We are the original “green deal.” The American Tree Farm System has been conserving forest land in the USA since 1941 & I think we have done a good job.
The ATFS logo includes the four things our land produces: wood, water, wildlife & recreation. We know we need to make a profit on our land, else we are not doing our duty as part of the productive economy. But profit is not the only or even the primary motivation for holding land.
Clean water is a product of forest land. Our forests filter rain water and the natural processes of a forest actually clean water flowing over it. A well managed forest produces wildlife habitat. That is a big part of my forest goals. And forest are undeniably beautiful places.
My often repeated slogan is that trees are more than wood and forests are more than trees. We need look at the total ecosystem and the total ecosystem includes more than what we would usually call nature.
The human ecology is also part of our system. If our products go into long lasting buildings, they continue to hold the carbon they absorbed and create a habitat for humans. Lately, I have been thinking of it in terms of the triple bottom line. We need a money profit, a community/cultural profit and an ecological profit. Failing any of these is a general failure. Succeeding in all this is the success we seek.
My pictures are from around Louisville. The Ohio River is very high.
Forestry is the 3rd largest industry in Virginia (Agriculture is #1 followed by tourism). Brunswick County is Virginia’s leading timber producer and has been for the last decade. My forest lands are in Brunswick County, so I was delighted to go to the Brunswick County Agriculture and Timber Conference on February 20.
Brunswick County depends on agriculture & forestry Brunswick County officials were there to show their appreciation and concern for the County’s biggest industries. They seemed sincerely interested in how to make the place more forestry-friendly. Everything could be better, but Brunswick is already a pretty good place for forestry. That is why I chose to buy land there. Much of that is not easily within the immediate control of local officials, however.
Human ecology Favorable human and business ecology are the main reasons Brunswick is good for forestry. An ecological paradigm applies to human relations. We have enough loggers, mills nearby, decent infrastructure for moving timber and a supportive local culture, i.e. people are comfortable with the odd things that we do to manage and harvest trees. There are challenge with all these things that I will address later, but compared to most other places, we are doing well.
Forestry a big deal for Virginia Bettina Ring, Virginia Secretary of Forestry and Agriculture, was the keynote speaker. Ms. Ring was Virginia State Forester before becoming Secretary and was involved with Tree Farm and sustainable forestry before that. She reiterated that agriculture & forestry are Virginia’s biggest industry. Together they produce $91 billion of annual value for the Commonwealth and directly support 450,000 jobs, and many more indirectly. Forestry and agriculture also contribute mightily to tourism, our second biggest industry. Besides contributing to natural beauty, I was interested in some of the ways Virginians are using the production of the earth. We have 300+ wineries and cideries, 250+ brewers & 70+ makers of spirits, all of these attract tourist and support tourism. Who doesn’t want to have a nice drink in a beautiful setting?
We do have the perpetual challenge of land transfer. Much of the Commonwealth’s land is held by old people like me. In fact, I am a little on the young side. We will not live forever and what happens to the land when we shuffle off this mortal coil? We must recruit a new generation of active landowners who want to keep their land in trees or crops. I am concerned when I see the fingers of the cities reaching into rural land but selling often makes sense to landowners. I have no plans to sell my land, ever. I hope my kids learn to love the forests, but who can say? On the plus side, this challenge is perpetual, as I note above. Forest landowners are usually older than average, for the simple reason that you must be old enough to inherit land or to have saved enough to buy it. I have owned my land for almost fifteen years, and I was 50 when I got it, already not a young man. Virginia has a special designation of “Century Forest,” a forest that has been in the same family for at least 100 years. My great grandchildren could apply for this in 2105, but there is a lot that can happen between now & then.
The triple bottom line Finally, she got into the triple bottom line, although she did not use that term. For a project to be truly sustainable it must be worthy from the ecological, economic and social/cultural perspectives. If it fails on any of these factors, it fails generally. There is a challenge in meeting all three, since there are inevitably tradeoffs. But it is a challenge that can be met and is being met in most of Virginia forestry.
When thinking about the triple bottom line, I do not like the idea of compromise among the factors. Compromise implies a zero-sum game, where one loses to the extent that the other wins. I believe in synergies. Applying intelligence and accumulated practical wisdom, we can do better in all the factors, where one does not take away from others but rather each grows with the other.
Virginia ports and railroads Daniel LeGrande, talked about Virginia ports. He explained something I wondered about, but never really followed. How is it that Virginia has a “port” at Front Royal, hundreds of miles from the sea and not on a navigable river. Virginia’s inland port is a hub for rail and roads. Virginia’s ports at Hampton Roads is the third largest and deepest on the East Coast and is well served by rail and road. Ships can also go up the river as far as Richmond. Agriculture and forestry serve this by filling empty containers going out. All this logistics is fascinating for me, but well above my competence. I am glad somebody got it figured out.
