Status Updates From Texas Master Naturalist Sta...

What I’m learning (I am taking deep breaths) WHAT I’M LEARNING is that ecological education that is removed from indigenous education and TEK (or other related knowledge systems) feels like being stabbed One Million Times. I am not interested in playing pretend with economists about ecosystem valuation when the land is so often the thing that is hurt the most in the process.

THESE PHILOSOPHIES DO NOT COEXIST. We’ve tried!!! We gave it a good effort, gang! But CLEARLY this isn’t working. Why are we still pretending that the economic valuation system we’ve got is a true and valid “valuation” when it unduly favors human economic activity???? WE MADEEEEE THAT UP. THAT’S NOT REAL. THE DRAGONFLIES DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE US DOLLAR.

WHY ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT THE RETURN ON INVESTMENT OF A LANDSCAPE THAT THEY’VE ESTABLISHED HAS CRUCIAL EXTERNALITIES VALUE. WHAT. WHAT. WHAT. ECONOMIC VALUATION OF EXTERNALITIES SIMPLY AINT IT. Every new chapter keeps restating “yayyy externalities!!! Land is important 🫶” and then immediately writing about the economics of land management and land valuation.

I. Hate the definitions of rangeland sustainability and rangeland management. So much. Legitimately developing headaches from reading these. THESE ARE I N C O R R E C T AND DEEPLY INCONSIDERATE OF ANYTHING THAT’S NOT A HUMAN PERSON. THIS IS ECOLOGY. WHAT ARE WE EVEN DOING

Unfortunately, this book is trying to kill me.

That which is not good for the beehive cannot be good for the bees. -- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations