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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4>Ty, Toby, and APWG:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4>At root, Toby's essay is right on the mark, so I
will quibble little, praising with faint damnation. While he covers the subject
pretty well and has a knack for effective writing, he doesn't hammer home the
point hard enough that I persist in trying, in vain, to make: Ecosystems are a
reflection of the habitat conditions they inhabit (by definition, yes, but not
widely recognized or understood). </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4>While I believe his definitions and statements are
valid enough, taken at face value, I believe he is begging the question a bit
too far when he compares the effects of modern civilizations with those of the
first human (invaders) inhabitants. To what extent the latter actively managed
their habitats, even with fire, no one really knows; the "evidence," while
present in at least anecdotal form, is thin and perhaps inflated to conform to
"an idea"--yet this popular presumption is almost as persistent as the 50,000
acre invasion myths he uses as an example to illustrate his point that
"invasions" rarely actually occur in undisturbed indigenous ecosystems and that
many "invaders" are alien species taking advantage of direct and indirect
anthropogenic disturbances, a valid observation. The weed-bashing impulse,
with respect to ecosystem preservation, is borne of the simple observation that
corrections to those disturbances, and the restoration to the "original"
ecosystem rather than accept the disturbed state with its aliens is seen as a
kind of compensation for error that benefits both "nature," and "civilization."
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4>The weed-bashing impulse could be better-directed,
toward the highest priorities and a requirement that predicted results actually
occur rather than an impotent thrashing about, "fully of sound and fury,
signifying nothing." As Toby clearly implies, the restoration of a
fully-functioning, self-sufficient* ecosystem is often the most cost-effective
means for restoring the biotic diversity that has been simplified by disturbance
and invasion. Except for those with a financial axe to grind, most weed-bashers
are well-intended, but often uninterested in objective analysis of the nature
and extent of the problem. This delays optimal allocation of scarce resources,
the fundamental requirement of all good management. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4>Sahara mustard is apparently a case of (again,
<EM>apparent</EM>) of an alien organism that is capable of invading apparently
"undisturbed" habitats (deserts, like riparian habitats, are cases of natural
disturbance). Had "control" measures been initiated and maintained long enough
early enough, this plant might have been extirpated; now it is so
widespread that its control is perhaps unfeasible or impractical or
prohibitively expensive. Like the kudzu vine, we, and the deserts, may "just
have to live with it." Had the bashers been more selective of their victims,
this might not be the case. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4>This is about as provocative as I can be, but I'm
sure others will be able to outdo me. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4>WT</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4>*This is a crucial distinction. Oaks may be
succeeded or suppressed by fir, and that might be due to natural or unnatural
factors (fire or its suppression or its non-occurrence). Corn, for example,
is wholly dependent upon humans to persist, the prairie grasses are
not. The environment/habitat, in whatever state, when disturbance is
withdrawn, will determine the species composition, population,
density, and diversity of any site. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=tyju@xmission.com href="mailto:tyju@xmission.com">Ty Harrison</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=apwg@lists.plantconservation.org
href="mailto:apwg@lists.plantconservation.org">apwg@lists.plantconservation.org</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, April 05, 2011 12:25
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [APWG] Fw: Ideas for
thought.</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Please find below an interesting essay by Toby
Heminway, the polyculture guru, which members of APWG may like to
discuss. Some of his points deserve a critical analysis. I'm not
sure we can accept some of his generalizations. Are we really
wasting time and money figting invasives? Regards, Ty
Harrison</FONT></DIV>
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<P class=MsoNormal>Native Plants: Restoring to an Idea</P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Thursday, December 02, 2010 3:44 PM</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Let me tell you about the invasive plant that scares me
more than all the others. It’s one that has infested over 80 million acres in
the <ST1:COUNTRY-REGION w:st="on"><ST1:PLACE
w:st="on">US</ST1:PLACE></ST1:COUNTRY-REGION>, usually in virtual
monocultures. It is a heavy feeder, depleting soil of nutrients. Everywhere it
grows, the soil is badly eroded. The plant offers almost no wildlife habitat,
and since it is wind pollinated, it does not provide nectar to insects. It’s a
plant that is often overlooked on blacklists, yet it is responsible for the
destruction of perhaps more native habitat than any other species. Research
shows that when land is lost to this species, native plants rarely return;
they can’t compete with it. It should go at the top of every native-plant
lover’s list of enemies. This plant’s name: Zea mays, or corn. Corn is
non-native. It’s from <ST1:PLACE w:st="on">Central America</ST1:PLACE>. Next
on my list is the soybean, with 70 million acres of native habitat lost to
