Growing by Organics-food Gardens & Sharing : Article at Bluecray Journey for Wisdom in the Land

Wildlife leaves Glyphosate Bank – finds refuge in Organic Garden : article at Bluecray Balance of Faeries

Lantana : This page will take you to the following:-

• Lantana National Priority Framework –  PDF file
• Lantana Weed Spread and Management Actions – the National Management Map (PDF file)
• Lantana control and Management Manual – (6 PDF files)
• Documents and Resources
• National Strategy Download – (PDF file)

weeds.org.au – An Australian Weeds Committee National Initiative – Weeds PORTAL

Weeds.org.au - about John Thorp – policy and weed strategy directions

The Well Trained Activist‘s article “Can Corporate Leadership Theorists Help Activists?”  - This is a great website full of great inspiration, with links to Daniel Goleman’s : Ecological Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, Social Intelligence page.

Lantana Management : Weeds of National Significance – Strategic Plan for the Commonwealth of Australia and National Weeds Strategy Executive Committee 2001

CSIRO – Lantana – the “Horror Story” – media release 2002

Qld Government : Biosecurity

Introduced Species and the Australian Environment : links at Earth and Environmental Science (UniServe Science at the  University of Sydney)- including links for the Bradley Method, the Australian Association of Bush Regenerators, Fire Ants, Cane Toads, Fish, Water weeds and much more

NWS Lantana Plan : Implementation

NSW Threatened Species : Habitat Management and Weed Control – priority actions

The Dynamics of Lantana camara Invasion of subtropical Rainforest in SE Queensland by Daniel Stock – at Australian Digital Thesis Program (Griffith University 2005)

Pest and Diseases forum at ivillage Garden Web – seems like plenty of people have had lantana experiences in this Gardening Forum

search for  Aboriginal  (Indigenous peoples) research literature for the North Coast of NSW at the Libraries Australia Search

Philosophy of  Environmental Destruction in the Name of Healing : bluecray.org article

The Mt Warning Region, on the east coast of Australia has vegetation remnants that suggest the region has good resilience to drought continental conditions over time.

Three other important regions that can withstand drier trans-continental periods are the Temperate Rainforests of Victoria, the Dorrigo Plateau Region, Eastern NSW  and Far North Queensland Rainforests.

• bluecray Regional Environmental News – Mt Warning Caldera : WATER
• Water Links SE QLD and NE NSW
• What is an ecological community? and more at  NSW Government Threatened Species
• SE QLD Hazards & Risks at Geoscience Australia –  This is a Group of PDF files that can be downloaded separately so, have a look:- includes chapters on flood, east coast risks, cyclones, multi hazard risk assessment

Australian Government National Water Commission

Weather – Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology

To understand our use of, and impact on the basaltic aquifers of the Mt Warning Caldera Region, monitoring is urgently needed. WHY? Because human populations and settlements are increasing steadily in this Region of NE NSW and SE QLD, Australia.

• loving vision to heal + habitat = more habitat and more biodiversity
• killing to heal + habitat = less habitat, less biodiversity

The Agricultural Chemical and Machinery Industries‘ direction within mainstream society has endowed future populations of  our world with:

• fast food production,
• decreased biosphere activity
• fast development
• increased production yield in mainstream Horticultural, Agricultural and Amenity cropping systems.
• Everywhere you drive, along the side of the roads you can see this legacy of the Agricultural Chemical in the form of  dead grass and micro habitat sprayed with herbicides.
• Everywhere you shop, you can purchase food products as a legacy of this fast fix Agricultural Chemical legacy.
• Every time you meet council and landlord requirements to “pest proof” your new building or leased property, you sponsor this legacy of Agricultural Chemicals.
• Everytime you you chose the comfort of  poisoning a rat, spraying a fly, safeguarding your home from those “terribly annoying and threatening spiders and ants”, you further this legacy of Agricultural chemicals into the world and the food chains.
• Every time you need to travel many kilometre to retrieve food and accomodate lifestyle, the machinery industry helps you, via roads, non regionalised industry, and non sustainable developments.

Now, I do not mean to make you feel uncomfortable about this. Or do I…….

• Agricultural Chemicals and Large Machinery  are a wonderful and terrifying gift from Science and, in turn God. These pesticides and machines, if I may so loosely term them, have saved lives, and helped feed millions.

And this, dear environmentally concerned reader, is the quandary. The annoying dichotomy of existence today.

The Quandary

*Chemicals + machinery+microhabitat and habitat = Bare soil / limited habitat

How does one practice and live valid, sustainable lifestyles (especially those that we, and our peers have become so accustomed to), and yet keep our environments comfortable, safe and abundant?

“Chemical free” I hear the advertisement chirp cheerily on the radio. “Without harmful chemicals”, “biosafe” .  .  .       I see the presenter announcer –  in pristine white gleaming kitchen, as she wipes those dangerous germs from the kitchen bench, her baby’s hands, and her swing lid garbage bin.

