Here is a cool story from the Mississippi State University Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Why is an assistant professor of aquatic sciences interested in native grasses? This vision, seeing the connections between wildlife habitat, native grasses as forage and hay, and cattle farming, this is the sort of thing that Landscape Architecture needs to continue to follow as a profession.
From the article:
"We were looking for something that we could use to interject some wildlife habitat in small places on a production livestock operation," Gruchy said. "This would distribute the habitat through the farm and the landscape so we can get maximum benefit for wildlife."
In the past, this was the exclusive domain of wildlife biologists. I read Landscape Architecture, the official magazine of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), and their focus seems to expand every month. In November they had a cover story on the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, but instead of showing us the Gulf, the image was of a midwestern farm, with the title "The Gulf Starts (and Stops) Here." Just this past month they published on the "bonanza in harbor dredging." I applaud this expansion of the discipline. Practitioners should continue to pay close attention to what other managers and stakeholders are doing with the land. I see the above quote as the basis for a great project in a Landscape Architecture class.
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