Canada Day Tirade: Sustainability in Canada’s First National Urban Park in Question

I am still winding down from Canada Day festivities with my family, thinking back to the ice cream, pony rides and fairground activities of the day. But it isn’t only these sweet memories I find floating through my mind as the evening comes to a close.

I’m left on this Canada Day in a mood of reflection. Who could do other than reflect on a weekend marked by both a National Day of Action by Aboriginal people across the country, and a celebration of Canada’s coming into being as a nation? However, reflection on the questionable basis of our country’s history is met in my mind by an equally perturbing reflection on our country’s geography, particularly the geography of our protected spaces.

A bit bleak sounding, I know, but it wasn’t a dark cloud that came over me on this Canada Day, but rather a petition. I was approached mid-merriment by an earnest, clipboard-toting gentleman letting me know that the park in which I was honouring our country was to see 212 of its 572 acres go for housing development.

I had been aware that part of this park’s mandate was to cover the costs required for its maintenance. However, I was shocked to hear of the scale to which this land–federal land put aside for protection and the long-term good of the public–was to become urbanized. The shock became increasingly pronounced as I stood, pen in hand, considering this petition, surrounded on all sides by park signs, booths, and brochures whose most prominent linguistic feature was the term sustainability.

572 acres of open green space in Canada’s largest, most populated (and rapidly growing) city; a huge chunk of land transferred to Parks Canada from the Department of National Defence and touted as a first in our country: a national urban park; a self-proclaimed emblem of sustainability in action. What jumps to mind given this scenario is an incredible opportunity for a world-class, ecologically meaningful green space in the midst of an urban landscape; an accessible parkland for nature-hungry urbanites to satisfy that innate need for connection to something other than concrete; and a space to give back to wildlife in a landscape in which so much habitat is continuously being taken away.

The ecological significance of the park has not been completely lost on those in management. Sections of the park are being rehabilitated, and with impressive results. A visitor to the newly restored areas is met by swallows, monarch butterflies, bird calls, the soothing sounds of swaying grasses in the wind, and the sweet smells of fresh, abundant vegetation so rare in the city. But somehow, this aspect of the park has been relegated to a position of relatively minor importance. In the development plans are sports complexes, commercial areas, and the neighbourhoods referred to above. What, I cannot help but think, does such a plan have to do with sustainability, and how, I have to ask, will another set of subdivisions and retail outlets benefit all Canadians over the long term?

National parks like Banff, infamous among conservationists for the scale of development within what are supposed to be protected areas, seem like innocents compared to Downsview. Those in management at Banff can be blamed for letting things slide, for allowing something small to get too big. But what can be said of those in charge at Downsview, when their initial vision for this rare gem of an opportunity is based on relegating nature to a back-seat position and opening their arms wide to development corporations?

Sustainability may encompass economic as well as ecological goals. But national parks occupy a special place in our collective consciousness not because of the outstanding shopping opportunities or housing designs they offer, but because they are those rare spaces where–for once–economy must give way to ecology. The land we have decided to protect in our national parks system needs a little sanctity, as well as recognition that these spaces are unique and precious precisely because they do not offer all that can be found in the next stop along the highway. Needless to say, pen hit paper with great vigour: I signed the petition.

When thinking about the act of conservation, many of us tend to picture professionals (maybe biologists, ecologists, physical geographers) out in the field collecting data, processing samples, and crunching numbers in their labs, plugging info into computer simulation models, and coming up with the most up-to-date, scientific solutions to the environmental problems they’ve discovered.

However, conservation as it happens on the ground often involves a far broader range of people than only those we think of as professionals. Both at the initial problem identification stage and throughout the various problem resolution stages, local community members often play key roles in conservation.

This is particularly true in my field–ecological restoration, focused on the repair of damaged and degraded ecosystems. Local community members often do a lot of the hard labour involved in carrying out restoration projects–the site preparation, the invasive-species removal, the planting, the ongoing maintenance . . .