Well, we are all chemical. It is highly chemical. We are a biochemical complexity on a biochemically complex earth.

*The trick is: chemicals , particularly man made ones, are on the rise, permeating our food chains, air, water and soils.   Our world has become so full of these new, and often combined chemicals, that. . . …… that it is hard to know what was natural, in the beginning, and what is “natural” now.

Our minds have become so full of this knowledge, about these chemicals, that we have reached new plateaus of tolerance and comfortability about them all (well, at least many of them).

Yet, listen to this reasoning:

• We may be all chemical.
• We may strive to define what is a “good chemical” and a “bad chemical”.
• Essentially, in between all those biochemical components that make up the living earth………. in between all the organic, and inorganic chemicals of our living planet, there exists SPACE.

And there is alot of it!                 In fact, mainly, we ARE composed of SPACE. There is quite alot going on, in that space….. another story………. I digress.

Tolerance Plateaus and Stress

So the tolerance plateaus that  much of society have reached, with regard to man made chemical creation?

• Food chain chemical adjustment.
• Brain wave chemical adjustment.

The combined effects from media and industry onslaught of killing the bug, monculturing the lawn, product fixation, running to a deadline, playing with the beast?,

Generally, over-driving natural systems to the same extent we drive our neurotic selves., Causing a number of  abreactions.  Combined effects of combined effects carry with them unpredictable outcomes.

Chemical Monoculture Mindsets

*Bare soil    =      limited habitats,limited biodiversity

*Chemicals + machinery+microhabitat and habitat = Bare soil / limited habitat

These mindests have been built up of a number of generations now – courtesy of

• marketing,
• advertising (some of it, you even invite into your home via tv, radio, via playing it while YOU go about YOUR day). Why look!!! I even have google ads on bluecray…well, i tried them for a while…
  
• Product & Company endorsement via guidelines laid down in government and agency activities
• Schooling “norms”
• Peer Higher Education interfacing with Corporate/ Business.

Now all of this makes me think of R J Lifton’s writings,  how my experiences in life show me that many people adopt this strategy of “killing” in the name of healing, as explained by R J Lifton.

Nature is also under stress. And like us, has coping mechanisms.

However, consequences from all of these stresses  - the ongoing complexity of them…… makes the little things rather important.

Little things, like not killing, but growing habitats.

In our dazed neurotic state (complex as it is),  we forget what we were doing. We forget our simple, caring lives.

Instead, we find ourselves caught in an ever informed, mindblowing realisation that it really IS going way too fast!! All of us, so many people in the planet lost into their moment, and times are changing, again!

Vision and Love

I would like to bring this article back to the beginning now.  Back to that directional  idea. That idea of killing something with chemicals, spraying the country, waterways and estuaries with chemicals.

• Machinery and chemicals cause small localised losses of biodiversity
• These losses can accumulate rather rapidly owing to other localised pressures that are also within that particular ecosystem or even habitat.
• I have noticed that many small and sometimes larger property management tree plantings  are cleared extensively by mowing or herbicide. A strange birth path for an environmental project. Killing the land to heal it. It isn’t even a gentle killing!!
• Various different growth stages, over time, of different plant communities = Variously different habitats and related biodiverse flora and fauna communities

This is a symptom. This is looking it right in the eye, at the ground level. TAKE A LOOK!!!

*Over cultivation  + Mowing + herbicide use  =    limited habitats  +  limited biodiversity

*Bare soil    =      limited habitats,limited biodiversity

• Australian landscapes have a fundamental dynamic biodiversity that has functioned for tens of thousands, even millions of years.
• Different biodiversity dynamics appear regularly. The trick is in keeping the biodiversity going, so that balances can occur more readily.
• Nature is amazing, and it can re-invent iself quite remarkably. A bare mown patch of ground can, perhaps, turn itself into a forest. It certainly can, if it is in the middle of a wet rainforest, surrounded by biodiversity. If it is along the Darling River, it may take many, many years or even decades and centuries to “reinvent” itself into a dynamic yet stable over time,  biodiverse habitat.

Various different growth stages, over time, of different plant communities = Variously different habitats and related biodiverse flora and fauna communities

• Habitat regeneration, without chemicals and large machinery is caring for our country, flora and fauna.
• Habitat regeneration need not be  about killing habitat. Although natural processes do respond to death in a rebirth way.
• Habitat repair, after destruction via machinery and chemicals,  having gone past critical level, responds with less and less resilience.
• Habitat regeneration is about understanding and loving habitats. Loving nature, and bothering to spend some time there, to care, before you race in and kill habitats and micro-habitats.
• A loving approach to Habitat regeneration makes more sense.
• A loving approach to Habitat regeneration takes more time. The birth energy of such a regeneration project is alot more well adjusted to fit into natural rythms already working on the revegetating sight.

Meanwhile, back to the Abreactions, the biochemical and psychological stresses that we are handing ourselves over to.