Forestry panel We broke into separate forestry and agriculture groups. The forestry group featured Virginia’s State Forester Rob Farrell, as well as local forestry business leaders including Owen Strickler, Thomas Evelyn, Frank Meyers & Vance Wright. It was a very congenial group, guys who have known each other for many years and know their business.
More wood than ever in Virginia Rob started off with good new and bad news about forestry in the Commonwealth. We are harvesting more wood in Virginia than ever, but we are growing those trees on fewer acres and more wood is growing each year than is being harvested. Why is that good and bad news? Harvests are good. That more wood is coming off fewer acres may be good, but it probably means that we are growing more intensively. That is good, right? Not sure. I know this is only my opinion and it is based on the luxury I have of an income not only from forestry, but I like a little LESS efficiency. My farms are a little lazy. The trees are too far apart for maximum production, but they are the right spacing for wildlife, for example. I am not sure the longleaf experiment ever will pay off. Intensive loblolly would be better. I cannot scoff at better results, however. Well … I can but I recognize that mine is a curmudgeon opinion. I am not offended knowing that many people would think I was just nuts.
The more wood factor is more clearly economic. Prices for timber are low and the fact that more wood is growing every year than is being harvested implies that they will not improve. On the other hand, it does show that we have a practically limitless supply of southern pine. No worries about a wood famine for at least a generation.
Virginia forestry is green, good and growing Unambiguous good news is that Virginia forestry is doing a great job of protecting the environment. Department of Forestry inspects every harvest and they do a sample for deeper study. In this years sample 95% of the sampled met 100% of their Best Management Goals (BMP), and 100% of the samples found no significant sediment leaving the tract. You cannot do better than perfect. Virginia’s BMPs are more stringent than those imposed by EPA.
My experience fits with what the State Forester told us. In May of 2018, I went along for tree farm inspections on 20 randomly selected Virginia Tree Farms. The inspector found zero violations of standards of sustainability. We harvested on Freeman this year. I am very particular about how it is done. I inspected the harvest in every way I could. I found a few things I did not like, but absolutely nothing that I could reasonably complain about. The loggers left the site clean and beautiful. The only things I did not like was that the ground was compressed where they had assembled the logs. This was unavoidable. I can, and I am addressing this by making them into pollinator habitat.
Solar farms growing but not green Thomas Evelyn spoke about rural economic development in New Kent County. The thing I took away from his presentation was the danger of solar farms destroying forest ecosystems. I have noticed these monstrosities popping up like a rash in Virginia and the Carolinas.
The following is what I was inspired to think about, but as I read it, I see that it is a bit of a rand and I will not saddle Mr. Evelyn with it.
IF you think that using energy from solar farms is “green” you are badly mistaken. Solar power from solar farms is obscenely destructive. Solar farms are more like strip mining than they are like regenerative. They tear town existing forests and cover the land with solar arrays. Nothing grows there. The soil underneath erodes. The land underneath dies. And then consider the aftermath. You have to dispose of these solar panels when they are done. Solar panels require lots of toxic materials to make and disposing of them creates a toxic waste situation.
The Commonwealth of Virginia is worried about this. Lawmakers want to require solar purveyors to come up with a plan to dispose of the panels when they are done and restore the soils, the flora and fauna – just as they would have to do with strip mining. Virginia has an estimated 200,000 acres of land easily suitable for solar farms. One of my worst nightmares is that solar is put on these acres.
I have received unsolicited offers to lease my land to solar firms. I tear them to pieces & throw them away. There is no way I would EVER do this to my living forests. I would consider it immoral to ruin the environment like this. I love my land too much. Yesterday’s solution is often today’s problem, and solar farms are going to to be a big problem, maybe not today but soon. The irony is that we are paying taxpayer money to finance and subsidize this future ecological disaster.
Solar energy can be, often is, good. Like most things, however, it depends on where, when, how and how much. The race to appear green is sometimes harmful to being green. Don’t fall for that green electricity canard. If you demand 100% renewable energy currently, YOU are part of the problem, not the solution.
Questions about Virginia forestry Frank Meyers gave a great talk. (I have a semi-disclaimer here. Frank introduced me to the guy who sold me the land in Brodnax. I have been pleased with the purchase and grateful to Frank for the opportunity.) He did not answer so many questions, but he posed lot to think about. Some of the things I think that I have thought about, but I am not sure. Frank worried about merging of mills. We have a lot of mills in the near Brunswick, but maybe not the competition that will give landowners the best prices. Frank praised the reforestation tax. Loggers pay it and the Commonwealth matches it. The proceeds go into reforestation of pine. Frank wonders if we may not have done too good a job. Maybe we need to go into hardwoods. We worried about a shortage of pine. Maybe not.
