Pictures from a recent cryptoforest expedition

These are pics taken by various people during the 3 hour exploration through the cryptoforests of Westraven. This walk was part of the Casco program 'future park'.

Mushroom thieves

The above article that appeared in the local paper today is a sign of the times. 2010 is an excellent year for mushrooms and it appears people of Eastern European origin, who, as R. Gordon Wasson already knew are extremely fond of fungi, are harvesting 'our' mushrooms at a grand scale, probably selling them on to restaurants. This foraging activity is also inspiring Dutch people who consequently poison themselves. The ethics of modern-day foraging still needs to be callibrated.  

Let the monkeys teach you what to eat

My soft spot for Marc van Roosmalen started when I read in the first book of his autobiography that he had great admiration for Provo as a biology student in Utrecht. He didn't take part of the things Provo is best known for, as far as I can tell, but I do think he is still embodying the spirit where many others haven't. The above shows his Amazonian camp-site/field station.


The following quote is instructive to all edible city proponents. This is how the pro's do it:


Listen to Marc van Roosmalen:

 “Most of what I have learned about survival in a neo-tropical rainforest I have learned from the red-faced spider monkeys from Surinam. I also learned a lot from other animals. From mammals, reptiles and birds who, like me, live on the ground. Agouties, agouties and peccaries led me to those seeds and seedlings you can eat without risk, and to others that are poisonous enough to kill you by touch alone if you happen to have a scratch or small wound. Tapirs and deer taught me which seeds and seedlings to avoid. They also taught me which green leaves from which trees I could eat with relish. By studying the food habits of a wide variety of animals, by observing what foods they are looking for, what foods they eat, and from which foods they sometimes accidentally die, I soon started to feel comfortable in my new daily surroundings. More and more I started to look like a native of the forest“.   

Edible city G-map apps, wild horses & the great hippie revival

The awareness that the city contains many domesticated and undomesticated edible plants (wild food database) which together constitute a hidden dimension of the urban landscape is growing. The awareness that it makes environmentally sense to consume these foods rather than the flown-in fruits and vegetables from the supermarket is growing as well. I watch too many cookery shows on the BBC and it sometimes seems that all English Michelin-starred chefs (and Ray Mears thrown in for good measure) are keen to incorporate foraged greens. In fact the world's top restaurant for 2010 is Noma in Copenhagen has the cardinal rule that at least one third of each dish must be foraged. Most of us (the assorted collection of 'artists' that I suppose are reading this) have a participatory sympathy for the Transition initiative. In fact, I would not be surprised if the Transition Town movement will become a major political voice around the world within the next 10 years. One of the core goals of this movement is the creation of the resources for communities (cities or otherwise) to feed themselves on locally grown food exclusively. The 'edible city', in other words, is hot property.

Swanky screenshots of the Boskoi Beta

The city is already harvested: all over town I see people purposefully picking blackberries and collecting walnuts and chestnuts that have fallen on the ground, I know that people are foraging for mushrooms for taste and for the strange things they do to your head. Anglers are surely eating their catch. These are the obvious examples of edible city foodstuffs, and these examples are probably also where the knowledge stops for most people, myself included. But there do exist people whose passion is older than the buzz and who have amassed an amazing body of knowledge, often, I suspect, through direct experimentation. 


It is fun to go out with a 'guide' and discover this n'th landscape and to learn about the unsuspected properties and uses of ordinary plants. An astonishing array of everyday 'weeds' (as you call them) are at least partly edible and it is great that people are sharing this knowledge through books, (art) projects and and through on-line services like Boskoi and Forag.rs and countless of others, this augmented foraging wiki lists almost 30 different projects. It is probably true that our grandmothers and great-grandmothers were aware of these plants both as food and for its medicinal properties. (Even though this knowledge has always been suspicious: it was the secret technology of the witch). We, who depend on an incredibly impoverished diversity of food-sources, have forgotten the variety of nature and suppressed our grazing habits. Now we must relearn this the hard way.


