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Title: Untamed Unmasking of Permaculture Author: Ria Del Montana Date: June 1, 2019 Language: en Topics: permaculture, rewilding, anarcho-primitivism, anti-civ, homesteading, restoration ecology, invasives decolonizing Source: https://veganprimitivist.wordpress.com/2019/06/01/untamed-unmasking-of-permaculture/
“The more the human primate resists its primal nature, the more it
rationalizes exploiting and dominating. It disconnects from innate
awareness and fully intact empathy, falsely perceiving itself as safe,
free and supreme. Detached from organic interconnection within rich,
diverse habitat leaves it jaded to suffering as it commits carnage in
all forms.”
Just beneath a thick cracking veneer of denial modern humans sense the
end throes of civilization. Many compliantly follow the herd sacrificing
their lives as fodder for the insatiable beast. Some shed pseudo-life
bypassing the leviathan, looking to pre-civ for ways to live feral in
collapsing-civ and inevitable post-civ. Being that noncommercial
sustenance will be needed in the shifting biota-scape, permaculture is
pitching a sale to transitioning rewilders.
Does the pitch reflect the way of wild? While some permaculturists
collaterally include a premise of innate compassion for wildlife, does
the overarching paradigm remain supreme man in the middle of his
designed environment, even incorporating nonindigenous life? Does ‘all
plants play an ecological role’ rationale in homesteading permaculture
signal acquiescence to humans unrelenting dominating and manipulating
the world on their terms? Restorer of native wildlife habitats Benjamin
Vogt calls for humans empathetically reconnecting with wilderness by
actively reviving local wild lands:
Our gardens are places of arrogance and alienation. We are a species
very much alone in the world, trying to find an intimate, stabilizing
connection we once had with other species. But somehow we are unable to
give ourselves to the rather simple communication of empathy,
compassion, and shared fate. In our gardens, we may show the greatest
alienation, placing plants how and where we want and using species
unrecognizable to wildlife. In our gardens, then, is arrogance- that we
matter more, that our passions and loves, our losses and agonies, are
separate and even superior to those of other species. While our gardens
could ideally function as bridges between our world and the worlds of an
infinite number of lives, too often they are walls of hubris and
human-made disorder we impose upon a world already ordered to maximum
benefit through millions of years of trial and error. What we wish to
improve upon may be our own human-made alienation as creatures who
struggle with an ethics that must encompass not just different races and
creeds, but also animals, plants, and fungi. In a world of climate
change and mass extinction, intimate gardens out our back door might be
the best places to generate a landscape ethic that evolves into an
activist-based global ethic of creation care for all life.[1]
Whether logically or emotionally, is permaculture intention for
rewilding intrinsically breeched with use of nonindigenous species being
naïve at best, insensible at worst?
Two nonfiction books flirt with transitional rewilding. While neither
fully embraces anti-civ or post-civ notions, distinctions in ethos
between the two are revealing. The true story of Carol Ruckdeschel,
Untamed: the Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland
Island[2] is archetype of contemporary human rewilded as adaptive
creature connected in and contributing to indigenous community. Carol’s
kindred shared life with nonhuman others is closer to the connections
anthropologist Nurit Bird-David observed of South India foragers, with
whom ‘family’ includes an interwoven diversity of biota and abiota
coalescing in a place.[3] The exposé Beyond the War of Invasive Species,
Resilient Permaculture Design, and Transition Homesteading[4] is
promotion of permaculture through rebuke of restoration ecology, and a
calling to surround oneself in a constructed sustaining nature by
managing nonhuman others in a manner flourishing in beneficial functions
centered around humans. Opposite restoration ecology, permaculture oft
incorporates nonnative species into a designed anthropocentric permanent
agriculture/culture.
