About 30 years ago we use to rent a small cottage in Dewey Beach, DE, USA which was about 90 meters from the Atlantic Ocean and about 32 miles from my home. At home we had a large collection of native plants, orchids, and other plants in our gardens and green house. We would go home every couple of days to tend the gardens and check the mail.
In the sand dune yard next to our rented beach cottage was a small colony of rare dune dwelling plants. I wanted to take one back to my gardens and plant it where we had a good chance of keeping it alive but I was torn by the moral dilema of taking such a rare plant (and violating the law) even though I would be preserving it. I decided not to take the plant (taking the high road,after all I was a teacher), but was totally mistaken. The next week we came back to the cottage only to find that the lot where the plants had existed for years had been bulldozed! Every plant was gone. The rolling dune leveled. In a few weeks it became an asphalt parking lot and a new condo. All of the plants were gone.
We have also seen similar things happen in the Florida Keys. We use to dive around Key West in 1968 before the housing boom covered the keys with houses and canals. We saw the white silt from diging canals hanging in the water and eventually covering the animals, plants, and bottom later in the 70s.

Matt

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