permaculture

[lbsaltzman@aol.com]

I once had the experience of viewing hundreds of hours of documentary film 
shot in the Serengeti in the 1940's before it was greatly impacted by human 
pressures and bad management.? There were shots where the camera panned 360 
degrees and there were solid masses of grazing animals in all directions as 
far as the eye could see.? The Serengeti was a vast complex ecology that was 
highly dependent on the successive grazing patterns of various herds. The 
herds of wildebeests, zebra and many other antelopes arrived in an 
exquisitely timed sequence that caused the grasslands to flourish despite the 
heavy grazing each herd engaged in.? I could imagine if somebody suggested 
planning for grazing animals to exist in such huge numbers, many would assume 
they would destroy the ecosystem they were introduced into.

I am personally a vegetarian, but I agree that even if one chooses not to eat 
the animals, they play critical roles in a healthy ecosystem and have as much 
right to live and be in the environment as we do.? I would also suggest that 
just as the plants in a garden are good for our mental health, that animals 
properly mixed into a healthy garden or farm are also good for our mental 
health.

-----Original Message-----
From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 12:11 am
Subject: Re: [permaculture] [Fwd: Re: [fukuoka_farming] Re: Academy of 
natural farming]



Bob Monie wrote
> > Gardens are certainly
> > part of the food web, and the microbes, worms, and other creepy crawlies
> > endemic to this werb are welcome, but we don't need the horses, cows,
> > and other big-manure animals or even the medium size ones like ducks and
> > chickens to make our gardens work.
If I may borrow Larry Santoyo's rhetorical style for a moment: What in 
natural systems would make you think an ecosystem could lack animals and 
still have all its functions? Nothing in nature works that way. Then 
humans have to take on all those roles that animals do far better and as 
a natural part of their life. Horse and chicken manures are much nicer 
than mine to garden with, and ducks are much better than me at eating 
slugs. Assuming I'm not going to be cruel to them, deliberately 
excluding animals from a garden ecosystem is more ideology-driven than 
ecology driven.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com

>  

_______________________________________________
permaculture mailing list
permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Subscribe or unsubscribe here:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture





________________________________________________________________________
AOL now offers free email to everyone.  Find out more about what's free from 
AOL at AOL.com.