Ecological Amnesia: Life Without Wild Things (2019)(wilderutopia.com)
wilderutopia.com
Ecological Amnesia: Life Without Wild Things (2019)
https://www.wilderutopia.com/international/earth/ecological-amnesia-life-without-wild-things/
34 comments
totally agreed, permacultures can be more or less self-sufficient in resources and energy. In contrast the widespread monocultures are hyper expensive in resources, and making the soil extremely poor and erosive. Even things like tobacco monocultures, they have a big environmental cost, not even talking about the health cost of smoking. Let's also not forget intensive animal farms use even more resource by surface. We really need to reshape the global landscape, I'm so happy when I can find a fig tree along my ride, figs have actually been 90% of my diet since 2 months, free and deliciously nutritive fruits
Yes, I think animals play a vital role in ecosystems and the way we are treating them (both in nature and in our factory farms) is abhorent. That said, a Food Forest could feed many humans and just as many hogs, sheep, goats, and chickens and the closed loop nature of their manure cycles helps the plants regenerate and thrive. Keeping the animals separate from their inputs in absurd once you get to know animals. They don't want to be treated that way.
As for figs, YES. I eat a lot of processed figs via "Cereal Bars" but I'm slowly growing my army of Hardy Chicago Figs, I have 10 or so 1 foot tall clones in their own pots, and a single treeform with two tiny figs on it. I'm looking forward to trying a fresh one but apparently collecting fig varieties is a sport for more well established growers. Worth learning how to grow a fig for anyone who isn't at their "forever" home, figs are fine to grow in pots! They are one of the few trees you can do that with because they tolerate swings of drought between watering and thrive in well draining soils having most of their roots very shallow and close to the surface.
Have a great day:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1L3BxBiUQg | Pot up a rooted fig tree cutting into a bigger pot - my best cloning method
As for figs, YES. I eat a lot of processed figs via "Cereal Bars" but I'm slowly growing my army of Hardy Chicago Figs, I have 10 or so 1 foot tall clones in their own pots, and a single treeform with two tiny figs on it. I'm looking forward to trying a fresh one but apparently collecting fig varieties is a sport for more well established growers. Worth learning how to grow a fig for anyone who isn't at their "forever" home, figs are fine to grow in pots! They are one of the few trees you can do that with because they tolerate swings of drought between watering and thrive in well draining soils having most of their roots very shallow and close to the surface.
Have a great day:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1L3BxBiUQg | Pot up a rooted fig tree cutting into a bigger pot - my best cloning method
Along with animals we also forget about fungi and insects. Trees communicate between themselves through forest wide fungal networks. And that's the biggest problem of pesticide driven monoculture farming - you destroy all of that complexity.
While I agree on the general notion, I disagree with quite a few points from the article:
- the effective population size of the passenger pidgeon was supposedly smaller than a million individuals. The billion animal events where likely exceptions and outside of the norm, possibly due to some form of human intervention.
- The huge bison herds were likely artifical, due to missing predators and almost all other large herbivors that are by coincidence missing since the first native american arrived.
- Same about the australian abriginees: > 'who thrived as guardians of their world for over 55,000 years. In all that time, the desire to improve upon the natural world, to tame the rhythm of the wild, never touched them. Indigenous people accepted life as it was, a cosmological whole, the unchanging creation of the first dawn, when the primordial ancestors sang the world into existence.' which totally disregards that the entire land based australian megafauna exept emu, red kangaroo and wombat was long extinct when europeans arrived.
A world without humans would not look like it did in the 1500s.
- the effective population size of the passenger pidgeon was supposedly smaller than a million individuals. The billion animal events where likely exceptions and outside of the norm, possibly due to some form of human intervention.
- The huge bison herds were likely artifical, due to missing predators and almost all other large herbivors that are by coincidence missing since the first native american arrived.
- Same about the australian abriginees: > 'who thrived as guardians of their world for over 55,000 years. In all that time, the desire to improve upon the natural world, to tame the rhythm of the wild, never touched them. Indigenous people accepted life as it was, a cosmological whole, the unchanging creation of the first dawn, when the primordial ancestors sang the world into existence.' which totally disregards that the entire land based australian megafauna exept emu, red kangaroo and wombat was long extinct when europeans arrived.
A world without humans would not look like it did in the 1500s.
A common flaw I see with "Save our X" type campaigns is the lack of knowledge of the history of our places. We all tend to remember a place the way we first encountered it. And conversely we also tend to fetishize how people lived before us.
A short anecdote, I live in the PNW. There are plenty of places that are 3rd generation logging sites. I live in a neighborhood that since the 1800's was logged, homesteaded, reforested, logged again (possibly 2x?) and in the last 30-40 years has become an attractive semi-rural place to live. I've been in the area for about 20ish years, my partner her entire life. People who have recently come to the community and complain about new development don't understand the history of the place and that the homes they live in are new development to us. What they see as old growth forests are 50 year old sick and polluted monoculture tree stands that were abandoned by the forestry industry.