In sync with restoration ecology, Carol in Untamed, for example,
discourages expansion of human-introduced feral pigs decimating the
island’s indigeneity by turning them into meat to fuel her body’s work
saving threatened sea turtles. Since childhood Carol followed her
instinctive awareness of and compassion for wild life. More feral than
refined, she feels most at home in wild communal life as a pauper
sustaining herself on a biologically diverse barrier island; but it’s
under civilization’s attack. Fortuitously, being a self-taught published
scientist gives her standing to leverage the eminence of science and
politics to support her conservation efforts, though she’s most willing
to take Edward Abbeyesque action for some quick and fun results. Driven
by her primal purpose, she performs washed-ashore sea turtle necropsies,
connects with a blind gator, befriends vultures, grieves for human
introduced wild horse castaways ailing outside their habitat, and serves
witness to a wild mourning ritual. Her intertwined personal life
tragedies do not deter her fight for a true wild family, protecting it
from commercial development and exploitation.
Colonizing humans transferring species into bioregions, exponentially
fragmenting and degrading interconnected assemblages, has left many hard
decisions on how to halt their overpowering impact and revive a lifeway
embedded in wild. In Beyond the War, Tao Orion, a permaculture design
teacher and farmer degreed in agroecology and sustainable agriculture,
proposes a strategy to include invasive species based on permaculture
principles. Seeing restoration practices as untenable and ineffective,
she promotes utilizing invasive plants for uses such as compost,
medicine, farm animal feed, and human food. Without knowing how
invasives will impact nature in the future, she proposes taking a leap
of faith in moving forward into the unknown with inventiveness and tools
to create a new thriving of shifting biotic collections for human
sustenance. She believes that humans worry too much that some introduced
species ‘appear’ to overtake native communities forever altering
ecosystems, threatening not only existence of individual species but
intact bioregions and global biodiversity. To her, permaculture offers a
way to incorporate nonnative invasives through revamping the root cause
of ecological destruction: routines of humans’ everyday consumptions, or
she’d reframe as productions.
On the podcast Ancestral Health Radio self-described “ancestral health
coach, rewilding advocate, and 21st-century hunter-gatherer-gardener”
James Broderick interviews Tao.[5] Some of their topics include
supplementing chicken feed with grains for egg production, buying land
for homesteading, vegetable gardening and animal husbandry products. In
suggesting people dig up noxious knotweed to use the root for medicinal
purposes, the lack of depth of Tao’s awareness of plant behavior is
revealed when she neglects to caution that any 4” cutting of this plant
landing on soil can re-root expanding the habitat invasion, cascading
into suffocating aquatic life like juvenile salmon.[6] Acknowledging
that there’s not enough wild game to support hunting, her theme is on
creating an agricultural society where humans acquire enough land to
support their diet. It is clear that Tao’s permaculture homesteading is
intended as the anthropocentric endpoint, not a feasible transition
toward a rewilded human embedded in rewilded Earth. Akin to how Leirre
Keith’s The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and Sustainability[7] failed
in logic for carnists’ leap of faith out of speciesism, so to Tao Orion
fails in logic for permaculturists’ leap of faith out of human
supremacy.
Tao’s minimizing the concern over civilization’s introduced species’
impact on wilderness resilience is reckless and uninformed. [8], [9]
Essential truths are misconstrued and ignored such as 1. Many indigenous
animals depend on indigenous plants to thrive, for example, wildlife are
generally not adapted to eat introduced plant foliage [10] 2. Indigenous
plants and animals have co-adapted in intricate and complex ways with
defense mechanisms to establish balance,[11], [12], [13] 3. Docile
nonindigenous plants and animals can become invasive as conditions
change,[14], [15], [16] 4. Alien plants beget alien animals up the food
chain, exponentially expanding competition with native species,[17] and
5. Hybridization of introduced species with natives has subtler but
insidious impact contributing to decline and extinction of native
species.[18] Only folly would refute that introduced invasive plants and
animals degrade indigenous habitat sparking spirals of vulnerability for
other nonnatives to move in.
While fair to critique restoration ecology, it’s unreasonable to dismiss
and re-apply it with blatant bias. For example, coevolution is dismissed
if it explains species’ community interconnectedness, and how some
introduced species wreak ecological havoc, but is given credence when
convenient in backing her nonnative integration ideal. Yes, species
shift their ranges, but it’s on their own terms, usually slowly,
sometimes quickly and rarely with enough aggressiveness to destabilize
robust diverse communities. Yes there are natural mass changes such as
volcanoes where waves of species colonize the disturbed space in
succession. But Tao seems unaware that domesticated humans shuffling
species about, out of and into various habitats at a spiraling rate,
outpaces ecological dynamics.
