Home › Contributors › Kaid Benfield › Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Kaid Benfield's Blog
Issues: Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
All contributor posts in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
November 3, 2009
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Curbing Pollution
, Green Enterprise
, Health and the Environment
, Living Sustainably
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
- Tags:
- agriculture, conservation, density, florida, mining, smartgrowth, sprawl, watershed, wetlands
Lee County, Florida (Fort Myers) is moving forward with an innovative plan to use clustered, dense development instead of large-lot zoning to protect its water supply. Under current zoning the southeastern portion of the Gulf coast county has been threatened...
September 14, 2009
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably
, Reviving the World's Oceans
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
- Tags:
- coasts, development, greeninfrastructure, lowimpactdevelopment, NOAA, planning, smartgrowth, waterfront, watershed
Kudos to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for a comprehensive new report and web site on best practices for smart development in coastal and waterfront communities. The report was issued in cooperation with the federal EPA,...
September 6, 2009
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
- Tags:
- farmland, frederick, maryland, smartgrowth, sprawl
This is a follow-up to add to the record concerning the wisdom of the proposed office park and subdivision north of Frederick, Maryland. The property in question is highlighted in red jutting out from the existing city limits to the...
September 4, 2009
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
- Tags:
- farmland, frederick, maryland, smartgrowth, sprawl
I don't think so, either. But the leaders of the city of Frederick, Maryland, apparently think otherwise. This is despite strong opposition from the leaders of surrounding Frederick County, which until now has had jurisdiction over the property. Basically this is...
August 7, 2009
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Curbing Pollution
, Health and the Environment
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
, Solving Global Warming
- Tags:
- coal, dollyparton, mining, mountaintopremoval, tennessee
This isn't usually my beat, but as someone who grew up in western North Carolina, the southern Appalachians (pronounced with a flat "a" in the third syllable, thanks) mean a great deal to me. And, like a lot of normal...
June 24, 2009
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Health and the Environment
, Living Sustainably
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
- Tags:
- agriculture, conservation, farmland, maryland, openspace, preservation, smartgrowth
These wonderful photographs of Frederick County, Maryland, are all by my friend Kai Hagen, writer, photographer, conservationist, entrepeneur, and County Commissioner. Kai is concerned that development is sprawling out onto prime soils even while there are ample sites within...
March 13, 2009
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise
, Living Sustainably
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
- Tags:
- community, neighborhood, realitycheck, regionalplanning, smartgrowth, uli, urbanlandinstitute
Most of us love to gripe about development, traffic, and sprawl, and some of us even love to complain about the development activities of nearby churches and schools. But what if the same folks who complain had to confront a specified influx of...
March 6, 2009
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
, Solving Global Warming
- Tags:
- cities, globalwarming, regionalplanning, rural, smartgrowth, sprawl
Cities are traditionally blue, rural areas red, and suburbs purple, says Bill Dodge, former executive director of the National Association of Regional Councils, on Citiwire. But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't or can't cooperate, and Dodge believes the...
January 27, 2009
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
- Tags:
- blackwater, chesapeake, globalwarming, sealevelrise, smartgrowth, sustainabledevelopment, wildlife
I spend most of my professional time thinking about where development should go, where it shouldn't, and what form it should take. A lot of my thinking is derived from wanting to reduce transportation impacts from sprawl and also...
January 13, 2009
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise
, Living Sustainably
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
, Solving Global Warming
, U.S. Law and Policy
- Tags:
- chesapeake, glendening, greenhousegases, martino'malley, maryland, planning, smartgreenandgrowing, smartgrowth
Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley announced yesterday that he was introducing six bills in the state legislature to influence the state's land development in a "smart, green, and growing" way. Collectively, the bills would do the following: Strengthen...
January 6, 2009
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
- Tags:
- development, forestroad, forestservice, missoula, montana, plumcreek, sprawl
Plum Creek Timber Company, the nation's largest private landowner (8 million acres nationwide), has withdrawn a controversial request to pursue residential development of remote land in western Montana. The company had requested an easement on timber roads owned by...
December 17, 2008
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
- Tags:
- desert, downtown, mesaarizona, mesaprovinggrounds, newurbanism, resort, sprawl, towncenter
Does this look to you like an environmentally sustainable place to put a "destination resort, retail, and convention center core"? Me neither. How about a golf course? Irrigation, anyone? Let's recreate a little bit of Scotland in the...
December 5, 2008
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise
, Living Sustainably
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
- Tags:
- cascadeagenda, cascadelandconservancy, community, conservation, forests, growthmanagement, pugetsound, smartgrowth
Not enough organizations and not enough of our messaging, in my opinion, explicitly links the saving of the rural and natural resource landscape with more compact growth. Lately I have begun to worry a bit that this fundamental link...
November 13, 2008
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
, U.S. Law and Policy
- Tags:
- ballotinitiative, cityparks, landconservation, openspace, referendum
Earlier in the week, I reported on the success of various transit measures in referenda around the country on November 4. According to our friends on the Trust for Public Land's excellent City Parks Blog, it was also a...
October 29, 2008
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise
, Living Sustainably
, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
- Tags:
- neighborhood, portland, redevelopment, salmonsafe, smartgrowth, sowa, sustainabledevelopment, waterfront
One of the largest urban redevelopment projects in the country, Portland's South Waterfront ("SoWa") has been certified as "salmon-safe" by a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring watersheds so that salmon can spawn and thrive. According to the press release...
