Rob Halpern

Another article, quite timely:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11495812

And it is already begun
http://gulfnews.com/news/world/uk/15-000-species-of-medicinal-plants-face-extinction-1.78647

Well, I see your plan now.
As we continue to obliterate Nature, eventually it will come crashing down on us. So it’s all taken care of. No need to be concerned or change our economics or behavior. The remedy is built in.

“Or is fire a natural result of to much fuel?”

By which you mean species… or humans?
At this time, something like 22% of plant species world wide are endangered.
http://www.kew.org/science/plants-at-risk/plants-worldwide.htm
The last time that happened was either the great Ice Age or the event (assuming there was one) that wiped out the…[Read more]

Steve,

Your comment about extinction blithely brushes away how human activity has accelerated the extinction rate enormously. It is rather like saying, “Hey, things have been burning down for millenia, whether an arsonist set the fire or not.”

I wasn’t saying we never move forward. I was saying we need to get kicked in the ass to do it. Read what I wrote. The Magna Carta was signed at sword point!

I cannot think of any progressive act that was the result simply of people deciding what was “right.” Whether it is clean drinking water for Paris in the 15th Century or the Clean Air Act, change comes when the status quo is no longer possible. As human population has soared in recent decades and the consumer economy spread to China and now to…[Read more]

Most of those approaching retirement lost the value of their retirement savings two years ago. Maybe we can cut a deal: give the jobs to the young…who have a lifetime of work ahead…and who must buy out the older workers! Everyone wins

Wow! What a load of generation generalizations, Ashish.

You might enjoy this then:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/business/media/04carr.html?ref=movies

It paints an opposite picture of the generational values.

This is such an odd question (in my view) I have to ask: Why are you asking?

There are quite a number of commercially available rabbit repellents. Google and ye shall find.

But if the rabbit population gets large enough, they will have little choice unless there is another landscape they can eat.

Not an end…just an overview of what has been working and what has been researched as far as I know. These are issues I try to keep up with.
The rail in India that has killed so many elephants is criminal.
The new highway through the Serengeti will be another.

The grape extract has been researched and found reasonably effective for Canada geese. It is taste-based, not smell. There are other taste-based repellents, of course, but they must be matched to the species one wants to repel. What works for deer does not usually work for rabbits, etc.

As to roadkill, if we run a road or rail through natural…[Read more]

“Get a few of your friends from class who are serious about the program, go back to the site with your cameras and sketchbooks and hang out all day. Go explore the neighborhood, check out the industrial areas, have lunch at one of the local restaurants, talk to locals about what they’d like to see happen… go get out there!”

I strongly agree.…[Read more]

If what you are advocating is basically “Think about native plants so you are not only thinking about all the Asian landscape Usual Suspects” then absolutely! I guess I didn’t get that point because I don’t think of plantings in such a way.

Perhaps we are looking at this from two different points. My reaction was that in a centuries old city, where Northeast woodlands (actually this area was underwater “originally”) have been completely replaced with structure and concrete/glass/steel the environment is entirely new. There is no “native.” And what was once native is not the most…[Read more]

I agree with all of that.
And continue to feel that a monoculture on this scale is a disaster waiting to happen.

Sadly, it is getting more and more difficult to select good plants for some sites. Old standards do not hold and a monoculture based on historical assumptions is not a sustainable design. New insects and diseases are spreading (Asian…[Read more]

The article explains how they were going to have a ribbon of sweet gums running through the mass of oaks. Now it’s all oaks

Still don’t know! If my new clients bite then I ought to be out of town. But nothing in this business ever happens when it was scheduled.

Yeah, and this project has to be the worst case!

Still, the issue of long-term maintenance is a real one. I just returned from a conference of grounds managers, all of whom had horror stories on new projects being designed that they did not have the resources to maintain. In my experience, the Owner is usually the prime mover in such delusional…[Read more]