permaculture

["Kirby Fry" <peace@totalaccess.net>]

Salutations,

I just receive a web-site link about pine nuts from a friend, Michael Peter.
It has led me to
a chilling story (pasted below) and a chilling revelation about the politics
of land.  Here's a quote from the article:

"The politics of the Western cattle industry and public land grazing is the
primary reason From 1950-72 the USFS and BLM cleared ("chained") over
3,211,000 acres of pinion-juniper to create grazing land. "

Since so much of the Edward's Plateau in Central Texas was wooded (at least
40 - 60%), I
believe we should all be extremely cautious about how much of it and other
lands we allow to be
classified as range.  Once it is viewed as range it will hencforth be
managed as such.  Another quote:

"Most public lands managers are educated as range managers, rather than
foresters. Range managers see it as their self-imposed duty to create and
maintain range, which can also be called pasture."

The article below testifies that a land should be "registered" with
municipal, sate and federal agencies at it's highest successional state, not
at a state which was created 50 or 100 years ago in a mad dash to "open up"
the Southwest.

This is an amazing story and a must read for naturalists.

* * * * *

Pine nuts, Politics and Public Lands

Last year we imported 5 million pounds of pine nuts from seven countries.
Prior to World War II, millions of pounds of fresh American pine nuts were
harvested here and available to U.S. consumers. What happen to our own pine
nut harvest?

All pine trees reproduce through creating a nut in a cone. Some of these
pine nuts are tasty and nutritious - others cost more in calories to
collect, than they yield. The pinenuts purchased at a grocery, could be from
any one of the 28 species, grown in about 7 countries. Each species with a
different , shape, texture, flavor
and nutritional value.

The Department of Commerce reports that foreign countries ship us, 5 million
pounds of pinenuts each year. China provides most of the imported nuts, with
Italy, Pakistan and Portugal, each being a major exporter of pinenuts.
Because the shell amounts to 25% of the shipping weight, most nuts are sold
with the shells removed. Once the shell has been removed, the nut must be
preserved. Pine nuts are preserved, according to methods of the exporting
country. Certain methods of preservation would not be allowed here, like the
use of lye as preservative. Unless you live in the Southwest, or are over
the age of 70, chances are you have never had a fresh, unprocessed pinenut.
One might compare this to never having eaten a fresh strawberry, but
consuming only dried or frozen fruit. Yet, two American species of pine nuts
grow wild on 47 million acres of public land. It is a native plant, with
tremendous range, outstanding nutritional value, and highly sought after in
foreign countries. Why then are we importing so many pine nuts?

The politics of the Western cattle industry and public land grazing is the
primary reason From 1950-72 the USFS and BLM cleared ("chained") over
3,211,000 acres of pinion-juniper to create grazing land. Before the huge
corporations controlled grazing permits, pine nuts were harvested by the box
car load and readily available. Those were the days before the chain-saw,
bull dozer, massive herbicide treatments, the American Cattle's Association
and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The days before large expanses of
maturing pine nut trees were destroyed to grow grass for cattle --- at
taxpayer expense.

Pinyon pinenuts sustained the native peoples of the Great Basin for over
10,000 years. The soft-shelled pinyon pinenut, (p.monophylla) provided
primary protein to the Shoshone, Piautes and Washo peoples, containing
substantial amounts of the amino acids necessary for human growth. It was a
sacred part of the way they lived. Between 1865 to 1877, Native lands had
been overrun with cattle and sheep. The pinion pines, which they depended
upon for a pine nut crop each fall, were rapidly being cut down for fuel for

the mine smelters. Smelting a ton of ore required from twenty-five to
thirty-five bushels of charcoal. The mills at Eureka consumed as much as
1.25 million bushels of charcoal a year, destroying the Indians' pine nut
groves .

Certain treaties and Nevada laws provide harvest rights to Natives. The
Native Peoples have never fought for those rights. The Federal Government
cannot be guaranteed economic control of the pinenut harvest. Corporate
cattlemen pay minimal grazing fees and the taxpayers subsidize the land
treatment, to create the gazing lands, yet cattle won, hands down, over
pinenuts as a public land use.

Most public lands managers are educated as range managers, rather than
foresters. Range managers see it as their self-imposed duty to create and
maintain range, which can also be called pasture. Millions and millions of
acres of pinyon forests were bulldozed, chained, poisoned and subjected to
prescribed burning to create pasture land for cattle. Beginning in the 1960
's the pinyon tree were treated as a invasive weed, interfering with the
forage available for cattle.

Range managers were never educated about the massive deforestation caused
1800's mining industry which fueled the silver smelters with pinyon charcoal
at a rates up to 450 acres per day. Nor, have they been taught that the
p.monophylla life cycle requires between 100 and 150 years to reach seed
bearing maturity, then cones on a 5 year cycle, with three seasons required
to produce the nut in the cone. Most have never read the research reports
that state pinenut production potential revenues could exceed grazing
revenues by 148 to 500 times over. Or, that pinenuts are 28 times more earth
efficient in terms of acreage used to produce pounds of protein than beef.

The Great Basin was a semi-arid forest and native peoples could always find
a harvest of pinenuts, before white settlement. The pinyon never recovered
from demands made upon it by the mining industry of the 1800's. The large,
mature seedstock trees had been depleted from all but the most inaccessible
areas of the forest. As the cattlemen came in, the land was manipulated to
yield grasses, rather than forest. The grasslands dry out and die, rather th
an maintain the moisture content, like trees. The pasture land has become
part of the catalyst for huge fires in Nevada.

Land managers again, rather than looking to long term historical land
composition, used faulty logic to justify treatment projects as landscape
restoration, creating more grassland and flash fuel. Deforestation. One can
obtain more information about pinyon pine nuts and public land activism from
www.pinenut.com. The owners of that site are environmentalist working to
promote wild food as an alternative to cattle grazing.


Penny Frazier is independent environmental advocate, who has spent the last
8 years working to create change on public lands. She is a former litigation
paralegal and the owner of the www.pinenut.com . She actively participates
in public land management NEPA proceedings, receiving training and
encouragement from the Committee for Idaho's High Desert (www.CIHD.org) .
She works at respecting the Western Shoshone Nation and supports justice for
their Land Settlement Claims.