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Landscape and Tree Protection
Tree Chronicle Paints Bleak Picture From an article in the Richmond Times Dispatch, Monday, March 1, 1999 I heard myself describe The Dying of the Trees to a friend as a book that begins in sadness and ends in despair. And then I had the nerve to beg, "Please read it." Why read a book that will make you weep over the state of North America's forests? Because the information in it is information that is not being broadcast elsewhere and because, horrifying as the information revealed is, it's news you'd rather have than be ignorant of. It's also a must-read for anyone concerned about the chip-mill controversy brewing in Southwestern Virginia, because it makes clear the distinction between tree farms and forests. The former is about as much like the latter as a cornfield is like a wilderness area. Never for a minute let a picture of a nice man planting a sweet little pine seedling seduce you into thinking that "forests" are being replanted on tree plantations. A crop of fast growing, even-aged trees is not a species-rich woodland. The latter not only has multi-aged trees but it is rich in the very thing chip mills propose to "clean up" --the detritus that is the raw material for soil building and forest regeneration. What chip mills--which are as happy to receive wood from ancient trees as from tree farms--put me in mind of are the roofing shingle mills on the West Coast that ate up the redwoods. Making roofing shingles out of redwoods was once compared to making kindling out of grandfather clocks. Virginians are horrified about filling our landfills with out-of-state trash, but would they allow our old trees to be "chipped" into toilet paper? If my tone gets a little rabid talking about chip mills, it's at least partly because I've been affected by Charles E. Little's The Dying of the Trees: The Pandemic in American's Forests. I want to say that Little's The Dying of the Trees could do for trees what Rachel Carson's Silent Spring did for birds, but that would be to make an assumption Little doesn't make: that the situation he describes is reversible. Little's book provides an in-depth look at forests all over the United States that have been damaged-in some cases, he believes, irreversibly-by pollution, disease, insects, or mismanagement. It is a weakness of the book, I think, that Little lumps descriptions of forest systems damaged by natural agents together those damaged by avoidable human activity and calls the result a "pandemic," but that, and a too-loose use of words like "extinction," are my only complaints about this book. If Little's word choice is sometimes overwrought, I understand the condition: it's hard to stay calm in a crisis. Among the crises Little documents are these: growth suppression of spruces and firs on Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina similar to the "Waldsterben" (forest death) that has decimated German forests. The cause: an airborne garbage dump of pollution from the Midwest. Also: an examination of how acid rain has weakened high elevation red spruce in Maine, making them unable to cope with temperature extremes, a much more complicated situation than scientists had originally thought and one that, by some estimates, has so damaged forest soils that even if pollution stopped altogether immediately, would require 1000 years of recovery to remedy. Also: the effects of smog on California's Ponderosa pines, the impact of development on California's native oaks, and close to home, the devastating effects of pollution on one of the two oldest temperate-zone forests on earth-the mixed mesophytic forest (a type of hardwood forest) in the central Appalachians. In this, North America's richest forest in terms of biodiversity, as many as 80 tree-sized woody species, according to Little, are showing effects of "years of oxidant concentrations and acid deposition driven eastward by prevailing winds from the industrialized river valleys of the Midwest and the Southern border states." There is no dearth of examples in this book proving Little's point that natural systems can no longer absorb the burden of current human practices in North America, but most sobering to me were his examples of how hard it is to get the word out about the crisis. He cites examples of how politics affects where grant money goes and how prevailing political opinion can determine even whose scientific work gets published and whose research findings suppressed. Even an interest in fairness can skew public opinion, Little argues, citing the example of how giving opposing views equal time in the media sometimes misleads the public into thinking there is more disagreement in the scientific community on subjects like global warming than there really is. According to climatologist Stephen Schneider (as quoted by Little), there is broad international agreement among mainstream scientists that over the next century the planet's climate will warm up at an unprecedented rate: only the rate is being debated. Yet the media give equal time to the handful of scientists extremely skeptical about global warming, leading the public to believe half of the scientific community shares that view. And finally, the most sobering picture Little paints for me is one of forest systems so diminished by clear cutting and so ecologically altered by climate change and pollution, that they can never again be what they once were. Little argues that even if we were to quit logging North America's old growth forests altogether, it is quite possible that what small patches of old growth we have now remaining are all that we will ever have, because future climate conditions and depleted soil banks will not be propitious for their regeneration. And how much old growth do we have now? According to Little, if all the true old growth forests remaining in North America (five percent of the original wooded land that covered the continent) were consolidated, it would consist of a square patch of trees only forty-seven miles on a side. Depressed yet? How about this: according to Little, some scientists think the entire Eastern hardwood forest is dead ecologically and that it can never mend itself because of leached out nutrients from acid decomposition and the resultant ecosystem changes. For solace, Little takes the extremely long view proposed by entomologist E.O. Wilson and by physicist James Lovelock, both of whom suggest that, while the human species may be making the world unfit for itself, some other more adaptable species will surely take our place. Well, great. In the meantime, I intend to go down clamoring for tree justice, voting for tree huggers, and begging people to read books that may worry them into taking corrective action. Copyright © 1999 Nancy R. Hugo. All rights reserved.
Virginia Beach Project is "First Ever" in the U.S. According to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Plants and Gardens news Summer Issue, 1998 a 500-Year municipal forest project of the Virginia Urban Forest Council (VUFC) is a first ever of its kind in the United States. Patterned after England's Woodland Trust, which was established in 1972 to save forests from encroaching urbanization, a 100-acre tract in the city of Virginia Beach will be managed and protected "essentially forever." The project insures that all development decisions will be made for the greater good of the forest. This far-sighted measure will afford residents of Virginia Beach and visitors to the area the opportunity to see the forest grow to full maturity over the course of many generations. Scenic Virginia salutes the city of Virginia Beach and the VUFC for setting an example for the nation. |
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