Typically 'collaborate free food mapping sites' critically depend on the Google.Maps backbone/interface, enabling you to find edible foodstuffs on a map and learn their uses with no effort than a double-mouse click. These services will also urge you to add your own local wild food resources to the database through a point-and-click interface. Most services will also provide (or promise to do so at some point in the future) related information like harvesting season, medical issues or recipes. However, all augmented foraging application I have seen so far disappoint when it comes down to delivering the goods: their databases are all almost empty. And even though this might of course change, I have my doubts. 

Forage.rs has the best interface but 11 annotation for the entire US is pathetic.

In a sense augmented foraging tools are a way of cheating; or better put, they seem to promise a short cut to an higher awareness where no magic portal exists. What characterizes foraging people (see earlier post) is their immensely detailed knowledge of the natural landscape, a landscape in which they are at home and in which individual has the full capacity to survive with affluence. A web 2.0 app is just another screen asking you to rely on other people's knowledge, a tunnel that tells you where to go and what you can find. It is not that augmentation cannot add additional (virtual) richness to a place but that in practise much augmentations offer a quick fix, a fatty gob, McDonalds style. I do not want another redundant layer between me and my surroundings, but I want the information that helps me read it better so I can create my own mental pop-up notes. So to speak. Sure, this is an idiotic criticism to level at these tools, (criticizing new tech is the best way to come across as grumpy, boring and out of the loop) at least at the practical level, and I am convinced that free food locating websites are a great way to learn about an important under-appreciated aspect of the city. They are teaching devices and like all teachers their influence over you must be doubted and criticized at every point. 


Unlearning is just as important as learning.   


There are already millions of G-maps applications, the technology is just monkey business. What I would like to see these services do is to step away from the gonzo-mapping model. Instead they should try to create content, to create exhaustive coverage for an area no matter how small. Collecting this data is hard work but once it is done, even when it is just for one street, it will give a much better sense of the richness of the world right under your nose than a random shatter of annotations ever will. It also makes sense as a open-source best practise: the open source projects that find the leverage to spawn an enthusiastic community are always the ones in which the project is useful from the start.


The edible city phenomena is a hippie revival because no other movement in the past (from surrealism to situationism to punk) has ever considered the production of food as politically important. That hurts.

The hippies were there before us, even though farming is a hopelessly conservative practise  

I also have to mention that my own interest for the edible city is purely intellectual. I will have to cross several mental bridges before I will be able to set myself to eat wild flowers and street grasses. I am not a horse, but I do have equestrian potential. 


There is also my proposal for Forage Mark-Up Language which is for you if you want it but will probably forever unused, which is ok. 

Small portion of Free Food Bristol map

The n'th landscape

...collecting nettles and quickleaf from the wasteland for the first infosoup

The edible city movement, if that is what it is, with their g-map applications and obscure herb recipes, gives us much to think about. At the moment I can think of only one attempt to create a theory for the edible city effort.


Listen to Wietske Maas and Matteo Pasquinelli (The City Devouring Itself: Urbanibalism in Times Insurgent Communes and Biopolitical Sieges):

The scenario of war, more than a well-regulated city ecology, forces a recognition of the overlooked nature across the urban landscape. This space is what the gardener Gilles Clément refers to as the third landscape, a ‘residue’ full of biological potential that grows between the first landscape of nature and the second landscape of man. Clement never uses the term ‘ecology’ as he prefers to stress the autonomous power of the neglected and uncultivated spaces of the environment. Yet not even in a global megalopolis is the dominion of concrete absolute. A recent example of metropolitan resistance — guerrilla gardening and seed bombing — shows how cities are not an ecosystem apart but a terrain still permeable to ‘involuntary’ vegetation.

That is spot on, though, without wanting to sound like a total dick, given that this third landscape stands between the landscapes of nature and man, it is a misnomer. The one-and-a-half landscape, the 1.1 to 1.9 landscape, the 1.01 to 1.99 landscape, would all be a better names. 

