[FLPERMACULTURE] invasives discussion

Thu Nov 17 17:13:23 GMT 2005

Tonight begins the first permaculture course in the Finger Lakes in recent
memory. I'm excited, not only because I've helped to organize it, but also
because this will be my first formal certification course. Yeehaw! Before I go
offline for the next three days I'll post something lively and
controversial...

A couple days ago I posted to the international permaculture list a query
regarding  Larry Santoyo's list of useful plants for cold climates and the
inclusion of a couple plants that are commonly accepted as invasives. The
message included the two posts to this list that questioned the wisdom of
planting Crownvetch and Russian Olive. Here is an excerpt from my post:

"Thanks also for the list. I posted it to the local "finger lakes permaculture"
listserv and got the following replies. I don't know enough about the plants
mentioned, or the issues surrounding invasives to comment. Maybe other could?"

I know there is controversy surrounding the idea of "invasive" plants and I
know some permaculture designers have some strong ideas. I was suprised and
intrigued by the quick and thoughtout responses received since Tuesday. In the
interest of the eternal, though often messy, search for truth I'll share the
responses to the list:

1. response from mIEKAL aND
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture/2005-November/022423.html
2.response from Toby Hemenway
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture/2005-November/022424.html
3. response from Karen Kellogg
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture/2005-November/022425.html
4. response from Lisa Rollens
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture/2005-November/022426.html
5. response from William Genest
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture/2005-November/022428.html
6. response from Larry Santoyo
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture/2005-November/022437.html

1.
I would replace those two with Goumi (Eleagnus multiflora), which has
an edible fruit good for jams, jellies, wines & wildlife & at least
around here does not appear to be suckering.  The other plant from
Elaeagnceae which is very good, multiple uses, & produces a fruit
with some of the highest amount of vitamin C in the northern
hemisphere is Sea Buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L.) which also is
not suckering for me tho some folks in looser soil have claimed it does.

Autumn Olive is out of control in old pastures around here & prairie
groups spend a lot of hours grubbing them out.

~mIEKAL

2.
Dave Jacke made the following amusing observation: if Russian olive is
rampant in your area, what possible harm could there be in planting one more
of this soil-restoring, wildlife-feeding, edible (etc., etc.) plant? The
seed burden will be dwarfed by what is already there.

I agree that goumi and E. x ebbingei are better choices for small-scale
projects.

Russian and autumn olive were distributed widely in the eastern US by
highway departments in enormous roadside planting projects; they are pretty
well naturalized now. They tend not to move into intact ecosystems, with the
possibility of remnant prairie, which is endangered by just about every tree
and shrub species, native or not, since we don't burn prairie any more. They
do like pasture and other artificially maintained grassland or disturbed
ground, but that's an economic and land use choice, not an ecosystem
preservation issue. Pasture (and unburned prairie) generally wants to become
forest if there's more than 20 inches of rain a year; the shrubs are just
doing their job.

Oh, yeah: I wonder how much funding NYIPC gets from Monsanto and other
herbicide companies. Most of the Invasive Plant Councils get lots
(California's was started by a Monsanto exec). They love the repeat
business. "Invasive" plant removal is a huge source of herbicide use--too
bad about those "natural, native ecosystems."

Sorry if I'm a broken record. A knee-jerk anti-exotic reaction will get from
me a knee-jerk "learn some basic ecology" response (I realize the posts came
from off-list).

Toby
www.patternliteracy.com

3.
Toby---

I got one of the shrubs from the state in a wildlife buffer package
years ago--one is now a lovely large shrub blocking my view of my
neighbor's house---I've been thinking I should get rid of it; now your
post gives me a decent argument for keeping it--- and It smells so
heavenly when in bloom!!!