But more than that, locals–particularly those who have lived in one place for a long time–are increasingly coming to be seen as intellectual resources for conservation activities such as restoration. These people are often intimately familiar with their local ecosystems and are coming to be recognized as holding the type of long-term, detailed ecological knowledge on which environmental understandings, and thus successful restoration initiatives, need to be built.

There are two distinct, but related, types of local knowledge now seen as important in enhancing environmental management and restoration understandings. The first is referred to as LEK, or local ecological knowledge; the second is referred to as TEK, or traditional ecological knowledge.

LEK is discussed as the local knowledge held by long-resident non-indigenous people such as inshore fishermen and farmers. These people often hold detailed knowledge about the historical structure and functioning of local landscapes, and are often very familiar with the activities and events that led to the degradation of their local ecosystems. The existence (and illumination) of such knowledge is attracting the attention of an increasing number of scientists.

However, while interest in LEK is growing, the attention being paid to this area of knowledge is far outweighed by scientists? interest in obtaining traditional ecological knowledge (TEK)–the environmental understandings of indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples have typically resided in their traditional homelands for hundreds if not thousands of years, have utilized a broad range of natural resources, and have managed landscapes through such practices as burning, clearing, tilling, pruning/coppicing, weeding, planting and transplanting.

As such, indigenous peoples have come to be viewed as a significant resource for insights into environmental management and sustainability. TEK already forms a core part of many environmental management regimes, including environmental assessment and species at risk work, and interest in incorporating TEK into ecological restoration is growing.

But seeking and sharing knowledge is not an unproblematic endeavour. Both indigenous and non-indigenous communities are expressing a desire to have their knowledge, understandings, and perceptions of the local environment taken into account in environmental management activities such as restoration. However, there is significant resistance to the portrayal of local communities as sources of data to be used by outside environmental management professionals for what many see as outside management interests.

Non-indigenous local communities are becoming increasingly vocal regarding their desire to influence first-hand what happens to shared and/or public space, and are actively resisting the expert scientist’s sole decision-making powers via political pressure, media, and other means.

Indigenous communities are similarly involved in resisting the data repository role assigned to them by non-indigenous environmental managers. Indigenous authors and activists stress that TEK is not simply ?information? that can be extracted and plugged into a Western understanding of environmental management.

TEK is discussed rather as a way of life, a code of ethics and instructions on how to respectfully relate to other kin and members of Creation. TEK is therefore seen as inseparable from the people who hold it, the land from which it arose and in which it is contextualized, and can and should not be extracted, distilled, and compartmentalized to fit and serve a Western world view.

Both indigenous and non-indigenous local communities are key to the restoration of degraded natural areas. Without their involvement and support, good, ethical, sustainable environmental management and restoration initiatives are simply not possible. Both communities have vested interests in ensuring that local ecosystems are as productive as possible, and in ensuring that local community members have a say in how recovery of ecosystem health is achieved.

Restorationists and other environmental managers who are interested in seeking the involvement of local communities?indigenous or non-indigenous?will need to enhance their understanding of the shortcomings of current visions of local community involvement if knowledge sharing is to occur in a manner that satisfies the understandings and ethical expectations of the local communities from whom environmental insights are being sought.

If there is one certain thing in a world characterized by uncertainty, it is that change is inevitable. Understandings of why and how change happens in the natural world (succession, as it is called in ecological circles) have themselves morphed over time.

Once emphasizing predictability and stability, theories of succession have shifted dramatically in recent decades to the recognition of dynamism and uncertainty in processes of change in natural systems.

Succession was initially understood to be an orderly process of change following a predictable pattern:

1. a ?pioneer? ecosystem stage characterized by fast-growing, light-loving species capable of growing on poor-quality sites;

2. a predictable set of ?seral? stages, for example the transition from the pioneer stage to an ?old field? ecosystem characterized by increasingly dense shrub cover, shading out of herbaceous (non-woody) species, and eventual establishment of shade-tolerant species; and

3. the final equilibrium climax ecosystem (e.g., a mature mixed maple-beech forest with thick, rich soils and shade-tolerant climax tree species).