Garden joke (Ha!Ha!) by Gilles Clement

The point however I think is not that the existence of these 'mezzanine landscape', to coin another name, had remained undetected, (go ask a gardener about weed) but that they are not longer regarded as something purely negative, as a blight to be destroyed. Suddenly the 1plus-2minus landscape has become a giving landscape. This brings us back to the earlier observation that for hunter-gatherers "the land around them is their spiritual home and the source of all good things. This view is the direct antithesis of the Western Judeo-Christian perspective on the natural environment as a "wilderness"." The western distinction between man and god is a stranger to the forager as well, they do not have gods but tricksters, beings who stand somewhere between being fully human and fully divine, a being who is cunning and sly and devious but at the same time someone who teaches and has a good sense of humour; consider the Curupira. 

It's a foraged dish but I would prefer it deep-fried. 

A g-search on 'third landscape' quickly leads into another term: drosscape coined by Michael Berger and which offers an typology based on earlier work by Lars Lerup (who I met once, his book I have sold to my 2nd hand dealer). Quoting Frieze Magazine:

Drosscape’s greatest contribution lies in its speculative taxonomy of the wasted and the wasteful. Berger classifies drosscape sites into

Landscapes of dwelling  (LODs – voids of land in housing developments), 

Landscapes of transition (LOTs – temporary storage facilities),

Landscapes of infrastructure (LINs – transportation rights of way), 

Landscapes of obsolescence (LOOs – junkyards and landfills), 

Landscapes of exchange (LEXs – abandoned malls) 

and

 Landscapes of contamination (LOCOs – military bases and other brown fields).   

Sounds ok to me, up to a point because of course ends up by thinking about this landscapes as problematic areas in need of a fix. Can I stress that the Cryptoforest is not another urban design typology but an ethical proposition and that the cryptoforest is fine as it is and that the cryptoforester does not want to DO, let alone IMPROVE, anything. 


We are the first generation that will be judged by its waste rather than by its art.

The pheasant is the icon of the cryptoforest

The above is the most typical view you are most likely to get from a pheasant: a slight faraway noise as it runs away or maybe flies away in that typical awkward style of theirs. Pheasants, I have never seen them anywhere in this city, is what first alerted me to the cryptoforests of Westraven, Utrecht. The past two years, autumns especially, I have often spotted 4/5/6 of them at a time but this year they have been rare. But as the Wikipedia notes: "they are always timid once they associate humans with danger, and will quickly retreat for safety after hearing the arrival of hunting parties in the area." I doubt they are hunted but they do seem more timid, and only occasionally you see one. They are however certainly there, because sometimes they wander onto the bicycle lane and when they see you, usually before you see them, they dash into the underbrush and disappear out of sight.   

Mosquitoes as the cryptoforest's 'eco-system engineer'

A recent article on the website of Nature magazine seems to argue (judged by the headline) that wiping out all mosquitoes would be an excellent idea without any unwanted side effects. The actual article is more nuanced, and such a project would probably only result in bugs that are even hardier.  What really struck me is the following comment left by a certain Gerardo Furtado:

I am Brazilian, and I've been in areas of the Amazonia where you cannot stay ten minutes in the jungle without going crazy because of the mosquitoes. If not for the mosquitoes, the forest would be more devastated than it already is (out of curiosity, there are several folk songs in the amazon where mosquitoes are celebrated as the defenders of the forest against humans).

That is a wonderful idea that allows us to think of the mosquito from the perspective of the ecosystem in which the mosquito is an ecosystem engineer with the extremely valuable contribution of keeping out the humans. Searching from here I discovered David Quammen's article 'Sympathy for the devil' in which he refines the point:

Clear the vegetation on the brink of a waterhole, move in with tents and cattle and jeeps, and Anopheles gambiae, not normally native there, wil arrive within a month, bringing malaria. Cut the tall timber from five acres of rainforest and, and species of infectious Aedes - which would otherwise live out their lives in the high forest canopy, passing yellow fever between monkeys - will literally fall on you, and begin biting before your chainsaw has cooled. Nurturing not only more species of snake and bird than anywhere else on earth, but also more disease causing microbe, and more mosquitoes to carry them, tropical forests are elaborately booby-trapped against disruption.

