lucky, they may each get ten skeins from
their investment, which would be a really
good deal, since Gibbs’s yarn generally sells
in the $24 to $45 range. On the other hand,
if disaster hits, the investors may receive
nothing for that shearing.
Most interesting in Gibbs’s story is
how she got the “free” land. She moved to
Martha’s Vineyard because her >ancé got
a job there, working in the a=ordable
housing >eld. At the time, she owned only
a few animals and didn’t know how she
would pasture them on an island where
only the richest people can a=ord to buy a
house, let alone pasture. But it turned out
that organizations on the island had for
decades been buying up farmland to keep
as open space. The Martha’s Vineyard
Land Bank had acres upon acres of >elds
that were growing over. Gibbs o=ered her
?ock as one way to keep brush from overwhelming one >ve-acre >eld. The deal
was clinched when both parties agreed on
a fee of twenty-two dollars a year.
That worked so well that she began
talking to Suzan Bellicampi about her
problems at Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary,
a three-hundred-acre Massachusetts Audubon property beside a saltwater pond.
The land had gone unfarmed for decades, resulting in >elds inundated with
Oriental bittersweet, a vigorously growing vine that smothers native vegetation. The sanctuary’s bittersweet had
begun to look like Audrey II in Little
Shop of Horrors. The open >elds, which
had once attracted grassland birds,
were disappearing.
Time to bring on the sheep and goats—
animals famous for mowing down everything in sight in a matter of hours.
Bellicampi thought the sheep might be
environmentally superior to using herbicides. After a summer of experimenting,
she couldn’t be happier. And the price for
the land—free—was exactly suitable to
Gibbs, who loves the symbiosis. “Suzan
sees invasive species she wants to get rid
of,” Gibbs says. “I see enough food for my
animals to eat for the rest of their lives.”
When Gibbs sums up her new world,
several thoughts come to mind. Her television colleagues can’t believe she has chosen such a life. But she is happy. Farming
suits her Type A personality perfectly:
There is always something to do. A lamb
may be ill. The goats need to be deloused.
Shearing time may be just around the corner. And feeding time is inevitable. Every
morning. Early. And again, every evening.
So Many Species,
So Little Time
by john moir
The numbers are daunting. By the time
you wake up tomorrow, somewhere on the
planet several dozen species will have gone
extinct. A year from now, an estimated
thirty thousand species will be history. And
if this extinction crisis continues unabated,
by the end of this century half of Earth’s
life-forms will have vanished forever.
“Because of human overpopulation and
overconsumption, the current extinction
rate is at least a thousand times above normal,” says Edward O. Wilson, the two-time
Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist who has
devoted his life to preserving Earth’s biodiversity. He believes that this unparalleled loss of species, known as the Sixth
Extinction, is one of our century’s most
pressing issues, a=ecting the most fundamental aspects of our lives, from medicine
to food to the stability of our ecosystems.
With this in mind, Wilson is spearheading a sweeping new project that could
be the most important of his career: the
Encyclopedia of Life. This unprecedented
digital endeavor aims to develop a web-page for every known species on Earth. The
EOL ( www.eol.org) is so vast in scope and
scale that it rivals the Human Genome
Project. Wilson sees a special urgency in
this undertaking. Up to 90 percent of life
on Earth—millions of species—remain
unidenti>ed by science. The EOL will help
scientists preserve biodiversity by identify-