Frank also was concerned about solar farms. He mentioned them in Fluvanna County. Solar farms do NOT respect stream management zones or BMPs. The rain that falls on solar farms washes sediment into streams. Will forest owners need to pick up the slack? Will we get blamed for the silting of streams and estuaries from the sediment of those solar farms?
What about Timber Investment Management Organizations (TIMOs are like REITS but for timber land). TIMOs own or control a lot of forests land these days. Their goals are investment more than forestry. What if they find better returns for their shareholders? Finally, Frank talked about something I never even thought about. Evidently loggers have to pay taxes on their equipment, while farm equipment is exempt. This is making it hard for loggers. They have a fixed tax unrelated to their income.
Vance Wright pointed out that forestry is Virginia’s first green industry. He also took a swipe at the solar farms. He said that there are just two ways that we humans can get anything. We can dig it out of the ground, or we can grow it from the earth. Forestry grows from the earth. Solar panels are made from materials dug from the ground. Make your own judgement.
Owen Strickler said that we need another pine saw mill east of I-95. There is lots of supply. Virginia is exporting raw logs. This is okay, but it is better to add value with Virginia jobs. He made an interesting point that just had never occurred to me. He talked about how a pine saw mill could ease a shortage of hardwood logs. Some of the best oak and popular comes as a collateral harvest to mature pines.
What is happening in the state legislature After the panel and after lunch we had a few presentations. The one I recall best was by lobbyist Ben Row. He talked about several of the bills in the legislature. Two of special interest, IMO. One related to timber theft. Many landowners sell timber only once in a lifetime. They are not sophisticated about the sales and can get ripped off. One scam is for a crooked logger to sign a contract paying 50% of up front and the other 50% when the job is done. Sounds fair, but what the crooks do is pay the 50% and then harvest up to 90%. Then they stop. They never finish the job and so never pay the rest of the bill. Another bill related to those hated solar farms. It would allow localities to require owners to present a plan to decommission the solar farm when it is finished. The danger is that solar owners will leave the mess of panels, denuded soils and toxic waste.
I greatly enjoyed the conference. I attend lots of such events. Usually they are good, but this one was so very well targeted to my local issues. I hope they do it again and remember to invite me back.
People who know me know why we burn and what we are doing, but maybe some people who saw the post about our Brodnax burn don’t know me, so let me explain. Fire is an important factor in southern pine ecology. Too often, we have excluded fire with negative effects. We are burning on our lands in Virginia to restore the balance. It will encourage the growth of understory plants, including habitat for pollinators and wildlife like quail and deer.
We have also thinned our forest, so that the trees are spaced widely enough to allow sunlight to hit the forest floor to allow that growth mentioned above.
You have seen pine forests that are so thick that almost nothing grows on the ground under the trees. This is an efficient way to grow pulp and timber, but produces a mono-culture that does not share the environment.This is not what we prefer.
Trees are more than just wood and a forest is more than just trees. A more complex and complete ecology is a thing of sublime beauty, that has value beyond its “use” to us. On our Freeman unit, we have thinned about 80 acres of 22-year-old loblolly to 50 basal area (trees are far apart). We are establishing pollinator habitat and restoring longleaf pine. Longleaf pine ecology is the most diverse in non-tropical North America. Of course that ecology includes more than just the trees, as discussed above. We also planted some bald cypress in the damp rills.
Our Diamond Grove unit is 178 acres, of which 110 acres are in loblolly pine planted in 2003. The balance is stream management zones, mostly hardwood – a lot of beech,maples & tulip trees. We will thin the pines in 2020. I think will go with 80 basal area, not so thin, but still with some light hitting the ground. I will clear 5 acres near Genito Creek and plant that with bald cypress.
This fire is on our Brodnax property. We are patch burning 45 acres: 15 +/- acres each year in rotation. This provides diverse wildlife habitat.
First picture shows the Brodnax burned section. The loblolly there are about 30 years old. Next is thinned Freeman. Those trees are 22 years old. We will burn in December or early next year. We are planting openings with longleaf. Picture #3 shows newly planted lobolly. There were planted in 2016. They are genetically better trees and have grown very fast. Last two are videos from Freeman. It is not so much what they show but the sounds of the peepers in the first and the running water in the second.
Great fire today. Seems the perfect fire. The rule is that black (char) is good. White (ash) is okay. Red (burned to the clay) is bad. My inspections found all black. And when I kicked under the duff, I found that the dirt under was still moist in most places. We had moderate winds &moderate temperatures, but the big factor was that we had damp and cool soil and dry grass and brush. Perfect. Of course, I will know that for sure only when I see what grows in the spring.
