Conservation is not often associated with the built-up portions of our nation. Yet in this era of unbridled metropolitan expansion it has become a critical urban problem. Conservation, after all, is for people, and in the Tri-State New York Metropolitan Region, the largest concentration of people in the United States, the need to conserve open land has become a matter of urgency. The pages which follow demonstrate this need.

Within this great urban region are most powerful and impressive examples of man’s ability to alter the natural environment. Skyscrapers, expressways, bridges, aqueducts, canals, dams - these represent what man has carved out for himself from the raw materials which nature provides. But we are sometimes unwary and unskilled in the use of these materials, and we find ourselves the victims of our own accomplishments. Due to man’s ineptitude, water and air often become polluted, floods run rampant, and the food supply itself is threatened. But perhaps most important of all, man’s carelessness with nature destroys the best form of relief he has from the tensions of urban life. Natural open land is the ideal setting for rest and recreation. Once it is developed, it cannot be replaced.

In natural communities ecologists observe a certain harmony among the various members - an ecological balance. If this equilibrium is seriously disturbed there results a stress which, if prolonged, may threaten some elements of the community and, in turn, the survival of the whole. This principle is also applicable to man-made communities. Urban society cannot flourish without the support and balance of living things other than man. The steadily lowering density of human settlement within metropolitan areas, the unrelieved development known as urban sprawl which results from our excessive hunger for land, is a violation of this principle which may have serious consequences.

Another instance of dangerous tampering with nature concerns the wetlands.

These are the key to an adequate water supply, the basic component in a natural system of flood control, and a vital biological element in marine productivity. For example, without the wetlands of the Upper Passaic Valley and the Hackensack Meadows, flooding in northern New Jersey would be a much more serious problem; without its tidal marshes, Long Island’s fishing industry would be practically nonexistent. Yet we permit our swamps, marshes, and bogs to be dredged, drained, filled and polluted with the mistaken notion that man-made works are somehow superior to these biologic natural features which subtly perform a great, continuous task free of any capital or maintenance charge.

It is in sheer ignorance that we do not treat crucial natural phenomena with the same respect as we do such mechanical ones as cars and television sets. The late Aldo Leopold, one of the nation’s leading conservationists, expressed this point succinctly: “We know that engines and governments are organisms; that tampering with a part may affect the whole. We do not yet know that this is true of soils and water. Thus men too wise to tolerate hasty tinkering with our political constitution accept without qualm the most radical amendment to our biotic constitution.”

We must learn to appreciate the role of nature in the metropolis. Ultimately, and it had better be soon, government at all levels must undertake the responsibility for conservation. Only when this occurs will the 24,000,000 people who are expected to live in the New York Region in 1985 be able to enjoy the rich natural heritage with which the Region is so fortunately endowed.