While Tao’s criticism of herbicides is a popular and valid critique, she
fails to dig deep enough in addressing the root cause of wilderness
devastation: anthropocentric command over nature.[19] The hollowness of
her ideas is revealed in what she does not contemplate. For example,
instead of using herbicides as pretext to cultivate nonindigenous
species, rewilding permaculturists could collaborate on nonnative
species control through targeted harvesting for the goal of recovering
indigenous habitat. Top priorities could go to removing small patches of
new nonnatives before they spread,[20] and species with excessive
advantages over others outside their indigenous habitat (e.g.
allelopathic properties) such as Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata).
Strategies could include awareness of risks of harvesting plants that
for example spread vegetatively from segments left on soil, like
notorious vegetative propagator Japanese Knotweed (Polygonum
cuspidatum).
Regarding indigenous plants behaving invasively, in remnant wild
communities, herbivory plays a crucial role in limiting rampancy. If
indigenous herbivores are no longer playing that ecological role because
they are waning under civilization, then rewilding permaculturists could
either give indigenous animals back their habitat, or if that’s not
possible replicate the function. However take caution, substitutes such
as cattle for bison degrade the system further.[21], [22] Addressing
ethos directly, intercepting human domination by restoring indigenous
ecosystems could take the form of honing and collaborate on more gentle,
responsive approaches timed with natural rhythms, such as the Bradley
Method.[23]
While living within the local natural environment is key to rewilding,
using that setting to rationalize craftily introducing, maintaining or
propagating nonnative species that risk escaping into and degrading
other areas is more of the same dominating doctrine. Civilized humans
have so rapidly introduced species that most wildernesses have succumbed
to fundamental permanent losses leaving skeletons of themselves as
sitting targets vulnerable to ever increasing invasion. The problem of
civilization cannot be resolved with a more appealing version of
civilization that alleviates fears of sustenance in preparation to
survive societal collapse. Returning habitat and setting it free from
civilization overcomes humans’ domesticating ethos.
While Tao points to native people wild tending and the notion that
nativity is not a fixed state to promote permaculture, (pgs. 148-50)
indigenous people are connected members of indigenous habitats,
something permaculture cannot replicate. Primal biocommunities emerge
and transform their characteristics, relationships and ranges, on their
own terms. For permaculture to attempt to co-opt wild tending is the
epitome of supremacy. A more respectful and cautious ally approach would
be for permaculture to invite and assist native food plants supporting
members of local native ecosystems, encouraging resistance to
civilization’s introduced invasives. Incorporating invading colonizing
plants reflects an invading colonizing ethos where colonizer preferences
take precedence over indigenous habitat needs. Permaculture reasoning
exposes domination culture and power positioning used to willfully
ignore or justify human supremacist control over others.
Tao’s book is swimming in human supremacy bias with faulty
oversimplified reasoning. She brews an impassioned tincture of logical
and illogical thinking and proposals based on valid and invalid
criticisms. She makes claims of an invasive species’ benefits while
neglecting to mention more significant massive detriments. She bases
colonial misbalanced ‘biodiversity’ on indigenous people’s wild tended
habitats without seeing the difference. A fallacious book like this can
be dangerous for indigenous life if accepted by well-intended humans
lacking fuller understanding on how to assist an injured place to return
its vitality, much less embed within it.
For eons since origins humans like all animals found their food and
medicines based solely on instincts and primal senses.[24] Science is
less about increasing this kind of primitive awareness and more about
rationalizing domineering manipulation reflective of a supreme human
within contrived hierarchal power structures. A keen eye is needed to
sift through civilization bias. If the only egalitarian way for humans
to live wild is located at wild tending or earlier, how will humans undo
what they can of domestication’s impact on wilderness during transition
toward post-civ? How can humans shift the locus of control back to
wilderness as they adapt into ecologically contributory roles?
Humans across the wild-civilized spectrum on some level intuit
intensifying globalization pressures lunging toward a boiling point.