Thanks, Karen

4.
You all do know that autumn olives are edible, don't you?  I have eaten
about a gallon this year.  They are juicy and tart/sweet with soft edible
seeds and a nice thirst quencher when doing things outdoors.  Also a friend
has wine from autumn olives going and I tried wine, but I think I am getting
vinegar!  :^)  Russian Olive is invasive but my sheep and horses cleared
almost a whole pasture of them in Ohio.  Supposedly turkeys and other
poultry love them and I am thinking about planting some in my poultry areas.
You are scaring me with all this "invasive" talk.  I searched on the
internet and all I found was how to kill them.  I don't think that is the
Permaculture way tho.  Aren't we supposed to look at it a different way and
call it a resource???

Lisa, in the Ozarks, USA

5.
Article I wrote for paper....

             Paradigm Shifting: Invasives Revisited.
                 ... Current understanding of invasives is outmoded
                          and lacks ecosystem knowledge.

By: Claude William Genest
Green Mountain Permaculture Institute.

     A Chaos Theorist once remarked that it is relatively simple to
find the fault in a design. It's harder to spot the assumptions that
give rise to the fault. And it's hardest of all to identify the world-
view that underlies it all.

A world-view which holds germs as causing disease and "exotic
invaders" as responsible for destroying ecosystems is outmoded, leads
to faulty assumptions and poor design choices. This is painfully true
with our understanding of pioneering successional plant species
wrongly maligned as a "problem".

Gaia Theory
     The Nobel prize winning "Gaia Theory" teaches us that the earth
is like a body : it self-organizes, self-repairs, and self-
reproduces. It is a single, self-regulating living system that
organizes itself in such a way as to maintain and create the
conditions suitable for life.

 From this systemic perspective it can be rightfully said for example
that we don't "catch a cold". Rather, we make ourselves vulnerable by
compromising the processes that collectively make up our immune
systems. Coughing, sneezing and runny-noses are not the problems of
your cold, they are the solutions ! They are your body expelling the
"exotic invaders".

Similarly, invasive plants are also operating in the context of the
whole-system. Take a closer look:  they are absolutely specialized at
cleaning up our mess and repairing degraded soils.  Purple
loosestrife's historical progression can be traced right up the
fouled waters of  our man-made canals and its ability to fix nitrogen
and mine minerals make it an ideal pioneer species for degraded
former wetlands. Eurasian Millefoils'  "thousand leaves" give it more
surface area with which to capture the nutrients we so ignorantly and
abundantly provide and Zebra mussels fix our phosphorous overload
like nobody's business.

An understanding of living systems also does away with the
ecologically untenable notion that anything in nature results in a
monocrop, as any walk in a healthy forest will reveal.  Monocrops are
man-made and to think of it, what species has been more invasive and
expensive than the common lawn whose acreage and rates of herbicide
applications exceed those of farms ?
Living systems evolve towards diversity, complexity and resiliency.
Pioneer species including many exotics, "take-over" for what appears
to be a long time only in our myopically short life-spans. The
pattern in fact is one of "succession" in which one species helps
create the conditions for the next. Life creates life, even in death.

Historically Correct ?
     The Historical argument holds that what was there once should be
there again.
The historical land use pattern has been to erode top soil through
clearcuts, farm it to death, then turn it to pasture and finally to
hay. We erode the soil and systematically mine its fertility through
intensive, extractive and chemical-laden monocrop practices and then
stand amazed that nature is stepping in to repair the damage.

To recreate the matrix of species that dominated prior to intensive
logging/farming all that is required is but to re-create the soil,
flora and fauna conditions that were then present. The irony is that
Gaia, in association with exotics, is doing just that. Incredibly, we
pay to eradicate this process, then pay again to inappropriately
plant climax plants in a pioneer soil.

A lake's best friend ?
     In order for any species to thrive, it needs food. Waste is food
and we are providing the nuisances of Lake Champlain with a
smorgasbord of agricultural, industrial and human nutrients.