Such a rigid view of ecosystem change had a profound impact on environmental management understandings and strategies. The climax stage was considered the ultimate end point to which each ecosystem was progressing; as such, management was directed toward maintaining existing climax communities in a stable state, and directing ecosystems considered to be in earlier seral stages toward their final climax stage.

This idea of stability, of the static nature of natural systems, and the perceived need for ecosystem managers to maintain climax conditions led to management actions such as near continent-wide fire suppression.

These management actions were seen as a means of protecting ecosystems from disturbance; disturbances were viewed as reversing the process of succession and setting back ecosystems otherwise on their way toward the ideal stable climax state. The doctrine of managing for stability dominated protected-areas management throughout much of the 20th century and has led, in the eyes of many ecologists, to the severe decline in ecological integrity seen in many parks and other managed areas.

Recognition among ecologists of the failure of past stability-oriented management regimes resulted in a shift in environmental management understandings. Scientists, theorists, and practitioners began moving from a focus on stability to a recognition of the dynamic, unpredictable nature of systems as complex as interconnected ecological webs, and of the need for incorporating disturbance and change into management regimes.

This new perspective on ecosystem change has begun to alter the face of ecosystem management in significant ways. Disturbance factors such as fire and flooding, which used to be seen as having only negative impacts on ecosystems, are now seen to be critical to maintaining ecosystem integrity and productivity.

Fire, for example, is now known to replenish soil nutrients, release the seeds of certain species from dormancy and enhance germination rates, control disease and pest outbreaks, and provide the landscape-level heterogeneity now considered so essential to broad-scale environmental integrity. Incorporating disturbances into management plans is becoming increasingly commonplace.

So change really does seem to be the only constant–even in the way we perceive dynamism in natural systems and the actions we take based on our perceptions of how and why change happens. Good thing is, the evolution of theories of succession seems to be leading us down a smarter environmental management path for the future.

Conferences are interesting things; so much information comes your way in such a short time that you have to wonder whether anything will stand out in your memory once It’s all over, or whether your brain will simply give up in the face of such an onslaught of data.

But the miraculous human brain does normally prevail, and what stand out are those points with the greatest significance, the most long-term salience. At least, That’s how I feel right now, two weeks after returning from the annual gathering of minds of the Society for Ecological Restoration International. Ask me in two years how my memory’s doing, and I hope to still be as positive about my brain’s filtration and storage capacity.

While the volume of details, the minutiae of the myriad talks I attended, are already lost to the recesses of my brain, the big debates in the field, the questions and emerging strategies that will determine the future of restoration, are the points that fill my mind right now.

Most significant to me from this conference is a fundamental divergence of thought regarding the value of history in a time of climate change. Restoration as a field has characteristically relied heavily on history, with past reference conditions of a site (to the maximum extent to which they could be determined) guiding efforts toward a restored site’s future. Makes sense: restoration essentially means bringing back what once was, so what better place could there be to start than the past?

But many of the top practitioners and scientists in the field are now questioning the logic of rebuilding and restoring ecosystems that existed historically given that, with all likelihood, most sites will be very different in a future of climate change.

For example, an area characterized in the past by, say, moist conditions may in the future be very dry. As such, restoring a plant community adapted to moist conditions makes little sense if conditions will in the near future be more suited for drought-adapted flora and fauna. It needs to be asked whether restoration to a historical state makes sense when historical conditions that would favour plant communities of the past aren’t likely to exist in the future.

In fact, some even question whether it is responsible to potentially squander precious–and limited–resources on projects geared toward restoring historic communities when logic indicates that they may not survive in a changed climate.

On a grand scale, say at the regional level, such logic is inarguable. However, questions regarding this mode of reasoning arise when you get down to the small, fine, local scale at which restoration projects generally take place. While global climate change can be seen to be marching right along and regional changes may be able to be predicted with admirable accuracy, there are those in the restoration field who are asking for a humility check when it comes down to what we can reasonably predict about the future of site X?say that degraded prairie ecosystem down the road.

