[HN Gopher] The Fight to Protect the Joshua Tree
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The Fight to Protect the Joshua Tree
Author : lxm
Score : 60 points
Date : 2023-05-21 22:22 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| [deleted]
| pvaldes wrote:
| Is not the species, is the old valuable individuals that are
| alive monuments. For example, ashes are frequent species, but 500
| Yo ashes are very rare (The species can live this time but 99,99%
| are killed when they are less than 100 Yo). If you have a 500 Yo
| ash you may want to protect it. At this moment many temperate
| forests are like seeing a city when all inhabitants where 10
| years old or less. This is not really OK. There is a problem
| here. People in cities are very afraid of trees and chomp it at
| the tiniest ludicrous excuses.
|
| In any case Yuccas, like the Joshua Tree, are very easy to
| transplant and even easier to clone, so is just a question of
| throwing more engineering efforts at this problem because the
| trees can be moved and stand drough periods. Their biology allows
| to put a Joshua tree in an hangar and let it without any soil or
| water for a month. They just don't care. The main problem is to
| avoid breaking the branches. Easily fixable if you wrap the tree
| before
|
| In the desert each tree counts also, as water container, so the
| more they have of a frequent species, the better for humans
| inhabiting the area.
| uxamanda wrote:
| From what I have read and experienced, Joshua trees are very
| difficult to transplant, but that could be with different tech.
| Do you have any resources for the technique you mention, would
| be love to learn more. Fwiw, I've tried and failed 3 times with
| little ones (that were going to be destroyed regardless) and
| have one transplant that is doing ok.
| pvaldes wrote:
| How do you did it?
| uxamanda wrote:
| Dug around the plant to keep the roots as undisturbed as
| possible, moved via truck less than 1 block, immediately
| replanted into non-amended ground (have heard that rich
| soil can kill them quickly), watered in, continued watering
| occasionally (~monthly). After about 6 months 3 had died.
| These were only about 1 foot tall, from a neighbor who had
| clearance to remove.
|
| FWIW, with aloe, a similar process had much greater success
| of transplant.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Probably killed by watering.
|
| You need to allow the tree to form a scar before watering
| it. Just assure that it is balanced and can sustain its
| own weight using some strong cables or any other support.
| Those trees can be heavy.
|
| And then forget that is there for some weeks. After this
| time you can start adding water.
|
| How much you can wait for watering depends on how harsh
| is your climate, but the golden rule is to use only the
| strictly necessary amount of water so the trunk does not
| shrink.
|
| The tree will feed on its reserves for a while and will
| discard all older leaves to form roots. You will have a
| lot of yellow leaves in the soil but don't worry, It will
| recover later from buds. As long as the trunk feels firm
| and does not show shrinks, the tree is alive.
|
| Take in mind that Yucca has a burrowing beetle parasite
| that can kill them.
| uxamanda wrote:
| Ah ha! Counterintuitive on not watering but the scarring
| part makes sense. Will keep my eye out for other trees to
| try it on, would love a little Joshua tree forest. Thanks
| for the advice.
| uxamanda wrote:
| "It simplifies the process for builders to get a permit to remove
| trees and requires a fee that would go toward a conservation
| fund. "
|
| One problem has been that the penalty fee for ignoring the
| process was (at least historically) lower than the permit. I read
| multiple articles about developers ignoring permitting and paying
| the penalty when/if caught. My favorite was one where they
| claimed they "didn't know" it was required, but were caught while
| digging a ditch to hide the evidence.
|
| I don't know enough about the new legislation to know if that
| imbalance would still remain.
| MongoTheMad wrote:
| I have lived in California. If there is serious concern for
| saving the Joshua Tree, then California needs to make another
| sanctuary for it in a place where people do not want to live:
| north of Barstow. Yucca Valley is a nice place to live and should
| have more people (much nicer than in the deserted wastelands
| north of Victorville.)