There is scientific research for this.

Anopheles gambiae are much more likely to survive in deforested landscapes than in intact, forested habitats (Tuno et al. 2005). Previous studies conducted in the Amazon indicated that malaria risk rose sharply during the late 1980s and 1990s (Aramburu Guarda et al. 1999). New evidence suggests that changes in forest cover, through effects on the distribution patterns of mosquito vectors, may have contributed to this upsurge in the disease. In particular, a recent project in the Peruvian Amazon examined the links between deforestation and the principle mosquito vector for malaria in South America, Anopheles darlingi (Vittor et al. 2006). This analysis suggests a direct relationship between the extent of deforested land and increasing biting rates of A darlingi. In fact, heavily deforested areas can see up to a 300-fold increase in the risk of malaria infection, compared to areas of intact forest, controlling for changes in human population density.

Rainforests may provide another valuable ecosystem service, moderating the risk of infectious disease by regulating the populations of disease organisms (viruses, bacteria, and other parasites), their animal hosts, or the intermediary disease vectors (most often insects or rodents). For example, the loss of forest cover may affect the abundance and behavior of mosquitoes – a common disease vector in the tropics – through changes in local habitat conditions. Individual mosquito species occupy unique ecological niches and can react rapidly to changes in habitat. For example, in Africa, the larvae of



Backpack aspirator

  A recent study on a deforested area in the Amazon has the most detailed statistics:

The report, which combines detailed information on the incidence of malaria in 54 Brazilian health districts and high-resolution satellite imagery of the extent of logging in the Amazon forest, shows that clearing tropical forest landscapes boosts the incidence of malaria by nearly 50 percent.

"It appears that deforestation is one of the initial ecological factors that can trigger a malaria epidemic," says Sarah Olson, the lead author of the new report and a postdoctoral fellow at the Nelson Institute, Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.

The clearing of tropical forests, say Olson and senior author Jonathan Patz of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, creates conditions that favor malaria's primary carrier in the Amazon, the mosquito Anopheles darlingi, which transmits the malaria parasite if it draws its blood meals from infected humans.

"The deforested landscape, with more open spaces and partially sunlit pools of water, appears to provide ideal habitat for this mosquito," Olson says, noting that Anopheles darlingi has been shown to displace other types of mosquitoes that prefer forest and that are far less prone to transmit malaria.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has made the fight against malaria one of

their top prio's.

Malaria causes nearly 1 million deaths per year, and 85 percent of those who die are children under 5 years of age. Ninety percent of malaria deaths occur in Africa, where the financial cost of malaria is crippling economic development due to the high cost of medicines and reduced productivity.

In 2008 the Foundation pledged $200 million dollars to six projects in order to have a working vaccine by 2025. Their solutions to Malaria are however all technical; no mention is made of deforestation.

DIY bugcatcher

From my cryptoforest groupwalks I know that mosquito clouds are very convincing when it comes to sending us out. At one time someone refused to move any further because of the skeeters, we left him behind, the coward. From Wikipedia we learn that the cryptoforest might be especially eligable for healthy mosquito populations because of the edge-effect.

The Alaskian Tlingit have an interesting myth on the origin of mosquitoes that can be read in several ways (is one man-eating giant better than a swarm of mosquitoes? a danger destroyed can always return even more deadly? the inability to fully predict the consquences of your actions?) but that makes psychological sense:

Long time ago there was a giant who loved to kill humans, eat their flesh, and drink their blood. He was especially fond of human hearts. "Unless we can get rid of the giant," people said, "none of us will be left," and they called a council to discuss ways and means. One man said, "I think I know how to kill the monster," and he went to the place where the giant had last been seen. There he lay down and pretended to be dead.

...

