I have been studying various approaches to land ethics more intensely in recent years and have come much more to respect tribal points of view. This is plural points of view – since there is not one but many.
What they tend so share, in my limited experience, is people living in harmony with nature and the land. This is distinct from what I have come to learn about a preservationist ideal, which often seeks to separate humans from nature. Some of our concepts of wilderness exclude human influences, no matter how harmonious. I think this is an error.
One guy I talked to made a profoundly simple statement. He said that we should tread lightly and harmoniously in nature, but that implies that we DO tread and include humans. There are many traditions for living in and with nature. I doubt we can come to a once-and-for-all ideal. For example, I only recently learned about the German tradition of dauerwald, and I only learned about it because someone said that “my” forest management resembled that. My research found many similarities. I never recalled learning about this specifically, but I did grow up with Aldo Leopold, whose parents were German and who must have been familiar with the concept and in the long game idea, one of the sources I found on the topic was a webinar hosted by Han Schabel. I had not thought of that name for years, but it seemed familiar and it was. He was my forestry professor at UWSP way back in 1973. Anyway, I signed up for this webinar. I have done others and always been satisfied. The more I think about land ethics and our/my place is a dynamic environment, the more confused I get but also I get more a feeling of connection and joy is the word I would have to use. It is a very deep joy in the world. Maybe the less I know I know, the more I understand. Who knows?
My friend Adam Smith just sent some pictures of our Freeman place. We are experimenting with longleaf pine restoration. To do this, we thinned all the trees to 50 basal area and then made 1/4 acre clearings in each acre. We are planting in longleaf, creating an uneven aged stand.
It would be too much to say that it is based on the Stoddard-Neel approach – we cannot do that in Virginia at this time – but that was my inspiration. We will try to create the pine grassland ecosystem, once common in Virginia.
Philosophy of Stoddard-Neel Rather than a formal silvicultural system, the SNA is as much a philosophy of how a forest ecosystem — in its entirety — should be managed and nurtured while still deriving economic benefit. Inherent in a landowner or manager’s decision to practice ecological forestry is a strong land ethic and an appreciation of the multiple values of the forest ecosystem.
Logger Kathryn-Kirk McAden did a good job, as you see in the photo. I understand that the request was unusual.
Mike Raney and the hunt club might be interested to see what they are walking across.
The Blue Plains Water Treatment Plant is one of the most advanced in the world. I am interested in biosolids and in water quality, so I went on a tour when I had the chance. In many ways it was reminiscent of the Milwaukee sewage plant that we (my cousins and I) visited last year. When I mentioned the Milwaukee facility to some of the professionals at Blue Plains, they evinced the proper respect. Milwaukee did not invent biosolids, but Milorganite was among the first and still remains one of the most successful use
I was lucky enough (well I kinda made it happen) to sit next to the woman from Blue Drop, the non-profit firm in charge of marketing biosolids form the plant. We talked about how good and useful biosolid are for building soil. Building soil. Biosolids add heft. We can sequester prodigious amounts of carbon in soil if we build soil. I told her that the only problem with biosolids in forestry is that we (at least I) am unable to get them as much as I want. I doubt she will be able to help me with my specific problem, since Brunswick County is too far away, but it is always good to talk with anybody interested.
The plant is underfunded, typical of much public infrastructure, so always looking for ways to cut costs of make money. They use methane from the biodigesters, take advantage of waste heat and they are planning to put solar panels over some of the roofs and tanks.
Selling biosolids They also think that they can make some money selling biosolids. There are cultural impediments to the sale. People are just grossed out by the thought of recycled poop. But attitudes are changing. They upgraded their ability to process biosolids and now produce class A biosolids. You can see them in my pictures. They don’t look like crap and don’t smell very much, so they are more accepted.
They also gave up using lime stabilized biosolids and instead run them through thermal hydrolysis, a two-stage process combining high-pressure boiling of sludge followed by a rapid decompression. This combined action sterilizes the sludge and makes it more biodegradable and destroys pathogens in the resulting in it exceeding the stringent requirements for land application, i.e. great biosolid.
Thermal hydrolysis You can see the thermal hydrolysis machine in my picture. It is the first of its kind in the USA. In the USA. This points to an American blind spot. This technology is well established in Europe and it is much better than previous treatments. But we Americans refuse to learn from their experience. It is a similar dynamic for CLT. Procurements often specify that successful projects must be in America. We miss a lot of good idea with our parochial outlook. Americans are leaders in many things, but not all things and good ideas do not stop at the border.
