EDITORS NOTE: This exchange took place between one of the key activists on Gabriola for the Groundwater Management group. The reply to the first letter is very poignant, thus its reprint here!

Hi Jenny
thanks again for all you are doing.. One day if I ever build I will be building a house that has water collecting and saving built right into it and it could be a good demonstration house of what can be done. Meanwhile I read three words in this email that clicked for me.. “ aquatic ecosystem health” I assume that applies to all the little critters who use ponds and wetlands... Well that is something I have been enhancing since I moved here four years ago.. My main focus has been on water for non humans’ habitat... I now have literally dozens and dozens of small watering holes and ponds that fill up quickly and many retain water even during a dry summer.

It seems to me that as usual and it is understandable, that most of our focus is on water for humans. I on the other hand have focused mostly on water for non humans. That is an area that I am most interested in. Perhaps I could better serve the GGMS if somehow my focus on water for habitats for non humans could be integrated into GGMS agenda

I would gladly share my experience and give guided tours to folks interested in how I worked this land to create watering retention sites. I realize that by helping the overall water system humans are helping the overall habitat. I just feel too many folks are not aware enough about the negative impact we have upon non humans when we build and change the landscape. Bringing about more awareness for water for non humans would open up the vision of humans for this land.

Maybe at the next meeting [whenever it is, I forgot] I could bring this topic up and it could be an area I could focus on, as it is what I have been doing on this land whose caretaker I am.

REPLY

Dear L,
That is the point of many presentations that I have heard and seen: The ecosystem is meant to support itself. All water is already allocated to this ecosystem and its well adjusted population.
The bountiful plant component, trees to algae, is so adjusted that it breathes water in and out, an effect which cools the atmosphere and creates microclimates and contribute a moderating and a balancing effect to the heat and cold of temperature fluctuation on a local to a global scale.
From fish and amphibians to its four footed fur and hair bearing denizens to its feathered membership the ecosystem is a delicately balance fully functional entity, complete unto itself and capable of incredible feats of healing itself when planetary events disrupt this balance.
It seems the two footed members with the thin skin are the ones causing trouble in the garden.
This point of view was widely debated and mainly disbelieved among ourselves until recent times.
We humans had the belief that we "owned" the planet, the beasts of the field and the birds of the air as well as all fish and insects. This feeling of ownership allowed us to domesticate some animals and insects for food and for pleasure but in the case of reptiles, we demonized and abused them.
Alas, we abused all of it. Collectively and individually, with or without deep knowledge or understanding of what we did, we have eroded the balance and the ecological peace of our own planetary home.
I believe that we owe it to this planet to end the abuses to which it has been subjected and to correct the imbalance that mankind has created. That is to satisfy justice.
To satisfy the nobler demands of charity (love in its purest form), we need to continue on this path of best practice and evolve into ethics, a system whereby we give full value to the ecosystem and its inhabitants and accord them the respect and the physical room that they need to live and to flourish.
This involves a drastic change in our power besotted mentality. We have to accept the fact that each member of the ecological community has place and privilege, and somewhere we will find that our correct place does not allow us to overstep our privilege and destroy another's ecological presence.
We have behaved badly and we have destroyed creature after creature, species after species. They do not become extinct overnight. They do not die off of themselves. They are dying from the effects of the worst predator in the food chain.
This predator is not content merely to consume species after species but must also absorb their habitat, ensuring that the species will never recover or return.
The further this process takes us the closer we come to destroying ourselves. We have come so far down this path that our pollinators are in great distress. Our own cultivated insects which we have bred for honey and for pollination of our massive fields of monocultured, chemically treated food crops, are disappearing. Predators are adapting to our urban landscapes and coyotes and raccoons flourish in our cities. Populations of deer are allowed to overgrow their natural habitat and die and spread disease.
The planet itself is in the throws of distress. A recent study found that earthquakes are increasing in intensity due to global warming. The weather system itself is becoming more violent as global temperature rises, investing more and more energy into storm systems and tidal surges and these storms and surges and volcanic events are destroying human habitat at an increasing rate.
The health of one newt in a still collected body of water is the gauge which tells us that there is still a chance for the ecosystem. The proper development of a frog in a pond and state of a tree frog in its season and the success its eggs in their hatching, we can see the effects of a star, our sun, on its planet, our Earth.
If we can see the value in such small and seemingly insignificant creatures; if we can see past the diminutive size and the short lifespan to the effects they are demonstrating to us that our ecosystem is in trouble and so are we, then we have finally read the handwriting on our wall as a species.
We are not alone. We have the rich and varied presence of other species travelling with us on our planetary entity, spaceship earth.
If there are others like us out there in the universe, will we be judged on how we valued other species and how we demonstrated our stewardship of our own home, this planet?
Will we look outward as always with the expectation of new lands to conquer, new territory to invade? Will we accord alien life with importance and meaning, or will we again overlook the value of life per se in its own environment, its rightful place?
The mindset we adopt is our destiny as a species. We do control our own environment. We do have the power to save or to destroy our own ecosystem that sustains and nurtures us as well as the totality of life on earth.
That is our greatest lesson.
Jenny