"I'm about to make sure that you never eat anyone again." He cut the giant's body into pieces and burned each one in the fire. Then he took the ashes and threw them into the air for the winds to scatter. Instantly each of the particles turned into a mosquito. The cloud of ashes became a cloud of mosquitoes, and from their midst the man heard the giant's voice laughing, saying: "Yes, Ill eat you people until the end of time. "As the monster spoke, the man felt a sting, and a mosquito started sucking his blood, and then many mosquitoes stung him, and he began to scratch himself.

Modern Tarzan

Strange ebay stuff; if only my funds were unlimited, would Tarzan be the man pictured at the Kreen-Akror post?

Forage Psychogeography

The above image is a classic piece of situationist every-day-life self-cartography. It is a schematic map of Paris with lines drawn between the point of origin (home) and the destination of travels made in a year. I was first published as an illustration to Guy Debord's  'Theory of the Derive' and it means to show how limited our ordinary use of the city is and how little we therefore know of our immediate surroundings; the function of the derive is to break this territorial straight-jacket. Notice that it assumes that the territory is Paris whole, the city and not the countryside, while you could argue that your territory is not a given but the space you need for your everyday needs.   

Below is GPS drawing made by Jeremy Wood of a generative psychogeographical walk in London. The idea being that the algorithm (for example: second left, first right, third left, repeat) will generate a coiling movements from somewhere to neverwhere reaching all points in between.

The current interest in the 'edible city' I find interesting for several reasons but most of all because it is a reinvention or an accidental return/rediscovery of foraging. Our fascination with roads and trails (and desire paths), and with centralized power and accumulation of wealth is a dual neolithic invention: the forager needs to travel the roads less travelled and leave the trail to survey the entire territory with intense awareness; survival depends on it. Foraging, the lifestyle of the forager, demands/creates another way to relate to your environment and your fellow people.     


Listen to Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly (The foreword to the The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers):  

Found among many but not all hunter-gatherers is the notion of the giving: environment, the idea that the land around them is their spiritual home and the source of all good things. This view is the direct antithesis of the Western Judeo-Christian perspective on the natural environment as a "wilderness". 

The foraging lifestyle guarantees a level of freedom and leisure that has been forever lost to those people who succumbed to the caloric revolution of agriculture 10-12.000 year ago. At the heart of the re-evaluation of the hunter and gatherer stands Marshall Sahlin's classic essay 'The original affluent society', surely the only anthropological classic to be regurlaly reprinted as a punk zine. Sahlin makes an interesting case for nomadism itself as a technique for freedom and a mindset for being out there.


Listen to Marshall Sahlin:

The manufacture of tools, clothing, utensils, or ornaments, how- ever easily done, becomes senseless when these begin to be more of a burden than a comfort. Utility falls quickly at the margin of portability. The construction of substantial houses likewise becomes absurd if they must soon be abandoned. Hence the hunter's very ascetic conceptions of material welfare: an interest only in minimal equipment, "if that; a valuation of smaller things over bigger; a disinterest in acquiring two or more of most goods; and the like. Ecological pressure assumes a rare form of concreteness when it has to be shouldered. If the gross product is trimmed down in comparison with other economies, it is not the hunter's productivity that is at fault, but his mobility. 

I would love to see a year's worth of GPS of traces of a GPS-collared nomadic Amazon Indian, but lacking these the following traces of animals make the point clear enough. The first image of the Situationist-map clearly shows a centre, a number of locations in the periphery. The various animal GPS-traces below show a full use of the territory, with the open spaces in the imaginary boundaries of its home range always ignored for a good (geographical) reason. GPS-collars generally aren't recording continuously, but make lan/lon snapshots perhaps every 12 hours, the straight lines therefore should be replaced, in one's mind, with a meandering line, suggesting an ever deeper coverage, use and knowledge of the land.

Location points (blue dots) of Alaska wolf NW025 (April 3 - June 4, 2002) connected in chronological order (red line), and the minimum convex polygon (blue line) of its home range. The cluster of locations at the top center of the home range indicates a den site.

