🚀 go-pugleaf

"S.Benedikt" <benediktwatson@hotkey.net.au> writes:

> It may be OK for Scotland? But for Australia the idea plotted here if it =
> could be made to work would be of outmost benefit. The problem I have on =
> my property where I am currently planting variety of 2000 native trees =
> is keeping rabbits, wombats and wallabies off the trees. The trees have =
> to be guarded with plastic guards and sprayed with wombat/wallaby =
> deterrent. Even so a great percentage of young trees get eaten before =
> reaching a foot height. And you can not guard them from rabbits. It is =
> interesting problem.
> Any idea how to overcome it?

Well, frankly, unless you control the numbers of fluffy cuddly
browsing animals, you cannot get forest re-established. You can't do
it in Scotland, you can't do it in Australia, and I don't suppose you
can do it in timbuctu. And if you don't get forest re-established,
those same fluffy cuddly browsing animals will eventually overgraze
the pasture, leaving it vulnerable to erosion, which will (at least
under Scotish upland conditions) take the topsoil off, and then there
won't be anything for the fluffy cuddly browsing animals to eat and
they'll all starve.

The problem is, as a culture, Western people have a practice of trying 
to exterminate the local climax predator wherever we go. Once there
isn't a climax predator there's nothing to naturally control the
fluffy cuddlies, and their population explodes to the point where
their environment can't sustain them and degrades rapidly. While
overstocking of browsing animals is not the main cause of forest loss
in the world, it is a major factor in preventing forest recovery.

So you have two solutions, basically. The best is to reintroduce your
climax predator (and prevent neighbouring landowners from
exterminating them again). This has not proved practical, yet, in
Scotland - the same people who have a sickly sentimental thing about
shooting the fluffy cuddlies have an irrational, almost superstitious
fear of wolves. Or else, control the fluffy cuddlies yourself -
ideally by shooting, because trapping is too bloody indiscriminate and
poisons will migrate up the food chain and take out any remaining
major predators you have.

City people believe conservation can be carried out without making
hard choices. It just is not so.

-- 
simon@jasmine.org.uk (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon

	'graveyards are full of indispensable people'