Hi Gavin, very good question...giving other living things legal standing. I voted 'not sure' reason being, is I don't trust the legal system, at least, not in my country, nor would i trust most other countries legal systems. I've been following the trail in Germany of a good man called Reiner Fuellmich, and it has been a bought and paid for travesty so far, with very real trespasses of the German legal system, by the very judge hearing the case. So my take on giving legal standing to anything, animal, plant, fish, waterway could easily be twisted and misused as it often has been against people, so why even bother to kowtow to a system that cheats?
Rather let us learn to regain respect for that which gives us the where with all to stay alive on this planet, just as our hunter gatherer ancestors most obviously did. What remains of these ancient cultures, that I am aware of, the San Bushman of South Africa spoke to the animals they needed for food, asking them for permission to hunt them and to allow themselves to be caught and thanking them once killed, for giving their lives for the lives of the tribe. I believe many North American tribes have similar beliefs and practices. They feel 'equal' to all life on earth, no more important, no less important. All life is respected as equally important. Long ago I read a book on old tribal life in the UK, when apparently, large old grandfather trees of the forest where honoured and asked for permission to cut down the right trees for building shelters.
We went wrong when certain words taken from the Christian bible, supposedly gave us the 'right' to 'lord it' over all other life forms and we can well see how this has been to the detriment of life on earth, ours included.
We can teach respect for life, its waters, its air, all of it, to our children and from that will come a rebirth of rightness, and maybe hope that the current legal system might possibly be encouraged to uphold the rights of trees or rivers as a temporary measure, but as anyone could chose to talk 'on behalf' of whichever of natures many things, they could say anything were it to come to a court case. Here in the UK they are busy trying to get rid of jury trials in favour of one judge deciding on guilt or innocence; no thank you. Let's rather trust ourselves to work towards bringing about a change in the general mindset and create real justice for life on earth.
I voted yes, only because all life should have sovereignty & be protected from those who would exploit & poison them. Doing this may keep them from moving forward with natural assets trading & other such shenanigans. I know this could be used to try to push us all into 15 minute cities but they(the hierarchy enslaving you) are already doing that on multiple other fronts.
I voted yes. At minimum, an older tree should be left alone to live it's maximu. Something that lives so much longer than humans has a divine purpose in nature that we don't fully understand. Trees provide building material, garden mulch. They retain moisture in thground. Trees provide filtration above and below the surface. They give us oxygen, protect us from heat, rain/hail. Insulate too. The roots of a larger tree fosters sapling trees by helping their roots connect for deep water access in drought. Trees provide ground stability, creating natural levees along a river way.
The least we can do is consider their value higher than as timber or an obstacle in the way.
This question should be NEITHER a flat-out 'YES', or a flat-out 'NO'.
This is a VERY SLIPPERY SLOPE, if one answers, 'YES'; and one WILL live to regret it!
In the above screen shot text, where it states the 'things' that do (via lawyers) have 'standing'; Corporations, states, Uni's, ect. MOST of what was listed, EXCEPT 'infants' (and 'incompetents'), should NOT 'have standing', since these are institutions, and NOT LIVING BEINGS.
The 'law' that we operate under now, is MARITIME LAW; this is your Globalist Masters' 'LAW'.
It is an ANTI-HUMAN/ANTI-LIFE system of 'law'. WE (We, The People) SHOULD be operating under COMMON LAW! Period! Under Common Law, the before mentioned 'institutions' are NOT held above Humans/Nature; they are BENEATH US, and THEY DO what WE TELL THEM to do. With Maritime Law, it is THE INSTITUTIONS that are HELD ABOVE Humans/Nature.
My point in bringing up 'law'.....is that we do NOT WANT GOVT making these kinds of 'laws' (ie 'Trees having Standing'), for it will NOT END WELL for Humans AND Nature! ONLY the INSTITUTIONS will benefit! EXAMPLE: You cannot cut down tress to heat your home, or you'll go to prison for doing so. While a Developer comes in and clears 100 acres of trees to build a Mall and Condos.....and that's OK!
With all of that said, I think that corporation AND govt should NOT be allowed to 'mow down trees'!
Individual HUMANS......SHOULD be able to....AS LONG AS there is a NEED for taking down trees.