There is great depth to how humanity has impacted our planet and this article touches on some of it. It's easy to forget that humans bring change to places, even 5000+ years ago. I think your comment also points out some of the longer term impact humans have had. What state of planet earth are we trying to lock in? What are we trying to save? Humans are part of nature. How do we find balance to participating in the world?
A short anecdote, I live in the PNW. There are plenty of places that are 3rd generation logging sites. I live in a neighborhood that since the 1800's was logged, homesteaded, reforested, logged again (possibly 2x?) and in the last 30-40 years has become an attractive semi-rural place to live. I've been in the area for about 20ish years, my partner her entire life. People who have recently come to the community and complain about new development don't understand the history of the place and that the homes they live in are new development to us. What they see as old growth forests are 50 year old sick and polluted monoculture tree stands that were abandoned by the forestry industry.
There is great depth to how humanity has impacted our planet and this article touches on some of it. It's easy to forget that humans bring change to places, even 5000+ years ago. I think your comment also points out some of the longer term impact humans have had. What state of planet earth are we trying to lock in? What are we trying to save? Humans are part of nature. How do we find balance to participating in the world?
In a similar vein the effective population of humans is probably much much smaller than it is now. Our current state of existence is an artificial blip on the ecological timescale of the earth.
There was a great /r/collapse thread discussing this[0], prompted by this article[1].
Links:
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/p9it08/we_suffer_...
[1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/08/19/whales-requiem-f...
Links:
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/p9it08/we_suffer_...
[1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/08/19/whales-requiem-f...
Needs a (2019) tag.
Restoration of the wild buffalo population is actually going surprisingly well, but it's just getting started.
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/135ade9a64a243eaa8e4647...
https://www.nwf.org/Our-Work/Wildlife-Conservation/Bison
https://www.nwf.org/Our-Work/Wildlife-Conservation/Bison/Tri...
Restoration of the wild buffalo population is actually going surprisingly well, but it's just getting started.
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/135ade9a64a243eaa8e4647...
https://www.nwf.org/Our-Work/Wildlife-Conservation/Bison
https://www.nwf.org/Our-Work/Wildlife-Conservation/Bison/Tri...
A lot of important work is happening, and it is hard going. Describing it as "surprisingly well" is a reach, though. From 30 million individuals before European colonization, to a minimum of 1,000, to now 21,000...that's still 3 orders of magnitude off. And that population will never recover to pre-colonization because their former habitat is now largely ranches and farms. Yet another example of how mankind utterly obliterated a whole cross-section of the ecosystem for its own ends and cannot restore it.
Some of these topics are also covered rather well here:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-07-06/the-ideology-o...
It is a clear case of the 'tragedy of the commons'. The only way to escape the tragedy of the commons (when there are large numbers of people who don't know each other) is regulation. However regulation has proved very hard to do at an international level.
It is a clear case of the 'tragedy of the commons'. The only way to escape the tragedy of the commons (when there are large numbers of people who don't know each other) is regulation. However regulation has proved very hard to do at an international level.
> It is a clear case of the 'tragedy of the commons'. The only way to escape the tragedy of the commons (when there are large numbers of people who don't know each other) is regulation. However regulation has proved very hard to do at an international level.
All of Ostrom's work was to disprove this argument -- she showed that it is possible (not always, but frequently) to avoid the tragedy of the commons without regulation or privatization:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom#Research
All of Ostrom's work was to disprove this argument -- she showed that it is possible (not always, but frequently) to avoid the tragedy of the commons without regulation or privatization:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom#Research
From a quick read of that page, she seems to be talking about management by relatively small groups, where some percentage of peolple know each other and social norms can be powerful incentives. I'm not sure that scales to international issues, where there is little common culture.
Even things like bugs have been devastated. When I moved from Europe to the US, one of the first things I noticed about the state of wildlife was the lack of bugs. It’s no wonder there’s a lack of all the other wildlife if we don’t respect the foundation of many food chains.
There is a term for this, shifting baseline [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline
Jeremy Jackson gives a number of eye-opening examples of this in oceanography:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fRPiNcikOU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fRPiNcikOU
Essential reading: https://www.jbmackinnon.com/the-once-and-future-world
One wild thing we've lost but could get back is the night sky. Have you seen a truly dark sky? Have you ever seen the milky way? The vast majority of people haven't, so they don't know what they're missing every single night of their lives.
How do we get it back? Honestly I'll do my part if I understand how.