Following this line of reasoning, it is argued that presumption rather than scientific understanding may be at the heart of the emerging guiding principles in restoration. Can we really presume to predict the exact future conditions of this exact location? And are we really able to do better work, to achieve greater ecological benefit, by acting on educated guesses (no matter how well educated) than by replacing what historically existed here?

These are the questions that will shape the future of restoration ecology, and of sites restored by scientists and practitioners partial to one perspective or the other.

As I mull these questions over, what strikes me as perhaps most significant of all within this debate is something kind of revelatory. Such fundamental divides in understandings illuminate the fact that restoration science, like all sciences, is not just about observed fact (e.g., historical conditions, changing climate), but about how we understand these observed facts, and what they mean for our practice, within the perspective in which we reside.

I am still winding down from Canada Day festivities with my family, thinking back to the ice cream, pony rides and fairground activities of the day. But it isn’t only these sweet memories I find floating through my mind as the evening comes to a close.

I’m left on this Canada Day in a mood of reflection. Who could do other than reflect on a weekend marked by both a National Day of Action by Aboriginal people across the country, and a celebration of Canada’s coming into being as a nation? However, reflection on the questionable basis of our country’s history is met in my mind by an equally perturbing reflection on our country’s geography, particularly the geography of our protected spaces.

A bit bleak sounding, I know, but it wasn’t a dark cloud that came over me on this Canada Day, but rather a petition. I was approached mid-merriment by an earnest, clipboard-toting gentleman letting me know that the park in which I was honouring our country was to see 212 of its 572 acres go for housing development.

I had been aware that part of this park’s mandate was to cover the costs required for its maintenance. However, I was shocked to hear of the scale to which this land–federal land put aside for protection and the long-term good of the public–was to become urbanized. The shock became increasingly pronounced as I stood, pen in hand, considering this petition, surrounded on all sides by park signs, booths, and brochures whose most prominent linguistic feature was the term sustainability.

572 acres of open green space in Canada’s largest, most populated (and rapidly growing) city; a huge chunk of land transferred to Parks Canada from the Department of National Defence and touted as a first in our country: a national urban park; a self-proclaimed emblem of sustainability in action. What jumps to mind given this scenario is an incredible opportunity for a world-class, ecologically meaningful green space in the midst of an urban landscape; an accessible parkland for nature-hungry urbanites to satisfy that innate need for connection to something other than concrete; and a space to give back to wildlife in a landscape in which so much habitat is continuously being taken away.

The ecological significance of the park has not been completely lost on those in management. Sections of the park are being rehabilitated, and with impressive results. A visitor to the newly restored areas is met by swallows, monarch butterflies, bird calls, the soothing sounds of swaying grasses in the wind, and the sweet smells of fresh, abundant vegetation so rare in the city. But somehow, this aspect of the park has been relegated to a position of relatively minor importance. In the development plans are sports complexes, commercial areas, and the neighbourhoods referred to above. What, I cannot help but think, does such a plan have to do with sustainability, and how, I have to ask, will another set of subdivisions and retail outlets benefit all Canadians over the long term?

National parks like Banff, infamous among conservationists for the scale of development within what are supposed to be protected areas, seem like innocents compared to Downsview. Those in management at Banff can be blamed for letting things slide, for allowing something small to get too big. But what can be said of those in charge at Downsview, when their initial vision for this rare gem of an opportunity is based on relegating nature to a back-seat position and opening their arms wide to development corporations?

Sustainability may encompass economic as well as ecological goals. But national parks occupy a special place in our collective consciousness not because of the outstanding shopping opportunities or housing designs they offer, but because they are those rare spaces where–for once–economy must give way to ecology. The land we have decided to protect in our national parks system needs a little sanctity, as well as recognition that these spaces are unique and precious precisely because they do not offer all that can be found in the next stop along the highway. Needless to say, pen hit paper with great vigour: I signed the petition.

