Dahlia Garden Club of Walters Announces Essay Contest Winners

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  • Phleim Jaing and Melanie Spence Dahlia Club President
    Phleim Jaing and Melanie Spence Dahlia Club President
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The Dahlia Garden Club of Walters presented Phelim Jiang, Walters High School graduating Senior and son of Xiao Yang and Tong Jiang with top awards for his essay.

The National Garden Clubs, Inc. offers an essay contest each year for student’s 9th through 12th grades. Each year they have a different title. This year’s title was “Challenges in Preserving our Natural Habitats”.

The Dahlia Garden Club had three entries this year, all students entering were from Walters High School.

The awards presented to Jiang on June 15, 2020 at Tong’s Restaurant were: First place, Dahlia Garden Club $25; First Place, Southwest District of Oklahoma Garden Clubs $5; First Place, Oklahoma Garden Clubs, Inc. $100; and First Place, South Central Region (the states of Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and New Mexico) $100.

The Dahlia Garden Club second place award of $15 is awarded to Gabriella Scott and the third place award of $10 is awarded to Jenna Johnson.

The Dahlia Garden Club has had First place winners at the state level before but Jiang is a first to win the South Central Region award.

The Dahlia Garden Club congratulates Phelim Jiang and wish him the same success in all his undertakings.

Phleim’s Essay:

“Challenges in Preserving Our Natural Habitats”

As climate change becomes an increasingly important global issue, many people are

working to preserve our natural resources; however, they are meeting substantial pushback from major corporations. Big corporations often value frugality over sustainable practices that are better for the environment but often stay away from these practices because of the heftier price tag and lower profit margin. Companies around the globe pursue development in natural habitats by conducting work which causes deforestation, pollution, and changes in demand on land resources. Corporations thwart attempts to preserve natural habitats because they can earn a higher profit margin by participating in destructive practices rather than doing what is right for our environment.

People around the globe fail to realize that the ongoing problem we have with deforestation is only going to get worse as time progresses. “In 1980 the area of [deforestation in the US] cleared annually for other uses, largely agricultural, was the size of Pennsylvania or Louisiana” (Houghton 1). One can only imagine the problem today with even larger corporations and agricultural projects arising seemingly out of nowhere. Many do not realize that “deforestation also has global effects” (Houghton 1) beyond the local area, further affecting the global carbon cycle and “increased frequency and severity of floods” (Houghton 2). The real problem we have today is that deforestation is being used as a gate to other environmental issues. Once a corporation or party gets hooked on deforestation, what happens next is population displacement, climate issues, and the extinction of ancient species. Deforestation has gotten to this point because corporations constantly challenge their needs against the society. If the topic was voiced louder, our planet might have not been in all the mess we have created throughout the years.

In addition to deforestation, one can see the impact pollution has on our planet, from carelessly throwing drinks out the window to corporations dumping a vast amount of pollutants into our oceans, which include harmful chemicals that can kill off endangered species. One can see the effect of pollution by observing the Great Barrier Reef as it “continues to be degraded from landbased pollution” (Packett e t al 2) which we can blame on human-trafficking the land for recreational purposes and global warming. Water quality around the area is also caught in some deep water because of the pollution that lives there which also poses a threat to humans swimming in the water. These big corporations like t he oil industry “consume the ecology [and] poison the water” (Tuttle 1) around it which can contain carcinogens that are harmful if consumed. Globally, even “China is cracking down on pollution like never before” (Kearns e t al 1) and the effects of the new policies can be felt anywhere when in China. The U.S. must put these same words into action in order to combat the pollution in our nation as well.

To continue, changes in demands of land resources have changed significantly because of big oil corporations wanting to drill for oil and ultimately ending up destroying natural habitats and even sacred land of the natives who have lived on the land for centuries. A community may have used land for agricultural purposes, but with these corporations setting new ground on for building, they cause communities to lose their resources. When these corporations contaminate the land around it, demand on those resources, such as timber and medicinal plants decrease due to the fact that it is either contaminated or depleted due to pollution and deforestation.

Preserving our natural habitat will always be a challenge because large corporations will only look at the matter from an economical standpoint rather than what is actually safe and beneficial to our planet. The main point is, corporations fail to put any focus into discovering new innovations, but rather do what is easiest for them ,which will ultimately lead to the downfall of any corporation. In other words, corporations will keep cutting corners as long as there is no formal regulation against them and our planet will keep facing these challenges for years to come.