The Idea: Whether
you live in the country or the city there are opportunities to
renaturalize your community, and in so doing transform and enrich it
ecologically, physically and psychologically.
We had the great pleasure this past weekend
of a visit and tour by wildlife biologist Natalie Helferty. The purpose
of her visit, which I negotiated (thanks to Natalie for volunteering
her time, and to Richard Procter of the local Green Party for helping
me find her), was to acquaint us with the natural ecosystem in which we
live, especially the local wetlands. We are extremely fortunate, as the
aerial photo above shows, to live in an area where nature and
wilderness coexist somewhat harmoniously with human habitation and
human activity, an area on the Oak Ridges Moraine peppered with kettle
ponds scoured out by ancient glaciers. It is home to a wide variety of
wildlife: beavers and muskrats, woodchucks and skunks, wild turkeys,
whitetailed deer, grey wolves, great blue herons, red foxes, spring
peepers, and geese 'superfamilies' with their dozen or more adorable and obedient goslings.
We learned how the moraine was formed, and how, in the 'dirty thirties'
drought it nearly turned to pure desert (the soil in our area is very
sandy), and we learned how the planting of drought-resistant red and
white pine forestalled desertification. We learned how the various
types of frogs in our ponds are the 'canaries in the mineshaft', the
first species to perish when human poisons begin to flood the natural
ecosystem. We learned that the creatures that utter soft quacks in the
evening are not ducks but wood frogs. We learned that skunks are a
favoured delicacy for the local owls We learned that white bullhead and
yellow water lilies act as natural filters and can keep stagnant ponds
from getting covered in algae and duckweed. We learned that our
government will stock neighbourhood ponds with bass, but that such
interventions could upset the balance and exterminate the frogs. We
learned that Canada Geese like manicured lawns because they remind them
of their summering ground -- the sparsely covered subarctic tundra. We
learned that our 'destructive' beavers create microsystems that support
thousands of species of wildlife that live nowhere else.
We learned what plants grow best in low-lying wet areas and on steep
slopes (you can't tell from the top photo, but our area is very hilly).
But while we were mostly focused on mammals and birds at the top of the
food chain, Natalie had us focus at the bottom -- at the plants that
essentially create the ecosystem and sustain the rest of its life.
Specifically, she told us which of the species of trees, shrubs,
sedges, grasses, flowers and other flora were native to the Oak Ridges
Moraine and which (an astonishing number) were not. She suggested the
best thing we could do for all of the inhabitants of our lovely little
community would be to renaturalize
the plant life -- to weed out some of the invasive species that keep
the ecosystem out of kilter, and to seed and plant native species. This
is difficult for the same reason all of the other significant changes
we need to make in our world will be difficult -- to get from here to
there, things may have to get worse before they can get better. Short
term pain for long term gain is not a very popular mantra in our modern
civilization. Renaturalization can't happen overnight -- you need to
prepare the ground for it, and let nature take its course slowly, going
through some possibly shabby, messy-looking intermediate steps before
the beautiful, natural, sustainable ecosystem can be fully restored. We
have one neighbour who's already started -- no lawn, and only natural
plant species planted. The largest business in our town, Husky
Injection Molding, has won many awards for keeping the expansive
grounds around its large plant planted only with native species, and
those grounds are lovely -- and sustainable. Most of the neighbours
have stopped using pesticides and some now use only organic
fertilizers, sparingly. Most lawns are only watered when re-seeding.
But the idea of having no
lawn is stressful to many, and the transition from uniform-cut lawn to
natural vegetation will be much more so -- and could invite some
backlash from those concerned with 'property values'. Natalie says the
'English lawn' originated with British aristocracy as a status symbol
of nobility -- for people who were so wealthy they could afford to have
their land 'do nothing', and that ill-conceived vanity continues to
this day.
The bottom line is that the beautiful, natural-looking community shown
in these pictures is largely a fraud. Although the protected wetland
areas cannot be touched, even they have been replanted and overtaken
substantially by invasive flora and even some non-native fauna.
Substantial parts of our community are paved, graveled, planted with
ever-thirsty non-native grass and foreign trees that are ill-equipped
to survive without chemical help, and indifferent or even hostile to
the native creatures that came to depend on long-vanished native trees
and plants. We are closer to nature than urban dwellers, or even
farmers, but we are still a long way from the sustainable and
harmonious natural wilderness -- heavily forested for the most part --
that prevailed for millions of years before our noisy and cavalier
arrival. We have a long way to go to renaturalize the community in
which we live, and hence renaturalize ourselves.
But what do you do if you live in a city, with concrete and steel
everywhere and no place to start, or even imagine, renaturalization?
Perhaps the best place to start is brownfield areas. Not only are they
low-valued, they are the ugliest of our urban landscapes, and hence we
might be more tolerant of the intermediate messiness as nature, with
our newly-knowledgeable support, reclaims these lands as oases of true
wilderness in the contemporary city desert.
Imagine if communities all over the planet gradually started to
renaturalize, from the bottom of the ecosystem up. We might be able to
renaturalize our entire world, so slowly no one would notice. What a
deliciously subversive plan.
One step at a time.
(More articles on renaturalization here, here, and here. But this is a very local project.
Chances are you won't get much idea online of what your area looked
like, and what plants it contained, in its natural state. You're going
to have to do some real research. Photos are all from 2004 -- the top one is from Google Maps, the goose picture is from Bernd Heinrich, and the rest are mine, taken in our neighbourhood.)
I have just revamped my blog
taxonomy, retaining but renaming the 6 main categories, reducing the
number of second-level categories (so the table of contents takes up
less space on the right sidebar) and increasing the number of
third-level categories (so it's easier to browse the table of contents
to find what you're looking for). I hope those of you (and judging from
the number of hits there are many) who use the table of contents find
this reorganization helpful. I will be adding the last month's articles
to the revised table of contents by Sunday, so we'll be all up to date.
Just in case anyone is interested, my new blog taxonomy is depicted
graphically above. These are the 54 subjects I care enough to write
about. I'm surprised that, except for the Politics posts, few of my
1000+ articles have lost their currency. If I were to edit a magazine,
this is how it would be laid out. Built to last, to keep, and to
provide ideas and insight you can actually use.
I apologize to those who have signed up for my blog by e-mail through
the Bloglet form in the right sidebar. You won't get e-mails until the
owner of Bloglet replies to my many messages and gives me 'control' of
the Bloglet RSS feed for How to Save the World. And since the rumour
seems to be that he's deceased, I'm not holding my breath. There's a
new German RSS-by-e-mail app just starting up, that I'm beta testing.
As soon as it's upgraded to include graphics and formatting I'll put it
up in place of Bloglet and write more about it. Some updating of the
blogroll is also overdue -- I will try to get to that this weekend.
Thanks for your patience with the Salon Comments Server -- it took
awhile for the switchover but it seems to be getting back up to speed.
They're still working on fixing the line breaks problem (in the
meantime, put in <br><br> for a paragraph break with a
blank line). Those of you with ISPs who block disclosure of your IP
address will still not be able to post comments -- apparently the only
way to block comment spam etc. is to capture the submitter's IP address
before the comment post is accepted. If you get blocked, just e-mail
your comment to me with the date of the article it apples to and I'll
post your comment for you. That's it for the blog housekeeping. Now
back to writing.
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
