From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Population growth and cultural destruction (Re: Nast
Distribution: world
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 08:05:32 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1992Dec30.010943.5088@watson.ibm.com> andrewt@watson.ibm.com writes:

 > >I might as well add here most trees and woody plants here in Australia which
 > >will not even open their seed pods until after a bushfire has burnt through.
 >  
 > Only a small fraction of Australian trees/woody plants require fires to
 > release seeds.

I am not going to argue with you on the difference between "most" and
"small fraction". The facts remain that the Australian bush regularly
requires a burnoff in order to thrive, and you might as a biologist
have addressed that phenomenon in more detail. If you have any.

 > Why do you post tirades insisting graduate qualifications should be required
 > to post to sci.environment but yourself post articles containing basic errors
 > and misinformation?

Please do cite just one occasion where I have insisted exclusively on
graduate qualifications to post here? The issue throughout has been on
the standard of debate, expecting that people do at least some level
of homework before engaging in reasoned and thoughtful argument on any
matter concerning the environment.

 > This piece is my favourite so far:
 >  
 > In article <724399427snx@tillage.DIALix.oz.au> gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil
 > Hardwick) writes:
 > >While I am at it, perhaps you might take a good hard look at the
 > >policies now in place in such countries as Zimbabwe and other East
 > >African states (I think it is called the Campfire Program, if someone
 > >would like to check) which have knocked down all the fences around
 > >the national parks and let the villagers back onto their land on the
 > >condition that the well being of the local environment and its stocks
 > >of wildlife underwrite the economic prosperity of the village.
 >  
 > >Of course it works very well indeed, since the program merely serves
 > >to reconstitute traditional management practices which had resulted
 > >in such an abundance and diversity of wildlife long before the stupid
 > >bloody Europeans arrived with their domestic stock and their colonial
 > >administration responsive only the religious morality of Europe.
 >  
 > Zimbabwe is in Southern Africa not East Africa.  Domestic stock arrived
 > not with Europeans, but with Bantu pastoralists over 1,000 years ago.
 > The Campfire Program involves communal lands, not National Parks (and from
 > memory large parts of the NPs are unfenced).  The program does not reconstitute
 > traditional management practices. It is at best a limited success.
 >  
 > Andrew Taylor
 >

Oh dear, keeping archives are we. I am so glad you like it enough to
keep it for posterity, Andrew. I'll not bother dragging yours out.

Perhaps you might keep it in mind that I have made no claim to accuracy
outside my field, rather seek to prompt further discussion. Please do
note my invitation for others to check you didn't have the wit to edit
out.

I am far more interested in your reasons for selecting this one among
very many indeed, and reposting it now after no other response to it
was forthcoming whatever. Perhaps you feel some need to compensate for
the earlier embarrassment over your failed ideological campaign against
Australian policy on kangaroos?
 
What you significantly fail to mention here is the context in which it
was posted, quite openly and explicitly against foreign intervention
in the internal affairs of other countries, which appears to delight
you for some reason. The Camp Fire Program remains policy in Zimbabwe,
not least toward empowering local communities to look after themselves
and their environment, and it has my wholehearted support as progress
on the previous colonial policy forcing local people to poach wild-
life in order to survive, from lands alienated from them as National
Parks, where they were being blamed and punished for the decline in
that wildlife instead of being assisted to set up a far more viable
economic base for themselves.

Poaching itself began in Europe under the same conditions, except there
it was the Anglo-Saxons who had been forced to practice it in order to
get enough meat into their pot, but the same administrative classes who
had imposed such a stupid system. Whichever way you want to look at the
problem, anywhere the natural environment has no value intrinsic to the
human condition you can kiss it goodbye. Poor, hungry people will kill
everything in sight, while prosperous communities will husband their
stocks and secure for themselves a future.

In the meantime, your innuendo is amateurish, and pathetic. If you are
actually a biologist as you claim, why don't you present material of
your own reflecting the fact, and bring some level of respect upon
yourself?

Or is your silly game yet intent on political activism hell-bent on
discrediting everyone not so ideologically sound as you? No problem;
please do just keep it up as long as you wish.

Gil