Rewilding Your Lawn

SUBHEAD: Now that we've entered the Anthropocene you need to do your part in supporting the living environment.

By Amy Brady on 28 July 2018 for Orion Magazine -
(https://orionmagazine.org/2018/07/rewilding-your-lawn-in-the-anthropocene-an-interview-with-author-jeff-vandermeer/)


Image above: Photographs of a yard gone wild. From original article.

Jeff VanderMeer, award-winning author of Borne and the Southern Reach Trilogy, is also an avid environmentalist. 

As part of his desire to make outdoor spaces more habitable for birds and insects, he’s embarked on a yard rewilding project that involves letting native grasses and plants (many of them deemed “weeds” by some less-than-pleased neighbors) take over his lawn.

If you follow the author on Twitter, you may have read his amusing—and educational—anecdotes about the project. Here, we discuss the yard project in more depth, including the benefits a wild yard provides for local wildlife and what others can do to improve their own neighborhood ecosystems.

AB: What inspired you to re-wild your yard?
JV: I was the writer-in-residence at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in upstate New York in 2016 and lived in a house with a very lively bird population. I started putting out feeders. 

Then Trump was elected president and my stress level went through the roof. We returned to our home in Florida and, to distract myself from the news, I put up a lot of bird feeders and tried to emulate the things that we’d loved about upstate New York.

We got several more birds than in the past, although I’d always been an avid birdwatcher. The feeders made me feel like I could help semi-urban wildlife and migrating birds in the moment, which was important at a time when I felt useless and worn down by the news.

I then began investigating how to make the yard more bird and bee and butterfly friendly. Given that our attempts at a “normal” lawn had always led to bare dirt, I figured nothing would grow. 

But as soon as we gave the yard over to whatever would naturally grow there, we had a great burgeoning of 
plant, insect, and animal life. We even have, ironically enough, a fair amount of grass in the yard now.

AB: What do you hope to achieve by doing this? Do you anticipate an environmental impact?
JV: I already know we’re creating a safe haven for migratory birds. We’re also helping to cement a corner of an unacknowledged greenway for raccoons and possums and other nocturnal animals, none of which have been a bother. They also eat insects and are beneficial in other ways. 

I’ve also seen more toads and frogs and in general a healthy little ecosystem quietly building up. Contrary to the generalizations people make about non-traditional yards, we’ve not seen any ticks. Either the possum eats those or they just aren’t present.

In addition, we’ve had some exciting finds, like Florida lupine growing in one part of the yard. Florida lupine is rare these days and should be encouraged.

Does all this mean much in the grand scheme of things? I don’t know. But it acknowledges that in addition to dealing with things on the macro level, you can support the environment in your own backyard by not using pesticides and, while not letting things look totally unkempt, support life rather than a mono-lawn that nothing else can thrive on.

AB: You’ve said on Twitter that your neighbors are less than thrilled. How would you sum up their response to your yard?
JV: I think it’s accurate to say that the “neighbor complaint” has become in my mind an existential threat from The Neighbor. By that I mean I feel like I need to anticipate the possible objections to what I’m doing, and thus The Neighbor is always on my mind. 

This is probably very unfair to the actual neighbor in question, which is why I keep everything very anonymous [on Twitter] and try to acknowledge that it’s the system and our assumptions at the neighborhood association and city government level that are flawed.

We also have lots of lovely neighbors, and even the neighbor who complained is not automatically not-lovely. But the system is crap. 

The fact that I can grow weeds only so long as they’re in a straight line and look like a garden—or put up a white fence around a part of the mayhem to ritualistically create a “lawn”—is hilarious and also a bit depressing to me. 

A traditional “lawn” is really about signs and symbols and status. What we’re really talking about is whether you admit life onto your property or decide to kill it off.


Image above: Photographs of a yard gone wild. From original article.

