Going up - then coming down - our mountain we can see different farms and different treatments. We can see public and private spaces, paths and woodlands, grassland and forest.
In Libano, those in the know are talking about *Leptodita conoveri*, an endangered endemic bird that lives on our farm. A recent study predicted only 700 of the species alive at the current moment, and now 
They live in, around and under these trees: *bocconia frutens*, a native medicinal pioneer tree species, which looks like this:
We started leaving these trees as a part of our permaculture practice - observe first and machete later. These are great trees for recovery as not only are they loved by fauna of all types, they also cycle lots of biomass into the soil.
Not everybody in the neighborhood is onto these best practices. On the way back to town I have been noticing that one of our neighbors is burning by section of their coffee field, and I got a pretty good shot of a recently burned area. The ash is high in available calcium, phosphorous, potassium and magnesium. But not burning would yield all of those same nutrients and more, a lot more carbon especially and a good bit more nitrogen.
Letting biomass layers 'return to the Earth' does take more time, but it is the way we are working it into our plan. Already in agroforestry we can see there is a lot more tree pruning than in no-tree models. But the tree shade helps quite a bit with invasive grasses and other species that can become problematic in full sun.
