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Post by bunkie on Apr 4, 2012 11:40:21 GMT -5
on soapbox...
last year we had a big swath of a blue-flowered plants over on our north hill. i forget the name right now, but they were beautiful, and were loaded with bees during the day. anything to bring in the bees are a plus for us.
a week or so after they bloomed, we got a letter from the 'weed board' of our county saying they spotted a noxious weed on our property and said that we had to get rid of it. they said that they would come in and help us if we wanted. if we did nothing, we would be fined, and they'd destroy them.
thus, hubs had to mow them down in the dark hours of the day so not to hurt the bees. i have always planted some flowers here and there, but this year i will be planting hoards, yes, HOARDS of flowers to make up for us having to kill these.
WEED BOARDS SUCK!
off soapbox...
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 4, 2012 12:55:20 GMT -5
But on an ethical note, why do we think that human introductions are somehow an improvement? and an improvement according to whose values My point exactly... We have no way to evaluate whether an introduced species improves an ecosystem or is harmful to it. (My philosophy is that more diversity is always an improvement.) Those sorts of things simply can't be measured, so we shouldn't have county weed boards using violence against people to extort and coerce them to kill this weeks current boogy-species. My county tried that 40 years ago with dyers woad. They failed miserably and eventually gave up after untold human misery and ecological damage caused by the weed board, not by the plant. I think that it is impossible to control the movement of species, and to maintain a static ratio between species, so there is no point wasting the money trying. I believe it is also impossible to prevent the spread of organisms so there is no point wasting the money on import controls. As far as I can tell prohibition always fails, especially when dealing with nature, because lets face it, she has a vastly larger budget.
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Post by nuts on Apr 4, 2012 13:20:49 GMT -5
But on an ethical note, why do we think that human introductions are somehow an improvement? and an improvement according to whose values My point exactly... We have no way to evaluate whether an introduced species improves an ecosystem or is harmful to it. (My philosophy is that more diversity is always an improvement.) Those sorts of things simply can't be measured, so we shouldn't have county weed boards using violence against people to extort and coerce them to commit genocide against this weeks current boogy-plant. My county tried that 40 years ago with dyers woad. They failed miserably and eventually gave up after untold human misery and ecological damage caused by the weed board, not by the plant. I think that it is impossible to control the movement of species, and to maintain a static ratio between species, so there is no point wasting the money trying. I believe it is also impossible to prevent the spread of organisms so there is no point wasting the money on import controls. As far as I can tell prohibition always fails, especially when dealing with nature, because lets face it, she has a vastly larger budget. So that's why we should deliberately spread as many species as we can where ever we can?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 4, 2012 13:42:29 GMT -5
So that's why we should deliberately spread as many species as we can where ever we can? Yes. My philosophy is that moving species to new areas is a noble undertaking. I believe that the more species that we can introduce into more areas the healthier our ecosystem will become. I am not the slightest bit upset about dyers woad, or worms, or humans, or tamarisk, or bryoni, or kudzu, or zebra mussels, or russian olive, or pheasants, or corn, or soybeans, or wheat, or rice living in areas that they didn't live previously. I wouldn't be the slightest bit uncomfortable sending earth lichens to mars to compete with any indigenous life. If I were wealthy, I would establish wild herds of elephants and camels in the Americas, and export wild herds of roos around the world. Heck, I'd export most of the Australian genome to other places. Edited: Biodiversity is important to me, and a new species in a new place ==> local biodiversity plus one.
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Post by steev on Apr 4, 2012 14:47:05 GMT -5
If one accepts that whatever organisms develop from pre-existing organisms are "native", and that an organism anywhere on a landmass has some claim to all of that landmass in perpetuity, then how does one dispense with the notion that every organism has a claim on every part of Earth? Does connection of one landmass to another end where water intervenes? Are we dealing with continents buoyantly floating on oceans? What happened to Pangaea? Gondwanaland? Who gets to declare at what point the doors officially slam shut? On behalf of the first-come Neanderthal People, I demand that all Homo sapiens invaders go back to Africa!
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Post by nuts on Apr 4, 2012 16:53:30 GMT -5
a new species in a new place = biodiversity plus one. Joseph,I'm seeing some weak points in your maths. first,it's not because you introduce a species somewhere that it's a new species,so I'm doubtfull about the "plus one" But there are enough exemples of cases where the introduction of non native species led to disapearance of other species. An exemple I heard of is the introduction of goats on an desert island with a luxuary vegetation,but without adequate predators of goats.When the sailors came back many years later there were plenty goats,but the vegetation was gone.And of coarse,many endemic species disappeared.Not likely that the sailors made many inventories of species but for the decrease of biodiversity is an evidence for me. I know goats very well.I'm 100% sure that they will distroy any,but really any,any tree if they are allowed to expand to high density. Any introduction of goats in an area without control of their numbers by predators or humans will lead to a decrease of biodiversity. This is predictable,this is sure This is only one exemple that makes equation become: introduction of new species = biodiversity minus x where x is 0 or higher. Interaction between species in complex ecosystems are mostly unknown. But if you know an exemple that introduction of new species will decrease biodiversity you can suppose that there are other known or unknown cases were the same thing will happen. A new species can occur when the introduced species stay isolated from their "brothers and sisters" for a long period.That can be hundreds or thousends of years.Where extinctions will take place in only a few years. As is said species move around by themselves.but because humans are much better in allmost eberything than nature we can move species around much better than would happen without us. And anyway,it's inevitable,we will allways do wat we can nomatter how stupid it is.