Introducing plants and animals began with agriculture for settling lands
and grazing domesticated animals for human colonization of new
lands.[25] While behavior change from introduction to invasion can be
delayed, once introduced into homeostatic habitats nonindigenous species
can outcompete, eat, infect and hybridize with indigenous species,
exponentially impacting flora and fauna. This harm is often compounded
by overarching dynamics such as climate change.[26] Even with
civilization’s science confirming ecosystems everywhere are degrading
and collapsing under human linked invasions, tamed humanway cannot begin
to envision renouncing its terra-conqueror thrown. Nor is permaculture,
however charming and benevolent, relinquishing humans’ peculiar
omnipotence over nonhuman others.
There are endless unintended consequences of domesticated humans
rearranging species about on domestication’s terms. Introduced,
domesticated and wild species are all puppets and victims of colonizing,
predatory human folly. With palpable ignorance of primal ways, the best
domesticated humans can do is attempt to undo what they can of the harm
domestication has done. Domesticated humans liberate themselves and
others by re-engaging with wilderness in a recompensing liberation ethos
of de-colonizing restoration, such as returning indigenous plants
co-adapted to a site and freeing them to naturally evolve over time. “If
we garden with native plants that form living communities… we begin to
cross-pollinate again. We begin to learn to speak languages we’ve
forgotten. We mend. We bind.”[27] With ecological dynamics returned
species will reestablish their niches and spread seed until they settle
into spots with others they remember and prefer, rekindling thriving
resilience.[28] But continuing to promote architecting the world around
humans only emboldens domestication’s menace.
To be anti-civ comes from primal pain of deep losses and resolve for
restoration. Untamed Carol is a wild warrior whose personal story is the
story of wildness under siege, and a plea for humans to let go of
civilization’s primacies, to become deeply aware of indigenous life
around them, to take action to assist wild recovery. To be rewilding
human in transition times is not preparing oneself to live through
changing conditions. Instincts will manifest sustenance in the moment,
tis the way of the nomad. Accepting wild fate is the cost of free
living. To rewild away from colonizing lifeway is to rejoin the primal
force through action based on innate empathy, tending to wilderness not
for human dominion but simply for wild.
Ria Montana, Forest and Wetland Rewilders
veganprimitivist.wordpress.com
/
Endnotes
Beyond the War on Invasive Species: A Permaculture Approach to Ecosystem
Restoration
“The problem of invasive species today is not that humans are trying to
hold species in place against their will instead of letting them
naturally shift their ranges, but that as humans have invaded and
colonized Earth, they have tugged other species about with them doing
the same. For humans to decolonize, they must recognize and remedy best
they can all their mutilations.” Ria
1. Page 1 - Tao is experienced and trained in farming, agroecology and
permaculture design, but some government department hired her as a
botanist to lead the restoration of a wetland. Her profound lack of
experience in restoration ecology is demonstrated throughout the book.
Not that restoration ecology is flawless or should escape critique, but
if modern humankind learned the practices and principles of restoration
ecology, during human transition toward lifeway embedded in nature there
might be enough worldwide manual effort where last resort methods like
use of chemicals are unnecessary. The clash between pro-agriculture
human-centered land management and pro-rewilding humans returning
wildland for wildnerness’ own terms begins on the next page.
2. Page 2 – Tao incorporates invasive species such as Himalayan
blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) into managed pasture. She says in
pastureland invasives “find their homes on land where conditions are
less than ideal for native or other desirable vegetation.” Does she
understand the devastation humans wrought upon wildland when they began
transforming swaths of Earth into domesticated cropland and grazeland,
how it eradicated 1/3 of Earth’s arable wild land and is still
increasing? Does she understand the advantage some species take when
introduced into a habitat of others who have not had time to co-evolve
with them to achieve homeostasis? Does she know the origins of the
Himalayan blackberry she incorporates? Trained in ethnobotany, Tao
should know that before European ‘settlement’ indigenous people in
Cascadia foraged and gathered berries such as Salmonberries (Rubus
spectabilis), Thimbleberries (R. parviflorus), Trailing Blackberries (R.
ursinus), Blackcap Raspberries (R. leucodermis), Salal (Gaultheria
shallon), Dull Oregon Grape (Berberis nervosa), Tall Oregon Grape (B.
aquafolium), Red Huckleberry (Vaccinium parvifolium) and Evergreen
Huckleberry (V. ovatum). In 1885 plant breeder Luther Burbank imported
seeds of a blackberry from Asia with berries so plump and tasty it sold
well to his fellow colonizers. In addition to birds spreading the
berries, it rapidly propagates vegetatively by root and stem tip,
choking out indigenous plants as it rampantly spreads in a new bioregion
not adapted to hold it in check. Efforts to diminish this noxious yet
human valued species are simply acts of decolonizing undoing our
species’ harm.