AB: What kinds of wildlife have entered your yard since starting this project?
JV: In addition to a regular polite possum and raccoon, we have many more bats out at night. We also have a wealth of birds that we didn’t have before. For example, the thrashers are out in force and very comfortable. 

We’ve had migrating grosbeaks, a first, and we have almost all of the Florida woodpeckers in our yard: downy, hairy, red bellied, flickers, and pileated. They used to be much rarer sightings. We also have a resurgence of snakes and tree frogs and toads of all kinds. 

We used to have a few skinks, pretty big ones, and now we have a lot more. And more bees. And tons of different kinds of plants—too many for me really to go into. Except, of course, the famous one, Fred the Weed, a giant wild lettuce.

Fred blew down in a storm, but is currently convalescing and plotting his return. I’m only just learning more about the plants in our yard, and some are likely invasive, but I must admit that paying attention to what’s growing in the yard has made landscapes so different for me in general. I used to think of plants as the backdrop for animals, but now I see acutely the plant life and how it’s growing. 

I feel like when we visit other people’s houses I can tell a lot about them just from the yard. I’m grateful to Jenn Benner, an Orlando friend, who helped me identify a lot of these plants.

AB: Have any of these lifeforms inspired new characters or settings in your writing?  
JV: This sense of plants being in the foreground will definitely seep into my fiction. The fact that I know individual cardinals and individual downy woodpeckers—that I can see them interacting with other individual birds—is also something that will influence my work. 

Somehow the whole world is now more alive than before, which is, to be honest, also painful, because suddenly I’m aware that even yards that seem green and healthy are actually sterile spaces. 

That’s hard to take. It’s also quite frankly hard to take when I find a vole dead in the yard, a victim of some passing cat. 

Luckily, we don’t get cats much—I chase them away and sometimes squirt them with orange juice, which they hate. In a sense, I feel very connected to this little piece of land and I feel it in my body when something goes wrong.


Image above: Photographs of a yard gone wild. From original article.

AB: Do you have any tips for readers who’d like to do something similar with their yards?
JV: I’d say let the space speak to you and really observe what’s going on. Go with the flow of what seems to grow well—don’t try too hard to push back against what nature tells you needs to happen. 

And before uprooting a plant, make sure you know what you’re doing. Early on I wound up taking out some beneficial plants and leaving some that weren’t from pure ignorance. And be aware that herbicides aren’t really any better than pesticides in many cases.

Bring in a local specialist for a consult, even if you don’t want them to do any actual landscaping. 

Finally, where possible, do leave some dead leaves around, especially in places in shade, where they’ll help form good habitats for toads and worms. These are really beneficial creatures that will only add to the richness of the place.

AB: Do you have any suggestions for people living in urban and suburban areas who want to have a positive environmental impact but who can’t let their yards grow wild?
JV: You can always do something. Even a few potted plants that your local nursery says are good for butterflies or birds can be of use. 

Even a small bird feeder can be of use, too. 

In that case, I’d learn what migratory birds pass through your area, what they tend to eat, and when they tend to appear. 

Keep in mind that birds might take as long as a month to find a new feeder and deem it safe. 

Finally, and this is controversial in some areas, keep in mind that outdoor cats do kill lots of birds. There’s no two ways about it. 

So keep your cat inside if at all possible. If your cat seems too energetic for that, all apologies, but you may need to increase your efforts in engaging and playing with your cat inside.

AB: What has been the most rewarding thing about this project?
JV: Rewilding the yard has largely saved me from situational depression, which means I can be more effective in my other, wider environmental efforts. 

Also rewarding has been the daily connection, in some form, to our environment. It is so important to our health in general to understand what it is we’re losing and what we need to save and why.

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Food sustainability is complex

SUBHEAD: Some say grazing livestock, and the high-quality food they produce should play a key role.

