I would like to state my…

I would like to state my opposition to this legislation. It is, in my opinion, foolishly short-sighted to harm the Endangered Species Act, and other environmental protections. These populations are under threat already from the climate change we have caused, helping them survive the damage is the very least we can do. And even more foolish, we risk our own extinction. Biology isn't made up of discrete entities, living wholly bereft of contact with other living things. It is a complex web of interconnectedness, which we do not and probably never will understand to the level where we can toy with it, especially for the short-sighted goal of Line Go Up. We don't know what allowing certain species to die off will do to us, humanity, and to the animals on whom we depend still, or the crops and water we need to live, if you need a purely selfish approach to why we should be careful.

We have plenty of cleared land already for development use. We just have to be willing to densify our cities and towns, rather than sprawling them out across the natural landscape. We need that landscape to live. Pushing it farther and farther away is only inviting our eventual doom.

We need to move away from a model where everyone expects their house to *increase* in value as it gets older. It creates perverse incentives, like NIMBYism, which prevents affordable housing being built in mixed neighbourhoods. Because of this resistance, we push further and further out into the landscape, destroying it as we go. The further we get into formerly wild areas, the more we risk contacting animals in unsafe ways, that will put people at risk of zoonotic disease.

Please listen to the scientists for a change. They have the knowledge you need to make an intelligent, informed decision on this. We must, absolutely MUST, move away from a Line Goes Up mentality about property, or we foretell our own end.