Duh! Your article Steve is the basis of Native American forestry methods through the creative use of fire for thousands of years. Now the question is "Did they do that because they wanted to eat better or because they wanted to help the animals? The answer lies in our spirituality which was called "The way of right relationships." It's a manual for managing the forest and it ain't easy.
Your scientists are just now getting around to the theory of the thing (see below). They had consigned it to the same superstition as they believe about their own religions. Their ignorance is what made the Europeans feel superior and OK about the holocaust here and eventually turned on themselves in WWII. Now let's see if they have the courage to put it together with their history and confront it in their souls? Here's the formula of European needs based in the whiplash from the plagues. That PTSD is still with us in that community's myths. Our PTSD is different from yours. The new "brand" for that "PTSD" is called a "Soul Wound" and it was coined by therapists working with the native communities talking about what Ed has described in his work with First Nation's peoples in Canada. The Evangelicals here have taken it up to use as a political weapon against anyone who resists their version of Christianity or their neo-classical economics. Affirmative Action has been their first target and Obama is their first embodiment of that target. . Uncertainty + Ignorance = anxiety. . Anxiety + having a family = the path of war and competition. . The path of war and competition + the need for revenge = government. . Government + guilt from the carnage of warfare = the theory of original sin. . Original sin + the law of eternal retribution = religion . Religion + the organization of knowledge in science = the present age There is another way. That, Keith, is what I have been saying when I said that you must not have "winners and losers." That the creation of losers destroys diversity. It is mirrored in the words of the Narragansett's watching their enemies, the Pequots, be burned to death by the English who considered them vermin. The comment of the Narragansett Medicine Priests to the cooking flesh of children was "To what purpose?" When you find the "Way of Right Relationship" you have learned the purpose of all life in the great forest and you are the gardener. REH From: Steve Kurtz [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 7:20 AM To: undisclosed-recipients: Subject: Fwd: A new predator/prey model that explains the stability of complex ecosystems (Thanks to Bill T.) Note that these are models, and they are not perfect mirrors of reality. Also note that predation is "in addition to interacting with one another as competitors or mutualists." <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120222154633.htm> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120222154633.htm Predator-Prey Relationships Make Possible the Rich Biodiversity of Complex Ecosystems <snip> . . . in their recent research, Allesina and Tang modeled ecosystems in which species consume each other in addition to interacting with one another as competitors or mutualists. Their results explain why large numbers of species do, in fact, thrive instead of necessarily going extinct as predicted by May's model. This advance provides the foundation for the development of increasingly sophisticated analyses of ecosystem responses to environmental change. Allesina believes that it is predator/prey relationships (not competitor or mutualistic relationships) that provide the necessary stability for almost infinite numbers of species to exist in ecosystems. They do so by keeping the size of species populations in check at supportable levels. Allesina explains, "When prey are high, predators increase and reduce the number of prey by predation. When predators are high, prey decrease and thus reduce the number of predators by starvation." <snip> below is the referenced NSF piece http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123191 <http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123191&org=NSF&from=news> &org=NSF&from=news Allesina believes that it is predator/prey relationships (not competitor or mutualistic relationships) that provide the necessary stability for almost infinite numbers of species to exist in ecosystems. They do so by keeping the size of species populations in check at supportable levels. Allesina explains, "When prey are high, predators increase and reduce the number of prey by predation. When predators are high, prey decrease and thus reduce the number of predators by starvation." By contrast, mutualistic relationships may reinforce the growth of large populations and competitive relationships may depress population numbers to the point of ecological instability. Allesina says that May's model mixed various types of species interactions but could not represent these relationships accurately because of technical modeling constraints that he and Tang overcame. "The results of Allesina and Tang's network analyses are important," says David Spiller, an NSF program director, "because they show that the stability properties of complex ecological systems are determined by the type of interaction among species (predation, competition, mutualism) and the strength of those interactions."
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