By Peter Mundy on 19 February 2016 for Sustainable Food Trust -
(http://sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/sustainability-is-complex-there-is-no-single-diet-solution/)


Image above: Photo of free range sheep from article "Steps to Sustainable Livestock", in Nature Magazine, 6 march 2014 - Volume 507. From (http://www.nature.com/news/agriculture-steps-to-sustainable-livestock-1.14796).

[IB Publisher's note: Not all would agree that meat should play a major role in sustainable food production. Some would argue no meat is best. They might argue that this article is merely propaganda and public relations for the meat industry. But free-range herds of grass feeding ungulates were part of the natural world long before humans - and predators helped to keep those herds healthy. Early humankind evolved as hunter-gatherers. We eat local beef.  Here on Kauai grass fed beef is available in some supermarkets from Aakukui and Makaweli ranch (among others). Because we live on the south shore we shop for grass fed beef at Kukiula Store in Koloa, Medeiros Farms in Kalaheo, or Ishihara Store in Waimea.]

We face huge challenges in feeding the world sustainably. But one thing is certain: grazing ruminant livestock – and the high-quality food they produce – can and should play a key role.

With ongoing reports and media headlines about the negative impacts of livestock – particularly beef cattle – on the environment and our health, this might seem like an unscientific statement.

After all, livestock are now widely considered to be unsustainable.

So it might come as a surprise to know this support for grazing ruminants was one of the key conclusions from the first International Conference on Steps to Sustainable Livestock – a ground-breaking multi-disciplinary event involving leading scientists working to find solutions for global food security, hosted by the Global Farm Platform and;University of Bristol Cabot Institute in Bristol, on 12th-15th January, 2016.

Over the three-day conference, more than 50 scientists presented the stark realities of industrial livestock production and the challenges we face in feeding the world: the significant direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; the widespread erosion and degradation of soils; the localized environmental pollution from concentrated output of fecal waste; and the human health threats posed by widespread farm antibiotic abuse.

The list goes on.

With the ever-increasing demand for meat and livestock products from a rising global population, it’s easy to think that ending all forms of livestock production – and adopting a plant-based diet – is the only answer.

But it’s not.

We’ve said it many times before, but the scientific evidence presented at the Steps to Sustainable Livestock conference confirmed that grazing ruminant systems (in other words, managing cattle, sheep, goats and bison on pasture) can not only help feed the world sustainably, but also provide a number of important environmental and societal benefits.

Perhaps the most immediate take away from the Steps to Sustainable Livestock conference was that industrial grain-based livestock production is simply no longer justifiable – and may even be morally suspect.

With over 800 million people on this planet going to bed hungry, and more mouths to feed every day, there was a near unanimous agreement at the conference that governments urgently need to pursue a ‘food not feed’ strategy, reserving prime agricultural land for growing human food – not livestock feed.

Livestock currently consume around 70% of grains used by developed countries, and a staggering one-third (or 795 million tons) of all grain grown in the world, meaning that industrially raised grain fed animals are competing directly with hungry human beings for food. The very same concerns apply to the policy of using prime agricultural land to grow crops for biofuel.

Underpinning the Steps to Sustainable Livestock conference is the knowledge that ruminant animals have evolved the unique ability to convert high-cellulose plant materials (read grass and forage) that humans cannot eat into high quality meat and milk that we can, thereby allowing us to produce food from marginal land we could not otherwise use to grow crops.

But the benefits of grazing ruminants do not end at utilizing vast areas of marginal land to produce much-needed food.

Grazing livestock are also a vitally important source of high-quality, protein-rich and nutrient-dense food.

While no one can deny the excessive global consumption of industrially produced grainfed meat is simply unsustainable (not to mention bad for our health), researchers at the Steps to Sustainable Livestock conference praised the “extraordinary merits” of animal-sourced foods, arguing that modest quantities of high-quality pastured meat and dairy products (as part of a balanced diet) offer significant health benefits, providing a vital source of lean protein, healthy fats – such as omega-3s and CLAs – plus a smorgasbord of micro-nutrients essential for health, such as iron, magnesium and selenium.