Adam Smith from DoF did the planning and honchoed the operation. I got the easy assignment of laying the fire lines along the roads, while the DoF guys did strips inside the forest. Alex’s friend Colin Michał came down and got to lay a fire line along the stream.
Pictures show Adam, Colin and me. Others are various fire photos.
Wild hogs are the worst Wild pigs are the worst, or certainly among the worst invasive species. They can destroy a corn field in one night. They are an especially savage enemies of longleaf pine and are a big factor in its decline in Virginia. Longleaf pine roots are rich in starch. In colonial times, “free range” or feral pigs rooted up and killed young longleaf.
Wild pigs are not present in most of Virginia, but they are serious problems where they are found and in other states. The best way, the only effective way, to deal with wild pigs is to exterminate them. Hunting does not control their numbers. They breed rapidly and you need to kill 70% of the population every year to keep populations under control. The pig is one of our most efficient ways to produce protein and this same factor makes them efficient pests.
Jeffrey Rumbaugh, USDA-APHIS, talked about feral pig management. The bottom line is that any are too many. A challenge is that some people like to hunt them and so introduce them, and they soon get out of hand. That is why we do not want to encourage a hunting culture to develop around them. As it is now, wild pigs are nuisance animals and you can trap or shoot them anytime you see fit. But that is easier said than done. They are cunning animals. The methods and traps that work for a while will not work all the time. Where there is enough open area, they can be shot from helicopters, otherwise it is much harder.
Herbicides safer than ever Charlie Smyth, Nutrien Solutions talked about herbicides. Herbicides are getting much more precise and you need to use a lot less. At one time, they dusted gallons of the stuff per acre. Now it is down to a few ounces. I dislike using herbicides on my land, but sometimes the alternatives are even less attractive or impossible. Some invasive species just cannot be controlled w/o herbicides. Herbicides may also be the way to help a beneficial ecology to establish or reestablish. An established ecology may then require little or no use of herbicides to maintain it, and that is a good goal for forestry. It is NOT that herbicides are not safe if properly used. One of the purposes of the forest health conference is to certify pesticide and herbicide users. There is currently a controversy around glyphosate, one of the world’s most widely used herbicides. No evidence is found to think it is harmful. The Canadians recently did a meta study and determined – “No pesticide regulatory authority in the world currently considers glyphosate to be a cancer risk to humans at the levels at which humans are currently exposed. We continue to monitor for new information related to glyphosate, including regulatory actions from other governments, and will take appropriate action if risks of concern to human health or the environment are identified.”
The once and future king of eastern American forests – GMOs give hope Good news for a future most of us will not live to see is the return of the American chestnut. Nobody (almost nobody) alive today remembers a healthy chestnut forest in its native range, but the records and photographs indicate that it was magnificent. The American chestnut was a keystone species in forests in North America. Its wood provided timber for building our young nation. Its nuts fed wildlife livestock and humans from Canada to Florida. All this ended in just a few decades when an Asian blight swept through our American forests. The blight probably arrived sometime in the last 19th Century, but it was first documented at the Bronx Zoo in 1904.
The blight releases a toxin that kills ends up girdling the tree and killing it. After all the chestnuts are killed, the blight persists in introduced chestnuts and in some oak species. It does not kill these trees, however. But that means the blight is always present, ready to attack new chestnuts trees. No American chestnuts have shown any immunity to the blight. Asia chestnuts are not much harmed by it, and there attempts to cross American and Asian chestnuts has been ongoing for nearly a century. The problem is that they are similar species but not the same. The American chestnut is taller, straighter and just better. Hybrids have been unable to survive well in the wild and they are not the same. Transgenic research may help solve this problem. The capacity to live with the toxin produced by the blight is common in nature. It is possible – and has been done – to transfer the gene from another plant to chestnuts. These trees are 100% American chestnut save for the addition of this one factor.
GMOs are heavily regulated, and USDA, FDA and EPA all have a piece of this. The transgenic chestnuts are currently passing USDA tests. So far, no differences between the improved chestnuts and other varieties have been found. They have tested the mycorrhizal environment, leaf litter, nuts, flower and nutrient intake, among other things. They have looked for effects on animals like frogs and bees and found nothing. This IS an American chestnut tree. The difference is that it is not killed by the blight.
It is important to note that it is not killed by the blight AND it also does not kill the blight. The gene affect the danger of the toxin produced by the blight, makes it harmless to the tree. This is important because it will not set off the adaptive arms race, i.e. it will not cause the blight to develop resistance to the cure. If the blight could articulate a goal, it is not to kill trees, but to survive. That it still does.
