WET OR DRY SUSTAINABILITY?

   

It  is very distracting listening to someone defend an argument dropping numbers or stats as if nature, the environment was an investment in securities, banking or real estate.

El Yunque our standard-bearer environmental symbol is visited by a million people. So what?  Isn't Yellowstone visited with five or six times that number?


Nature can not/should not be seen as a Walt Disney World entertainment for profit amusement park. Numbers do not matter since huge amounts of people trampling the soil and vegetation will destroy it. The traffic jams disturb the flora and fauna with noise and fumes.


What is wrong with keeping a balance in terms of attracting tourism? The Guanica Dry Forest in my view, is as interesting or more than El Yunque. It should be ranked along this wet, cool, forest that some think is the only worth while vegetated space in Puerto Rico.


The Sierra Club has kept a campaign to 'protect' the rain forest and its surroundings from the mortal, powerful enemies: Association of Home Builders and the Blues and Reds, political parties sharing the bounty, rip off of our resources every four years.

While all the focus is directed toward this space, as if nothing else matters, what about the rest of the island?

Is it thinking on tourists only? Making some money?  It is evident that  concrete/asphalt lobbyists would not mind giving the shot of grace to our surroundings.

Let the record show that Puerto Rico, is more than El Yunque Rain Forest. And forgive the editorial tone, I can not help looking at the whole instead of its parts, dismembered.