#it's food forests AND no till farming AND renewable energy AND low input arable and and AND

[bisquid]

"Kill nothing but time" only works when you have an intact trophic system - which can itself include humans! I don't have any information on it because it's not my area of research but I would not be surprised if one of the effects of the genocide that occurred during the colonisation were ecological effects not unlike those of a major trophic disruption (any data on this would ofc be muddied by the much more direct ecological destruction happening, unfortunately). I know there were food forests on the east coast so productive the settlers thought they'd found Eden, which ~mysteriously~ disappeared not long afterwards. Because they had been managed, but because they didn't look like what the Europeans were used to - arable fields and coppiced woodlands and so on - it was assumed to be a pristine wilderness, and a massive free resource.

One of the things that frustrates me as an ecologist in the rewilding 'sector' is the number of well meaning people consciously or unconsciously valuing 'pristine wilderness' higher or considering it the only real 'end goal' and being sort of sniffy about 'half measures' like protecting field margins and wilding urban green spaces. 'those things are important but they're just a stopgap measure! We need to protect more land and give it back to nature!' which is a well meaning but incredibly frustrating attitude to take, honestly.

One: I am based in Scotland, which has an incredibly low percentage of actually 'pristine' (another word that's more open to interpretation than people think but I won't get into that now) landscape because.. well. Centuries of deforestation, land clearances, intensive farming and monoculture timber plantations, among other things. Today Scotland can boast slightly less (or slightly more, depending how you define it) than one percent of its native pinewood. 'Pristine wilderness' is a pipe dream, here.

Two: there is no way in hell, heaven, or earth that Scotland is going to give up vast areas of productive land - pasture or arable - for 'giving back to nature'. It just won't happen. And, frankly, it doesn't need to happen. The existence of farming is not the problem. Food production is not the problem. Modern farming techniques are the problem, and those problems can be solved, or at least mitigated, with the cooperation of the farmers. Incredible things can be achieved like that! The problem - as everything seems to be these days, seriously, it's exhausting - is this false dichotomy that you can only have 'good untouched wilderness' or 'evil arable farms'. Obviously people don't think it's literally one or the other, but there's a definite inclination towards 'this land can either be for nature or people, not both'. Which is... wildly unhelpful, for obvious reasons. It's also deeply untrue, and between the rewilding I'm involved in professionally and all the Deer Math and associated research I've been doing for fun, it's becoming ever more clear that it's not only possible but far easier than it seems to be able to produce resources including food at a scale significant enough to be a genuine alternative to traditional farming. Especially if you combine it with more 'eco friendly' methods of eg construction.

Coppiced hazel and willow can generate insane quantities of - essentially - small gauge timber, as well as producing haws - theoretically human edible but also a valuable source of food for wildlife. Any fruit bearing tree, again, can provide food for humans and wildlife. Let wild garlic grow where it wants. Plant blackberries and raspberries and manage their spread. Let pigs roam and rootle to grow fat on oak and beech mast, use the winter deer cull to stock your larders with venison rich with winter preparation. Seed riverbanks with cress and alder to shade the water and watch otters playing among their roots. Let elder trees hang heavy with a white foam of flowers in the sunlight in clearings full of wildflowers and the heady buzz of bees at work. Fish in streams and rivers packed with trout and salmon while the swifts and martins dip and dive overhead and the heron stands still as a statue in the shallows.

You don't have to choose between food and nature. You can have both. I promise.

I would far, far rather see a million acres of Aberdeenshire Managed Food Forests than nine hundred thousand acres of traditional intensive farming and a thousand acres of untouched nature reserve.

“National parks have been vital in protecting huge swaths of land, including sacred sites and unique ecosystems, from land developers and other forms of destruction and are some of the last places in the continental United States where many animals are able to live safely from overhunting and unnecessary culls.”

and

“National parks are, just like the rest of the US, land stolen from indigenous people who are now denied access to the lands that their ancestors lived on and cared for for thousands of years, even when having access is vital for a community’s survival, whether that’s through food sources in the form of hunting/fishing/gathering or the ability to continue cultural practices.”

and

“National parks provide places for people to feel connected to nature and to able to observe plants and animals and land masses that they’d never be able to see otherwise, and many national parks also include other services like horseback riding lessons and educational events to help people better understand their planet.“

and

“National parks, including with the famous motto ‘take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints,’ push an ahistorical and frankly dangerous narrative that separates humans from nature, turning people into observers of our world instead of active participants, and does damage to the plants that adapted and evolved at the hands of foragers to benefit the most when they’re harvested.“