this invasive exotic. Following those two scourges on this roll call of
devastating plants is the European invader called wheat.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Wait, you say: these plants are deliberately spread by
people; that’s different! But to an ecologist, it is irrelevant that the
dispersion vector of these plants is a primate. After all, we don’t excuse
holly or Autumn olive, even though without bird dispersal, they could not
spread. Why are corn, soy, and wheat not on any blacklists? Because we think
of them differently than plants spread by non-humans. This suggests that an
invasive species is an idea, a product of our thinking, not an objective
phenomenon. When we restore land, we restore to an idea, not to objective
criteria.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Let me give another example of how our ideas dictate which
species we’ll tolerate and which we won’t. The wooded hillside on rural
<ST1:STATE w:st="on"><ST1:PLACE w:st="on">Oregon</ST1:PLACE></ST1:STATE> where
I once lived was thick with 40- to 120-year-old Douglas fir and hemlock.. But
as I walked these forests, I noticed that scattered every few acres were
occasional ancient oak trees, four to six feet in diameter, much older than
the conifers and now being overtopped by them. I realized that in these
ancient oaks I was seeing the remnants of the oak savanna that had been
maintained for millennia by fire set by the original inhabitants, the Calapuya
people. The fir forest moved in when the whites arrived and drove off the
Calapuya, and suppressed fire. So what I was seeing was a conifer forest
created by human-induced fire-suppression, and it had replaced the oak savanna
that had been preserved by fire setting. Which was the native landscape? Both
were made by humans. If we say, let’s restore to what existed before humans
altered it, we’d need to go back to birches and willows, since humans arrived
as the glaciers retreated. But clearly that’s not appropriate.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>In a similar vein, one of the rarest and most valued
ecosystems in the Northwest are the native prairies, such as those found in
the <ST1:PLACE w:st="on">Willamette</ST1:PLACE> and other valleys. Yet these
prairies are also the product of human manipulation. Prairies occurred
naturally in the <ST1:PLACE w:st="on">Willamette</ST1:PLACE> over 5000 years
ago, but began to disappear after that. Ecologist Mark Wilson has written “As
climate turned cooler and moister 4,000 years ago, oak savanna and prairie
ecosystems were maintained only by frequent fires set by native people to
stimulate food plants and help in hunting.” The local people used fire
technology to maintain an environment that supported them even when the
climate no longer supported that ecosystem.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>So I applaud and encourage efforts to preserve native
prairie in the region—they are valuable as endangered species habitat,
examples of cultural heritage, and a way of preserving planetary biological
wisdom. But we should restore these prairies with the strict recognition that
we are creating—not recreating or restoring--a state that can not be supported
by current climate and other conditions. Prairies are artificial in the
<ST1:PLACE w:st="on"><ST1:PLACENAME w:st="on">Willamette</ST1:PLACENAME>
<ST1:PLACETYPE w:st="on">Valley</ST1:PLACETYPE></ST1:PLACE>. The preservation
of prairies there isn’t a matter of simply repairing and replanting a degraded
landscape and then watching the prairie thrive, but constructing a species
community and an environment for it that must remain on intensive life
support, with constant intervention, for it to survive at all, as long as the
climate remains unsuitable to it. The <ST1:PLACE
w:st="on">Willamette</ST1:PLACE> prairie remnants can’t be considered native;
the only criteria they meet is that they were here in small patches when
botanists first catalogued them. But so were dandelions. Botanists knew
dandelions weren’t native, but the didn’t know that the prairies were human
created, so the prairies were catalogued as native. Prairies in the Northwest
haven’t been indigenous for 4000 years.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>We love the local prairies and I firmly believe in the
efforts to preserve them. But I want us to be clear that we are restoring to
an idea. We are restoring because we want these things here, and not because
there is a master blueprint that says they are the right ecosystem for the
place. Ecosystems exist because current conditions favor those particular
assemblages. Change the conditions, and the ecosystems will, absolutely,
change. Both the climate and humans have changed the conditions plenty.
Environmental change is the driving force behind shifting species makeup. With
plants and most animal species, no evil species showed up and through sheer
cussedness, killed off the locals. Instead, the conditions changed</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>The very concept of wild land, for most Americans, is
founded on a misunderstanding: a very brief ecological moment during which a
once-managed ecosystem was at the height of its degradation due to loss of its
keystone species. The dark and tangled primeval forests, written about by
Thoreau and Emerson, are simply the declining remnants of open and spacious
Eastern food forests, turned to thicket after a century or two of neglect. But
this idea of wilderness is deep in our mythology, national imagery, and
consciousness.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Let’s look at some of the causes of species change. First:
terminology. The word “invasive” is loaded. We hate invaders. The term also
places focus solely on the incoming species, yet the ability of a species to
survive is due to interactions with the biological and physical environment.