These NEEDS include.....clearing (a 'small' clearing) a wooded area to build your home ('Developers' should NOT be allowed to do this! THINK: MALLS, CONDOS or SUBDIVISIONS!); this includes building that home FROM THE TREES that you took down. Taking down trees on your wooded property for NEEDED space to GROW FOOD (Big Agra should NOT be allowed to do this! THINK: FACTORY FARMS). And although ALL woods have downed/felled trees within it, that can (and SHOULD) be used for firewood to HEAT ONES HOME, one SHOULD be able to take down trees, when one cannot get to those trees already downed.
Things like this, that individual HUMANS need trees/wood/clearing property for.
GOD GAVE US THESE THINGS FOR US TO USE.
But we also HAVE TO be Good Stewards of the Land. Which means ONLY taking what a Human NEEDS; REPLACING what one uses (ie RE-PLANT new trees), and keeping the planet CLEAN. This is OUR (ie HUMANS) Right! And NOT INSTITUTIONS!
This SHOULD be Our (Humans) Common Law! DO NOT involve the CRIMINAL/CORRUPT govt(s)!!
Imagine.....one day you lose your home. You then go into the woods to clear a space, and start cutting trees to use those trees to build yourself a new home in those woods/that space, because you don't have any $$ to BUY/REPLACE the home you just lost. THEN......along comes THE GOVT to inform IT'S SLAVE (YOU!) that you CANNOT do that, and they throw you in jail for 10 years for cutting down trees!
It's a SLIPPERY SLOPE to vote 'YES'!
And the above 'poll' SHOULD have a FORTH Option: 'A Combination of BOTH!'
Thanks for that. It makes me think of the old Brehon Laws of the Druids and Gaels where they saw the old growth trees as nobles and the bees as beings worthy of respect and protecting from burglary. I wonder how the realm of outer space would play into the concept of "The Commons" according to existing thinking on the matter?
Outer space is the "Commons," too, in my opinion. NONE of it "belongs" to any person or group of persons, but to the Great Spirit. If the GS is made up of ALL of us beings, and I don't mean just humans, then okay, but it belongs to ALLLLLL of us. And MONEY is laughable as a reason for anything more than just an easy way to barter... xo xo
Money is only another human-made THING, like tires or whistles or bricks... It's fake, after all.
I voted not sure. My reason is that things such as laws and rights are always corrupted by some power that be. I apparently have human rights yet my government sees fit to flagrantly ignore most of them, most of the time. Bringing any other part of nature into the fold of legality doesn’t feel as if it will offer long term solutions - there’s so much legislation yet so little works and less is understood by most people. For these convoluted reasons, I remain undecided on this. Whilst protections do seem incredibly important, I am absolutely sure such a thing could even be turned to evil.
I feel we need a non legislative way to love each other and the Earth. A New Testament of relationships and order, if you like.
I respect your choice to avoid lending momentum to existing judiciary structures (that mostly result in the continuance of the hyper-consolidation of material wealth and the perpetuation of exploitative economic models) and your emphasis on how all beings should be recognized as worthy of "rights" and protected but how you see existing structures as easily corruptible.
I have seen how corrupt the judicial system here in Canada can be (weaponized against both ecological defenders and doctors that tried to speak out when they saw how the covid mRNA injections were maiming pregnant women) so I can see how laws that exist to seemingly protect can be manipulated and used to abuse. (for some context on what I am talking about RE: judicial abuse: https://tessa.substack.com/p/forced-hospitalization-dr-bruchet )
I said no for the only reason that if we were to 'personify' a tree then they have the same 'rights' as we humans which you can see from the entity of the person versus the sovereign man or womb man these rights seemingly belong to babylonia and we currently have no say what happens to us.
Should we consider to actually put true values on the environment in its form of a complete Biosphere: 'ABOVE' as in the 'atmosphere,' where there currently is continuous poisoning onto all of us 'persons;' as well as all 'Below' and all the resources, artesian lakes and waterways, microcosm or organisms. Why stop at a 'Tree Standing' let's value it all for what it is and make MUCH more conscious choices of how we utilize these resources taking only what is needed and with reciprocation in mind.
Robin Wall Kimmerer's book really spoke to me in this way Gavin. Her book, "Braiding Sweetgrass." is a story of where she bridges her PhD in Botany with Traditional Practices of the Indigenous ways. The story is about reciprocation and this I feel has been replaced by greed and ownership and rights.