3. Page 3 – Nonnative invasives “appear” to dominate and replace native
flora and fauna? This is just an illusion? That needs to be backed up
with something other than permaculture biased misconception.
4. Page 4 – “Herbicides are favored as a restoration tool…” In
restoration ecology, integrated management utilizes chemical and
biological controls as the last resort.
5. Page 5 – When using burning as a control method and accidentally
burning an endangered frog, Tao calls into question eradication methods
that do harm. Unfortunately the colonizing human species leaves hard
decisions in ecosystems we’ve seriously degraded and are now trying to
recover. Does she know the entire assemblage of species that have moved
out of or struggle within the invaded wetland? Since she seems here to
support conservation of native species, are there other methods she can
utilize that are less harmful or can she adjust her method, such as if
adjacent to native patches, burning in plots slowly allowing time for
native plants to grow in to provide habitat functions for native animals
as the indigenous habitat slowly returns?
6. …
I could continue on in similar fashion critiquing every page, it’s full
of fallacious fodder. If someone gets permission from the publisher,
I’ll do so.
[1] Voigt, Benamin. A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion
for an Uncertain Future. New Society Publishers, 2017. Pgs. 96-7.
[2] Harlan, Will. Untamed: the Wildest Woman in America and the Fight
for Cumberland Island. Grove, 2015.
[3] Bird-David, Nurit. Us, Relatives: Scaling and Plural Life in a
Forager World. University of California Press, 2017. Pg. 173.
[4] Orion, Tao. Beyond the War of Invasive Species, Resilient
Permaculture Design, and Transition Homesteading. Chelsea Green
Publishing, 2015.
[5] Broderick, James, and Tao Orion. “Tao Orion: Beyond the War of
Invasive Species, Resilient Permaculture Design, and Transition
Homesteading.” Ancestral Health Radio, 15 Mar. 2017,
ancestralhealthradio.com/podcast/tao.
[6] Compared to restoration ecologists, permaculturists don’t commonly
studiously know or aim to know invasive behavioral implications of
plants they work with, such as Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica),
now hybridized into Bohemian Knotweed (Fallopia x bohemica). In addition
to re-rooting vegetatively from dropped cuttings, cutting itself
triggers root growth up to 4’ deep and 20’ across. Large roots’ physical
properties destabilize soil, and along waterways this triggers soil
erosion that degrades aquatic habitats such as salmon-bearing streams.
Juvenile salmon cannot handle the sediment load. Handling plant without
cautious awareness of that plant’s characteristics and behaviors can
inadvertently cause chain reactions overpowering nearby indigenous
biotic communities, even on immense scale, replacing biodiverse species
communities with virtual monocultures. Human-triggered species invasions
can become such a threat to indigenous biotics that they can result in
management practices such as herbicides that most permaculturists and
restoration ecologists alike abhor.
[7] Keith, Lierre. The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and
Sustainability. Flashpoint Press, 2009.
[8] Simberloff, Daniel. “Introduced Species, Impacts and Distribution
Of.” Encyclopedia of Biodiversity, 2013, pp. 357–368.,
doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-384719-5.00251-3.
[9] Jarić, Ivan, et al. “Crypticity in Biological Invasions.” Trends in
Ecology & Evolution, 2019, doi:10.1016/j.tree.2018.12.008.
[10] Tallamy, Douglas W. Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain
Wildlife with Native Plants. Timber Press, 2016. Pgs. 52-4.
Ninety percent of native fauna are slow adapting specialists (pg. 58)
unable to complete their life cycle with nonnative plants. Entomologist
Douglas Tallamy studied the ability of native insects to utilize
nonnative plants to support various parts of their life cycle. Comparing
insects eating native and nonnative species, the native vegetation
supplied four times more insect biomass simply because the insects’
chewing mouthparts were unable to process nonnative plants (pg. 328).