I recently had the chance to visit two sites in Toronto where ecological restoration work is being carried out–High Park’s black oak savannah and the Leslie Street Spit. The environmental management approaches at these sites are quite different, and provide an interesting opportunity for exploring a central question in the field of restoration ecology, namely: what activities warrant the title of ecological restoration? A variety of motivations currently form the basis for carrying out restoration efforts, from attempting to restore a site to an approximation of its original, historical condition to centring restoration instead on specific conservation priorities (e.g., recovery of species of concern).

The management strategies in High Park and the Leslie Street Spit provide good examples of these two quite different bases for restoration. In High Park, the primary goals of restoration centre on protecting the existing at-risk black oak savannah ecosystem and restoring this ecosystem to its historical condition as much as possible in the highly-urbanized setting in which the site exists (pretty much downtown Toronto).

The basis for this restoration effort, then, is history: attempts are being made to re-establish plants and plant communities that historically existed at the site, and to reinstate natural (i.e., historical) disturbance regimes such as fire, which are crucial in maintaining appropriate plant community dynamics. Management at High Park can be thought of as an example of classic restoration, in which the site itself provides the historical basis upon which management plans are based.

Management activities at the Leslie Street Spit (a man-made landform extending about 5 km from Toronto’s Lake Ontario shoreline) are based on quite a different approach. Restoration at this site is centred on the recovery of target species, especially wildlife species of concern. Without any long-term natural history to call its own, the Leslie Street Spit itself provides no historical basis upon which to develop restoration plans and targets; as such, its management raises two interesting questions:

1) Can the creation of ecosystems that did not previously exist at a particular site truly be called restoration?

2) Does geography, and scale in particular, matter in the definition of restoration, and does it help to qualify question 1?

Definitions may help to answer these questions. According to the Society for Ecological Restoration International, ?Ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged or destroyed? (1). In the case of the Leslie Street Spit, the actual medium on which restoration is based (a mass of construction waste and imported subsoil) has no history of having been degraded, damaged, or destroyed. As such, it could be said that management programs here are not technically assisting in the site’s recovery: one cannot recover what did not previously exist. In this sense, it may seem more appropriate to term current management activities at the Spit as ecosystem creation or ecological engineering rather than ecological restoration.

Addressing the second question above–that of the importance of geography and scale in restoration–may help resolve the issue of whether or not activities at the Leslie Street Spit can fairly be termed restoration. While the precise geographical location of the landform that is now the Leslie Street Spit was historically an aquatic ecosystem (part of Lake Ontario), nearby sites likely hosted (and still host) plant and animal communities very similar to what is being created in the management units on the Spit. In quibbling over the appropriate use of the term restoration, the question here becomes: what is meant geographically by the terms ?site? and ?ecosystem?? To make a case that management activities at the Spit should be considered ?restoration?, it could be said that current efforts at this particular site are based on restoring characteristics of the broader ecosystem in which the Spit is found. The Leslie Street Spit therefore offers an interesting case in which determining whether or not the term restoration is appropriate is influenced by the geographic scale at which one chooses to define site and ecosystem, and thereby restoration and recovery.

The above discussion highlights some of the complexities involved in the language of a field as necessarily diverse and adaptive as ecological restoration. High Park and the Leslie Street Spit provide interesting cases for exploring the terminology and communication bases of ecological restoration. The remaining question, given the exciting–and in the case of the Leslie Street Spit, dramatic–conservation gains achieved by both projects within an otherwise rapidly-degrading regional ecosystem, is the following: what has greater merit–spending one’s time critiquing the linguistic basis of restoration, or getting one’s hands dirty putting together appropriate habitat at any site where the opportunity arises, regardless of the name given to the activity?

(1) Society for Ecological Restoration International, 2004. ?The SER International Primer on Ecological Restoration.? Retrieved June 2, 2007, from http://www.ser.org/content/ecological_restoration_primer.asp

For me, the day my seed packages arrive in the mail is always a time of great excitement. This year, the wondrous moment came just a couple of days ago. I got back late from this year’s first jaunt out of the city and was aching to just go to bed, deal with all my gear and remnant foodstuff tomorrow. But that big parcel sticking out of the mailbox could not be mistaken: it must be my seeds.

