Welcome to Blanca Mesa's site.
A sampling of published articles
I come to this column as an almost-native Miamian, a hybrid of Cuban-American descent who has witnessed the transformation of Miami into a “world-class” metropolis, a moniker equal parts aspiration, transformation, and myth.
The 1970’s Miami in which I came of age was a low-scale affair. The streets were navigable, even at rush hour. The urban waterfront parks and green spaces -- the Bayfront Park of my youth -- were real parks, where families came to play or picnic, and not venues for mega concerts, raceways, or shopping centers.
Today’s mania for erecting urban high-rises and expanding unbridled sprawl into farmlands and wetlands couldn’t have been imagined. Neither could a future where public waterfront parks would be sold for museums or sports venues, or where the wilderness of sea and land that surrounds us could be threatened not just by external forces -- overbuilding or blasting coral reefs -- but by the internal corrosions of ocean acidification and pollution.
Miami is at a crossroads. Earth’s volatile climate could swallow our beloved city whole and reduce it to its limestone coral core. Or not. As one of the most at-risk global cities, the world watches to see how we’ll address these unprecedented challenges -- in our transit decisions, our land-use planning, and our potential to re-sculpt our landscape to capture rising seas.
Like all civilizations at a crossroads, we work among competing forces: those that seek to build at all costs and those desperately trying to preserve what little remains.
Yet even after a century of development, we’re a city existing in concert with the wilderness. Biscayne and Florida bays, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Everglades define our borders, and pockets of green space dot our metropolis. We share our home with fragile preserves and refuges that harbor the last remaining endangered and threatened species. This is what we must hang on to.
Already a new consciousness has risen from residents who recognize that even in an urban environment, there is a need for nature. Eco-swaths of green space are being reclaimed -- the campaign to rip up the dark stain of asphalt on Parcel B behind the AAA is one example. The fights to stop high-rises from looming over Greynolds Park in North Miami Beach or to prevent a theme park and Walmart-anchored shopping center from paving over a rare rockland pineland in South Dade are others.
And then there is my personal quest -- the decades-long struggle to preserve and protect the wilderness island of Virginia Key from commercial development. On Virginia Key, a 1000-acre Critical Wildlife Area remains the last refuge for numerous threatened and endangered species. The restored tropical hardwood hammock on the island harbors rare songbirds and migratory birds.
You would think the status as “last refuge” -- last hardwood hammock, last contiguous mangrove shoreline, last pineland preserve -- conveys special protection to these places. It does not.
On Virginia Key, City of Miami officials allowed the Miami Boat Show to replace fragile waterfront with asphalt, and dig up bay bottom in a protected cove for a marina. In South Dade, county officials are eager to develop the pinelands into a theme park, and a developer plans to build housing and shopping centers. Even the permitting agencies are oblivious to the end-of-nature realities, finding ways to allow ventures that should be off-limits.
Instead of restoring these special places and repairing the damage we’ve inflicted, we double down, as if we had an endless frontier to conquer for our own amusement and profit.
In Miami, much like in the rest of the world, our need to understand our obligation to nurture all life comes at a time when the very future of life on Earth is in question.
Can we not see our own deaths foretold in the thousands of whale and sea lion carcasses, the bodies of sea turtles deformed by our pollution, that wash up on our shores? Does it not register that we are equally at risk?
This year, 2016, may be our new Silent Spring. And Summer. And future. Or it may be the year we accept that we are not alone and learn to coexist. To survive in Miami, we must embrace our green heart.
In this “Going Green” column, I intend to give voice to the people entrenched in the fight for our area’s survival. And I hope to show how we can ensure that coming generations are able to enjoy Miami’s natural heritage. I also look forward to hearing your stories, concerns, the joy of successes, and the grief of failures, in our quest to reclaim Miami’s green future.
On a final note, I’m pleased to be given the opportunity to have this conversation with the community, and honored to continue the “Going Green” column from Jim Harper, a gifted writer and environmentalist who first introduced our community to Miami’s green heart.
Send your tips and clever ideas to: goinggreen@biscaynetimes.com.
Feedback: letters@biscaynetimes.com