Learn from others In the early days of our republic, one of the most important duties of American diplomats was to bring back good ideas from other places. We still do this, but we have too much of a “not made here” idea. The Europeans are ahead of us in many aspects of waste treatment and ecological products. We need not reinvent. We can take the best and leave the rest and then move on. Makes sense to me.
Innovation is most often lateral thinking – the adjacent possible. We get that from using the work of others & sharing our own.
Any story that begins, “I was having a few beers …” may not seem promising, but I am going with a version of “in vino veritas” here.
So, I was having a beer while waiting for Chrissy. I don’t mind at all waiting. It is a great time to think. I was thinking about land ethics and by the second beer, my thinking became clearer.
Ethics is simple, if not easy. It means that we practice self restraint. We do not take all we can, or demand all we “deserve.” We leave room for other people, and in the case of land ethics, other things.
I cannot tell you what a land ethic means, since it is not a final code but a process. We develop land ethics in interaction with the land over time. I can share my experience – eager to share – but I cannot share the feelings and the tacit knowledge. The best of what I think I know, I cannot say: the joy of finding a grove of cypress trees I thought had not survived, the resigned sorrow of finding one of my favorite beech trees blown down in a storm, redeemed by the little ones ready to fill the gap, the feel of the ground under my feet, the honest fatigue of a good day’s work … I could go on.
The meaning is not in the things themselves but in the mixing of ourselves with them and feeling the complexity of relationships. It is what is between them and us that make meaning. All of our lives have meaning. It is the fortunate among us who find meaning in life.
I know my love of the land and the biotic communities growing, crawling and developing on it will remain forever unrequited. That in no way subtracts from my experience. When we read and learn from the thoughts of some long dead thinker, we sure do not commune with him. We get to appropriate those things for our own use, our own benefit. I am not saying we make them better, but we sure make them more appropriate to our circumstances. But I think it goes further. I believe in transcendence. I will not try to convince those who don’t. Suffice to say that I know that each of us adds threads to the great tapestry. One more thing about ethics & self restraint. It is good for us as well as ethical. I am wondering about that next beer. I can afford this and nobody will know or care if I schluck down another. In fact, the waitress will be happier. But I am an intelligent man. I can bend the arguments to my desires.
You might say that ethics is a way to balance the legitimate needs of the individual with those of the community. My decision is easy. The waitress, the restaurant and the brewers are better off if I have another beer. I will suffer the consequences and risk a headache for the good of others.
You can never win the battle against brush & brambles, but you can hold them at bay and try to establish competing system that you think are more appropriate
Open pinelands In my pinelands, I have two options of appropriate, and lots of other choices. The two appropriate ones are closed canopy, where they trees are so close together than nothing much grows on the ground and open woodland with grass forbs and some bushes. My preference is for the latter because I think it more ecologically balanced. Getting there is a fight.
Landscape painted by fire
In “nature” open pinelands are maintained by fire and this is ultimately how I want to manage mine. But fire is a dangerous tool. I am not competent to use it as much as I think I should. In the meantime, I depend on chemical and mechanical tools. I spent all of yesterday and a very long day last week cutting with my brush tool and accomplished not very much. It is physically difficult work and there is more to be done than I can do. I think I will hire someone to spray the Japanese honeysuckle. They use helicopters and can get at all those parts I cannot.
My goal is to get at an open forest, as I mentioned. My longleaf experimental patch is doing well in that respect. An interesting development is sumac.
Sumac Wrote elsewhere that sumac is nearly fireproof. It burns to the ground and comes back stronger. You can see in the first picture, we have a thicket developing. We have both shinny (winged) and staghorn sumac. The shinny are the ones making the thickets. The pines are up on top, so I don’t think they will be harmed. The sumac shades out brambles, which is good. Having patches of sumac could be good for wildlife I want to encourage, like bobwhite quail. And sumac are attractive in the fall (beautiful red) is good for bees and provides food for wildlife.What’s not to love.
Prickly pear and the rattlesnake masters My prickly pear and rattlesnake master are thriving, as you see it the next picture. Both these are native to Virginia pinelands, but I have never seen any. Chrissy got them for me and I am trying them out.
Bald cypress I also did some work cutting around the bald cypress in the marshy area long side the longleaf. My friend Eric Goodman planted them at the same time (2012) as the longleaf. The biggest are around 10 feet high, but some are only about four feet. They were sandwiched under some unthinned loblolly. When we harvested the loblolly last year, they started to get a lot more sun and are doing well, but so is the competition. I helped them out but cutting back the gum and poplar. There are maybe 30 of them. Some/most are okay. They can survive with their feet wet and most others cannot.
