Smiles and cheers are shared as families get together to watch their relatives score their first goal in a sport they love. Urban recreation areas are places where people come together and support their favorite local sports teams. However, nobody sees the negative effects on the environment that these recreational centers caused when they were created. For insistence, Helen McCall Recreational Center along Highway 98 in Walton County is expanding their “twenty-nine-acre recreation area” by clear cutting and burning the woods to expand the park (Wheeler n. pag.). While many people enjoy the idea of more public recreational spaces, there are some who disagree with how the expansion is being conducted.
According to Tomas Munita’s article on …show more content…
When developers start clear cutting forested land, most will not pay any attention to the habitat they are destroying. Cutting down an animal’s habitat forces them to have to relocate to another area. Relocating can be risky for wildlife because it puts them out of their comfort zone and forces them into potentially dangerous journeys to find new homes. These displaced animal refuges also face a greater competition for resources with other animals in smaller areas of habitat. Some animals are then forced into developed area to compete with domestic animals. Eighty percent of earth’s animals and plants live in the forest, and many cannot survive the deforestation that destroys their home (Munita n. pag.). Animals living in the forest along Highway 98 may be more adaptive then some places due to constant construction. Nonetheless, these animals are put in danger when land is being cleared because many of the animals try to run across the highway and get hit by a …show more content…
Anthropogenic degradation means damage of ecologic or environmental features of an area caused by human activities. Like the loss of habitat, developers rarely concern themselves with the ecological impact that they are having on the hydrology of an area when they break-ground on a project (A. Eddington n. pag.). When the trees and undergrowth vegetation is removed, the ability of the forest and tree root structure in the ground to take up storm water is removed. Excess storm water becomes an issue because the water is no longer being used by the forest vegetation. Without the trees, there are also no longer tree roots that to stabilize soils and prevent erosion due to storm water runoff. What the forest could once do through natural processes, engineering controls are now needed to manage precipitation and the hydrology of the deforested area. Sewers and drainage ditches are now needed to control storm water. These controls end up lowering natural groundwater levels and disrupting the natural hydrology of the area. Anthropogenic degradation is worsened further by the introduction of impervious surfaces such as parking lots, paved areas, and roads that are added to the area as it is developed (A. Eddington n. pag.). It is all one continuous chain of negative effects that never