80 acres, 8 years, 800 species

[e_moon60]

Well, we made it, in the 8th month, too.   With a comfortable little margin to make up for errors I might've made.  And another four months to add more species in case I've made even more errors.

Of course we didn't personally put every one of those 800 species on the place.  Many were here to start with.  I can say we've seen an increase in every

Comments

[trembling_aspen]

Are there any good books out there on how to do this sort of thing? I'd love to do this someday. :-) If there aren't any good books out there, have you ever thought of writing a book about it?

Delilah

[e_moon60]

There are books for managing larger chunks of land--start with a general introductory ecology book for an overview, then look at applied ecology, water resource management, etc.

There aren't good books for small-scale wildlife management or restoration projects (there are articles here and there in specialist journals--hard to find and I can't afford to subscribe to all of them. We subscribe to NATURE and SCIENCE, the two big fast-publication science journals, and they sometimes have stuff that's relevant, but it's not aimed at landowners.)

None so far deal with the problems of climate change or (very important to small-acreage operations like ours) the effect of neighbors' land-use choices. I want to write a book on this, but so far it's ho-hum for my agent and editor. They know the SF/F will sell; they don't know that there's much market for the other. I'll do it someday but not until the current contract's finished, at least.

[trembling_aspen]

If your not worried about income or marketing (ha ha, right?), you can publish it through a printer like Lulu. The subject is a nitch market, so I don't think any of the big publishing houses would be interested. :-/ I'm not really in any position to know, though, so take that with a grain of salt.

Anyway... If you write a book like that, I will buy it. Sometimes when you talk about land restoration, it sounds really complicated. Like with all the papers needed to file property taxes. Bleh!

Delilah

[e_moon60]

Land management is simple in concept--it's the execution that's tricky, because--as in raising kids--every situation is different. Wildlife management depends on good land management, which depends on good water management

The quick primer: water

[e_moon60]

I should be on the other machine working on work, but