| aurizon wrote:
| They can deal with this by mandating a desert ecology. I see huge
| amounts of water in Ca pumped from declining aquifer to maintain
| huge areas of lawns on houses etc. I wonder if this is a nimby
| based mechanism to maintain house prices by limiting new home
| builds? People in million dollar tar paper shacks in Ca simply do
| not want more/denser housing = arcane zoning laws in Ca.
| nickphx wrote:
| Residential water use makes up less than 10% with agriculture
| making up over 50.. https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-
| Website/Files/Documents/2019/...
| noobermin wrote:
| To be honest, I'm not sure which side of this conflict I come on.
| Sure, 40% of the trees live on private land, but only a fraction
| of that would need to actually be razed for new housing, and with
| the changing landscape, that housing should be much more denser
| than previous sfh. I'm not sure how much new development is
| responsible for the reducing population.
|
| On the other hand, while the trees exist, the ending quote is
| telling that no _new_ trees seem to be growing because of the
| changing climate. Just mere numbers currently existing seems too
| simplistic to apply as a metric to determine whether something is
| endangered when that species is not really reproducing well. By
| the point it becomes endangered, it will be too late.
|
| The existing bill sounds like a good compromise. May be another
| (or instead of legislation, an administrative plan) could be to
| slot a certain number of allowances, say for 1-5% of the existing
| tree population, and grant permits for removal up to that number,
| and require the new housing to be above a certain density
| requirement to get the permits. That way everyone gets a little
| of what they want, yimby's get their houses, the trees are
| somewhat protected and it's not open season on them, and the only
| ones who lose out are lazy individual homeowners who want to kill
| their tree so they can put up another boring grass lawn.
| uxamanda wrote:
| Not too many grass lawns in the area luckily :). From what I
| can tell, they are cutting them down to put up the building
| itself. Seems to be a bigger problem on small lots. What makes
| me sad is seeing places where they leave the lone tree but rip
| up 100% of the other native plants that create an ecosystem
| with the trees. No longer a great spot for wildlife and it
| makes me wonder how it affects the health of the tree.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >the species was "abundant and widespread," with between 4.3
| million to 9.8 million of the trees in California.
|
| That is neither an endangered nor a threatened species. Tough
| shit.
|
| >according to environmentalists, because around 40% of the plants
| grow on private land. The Joshua trees could be razed to make way
| for homes and infrastructure.
|
| The environmentalists can propose to buy the private land, if
| they can't (or won't) then tough shit: They aren't the landowners
| and thus should have no say.
| fluxinflex wrote:
| Ownership is not always complete.
|
| Nature and natural resources are in fact a societal good and
| shouldn't be dominated by a small class of people within
| society. Sure someone "owns" that land (whatever that means
| since it was "owned" by others before the Europeans came) and
| they have certain rights but they should not have all rights.
|
| Imagine a powerful landowner owning _all_ plots of land on
| which Joshua Tree existed, imagine that landowner unilaterally
| deciding to destroy all the trees. They have made a decision
| for future societies that is not theirs to make. The property
| own profits, society pays.
| CJefferson wrote:
| I don't like the idea that landowners should have complete
| control of the land they own.
|
| Owning land, more than anything else, should be considered a
| responsibility -- we have a finite amount of it and (mostly)
| can't make more. I personally feel many societial problems
| arise from poor use of land (in the UK, the lack of house
| building has both pushed up both rents and house prices to
| extremely unreasonable levels).
| sclarisse wrote:
| If your problem is with land use, especially UK land use in
| cities, it's much more the zoning and planning permission
| that's to blame: if anything there's too _little_ landowner
| control and too much social control (at least, social control
| of the wrong sort.) Building new housing supply into an
| overpriced market is generally quite profitable, and will be
| pursued by private landowners when not illegal.
| steve1977 wrote:
| This. I would even do away with the concept of individuals
| owning land and just give people some restricted usage
| rights.
| logifail wrote:
| > I would even do away with the concept of individuals
| owning land and just give people some restricted usage
| rights
|
| Q: How would this affect those who purchase land to build a
| home?
| groby_b wrote:
| A time-limited right of use. If you're a good steward of
| the land, it gets renewed. Leaseholds are (or at least
| have been) a fairly common and workable thing.
