Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Conservation, restoration, and participatory management of ecosystems (i.e., from the inside-out) are not only hands-on forms of “engagement with nature,” but also reciprocally restorative practices: restorative for the people involved as well as for the ecosystems undergoing restorative actions.
We must eat. But the land sacrifices so that we may live; the land ethic asks that we live in ways that show we are responsible citizens of the land community; and the law of reciprocity asks what we are giving back in return for that gift of life.
This is the story, in large part, of my own life journey (which is, I earnestly hope, not quite over yet), from breeding endangered breeds of domestic farm livestock at its beginning to restoring a broad array of the most marvellous native creatures back into habitats they have lost at its end.
In the US Pacific Northwest, tribal hatcheries uphold Indigenous communities’ treaty rights to salmon, while buying time to rehabilitate lost habitat.
In letting go, in providing space for coastal ecosystems, we acknowledge the power of waterlands—to hold water, to hold carbon, to hold life, including us.
What kind of thinking leads to the unleashing of exotic species on unsuspecting ecosystems? Hint: it’s certainly not systems thinking or critical thinking – in fact, thinking may not be involved at all!
The answer is that to avert the worst effects of climate change, tamp down on pollution, and avoid ecological destruction and the sixth extinction, everything—ethics, economics, business practices, basically the whole of modern industrial society, needs to change, to be conducted along different lines, and fast.
Villagers along the Limpopo River are restoring an estuary and securing their food supply, one mangrove at a time.
An Ark is what we call those places which have been set free from those chains to heal our planet, patch by patch. It is a restored, native ecosystem, a local, small, medium, or large rewilding project.
Give that phrase free rein and see what it inspires: “A mosaic of local projects animated by a shared idea.” That may be a motto for the kind of healing that earth and society need today. Not a single solution that scales up, but an ecosystem of related solutions, each unique to its place.
Apart from being a wildlife sanctuary and a permacultural model farm, the Refugio is an education and consultation center for reforestation practices and regenerative agriculture.
I believe we can learn from beavers’ water management skills, coexist with them in our landscapes and incorporate their natural engineering in response to weather and precipitation patterns disrupted by climate change.