[11] Occhipinti, Andrea. “Plant Coevolution: Evidences and New
Challenges.” Journal of Plant Interactions, vol. 8, no. 3, 2013, pp.
188–196., doi:10.1080/17429145.2013.816881.
[12] Tallamy. 2016. Pgs. 48-64.
When a plant or animal is introduced into the habitat of others,
dynamics that kept it in check before are suddenly removed giving it
potential for advantageous, opportunistic and colonizing tendencies (pg.
66). While some native species can behave aggressively in certain
situations, they are still symbiotically sustaining themselves and
others, not impacting the health of the community at large.
[13] Mooney, Harold, and Elsa Cleland. “The evolutionary impact of
invasive species.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
2001 May 8; 98(10): 5446–5451. doi: 10.1073/pnas.091093398
“Since the Age of Exploration began, there has been a drastic breaching
of biogeographic barriers that previously had isolated the continental
biotas for millions of years. We explore the nature of these recent
biotic exchanges and their consequences on evolutionary processes. The
direct evidence of evolutionary consequences of the biotic
rearrangements is of variable quality, but the results of trajectories
are becoming clear as the number of studies increases. There are
examples of invasive species altering the evolutionary pathway of native
species by competitive exclusion, niche displacement, hybridization,
introgression, predation, and ultimately extinction. Invaders themselves
evolve in response to their interactions with natives, as well as in
response to the new abiotic environment. Flexibility in behavior, and
mutualistic interactions, can aid in the success of invaders in their
new environment.”
[14] Divíšek, Jan, et al. “Similarity of Introduced Plant Species to
Native Ones Facilitates Naturalization, but Differences Enhance Invasion
Success.” Nature Communications, vol. 9, no. 1, 2018,
doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06995-4.
[15] Seebens, Hanno, et al. “Rise in Emerging Alien Species.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 115, no. 10, 2018.
Sixteen percent of introduced species can later emerge as invasive.
[16] Essl, Franz, et al. “Socioeconomic Legacy Yields an Invasion Debt.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 108, no. 1, 2010,
pp. 203–207., doi:10.1073/pnas.1011728108.
The full habitat impact of a relocated species may be delayed for
decades after its intentional introduction. Permaculturists rationalize
that humans have been moving plants and animals for thousands of years.
While true, earlier humans’ intended and unintended species dispersion
does not scientifically or otherwise justify today’s less intuitively
aware, less wilderness connected modern human dislocating and relocating
species en masse in whimsical whirlwind speed. Modern human’s accidental
activating species into invasive behavior has irrefutably resulted in
worldwide indigenous habitat devastation. If the nonindigenous human
species aims to retake position in a thriving wild world, transporting
species in and out of the habitats of their choosing would either be
ended or limited for entire biotic community benefit, de-centered on
nonindigenous humans. To rewild, begin with compassion for present-day
ecosystems experiencing profound stresses, from humans’ climate change
to habitat fragmentation, leaving them fragile instead of their
pre-anthropocentric robust and resilient form.
[17] Tallamy, 2016. Pgs 75-9.
When fewer native insects are available that native birds co-evolved to
eat, they too decline (pg. 63). Thriving indigenous species comprise the
networks of thriving indigenous communities.
[18] Muhlfeld, Clint C., et al. “Invasive Hybridization in a Threatened
Species Is Accelerated by Climate Change.” Nature News, Nature
Publishing Group, 25 May 2014, www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2252.
[19] Tallamy, 2016. Pgs. 26-37 and throughout the book.
Permaculturists sustaining themselves in designed biodiverse zones
around their homes paint an idealized picture, but a complete picture
includes the spread of their nonnative choice plantings into local
native wild places sometimes sparking swaths of devastation. Invasions
can indirectly impact overarching dynamics such as hydrology cycles,
water quality, wildfire frequencies and intensities. (pg. 85).
[20] Béguinot, Jean. “Disentangling and Quantifying the Functional
Determinants of Species Abundance Unevenness in Ecological Communities.”
Advances in Research, 2019, pp. 1–14., doi:10.9734/air/2019/v19i130114.
