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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Thanks to Laurie Davies Adams for sharing the below:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><a href="http://garynabhan.com/i/archives/1414">http://garynabhan.com/i/archives/1414</a><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>When most
people think of the “birds and the bees,” they are inevitably
thinking about relationships… romantic or otherwise. But what few
conservationist advocates remember is that their neighbors, friends and kin who
may be unschooled in the details of conservation biology almost intuitively
“get” that the conservation of relationships may be as necessary as
the conservation of species or of habitats. Most people will agree that the
relationships between pollen-carrying animals and plants are worthy of our
respect, protection and restoration, since they literally bring us our daily
breads, fruits and vegetables.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>So what
if you designed a participatory community-based conservation and restoration
initiative around pollinators, their habitats, and their benefits to a local
economy? It may seem far-fetched, but that is exactly what is happening in the
watersheds straddling the Arizona-Sonora border, which is some of the richest
real estate for native pollinators in all of the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Americas</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><img border=0 width=219 height=163 id="_x0000_i1027"
src="cid:image001.jpg@01CD1C9D.137BB510" class="size-medium wp-image-1422"><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=wp-caption-text><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Heliconius Sara, just one of the butterfly species in <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Arizona</st1:place></st1:State>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
borderlands of Southeastern Arizona and adjacent <st1:State w:st="on">Sonora</st1:State>
are home to at least 600 native bee species which live in the wilds of southern
<st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Arizona</st1:place></st1:State>, as
well as 300 pollinating butterflies and moths, 15 hummingbird species, two bats
and several doves. That level of pollinator diversity may qualify this
landscape to be heralded as the “pollinator capitol of <st1:place w:st="on">North
America</st1:place>.” Ironically this semi-arid landscape is also
one of the worst hit by the arrival of Africanized bees and parasitic mites
which have wrecked havoc upon the honeybee economy. Throw in the effects of the
sudden colony collapse, and there may be fewer honeybees out pollinating
flowers in this region that at any time since the American Revolution.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>And yet,
another kind of revolution is now occurring in the borderlands landscape; a
deep-seated urge to <em><i><font face="Times New Roman">restore</font></i></em>
broken relationships—between the citizens of Mexico and those of the
U.S., between ranchers and urban environmentalists, between native and
immigrants, and of course between humankind and other-than-human species.
Restoring plant-pollinator relationships has become a tangible means of
bringing people together from diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, ideologies and
livelihoods to heal relationships at several levels all at once.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Coming
together under the umbrella of the Borderlands Habitat Restoration
Initiative, local citizens—from retired elders to the Girl
Scouts—are banding together to restore degraded lands and waters, improve
wildlife habitat for pollinators,and strengthen the local economy through
celebrating what is most unique about this place.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>As BCRI
founder and co-facilitator Ron Pulliam reminds us, “The borderland
between southern <st1:State w:st="on">Arizona</st1:State> and northern <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sonora</st1:place></st1:State> is one of the
most biologically diverse temperate areas in the world. Its unusually high
biological diversity for any ecoregion on the continent is due to the
confluence of four great biogeographic domains- the Sonoran desert to the West,
the Chihuahuan desert to the East, the Sierra Madre to the South and the <st1:place
w:st="on">Rocky Mountains</st1:place> to the North- and the intermingling of
their unique floras and faunas.”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>While
much of the borderlands working landscapes appear to be intact, and its flora
and fauna attract millions of visitors each year, all that has been changing
rapidly. In just the past 50 years, human settlements have grown from a few
dusty border towns to several sprawling, rapidly growing cities. The large
human migration in history has been the post-World War II translocation of
Mexicans and Americans to the <st1:place w:st="on">Sunbelt</st1:place>.
Streams, rivers and reservoirs have been gobbled up, and long meandering
corridors of habitats fragmented like the breaking-up of a necklace of pearls.