| noselasd wrote:
| >>the species was "abundant and widespread," with between 4.3
| million to 9.8 >>million of the trees in California.
|
| > That is neither an endangered nor a threatened species. Tough
| shit.
|
| I think that's what people said about the passenger pigeon
| also.
|
| Anyway, I don't think everyone shares your view that land
| owners can do whatever they so please. I certainly hope there's
| some protection against the my neighbouring landowners starting
| up a toxic vaste dump on their land next to mine.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| IUCN have it as 'Least Concern' but NatureServe have it as
| 'vulnerable' which is one of their 'threatened' statuses. I
| don't really know about NatureServe though. I think their
| methodology is different in how it treats cultivated/non-native
| populations.
| ah1508 wrote:
| Owing something usually give you the exclusive use of it but
| does not allow you to do what you want with it. You cannot walk
| in the street with a running chain saw even if you own it. Same
| thing with your car, you must respect a lot of rules. If you
| own a Picasso you cannot burn it. It is a political choice to
| let someone destroy a forest but not a Picasso.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| why is a picasso more important than an ecological system?
| ah1508 wrote:
| It is question asked by the soup thrown at paintings in
| museums recently. Like saying "Why do you consider that
| paintings must be protected and not the possibility to keep
| living on this planet ?" At least it is how I interpret it.
|
| It is about rules elaborated by an educated society. Not
| perfect rules, but at least rules that preserve what this
| society consider "important". Many example show that humans
| that live in a given place are very well aware of how
| important is a "healthy" ecosystem and give rights to "a
| good life" to this ecosystem: Wanganui river in New-Zeland,
| lac Erie in US (this attempt failed), constitution of
| Ecuador, etc... Elinor Ostrom wrote interesting about this
| rules (governing the commons), she had the nobel prize for
| that.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >If you own a Picasso you cannot burn it.
|
| If I own a Picasso I can absolutely burn it if I want to.
| Don't like it? Buy it off me before I do, or don't sell one
| to me in the first place.
| drekk wrote:
| If you live in the US you can do that, and you can and will
| be prosecuted under the 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act
| (VARA). Other industrialized nations tend to have similar
| protections. People always have the choice to break the
| law, and if you go so far as to do something irreversible
| (like burn an original Picasso) a jury of your peers might
| not be so understanding of your god-granted individual
| liberty to be a Vandal.
| explaininjs wrote:
| To my reading VARA only applies to living artists
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Seeing as Picasso passed away long ago, presumably there
| would be nobody to prosecute me under VARA[1].
|
| [1]: "In most instances, the rights granted under VARA
| persist for the life of the author (or the last surviving
| author, for creators of joint works)."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Artists_Rights_Act
| bloak wrote:
| Interesting. Seeing as you need a licence to export certain
| works of art and antiques (from the UK) I wouldn't be
| surprised if there's a rule to prevent people from destroying
| a painting. However, I've never heard of such a rule. Perhaps
| because it's not something that people usually want to do. (A
| Picasso might not be old enough to be protected as an
| antique, of course.)
| ah1508 wrote:
| * OwNing something
| ur-whale wrote:
| https://archive.is/Tf3OK
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > Hotter, drier conditions are already hurting them, according to
| Cameron Barrows, a retired conservation biologist at the
| University of California, Riverside. Dr. Barrows said his
| research indicates climate change will threaten much of the
| Joshua tree's habitat by the end of the century. Even inside the
| national park, the tree could largely disappear, conservation
| groups say.
|
| In that case, what's the point of protecting any individual tree,
| if they'll disappear anyway?
| groby_b wrote:
| By that logic, people who have an injury should just be
| euthanized?
|
| Obviously, you wouldn't do that. Neither should we let species
| die off deliberately because we currently assume climate change
| will threaten their habitat. We do not know. We have the power
| to shape climate change to some extent. The trees might migrate
| all by themselves. We could possibly find a new habitat.
|
| "Ah, fuck it, it's hard" isn't the answer here.
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