THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 19, 1995 TAG: 9505180353
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
The woodpeckers nesting in the facade of the new Central Library are not there looking for bookworms.
If flickers could talk, they would probably say that the decorative columns of the library would not be their first choice as a place to settle down and raise their families. They would probably prefer a secluded tree somewhere, far away from the the bustle of curious library patrons, automobile traffic and the harassment of agitated municipal administrators and their inflatable owls and recorded gunshots. Their chisel-shaped beaks are better suited to chipping bark than stucco.
But the flickers' instincts tell them they are running out of options.
The birds' lot, really, is not so different from that of a growing number of human beings around these parts.
The residents of Mill Creek and Elmwood Landing in Deep Creek, for example, must feel some empathy for the birds as they undertake to protect their own habitat from developers who want to crowd their neighborhood with apartment buildings. They would like for the few remaining green spaces around their homes to be preserved. The city's recent history is full of similar cases, in Camelot, Bowers Hill, Greenbrier and other places.
People, like woodpeckers, prefer to make their homes in a place where they won't be constantly threatened by someone who thinks their own aspirations for the land supersede the aspirations of those around them. Chesapeake, Virginia's fastest growing city, has begun to run short of such places.
There is only so much land, and the various uses that people - and wildlife, too - have for that land seem infinite.
A few enlightened souls have seen the need for a broad plan for the city's growth that would carefully and intelligently balance resources with demand and lead to more orderly and efficient use of what we have. So far, they have not prevailed.
When Councilman John E. Allen raised an imaginary shotgun and pretended to blow the trespassing flickers to Kingdom Come, he was acting out a different philosophy toward conflicts over who gets to use the land and for what purpose. The message of his little joke is that the prize always goes to whomever has the most firepower and the ruthlessness to use it - shotguns, lawyers, money, political clout, whatever. It's a familiar idea.
A far more difficult approach, one that seems to be beyond the ken of some of our leaders, is to find room in Chesapeake for flickers, for libraries, for apartments and for quiet, tree-lined neighborhoods, where we all can build our nests and raise our chicks without riding roughshod over others who only want the same. by CNB