USDA tests will be done in about 18 months. FDA may take another year. It is unknown how long EPA will take to approve. There is even some doubt that EPA should be involved. They regulate pesticides and herbicides. This genetic improvement does not kill anything. The next steps will not be to plant trees, but to distribute pollen. Scientists want to use the resistant pollen to pollinate trees that came up from root sprouts or were planted by concerned landowners or other scientists. The idea is to make sure there is a lot of genetic diversity. The blight will kill many of the offspring of these crosses, but those that inherit the immunity will survive along with the genetic diversity present in their native home populations. The chestnut range goes from Canada to Florida. There are a lot of different environments in that large area and lots of local adaptations that are likely useful to keep in the gene pool.
So, lots of good news about chestnut trees, with the caveat that they will not become a major forest tree again for 50-100 years. Those of us alive in 2119 can brag that we were present at the creation. We are likely to see American chestnut trees in gardens and maybe along street with the next decade. There are lots of “Chestnut Streets” in American towns. It will be nice if they can have the real things shading the eponymous streets.
Beautiful dark green hemlock groves: we may not soon see their like again A very sad loss is the beautiful dark green hemlocks that used to shade coves & mountain streams. I still recall my first hike to Old Rag Mountain. The hike started in a hemlock grove. Hemlock groves were dense and so quiet and dark. It was an almost spiritual experience walking among them. They are all gone now, killed by the hemlock wholly adelgid, that showed up from Asia around 1924 and it is eating its way through hemlocks in eastern North America. Scientists think that extreme cold kills them, which may be the good news from Wisconsin and Minnesota. No such salvation in Virginia or the Carolinas. We have been fighting back with chemical, biological and silvicultural tools, but success is limited. Chemicals work just fine, but they are too expensive to be applied at the landscape level. Scientists have had some limited success with biological controls, but no great breakthroughs.
Genetics might be the best way to go. Transgenic sciences are developing rapidly, and it may soon be possible to enhance hemlocks with using the new science. The adelgid infests hemlocks in its native China but does not kill healthy trees. Western hemlock species seem also to have resistance to the bugs. Our eastern species (eastern and Carolina hemlock) might could be equipped. The usual caveat is the time it takes to grow trees. Eastern hemlocks are not a key forest industry tree, which means that it, unfortunately, may get less attention than a species more commercially valuable. It is, however, extremely valuable as part of forest ecology. It grows in very shady places and has a major role in keeping streams cold, which affects fish populations.
We had a special edition talk about the new disease affecting beech trees around Lake Eire. This is very frightening. They still do not know the cause.
In praise of “non-essential” government employees Coming so close to the end of the shutdown, I am reminded of all the good work that Federal workers do. It is work that is low profile. If they stop working, we do not immediately notice. We might not notice at all that they are gone, but we would notice that our forests were less healthy, that our water was not as clean and that we just were confusingly lost.
It is always a little depressing to attend these forest health conferences, with the solace that lots of smart people are working to protect our trees.
Many of the scientists that presented their research at the conference were Federal employees and everybody depended on Federal programs in some way. Could we get along w/o their work? Yeah, but our world would be a lot worse.
Anyway, before I go into the insights I took away from the first day of the Virginia Association of Forest Health Professionals 27th Annual Conference, I want to say thanks to all those “non-essential” government employees who do the essential work of keeping our forests safe and defending our country from pathogens and pests, or at least giving us the science to fight back.
The agenda is attached, and you can see the biographies of the speakers. I am not going to make a full report but rather talk about my own takeaways.
Spotted lanternfly, the current bad bug Eric Day talked about our latest big threat, the spotted lanternfly. If we can control this pest, it will become not important. If it gets away, it will cost us billions of dollars. The spotted lanternfly is very fond of another pest from China – the ailanthus or tree of heaven. Mr. Day said that one way to control the fly would be to control the tree of heaven. He meant it ironically. We have been fighting the tree of heaven for more than 100 years. I have been going at it in my own corner of the forest going on fifteen years. The best we can do is fight it, knowing we will never win. Tina MacIntyre, Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services also talked about the fly. She emphasized the need for people who spend a lot of time in the woods to be vigilant. If you see something that looks like a lanternfly, get a sample to share with the extension and then kill as many as you can. These bugs have no place in the Old Dominion. Kill them first and ask questions after.
Remember the birds, bees and butterflies I listened carefully to Anand Persad, Ph.D., Davey Institute, talking about pollinator habitat because I am working on pollinator habitat on my land. I am looking forward to March to plant more varieties of wildflowers. Most of what he said, I kind of knew already, but it was good to hear it again. You need a variety of plants that flower at different times, since pollinators need to eat all season long. One thing I just had not thought about was the need for tree flowers. Deciduous trees flower, although most forest trees are not showy. They flower earlier in the season, before the wildflowers even emerge. This tree pollen provides early food for pollinators, especially bumble bees. Bumble bees also need nesting places, often in fallen logs. An ecosystem is complex.