I couldn’t (and so didn’t) wait to rip open the envelope and pore over the details of each species: height, flower colour, wildlife species attracted by the plant, preferred growing conditions . . . technicalities that, to a non-plant person, would be exceedingly tedious always get my blood pumping a little faster, and kept me up that night refining in my mind the exact location of each planting. Aargh?the only problem is that It’s still too early to plant many of the seeds outdoors, and I just don’t have the space or light to ?plant indoors for earlier blooms?; I have to wait just a little longer . . . but at least I know I’m getting close.

For me, a car-less city dweller, planning canoeing and hiking trips is a little more complex than prepping for my gardening adventures. Or should I say carrying out these trips is a little more complex. Planning is not a problem: topo maps, dull as they may seem to some, for me spell summer beauty, peace and the absolute leaving behind of city woes, and represent a great way to while away free hours during those pre-spring months. As far as actually heading out to those yearned-for locales, there is nothing like hitting the hiking trail, even if just for a day in a car borrowed from a family member, or splurging on a rental car (even if it means dealing with those not-so-pleasant rental folks), popping the canoe on top and seeing up close just what that guidebook author was trying to say.

The sweet smells of budding leaves and moist soil, the lovely cacophony of spring birdsongs, the sunlight filtering through the just-about-to-develop forest canopy: nothing compares to the first walks of the season. Nothing, that is, except for hearing that gentle dip, swoosh, dip, swoosh of the paddle, tucking in tight to the little bay and watching the loons, inspecting the plants that miraculously survive on that rock island, and feeling the peace wash over me as the canoe bobs and sways in the water.

So I’ve got the earliest seeds out in the beds, the more delicate–but still tough-ish–ones in pots, ready to be brought inside at the slightest threat of frost. The mud on my shoes, something of a memento to be saved for at least a few days, is evidence of my first hike of the season. And I’ve got my first canoe trip ready to go in June, when things in the rest of my life slow down enough to allow for a real outing. It’s all so close to being out of the brain, off the paper and into the world. Whatever thrills spring holds for you, I know you’ll enjoy the fulfillment of those winter dreams and plans–have fun!

Granted, you’d be hard pressed to find an individual plant able to pick up its roots and head south for the winter. However, when we consider populations as the unit of interest, the mobility situation for plants is quite different. Plant populations actively leave certain areas and enter others. As environmental conditions change, a given area may no longer be amenable to the growth of certain species. Past climate change events (e.g., ice ages) are good examples of situations in which plants have migrated out of certain areas. Examining the historical pattern of plant distribution in the landscape provides interesting information about past climatic conditions in an area.

Most of us can, of course, grasp the idea of how a given plant species might leave an area: easy, it dies out. But how exactly is the entre performed? When an area that has been burned or logged begins to come back to life, where is this life coming from? Seeds are at the heart of the story. Every plant has some mechanism by which propagation occurs such that future generations are produced and the species is given the chance to live on. And many plants have specific mechanisms designed to allow for dispersal of their seeds to areas quite far from the parent plant. This helps to ensure genetic diversity, and provides the opportunity for seeds to arrive, by chance, in new areas that may be appropriate for colonization, thus expanding the range of the species.

Of course, rooted as they are, plants don’t have the ability to move their seeds around the landscape on their own. They rely on other factors to do this for them: seed-dispersal factors may be biological or non-biological, or both. As we’ll see, animals play a big part in seed dispersal, but so do more basic elements like wind, gravity, and water.

Plants that rely on animal-based dispersal mechanisms display one of two traits: they either offer something to the animal from a nutritional standpoint, or their seed-dispersal mechanisms have to be a little more underhanded, getting the animal to transport the precious parcels unawares.

Acorns fall into the former category. Oak trees produce a tasty and nutritious offering–the acorn–which seed predators like squirrels and blue jays simply can’t resist. Luckily for the oak tree, these animals are long-term planners: they collect and cache (by burying) a great number of acorns for later eating. Often burying the acorns in areas ideal for germination, these animals can forget up to half of the seeds they’ve stored away. Many of these buried acorns are deposited in locations at a good distance from the parent tree, thus aiding in a very real way in the movement of oak populations throughout the landscape.