Living things are all interconnected--the health of one depends upon the health of all. Laws help us respect the rights of all living things and the health of the commons benefits us all.
Laws can also get in the way of our rights - what Treaty has been upheld?
What is happening right now in the Prince George area where the Wet'suwet'en are standing ground to protect another piece of their rightful lands... in fact where have laws gotten the entirety of the unceded land claims issue?
The life of the forest is underfoot. The stems through which we walk are sent up to catch the light and scatter seed. We walk, not on the forest floor, but on its roof.
I have 84 acres in stewardship, eighty in the upper Carolinas piedmont on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, and four on a heritage plot that is an island surrounded by a sea of poisoned suburban development in the more or less Mediterranean climate of North Metro Atlanta. My favorite place is the cathedral quiet of the giant mature stems, but I assure you few of my furry, scaly, and feathery neighbors would agree. For them, an open forest is a sterile and dangerous place to hurry through, when and if they must. The openness gives their predators good visibility and room to sprint. Or shoot.
Forty-five acres of the eighty were clear cut in 2005; a disaster for the established growth, and a bonanza for everything else.
The first season post cut was a grief and an offense to human sensibilities. A tangled mass of weeds and sprouts and briars... aka forage and shelter and safety for thousands of little ones who could never make a living in a mature wood, where the big stems have monopolized the light and denuded the ground with their mulch. An upright biped still cannot traverse those acres without a machete and a lot of noise, and that's a good thing.
An old-growth woods is open because the dropped leaves and needles, even limbs and bark, are an adaptive chemical attack on smaller plants, and inhibit the growth of other species. Try planting something under a mature walnut or oak. You and I respond positively to the sights, sounds, and feel of a mature wood because we cannot forage or hunt in the chaotic tangles beloved of smaller animals. We decry the sight of a decomposing stump or log, though its decay will be life to trillions. These are hardwired reactions on our part, and because of them we tend to make everything a monocrop desert or a picnic park.
Thankfully, life has finally evolved a critter that can observe with understanding. If it will. The Cherokee managed this part of the world with fire, and made a much better job of it than we are doing with all our tech and agriculture. I have not seen a quail or pheasant here since I was a boy in the sixties. Hearing a whippoorwill is an event. Those critters and a thousand others need long grass and plenty of it. Do they get a vote?
This is a ramble, I apologize. That's whatcha get for making me think.
More strictures, more code, more rigidity of thought and process, are in my opinion bringing gasoline to a dumpster fire. And yet protections are needed, required, and that urgently. What's ultimately wrong is not just over-timbering, over-building, over-harvesting our world. What's wrong is a culture of arrogance that cuts without thought, that reacts instead of understanding.
Far, far back in the dream, the first men and women to find their way to this hemisphere found two continents brimming with diverse and plentiful ecologies of macro life, much of which was far too easy for them to kill. We don't know for sure, but it's a good bet that the disappearance of much of that biodiversity 20,000 to 30,000 years ago was due to the exuberant invasion of our species and our thoughtless over-hunting. No doubt, during those days of easy living and abundant prey, there were voices of caution raised and ignored. No doubt, there was a crash. A key prey animal or an indispensable predator species suddenly winked out, and cascading disasters befell the biosystem. When Europeans invaded, many thousands of years later, what they found was an accommodation with disaster: every North American indigenous culture of which we have any knowledge held in common a fundamental reverence for life, for life processes, and a sacred respect for living systems too large and complex for human understanding. Did they learn? I like to think so, because that would mean that maybe we can, too.
I am an earthy man with spatial needs. I think in earthy ways and am terribly prone to simplify the complex and rationalize the difficult, but I am in mouth-breathing awe of life. Wrote a bible. Like to read it? Here it is:
"As for that which is beyond thy comprehension, whether of the land, or of the sea, or of the sky, yea, even as to all which lieth beyond the compass of thy wit: up thou shalt not fuck it, neither with it shalt thou fuck."
