permaculture

[Claude William Genest <genest@pivot.net>]

> Hi All, been a while..just sent this in to our local paper in response to a two week series on those bad bad exotics.....


> 		Paradigm Shifting: Invasives Revisited.
> ... Current understanding of invasives is outmoded and lacks ecosystem knowledge.

> By: Claude William Genest

> 	A Chaos Theorist once remarked that it is relatively simple to find the fault in a design. It's harder to spot the assumptions that give rise to the fault. And it's hardest of all to identify the world-view that underlies it all.
>
> A world-view which holds germs as causing disease and "exotic invaders" as responsible for destroying ecosystems is outmoded, leads to faulty assumptions and poor design choices. This is painfully true with our understanding of pioneering successional plant species wrongly maligned as a "problem".
>
> Gaia Theory
> The Nobel prize winning "Gaia Theory" teaches us that the earth is like a body : it self-organizes, self-repairs, and self-reproduces. It  is a single, self-regulating living system that organizes itself in such a way as to maintain and create the conditions that are suitable for life.
>
> >From this systemic perspective it can be rightfully said for example that we don't "catch a cold". Rather, we make ourselves vulnerable by compromising the processes that collectively make up our immune systems. Coughing, sneezing and runny-noses are not the problems of your cold, they are the solutions ! They are your body expelling the "exotic invaders".
>
> Similarly, invasive plants are also operating in the context of the whole-system. Take a closer look:  they are absolutely specialized at cleaning up our mess and repairing degraded soils.  Purple loosestrife's historical progression can be traced right up the fouled waters of  our man-made canals and its ability to fix nitrogen and mine minerals make it an ideal pioneer species for degraded former wetlands. Eurasian Millefoils'  "thousand leaves" give it more surface area with which to capture the nutrients we so ignorantly and abundantly provide and Zebra mussels fix our phosphorous overload like nobody's business.
>
> An understanding of living systems also does away with the ecologically untenable notion that anything in nature results in a monocrop, as any walk in a healthy forest will reveal.  Monocrops are man-made and to think of it, what species has been more invasive and expensive than the common lawn whose acreage and rates of herbicide applications exceed those of farms ?
> Living systems evolve towards diversity, complexity and resiliency. Pioneer species including many exotics, "take-over" for what appears to be a long time only in our myopically short life-spans. The pattern in fact is one of "succession" in which one species helps create the conditions for the next. Life creates life, even in death. 
>
> Historically Correct ?
> The Historical argument holds that what was there once should be there again. 
> The historical land use pattern has been to erode top soil through clearcuts, farm it to death, then turn it to pasture and finally to hay. We erode the soil and systematically mine its fertility through intensive, extractive and chemical-laden monocrop practices and then stand amazed that nature is stepping in to repair the damage. 
>
> To recreate the matrix of species that dominated prior to intensive logging/farming all that is required is but to re-create the soil, flora and fauna conditions that were then present. The irony is that Gaia, in association with exotics, is doing just that. Incredibly, we pay to eradicate this process, then pay again to inappropriately plant climax plants in a pioneer soil.  
>
> A lake's best friend ?
> In order for any species to thrive, it needs food. Waste is food and we are providing the nuisances of Lake Champlain with a smorgasbord of agricultural, industrial and human nutrients.
>
> The historical land use patterns of the lake have been to both remove the natural "sponges and buffers" provided by wetlands and then to dump our wastes into the lake. Many are surprised to learn that the number one source of point pollution in the lake are water treatment plants.
>
> We radically alter the life conditions that allowed natives to flourish, and then blame the exotics for succeeding in the conditions we created !
>
> How is it that what was once labeled a mere  "nuisance" has graduated to the ranks of "exotic invader" ?
> It is important to remind ourselves that species like Zebra mussels are nuisances only to man: they block his intake pipes, cover his war relics, and cut his bare feet. But in terms of phosphorous sequestration they are clearly more a friend to the lake than a foe.
>
> So, does invasive reduction have to be an expensive war ? Or can we learn to work with natural systems to profitably reduce the waste stream entering our soils and watersheds? If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, would it not make more sense to eradicate the human roots of the problem rather than pay to eradicate nature's solutions ?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> C. William Genest
>
> - Founder  Green Mountain Permaculture Institute of Vermont
> Solutions, Sustenance, Sustainability
> www.greenmountainpermaculture.com