“An expert is someone who is smart enough to know what he is getting paid to say.”
source unknown
Dear friends and Family,
Often February is our wettest month. This year it was not so, but the season continues to be kind to us. Nature is full of life and action. It is a time of surprises and abundance.
Highlight of the month was the birth of Kaitlyn. Congratulations, Bob and Nadia!
Thank you, Karl and Gregory, for helping with preparations for potential wildfire later in the year. The probability is high that this year will keep us on our toes.
Rainfall is already above average for the season, but we hope to keep getting further rain until April. If the season cuts out now, the region will dry out too rapidly and heat up again before winter.
We wish you all the blessings that come with the good tidings of Easter!
Greetings from Kachana
Photos of the Month
News & Views
While many discussions today seem to be having a polarizing effect on the public, it is my hope to open discussions around what people and organisations are not doing, what is happening as a result, and how to perhaps/hopefully do our part as individuals to address this shortfall.
Dysfunctional tropical and subtropical landscapes grow drought, flood, fire and new heat-exchange dynamics (i.e., “feral weather”) faster than other regions.
Having lived mostly in Northern Australian rangeland settings for the past forty years this statement sums up a significant portion of my personal experience. Of this time, the last thirty years have been invested in hands-on landscape remediation, and an attempt to harness natural forces, (or to at least work with them).
By hereby giving witness and inviting first-hand inspection (before I fall off the perch), I am merely doing what I consider to be my duty as a responsible citizen.
One could easily argue that the escalating loss of carbon, soil and other nutrients in Northern Australia appear to be greater than what current regenerative efforts could compensate for.
As with pumping air into a tyre with multiple punctures, (which now loses pressure faster than we can pump air in,) desertification at the global scale already has the potential to make obsolete all current restoration efforts within our lifetimes.
The same processes play out in Australia: human induced forms of trophic cascade (in our case, these were initiated millennia ago!) which have been accelerated by modern human behaviour.
To perhaps avoid extinction scenarios that otherwise lie ahead, the key would seem to be to harness nature’s own power to drive new types of well-designed and coordinated efforts at the scale required. There is no need for further pilot projects. Case-studies abound and, in some instances, even whole regions have been rehabilitated.
We need the creative juices that already flow within the regenerative paradigm stepping out of individual “circles of influence” into “circles of concern” that in turn lie well within our collective “circle of influence”.
We need to tell our grandchildren a better water story and help them where to look!
Can we grow the required abundance mentality fast enough?
I do not know.
But I see this to be our only viable option.
The page I therefore wish to be on, is the one where we discuss the type of puncture-repair that is currently not happening.
For this it makes sense to talk to those who already have access to some of the tools, as well as an understanding of negotiating the political and bureaucratic minefields that during, and twenty years after a “decade of land-care”, still stand in the way.
My continued “thank you” therefore, those individuals who are assisting in making connections to people who are being effective in the regenerative space, and who are busy relating messages in their own ways.
Even, if now may not be the time for some of you to get onto this particular page, if you are in any way associated with the regen-space, it might make sense to be aware of the “elephant in the room” and some of the related discussions.
Link of the Month