Generally I would agree yes but I marked not sure. As an arborist I encounter situations where decisions need to be made for the health of the tree and the safety of the target hazards around the tree. In an ideal world there would never be targets around a mature tree, power lines in proximity to trees, underground infrastructure in and around the roots. We know this is almost an impossibility in todays western cities. Sometimes decisions need to be made that would be unpopular to someone who is not looking at the situation from the property owners safety and liability. How would we mitigate a situation where the legal standing of the tree was the deciding factor? Would we still impose our opinions and science to the tree as a "representative" of the tree or the homeowner? As an Arborist I encounter the legal situations regarding trees and property line disputes. I don't have an answer. I think its way more complicated and we have ultimately made it more complicated through encroachment and inapropriate choices for species in the wrong areas. Rite tree in the rite space....
Currently we have a legal system that can't handle its workload let alone in a fair manner. Then why stop at trees, bees are endangered too. Commifornia has taken legislation for specific species to deny farmers water rights. We just don't have a working legal system and given the amount of land and forests that are in the world, why is this is a concern? I do support property rights and automatic prison sentences for deliberate arson of forests. The US has 2.4B acres amongst the 50 states and the Bureau of Land Management manages 18.4 million acres of public lands and 42.9 million acres of mineral estate.
I'm more for educating people about nature and wildlife in public education, and conservation efforts than legislating action which often is just another opportunity for lobbyists to write laws for personal gain, using misleading titles (e.g. Save the Trees, Stop Crime, etc). Pardon my rant.
Let us shift our perspective from acting as land ‘owners’ (essentially enslaving the earth) to being custodians who choose to live in harmony with ‘all our relations’. This relationship, like any other, requires we take responsibility — for our attitudes, choices and actions, and confer respect on our planetary family members, rather than commodify and use them in purely transactional ways. Making this shift may necessitate an upgrade in legal status for standing tree nations, as well as the stone Grandmothers / Grandfathers, etc.
Hi Gavin, very good question...giving other living things legal standing. I voted 'not sure' reason being, is I don't trust the legal system, at least, not in my country, nor would i trust most other countries legal systems. I've been following the trail in Germany of a good man called Reiner Fuellmich, and it has been a bought and paid for travesty so far, with very real trespasses of the German legal system, by the very judge hearing the case. So my take on giving legal standing to anything, animal, plant, fish, waterway could easily be twisted and misused as it often has been against people, so why even bother to kowtow to a system that cheats?
Rather let us learn to regain respect for that which gives us the where with all to stay alive on this planet, just as our hunter gatherer ancestors most obviously did. What remains of these ancient cultures, that I am aware of, the San Bushman of South Africa spoke to the animals they needed for food, asking them for permission to hunt them and to allow themselves to be caught and thanking them once killed, for giving their lives for the lives of the tribe. I believe many North American tribes have similar beliefs and practices. They feel 'equal' to all life on earth, no more important, no less important. All life is respected as equally important. Long ago I read a book on old tribal life in the UK, when apparently, large old grandfather trees of the forest where honoured and asked for permission to cut down the right trees for building shelters.
We went wrong when certain words taken from the Christian bible, supposedly gave us the 'right' to 'lord it' over all other life forms and we can well see how this has been to the detriment of life on earth, ours included.
We can teach respect for life, its waters, its air, all of it, to our children and from that will come a rebirth of rightness, and maybe hope that the current legal system might possibly be encouraged to uphold the rights of trees or rivers as a temporary measure, but as anyone could chose to talk 'on behalf' of whichever of natures many things, they could say anything were it to come to a court case. Here in the UK they are busy trying to get rid of jury trials in favour of one judge deciding on guilt or innocence; no thank you. Let's rather trust ourselves to work towards bringing about a change in the general mindset and create real justice for life on earth.
I voted yes, only because all life should have sovereignty & be protected from those who would exploit & poison them. Doing this may keep them from moving forward with natural assets trading & other such shenanigans. I know this could be used to try to push us all into 15 minute cities but they(the hierarchy enslaving you) are already doing that on multiple other fronts.
Thank for sharing that Sam. I can relate to your line of thinking on this matter.
Just wait until the powers that be order everyone to live in the cities so no tree can be cut out.
I voted yes. At minimum, an older tree should be left alone to live it's maximu. Something that lives so much longer than humans has a divine purpose in nature that we don't fully understand. Trees provide building material, garden mulch. They retain moisture in thground. Trees provide filtration above and below the surface. They give us oxygen, protect us from heat, rain/hail. Insulate too. The roots of a larger tree fosters sapling trees by helping their roots connect for deep water access in drought. Trees provide ground stability, creating natural levees along a river way.
