I haven't read that book (recent I think) but here's a favorable review by Mother Earth News.
http://www.motherearthnews.com...
This is the Yankee Permaculture pdf of Bill Mollison's articles
http://www.barkingfrogspermacu...
155 pp. pdf.
(The link in the References to my Dave's Garden article seems to be messed up.)
One of my favorites, from A Terrible Time of Day: QUOTE.
The Phasmid Conspiracy
Now we come to a thing called the phasmid conspiracy.
Each forest varies in each country in that its elms, its chestnuts,
its poplars, its firs, are subject to attack by specific pathogens.
Insects are taking some sort of cauterizing measures.
The American reaction would be to spray; the British reaction
would be to fell and burn; and in Australia, the reaction is to
say: "Aah, what the Hell! It's going to be gone next year; let it
go!"
PDC Pamphlet I, An Introduction to Permaculture, Page 3
Really, is it these diseases? What are the diseases? Phasmids
are responsible for the death of eucalypts. There is the
cinnamon fungus. In elms, it's the Dutch elm disease. In the
poplars, it's the rust. And in the firs, it's also rust. Do you think
that any of these diseases are killing the forest?
What I think we are looking at is a carcass. The forest is a
dying system on which the decomposers are beginning to feed.
If you know forests very well, you know that you can go out this
morning and strike a tree with an axe. That's it. Or touch it with
the edge of a bulldozer, or bump it with your car. Then, if you sit
patiently by that tree, within three days you will see that maybe
twenty insects and other decomposers and "pests" have visited
the injury. The tree is already doomed. What attracts them is
the smell from the dying tree. We have noticed that in Australia.
Just injure trees to see what happens. The phasmids come.
The phasmid detects the smell of this. The tree has become its
food tree, and it comes to feed.
So insects are not the cause of the death of forests. The
cause of the death of forests is multiple insult. We point to
some bug and say: "That bug did it." It is much better if you can
blame somebody else. You all know that. So we blame the bug.
It is a conspiracy, really, to blame the bugs. But the real reason
the trees are failing is that there have been profound changes
in the amount of light penetrating the forest, in pollutants, and
in acid rain fallout. People, not bugs, are killing the forests.