And yet—for a brief moment in time—the economic downturn has slowed
the momentum of land clearing and habitat fragmentation—and turned
people’s attention to the possibility of a “restoration
economy.”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><img border=0 width=221 height=148 id="_x0000_i1028"
src="cid:image002.jpg@01CD1C9D.137BB510" class="size-medium wp-image-1424"><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=wp-caption-text><st1:place w:st="on"><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Patagonia</span></font></st1:place>,
Az. - Photo taken by Tim Tracy<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>What if
Patagonia, Arizona—already one of the most popular birding spots in the
West—actually proclaimed itself to be the Pollinator Capital of America,
and shifted its goals to model what a restoration economy can be? What if its
farmers, gardeners and orchard-keepers bolstered their fruit, nut and berry
yields by planting hedgerows of pollinator-attracting shrubs and wildflowers
around the edges of their crops? What if naturalists and birders were invited
to come to the town’s “bird and breakfast” lodges, motels and
camp grounds to document the migrations of hummingbirds, bats and butterflies
in spring and fall, leaving their “citizen science” data behind to
be analyzed by school children and elderly volunteers? What if new nurseries
popped up that sold so many pollinator-attracting trees, shrubs and wildflowers
that the entire town became prime pollinator habitat once more? Many
Patagonians are already set on seeing their community integrate many of the
best practices for habitat restoration and pollinator recovery so that birds,
bees, butterflies, bats <em><i><font face="Times New Roman">and</font></i></em>
people all benefit.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Already
the Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy and the Girl Scouts have planted
pollinator gardens in public places, including the town square. Mexican biology
students have visited and exchanged ideas with American students. A coalition
of farmers and orchard keepers have recently banded together to submit an
on-farm pollinator habitat project to the USDA, and hundreds of townspeople
participated in 2011 events such as a nectar plant propagation workshop,
hummingbird banding and monitoring expeditions and “potting parties”
for seedlings of hummingbird bushes. A speaker’s series and habitat
restoration forum are planned for 2012.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>We hope
you will visit our community and participate in our restoration projects. You
will also be able to make a real contribution to wildlife and to reconnecting
people with land and wildlife while healing cultural relationships in the
borderlands as well..<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>And of
the idea of “land health”: seems to abstract to you, consider this:
The pollination services provided to food crops and rangeland forages by bees
and other animals is valued at no less than $15-20 billion a year in the United
States. It, like many other things we now find to be scarce, was once provided
to us “for free.” But over the last five years, the costs for
Western orchardists renting honeybee colonies has tripled, so that the price of
renting and managing honeybees to pollinate a crop like almond trees is now 15%
of the entire annual cost of producing nuts. This has forced farmers,
orchard-keepers and ranchers to look for other pollinators to do the
“work” on their lands. Recent events suggest that if borderland
dwellers want to keep these valuable services available to us, our many
cultures in the region need to invest in <em><i><font
face="Times New Roman">restoring imperiled relationships </font></i></em>by
providing pollinators with food, sheltered nesting areas and pesticide-free
habitat<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><strong><b><i><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt;font-style:italic'>Gary Paul Nabhan</span></font></i></b></strong><em><i><font
face="Times New Roman"> was co-author of </font></i></em><strong><b><i><font
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-style:italic'>The Forgotten
Pollinators</span></font></i></b></strong><em><i><font face="Times New Roman">
(with Stephen Buchmann) and founder of the national campaign of the same name.
He is editor of the anthology, </font></i></em><strong><b><i><font
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-style:italic'>Conserving Migratory
Pollinators and Nectar Corridors in North America</span></font></i></b></strong><em><i><font
face="Times New Roman">, and author of the memoir of a literary naturalist, </font></i></em><strong><b><i><font
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-style:italic'>Cross Pollinations</span></font></i></b></strong><em><i><font
face="Times New Roman">. He was recently honored by Utne Reader as one of 25
visionaries changing the world for the better in 2011.</font></i></em><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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