Of course, not all plants that rely on animal dispersal offer their helpers such sweet rewards; in fact, some plants? animal-dispersal mechanisms can be a downright drag for the furred or feathered individual involved. As many of us have likely experienced, burrs have a way of grabbing on, and holding on. What is it about burrs that gives them such sticking power? A seed’s morphological characteristics (a.k.a its physical traits) often give quite a bit of information about how it might travel from point A to point B. This is certainly the case with burrs, in which those all-too-familiar little ball-shaped seed cases are covered in visible hooked spines–just perfect for adhering to fur, clothing, hair (!), or anything a hook can grab on to. And, given the ability of a burr to become impossibly entangled in fur, feather, or hair, an animal may carry the plant’s seeds quite a distance, aiding significantly in this nuisance plant’s distribution.

Relying on wind dispersal may not seem to necessitate the same level of sophistication as animal-based dispersal requires; but plants have developed very intricate mechanisms for making the most of this dispersal factor nonetheless. Take the common milkweed: once mature, its pods burst open and release hundreds of small, lightweight seeds, each one attached to a number of long, silky hair-like plumes. Even slight breezes are able to set the light, plumed seed in motion; and once It’s on the go, the seed’s plumes act as a parachute, billowing out and allowing the seed to stay windborne for surprisingly long periods of time–and thus surprisingly long distances.

And where would the world be without water? Well, without coconuts, for one. With their hard, protective shell and hollow interior, these tasty treats are able–once they’ve matured and fallen from the tree with a little help from gravity–to float in whatever body of water they may have been lucky enough to land in, and disperse to distant lands by way of ocean or river currents.

The diversity and adaptability of living things never ceases to amaze. Seeds, with their remarkable ways and means of moving throughout the landscape, provide just one more reason to keep on marvelling at the natural world.

The question of why people abstain from eating meat may, surprisingly, be easier to address than the number of abstainers. Typical reasons for “going veg” generally include one or more of the following: ethical reasons (not wanting to cause animal suffering), health reasons (believing that a non-meat diet is more conducive to human health), and religious or spiritual reasons ( as is the case with Hindus, Buddhists, and Rastafarians). In addition, a significant number of vegetarians list environmental reasons as the prime motivator in shaping their dietary choices.

So what environmental factors influence people in this camp? One of the prime factors cited is the amount of land required to support farm animals. According to some sources, seven times more land is required to grow livestock feed, than would be needed to grow food directly for people. Much like the energy lost when converting, say, home heating fuels to actual heat, an animal’s conversion of food energy into meat for human consumption is not an entirely efficient process.

Given these two factors, the question becomes whether meat production makes environmental sense. The question gains relevance from an environmental standpoint given increasingly intense competition for scarce land resources and a global ecological scenario characterized by severe loss of natural habitat.

A second rationale some environmentalists give for becoming vegetarian is water quality. We’ve all heard of the pollution of waterways and groundwater sources by high-nutrient animal waste, particularly in the context of large-scale industrial agricultural operations. While nutrients in the water may sound a lot less concerning than, say, toxins spewed into a waterway from some industry, high nutrient levels in water are actually serious business. Eutrophication is the term used to refer to a water body suffering from excessive nutrient levels. High concentrations of nutrients, such as phosphorous and nitrogen, are taken advantage of by algae, which proliferate, sometimes in massive blooms. These algal blooms block light, preventing the growth of other plant species and use up the water’s oxygen supply to the extent that fish and other aquatic organisms can often no longer survive.

E-coli is among the most well known of the manure-related microorganisms that can also affect water quality. They can pose health risks to both people and other animals. The argument in this case is often not against livestock-based agriculture per se, but rather against industrial-scale agriculture. With the latter, the production of waste in a given area exceeds the capacity to deal with it in an environmentally responsible manner.

