Jay Angler wrote:I've been thinking about the entire concept of Economics:
a) sustainability
b) is the whole greater than the sum of the parts
c) is it realistic to look at economics as "constant growth"
Trees grow until they die. A resource is only renewable, if it stays near where it was created. When we export a whole tree overseas (which is being done in North America) we are exporting carbon, which will return to us as air moves all over the planet. But the phosphorus, and many other minerals in that tree will only return to the valley through means such as volcanic action locally, or dust from the atmosphere. Trees, with the help of mycorrhizae, can and do bring many minerals from deep in the earth to the surface, but reading books on coppicing, tells me that this is not necessarily a speedy process - even coppicing needs to be done with sustainability in mind.
The local people need livelihoods. Most humans given the option, will not want to live the way people did 500 years ago. So figuring out truly sustainable local employment needs to be evaluated carefully. To me, the first step is truly sustainable energy. Much of modern technology/farming/housing etc is completely dependent on fossil fuels directly or indirectly. For example, if the area develops the tourist trade, how many of those tourists will arrive by plane or car? If they arrive by electric car, where will the electricity come from to recharge those cars? Where will the energy come from to build the roads used to take tourists to the places they want to see, or hunt, or fish, etc? What are the natural resources which would allow the people to produce a net energy gain when you subtract all the embodied energy that many "green" energy sometimes seems to gloss over? I believe there are ways. Yes, some "damage" may result from installing sustainable power generation, but Nature has shown tremendous capacity to heal damage if give the support she needs to do so. But I think that an important first step is to look at the resources available and determine how energy can be captured responsibly for a very long time.
See Hes wrote:That's a challenge for many Generations by focusing first on your climate and average grow.
It will maybe even take longer than the time needed to destroy this huge habitat.
First you should get a hand in hand system where every farmer should start with alley cropping as much possible.
(Remember, the nature will always return to a forest landscape.)
With alley cropping (if all work hand in hand, and all farmers would pull the same string) you would have made a huge step ahead and many hands (all farmers and landlords) would be joining in.
Details you write down here is in my point of view completely impossible (moneywise and also see the workloads)...
Then reintroduce animals on small areas, where they can live their habits and let them do restauration works by expanding.
Look at Allan Savory's projects where he supports holistic regenerative management by using animals- even domestic ones, where the roaming big herds are lost...
Absolute too big for my little 8 acre retirement food forest mindset, but I would think this way:
What can be done in 8 acres can be done in millions of acres, as long the whole population builds and the will and the interest is there.
(which is in my case only the family needed)
Imagine, just every household would plant 2 pots with trees how much could be changed in just a few years. Also in a climate of BC.
In this region there is not so much a landlord/peasant economy though the colonial model might lead one to think that. There are people who are not indigenous who have settled on and occupy the land and have (in a colonial sense) legal title to it, and these would have to be approached, again with an idea to support common interests (such as water scarcity/fire risk and low animal weight) and approach with statistics and research and (hopefully) and an increasing amount of local examples of how processes can be to their benefit.And in cattle and horse areas, initiating rotational grazing, silvo-pasturing, and alley grazing, and combining these things with coppice and pollarding of deciduous species on contour or keyline to capture water and nutrients.
Roberto pokachinni wrote:
These have, in my mind, been radically altered ecologically in the absence of formerly abundant beavers, and it is only the resilience of the other intact processes including the ecological diversity that is still present in such seemingly pristine places that create the illusion that they can get along fine without this keystone species.
1. Do the people you've been working with, agree with your assessment?
2. Within the areas that have transitioned already, is it possible to identify areas in those valleys where there have been disturbance events - small forest fires, avalanches or rock slides as possible examples - and introduce beaver supporting species to those disturbed areas, as opposed to having to remove living trees?
3. Or are you better to remove living trees from areas where wetlands would have been before beaver were trapped, because that is where this keystone species would have lived, and use the resulting lumber for value added, community based support (building housing, creating saleable merchandise, etc)?
I agree. In my dealings with most Indigenous folks in regard to how they live on the land, it is always a careful process. I have no intention of offending anybody, of course, and the way to approach this would vary, definitely, depending upon the people one is discussing these ideas with. The Simpcw population was decimated by various colonial influences, including much of it's elder knowledge. They do have some traditional cultural elements that they have held onto in spite of these sad losses or they have subsequently learned traditional practices from the other campfires in the Sepwepemc nation. The greater Sepwepemc nation and neighbouring tribes in the Southern part of the region had the great fortune of having ethnological work done where many other nations on Turtle Island (aka North America) have not. The process isn't to bring them 'in line' but to share my vision with them, explain its merits, and see if we can work together to combine our visions for a new direction that heals the land's ecosystems and water cycles and the people (both Indigenous and Settlers) so that we can create a space that is both permacultural and in line with their traditional culture advancing into the future.I'm a little bit concerned as a subscriber to the idea that permaculture is for people who have lost their connection to their ancestral relationship to their land. And in general first nations haven't--though certainly some have. And I'm unfamiliar with most things that far north so I don't know if the Simpcw Nation have or haven't. I would tread carefully when talking about bringing them into line with permaculture.
It is indeed an exciting opportunity. Water will be central and is one of the foundations of their own cultural guidelines. I think the reintroduction of beaver-based ecosystems is paramount to this process.However, it is a very exciting opportunity to work with the people stewarding such a large area of land.
The only thing I'd dare to offer is that you center water in your plans. Technology is creating a bigger and bigger demand for water (this morning I saw an article about the shocking amount of water used to cool the ChatGPT servers) so it's important that we secure water abundance.
Thanks Edward. I really enjoy the way he presents his ideas.You asked for suggestions so here is something I came across:
Nicole Alderman wrote:
Roberto pokachinni wrote:The coppice species that I'm thinking of would be any that could be used for various purposes.
Birch, for instance, can be coppiced and allowed to grow to clusters that contain many merchantable stems.
Alder, cottonwood, willows, birch, and poplar could be used for compost, mulch, and biochar. Some of these are decent rocket stove fuel which is another project to promote.
Big Leaf Maple coppices really easily, and the coppiced trunks produce maple sap at as small as 8 inches in diameter (maybe smaller, but that's what I've found with my maples).
Your bioregion seems a lot like my own, just a bit cooler. Big Leaf Maples are native down here, and I do get sap out of mine, depending on the year. With cooler weather up there, they could probably get a lot more sap, and reduce it down to syrup. There's a market for our native Big Leaf Maple sap, and maple is a beautiful, relatively-dense wood for carving. It also has pretty high BTUs for firewood (aside from holly, it has the highest BTUs of any of the wood growing natively on my property!)
Many areas are not going to be convivial for beaver. Introducing them to an area that doesn't suit them (unhelpful land contours, lack of food sources, etc) won't help them or the area. When they build their ponds, they tend to be interested in taking down deciduous trees, whose bark they prefer to evergreens. So at least in the short run they are going to be working counter to your efforts to increase deciduous trees.