Early warning system Most of the nasty pests that show up in America come from Asia. The big and obvious reason is that trade with Asia is so robust. There are lots of opportunities for the bugs to hitch a ride. Less easily seen but just as obvious when you look is that East Asia has many similar ecosystems. The forests there are similar to ours and their pests can easily adapt to our tree species. Back in Asia, many of these bugs are endemic, but not big problems. The ecosystems have developed balance and defense. When a foreign bug shows up in America, it does not bring along the full panoply of predators and counter measures. North American pests, BTW, can have the same disruptive effect in Chinese forests.
Dave Coyle, Ph.D., Clemson University talked about the above and suggested that we need for an early warning system. Take the example of the emerald ash borer, that is spreading across our ash forests like a deadly wave. Back home in China, it does not generally kill healthy ash trees. They have developed defenses. But a while back, the Chinese were reforesting their hills. Among the trees they chose for this were American imports – green and white ash. At first, they did wonderfully in their new environment, having left many of their old pests behind. But then the emerald ash borer found them.
The Chinese noticed this. They studied it and wrote about it. They even wrote about it in English, the international language of science, but nobody paid much attention inside or outside China. In retrospect, we could have seen this coming. What we could have done about it is another story, but it need not have been such a surprise.
Prevention is always better than cure, but it is hard to do. A pest now destroying laurel and bay trees throughout the South is a vascular fungus transmitted by the invasive redbay ambrosia beetle. This beetle is smaller than a sprinkle on a donut. Genetic testing indicates that ALL the beetles that have killed 500 million trees in the last decade originated from ONE bug that hitches a ride from China, probably to the Port of Savanna. These bugs can reproduce asexually, so one is all it takes. It is a tall task to keep out all these things. This bug is small enough to fit through a spaghetti strainer, and it takes only one.
Those of us who grow pines in Virginia are not overly fond of sweetgum that overrun our piney woods. Nevertheless, we can appreciate their place in the ecosystem. The Chinese like sweetgum for their nice form and beautiful fall colors, so there are lots in China. But they are now being attacked by a bug called the sweetgum inscriber. If this gets to America, it will devastate our forests. We should take the warning.
… And you need fire in pine ecosystems Adam Coates, Ph.D., Virginia Tech, talked out the value of fire in the ecosystem. He was responding to studies that showed that wildfire destroys forest soils. These studies are true but off target. The hot and destructive wildfires destroy forest soils. Prescribed fires and the formerly common light fires do not. I have written about fire so often, that I will not go more here, except to note that Mr. Coates talked about a couple places I want to go in South Carolina: the Santee experimental forest near Cordesville and the Tom Yawkey forest near Georgetown, SC.
Asian longhorn beetles, dangerous but big and stupid The Asian longhorn beetle has the capacity to be one of the biggest forest pest in the history of forest pests. It can kill almost everything in its way. Fortunately, after it is detected it can be controlled and eradicated. Eternal vigilance is the price of this, explained Joe Boggs, Ohio State University. By the time they are discovered, they usually have been there for a while, but they are not very mobile; they can fly but usually prefer not to and they are big. The infestations can be traced to single introductions from Asia and then their spread. They tend to move where people move them. Don’t move firewood.
Pine beetles, bad but manageable Dave Coyle came back to talk about the southern pine beetle. This bug was the plague of southern pine forests, but it now mostly under control in the south. There are lots of possible reasons, none of which tell the whole story. The biggest factor is management. Pine beetles depend on over thick forests. If you thin your trees on time, the beetles have trouble getting hold. A forest with 120+ basal area is “beetle bait.” BTW – my forests are thinned to 50 BA.
Beetle outbreaks have not been a problem in Virginia for more than 20 years. Beetles are a problem still in Mississippi and Alabama. Reasons for this are not completely clear, but one reason may be lack of thinning in National Forests. You can see an almost perfect correlation between poorly managed USG lands and beetle spots. Mr. Coyle showed us an aerial photo of a beetle outbreak that stopped exactly on the properly line between an private and thinned forests and an essentially unmanaged government property.
The pine beetle is a manageable problem in the South, where we are used to it, but the bug is moving north, affecting loblolly and pitch pine in New Jersey and as far as Massachusetts. If the bugs can keep moving north, they may eat their way into white & red pine. This could be a disaster. These trees do not have the same sort of open ecology as southern pines, with their regular burning regimes. I grew up around white pines and I simply love them. The idea that they could be so endangered is heartbreaking. Let’s hope those smart guys working to find solutions will find one in time.
