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Biodiversity and native bees

When we came back to our desert home a month ago, I was horrified by the massive scouring and destruction of habitat in the Palm Canyon Wash around and between the East Palm Canyon  and Gene Autry bridges.  It is heartbreaking to see all that natural habitat and ecosystem lost and destroyed.  How can this be justified given the critical need to protect bio-diversity ?

This previously beautiful and thriving green wash, swinging in from the Indian Canyons through the neighborhoods up to Taquitz Golf Club was a corridor for all sorts of wildlife - bringing the wild into the otherwise manicured landscape. The wash was a wonderful stretch of natural habitat with a plethora of animal and plant species.  A magical place to walk around in, observe, explore on foot or on horseback. Wildlife manifestly felt the same way... frequently you could see coyotes lazing under the shade of the trees.  The stands of large desert willows provided cover and burrows for all the scurying little critters, their flowers a feast for native bees and hummers.  And after heavy rainfall, the meandering stream attracted additional wildlife for weeks, in essence a seasonal wetlands environment, that ensured green growth for months to come.
From memory, these are some of the species that graced the wash:


What is wrong here?

The engineers and administrators of the Riverside County Flood Control are just doing their jobs. The city managers who dismissed the case of the unofficially endangered Casey's June Beetle, whose habitat is the wash, are just doing their jobs.  And they're doing their jobs on the business as usual mode. Have their job descriptions been updated recently to account for the new paradigm?  

I'm no expert, but it certainly seems to me to make sense to leave the wash in it's natural state, knowing that the root systems of the trees and vegetation actually help flood water infiltration into the ground and aquifer, and given the fact that big concrete berms have already been built on either side of the wash to prevent lateral flooding. The wash is a natural system already in place and it's been doing the job for free since the white man first came to the valley.  The real problems are the roads, houses, and golf courses that have been built on the path of the wash, and the people and agencies that ONLY push multi-million dollar, 100% concrete flood control solutions, neglecting and destroying the natural systems. 


"Green Infrastructure refers to natural systems that capture, cleanse and reduce stormwater runoff using plants, soils and microbes. On the regional scale, green infrastructure consists of the interconnected network of open spaces and natural areas (such as forested areas, floodplains and wetlands) that improve water quality while providing recreational opportunities, wildlife habitat, air quality and urban heat island benefits, and other community benefits. At the site scale, green infrastructure consists of site-specific management practices (such as interconnected natural areas) that are designed to maintain natural hydrologic functions by absorbing and infiltrating precipitation where it falls. Additional information on green infrastructure is available on EPA's Managing Wet Weather with Green Infrastructure website."

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