CM PRESS # 784

"NATIVE" SPECIES?

The expensive work goes on of tearing out wind sown plants that now grow naturally in Fairview Park, without the help of man and at no expense to taxpayers, and replacing them with "native" plants that no longer grow there naturally and which will cost taxpayers lots of money to keep them on life support in an area where they are no longer the best suited to live there.

Silly humans.

"Native," as usually used by short-view-of-history humans, often means the organisms that humans at some arbitrary point in the past saw living in an area before they were replaced by organisms that have better survival mechanisms for the area now, as evidenced by their ability to live all on their own without human nursemaids.

HERE'S another news story in a similar vein; this one is about a fish that is replacing the "native" fish in an area.

So which species is native?  The one that is first in as seen by humans or the one that can survive without human help?  Here's a clue:  First in doesn't count in nature.  In one way or another, organisms move about, and remain where they are comfortable and can prosper and they leave areas where they can't. Those organisms that move to an area where they are the most fit for that area at the time, become the natives until another organism comes along to replace them.  This is the morality of nature and it is automatic and emotionless.

When a desert turns to forest, is the lizard that made a living in the desert still the native species and should it be maintained where it can no longer make a living?  That, in essence, is what is happening--but with plants--in Fairview Park, as a misguided former City Council voted to spend millions of our dollars to replace naturally growing plants with "native"plants that will require an arborist and many stoop laborers and special sprinklers and other things to even have a chance of living.

An environmental niche is not defined by its geographic location on a map--say, Fairview Park--but by the environmental conditions that exist there--which are subject to change.

The conditions in Costa Mesa and Fairview Park are not what they once were.  Native then, is not native now.
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REHAB OPERATOR MORNINGSIDE WITH FOUR LOCATIONS IN COSTA MESA SUSPENDED BY THE STATE

Long article but worth a read to ferret out the information about Costa Mesa.
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AZ STATE SENATE PASSES BILL TO PROTECT RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

Trying to stop Obama from weakening the First Amendment.
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