This is an old growth forest full of weeds.
The sage brush is the weed …
… not the bunch grass. Sagebrush is an indigenous plant, but it comes in a bit thickly when the grass has been overgrazed. Traditionally these weeds were kept down by a) not overgrazing and b) fire. The weeds below were kept down by fire, too.
Look at them now, messing with the grass’s head.
This is called a forest, but it’s not. It’s a grassland, with weeds. Now, there’s an interesting cycle in the grass, in which short-lived pines burn off, the grass comes back, the pines come back, the grass comes back, the pines come back, the grass comes back and before you know it 10,000 years have passed in the sun. This isn’t like that. These trees are sick.
See that? Their only life is in their top two or three metres. That’s where the forest is… scarcely higher than sagebrush. Everything else down below is just shade.
This is the great shade desert created by trees. All it is is fuel. All it is is fire. And billions of dollars are spent every summer in preventing that fire, with very few results, while all we have to do is cut the trees down and take them away, like we would to any weeds. We can throw a few into ponds, for the fish to shelter under, of course.
And leave some for the eagle. She needs them, the deader the better.
Eagles can’t use crowded trees, either, and people belong on the grass. You can see yourself in the grass, right?
We should go sometime together. Summer, winter, pshaw, it’s all good.
Better than this, for sure.
Nothing on earth can live there. For forests, the following will do. A few trees in the drainage of a cliff. Great spot for bears and flickers and deer.
And we like to live with bears, right?
Categories: Earth, Ethics, fire, First Peoples, Forestry, Gaia, Grasslands, green technology, Indigenous Farming, invasive species, Land, landscaping, Nature Photography, Open Agriculture, Spirit, weeds
Okanagan Okanogan 
Bring back the time honoured tradition of selective spring burning of underbrush!
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Indeed, especially after the overbrush has been reduced.
Ordell Steen did a study in the Cariboo, which demonstrated that leaving large old savanna trees and taking out the young ingrowth created more cubic metres of wood per hectare than the reverse… in contradiction of current logging practices.
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Yes. The overbrush. That has me thinking of property lines and band offices, fed and prov govt depts, Elders Youths and professors scientists…together attending workshops and dialog..
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That would be astonishing.
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I agree!
There was a 2010 workshop held on The Flathead Indian Reserve called The Braided Truth. An exploration of Traditional knowledge climate change and collaboration challenges. Here’s part 1 of 3
Four years later:
http://www.montana.edu/news/12689/teams-comb-flathead-indian-reservation-for-clues-about-ancient-recent-fires
Canada needs to get a grip, start shifting priorities.
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Oops that’s the short intro to the actual workshop videos. The other parts are on youtube
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Oops, that’s the short intro. The actual workshop and interviews are on YouTube. The title on the video is a link that will take you to the YouTube channel.
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This will take some work. At the moment, Canadians have been taught that there was nothing but peaceful accommodation of First Nations, except for some abusive priests. But it’s sure work that needs to be done. And that’s why we’re here, trying. I’ll look at these tomorrow. Thanks!
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