What is a free flowing river?

A free-flowing river is a precious habitat in the dry desert Southwest, supporting unique resident species such as birds, plants, mammals, amphibians, insects and reptiles (footnote 1, audobon.org). Riparian (river-related) habitat is exceedingly rare in the desert. The availability of water in this important migratory flyway also makes it a critical destination for millions of migrating birds each year as they stop over in their journey between Canada and South America.

However, as the last free-flowing river in the state of Arizona, the San Pedro River faces grave risk.

Human activity has diminished the San Pedro from a grand historic river to a geographical landmark that stands in the way of developers, ranchers and agricultural interests. Upstream diversion of water had reduced the San Pedro River flow, and parts currently don’t have flowing water. It used to be that the river was free flowing year-round but with dwindling precipitation year after year and heightened growth of invasive plant species, the river only becomes free flowing during certain parts of the year. The stresses from this threaten the animal species/native plants that call this river home. The deep rooted and well-established cottonwood trees still mark its sub-surface presence even though the river is no longer freely flowing year-round. Water management practices to restore the aquifer using storm water, and establish more sustainable agricultural methods are being explored by conservation groups like the Nature Conservancy. (nature.org)

A competing critical need in the area is developing more residential space for military occupants and military family members in the surrounding town since a very populated military base is situated nearby. The military base has already been sued multiple times, most recently during the Trump Administration for pumping dirty groundwater into the San Pedro River. The pollution acts have significantly damaged parts of the river.

A message formed by climate activists to educate the public and continue the fight (as they have been for the last 30 years) to stop a proposed development that would take a little more than 12,000 acres of undeveloped habitat into housing or retail space is gaining public support. Completing this development would cost the complete drainage of the San Pedro River while also fracturing the migratory bird route so many birds take each year, and would devastatingly hurt the habitat and delicate ecosystem found in this dry desert oasis.

Should people and organizations utilize the characteristic world for our own motivations and without worry for its government assistance or continuation? The "yes" answer follows back to a disposition called free use, which pictures the common world as altogether devoted to serving prompt human requirements and wants. The air and water and all characteristic assets are perceived as having a place with everybody as in all people have full responsibility for, may utilize, all assets having a place with them as they see fit. The air blowing over your territory and any water moving through it are yours, and you may inhale them or drink them or dump into them as you like. This demeanor, at last, has both recorded and moral parts.

The historical backdrop of free use begins with the way that the general thought of the regular world as requiring insurance at all is extremely later. For practically all mankind's set of experiences, putting the words climate and insurance together implied discovering ways that we could be shielded from it as opposed to shielding it from us.

Today, when our control over nature is huge, there are two fundamental contentions with the expectation of complimentary use:

The mastery and progress contention

The topographical time contention

The mastery and progress contention starts by declining to put any vital and inherent worth in the regular world: there's no independent worth in the water, plants, and creatures encompassing us. Since they have no autonomous worth, the individuals who misuse and ruin nature can't be naturally blamed for a moral infringement: nothing inherently important has been harmed. Similarly, as couple of individuals object when a dandelion is pulled from a front yard, so too there's no essential issue with the air being destroyed by our vehicles.

Associated with this repudiation of inherent worth in nature's components, there's high trust in our capacity to produce innovative advances that will empower human civilization to prosper on the earth regardless of how polluted and exhausted. At the point when we've penetrated the last drop of the oil we need to warm our homes and produce power to control our PCs, we can believe our researchers to discover new fuel sources to make a big difference for everything. Conceivably sunlight based energy innovations will jump forward, or the since a long time ago looked for key to atomic splitting will be found in an exploration lab. Concerning stresses over the deficiency of untamed life and vegetation, that can be redressed with hereditary designing, or by essentially managing without them. Indeed, even without human impedance, species are vanishing each day; abandoning a couple of more may not conclusively be significant.

Further, it ought to be recollected that there are numerous characteristic elements we're glad to manage without. Nobody wails over the annihilation of diseases such as polio or leprosy. Those infectious diseases were answerable for the passing of countless people, and for a lot of history has been one of the world's most startling death tolls before vaccines were rolled out. Nobody misses it; not even the most given supporter of normal environments faced the human maltreatment and last annihilation of the infection. At last, if we can annihilate one piece of the characteristic world without regret, can't that mentality be expanded? Nobody is advancing wild or wanton obliteration, yet to the extent those pieces of nature needed to live well, wouldn't we be able to simply take what we need until it runs out and afterward proceed onward to something different?

Ethical Questions to Review:

• How much more do we need to sacrifice of our home (Earth) for human species to continue their expansion?

• What about the homes for other species?

• Morally, are nonhuman animal species worthy of our consideration?

• By wiping out ecosystems to build and expand our presence at what point do we stop and ponder what will happen to others because of our acts?

• At what point do we consider that enough is enough on ruining all of nature's ecosystems to satisfy our expansion? Will we ever stop?

For more information about the fight to save the San Pedro River, see these sources:

San Pedro River. (n.d.). https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/rivers/san_pedro_river/.

Protecting the San Pedro River. Western Resource Advocates. (2019, January 17). https://westernresourceadvocates.org/projects/san-pedro-river-az/.

The San Pedro: Saving the Last Free-Flowing River. Earthjustice. (2014, April 10). https://earthjustice.org/features/the-san-pedro-saving-the-last-free-flowing-river.

San Pedro River. The Nature Conservancy. (n.d.). https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/places-we-protect/san-pedro-river/.

San Pedro River. Audubon Arizona. (2016, June 10). https://az.audubon.org/conservation/san-pedro-river.

YouTube. (2020). Saving the San Pedro River. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voqydZ0uZV0.

**All of the Digital Images Used on This Page are Credited to The Nature Conservatory at nature.org**