[21] “Are Cows Just Domestic Bison? Behavioral and Habitat Use
Differences between Cattle and Bison.” Western Watersheds Project,
www.westernwatersheds.org/gw-cattle-v-bison/?fbclid=IwAR1OPf9GBl1VhD6o5FfqvglUDtkw-jLyNTeQuQdefqIn9BCkx06pU-S44hA.
[22] Carter, John, et al. “Holistic Management: Misinformation on the
Science of Grazed Ecosystems.” International Journal of Biodiversity,
vol. 2014, 2014, pp. 1–10., doi:10.1155/2014/163431.
[23] Bradley, Joan. Bringing Back the Bush: the Bradley Method of Bush
Regeneration. New Holland, 2002.
Inspired by witnessing ample effort in restoration practices with
questionable long term effectiveness, naturalist Joan Bradley and her
sister Eileen experimented with a naturalistic method, eventually
shifting well-intended yet damaging restoration efforts into a more
nuanced, bio-centric approach. They chronicled the recovery of
Australian plant communities based on regeneration principles proven not
just effective but generalizable to a variety of settings. After the
‘gentle art’ proved itself over time, education and training in the
‘Bradley Method’ spread locally and abroad.
“My sister and I had for years been pulling up seedling weeds growing
near the walking tracks in Ashton Park, and had looked despondently at
the big ones scattered through the bush further in. We had always found
these widespread invaders particularly offensive, and longed for the
strength we believed was needed to cope with them. We felt that, because
of their threat to the whole of the bush, these should be the first
weeds to be destroyed, and were therefore delighted to see unsightly
walls of tall lantana fall to the mattocks and brushhooks of the park
staff.
We had never thought it possible that such very bad areas could be
restored by anything other than this sort of clearing followed by
replanting. The clearing was mostly confined to very heavy lantana
infestations, where the few native seedlings that came up were quickly
swamped by an explosion of assorted weeds, but in a few places work was
extended into areas of mixed weeds and natives. Here, where they were
not hopelessly outnumbered, the natives responded magnificently. Shrubs,
despite disturbed roots and broken branches, put out new shoots, and
seedlings of many species germinated along with the weeds
With growing enthusiasm, we began to understand that there might be
another way to fight the invaders. Given half a chance, the bush would
fight back on its own behalf… systematic hand weeding, carefully done,
was a spectacular success…
…The turning point for bush regeneration came in 1975when the National
Trust commissioned Joan, Toni May and their small team of regenerators
to demonstrate their techniques in Blackwood Reserve, Beecroft. While
regenerating Blackwood, Joan also proved to herself that the principles
established in Hawkesbury sandstone bushland could also be applied to
the moist schlerophyll woodland growing on the richer shale-derived
soils and, ultimately, rainforest. With the support and sponsorship of
the National Trust… the demand by local councils for the services of
trained regenerators grew rapidly…
With demand for regenerators outstripping supply, a school was
established to teach the Bradley Method to conservationists keen to
assist in bringing back their local bushland. Joan was commissioned to
provide tuition and gradually that small band of previously unpaid
workers grew – former pupils became teachers, and the Bradley Method is
now being used throughout Australia and in some countries overseas…
In Joan’s words, ‘As a very old-fashioned scientist and former chemist,
I had a thorough grounding in what was then the simple scientific method
of experiment and observation. Repeatability still remains for me the
acid test. This method is repeatable anywhere as long as the three
principles are followed’.” pgs.. 9-12
[24] Weyrich, Laura S., et al. “Neanderthal Behaviour, Diet, and Disease
Inferred from Ancient DNA in Dental Calculus.” Nature, International
Journal of Science , vol. 544, 2017, pp. 357–361.
[25] Nibert, David Alan. Animal Oppression and Human Violence:
Domesecration, Capitalism, and Global Conflict. Columbia Univ. Press,
2013.
[26] Plumwood, Val. Environmental Culture: the Ecological Crisis of
Reason. Routledge, 2007.
[27] Voigt, 2017. Pg. 151.
[28] Weaner, Larry, and Thomas Christopher. Garden Revolution: How Our
Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change. Timber Press, 2016.