From: Pinon Penny (216-229-67-76-dialup-mo.fidnet.com)
Subject: Pinon Care, water, drought and public land management
Date: December 2, 2003 at 7:11 am PST
In Reply to: Re: Pine Nuts, American Public Lands and Politics of Cattle posted by Leon Oliver on August 16, 2003 at 6:51 am:
Leon,
I did not know about your post, forgive the delay. I am with you! The trees have a very long root system. Protect them from the insects through watering.
In the 1950 - 1970, that was part of the reasoning used for those mass deforestation projects out west. "Freeing up ground water". Those roots were important to holding water in the soil. How old are your trees? They are good size for young trees, which brings me to another pinyon myth, "pinon are shrub like trees." They are very slow growing and by the time we "Euro -Americans" started looking at the species, a lot of old growth had been taken down.
Any chance the planter is "open" at the bottom? We are doing raised beds here, for biointesive growing, with just 4 side and no bottom. Have your trees coned? I tell folks to watch the coning as an indicator of health. It is the reproductive system, after all.
Finally, my big thing is land use. Most research has been done on deforestation, rather than growing the tree. In New Mexico, I have worked to find a a documented connection between the drought and the land use/deforestation. The system collapse was seen and predicted as early as 1977, by people who study such things. It has greatly saddened me to think, people have forsaken their forests through becoming entrenched in the urban life-style. In 1993 a group of folks got together and presented an excellent program on pinon for sustainable use. They put together an action plan, and a goal sheet, then did nothing to see it implemented. I have discovered that by in large, people must have a economic incentive to "care" for the land and advocate on its behalf. I am glad you are caring for these trees and hope you will teach others as as well. These fuel reduction projects, are horrible in the West. They do not consider the land use patterns.Please send me an email when posting. I want to be sure and respond.
Here are some links, http://wsare.usu.edu/pinyon/biblio.htm Annotated Bibliography of the Pinyon-Juniper Ecosystem in the Intermountain West. This is also a good article on the end result of poor land use:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12931884&dopt=Abstract
Rapidly eroding pinon-juniper woodlands in New Mexico: response to slash treatment.Hastings BK, Smith FM, Jacobs BF. But, here science runs afowl again, the turpines in pines inhibit grass. That is why they took out so much of the Western Pinon Forest, to grow grass for cattle.
Sorry, I have gone a bit off topic, but Earth Save is one place to speak about such things, to people who understand.
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