A prairie ecosystem with trees Next picture shows the milkweed/butterfly bush. I am trying to encourage plants like this under the pines. Next is how that goal is coming along. Last are just pretty flowers. I think they are black eyed Susan.
As a gentleman landowner, I am unaccustomed to actual work. Today was a lot of actual work in the forest.
I had some success and some not success. I cleared a couple acres of sweet gum and poplar in order to give oaks a better chance. This took two tanks of gas on my machine, i.e. a little over three hours of cutting and another hours of pilings and pulling. I think it will work.
Next I went after the gum and popular in my 2016 pine plantation. Here I ran into Japanese honeysuckle. This is a beautiful plants with a wonderful fragrance. It is also a horrible invasive. It can overwhelm, cover and kill small trees.My machine did not work well against them – too many stems, too close the ground and the vines move when you cut at them. I worked hard but accomplished little of value.
The only viable option is chemical warfare. I am going to have to spray them or maybe get someone to do it for me with a helicopter. I have around 30 acres of this 2016 pine. Not all is inundated with honeysuckle, but a lot of it is. I am not sure I can take it all on with my backpack sprayer. Actually, I am sure that I cannot. I will need to call in air support. Also checked out the burning. The winter burn is looking good. I don’t think we lost any pines. We will need to burn a couple more times to establish a nice grass and forbs layer. The burn from May of last year killed a couple dozen trees. It got too hot. I was very depressed when I saw it, but now with the passage of time it has become a kind of science project. I planted some longleaf under the dead trees and I am using this as one of my oak regeneration experiments.
Biochar is one of the parts of the science experiment. I have long been interested in “terra preta” in the Amazon. This is anthropogenic soil created by the natives by mixing charcoal with soil. It holds water better and produces a lot more plant life. We created some terra preta by accident. When the fire looked like it might escape, DoF pushed a line and trapped lots of wood in with dirt. It burned slowly and turned to charcoal and dirt, i.e. biochar. I will watch how it does.
My first picture shows the honeysuckle. Next shows the dead trees from the May burning, follow by the biochar heap. Picture # 4 shows the winter fire result – live trees and quick recovery. Maybe too quick. It did not burn enough. Last is some of my oak preference. I knocked down the gum, red maple, popular and sycamore anywhere near an oak. All the time I was working out there today, I was thinking of the Aldo Leopold essay “Axe in Hand.” – “When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver; he could plant a tree. And when the axe was invented, he became a taker; he could chop it down. Whoever owns land has thus assumed, whether he knows it or not, the divine functions of creating and destroying plants.”
Feeling overwhelmed today. Visiting the farms. So much to do. I have an idea what I want, but there is so much land and so little me.
I know this happens to me every spring and I will get over it very soon. But just now I am down. I also picked off two ticks. Generally my Repel works to keep those little nasty things off, but it seems a season of numerous ticks. Maybe all the rain.
Some of my wildflower/pollinator flowers are coming up. My plan was/is to plant patches in hopes they will spread. The seeds are very expensive and I could not cover all the territory even if seeds were free. Give it a month.
I am staying down south tonight. Tomorrow I will use my power tool to clear around some white oaks, so that I can help with oak regeneration on the Brodnax place. I identified the places last time and now I have to do the work. I dis like the power tool because it makes so much noise, but it sure is faster. I can clean off several acres with the tool. With my hand tools I can maybe do 10%.
My first picture is one of my “wildflower nodes”. I don’t know what flowers those are, but the are nice. I planted the seeds in handfuls of dirt. It seems to have worked. I have lots of those pods around. Hope they proliferate. Next shows the problem with longleaf. One is a longleaf in the grass stage. The other is actually grass. It is hard to tell the difference visually. If you touch them, they feel very different, but it is hard to find your new longleaf. Picture #4 are the longleaf now in going into their 7th year. The new growth is nice. Last is my prickly pear and rattlesnake master. They are growing.
Not everybody makes the distinction between conservation & preservation, but some do and whole books have been written on it, usually discussing the differences between Gifford Pinchot and John Muir.
I won’t tell that story here. Suffice it to say that despite sometimes serious ideological disputes, conservationists and preservationists overlap in their big goals, and in many, in most cases a conservationist and a preservationist behave in very similar ways. Conservation is the one with the Teddy Roosevelt tradition, and I would argue Aldo Leopold. Conservationists indeed aim to preserve nature, but also recognize the special role humans have played will always play as long as humans are on earth.
