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.)
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