People Needed (to tend the land)

It has been a very long time—11,000 years at the very least, possibly 20 or 30,000 years since California was without Homo sapiens. 

During that whole time, people had a hand in making the place the way it is. Until recently, the knowledgeable manipulations of humans made it an extremely beautiful place; fascinating, rich, brimming with life of numberless kinds. The chief management tool in their arsenal was fire, used wisely. 

Then came a Spanish colonial wave, and their big contributions to the ecological equation were two: a big problem, in the form of Mediterranean weeds, and a partial solution, in the form of large, grazing animals—lots of them. Oats and mustard, filaree and foxtails, bromes and bur-clover.

Next came “Americans”, whose main contributions were (at least) three, all (big) problems: the plow and the ‘burbs and the car . . . and the lumberjack . . .  and “enterprise” . . . and money . . . and chemicals.

What we are left with are many problems and a few tools: fire, and big animals, and (now) the chainsaw, and chemicals? , plus a few permutations and corollaries, with which to tackle the three great scourges that we newcomers unleashed: weeds, plow, and us. These all have a life of their own, and what they do is EAT NATURE.

Since the place got the way it is because of our tinkering, it can only be fixed, or even kept more-or-less status quo, through other kinds of tinkering.

At this point, without constant human “interference”, California would go to hell even faster than it already is. If the Pleistocene megafauna would have stopped chomping, the floristic rich would have got richer and the poor poorer. 

If the Indians had stopped burning, ditto. If the Spanish cattle had stopped chomping, ditto. If our own cattle stop chomping (and when they do), ditto. “Wildfire” likewise. 

Tools can be used for good or ill. Too much grazing, bare ground. Too little, weeds. Too much fire, ashes. Too little, weeds. Too much human “disturbance”, bare ground. Too little, weeds. Too much chainsaw, crew cut. Too little, weeds.

We can not “save” a piece of wild land by putting a fence around it with a “keep out—fragile” sign. With the possible exception of old-growth forest, temperate or tropical.