Navajo warning
Amused scientists, knowing that there was no conceivable relationship between prairie dogs and rain, recommended the extermination of all burrowing animals in some desert areas planted to rangelands in the 1950's "in order to protect the sparse desert grasses". Today that area (near Chilchinbito, Arizona) has become a virtual wasteland.
Bill Mollison, PERMACULTURE
Water under the ground has much to do with rain clouds. If you take the water from under the ground, the lands will dry up.
Hopi elder
By the way, since killing off prairie dogs the west has been in a decade long major drought, drying up the grasslands (for the ranchers) that brought about the mass killing of prairie dogs.
The above quotes are taken from the book, The Lost Language of Plants, by Stephen Harrod Buhner. I've read this book three times because of its ability to understand the life of plants and how we are all interconnected. The destruction of one species will have a cascade effect on all of us. Since the last time I read the book I have really paid attention to plants, trees, animals and insects and how the actually are.
You see, as a child of the 1950's and 60's I was taught, especially in church that God gave man dominion over all the earth. That man could do as he wished with animals, trees , plants insects and the soil and air. They were all to be used however "man" saw fit. I was taught in Sunday school that only "man" had a soul, or could think, or could dream. Plants and animals were apparently just things for our personal enjoyment. I asked my Sunday School teacher once, could dogs dream? He replied stammering, "No, they don't. They don't have a soul". I was taught animals do not think, they only act by "instinct", whatever that meant.
Judging by the devastation wreaked upon this living earth by man, I would guess most of the "decision makers" we have had were taught the same thing. We have the right (from God) to destroy anything which we choose to destroy.
I, of course, no longer believe the simplistic ideas I was taught. I believe the earth is a living biosystem. I believe all living things have souls, can think for themselves and have created co-operation amongs other living systems to bring about the glorious world of nature. Man is the stinker, not because "God gave him dominion over all the earth", but due to a failure to study and understand the value of life of all beings on earth and how we all interact. Let me explain...
We have a large willow tree in our front yard. It is probably 30 feet high and 50 feet around it's limbs. Last year when we moved in my wife trimmed some of the intertangled branches. When we had new electrical lines put in the workers trimmed the tree further for access to putting in a cement post for the wires. I noticed the tree limbs were off balance and seemed to have more limbs on the east side. This spring the tree began putting many small green limb growths on the west side to balance itself. It made a decision to correct its structure by balancing itself! How do trees know to do this? As far as I know no biologist or botanist has ever located a tree or plant "brain". Thus, a "scientist" would say there is "no scientific evidence" that trees have a brain or can think. By scientific standards tree brains don't exist, but there it is in real life sending new limbs out to balance it's missing limbs. How did it know to do that? Chemicals? Hormones? Cellular response? Chance? Or as I was taught, by "Instinct"? Or did it make a rational decision to correct an imballance brought about my wife and electrical workers?
I sit in my office, overlooking the lake, and watch herons and other water birds fly back and forth to the pine and fir trees by our house breaking off dried twigs and then fly back to the trees across the meadow using the twigs for building a nest. Is this instinct? Or do the birds actually understand that young ones are coming and understand they must go to the other trees, snap off twigs and fly back to their tree and construct a nest? This in my mind is a "thinking", "planning" being.
How do plants such as cockleburs, beggar lice or cactus know to have spines or other methods so to hitch a ride on animals or people, so they can reproduce in farther areas (spread their species)? Seems to me, somewhere along the line, one of their relatives decided "this method will be a great way to increase our species".
How do certain flowers know when to blossom, so that a particular bee or humingbird will be coming along at the exact moment thus allowing proper pollination? Instinct? Or, thought? How do they know to cooperate with another specie for survival?
Last night I watched one of beagles sleeping stretched on the sofa. He was deep asleep and breathing slowly and regularly. Suddenly his breathing became rapid and his eyelids flickered. Then his tail started thumping the sofa as if he was having a very happy dream concerning someone or something which he was very familiar. I was taught, dogs don't dream. My dogs do.
Any hunter who has shot and wounded an animal have seen that animal struggle to get up and flee, or try and protect itself. This shows me they have a "will to live". To have a will to live, one must understand what "death" is, to understand what lies beyond life. Thus "thinking" or knowledge.
Just as humans do.
Plants and animals (and insects) are extremely critical for human life. Plants willingly provide us with food, with clothing, with medicines, with companionship and will even clean the air that we pollute. All they ask in return is to be treated with respect. Animals help provide us with food, clothing, companionship, perhaps "cry for rain" and help plants to propagate. Their lives are intertwined with each other, with ours. Each being brings a piece to the puzzle of life on earth.
I think it is time people begin appreciating the life around them as necessary companions to encourage working with those in nature, and not as things to be subjugated, to be used/controlled/defeated. Appreciate nature for the nurturing she provides, for the wonder of it all. Everything alive has its place in the cosmos. We as humans may not see it or understand it, but that does not mean it does not exist.
Someone once said, "Just because you do not believe it, doesn't mean that its not true".
My elders have said to me
that the trees are the teachers of the law.
As I grow less ignorant
I begin to understand what they mean.
Brooke Medicine Eagle
If you kill off the prarie dogs there will be no one to cry for rain.
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