By Janet Asiain
My Beautiful Saugerties colleagues have spoken about what’s at stake on Winston Farm in
terms of habitat and biodiversity loss. I want to talk about why those things matter.
Biodiversity loss is one of the main “tipping point” indicators of the global ecological catastrophe,
one of the several events (along with global warming, ocean acidification, topsoil depletion, and
a few others) that will take our civilization down if we don’t change course. All species, plants
and animals, including birds, insects, and human beings, are interdependent. Lose only a few
species and the whole system will come crashing down. We are on our way to achieving that
horrifying outcome.
Winston Farm may seem small in comparison to the scale of the entire planet, but the entire
planet is made up of individual ecosystems such as Winston Farm, which make up regional
watersheds, which make up entire bioregions. Just as we care for our own backyard gardens,
we have to care for our community’s backyard, Winston Farm. Small as each one may appear
from our local perspective, they add up to a whole planet.
In fact we are living by an outdated playbook, the “growth is good” playbook that sees nature as
a resource to be used for human benefit and destroys entire ecosystems, one Winston Farm-
sized parcel at a time. Development for commercial and residential purposes is a prime culprit
here, never mind that it’s often done in ways that no longer even serve us. For example, the
actual need for housing in Saugerties has yet to be seriously assessed. We don’t dispute that
it’s needed, but we should at least know the specific needs and purposes before we start
building. The same goes for commercial expansion. The need for more tourist accommodations,
another conference hotel, additional campgrounds, or more retail stores has not been
demonstrated. And necessary or not, the result of any development will be the increasing
impoverishment of all the services nature provides if we leave it alone: clean air, clean water,
topsoil, pollinators, and many more.
We may not know what to do to get ourselves out of this self-destructive paradigm we take for
granted as normal but which is actually just a phase in the long story of human civilizations. But
we can at least stop doing what we know is harmful, like paving over habitat.. Unlike other
species whose populations have collapsed because of over-reach and over use of their
habitats, we have the capacity to know and regulate what we are doing.
Winston Farm can certainly stand a certain amount of a certain kind of development, if
development there must be, but the 73% Open Space requirement must be honored to keep it
within appropriate bounds for the age we’re living in, and it must be contiguous, and it must
include in the prime elements of the ecozone: the wetlands, the grasslands, and the woods.
-Janet Moss Asiain
