green Science. Nature.org, 29 June 2016. Web. 22
Sept. 2016.
Brian Maffly | The Salt Lake Tribune. "'Values of the Resource' Is Focus of
Utah Lawmaker's Plan for Managing 31 Million Acres of Coveted Public
Land." The Salt Lake Tribune. N.p., 09 Feb. 2016. Web. 18 Sept. 2016.
Mazoomdaar, Jay. "Why Are India's Tigers Killing Humans?" BBC News., 20
Jan. 2014. Web. 18 Sept. 2016.
Society, National Geographic. "Conservation." National Geographic Society.,
2012. Web. 22 Sept. 2016.
Canning, Amy. "Utah's Predator Control Program." Utah's Predator Control
Program. N.p., 8 Feb. 2016. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.

"Dog Disease Infecting Tigers, Making Them Fearless." National Geographic.

National Geographic Society, 12 June 2013. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.