The least we can do is consider their value higher than as timber or an obstacle in the way.
I like the thinking that went into your vote, thanks for elaborating as well.
This question should be NEITHER a flat-out 'YES', or a flat-out 'NO'.
This is a VERY SLIPPERY SLOPE, if one answers, 'YES'; and one WILL live to regret it!
In the above screen shot text, where it states the 'things' that do (via lawyers) have 'standing'; Corporations, states, Uni's, ect. MOST of what was listed, EXCEPT 'infants' (and 'incompetents'), should NOT 'have standing', since these are institutions, and NOT LIVING BEINGS.
The 'law' that we operate under now, is MARITIME LAW; this is your Globalist Masters' 'LAW'.
It is an ANTI-HUMAN/ANTI-LIFE system of 'law'. WE (We, The People) SHOULD be operating under COMMON LAW! Period! Under Common Law, the before mentioned 'institutions' are NOT held above Humans/Nature; they are BENEATH US, and THEY DO what WE TELL THEM to do. With Maritime Law, it is THE INSTITUTIONS that are HELD ABOVE Humans/Nature.
My point in bringing up 'law'.....is that we do NOT WANT GOVT making these kinds of 'laws' (ie 'Trees having Standing'), for it will NOT END WELL for Humans AND Nature! ONLY the INSTITUTIONS will benefit! EXAMPLE: You cannot cut down tress to heat your home, or you'll go to prison for doing so. While a Developer comes in and clears 100 acres of trees to build a Mall and Condos.....and that's OK!
With all of that said, I think that corporation AND govt should NOT be allowed to 'mow down trees'!
Individual HUMANS......SHOULD be able to....AS LONG AS there is a NEED for taking down trees.
These NEEDS include.....clearing (a 'small' clearing) a wooded area to build your home ('Developers' should NOT be allowed to do this! THINK: MALLS, CONDOS or SUBDIVISIONS!); this includes building that home FROM THE TREES that you took down. Taking down trees on your wooded property for NEEDED space to GROW FOOD (Big Agra should NOT be allowed to do this! THINK: FACTORY FARMS). And although ALL woods have downed/felled trees within it, that can (and SHOULD) be used for firewood to HEAT ONES HOME, one SHOULD be able to take down trees, when one cannot get to those trees already downed.
Things like this, that individual HUMANS need trees/wood/clearing property for.
GOD GAVE US THESE THINGS FOR US TO USE.
But we also HAVE TO be Good Stewards of the Land. Which means ONLY taking what a Human NEEDS; REPLACING what one uses (ie RE-PLANT new trees), and keeping the planet CLEAN. This is OUR (ie HUMANS) Right! And NOT INSTITUTIONS!
This SHOULD be Our (Humans) Common Law! DO NOT involve the CRIMINAL/CORRUPT govt(s)!!
Imagine.....one day you lose your home. You then go into the woods to clear a space, and start cutting trees to use those trees to build yourself a new home in those woods/that space, because you don't have any $$ to BUY/REPLACE the home you just lost. THEN......along comes THE GOVT to inform IT'S SLAVE (YOU!) that you CANNOT do that, and they throw you in jail for 10 years for cutting down trees!
It's a SLIPPERY SLOPE to vote 'YES'!
And the above 'poll' SHOULD have a FORTH Option: 'A Combination of BOTH!'
ALL LIFE should have "legal standing."
Should humans be able to simply do whatever they want? No. Not in the Commons.
Should there be a "Commons"? Uh, yeah. ABSOLUTELY.
This would include the SKY, the IONOSPHERE, the OCEANS, THE LANDS, and everything else that Humans have ANY access to in any way.
Thanks for that. It makes me think of the old Brehon Laws of the Druids and Gaels where they saw the old growth trees as nobles and the bees as beings worthy of respect and protecting from burglary. I wonder how the realm of outer space would play into the concept of "The Commons" according to existing thinking on the matter?
Thanks for the comment.
I agree with the Peoples you mention...
Outer space is the "Commons," too, in my opinion. NONE of it "belongs" to any person or group of persons, but to the Great Spirit. If the GS is made up of ALL of us beings, and I don't mean just humans, then okay, but it belongs to ALLLLLL of us. And MONEY is laughable as a reason for anything more than just an easy way to barter... xo xo
Money is only another human-made THING, like tires or whistles or bricks... It's fake, after all.
