David, Thanks for your remarks and thoughts. As I said in my postscript, the post was written in my Op-Ed style, not in my usual Ecolog post style. Sorry to hear about the intentional and expensive intrusion of pines into oak woodland by THE AUTHORITIES.
As to my post, a careful reading will reveal my uncertainty about the "sage-grouse" project and my qualification regarding the presumptive good intentions of the author of the post which gave rise to my comments. It is all about ISSUES, not personalities. WT "The suspension of judgment is the highest exercise in intellectual discipline." --Raymond M. Gilmore "Nine-tenths of the hell being raised in the world is well-intentioned." --Anonymous ----- Original Message ----- From: David Burg To: Wayne Tyson Cc: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, March 23, 2013 8:19 AM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Ecology and Range Management Compatible? Re: [ECOLOG-L] tree encroachment models Wayne, I think you must have flunked your Dale Carnegie course. Which is just one of the many things I like about your thinking, my fellow cynical curmudgeon. You make many good points. The very concept "range" is a self serving rancher construct, isn't it? Your example of the Oregon juniper removal project is something seen frequently, in my experience. Even where there is some kernel of good thought, like maintaining some former landscape-level vegetation pattern, the execution is often foolish. And often such plans just happen to result in lots of spending by agencies and contractors. Here in NYC the parks department has an idea of preserving "diversity". So they have, at great expense, been creating pine plantations in one of the rarest relict oak woodlands in the country. See Reed Noss's fine old article "Do We Really Want Diversity" on misuse of that concept by foresters. I mention this because it may be comparable with what is being done for sage grouse. I do not think that it is wrong to try to figure out how we can preserve as much nature as we can while also making accomodations for people. And while there is no substitute for field work, it does no good, Wayne, to dump on those who want to use modeling and other quantitative tools. But there is a problem with what Malthus calls the "insensible bias", where we see the universe through the lense of human "need". A raging problem now in "Nature Protection", particularly with concepts of "productivity" of forests, grasslands, hoofed mammals, fish, etc. And then there always seems to be some special interest that looks to jump on a bandwagon and twist it to their own benefit. Is sage grouse protection another example of that? The fuzzy term "Land Health" would seem to be very susceptible to such twisting. It could be argued that North America has not been "natural" since the die-off of the mega fauna. I would try to give Jessa Davis the benefit of the doubt and hope she (he?) is mindful of the trickiness of the issues you raise, Wayne. David Burg On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 11:57 PM, Wayne Tyson <[email protected]> wrote: Ecolog: Now I've heard everything! Models? Models? We don't need no stinkin' MODELS! (Paraphrased from the great old movie, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, one of the earliest attempts to illustrate environmental responsibility) What we need is to get out on the "range" (a bogus concept for most of the Great Basin [GB]), which is a romanticized Hollywood-cowboy notion anyway, and LOOK at what's ACTUALLY happening and has been happening since the arrival of the hoofed locusts in the 19th century. THEN, if need be, go back to the air-conditioned offices and crunch some numbers. The trees wouldn't BE encroaching if it weren't for livestock, and the ecosystems would be at maximum potential productivity, including plenty of healthful animal protein like pronghorns and elk and, in places, bison instead of cattle and other livestock that did not evolve under GB conditions. It was huge herds of cattle that caused the mesquite "invasions" in Texas and beyond, cattle that caused the "invasions" of juniper or "cedar" elsewhere in the west, not to mention cheatgrass and other alien species that have reduced GB and other ecosystems to far below their original productivity. This "range management" is not ecology, not even "applied" ecology, it is simply propping up a lousy idea that is so entrenched that we will never get rid of it. All over The West, huge amounts of our tax money has been squandered on chaining, cutting, and poisoning trees (including pinyons) under the unwarranted assumption that they were "stealing" water and nutrients from the grasses. I thought the yahoos in the pockets of "ranchers" (I'm all for small locally-owned ranches, but not for the non-resident-owned corporate landlords who are interested only in money and to hell with the future) were a thing of the past, and that now the government "management" agencies had some ecologists and biologists in them that would not perpetuate this kind of "Alice in Wonderland" myth that the GB is primarily for cows and that indigenous species are "invading" and thus degrading the "range." Balderdash! I went to see the "experiment" in "controlling" the "invasion of junipers at Steen's mountain in SE Oregon a few years ago. Their little propaganda signs, while admitting the fact that great herds of livestock (sheep and cattle primarily) had been brought in the last couple of centuries, but did not admit that the proliferation of junipers had anything to do with said the true invasion of cattle and sheep. They did some field trials, not experiments, where they used different methods to "control" the juniper "invasion." They cut down big junipers that were perhaps a couple of hundred years old when the livestock first arrived, not just the little ones that had actually invaded, which could have not been "invaders" themselves, thus cutting down badly needed "stock shade," instead of thinning out some of the "offending" seedlings that sprang up in response to the pulverizing of the soil and much of the ecosystem, including the cryptobiotic soil crust fraction of the ecosystem that was in equilibrium, including sage grouse, before the devastating disturbance that favored the proliferation of junipers, to wit, the cow-burning of the West. The Great Plains is another story. This has been a blatant opinion piece, and were it not for the inability of the present-day newspapers to separate the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the chaff, I would send it to one of them as I sometimes did in the last century (and the early 21st), but they are so inundated with submittals today that one has a snowballs chance in hell of getting published, much less getting paid like it was in the "old days." WT PS: I have no way of knowing for sure, but I would like to know, intentionally or unintentionally, whether or not the sage grouse program might be a surrogate subterfuge for sucking up more dollars for "range improvement" for corporate ranching. I presume that Jessa is well-intentioned, but she could be a pawn for the corporate interests, which can be very clever in manipulating the public, including "environmentalists." ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jessa Davis" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2013 2:58 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] tree encroachment models All, I was wondering if anyone has done any serious modelling of tree encroachment? Specifically pinyon-juniper in the Great Basin. I am testing out models/tools for encroachment on rangelands in conjunction with sage grouse habitat restoration. LandFIRE has been tossed out there, and there's been some toying with in house methods. The higher the resolution, the better. If anyone has any suggestions, they would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, JD -- Jessa Davis Land Health Assessment Project Lead Ely District The Great Basin Institute 702.606.5483 (cell) 775.289.1968 (desk) "Be the change you want to see in the world." - Gandhi ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 10.0.1430 / Virus Database: 2641/5694 - Release Date: 03/21/13 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 10.0.1430 / Virus Database: 2641/5698 - Release Date: 03/23/13
