- What’s good here? I love globalization.
- An organic oasis in Egypt.
- Today’s crop of the future: Salicornia.
- English lavender?
- Florida botanical garden collects plants threatened by climate change.
- “Los Delirios is a blend of Caturra, Typica, and Bourbon beans grown near Esteli, Nicaragua.”
- Fungus to help honey bees fight mites.
- “During our grandfathers’ time there were different types of grasses here, some for the cows and others for the goats and sheep. Now there’s no grass, the land has become barren.”
Nibbles: Afghanistan, Zucchini
- Support for small-scale private seed enterprises in Afghanistan. Including landraces?
- “It has no real taste of its own, piggybacking on whatever it is prepared with.”
Ecologists breaking (unwritten) ecological laws
Andy Jarvis, our man with the global insights, sends this despatch:
This article just came out in Science about assisted colonization. ((O. Hoegh-Guldberg, L. Hughes, S. McIntyre, D. B. Lindenmayer, C. Parmesan, H. P. Possingham, C. D. Thomas (2008). ECOLOGY: Assisted Colonization and Rapid Climate Change Science, 321 (5887), 345-346 DOI: 10.1126/science.1157897)) That is the fancy term for moving a population from one place to another. Over the past few years this concept has been gaining ground, especially with the barrage of horror stories about the impacts of climate change on the geographic range of species. The authors propose a decision framework to identify candidate species for translocation (or assisted colonisation as it seems to now be called). The decision framework consists of criteria for threat, feasibility, and cost-benefit. Amazingly, the whole concept of ecological risk is not taken into account in the decision framework. The authors mention it in the text, and sidestep the issue somewhat by saying that these are short distance translocations, but this may not always be the case. With the best of intentions, we’ve had some really great “assisted colonisation” events in the past that have caused ecological disaster. See Australia, Lake Victoria, the Southern US, etc. etc. The list is endless.
Before I go too far, I must step back and state the positive side of this concept. After all, the objective is conservation. Done properly, with sound risk analysis of direct and indirect impacts on ecological communities (and anthropogenic systems, like … errrr… agriculture), assisted colonisation could save species from near certain doom. An innocent way of seeing it is that you are just lending a hand to species who can’t quite migrate as fast as others. If migration rates are lower than the speed of climate change, or a pesky river gets in their way, then ecologists come to the rescue and move you. It’s like helping an old lady across the road.
Avoiding long-distance assisted colonisation is a useful surrogate for “eco-safety” (a new term is born), but I think it is dangerous as many assumptions are being made with that one. Suggested next article: Risk analysis framework for assisted colonisation. Readers get going.
As a side note, and while I am in the mood for inventing new terms, we also need to come up with a name for this kind of conservation. We have in situ, we have ex situ. What would be good for this kind of conservation? Non-situ could well be the case if you don’t assist colonisation, but I can’t think of a good name for populations that are assisted. Anyone fancy a place in the history books by giving this a name? ((I propose neo-situ. Ed.))
Nibbles: Bees, Training, Fertilizers, Darfur, Tourism, Vinegar, Gardens
- Commercial bees infecting wild ones.
- Ag graduates put to work in Punjab.
- Humanure. You heard me.
- Agricultural rehabilitation in Darfur.
- “Increasing farm yield should not just be aimed to reduce the local dependency on imported food items as much as it should be tied in to the tourism industry.”
- “One day he said he wanted to have a vinegar festival.”
- Edible landscaping.
- Peach mojito. Yummie.
Goji lovers threaten devastation
The UK government is warning that illegal imports of goji (Lycium barbarum) plants threatens commercial potato and tomato crops with destruction. Goji, tomato and potato are all members of the family Solanaceae, and apparently “bugs” could come in on the clandestine gojis. According to one advisor, “the retail value of British tomato production is £150m, and potatoes are worth more than that, so the size of the industry that is under threat is pretty massive. If some bugs were to arrive here, they would be devastating.”
The Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate destroyed my entire stock of pepino (Solanum muricatum) in a former life because of some viral threat, even though the plants they confiscated initially tested negative. It’s easy to think that these “invading pests and diseases” threats are just crying wolf, but all the evidence suggests that intensive plantings are indeed very vulnerable. Of course, why that should be so is another matter …
I’m not sure how the UK government plans to sniff out every goji plant, but Sir Mick Jagger and Kate Moss, goji enthusiasts, presumably have plans to cope. Let’s hope proposed imports get up to speed soon, and don’t carry the bugs.