With strong public commitment and political support for immigration reduction, aggregate water consumption could be reduced even more, allowing still more water to remain where it belongs — in natural streams, rivers, and lakes — where it furnishes ecological benefits to habitat, wildlife, and society.
Water is quickly being depleted by a growing U.S. population. This is placing an increased demand on rivers, reservoirs, and groundwater for drinking water, farming, and industrial production. This precious resource deserves our protection, stewardship, and care. Yet, our government officials have turned a blind eye to the crucial component of doing so, which is to cut immigration to the U.S.
Our National Parks and protected areas are revealing their fragility as pressures from our growing immigration-driven population increase. Unprotected areas are part of the larger ecosystems of protected land, and urban sprawl brings with it habitat loss and increasingly fragmented landscapes along with a myriad of other issues. Between the years 1940-2000, 28 million housing units were built within 50 km of protected areas in the United States. If this trend continues, this number will increase by another million by 2030, many of which will be built within 1 km of protected areas.
Nineteen years after NumbersUSA published our first study, sprawl is still devouring valuable farmland and wildlife habitat, both in Oregon and nationwide. But national and state environmental groups, by and large, have shifted their focus to other issues and away from the loss of habitat and open space due to the unsustainable outward expansion of cities in America.
Sprawl Still a Problem After All These Years (and Americans and Oregonians Are Still Concerned).....
A recent study shows that scientists have underestimated the amount of land and water needed for agriculture, which is further complicated as the United States loses three acres of land every minute to development and has areas such as the West and Southwest facing increasing droughts and declining Colorado River water reserves.
Advances in agriculture make it possible to yield higher amounts of food, but the best and most fertile land is being lost to development in both rural and urban areas. As a result, the ability to grow the best crops in a sustainable manner with the least amount of water becomes more challenging. Technological advances will offer temporary solutions, but the issue will only be exacerbated as our population grows to over 400 million by 2060. Our population growth is driven by immigration policies set by Congress that must be reduced in order to alleviate pressures on our land and water supplies.