Then there is the "Natural Assets Scam"
https://open.substack.com/pub/sovereignty/p/sovereignty-summit-to-expose-biden?r=1b895l&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://sovereigntycoalition.org/take-action-the-natural-asset-scam-is-back/
I voted not sure. My reason is that things such as laws and rights are always corrupted by some power that be. I apparently have human rights yet my government sees fit to flagrantly ignore most of them, most of the time. Bringing any other part of nature into the fold of legality doesn’t feel as if it will offer long term solutions - there’s so much legislation yet so little works and less is understood by most people. For these convoluted reasons, I remain undecided on this. Whilst protections do seem incredibly important, I am absolutely sure such a thing could even be turned to evil.
I feel we need a non legislative way to love each other and the Earth. A New Testament of relationships and order, if you like.
I respect your choice to avoid lending momentum to existing judiciary structures (that mostly result in the continuance of the hyper-consolidation of material wealth and the perpetuation of exploitative economic models) and your emphasis on how all beings should be recognized as worthy of "rights" and protected but how you see existing structures as easily corruptible.
I have seen how corrupt the judicial system here in Canada can be (weaponized against both ecological defenders and doctors that tried to speak out when they saw how the covid mRNA injections were maiming pregnant women) so I can see how laws that exist to seemingly protect can be manipulated and used to abuse. (for some context on what I am talking about RE: judicial abuse: https://tessa.substack.com/p/forced-hospitalization-dr-bruchet )
Thanks for the comment.
I said no for the only reason that if we were to 'personify' a tree then they have the same 'rights' as we humans which you can see from the entity of the person versus the sovereign man or womb man these rights seemingly belong to babylonia and we currently have no say what happens to us.
Should we consider to actually put true values on the environment in its form of a complete Biosphere: 'ABOVE' as in the 'atmosphere,' where there currently is continuous poisoning onto all of us 'persons;' as well as all 'Below' and all the resources, artesian lakes and waterways, microcosm or organisms. Why stop at a 'Tree Standing' let's value it all for what it is and make MUCH more conscious choices of how we utilize these resources taking only what is needed and with reciprocation in mind.
Robin Wall Kimmerer's book really spoke to me in this way Gavin. Her book, "Braiding Sweetgrass." is a story of where she bridges her PhD in Botany with Traditional Practices of the Indigenous ways. The story is about reciprocation and this I feel has been replaced by greed and ownership and rights.
National Georgraphic's definition of Biosphere: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/biosphere/
Living things are all interconnected--the health of one depends upon the health of all. Laws help us respect the rights of all living things and the health of the commons benefits us all.
Laws can also get in the way of our rights - what Treaty has been upheld?
What is happening right now in the Prince George area where the Wet'suwet'en are standing ground to protect another piece of their rightful lands... in fact where have laws gotten the entirety of the unceded land claims issue?
Law can be more an obstacle in these matters.
The life of the forest is underfoot. The stems through which we walk are sent up to catch the light and scatter seed. We walk, not on the forest floor, but on its roof.
I have 84 acres in stewardship, eighty in the upper Carolinas piedmont on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, and four on a heritage plot that is an island surrounded by a sea of poisoned suburban development in the more or less Mediterranean climate of North Metro Atlanta. My favorite place is the cathedral quiet of the giant mature stems, but I assure you few of my furry, scaly, and feathery neighbors would agree. For them, an open forest is a sterile and dangerous place to hurry through, when and if they must. The openness gives their predators good visibility and room to sprint. Or shoot.
Forty-five acres of the eighty were clear cut in 2005; a disaster for the established growth, and a bonanza for everything else.
The first season post cut was a grief and an offense to human sensibilities. A tangled mass of weeds and sprouts and briars... aka forage and shelter and safety for thousands of little ones who could never make a living in a mature wood, where the big stems have monopolized the light and denuded the ground with their mulch. An upright biped still cannot traverse those acres without a machete and a lot of noise, and that's a good thing.
An old-growth woods is open because the dropped leaves and needles, even limbs and bark, are an adaptive chemical attack on smaller plants, and inhibit the growth of other species. Try planting something under a mature walnut or oak. You and I respond positively to the sights, sounds, and feel of a mature wood because we cannot forage or hunt in the chaotic tangles beloved of smaller animals. We decry the sight of a decomposing stump or log, though its decay will be life to trillions. These are hardwired reactions on our part, and because of them we tend to make everything a monocrop desert or a picnic park.
