Host:  This week, Pepper Trail continues our series on taking responsibility for the Earth with the Earth Precept that states:

        ☼       Exploitation of the Earth must be accompanied by restoration of the Earth. 

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Today’s precept boils down to lessons that our mothers taught us: Don’t make a mess.  When you do make a mess, clean it up.

It is possible to plan and manage our activities on the Earth so well that we clean up as we go, and don’t leave any mess at all.  Examples are sustainable terraced agriculture in Bali and forest management in Japan.  These activities have been carried out for hundreds or even thousands of years while the health of the land has been preserved.

More often, though, we take too much from the land too fast, and leave it damaged.  When that happens, we must repair the damage and restore the land to health.  The reason is simple: the Earth is finite.  We cannot consume the land and act as if there will always be more unfarmed land to farm, undeveloped land to develop, unlogged forest to cut.  In the United States, essentially all productive farmland is already in use for agriculture.  There isn’t any more.  And yet, almost every American city continues to allow sprawling development that consumes surrounding farmland.  If this doesn’t change soon, we will wake up one day and realize that we have run out of land – not just for shopping malls, but for our very subsistence.  On that day, the restoration of land will become the most urgent crisis that we face.

To try to restore damaged land is a profoundly humbling activity. It reveals just how little we know about the complex web of interactions that are necessary for ecological health. 

In this work, the knowledge of indigenous peoples is of critical importance.  It is hard for most of us to conceive of how intimately these peoples knew their local environment, which provided all their needs.  We have ignored this knowledge for too long, at great cost.  An example: for decades federal land managers excluded fire from the forests of western North America, ignoring the Native American practice of setting cool-burning fires to maintain meadows, enhance oak woodlands, and prevent the buildup of excess dead wood.  As a result, millions of acres of National Forests have become tinderboxes, with dense thickets of highly flammable firs choking out ancient, fire-resistant pines.  

One local organization that is an inspiring example for the ecological and economic benefits of restoration is Lomakatsi, a group that takes its name from the Hopi word meaning “Life in balance.”  Guided by a set of ecological principles that rely heavily on indigenous knowledge and are truly “restoration precepts,” Lomakatsi works on watershed restoration, fuels reduction, prescribed fire, tree planting, native plant propagation, and ecological education throughout southern Oregon and northern California.  Every year, Lomakatsi helps to restore up to 1000 acres in our region.  Such projects contribute directly to restoring the Earth, and also provide a model of how sustainable forestry can benefit both the land and rural communities.

To work to restore the Earth is perhaps the deepest personal practice of the Earth Precepts. All those who do this work, whether they are organic farmers, tree planters, ecological scientists, or permaculture gardeners, deserve our deepest gratitude.

Next week, we’ll look at the precept that considers humanity’s responsibility to limit our own population.  Until then, this is Pepper Trail.

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