permaculture

[Steve Diver <steved@ncatark.uark.edu>]

Claude Genest wrote:

> > I doubt very seriously you have an epidemic loss of songbirds.
>
> Why do you sat that ? Isn't that exactly what Rachel Carson describes in her
> book ?  I guess the rate of decline has slowed in recent decades and that
> the real "epdemic" has come and gone, but sure seems the cumulative effect
> is massive (?)

My post indicated that change creeps up on you slowly, year after
year, until one time you look at the situation anew and realize,
"damn, where did all the birds go?"

A massive epidemic loss, by comparison, is so noticeable that
state officials are out on the trail, to investigate something like
a massive bird kill on a golf course after an application of diazinon.

Think of the fish bowl as an analogy.  Humans are very much like
fish swimming around in a bowl, they cluster into regional groups
and busy themselves, they become preoccupied with taking care
of business and going about their daily lives, feeding and working
and procreating and sleeping.  One day a fish from a distant village
swims over and looks inside the fish bowl, *aghast*!  For it sees
that its cousins have grown "fat".  It holds a mirror up, and the
fishies inside examine the situation from a new light.  An alarm
goes off, and now we have the Centers for Disease Control
saying that obesity is a serious health threat.  If you look at
pictures of Americans from the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and even 60s,
they look like slim and fit like our cousins in other lands still
do today.  Canadians and Europeans and elsewhere peoples
look "slim" compared to a growing number of really "fat" and
"large" Americans.   Perhaps one of the fish jumps out of the
fish bowl and swims across the ocean to visit these distant lands.
After time, it beomes accustomed to being around these slim
fish and that is it's normal sense of what a healthy fish looks like.
Yet when it comes back and peers back into the fish bowl,
it gazes in upon neighbors and cousins with shock!  And thus
when you walk onto an elementary school campus or a college
campus, the site of these fat little kids and these very *large*
college girls and boys -- who should be trim and fit like
their European cousins -- is a shock to the eyeballs; it
is so stunning that it SHOCKS your sensibility into a new
state of awareness.

Visionaries warn of such change, in hopes of avoiding calamity.

That is what a lot of the progressive movements like permaculture
are about, visionary change in hopes of maintaining a beautiful
earth, a pleasant place to live.

The alternative form of change is to get shoved up against
the wall, forced to change, because things have gotten so
far out of control that bluck muck is oozing down the streets.

The visionaries warned of the situation that will result in black
muck if certain steps are not taken, but oh no, the people and
especially the power elite would not listen; it is bad for business.

Or, like the fishies in the fish bowl, everyone is too busy to
notice change slowly creeping down the street.


>  but you may be able to get
> > collective buy-in to habitat and have a significant impact.
>
> What is collective byuy-in ?

The government wants to spray for mosquitos, what can you do?

A primary option, in my view, is to offer least-toxic, biorational
pesticides as an alternative to the regular run-of-the-treadmill
pesticides.   That is why I listed BIRC, Bio-Integral Resource
Center. BIRC is a premier source of information on least-toxic
IPM  tools and management systems for household pests,
neighborhood pests, garden pests, and also some agricultural
pests.  Contact BIRC and get some new biorational tools in
your toolbox to go back and talk to the spray promoters in
local government.

Bio-Integral Resource Center (BIRC)
http://www.birc.org

BIRC is a leader in the field of integrated pest management.
BIRC publishes The IPM Practitioner and Common Sense
Pest Control Quarterly as well as an annual Directory of IPM
Products and Beneficial Insects. BIRC also produces booklets
and reprints on least-toxic controls for selected pests.

Bio-Integral Resource Center (BIRC)
P.O. Box 7414
Berkeley, CA  94707
510-524-2567
510-524-1758 Fax
birc@igc.org
http://www.birc.org

Here's my big resource list with IPM resources.

Resource Guide to Organic & Sustainable Vegetable Production
http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/vegetable-guide2.html

See Section
4.0 IPM for Vegetables

We like to build conceptual frameworks for people to see things
more clearly so they can approach a task with some kind of
guidelines.  That is what permaculture is all about, in my view,
and that is what this Rincon-Vitova's 5-Point Integrated Pest
Control guideline does for IPM.