Arctic wolf Brutus’ locations (small circles) since capture on 08 July 2009 to 30 November 2009. Each location is joined to the next consecutive location 12 hours apart with a line, resulting in what we call a “spaghetti” map.

Finland wolves Irina (n=576) and Retu (n=513) locations connected in chronological order,

April - August, 2004.

The movement patterns of collared zebra 6865 during the month of April. Zebra 6865 was collared on the 1st April and for the month of April exhibited a central place foraging strategy, returning regularly to the waterholes near to where she was collared. 

The complete movement patterns for collared zebra 6872 from 3rd April until 27th May within the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park. The movement patterns of zebra 6872 show the response to the rainfall of the 2nd and 3rd May followed by its eventual migration west to the Boteti region arriving on the 22nd May.

The collared hyena went on two excursions to the Bakers Bay seal colony, which is more than 60 km away from his western territory boundary. His home range estimate was 1400 km.

The red lines show the movements of nine caribou with GPS satellite locator collars during 2006-2007. These caribou belong to the Kenai Lowland Herd. The summer range is shown by the dense red color on the west side covering the Kenai gas fields, and the Kenai River flats to north of the Kenai airport. The winter range lies generally east of Sterling. The route lines clearly indicate that the caribou avoid roadways and developed areas. 

These are Swedish bear tracks in Sweden the underlying maps is missing to prevent poachers from utilizing the data.

Sea-routes for whales, seals and whatever, but beautiful!

Something completely different, the Apollo 11 traverse map.

Ethnobotanic Dare and Arachnophagy

Ethnobotany is the study of non-western / non-academic / 'savage' biology, here is funky little story about the scientific acumen of an Amazonian tribe.


Listen to Shepard Jr. and Yu (Rain forest habitat classification among the Matsigenka of the Peruvian Amazon)

The research that led to this paper began as a dare. Shepard (an ethnobotanist) heard that Yu (an ecologist) was teaming the taxonomy of Cecropia, a genus of pioneer trees that host a number of ant species. Shepard suggested that Yu consult with the local indigenous people, the Matsigenka, with whom he had been conducting ethnobotanical research for several years, and who recognized a number of folk species of Cecropia. Yu chided, "Cecropia taxonomy is a mess. We have been working on it for years. Some of the species are very close. Not even the expert on the genus has been able to figure them out. I doubt the Matsigenka even havenames for many species." Shepard dared Yu to test his instinctive distrust of folk biology. Open to the challenge, Yu began to interview the occasional Matsigenka visitors to the Cocha Cashu research station in Manu National Park, and was surprised by the findings. The Matsigenka had names for almost every species of Cecropia found in the area, including some that as yet had no established botanical names. More interestingly, the Matsigenka recognized various sub-groups of Cecropia that corresponded exactly with the intermediate taxonomic groupings identified by botanists after several seasons of field and herbarium work. Yu was impressed by the sophistication of Matsigenka folk taxonomy, "We could have saved two years of taxonomic muddle!" Unfortunately for Shepard, no formal wager had been made.

Ha!Ha!


The Journal of Enthnobiology has an open archive for all issues before 2005 and amongs the zillion interesting papers found, but this is the best of all "Alune Arachnophagy and Approaches to Spiders Among an Eastern Indonesian People", or, a natural history of human consumption of spiders!


Listen to Christopher Healey and Margaret Florey:

Spiders often live in close association with humans, and are variously objects of interest, danger and aversion. Few ethnobiologists, however, have paid much serious attentiun to human knowledge of, and interactions with spiders. As a contributiun towards an ethnographic understanding of human-spider relations, this paper documents the uses and ethnotaxonomy of spiders among the Alune people of Seram Island in Indonesia.

