An Open Letter to IPFW and the Plex, Part two

Seeings as so many of you have commented on my post "An Open Letter..." I thought you might like to see the stuff you maybe haven't seen. 
First, I have an e-mail from my friend downstate who doesn't like to comment on blogger because of security/signing up issues.

Isn't it sickening? Our township is zoned rural/farm and they're doing their best to turn it into a barren wasteland. The church across the street had many trees on the property that dated before the beginning of that church (1863). They have pictures inside of horse & buggies tied to those same trees. All gone. They put in an asphalt parking lot. Several more were cut down just for convenience. No kidding, the moment those trees fell you could feel the temperature rise significantly.



A woods less then a quarter mile down the road south went down because the farmer was tired of farming around it. One the same distance to the west is slowly going down to make it 'productive'. A little farther along they are in the process of mulching a huge woods (huge for today standards). Home of coyotes, deer and kind. Who knows why? Just to add more fields?


It seems to be a trend because home owners miles in each direction are doing the same. Cutting down massive healthy trees because they might fall on someone or are in the way.


Not many years past driving home from town you could feel the temperatures drop each mile you headed. Home was always 2-3 degrees cooler then town. Sometimes more.


And the hypocrites have the gall to complain about that starving, poor man in the rainforests. One farmer even told me that global warming is increasing because we're having so many wars! Not because he just cut down a forest!

Damn right!  IPFW will tell you they are green and want to take care of the environment, but here they are disrupting a fragile ecosystem so that sweaty men can chase each other around in the shade.  Which maybe they wouldn't have to if we didn't need those two extra soccer fields so bad.  BTW, I have heard nada from the plex despite e-mailing the link to them.  IPFW, however, had no e-mail link so I put the original post on their Facebook page- and got the following conversation in response:


Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) Thanks for sharing the post. I appreciate Chris' experience and insights. He's right -- it's hard to balance development, growth, and protection.
I believe the widened trail Chris spoke of is part of the Rivergreenway system expansion, anoth...er example of balancing development and protection. The Rivergreenway map (available at http://bit.ly/fwgreenway) shows sections of the trail running next to the soccer fields.
A pristine trail is truly a beautiful thing, no doubt about it. A paved trail encourages more use and gives accessibility to those with mobility challenges, exposing more people to the beauty of nature.
By helping more people experience the outdoors through an accessible trail, perhaps we can grow an appreciation to help protect what's still pristine.
Yesterday at 10:36am


(ME) This is not the treeline along the river. It is the woods on the OTHER side of the plex, clearly marked "IPFW property- no hunting". This is not the greenway's baby, it is your property, patrolled by your security. Perhaps the university should do a little more research into what the university is doing, before answering.


And by the way, a trail is not "pristine" - a natural area in its natural state is. So what is the plan, anyway. Are you going to pave it? Better use better quality asphalt than you did on the lower end of the main trail, it gets rivets ...worn into it every heavy rain. The thing that makes me mad is that, if you followed the deer in that woods around for months (as we have) you couldn't have torn out their preferred trails more perfectly or completely. I agree with your case about mobility issues. Instead of tearing up the home of a band of deer (which we'll probably never see again), why not push the greenway to get off their collective butts and finish the trail along the river like they've been promising? Then you could have left the woods they way it should be- AS IT WAS. Instead, now we have homeless deer, a ruined woods, and an unfinished stone trail just across the way. Nice job.
23 hours ago


Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) Thanks for your reply... With the extra information, I was able to dig deeper. The path you describe is apparently part of an expansion to the Athletic Department's cross country track. It will be topped with gravel, not paved.
2 hours ago


(ME) Oh, well, that makes ALL the difference.


2 seconds ago

(Sigh.) Cross country and soccer.  I said it before: it's no crime, it's no sin.  Unlike the wanton whackjobs or militant extremists, I have no cause to grab my gun (which I don't own BTW) and shoot a random bunch of socceristas or make the CC team run faster.  But you know what, plex and IPFW? If you'd ever spent any time on this land just enjoying it, you might think differently about what you're doing.  But, go ahead, stay behind your desks, make your great decisions.  Who gives a damn about deer, anyway?