Changes in animal food consumption patterns have already had notable health impacts, with one researcher suggesting that a diet lacking the key micro-nutrients found in plentiful supply in livestock products (and milk) is resulting in serious emerging health problems – even in high-income countries.

We learned that grazing livestock systems result in many environmental positives – from improved biodiversity (above and below the ground) to the role of well-managed pasture and grassland as carbon sinks. While it is true that grazing ruminants produce significant levels of methane, researchers at the Steps to Sustainable Livestock conference argued that we must stop comparing livestock systems on methane emissions alone.

Instead, we need to consider all GHG emissions and environmental impacts associated with all stages of any given production system – including the potential for well-managed grazed pasture to sequester significant levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

New research is already investigating the potential of alternative livestock diets to significantly reduce the amount of methane emitted, including new plant varieties and dietary supplements, while new livestock breeding strategies utilizing geonomics (not genetic engineering) can also aid the selection for positive methane emission traits.

Potential solutions are emerging fast but we urgently need more research and support to encourage adoption of such practices at the farm and policy level.

Reflecting the multi-disciplinary and holistic nature of the conference, we were also reminded that animal health and welfare is directly related to our future food security.

While welfare concerns might seem secondary to matters like maximizing animal productivity to feed a growing global population, researchers pointed out that healthy animals are productive animals and produce healthy, nutritious food.

Conversely, unhealthy animals are not only less productive (and inevitably require routine drugs like antibiotics to maintain productivity), but can present a real disease risk to humans – as we are now learning at great societal cost.

The quest for sustainable food production is highly complex and there will be no one-size-fits-all solution.

Indeed, the necessary solutions will inevitably be highly complex, multi-faceted and site-specific: it comes down not simply to what you eat, but fundamentally how it is farmed.

There is no single diet solution for everyone, and consuming nutritionally appropriate levels of pasture-raised livestock products as part of a healthy, balanced diet with plenty of sustainably produced vegetables and fruits is not just an acceptable option, it’s a vital one.

And while developed nations urgently need to reduce the production and consumption of unsustainable, low-welfare, intensively raised livestock products and highly processed foods (there’s a good chance many of us would feel a lot better for it), it is clear from current science that pasture-based livestock systems will not only continue to supply high-quality, nutritious food to global populations, but can help protect and enhance key ecosystem services and mitigate anthropocentric GHG emissions.

The International Conference on Steps to Sustainable Livestock marks a very important step towards sharing best practice on optimizing the sustainable use of livestock in many regions of the world, and challenging the industrial farming paradigm.

As an organization that supports sustainable livestock farmers, it was refreshing and reassuring to hear that leading scientists from across the world believe that sustainably managed livestock have an important role to play in feeding the world, and to know that AWA’s farm standards already represent among the most sustainable methods available.

Read the original collaborative article, published in Nature Journal in 2014, that spawned the Global Farm Platform – and subsequently the recent International Conference on Steps to Sustainable Livestock.

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The Power of the Flerd

SUBHEAD: Flerd is the coexistence of a variety of grazing animals in a community that compliments the soil.

By Courtney White on 15 December 2014 for The Carbon Pilgrim -
(https://carbonpilgrim.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/coexistence/)


Image above: A photo of Eric’s flerd in action at Gilgai. From original article.

The power of carbon and coexistence struck me while visiting a farm in New South Wales, Australia, a few years ago. It hit when I learned that the number of native grass species on the farm had increased from seven to 130 in only seven years! The key? Using cattle and sheep managed together as one herd.

The man responsible for this accomplishment was Eric Harvey, a gregarious former wool trader who had decided to try his hand at the other end of the supply chain by purchasing a 7000-acre farm called Gilgai, located a few miles from the crossroads city of Dubbo. Shortly after buying Gilgai in 2004, however, Eric nearly “bought the farm” himself when he had a massive heart attack, as he explained to me on the drive in from Dubbo.