• When someone is acting from a primed stress response, any further stresses can cause chronic illness.
• When an animal is acting from a stress situation,  especially if stress patterns are already deeply based in the animal’s responses, with further stresses occurring, that animal may become further stressed, depending on it’s coping mechanisms.
• Changes that occur too rapidly, will often then cause more stress.
• The same can be said for a micro habitat.  The most basic micro habitat for much survival, here on earth, is the humus level. This humus level is a fantastic earthly biological wonder.  Beyond this are the smaller creatures of earth, the bacteria, the insects, the spiders, the fungi, the lichens, the small molluscs, reptiles, mammals etc, plants, vegetation communities.
• As our personal environment changes about us, be it social, homelife, daily or work related, our earth’s environment is also moving  fast, about us. (especially in rapid development areas).
• Social Environmental Stress is also rapidly changing.
• Habitat destruction comes in many forms.
• Habitat destruction stresses us and earths precious creatures and life forms  in more ways than you can imagine.
• Habitat destruction has far reaching consequences on, and via the more basic earth elements, such as fire, wind, rain, heat, cold, weather etc.

Killing to heal is an auto response that doesn’t always serve us. Loving to heal is a whole much better. Get it?

killing to heal + habitat = less habitat, less biodiversity

loving vision to heal + habitat = more habitat and more biodiversity

Environmental Ethics at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Peter Vintila at Postkyoto Centre : See some of Peter Vintila’s work here:- ABC Unleashed: “Climate War” 6th November 2009; Post Kyoto Journal . His works show the dichotomies of human acquired learning responses and social adaptive tendencies when, the whole of our beautiful blue planet is at risk from our collective social activities. The tendency to “fight, flight and freeze” – the trauma adaptive qualities of centuries of “threat from outside” are now being acted out en masse by society. These learned adaptive processes, whilst possibly serving us collectively in humanity’s “youth”, are now outdated, and a new, brave form of courage is required. That of a VISION encompassing loving, sharing, forgiveness, acceptance – growing and nurturing “the good” in place of fighting and destroying “the bad“.

This can be said, in general,  for wars, developments, community revegetation programs, roadside management, planning instruments, daily lifestyles of individuals and much much more.

“A Balance of Faeries” 1989 – A true story

• Weed Identification – IBRA – SE Qld
• Weed Identification – IBRA – NSW North Coast

About 28 years ago, when I was studying at Gatton Agricultural College, I realised that to have a goal in life, something that I could work on, that would give me meaning to life, may be a good thing.

I meditated upon this, and decided that, to keep it simple, it was best to give my goal as few a words as possible. Discovering a life goal, and putting it into a few simple words may sound somewhat difficult. However, suprisingly, as soon as I asked this question of myself, the answer came immediately.

And the word were few. ‘Wisdom in the Land’. Very simple. Yet, full of complexity.

This life goal of Wisdom in the Land has led me to many beautiful places, inspiring people, and amazing experiences. The search for wisdom may seem a rather pretentious journey, and yet to me, it implied an innocent stance – one of student to nature.

The journey for me is far from over. And by the end of my journey I will still be the student.

What the goal of Wisdom in the Land has taught me so far, is that the teachings are everywhere.

The world, the land is an awesome place of learning. Wherever I go I learn more and more. It is a never ending goal for me, and one that I will never reach. But the journey that the goal is taking me on is worth it! So far, this is what I have learnt

If you sit quietly, and listen with your spirit, the Land will talk with you.
The Land, and all its natural wonder, is a great teacher.
The Land, and all its resources, belongs not to us. We belong to it.
With vision, we lead ourselves forward.

Choose your vision wisely, with your heart.

The rush for owning and possessing Land can lead us to run frantically upon the same spot, eating up the very resources that we aspire to own, till eventually we eat ourselves. Nothing is left.
Relax and be part of the wonder that nature provides in the Land.

Meditate within the Land
Retreat to the hidden spaces within time that the Land holds for us.
It is there, that the Land will speak to us.

The Land is a receptive vehicle, though which our creative energy and desire can be focused. Use this creative energy and desire wisely, for our human knowledge and consciousness has evolved great power. And greater power requires greater Wisdom.

Ask yourself – is it better to run upon the spot, and eat yourself up?
Ask yourself – is it better to relax and let the Land be your friend and guide, teaching you Wisdom…

Wisdom in the Land does not need a degree from university or great scientific learning, it can be practiced daily, anywhere, anytime. It can be shared with others and it will probably take a lifetime to become just a little wiser!

Alison Polistchuk

(I dedicate this page to two people who have inspired me to journey on this path. One is a neighbour of my childhood, who inspired me to follow the path of nature and simplicity – Rosemary Payet. The other person is Len Webb, who grew up with my father, Roy, and who sent me such a beautiful letter when I graduated from college, wishing me well, that his wishes have stayed with me, in my heart, to this day.)

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