permaculture

[mangodance <bmn@iglou.com>]

Toby Hemenway wrote:
> In North America the prairies, all major river valleys, coastal plains, and
> many mountain valleys--pretty much the whole continent--were regularly
> burned by humans and otherwise altered for millennia before whites arrived
> (I can give plenty of references). 

This is a bit large in scale but I'll concede the point.

> Thus the baseline for restoration work is
> a landscape that was already highly manipulated by humans. 

Again, this is not necessarily so.  I depends on what people are
trying to do.  Again, if we are really discussing restoration,
we're looking at communities that are present before system-wide
disturbance, so that is the baseline.  Most projects tend to be
rehabilitation (in the case of people creating or growing
systems, or just creating a different use).  Few projects have
the specialty input of expertise, time & money to do
restoration.   Also, there is a difference between exotic
invaders and plants that were present but suddenly allowed to
fluorish.

> So we're
> arbitrarily deciding that the earlier human-modified landscape is worth
> preserving, while *our* human-modified landscape is somehow bad. In many
> cases this is reasonable, as with the impoverished flora found in farmland,
> strip mines, etc. But in restoration we're deciding that one species mix is
> superior to many others possible on that site. I just ask that we
> acknowledge the slipperiness of defining the "best" vegetation for a site;
> that when we say "native" we're excluding many eligible species because they
> don't fit a tiny subset of possible timeframes and conditions.

It isn't anywhere near that arbitrary.  It is worth preserving. 
We did the damage and should look for opportunities to make it
right whether we look at individual species to entire
communitites.  Should we do one *type* of rehab/resto?  Not at
all.  There are projects in the ground that addressed both of
these systems in a region.  There is a wealth of information and
armies of overworked folks who do well reasoned, quality planning
and work.  These workers are not prone to list plants simply due
to timeframe.

> We're stuck in the position, like it or not, of playing God. Thus it would
> be useful to recognize how wide our opportunities really are.
> Like many permies, I like species mixes that have plenty of exotics as well
> as natives because in many cases I can design them to promote greater
> insect, bird, and mammal density and diversity, richer soil, plus more food
> for me, than natives alone seem to promote (now there's some God-playing
> hubris for you!). But obviously I'm not talking about planting the Greater
> Yellowstone Ecosystem with the same mix.

This is where the discussion gets a little fuzzy.  For the most
part we flip back and forth between folks making their patches of
ground productive.  This is different than rehab/resto.  It is
reasonable to expect food production & aesthetic gardening to
proceed with exotics.  I just hope people look beyond their own
wishes before using some of them, and don't confuse this with the
rehab/resto side.

> And I'd love to see the woolly mammoth back!

Heh... and you think weevils are bad!
-- 
Please note and remove the spamblock "faux." from my reply-to
address above in order to send a reply.  I use it to block some
of the junk mail.  ESPANOL: Por Favor remueva la palabra "faux"
de mi respuesta de arriba para usd poder mandar una respuesta,
asegurese que la  direccion correcta es: bmn@iglou.com