So I prefer a more neutral, and I think, ecological more correct and
descriptive term, such as opportunistic. Kudzu is not much of a problem in its
native habitat, but it will take advantage of opportunities.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>What creates those opportunities for species shifts? Intact
ecosystems are notoriously hard to invade. We know this because, for example,
seed dispersal rates are truly astounding.. Birds are a major dispersal agent.
They can carry seeds from multiple plant species in their gut, stuck to their
feathers, and in mud on their feet. So picture billions and billions of birds,
for 60 million years or so, traveling tens to thousands of miles, seeds
dropping off of them every wing-beat of the way. Add to that bats, which are
actually more effective at seed dispersal, per bat, than birds. Plus
land-animal dispersals, not as far-ranging as birds but bringing much larger
seed loads via droppings and fur. Include water-rafted trees and other plants,
wind-dispersed species, and more.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>This gives a picture of the whole planet crisscrossed with
billions of birds and animals for millions of years, seeds and spores going
everywhere, eggs being carried to new environments, dispersal, dispersal,
dispersal! So why isn’t the whole planet a weedy thicket? Because the mere
arrival of a new species, even in large numbers, is not what causes a
successful colonization. Ecosystems are very hard to invade, and several
conditions must be present for that to happen.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>A major reason for ecosystems being tough to invade is that
nearly all the resources in undisturbed ecosystems are being exploited. Nearly
every niche is filled, every nutrient flow is being consumed, almost every
opportunity is taken. Two major changes make ecosystems invasible:
disturbance, and the appearance of new resources. Take disturbance.
Perennially disturbed places, like riparian zones, are sensitive to
opportunistic species. So is farmland, or developed areas, or anywhere than
humans or nature cause disturbance. It drives me nuts when I read that
“species X” has destroyed 50,000 acres of habitat. When you do a little
digging you find that, no, that area was farmed, or new roads cut, or logged,
or polluted, or otherwise disturbed, and then the new species moved in.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>For example, one poster child of invasion biologists is the
brown tree snake, blamed for invading <ST1:PLACE w:st="on">Guam</ST1:PLACE>
and killing off several species of birds. The untold story is that for decades
the US Navy used over half of the island as a bombing range, leaving most of
it unfit for life. Much of what remained was crowded by displaced people, and
developed by the military, and thus turned into poor and disturbed habitat.
The tree snake just cleaned up the struggling remnants that were already in
serious decline.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Stop the disturbance, and you’ll almost always eliminate or
reduce the effect of the new species. Land I lived on was clear-cut in the
early 1970s and not replanted with fir until the 1980s, and was covered with
patches of Himalayan blackberry and Scot’s broom when I arrived in the early
1990s. By the late 1990s, both species were gone from most places and nearly
dead everywhere else, because the trees had grown back and shaded them out.
The problem is disturbance, not that a species pushes out others because it’s
tough or mean.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>This suggests that we need to take care of naturally
disturbed areas like riverbanks, since most of the species we’ve labeled as
problematical thrive on disturbance. Even in these riparian zones, though,
conditions are altered from what they once were because of the loss of the
beaver and from damming. Thus nature is just trying to deal with our changes
as best as she can, and she’ll use whatever resources she can find. A return
to the former, natural disturbance regime may allow the once-present
vegetation to return, if that is our choice for that land,</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>The second cause of successful invasion is the appearance
of new resources. Often the new resources that that allow an otherwise intact
ecosystem to be colonized are pollution and fertilizer runoff. For example, a
number of aquatic opportunists, such as purple loosestrife, thrive in more
polluted and higher-nutrient environments than the plants they replace. Many
species that evolved in clean water are harmed by pollutants. Loosestrife,
though, has high rates of nutrient uptake, and this trait allows it to
out-compete many other species in polluted water.. But in permaculture, we say
that that every problem carries within it the seeds of its own solution. And
so loosestrife can be used in constructed wetlands and in natural environments
to clean nutrient-rich water. They are an indicator of a problem, a response
to it, and nature’s way of solving a problem, not the problem itself. If you
really hate loosestrife and want it to go away, clean up the water. Without
doing that, you’ll be flailing away at the problem forever. Spraying and
yanking is not an effective strategy to remove unwanted species. Nature is far
more patient and persistent, and has a bigger budget, than we do. To remove an
unwanted species, change the conditions that made it more favored than the
desired vegetation.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Unwanted species generally arrive because humans have
changed the environment to make conditions more favorable for the new species.