Land empty of people is sad and incomplete
– A land full of people who overreach and destroy nature is a horror. A land empty of people is sad and incomplete. Walking gently on the earth is essential, but that implies humans are indeed walking on the earth. Harmony, not exclusion, is the valuable and achievable goal. Humans living in harmony with nature is joyful and helps us find meaning in life.
People who use the land and the biotic communities can be great stewards of nature. Hunters are often great conservationists, so are foresters and loggers. These guys are rarely welcome at a meeting of “true” preservationists. Preservationists count among their ranks deep environmentalists, who sometimes believe that earth would be better off w/o humans, and some animal rights activists, who sometimes put the “rights” of the beasts above the needs of humans.
You will note that I have been modifying with “some” or “many” when talking about adherents to the two strains of environmentalism. The debate is significant, but there is no dogma as you might have in a religion. You can get some of the taste of the differences in E.O. Wilson’s “Half Earth.” My interpretation is included at this link. Wilson is in the preservation camp, but he is not a deep environmentalist.
Deep environmentalism has all the attractions of a religion. Its strongest acolytes resemble puritans in many ways, but there is no redemption in their philosophy for them or for humanity. Of course, this is an extreme view held by fringe people, but the pure preservationist ideal infects many in the environmental movement & even more casual adherents often see preservation as the true religion, even if they cannot achieve it.
Ecological footprints
A preservationist mind-set is on display in the common concept of “ecological footprints.” It is often formulated as the damage you do, and the best you can hope for is to limit the damage. It is a narrative of loss or even original sin. As with medieval concepts of sin, it is a game you are bound to lose. Conservationists can accept the footprint idea, but they recognize that the footprint can be positive. We can take steps that improve at least parts of the natural environment.
Humans in nature, nature in humans
Some places are so unique that we should do our best to preserve them in “natural” state that we found them. Some places must be used very intensively leaving little room for nature. In most places, nature and humanity can exist together, often in symbiotic ways. In these places we can aspire to regeneration.
I am agnostic about restoring nature and I do not believe in natural intelligent design. There is no way that it “should” be. There is no pristine natural state to be recovered. That means that there is nothing humans can do that will “destroy” nature because “nature” is a human concept, beyond our capacity to destroy. In the billions of years of earth history before human consciousness developed, plants and animals lived, reproduced, evolved and died w/o notice or consequence. When MOST of the world’s species died out at the end of the Paleozoic era, it didn’t make a bit of difference to nature. The disappearance of the dinosaurs was mourned by nobody until the modern kids found out about the great extinction, shed a few childish tears and called it a tragedy.
I was happy to read in the Nature Conservancy Magazine. In an article entitled, “Beyond Man vs. Nature”, the Conservancy’s chief scientist explained that biodiversity for itself and/or simple preservation should not be top goals. “The ultimate goal,” he said, “is better management of nature for human benefit.”
Nothing untouched
Of course, there are places we choose to preserve mostly untouched – mostly. I have visited the Grand Canyon five times. Each time I find more to love and each time the Grand Canyon fills me with wonder & awe. We should preserve awesome places like the Grand Canyon for ourselves & future generations. Let me modify that. We should conserve places like this. The Grand Canyon that so struck awe into my soul was not natural. I enjoyed the Canyon by walking to the bottom and back up on trails carved by human hands. I drove up there on roads build by men and machines. W/o those human improvements, the Canyon would be as inaccessible to me as the mountains of the moon and as meaningless as some great canyon that might exist on Venus or Mars. The universe really is a big place and we are small. It sounds arrogant to say so, but it is humanity that makes this wonder of nature a wonder at all.
We are humans. We can pretend to take the point of view of animals, plants or even geographical features. We can imagine seeing through the “eye of the tiger” or “thinking like a mountain.” This is useful. It helps us understand, but for us it is an exercise. We cannot hear, speak or feel for plants, animals or natural systems. It is literally like talking to a rock and expecting an answer. We can understand the world only with our human intelligence and perceptions, since we have never read or heard anything understood or explained by any but humans.
If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?
What gives nature meaning and what allows us to get meaning from nature is the interaction of us with it. An old epistemological conundrum asks, “If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?” It is an insoluble problem unless you add detail. If you are talking about the waves that our human ears interpret as sound, a tree falling in the woods certainly does this. But a sound also requires interpretation. If nobody is there to hear it, all we have is physical phenomenon.
My guess is that preservationists would generally say it makes a sound, even if no human hears it. A conservationist like me might be a little more human-centrist and say that it falls silently. Add a time component and it becomes even more interesting. Sound travels at 331.2 metres per second – fast, but not instantaneous. It takes almost five seconds for sound to travel a mile. If you are a mile away from a tree when it falls in the woods, WHEN does it make a sound? For me, sixty million years of dinosaur history had no meaning until it was discovered by human consciousness.