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Post by nuts on Apr 4, 2012 17:07:32 GMT -5
If one accepts that whatever organisms develop from pre-existing organisms are "native", and that an organism anywhere on a landmass has some claim to all of that landmass in perpetuity, then how does one dispense with the notion that every organism has a claim on every part of Earth? Does connection of one landmass to another end where water intervenes? Are we dealing with continents buoyantly floating on oceans? What happened to Pangaea? Gondwanaland? Who gets to declare at what point the doors officially slam shut? On behalf of the first-come Neanderthal People, I demand that all Homo sapiens invaders go back to Africa! Yes of course If it's right that life came from space with a meteorite, life and thus any species is invasive and speaking about native species is nonsense. Maybe just a bit to much philosophy for me ;D
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Post by castanea on Apr 4, 2012 22:32:56 GMT -5
So that's why we should deliberately spread as many species as we can where ever we can? Yes. My philosophy is that moving species to new areas is a noble undertaking. I believe that the more species that we can introduce into more areas the healthier our ecosystem will become. I am not the slightest bit upset about dyers woad, or worms, or humans, or tamarisk, or bryoni, or kudzu, or zebra mussels, or russian olive, or pheasants, or corn, or soybeans, or wheat, or rice living in areas that they didn't live previously. I wouldn't be the slightest bit uncomfortable sending earth lichens to mars to compete with any indigenous life. If I were wealthy, I would establish wild herds of elephants and camels in the Americas, and export wild herds of roos around the world. Heck, I'd export most of the Australian genome to other places. Biodiversity is important to me, and a new species in a new place = biodiversity plus one. One of Luther Burbank's major observations was that plants that are moved to different climates behave in interesting and unpredictable ways. Life is amazing. Living organisms are constantly changing moving and adapting. The idea that human beings can, or should, stop this, would be quite funny if many people did not actually believe it. The concept that certain plants should not be grown in certain areas because they have not lived there in the last few hundred years is unbelievably bizarre. Personally I would like to transplant snow leopards to some areas along the American-Canadian border and watch them run wild.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 4, 2012 22:39:59 GMT -5
I don't care much about small island ecosystems, they are fragile, ephemeral, and transitory to start with, since islands tend to arise nearly lifeless from the water and then to erode back into the waves. That's a great recipe for creating new species, but its a bugger for keeping them around. If island species are of value, the best way I can imagine for preserving them is the wholesale export of their ecosystems to the mainland.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 4, 2012 22:45:09 GMT -5
One of Luther Burbank's major observations was that plants that are moved to different climates behave in interesting and unpredictable ways. My okra grew to be about a foot tall last year. Ha!!! I read last week that people use okra plants as a structural support for pole beans. Huh? But sure enough: That's either a really short lady, or a really tall okra!
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Post by steev on Apr 4, 2012 23:38:37 GMT -5
I regularly see okra described as growing 6' to 8' tall; maybe this year my okra will go crazy and reach half that tall.
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Post by castanea on Apr 4, 2012 23:57:27 GMT -5
The first year I grew okra it was 2-3 feet tall. Then a few years later I combined horse manure with a really hot summer and got some 6-8 foot plants.
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Post by steev on Apr 5, 2012 0:27:22 GMT -5
Actually, I'm hoping this will be my break-out year thanks to having started my seeds already; for once, I expect more okra than I can graze in the garden; Cowhorn and Hill Country Red.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Apr 5, 2012 2:27:27 GMT -5
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 5, 2012 3:43:24 GMT -5
Thanks for the link. I also found: "Ecological Fitting" is a new vocabulary term for me: I am fully of the ecological fitting mindset. I don't give much credence to the concept of coevolution, or the so called ‘niche-assembly perspective'. Coevolution may pertain to certain pairs of isolated species, for example a hummingbird and a flower, but I just can't see it pertaining to entire ecosystems. I'm more likely to believe that past, current, and future ecosystems are the result of "chance accidents of history and dispersal". I think that the chaos that surrounds my plant breeding activities also occurs in every species in every ecosystem. For example: One day as I was driving down a 4 lane highway a gust of wind pulled a basket of cactus fruits out of the back of my truck.... So 10,000 cactus seeds got planted on the pavement. It will be interesting to watch, and notice in 10 years if any of them managed to make it to the edge of the road and survive long enough to grow a colony.
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