Rincon-Vitova 5-Point Integrated Pest Control†

1. Colonizing Beneficial Organisms

Use insectary-raised beneficials selectively to help restore the
natural enemy complex damaged by pesticide use.

2. Cover Crop Refuges

Plant strips of pesticide-free trap cover crops as a field
insectary and winter refuge for beneficials.

3. Monitoring

Sample (with nets or vacuums) and observe the relative
number of pests and beneficials.

4. Spraying

Do not spray if there is no pest problem! Use "soft" pesticides
that are less disruptive to natural biological controls.

5. Cultural Practices

Slight changes in farming methods can alter the behavior
of pests and their natural enemies to favor the crop. Crop
rotation, hedgerows, strip cutting, and other refuge
management techniques do make a difference.

Source:

†Rincon-Vitova Insectaries
P.O. Box 1555
Oak View, CA  93022
800-248-2847
805-643-6267 Fax
bugnet@rinconvitova.com
http://www.rinconvitova.com


So what is collective buy-in to habitat?

If you're first step is to investigate least-toxic spray alternatives,
I am suggesting that your second step, and the step that will
have the *most* significant impact on increasing songbird
populations, is to launch a campaign to increase wildlife
habitat through hedgerows, bioislands, agroforestry,
windbreaks, and other forms of ecological designed habitats.

Collective buy-in means that you are successful in convincing
local government, Boy Scouts + Girl Scouts, 4-H, Extension
Service, Garden Clubs, Parks Departments, to all chip in
and plant habitat and bring those songbirds back, and build
the bat houses and start bat colonies, etc etc..  butterflys
and native bees and lizards and frogs will all come along for
the ride.  They "buy in" to your suggestion that habitat loss,
having crept out of existence, year after year, is a significant
indicator of degrading environmental health.

"Habitat, habitat, gots to have a habitat" is a phrase from a
song by Stan Slaughter, a singer-songwriter extraordinairre
from the Ozarks bioregion who makes a living doing
environmental education for school districts and other
youth programs around the Midwest.

Stan Slaughter, The Eco-Troubadour
http://www.stanslaughter.com

Best,
Steve Diver


>    The
> > other option is to find non-toxic alternatives such as biorational
> > pesticides.  BIRC is one of your best options along those lines.
> >
> > Agro-ecology, agroforestry, hedgerow agriculture, riparian buffer
> > strips and corridors, permaculture... they all have something in
> > common with ecological design, species selection, and habitat
> > management.
> >
> >
> > Songbird Hedges—An Antidote to the Stockade Fence
> > Plants & Gardens News Volume 16, Number 3 | Fall 2001
> > by Janet Marinelli
> > http://www.bbg.org/gar2/topics/wildlife/2001fa_songbird.html
> >
> > Attracting and Feeding Songbirds
> > Clemson University Cooperative Extension Service
> > http://cufan.clemson.edu/hgic/factsheets/hgic1700.htm
> >
> > Understanding the Science Behind Riparian Forest Buffers:
> > Effects on Plant and Animal Communities
> > Virginia Cooperative Extension
> > http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/forestry/420-152/420-152.html
> >
> > Design Recommendations for Riparian Corridors and Vegetated
> > Buffer Strips
> > US Army Engineer Research and Development Center
> > http://www.wes.army.mil/el/emrrp/pdf/sr24.pdf
> > 17-page PDF; addressing zones, ecological design, species
> >
> > "Habitat, habitat, gots to have a habitat"
> >
> > Steve Diver
> >
> >
> >
> > Claude Genest wrote:
> >
> >> Thanks Steve,
> >>
> >> This option is quite popular around here, but I'm afraid it plays into 
> >> the
> >> "best and ONLY the best " mentality that seeks to "solve" the problem
> >> without recognizing that the apparent "problem" is in fact only a
> >> symptom....
> >> Don't get me wrong, I'm all for bats, but not instead of a healthy
> >> population of songbirds. And best as I can tell ( hence the need for
> >> corroborating evidence) this Spring is as Silent as they've all been for 
> >> the
> >> last fifty years, and if it hadn't been for Miss Carson's book, I doubt 
> >> I'd
> >> ever have noticed that this is NOT NORMAL !
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >>
> >> Claude