Abstract
Traditional and small-scale farmers may know of practices that control weedy species. When these species are also problematic in restored or managed areas, a collection of this knowledge might assist control efforts. However, past criticisms of using local ecological knowledge (LEK) from small-scale farmers state that small sample sizes and highly variable responses among informants hinders LEK’s utility in management. Here I document weed-control knowledge held by New Jersey salt-hay farmers to control common reed and adapt strategies to control its invasion in two restoration settings. Accounts indicated that repeated cutting could eradicate the invasive, and subsequent experimental treatments in restoration settings demonstrated this technique to be very effective. However, only one farmer knew of this technique, and this farmer’s accounts seemingly contradicted other farmers’ accounts of cutting. This study demonstrates that small sample sizes and highly variable responses are more problematic to studies of knowledge, per se, than in finding valuable knowledge, which simply must be held by a community member rather than be common or well-distributed.
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Notes
The paucity of demonstrable uses of LEK in environmental management is not limited to invasive species. In one insightful review, Huntington (2000) bemoans the tendency for most papers to refer to the practical uses of LEK in the future tense.
Much of this information is based on correlations, leading Rooth and Windham (2000) to question whether Phragmites is indeed affecting these biota.
I make the distinction between knowledge and practice because knowledge is often not acted upon, and farmers may not have knowledge about the effects of their practices (see Vayda et al. 2004).
Technically a rush (Juncaceae)
Full-strength seawater is 35–36‰.
This relates to the earlier admonition to avoid conflation of knowledge and practice and instead analyze the two separately. See Vayda et al. (2004) for a discussion of this issue in other contexts.
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Acknowledgements
I thank the salt hay farmers of Commercial Township for their patience and insights during the interviews. Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G) allowed access to their restoration site at Commercial Township for my research. I thank Drs. Jeanmarie Hartman, Bonnie McCay, Andrew Vayda, Joan Ehrenfeld, and George Morren for comments on the research incorporated into this paper, and Mark Wong for the aerial photographs. Funding for the experimental portions of the study was provided by the Hackensack Meadowland Development Commission (HMDC, now known as the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (NJMC)).
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Bart, D. Using Weed Control Knowledge from Declining Agricultural Communities in Invasive-Species Management. Hum Ecol 38, 77–85 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-009-9293-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-009-9293-7