Madeira Consorcio

122 Madeira Consorcio Meeting 23.10.2021

Oct 24, 2021 at 3:12 pm | Posted in Posts | Leave a comment
Tags: climate change, Consorcio, Madeira, nature, Portugal

We met in the Gallery as usual and watched this talk:

The Talk is about the fact that we define Nature too narrowly as a system that hasn’t been touched by humans. Nature can include reforested and replanted areas; new ecosystems develop in such areas as well. Weed is not necessarily bad.

C. said that Cistercian and Franciscan monks in the middle age, who farmed large spaces of land for the church, were instructed to leave a third of the land “wild”

In Germany, the farmers are instructed to leave the side-lines of their fields untamed so that wild plants can grow there and provide at least a small space for insects and other wildlife to settle there.

Rewilding:

Here is a link with more information:

https://rewildingeurope.com

In Portugal, a space on Vale do Côa is supposed to be re-wilded

https://rewilding-portugal.com/pt/oeste-iberico/

It makes no sense to cut trees into shapes, just because we find it better. Trees should grow unhindered in the shape they need to be in.

Apple trees should be used to grow apples for juice, if they cannot be eaten. This potential should not go to wasted even if the product is a bit more expensive.

The other issue the speaker has is that children like to have wild nature to touch it and be in it. They have a right to find such spaces, not to be confined to State parks where they cannot interact with nature because it has to be protected. If humans interact with nature, they do so as a part of nature.

The Plumbago at the entrance of the Gallery is such a “wild space”.

There used to be many partridges on the island as well as rabbits and ferrets. They used to be hunted. Now, rabbits were re-introduced in the forest, only in order to be fodder for hunting…

Invasive species can be bad (the eucalyptus seeds are bad, and the trees grab too much water) but they also may very well turn out to become a blessing later (medicinal plants, protection for trees against specific insect threats etc).

Climate Change:

The 2021 COP – United Nations Climate Change Conference – will take place on Oct 31 in Glasgow. Avaaz will certainly ask for signatures or donations to pressure World Leaders to do something useful about the problem (I will forward the Avaaz message to you when it comes around, Ursula)

Russia and China didn’t get the message yet but more and more industry leaders are talking about strategies that respect nature and include it in their development of new products.

It will come down that we’ll have to curtail our personal footprint as much as possible. Medium distance flights within a country, for example, will have to be forbidden.

Other stuff:

Portugal got some refugees from Afghanistan, the female musicians from Zohra orchestra. There is a link to one of their concerts: