How the Santa Ana Sucker represents our environmental challenge

by Samantha Torrence- The Santa Ana Sucker might just be a fish but it represents an issue that impacts all of us and the way we decide to live in the future.

[caption id="attachment_4552" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="Santa Ana Sucker - flickr- Hotash"][/caption]

The Santa Ana sucker is more than an ordinary fish. It is a small bottom feeding fish that has sparked a large controversy in California’s 41^st district. At face value the controversy may seem limited to  the environment of Inland Empire and the people who live there, but if you look deeper there is another  issue.  Is our current need to have large cities with urban sprawl met at the expense of our environment?

In the past, before major industrialization, we had cities that were surrounded by green zones dotted here and there with small villages or farms. The forests were burgeoning with fauna and flora, and our rivers and streams were mostly clean and teaming with life. Pollution was centered usually around the larger gatherings of our species while farms and villages lived more in tune with the land.

Industrialization changed our way of life in ways we could have never imagined.  There was significant impact on life expectancy and infant mortality giving us more children that lived on through an increasingly extended lifespan. Our population increased and as humans tend to do, we grouped together in large cities. Our need to have space, to be in touch with the land, but still have comfortable homes and closeness made us move from the big cities into the surrounding areas we now call suburbs. Our urban sprawl eliminated green zones until one city blended with another. Forests were destroyed, lakes and rivers tamed to our needs, and our farms over farmed to feed the growing population.

Species after species has succumbed to human tampering and in that long line of suffering swims in one little seemingly insignificant fish that has caused to surface an age- old debate between environmentalists and industrialists.

In the Inland Empire metropolitan area urban sprawl and big cities have made the necessity of a dam to be built to protect the population from flooding and to control and increase the water supply. The residents of the area are facing litigation and lobbying from environmentalist groups that champion biodiversity. The groups are working to convince the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to tear down the Seven Oaks dam and give the Santa Ana River back to the sucker fish that inhabit it. Jerry Lewis, the Republican Representative for the district has claimed that the dam needs to stay or there will be 2.7 billion dollars in loss as well as a loss of enough water for 400,000 families or 10% of the Inland Empire Population.

Why are there over 4 million people sprawled into this area? California has always been an attractive place to live because of its beauty and its bounty. There are also political motivations for the gay community and for illegal immigrants due to the sanctuary cities in its midst. People of like minds like to congregate, to find safety in numbers; however those numbers are over burdening the Californian wildlife. Environmentalists have proposed lifestyle shifts to help solve the problems of needed congregation without hurting the wildlife. The lifestyle shifts all go back to our historical way of living, but with a modern twist. Vertical sprawl with large cities surrounded by a mandatory green zone then outlaying farmlands have been seen as a solution.

There are many proposals for changing the way we live, from simple solutions like more clean living, to frightening solutions like eugenics and population control. Each solution has been looked at on an academic basis to determine its values and flaws. Everyone agrees overall that over population is the problem, and the decline of the Santa Ana Sucker is just one symptom.

The Santa Ana fish represents the complicated choices we must make for our future because where the fish swims cleanly, smoothly and safely might represent the safe passage for the rest of us.