Imagine the excitement the colonists experienced when they arrived in North America, particularly New York, and were overwhelmed by the acres of land and salt marsh estuaries.  The colonists had cattle, and their cattle needed a place to graze.  First the land surrounding the estuary was used, but eventually that land was no longer fertile and more land was needed.  The colonists may have drained the salt marshes to serve their own purposes, but they did not understand the consequences of their actions.  The colonists had only one main idea in mind, and that was to survive in this New World.  By draining the salt marshes, the colonists had more pasture for their cattle.  The colonists could then continue eating their cattle for food and using the animal skins and bones for clothing, tools, building, and trading.  This was innocent destruction.  There was no science to cure the simple diseases they were dying from, let alone understanding or science that proved that salt marsh destruction has negative effects on the environment ranging from the loss of certain species, an increase in costal flooding, and an increase in mosquito population.

It says in the Scientific American:  “Such lands are not only unproductive of anything which can subserve any important purpose, but they are productive of numerous evils.” The Scientific American has already taken the next step in actively destroying salt marshes.  The magazine states that salt marshes are hotbeds of evil and should therefore cease to exist. This quote is from 1868, more than 200 years after the first colonist step foot in America.  While science was still lagging behind in 1868, society had some understanding of salt marshes if they could attribute evils, whether correct or incorrect, to estuaries.  They might not have known all the positives of salt marshes, but they probably had a better understanding than the colonists.  By this point in history, people are destoying salt marshes because they lack a concern for the environemnt and are selfishly pursuing their own goals.  However, the colonists did not consider the salt marshes to be troublesome, because once again, they had no understanding of science.  Even if their homes were filled with mosquitoes or bad smells, they probably did not realize the cause was salt marshes.  They did not destroy salt marshes maliciously as the Scientific American is advocating.

The colonists were not concerned with the environment, but I do not think their actions were thoughtless.  The colonists were probably aware that they were destroying part of nature, but the colonists made what they considered to be a thoughtful choice.  The salt marsh was not a productive element in their society, so they chose to drain it.  What is interesting though, is that the colonists’ actions might not fit under the category of technology.  When the colonists decided to fill the salt marshes, scientific understanding was certainly lacking, but the colonists did not use fancy technology to drain the estuaries.  They  simply filled them by blocking stream outlets.  Science does not only need to catch up with technology, science needs to stay on track or even ahead of human intervention of any sort, including, actions taken without understanding the consequences in the big picture, actions taken to try to help a situation but might actually hurt, and of course actions that actively and knowingly destroy the environment.