It is now widely recognized in the anthropologlcalliterature that insects have formed an important part of the diet of human communities in many parts of the globe. Academic attention to the consumption and other uses of insects has been subject to the filtering lenses of Judaeo-Christian traditions and European gastronomy, which, with a few celebrated exceptions (honey, crayfish and escargots come to mind), eschew the consumption of non-marine invertebrates and their products. The Biblical vision of John the Baptist living a wandering existence in the desert, subsisting on locusts and wild honey, is a symbolic representation of his separation from the established social order. His diet combines the sublime honey, a pure insect product of nature, with a notionally inedible insect, which is, furthermore, inimical to subsistence in the Middle East through its plague attacks on crops. European observers of the subsistence habits of other peoples have tended to assume that the consumption of insects is an indication of destitute circumstances, such as The Baptist voluntarily endured, rather than a matter of choice. As Sahlins (1972:2ff) has pointed out, this ethnocentric view contributed to the long delay in realizing that a hunter-gatherer existence was by no means
as harsh as had been presumed.

...

The Khmer of Cambodia are reported to eat large tarantulas (Theraphosidae) deep-fried in oil and served on skewers. They are reputed to enhance virility (Menzel and D'Aluisio 1998). Similarly, the Yanomamo of Venezuela extract Theraphosa leblondi (Theraphosidae) tarantulas from their burrows to eat, roasting them on the fire (Menzel and D'Aluisio 1998). This species is the world's largest spider and contributes a substantial amount of meat to a meal.

Spiders and their webs are also used for purposes other than food. Again, there is very little of substance in the literature beyond passing references. The Nuaulu of central Seram, who are culturally related to the Alune, use the compacted web masses of Nephila species (Araneidae) as bait in line-fishing for needlefish, a practice Ellen (J993b:203) considers they must bave learnt from other people, as, like the Alune, the Nuaulu are traditionally an interior people. Speiser (1996 [1923]:241) reports the use of compacted web mass of unidentified spiders to construct purses and ritual masks in Malekula, Vanuatu. Spiders and their webs are also used for purposes other than food. Again, there is very little of substance in the literature beyond passing references. The Nuaulu 01 central Seram, who are culturally related to the Alune, use the compacted web masses of Nephila species (Araneidae) as bait in line-fishing for needlefish,

The Ngarinman of northwest Australia used spiders' web to fasmon small purses (Healey, unpub.fieldnotes). Spiders are reported to be used for medicinal purposes in a number of areas.

Hunn (1977:310-312) notes that among the Tzeltal of Chiapas, Mexico, tarantulas (Mygalcmorphae) are used in a cure for tumors, with the spiders induced to bite the affected area. Bodenheimer also reports the medicinal or magical use of spiders.

De Walckenaer notes that "in Brazil certain [unidentified] spiders are believed to be strong aphrodisiacs .. , , and the same quality is ascribed to them in folk medicine throughout the world" (Bodenheimer 1951:68). In the Kamchatka Peninsula of eastern Russia eating unidentified spiders Is said to confer fertility on sterile women, and ease labor (Boaenheimer 1951:68). The seventeenth-century English antiquarian, astrologer, and solicitor, Elias Ashmole, provides us with evidence of another medicinal use of spiders in his diary for 11 April 1681: "I tooke early in the morning a good dose of Elixir, & hung 3 Spiders about my Neck & they drove my Ague away, Deo gratias" (Ashmole 1966:1680).! This was no Ashmolean idiosyncrasy; live spiders encased in a nutshell and worn about the neck were believed to relieve fever (Black 1883:5960). One of Bodenheimer's possibly idiosyncratic German eaters spread them on bread in place of butter "as a purge" (Bodenheimer 1951:68).

The wolf as the indicator specie for the afforestation of Europe

The last time a wolf was seen in the Netherlands was in 1869 but it is expected that they will be permanently re-entering within 10 to 15 years. They will probably arrive from Germany where they have established themselves again after a century of absence in the year 2000, or perhaps from the South of France via Belgium. Excellent! One of the reasons for this optimism is the above image of GPS collared wolf Allan, born in Germany, who only needed six months to travel the 15000 km to Belarus, in the process several times crossing the border with Poland, one of the most heavily guarded in the entire EU. Experts say that because of the evasive character of the wolf it they may have already passed through the country without anybody noticing.