After recovering, Eric was astonished to learn from his doctor that his body was almost completely devoid of minerals, which are essential to human health. He knew there weren’t many minerals in rainwater – due to water scarcity Australians collect and drink a lot of rainwater – but he assumed he was getting enough minerals from the plants and animals he ate, which in turn get their minerals from the soil. Ninety-five tests showed he wasn’t. This was a huge eye-opener, he said.

Eric had soil tests conducted at Gilgai, discovering that it too was depleted of essential minerals, including carbon. This meant that the farm and Eric’s health were now one and the same – both had to recover.

But where were the minerals going to come from, he wondered? A mine? A factory? That didn’t sound very practical or economical. And what about carbon? Was he supposed to spread compost over all 7000 acres of land? That didn’t sound economical either.

A chance conversation with a neighbor provided Eric with an unexpected answer: the sky. Carbon was freely available in the air, his neighbor said, in the form of carbon dioxide, and all Eric had to do was get it into the soil via photosynthesis, livestock, and planned grazing practices. The goal, he told Eric, was to grow native grass –diverse and copious amounts of it.

So that’s what he did. First, he studied the principles of planned grazing and then, after deciding to put them to work, he made another unconventional decision: to run cattle and sheep together as one grazing unit. It’s called a flerd – a flock of sheep and a herd of cattle, comingled.

Years ago, he saw sheep and cattle grazing on a farm in Africa and thought “that makes sense.” Maybe to Eric – but not to many others. To say that it is not traditional to run cows and sheep together would be a huge understatement. It’s hardly done anywhere.

Not only do many in agriculture consider the two types of herbivores to be incompatible with each other from a grazing perspective, most sheep and cattle farmers consider each other to be incompatible as well. In fact, Australia endured its share of range wars between sheepmen and stockmen over the decades, much like America did in the nineteenth century.

Eric ignored all that and in 2005 he put together his first flerd, eventually comingling 5000 sheep and 600 cows. His goal was to use the different grazing behaviors of sheep and cattle to benefit plant vigor, diversity, and density. Nature likes mixed-species grazing, Eric said, because animals often complement each other in what they will eat, the composition of their manure and the way their hooves interact with the soil.

As Eric described it, herbivory creates an organic “pulse” below the ground surface as roots expand and contract with grazing. This feeds carbon to hungry fungi, protozoa, and nematodes, which in turn feed grass plants. The manure “pulse” aboveground helps too, especially with nutrient cycling. His plan with the flerd was to make both “pulses” beat stronger and more steadily.

To accomplish this goal, Eric divided the 7000-acre farm into 196 paddocks, mostly with electric fencing, creating an average paddock size of 140 acres (the smallest is six acres). The flerd moves from paddock to paddock every few days, giving each paddock plenty of time to grow more grass. And with only one “mob” to watch, Eric is often back home by 10 am.

As further work reduction, Eric monitors the watering troughs remotely via sensors linked to the computer in his office, as he showed me, which supply up-to-the-minute data. He also pays for a service that provides aerial infrared images of his farm daily, which allows Eric to monitor the growth rate in his paddocks at a 7-acre scale. He calls this service “pastures from space” and says it gives him an invaluable snapshot of forage conditions, which helps adjust his grazing schedule.

Eric also ground-truths the monitoring data he receives. That’s how he knows he has been able to expand the number of plant species on Gilgai from seven to 130. This improvement in diversity has substantially enhanced the mineral content of the plants, since they can now access nutrients more widely, as well as deeper in the soil profile, and process them more effectively.

And when these plants are eaten by animals, which are in turn eaten by us, the minerals enter our bodies, as Eric can personally attest (his physical health has improved dramatically). That’s why Eric and his family grow and sell only grassfed products from their farm.