The historical land use patterns of the lake have been to both remove
the natural "sponges and buffers" provided by wetlands and then to
dump our wastes into the lake. Many are surprised to learn that the
number one source of point pollution in the lake are water treatment
plants.

We radically alter the life conditions that allowed natives to
flourish, and then blame the exotics for succeeding in the conditions
we created !

How is it that what was once labeled a mere "nuisance" has graduated
to the ranks of "exotic invader" ?
It is important to remind ourselves that species like Zebra mussels
are nuisances only to man: they block his intake pipes, cover his war
relics, and cut his bare feet. But in terms of phosphorous
sequestration they are clearly more a friend to the lake than a foe.

So, does invasive reduction have to be an expensive war ? Or can we
learn to work with natural systems to profitably reduce the waste
stream entering our soils and watersheds? If an ounce of prevention
is worth a pound of cure, would it not make more sense to eradicate
the human roots of the problem rather than pay to eradicate nature's
solutions ?

6.
Thanks again Claude -and as usual, Toby too,

I forget sometimes, that the anti-exotic and the
militantly-passionate, natives-only plant people are among the long
list of well intentioned "environmentalists" that make teaching
Permaculture Design Courses so important and relevant... to teach a
new way of seeing, of reading the patterns of the landscape -and not
always falling for, without question, the "romantic" versions of
nature that most of us were taught to believe...

Don't forget to check out "Invasion Biology: Critique of a
Pseudoscience" by David Theodoropoulos (of J.L. Hudson, Seedsman
-seed catalog fame). With the help of Camille Cimino our local
Permaculture Guilds here in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, California
just hosted his lecture and book signing... see a review of his book
I found on amazon below...

Larry

Larry Santoyo, Director
EarthFlow Design Works
805.459.0452
http://www.earthflow.com/consulting.html

By Reviewer:Luna Verde  (Miami, FL USA)

In Part I, Theodoropoulos draws on paleobiology, historical records
of the movement of species, and studies of natural changes, to
disabuse us of naive views of "natural, stable, co-evolved"
ecosystems. Then, he details the true causes of the population
outbreaks that are called invasions, showing that these are symptoms
of anthropogenic disturbance -- changes in hydrology, pollution, fire
regime changes, etc. For me, this was the most devastating and
convincing part of the book: one realizes that the so-called
"invasive species" are not the problem, and we must address the true
causes underlying these population outbreaks. He then examines many
of the most popular "alien invaders" in the media -- purple
loosestrife, eucalyptus, star thistle, wild boar, fire ants, kudzu,
salt cedar, and others -- and neatly demolishes common misperceptions
about them. He exposes the extremism of the anti-invader movement,
and shows the harm that too often results from extermination efforts.

Part II will be the most difficult for most readers, dealing with the
psychology of belief and the nature of xenophobia and prejudice. At
first I was prepared to be repelled or offended by his comparisons of
biological nativism to racism, but his tone is so dry and unemotional
when examining these potentially explosive parallels, and he calmly
presents case after case, leaving the reader no choice but to give
the matter serious consideration. He also "follows the money" and
exposes the herbicide industry funding of anti-invader efforts. This
part of the book answered for me the question I was left with after
reading Part I -- how could we have forgotten the basic lessons of
ecology when considering these species, and created the environmental
equivalent of a "demon theory" of disease?

Part III builds a new view of "anthropogenic dispersal", showing the
many beneficial effects of invaders, demonstrating the rapid
ecological integration of man-dispersed species, and showing the way
towards a new direction for the conservation of biological diversity.
After thoroughly demoralizing me and demolishing my world-view, this
part revived my spirits and energized me to take a fresh approach to
restoration and conservation. My own approach to land management has
been radically changed, and I will be focusing on underlying causes,
rather than treating mere symptoms.

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Michael Burns
http://www.cayuta.org
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Earn your permaculture design certificate.
The Finger Lakes Permacuture Institute
begins its first course on November 18.
Go to: http://www.flpci.org
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