Banff’s first two wildlife overpasses were built in 1996 at a cost of $1.5 million each. A series of underpasses followed, tunnelling beneath the highway to provide a safe alternative.
Combined with fencing to keep the animals off the road, the structures have reduced animal-vehicle collisions in the area by more than 80%—and by more than 96% for elk and deer alone.
Let me explain exactly why every new subdivision in America looks like the top photo, because the math is wild.
A mature tree increases a home's value by 7 to 19 percent. On a $400,000 house, that's $28,000 to $76,000. A single shade tree produces the cooling equivalent of ten room-size air conditioners running 20 hours a day. One tree on the west side of a house cuts energy bills by 12 percent within 15 years. The bottom photo is worth more, costs less to live in, and sells faster. This has been documented by the University of Washington, Clemson, Michigan State, and the USDA. The data is not in dispute.
Removing those trees saves the builder roughly $5,000 per lot. Concrete trucks need twice the dripline radius of every standing tree. Utility trenches need flat ground. A bulldozer flattens 200 lots in an afternoon. Preserving trees adds weeks and thousands per home.
So the developer pockets $5,000 in savings and the buyer eats $50,000 in lost value for the next two decades. The person making the decision and the person paying for it have never been in the same room.
The Woodlands, Texas is the proof of what happens when they are. George Mitchell bought 28,000 acres of Houston timberland in 1974 and preserved 28% as permanent green space. He forced McDonald's to build behind the tree canopy. That McDonald's became one of the highest-volume locations in Texas. The first office building, designed to reflect the surrounding forest so you couldn't see it from the street, leased completely.
The Woodlands median home price today: $615,000. Katy, a comparable Houston suburb that clear-cut: $375,000. Named #1 community to live in America two years running.
Fifty years of data. The trees are worth more than removing them saves. Developers clear-cut anyway because they sell the house once and leave. You live in it for 30 years.
Today I$rael tried to kill me in a targeted airstrike in southern Lebanon as I was reporting on was the targeting of bridges and the forced displacement of 1 million people, an ethnic cleansing operation on a larger scale than the Nakba
I have absolutely no doubt that this was deliberate. Despite claims there were no warnings ahead of the strike and no notifications sent to the Lebanese Army who allowed us to film
As we have seen in Gaza they want to silence journalists who document and report their war crimes
It is the western powers who provide political and military support for I$rael, arming it to the teeth to carry out genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing here in Lebanon. They are not simply complicit, but active participants and should be held accountable for their actions.
But if I$rael thinks today’s strike will silence us and keep us out of the field they are very, very mistaken
Israel knows that when these people leave, they will not return, because they are, in fact, going back to their home countries.
The people who are actually native to the land have been fighting for nearly 80 years and four generations to return.
These folks can't wait to leave.
@YouTubeTV THANK YOU FOR GRACIOUSLY REMOVING THE STEELERS/RAVENS GAME FROM MY LIBRARY WITH 1 MINUTE AND 5 SECONDS REMAINING NO REALLY I APPRECIATE IT, IM SO GLAD NOTHING OF NOTE HAPPENED AFTER THAT POINT IN THE GAME IM SURE IT WAS BORING AND A WASTE OF MY TIME ANYWAY