Boyce: That is well put. And there are no simple solutions. Harold At 07:26 AM 9/7/2005, you wrote: >At best this is a complicated and emotional issue for many of us, myself >included. > >In the early years of the US, if a landowner did not utilize his property >in the most productive way (farming, timber, ranching, oil drilling) they >were subject to losing their land through emminent domain seisures by the >local/state/federal governments. The result is most of the land in the >eastern 2/3rds of the nation was significantly altered from it's natural >state. As time has decreased the importance of agricultural produce and >natural products (and as an appreciation has grown for the natural world) >many tracts of land have been allowed to go fallow (non-cultivated). In >their non-cultivated state anything and everything that can survive does >so, including species that were introduced (intentionally or as weeds in >cultivated crops) as part of the human ecosystem (includes, among other >things, collections of plants and animals that permit large human >populations to exist in a wide variety of habitats). Many of these areas >have been set aside as 'natural areas'. To return > these fallow tracts of land to a semblance of the ecosystems our > forefathers found when they settled the land, we have to weed them > (non-natives and non-desirable natives); apparently more of less > indefinitely (work at Gray Summit Arboretum (Mobot), Chicago Botanic > Garden, etc.). In effect, our natural areas, to maintain their species > purity, have to be weeded; and in suitable habitats artificial fires have > to be set and controlled. Basically that translates into cultivation - > the only difference between managing natural areas today and growing an > agricultural crop is the end product. This disjunct between what I 'feel' > to be natural and what I recognise as cultivated has not been something I > have been philosophically able to adjust to. > >There are those within the conservation movement that feel if we just ... >(fill in the blanks) then natural areas will not have to be managed and >all of our problems will be solved. One of the blanks that has been >proposed is the control (to varying degrees) of some/all plant taxa >associated with the human ecosystem. Simplistic solutions to complicated >problems always fail, and always create additional problems. I don't have >an answer, but I am wary of simplistic solutions (historical parallel to >be found in Prohibition as a solution to perils of alcohol). > >Boyce Tankersley >btankers@chicagobotanic.org > >_______________________________________________ >pbs mailing list >pbs@lists.ibiblio.org >http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php