The heartbreak of the ash apocalypse Speaking of heartbreaking tree death, Kathleen Knight, Ph.D., U.S. Forest Service talked about her research into ash mortality and the emerald ash borer. She has been monitoring ash in Ohio for more than ten years. The bad news is that mortality is nearly 100%, nearly – more on that later. The less bad news is that ecosystems can adapt. As the ash die back, other trees take their places, especially silver maples, elms & basswoods, that are present in the forest and in the understory. The dead ash are very brittle and they tend to fall down rapidly, presenting a danger to people walking in the woods, but making way for new trees. The good news and the bad news is that in a few years it will be hard to tell that the ash tree were ever there.
Ms. Knight also discovered some good news after returning to one of her sites, showing the value of follow up. She and her team saw a perfectly healthy ash tree among the many dead stems. Closer inspection of the site turned up 106 more. This was only around 1% of the total, but they are hope. Ash trees can be easily grown from cuttings. There may be hope for resistant trees in a short time. Studies show that the resistant ash can kill the borers. This is an adaptation of the Asian ash trees. The resistant American ash trees are not quite as good at this, but it is the first generation.
The other good news about ash trees is that they can be saved chemically. This is not cheap and cannot reasonably be done in forests, but valuable ash trees near homes or shading streets can be preserved. This is because of how the emerald ash borer interacts with the trees. The borers are phloem feeders, i.e. they are shallow. The phloem easily carries insecticide to kill the bugs and their larva. The question is if there can be “herd immunity”. If a sufficient number of ash trees are treated and the bug that invest them are killed, will the populations be cut enough to save unprotected trees?
The pathogen attacking the pest Last presentation of the day was about a pathogen that is attacking tree of heaven. Rachel Brooks, Virginia Tech, presented her research. Tree of heaven, ailanthus, is a serious pest from China so it seems almost poetic justice that a new pathogen from Asia might help free us from this trouble. So far, it looks like attacks only tree of heaven and spreads via root graphs. Biocontrol is good but I am always a little leery of it. What can kill one species today, might turn on another later.
I didn’t stick around for the pesticide safety presentation, since I don’t handle pesticides myself. Those who do get continuing education credit for these things. I do not. I will be back tomorrow for more.
I planted more than 400 tree today: 50+ bald cypress & 350 longleaf pine. I understand the professionals are much faster, but it is a lot of me. I also planted in smaller batches and with more thought. For example, I plant the bald cypress in sunny but wet places, not just in straight lines, and I am planting the longleaf in patches.
It was a nice day, sunny & around 50 degrees. It is nice to be out and doing something. I like to imagine what the trees will look like when they candle this spring and maybe decades from now.
I was listening to relevant audio programs. I finished one on evolution and one on dynamism in nature, which is some of the same thing.
The audio book was called “Inheritors of the Earth.” I actually listened to it about a year ago, but I wanted to revisit. The theme is that nature is dynamic. The author talks about deep time. When you look at it this way, being native doesn’t matter. Very few things are where they developed.
Longleaf have their own “native” story. It is likely that something like the longleaf ecology has been around for tens of thousands of years, however it was not where it is now. Longleaf ecosystems, or maybe proto-longleaf ecosystems, likely developed on the coastal plain of Norht America, but at a time of much lower sea levels. So the longleaf coastal plain is now underwater, the continental shelf.
I like to think that we are restoring longleaf in Virginia, but what does that mean? They were “native” to our state in 1607, but so what? We often take first European settlement as the base-line for “natural” America, but is was no more natural then than it is now. We really are not restoring as building an ecosystem with the natural principle of the longleaf ecology.
Anyway, I have confidence that it is good.
My picture is the end of the day. I just barely got the last trees in the ground before dark. Days are short this time of year.
Spent the day planting bald cypress in some wet spots on the farm. I listened to the Great Courses while at it. It seemed appropriate to hear about evolution when in nature.
Evolution explains lots of things, but it I can see why some folks don’t like it. Of course, the reason often given is religion, but I don’t think that is a real issue. You can still have faith in transcendence even if you recognize the mechanism of evolution. I think the greater reason why people dislike the idea is that they dislike the idea of emergence. Emergence takes away not only the idea of a plan that we can figure out, but it also removes heroes and villains, and people like to have heroes and villains.
The audio program is what Darwin didn’t know, as you see in the attached. Mostly they are talking about advances in genetics. Darwin postulated the idea of evolution, but he had no idea of the mechanism. Mendel and genetics were still in the future.
What Darwin actually got wrong is that he thought that evolution always went very slowly and that everything was gradual. In fact, evolution sometimes moves very quickly. Nature is resilient. I say that often. And nature is resilient because of the process of evolution. Everything changes and adapts to changing circumstances.
Two of my favorite ecosystems are the longleaf and ponderosa pine. They are maintained by fire and it is getting harder to use fire. The ponderosa is the longleaf of the western mountains or maybe the longleaf is the ponderosa of the southern coastal plain. Please check out this link
Joshua Tree National Park protects a unique environment where two environments meet. The Joshua Trees grow in the high desert of the Mojave. As you go downhill, you get into the Colorado Desert biome. The Colorado is a subset of the the Sonora Desert, but it lacks the iconic saguaro cactus, which is kind of a big deal, IMO.