Don’t mimic nature; work to understand & use natural principles
You cannot step twice into the same forest. The forest you fondly remember from childhood is gone, even if you can go to the same place and see trees and flowers that look just like you remember them. I have written on many occasions that sustainable and natural are overlapping contexts, but they are not the same and that sustainable, in both natural and human influenced system doesn’t mean something that last forever. Nothing lasts forever. Sustainable just means a system that persists a long time adapting continually to continuous change. There are ecosystems that would be recognizable 5000 or 10,000 years ago, but none that have been unchanged during all that time. Most of the relationships among members of the biotic community are much younger. A good conservation strategy strives for a healthy human population interacting with a healthy environment. We don’t have to keep our human hands off, in fact, while we should work and interact with natural processes, we probably should not leave very much untouched. Human interaction does not necessarily profane nature; the interaction – done right, done thoughtfully & managed adaptively – ennobles both. We need to understand and use natural principles, but we cannot and should not just mimic nature.
We can’t solve environmental problems without addressing human problems All human endeavors need to satisfy the triple bottom line. They must be sustainable economically (profit), ecologically (planet) and good for the community (people). Sometimes there are trade-offs between them, but we must succeed in all three to call it a success.
Conservation is a higher order activity compared with mere preservation, which is may be an abdication of responsibility in the guise of wisdom. We can’t solve environmental problems without addressing human problems.
A sustainable environment demands that we apply intelligence, innovation and constant learning to ecological factors to sustain systems that works for humans and the beasts. We humans live in this world and ever since we evolved into humans we have altered the environment. If/when there is a world w/o us, it really doesn’t matter anymore. So long as we are here, however, it is our job – our responsibility – to act in the world and strive to do the right things and do things right.
Went to the ribbon cutting ceremony at Forest History Society. I was elected a board member last year. This is my first full board meeting.
The Forest History Society has archives and information about forests & the forestry industry. They also produce a general interest magazine and one on environmental history.
We are in North Carolina for a meeting of the Forest History Society. I became a board member last year. It combines love of forests with love of history, so it hits both of my passions. Not sure how much value I add to the Society, but if they want me and am willing to hang around as long as they will let me.
Pictures are from Brixx Pizza near our hotel, plus a few left over from yesterday’s visit to our farms. The first is just a picture of the road on our Brodnax place. It shows the SMZ on the right, with a pine plantation (planted 2016) on the left and a more mature pine stand in the background. Next is a picture of the new bridge on Genito Creek. They are selling 37 acres across the creek from my Diamond Grove place. I went to look at it, but decided not to try to buy it. It is mostly wet and natural regen in sweet gum, poplar and sycamore. I asked myself why I wanted it and could not answer so I said no. Last picture is the CCC memorial at FDR memorial. I took about a month ago. CCC is interesting for me.
As FDR said, more important than the material gains were the spiritual and moral benefits from such work. Politicians do not talk like that anymore. More’s the pity.
One of the things we lobbied Congress about yesterday was landscape initiatives like the White Oak Initiative. I told them that it was important and good for landowners to do. I figured I should take my own advice, so I looked around my land today and found lots of white oaks. I can encourage them simply by clearing out some of the sweet gum and poplar.
White oaks are still common in Virginia, but the problem is age. There are lots of old growth trees, but not that many successful next generations. Oaks needs disturbance. They like to grow in patches with decent soil and dappled shade. Fortunately, giving them these conditions is not rocket science. All you need is a few big oaks for acorns and some sunlight. I can do that.
I also found that the recent fire did good things for the little oaks. I think I can help grow those white oaks for the next generation of bourbon drinkers. I have been extolling the virtues of bourbon and white oak to anybody who wants to listen, and even many who do not. Most of bourbon’s flavor and all of its color comes from white oak. A drink of bourbon is to task 50 years of forest.
Checked out the burning on the Brodnax place. We burned part exactly a year ago and the other part a few months ago, i.e. a growing season burn and a winter one. The growing season burn got a little too hot a killed a couple dozen trees. There are lots of sweet gum growing under those now. The winter burn is still developing. There was a lot of oak regen. It did not seem to kill many hardwoods and looks like none of the pines. There are a lot of ferns, however. First picture is the winter burn. Next two are the summer burn, #3 showing the dead trees. Picture #4 shows some of the firms on the winter burn and finally is oak rege on the winter burn.