By definition, grassfed means an animal has spent its entire life on grass or other green plants, from birth to death. This contrasts with the feedlot model in which an animal finishes its life in confinement, fattened on grain and assorted agricultural by-products and pumped full of medication and other chemicals.

Thanks to a lot of digging in the scientific literature over two decades by Jo Robinson, an independent researcher (www.eatwild.com), the health benefits of grassfed over feedlot meat have become widely known. They include:

More omega-3 fatty acids (“good” fats) and fewer omega-6 (“bad” fats)
Lower in the saturated fats linked with heart disease
Much higher in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a cancer fighter
Much more vitamin A
Much more vitamin E
Higher in beta-carotene
Higher in the B-vitamins thiamin and riboflavin
Higher in calcium, magnesium, and potassium
Enhanced immunity, increased bone density, and suppression of cancer cells
Does not contain traces of added hormones, antibiotics, or other drugs

As Jo Robinson says, “If it’s in their feed, it’s in our food” – which means if you’re a meat-eater, it’s in us.

As for the flerd itself, Eric Harvey has hardly had any trouble running sheep and cattle together. The key is to raise them as one family, he said, especially the lambs. Sheep will bond with cows at a young age and remain bonded for the rest of their lives.

As a result, the sheep follow the cattle wherever they go, which means they’ll move from paddock to paddock with the herd without much fuss. This is great news for a multi-paddock farm like Gilgai. It also means Eric doesn’t have to train any sheep to electric fencing, only the cattle. “Needless to say, moving one herd of livestock is a lot easier than moving two,” he said. “You just make to make sure there’s enough forage and water ahead of them.”

The only trouble he’s had, other than an occasional grumpy cow who doesn’t like sheep – quickly culled – happens during calving, when mama cows become highly protective and might kill a ewe that comes too close.

Eric solves this by separating the cattle from the sheep during their respective birthing seasons. “The only other conflict I’ve ever seen is over shade,” says Eric. “And that’s been minor. Otherwise, they get along great.”

We went to see for ourselves. After quick stop for a look inside a sheep-shearing shed (which I had only seen in Australian movies), Eric and I walked down a dirt lane, crossed through a gate, and entered a grassy field. The cattle saw us coming.

A number of them jogged hopefully towards us until it became clear that we weren’t going to open a gate so they could move to fresh grass. They drifted off, followed closely by small flocks of sheep.

We stopped in the middle of the paddock. Looking around, I saw cattle and sheep everywhere. “Look how they spread themselves out,” Eric said. “Cattle prefer grass over forbs [broad-leaf plants], but it’s vice versa with the sheep. If you keep them in a paddock just the right amount of time, everything gets a nibble. That’s good for the plants and the soil.”

“They’ll all be out of here tomorrow,” he added.

Although Eric doesn’t run goats as part of the flerd, he said there’s no reason it couldn’t be done. Not only do goats get along with sheep and cattle just fine, but, if bonded properly, goats prefer brush and weeds over grass and forbs, which means they would add another level of grazing diversity to a pasture – also good for the soil.

According to some research I had done prior to my trip, another benefit to a flerd is protection from predators, such as coyotes. In the American West, coyotes are the scourge of sheep, lambs especially, which is one reason why sheep-only ranching has declined steadily over the decades as predator populations rebounded, wolves especially.

Experiments, however, have shown that when sheep are bonded to cattle they are protected from predation by coyotes, which are reluctant to take their chances with a closely packed herd of bovines. Experiments have also demonstrated that sheep gain weight faster when grouped with cattle compared with sheep that are managed as a separate flock.

Wool production was also greater with the flerd than with sheep foraging alone – a fact that Eric said he could confirm.

He attributed both improvements to the healthier soil and increased diversity of plants on Gilgai – a result of his careful stewardship.

• Excerpted from Soil, Grass, Hope: a Journey Through Carbon Country by Courtney White http://www.amazon.com/Grass-Soil-Hope-Journey-Through/dp/1603585451
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