The dominant thing here is creosote bush, also known as chaparral. This bush does not play fair. It emits a kind of toxin that inhibits the growth of other places, resulting in widely spaced bushes, each able to get enough water. They look like somebody has planted them in regular rows.
Another common plant in the Sonoran Desert is the cholla cactus. My cousin Carl Hankwitz warned me about them. If you get near, they stick into you. They call it the jumping bush because it seems to jump on you and hold you down.
Joshua Tree was going to be shut down because of the shutdown, but they opened today with volunteers and money from entrance fees paid voluntarily. There was some vandalism a couple days ago. I have trouble understanding the malice that goes into destroying nature. The logic of keeping it open was that visitors would help avoid vandalism by at least providing witnesses to disapprove.
We first visited the park in 2010. I was at Camp Pendleton for a Marine training exercise and Chrissy came after. I rented a car, but it was a piece of crap, so I took it back before CJ arrived. They had a convertible, so we traded up. Since that time, we have really enjoyed convertibles. I don’t think it is worth it to own, but renting once a year it is nice to have. It was not really warm enough to drive with the top down, but we did it anyway, using the heater to make it okay. You really see a lot more.
Joshua trees form a kind of savanna. The little ones look like longleaf pine in the bottle brush phase, as you can see by the second photo. Photo #3 is just a nice sunrise photo. #4 shows me close the the cholla cactus. I did not touch. Last is ocotillo. It is a deciduous tree, but not dependent on season. Instead, it is rain dependent. After it rains, the leaves come out. This can happen five times a year.
A very eventful day. We went to Joshua Tree National Park and visited Palm Springs. I will write about such things soon, but let me start with the usual beer pictures. We went to Babe’s Bar-B-Que & Brewhouse for pulled pork and beer.
I don’t think pigs & beer get the credit they deserve for the advance of civilization. Recent scholarship indicates that beer came before bread in the use of grain. It is an excellent way to preserve the otherwise perishable product and provide carbohydrates into the future. Pigs are one of the world’s most efficient protein machines, and they recycle superbly. They grow fast and they can subsist on garbage that would otherwise just be wasted. Peasants could feed the pigs the slop they no longer wanted to eat and shortly harvest a bonanza of pork products.
I believe it is true that w/o pigs and beer, Western Civilization never would have broken free from the cycle of subsistence.
So let’s toast the wonderful pig with a flight of beer.
We had two sets of beer today. The first group is at Babe’s. The other two are from lunch at an Italian place in Palm Desert. I am not leaning sideways because I am drunk, but rather because Chrissy need me to lean out of the light.
Sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you. The guys at Reedy Creek got the bear. They cooked it up and invited me to try some.
I thought I had tasted bear before, but since I could not remember anything about it maybe it is a synthetic memory. Anyway, this time I have it documented.
For the record, bear tastes a lot like beef, maybe with a touch of pork. Of course, a lot depends on how it is prepared. They slow cooked it. I enjoyed the meat and even more ambiance. Alex got to come too. It was good to have him back and the hunt club is the center of a real community. I sold them six acres for their clubhouse, so I feel that I had some part in, was at least present at the creation.
Besides learning what bear tastes like, I learned a few things about soybean and tobacco farming. One distressing development is that fire ants have evidently arrive in Virginia. There are multiple theories as to how they arrived. Most popular and plausible are the they arrived on harvesting equipment or that they are following pipeline construction, also carried on equipment.
Speaking of theories, there was some discussion about how there got to be so many bears around Brunswick County. Until about ten years ago, nobody could remember ever seeing a bear in Brunswick. They suddenly are ubiquitous. Some people think that bears are being captured in other places and released to the “wilds” of southern Virginia.
Natural increase and migration could explain it too. Bears have long been common in the mountains. They are legendary along the Appalachian Trails. Power lines and pipelines create corridors. Wildlife in general can wander along these and cover significant distances. Once established, they are experience something like exponential growth. In these cases, you sometimes do not notice something until they become “suddenly” ubiquitous.
There is an old children’s story about lily pads covering a pond. Their numbers grow exponentially for 30 days until they completely cover the pond, but nobody notices until day 28, when they cover about a quarter of the pond.
My first picture shows the bear ribs cooking. Next is Exit 104, with my new go to gas station, Flying J. Gas has dropped down to $1.85. I think this is the lowest I have seen at Exit 105. After that is tree planting. Took advantage of being on the farms to plant some trees. It was a big advantage having Alex too. He planted many more than I did. The penultimate picture is the plug planting tool and last is last light looking at our trees from the hunt club.