Thankfully, life has finally evolved a critter that can observe with understanding. If it will. The Cherokee managed this part of the world with fire, and made a much better job of it than we are doing with all our tech and agriculture. I have not seen a quail or pheasant here since I was a boy in the sixties. Hearing a whippoorwill is an event. Those critters and a thousand others need long grass and plenty of it. Do they get a vote?
This is a ramble, I apologize. That's whatcha get for making me think.
More strictures, more code, more rigidity of thought and process, are in my opinion bringing gasoline to a dumpster fire. And yet protections are needed, required, and that urgently. What's ultimately wrong is not just over-timbering, over-building, over-harvesting our world. What's wrong is a culture of arrogance that cuts without thought, that reacts instead of understanding.
Far, far back in the dream, the first men and women to find their way to this hemisphere found two continents brimming with diverse and plentiful ecologies of macro life, much of which was far too easy for them to kill. We don't know for sure, but it's a good bet that the disappearance of much of that biodiversity 20,000 to 30,000 years ago was due to the exuberant invasion of our species and our thoughtless over-hunting. No doubt, during those days of easy living and abundant prey, there were voices of caution raised and ignored. No doubt, there was a crash. A key prey animal or an indispensable predator species suddenly winked out, and cascading disasters befell the biosystem. When Europeans invaded, many thousands of years later, what they found was an accommodation with disaster: every North American indigenous culture of which we have any knowledge held in common a fundamental reverence for life, for life processes, and a sacred respect for living systems too large and complex for human understanding. Did they learn? I like to think so, because that would mean that maybe we can, too.
I am an earthy man with spatial needs. I think in earthy ways and am terribly prone to simplify the complex and rationalize the difficult, but I am in mouth-breathing awe of life. Wrote a bible. Like to read it? Here it is:
"As for that which is beyond thy comprehension, whether of the land, or of the sea, or of the sky, yea, even as to all which lieth beyond the compass of thy wit: up thou shalt not fuck it, neither with it shalt thou fuck."
Generally I would agree yes but I marked not sure. As an arborist I encounter situations where decisions need to be made for the health of the tree and the safety of the target hazards around the tree. In an ideal world there would never be targets around a mature tree, power lines in proximity to trees, underground infrastructure in and around the roots. We know this is almost an impossibility in todays western cities. Sometimes decisions need to be made that would be unpopular to someone who is not looking at the situation from the property owners safety and liability. How would we mitigate a situation where the legal standing of the tree was the deciding factor? Would we still impose our opinions and science to the tree as a "representative" of the tree or the homeowner? As an Arborist I encounter the legal situations regarding trees and property line disputes. I don't have an answer. I think its way more complicated and we have ultimately made it more complicated through encroachment and inapropriate choices for species in the wrong areas. Rite tree in the rite space....
Currently we have a legal system that can't handle its workload let alone in a fair manner. Then why stop at trees, bees are endangered too. Commifornia has taken legislation for specific species to deny farmers water rights. We just don't have a working legal system and given the amount of land and forests that are in the world, why is this is a concern? I do support property rights and automatic prison sentences for deliberate arson of forests. The US has 2.4B acres amongst the 50 states and the Bureau of Land Management manages 18.4 million acres of public lands and 42.9 million acres of mineral estate.
I'm more for educating people about nature and wildlife in public education, and conservation efforts than legislating action which often is just another opportunity for lobbyists to write laws for personal gain, using misleading titles (e.g. Save the Trees, Stop Crime, etc). Pardon my rant.
Let us shift our perspective from acting as land ‘owners’ (essentially enslaving the earth) to being custodians who choose to live in harmony with ‘all our relations’. This relationship, like any other, requires we take responsibility — for our attitudes, choices and actions, and confer respect on our planetary family members, rather than commodify and use them in purely transactional ways. Making this shift may necessitate an upgrade in legal status for standing tree nations, as well as the stone Grandmothers / Grandfathers, etc.
hey hey! beautifully stated <3
trees need caretakers if they are to be considered legal standing.
I have no idea how this could be
Implemented. However, the disregard for parts of Mother Earth somehow has to be turned around .