And when we “restore” landscapes, or more often, introduce a set of species
that we have decided are the ones we want to see there, we are altering the
landscape to suit our idea of what should be there, not to match some divine
plan. These two understandings burden us with a huge responsibility to make
intelligent choices, but more importantly, to recognize that we are often
arbitrarily making a choice based on our own preferences, not because there is
only one right choice for a landscape, When we put resources into landscape
management, however, we direct the shape of that landscape toward only one
choice. That’s the best we can do. Thus I’d like to see us be less dogmatic in
the way we cling to those choices.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Unfortunately, dogma is present on all sides. Friends of
mine approached the <ST1:CITY w:st="on"><ST1:PLACE
w:st="on">Portland</ST1:PLACE></ST1:CITY> city government with a plan to
create some edible plant corridors along Springwater Trail, a 40-mile bicycle
and pedestrian loop around the city. Their idea was for bikers and pedestrians
to be able to snack on berries and fruit. The city official in charge said,
“Nope, we have a natives-only policy on the trail.” The trail is a paved
pathway that goes through industrial areas and along backyards, road
right-of-ways, and scrubby vacant lots. It probably goes through a dozen or
more different environments, based on soil, water, sunlight, and all the other
factors that determine what plant communities will grow there. But the policy
is natives only. Wouldn’t it make sense for the primary species that will be
using that trail to have a habitat that suits that species’ needs for food and
comfort, particularly since it’s in a busy urban area? But instead the
landscaping is to be driven by an idea, by dogma. I totally support the idea
of having natives-only areas on the trail. But let’s allow the new landscaping
to serve those that it’s being built for, too.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>I began this with corn and soybeans. One of my favorite
snarky questions for natives-only people is: “What did you eat for breakfast?”
I ask that because it is our choices that determine how much of our landscape
is going to be consumed by non-native species.. I didn’t eat camas cakes with
pink-flowering currant syrup this morning, and I’ll bet you didn’t eat any
local plants either. Of course, I’d rather see someone growing indigenous
species in their yard rather than having a sterile, resource gobbling lawn.
But my <ST1:CITY w:st="on"><ST1:PLACE
w:st="on">Portland</ST1:PLACE></ST1:CITY> yard is not, in my or several other
lifetimes, going to be part of a natural ecosystem. I might be able to
cultivate some endangered native species in an attempt to pull a rare plant
back from extinction. That’s one good reason I can see for growing indigenous
plants in my yard. But the most frequent native plants I see grown in yards
are salal, Oregon grape, and others that are in no danger of extinction and
don’t, to my knowledge, support specialist species dependent only upon them.
And since much of my yard is watered, it is inappropriate for me to grow
natives that are adapted to our dry summers. It’s always stuck me as bizarre
to see Northwest natives being irrigated.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>But even more than indigenous plants, I’d rather see
someone providing for some of their own needs from their yard. When we eat a
bowl of cornflakes for breakfast, or oatmeal, or store-bought eggs, we are
commissioning with our dollars the conversion of wild land into monoculture
farms. I’ll bet that a large percentage people reading this buy local food,
shop organic, and so forth. But the farms growing that food are almost all
moncultures, and out of the urban matrix. In other words, it is farmland that,
if consumption decreased, has a far better chance of being restored to a
functioning ecosystem than a home lot. If I grow some of my own food, that
means that somewhere out in the country, a farmer won’t have to plow so close
to the riverbank, or could let some of that back field go wild. That land has
a far better chance of functioning as an ecosystem than my yard will. Oh, I
have visions of how city and suburban landscapes could be functional
ecosystems, but that’s another subject.. My point is, we need to be putting
money and energy into growing indigenous species where they will do the most
good, where they can truly contribute to ecosystems and their functions. Much
of our efforts in eliminating exotics is a complete waste of resources at
best, and at worst is a terrible use of poisons to destroy a hybrid habitat
whose function we don’t yet grasp. Let’s be honest at what we are restoring
to: an idea of what belongs in a place. If we want to get rid of an invasive
exotic, let’s get rid of some monocultured corn, and let a bit of farmland
return to being a real ecosystem.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Copyright 2007 by Toby Hemenway</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>(presented at the Native Plants and Permaculture
Conference, <ST1:PLACENAME w:st="on">Lost</ST1:PLACENAME> <ST1:PLACETYPE
w:st="on">Valley</ST1:PLACETYPE> <ST1:PLACENAME
w:st="on">Educational</ST1:PLACENAME> <ST1:PLACETYPE
w:st="on">Center</ST1:PLACETYPE>, <ST1:PLACE w:st="on"><ST1:CITY
w:st="on">Dexter</ST1:CITY>, <ST1:STATE
w:st="on">Oregon</ST1:STATE></ST1:PLACE>, in May 2007.)</P><BR>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV></DIV>
<P>
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<P></P><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>PCA's Alien
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