It's not nice to fool Mother Nature

Here's a blast from the past:

Fooling with nature is what appears to be happening at Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge at the north end of Cayuga Lake. Pools had filled in over time and it had gotten hard to see much from Wildlife Drive in places where vegetation had gotten the upper hand. So pools are being dredged and muck being piled up in an effort to improve habitat and enhance eco-tourism:

Better for the birds, better for the tourists...what could be bad?

And yet, according to letter-writer Don Barber in the Ithaca Journal, humans—at least certain humans—shouldn't mess with nature because, it's implied, that never ends well:

Somewhere over the past century, the ruling plutocracy and many of its minions have lost their reverence and respect [for] Mother Nature and have come to believe that man and technology can solve any problem...

Perhaps humans shouldn't be trying to improve bird habitat, thereby shoring up the NYS economy by enhancing eco-tourism.

And they certainly shouldn't have a diesel tank on that "pristine" land for the purpose of pumping fossil fuels into the huge earth-moving equipment required to dredge the pools and pile up the muck:

Would the same people who object to energy development—when it comes to fossil fuels anyway—on the grounds that "Mother Nature doesn't care what you think" object to habitat and tourism improvement on the same grounds?