The Source: How Rivers Made America and America Remade Its Rivers by Martin Doyle

The Source: How Rivers Made America and America Remade Its Rivers by Martin Doyle
FIVE STARS

This book shows excellence in revealing the historical impact of America's expansion and exploitation of the continent. This well-written account of the impact of industrialization coupled with a mind-set of accelerated efficiency for dominating nature and the consequences that evolved are authenticated and verified. This is the very best book I have ever found on human’s impact on the environment.
A must read book that will be well -remembered and inspirational.

Excerpts from The Source:
The first settlers on the western landscape were trappers, who took the beavers with extraordinary thoroughness. In response to the European craze for beaver-pelt hats, explorers and trappers moved through eastern Oregon and southern Idaho in search of beaver. They removed 18,000 beavers from the area during 1823-1829 and took thousands more in the 1830s. But by the 1850s, trappers were scraping to find a few hundred animals. Thanks to the transatlantic demand for beavers, they were virtually eradicated. Without benefit of constant maintenance, beaver dams throughout the American West were lost, along with all of the lush grass and trees in the valleys. As the dams decayed and were washed away, the sediment-laden meadows were eroded, leaving behind a lunar-like landscape of barren gullies.

When a stream is polluted, its ecology is greatly changed. Like a man with a serious acute or chronic illness, its activities and functions are altered, often drastically, but there is always the hope of recovery. When a stream is channelized, it is permanently disabled.

Along the Obion Forked Deer river system outside Memphis, Tennessee, the channelization of over 241 miles was estimated to have reduced aquatic habitat by 95 percent and waterfowl hunting by 86 percent.
FIVE STARS