As the environment commission of the EU notes "Nature does not respect the borders that humans draw on maps" and the possible return of the wolf to the Netherlands is related to demographical developments elsewhere. Stefan Theil writes at MSNBC.com about how depopulation, urbanization and afforestation in nearly every country on the European continent creates large news habitats for animals like the wolf.


Listen to Stefan Theil:

Wolves returning to the heart of Europe? A hundred years ago, a burgeoning, land-hungry population killed off the last of Germany's wolves. Today, it's the local humans whose numbers are under threat. Wolf-country villages like Boxberg and Weisswasser are emptying out, thanks to the region's ultralow birthrate and continued rural flight. Nearby Hoyerswerda is Germany's fastest-shrinking town, losing 25,000 of its 70,000 residents in the last 15 years.

Such numbers are a harbinger of the future. Home to 22 of the world's 25 lowest-birthrate countries, Europe will lose 41 million people by 2030 even with continued immigration, according to the latest U.N. Population Division report. The biggest decline will hit rural Europe. As Italians, Spaniards, Germans and others produce barely half the children needed to maintain the status quo—and rural flight continues to suck people into Europe's suburbs and cities—the countryside will lose close to a third of its population, say both the United Nations and the EU. 

Rising economic pressures will amplify the trend. One third of Europe's farmland is marginal, from the cold northern plains to the parched Mediterranean hills. Most of these farmers subsist on EU subsidies, since it's cheaper to import food from abroad. Already, the EU is trying to limit costly overproduction by paying farmers not to farm. "Without subsidies, some of the most scenic European landscapes would not survive," says Jan-Erik Petersen, a landscape biologist at the European Environmental Agency in Copenhagen. Take the Austrian or Swiss Alps. Defined for centuries by orchards, cows and high mountain pastures, those steep valleys are labor-intensive to farm, with subsidies paying up to 90 percent of the cost. The Austrians and Swiss pay up so that the postcard-perfect scenes can continue to exist. Across the border in France and Italy, subsidies have been reduced for mountain-farming. Since then, all across the southern Alps, villages have emptied out and forests have grown back in.

This isn't necessarily the environmentalist's dream it might seem. The scrub brush and forest that grows on abandoned land might be good for deer and wolves, but is vastly less species-rich than traditional farming, with its pastures, ponds and hedges. "Once shrubs cover everything, you lose the meadow habitat. All the flowers, herbs, birds and butterflies disappear," says the EEA's Petersen. "A new forest doesn't get diverse until it's a couple of hundred years old." An odd alliance of farmers and environmentalists have joined to put pressure on the EU to "keep the landscape open," as World Wildlife Fund spokeswoman Catherine Bett calls it. Keeping biodiversity up by preventing the land from going wild is one of the reasons the EU pays farmers to mow fallow land once a year. France and Germany subsidize sheep herds whose grazing keeps scenic heaths from growing in. Outside the range of these subsidies—in Bulgaria, Romania or Ukraine—big tracts of land are returning to the wild.

Many Europeans are reluctant to just let nature do its thing. "We still cry when the woods close in."

Distribution of wolves in Europe 

Reader John Grzinich of MoKS recently mailed in the following infographic that shows that the nation of Estonia is for 51% covered with forest. John further writes that the overall size of the forest has been increasing for the last 100 years but especially after the Estonian independence. The percentage of protected parks is growing as well.

The wolves are doing so well in places according to the National Wildlife Foundation that they are overpopulating their territories and the obvious result is that they are spreading out. But how are we to co-exist with the wolf? The Astana country of Kazakhstan points to way:

the Kazakhs, who admire wolves for their cunning and courage, bear them no grudge. A tour of an area where many wolf attacks have been reported found everyone horrified at the suggestion that perhaps the wolf should be eradicated as it was in the United States and Western Europe. "There are just too many, that's all," said Galina Yakovna, who had watched helplessly as a pair of wolves recently snatched her favorite dog from her yard. "But they are part of nature."

Afforestation 1990-2000 according to European Environment Agency