brick-a-bracken

You know, that might be a good title for my thesis.

Today was devoted entirely to bracken. Karen, Irene and I spent the day in an ejido called Juan Sarabia, whose comisario (sort of commissioner, I guess, the guy who runs the place, the head ejidotario) man named Manuel (I didn't catch his last name). He was very nice when we went to his office this morning to ask permission to do research in his ejido. In fact, his words were, "The ejido is yours!" So we spent the rest of our day surveying our land (for bracken). We found so much of it that it became overwhelming to make maps of, but I think we've got some pretty good information. We'll be going back on Tuesday and Wednesday to do damage transects and get the last few patches of bracken. New photos posted.

The funniest part about my research is that any time we ask an ejidotario about the land and bracken history, they're very nice and helpful, but also kind of confused, sort of, "Why would these girls want to know about this stuff? We already know all there is to know about bracken. It grows everywhere. You burn the land, and snap! It grows back." Most of them say it's been a problem for as long as they've been on the ejido-- the Mexican government encouraged communal farming development in the last 40 years or so as part of conservation efforts. So most people remember bracken when they arrived in the ejido 20, 30 years ago. Ultimately, I'll be looking into other variables as well, but it's been interesting hearing their stories about bracken.