A third rationale is that meat eating contributes to global climate change in more ways than one. According to the United Nations, 18% of greenhouse gases (more than is produced by all the automobiles in the world) come from farm animals. Methane, one of the most efficient of the greenhouse gases in terms of heat-trapping capacity, is at the root of the issue. Indelicately put, the problem is animal farts. The large population of farm animals (that actually outweigh the earth’s human population) produces methane as a by-product of digestion. This methane is a significant contributor to the problems associated with climate change.

In addition, deforestation is common practice in some parts of the world in order to create new areas for livestock pasture or for the production of livestock feed. The problem is that the world’s forests are massive carbon sinks. The term sink is associated with trees that use carbon in their photosynthetic processes and incorporate it into their tissues, thus removing it from the atmosphere. With excess atmospheric carbon strongly linked to global climate change, and large-scale removal of these carbon sinks being at least partly due to meat production, climate considerations offer a strong rationale for going vegetarian.

Whatever the rationale, most of us constantly make choices about our diets and the dietary patterns of our families. Thinking about the rationale others use for determining their eating habits is, at the very least, interesting food for thought.

Habitat fragmentation, as it is referred to in environmental circles, is generally a result of human activities such as urban development or large-scale, industrial forestry operations -? activities that carve up the landscape, dividing one natural area from another. The problem with fragmentation from an ecological perspective is more than just an issue of habitat loss, or diminished space for plant and animal species to exist in. The home range of animals — the area required to sustain an individual, say a bear — is significant. Without enough geographical space in which to find food, shelter, and appropriate breeding grounds, wildlife simply cannot survive.

But fragmentation is associated with a number of additional factors that decrease the capacity of each remnant patch to support those creatures that remain. The process of breaking up continuous tracts of natural habitat into remnant patches decreases the proportion of “interior” habitat to ‘”edge habitat.” Large, intact ecosystems have vast areas of undisturbed interior habitat, and relatively little edge habitat (those areas, say, along roadways or next to agricultural land). Small habitat patches will have a great deal of edge habitat, and relatively little interior habitat. While not equally significant for all species, this ratio is key to the ability of certain species to persist.

Some species of both plants and animals depend on conditions typical of the interior of ecosystems. A forest illustrates well the significance of interior versus edge conditions: interior habitats are associated with relatively low light levels and high moisture conditions, while edge areas (such as the border between a forest and a farmer’s field) are subjected to higher intensity light, as well as greater air movement, both of which lead to more rapid drying of the soil. Species adapted to interior conditions cannot tolerate the desiccating conditions typical of edge habitats, and therefore will fare poorly in fragmented landscapes.

An additional problem facing small remnant patches is their increased vulnerability to invasive species -? aggressive plants and animals (often native to far-flung locales such as Asia or Europe) that are able to out-compete native species. Invasive plant species are often those that are specifically adapted to conditions typical of edges. Growing rapidly in the high-light environments of edges, and capable of tolerating the harsh drying conditions of these areas, invasive species can often gain a toehold in small habitat fragments. With a greater proportion of edge habitat to interior habitat, these species are given a good head start on working their way into and throughout a remnant patch.

Another issue associated with fragmentation is that of remnant patch isolation. The separation of one habitat patch from another presents very real difficulties for wildlife in terms of finding appropriate mates (especially for small or “shy” land animals, which may not be able to move between habitat patches separated by roadways, developed urban areas or open agricultural areas). Even if mates can be found within a habitat remnant, genetic isolation can begin to be a problem in isolated patches, with the effects of inbreeding taking a toll on species’ health. Plants are also affected by patch isolation; seed dispersal (often facilitated by wildlife) may not occur in fragmented landscapes, placing species in danger of genetic isolation.

Habitat fragmentation may be taking a back seat these days with all of the focus on global climate change, but the significance of fragmentation hasn’t waned, and may only be increasing: stresses placed on ecosystems and their component species may well be compounded by the effects of habitat loss, patch isolation and climate change.

It makes you look twice at those little patches of natural environment, scattered throughout our landscapes.