Re: natural/wild/safe/human (2)

The rest of my response to Eric's questions.

At 08:41 11/07/99 -0700, Eric wrote:
>Wouldn't it be great if we could make soil rich and fertile again where
>they are now barren and lifeless?  Nature can handle this kind of
>regeneration to a large degree, but we are probably morally obligated 
>to help.
>
>This brings up [some] recent questions I've played with.  
>-.. land ... rightfully commandeer ...
>-Can we incorporate Nature within that space?  
>-What is the dividing live between acceptable influence on one's local
>environment and manipulation for personal gain?


**  You say Nature, not nature. Here I'm out of my depth (as I've said
before) since I think your use of the word is as it is in Romanticism,
rather than as I would use it, to describe a fully-functioning (i.e.
dynamic) ecology.

**  However, I'll rush in.
    I've lived in tropical West Africa before the Ghanaians were seduced
into taking out an IMF loan (which, to repay, has 'required' them to cash
up nearly all their assets, including their forests). There were two main
kinds of land-based livelihoods there in sub-Saharan Africa, both of which
are slight modifications of what had been used for centuries and millennia.
One, which has a specialised name but is called 'slash-and-burn' by its
detractors, involves a cycle in which first the undergrowth is slashed and
burned and the ashes spread in that area, then the seeds/tubers are planted
and weeded as they grow, the crop harvested, and the cycle started again in
a new patch while the old one is left fallow for enough years that a tree
seedling has some chance to grow large enough to escape the next slashing.
    The other, north of the tropical rain-forest near the coast and
therefore in the Sahel, involves some crop-growing near the rivers but
largely depends on shifting grazing; you know from having grown up as a
herd boy/girl, where grass will be growing well enough at that part of the
season (monsoon/dry), so you travel a large circuitous route through the
year, taking care of your animals. You have traditional areas you go, which
are left for you by the other herders. In drought years you may 'have to'
let your animals graze on bushes and low branches, but you know that this
risks desertifying the area if taken too far.

**  I regard this as leaving space for nature within the human-modified
parts of the range or forest - my criterion, as in the earlier post, is: if
humans pulled out completely, would nature be able to take over (and build
up to its normal climax community) quite quickly (say, in 10 to 100 years,
tropical to temperate)?

**  However, that may not be answering Eric's question: "Can we incorporate
Nature within that space?" The difference is in how necessary is human
management in the 'incorporation', and would the result be a part of Nature
 or rather a museum-piece, a memory. 
**  I would think that some sort of inter-digitation of modified and
unmodified land might often be a reasonable answer. Here in Greenhithe the
geography is of shallow clay ridges separated by water-courses, with the
roads going along the ridges and one (or recently two) rows of houses down
each side of the roads. The little valleys have been kept as reserves,
untouched except for the rare gravel track, usually going across from one
road to the next. I grew up with a much higher ratio of 'bush' to
garden-lawn-and-house than this, but I see a similar (actually slightly
reduced) amount of wildlife here; plants as well as animals, so it is
perhaps OK.
**  The afore-mentioned sequestering of ~8 houses in one part of a 40-acre
patch of land (Jill's, of 21:20 11/07/99 -0500), leaving the rest for
horticulture and a large reserve, would be similar or better.


**  Now:
>-What is the dividing line between acceptable influence on one's local
>environment and manipulation for personal gain?

**  As Eric said, this is phrased as a leading question, but taking
'manipulation for personal gain' as meaning: modifying to the minimum
extent needed to satisfy one's vital needs, I think an answer is possible.
**  Way back in March, I was pointing out that every species has-effects-on
or modifies its environment, so I agree with: "acceptable influence on
one's local environment". And above I describe how I'd answer the question
"what is acceptable?".
**  So somewhere this side of the northern European wooden settlements that
have vanished without trace, is where I'd draw that line.
**  In other words, it depends on how alive the ecology is, that one is
part of. Here, at latitude 37 degrees and with a maritime climate, the
plants grow up inside the walls, the spiders and ants 'invade' within
months, and even galvanised iron rots in a decade or two. And that's by no
means tropical: we've had 3 frosts in the last fortnight. So once again, I
point out: you used the word: "the" to do with a dividing line. I say
Nature should decide, and in some cases (e.g. toward the poles and at high
altitude) humans should stay out: that particular dividing line doesn't exist.

David.
(David MacClement) d1v9d@bigfoot.com 
http://come.to/davd
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