Check out the International Dark-Sky Association:
https://www.darksky.org/
ps- https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/742493011
ps- https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/742493011
We are loosing words to describe nature. I recommend reading "Landmarks" from Robert Macfarlane. The audiobook is excellent.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/thelostwords
https://www.cam.ac.uk/thelostwords
Screw carbon credits. Countries should be given credits based on the number of (non-human) apex predators in the wild within their borders and any carbon-intensive/polluting economic activity should have to be offset against these very expensive credits.
More cobras in the wild! Result! As as aside, you'll find a cobra isn't an apex predator - a King Cobra ... now that could be considered. Every incentive humans have ever dreamed up has had perverse/unintended outcomes - what's your point?
Who is going to give countries "credits"? The UN? The US? God?
It's be cool if there were some distributed game-theoretic equilibrium that could be arrived at without a "central bank" issuing credits.
The credits get mined based on proof of existence and then can be traded. 'Given' was the wrong choice of word.
Is this a serious question? The Lion subsidies can only come from one place (God)
From 2019, should be tagged with the date
Meh. ALL of the North East was clear cut during colonial times. You only need to notice the property walls running through current dense forests today.
Most people claiming this have never actually lived outside of cities or suburbs. They've never directly experienced how fast nature takes back. They've never directly experienced how hard it is to fight that continuously.
Most people claiming this have never actually lived outside of cities or suburbs. They've never directly experienced how fast nature takes back. They've never directly experienced how hard it is to fight that continuously.
Would you consider that eventually we could as a species accidentally cut too much and cause the system to go out of whack? If that happened, how would it manifest? Would things be fine until nature demands her return on the investment and when she doesn't get it, a collapse happens? I think we are on a ramp toward a collapse when it comes to our environment.
We can build better systems than clear cutting which has a huge effect on the ability of a forest to hold water. Additionally forests create rain. We need to stop injecting clouds to try to trigger rain, that shit is dumb, we need to regrow our forests and thankfully we have lots of prior art on how to do that.
Yes, the bulk of the work is done by nature, mostly we need to configure the proper inputs, trigger the process and let nature drive, observe and then make minor adjustments to optimize multi yield and surpluses (outputs).
We need wood but trashing an ecosystem because it always grows back, is irresponsible.
I do understand there on many places were pine is farmed and clear cut multiple times in a monoculture and it's a generational family owned [and more recently corporation owned enterprise]). It works I'm not saying we should block that but even those systems could use a redesign for multi yield with the least destruction when the cutting happens.
We can build better systems than clear cutting which has a huge effect on the ability of a forest to hold water. Additionally forests create rain. We need to stop injecting clouds to try to trigger rain, that shit is dumb, we need to regrow our forests and thankfully we have lots of prior art on how to do that.
Yes, the bulk of the work is done by nature, mostly we need to configure the proper inputs, trigger the process and let nature drive, observe and then make minor adjustments to optimize multi yield and surpluses (outputs).
We need wood but trashing an ecosystem because it always grows back, is irresponsible.
I do understand there on many places were pine is farmed and clear cut multiple times in a monoculture and it's a generational family owned [and more recently corporation owned enterprise]). It works I'm not saying we should block that but even those systems could use a redesign for multi yield with the least destruction when the cutting happens.
This is true. Rural Vermont and New Hampshire have seen a lot of passive reforestation after farming moved to the Midwest. It took a few generations.
It doesn't always work though. There has to be enough left that it can grow back. And there can't be, say, new grazing animals that prevent that from happening. I'm thinking of, say, Easter Island, or arguably some of the North Atlantic islands like Iceland, Greenland... maybe even Britain (the moors used to be forests in prehistoric times).
It doesn't always work though. There has to be enough left that it can grow back. And there can't be, say, new grazing animals that prevent that from happening. I'm thinking of, say, Easter Island, or arguably some of the North Atlantic islands like Iceland, Greenland... maybe even Britain (the moors used to be forests in prehistoric times).
I had a personal eureka moment last year when I visited one of the last old growth flood plain forests. Humans decimated over 90% of this type of forest in just the last 200-300 year. This happened in the United States.
These flood plains are vital for the earth's homeostasis, flood plains have huge trees and hold incredible amounts of water.
In my honest opinion Permaculture management practices to rehydrate landscapes will be the first step toward reversing the climate crisis. Water in the ground acts like a battery to protect against flood and drought.
If you are also optimistic about what we collectively can do in the future, and want to hear more check out my YouTube channel here:
https://youtube.com/c/RussellBallestrini
For more about the last of the great flood plains forests of America, checkout this video in particular:
https://youtu.be/_4szw1gzBKc
Permaculture is a Philosophy and Systems Designed approach to working with nature to produce multiple yeilds, using little nudges and allowing nature to take the wheel to create surplus.
permaculture designers are people who think in terms of systems: inputs, process, outputs.
The goal is to stack functions, and regenerate ecosystems using site specific knowledge to guide the evolution of land and biosphere toward one of multi yield, for both people and nature.