Category: Conservation & Environment

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Partners in Preservation

Bertioga, São Paulo, Brazil
The preserve is in the middle of the town of Bertioga, a town with a population of around 60,000. It is a long and narrow municipality, hemmed in by the mountains (Serra do Mar) on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other.  It is a place of great natural beauty, but not so much wealth. This makes it more challenging to conserve nature, since local people might want to use the forest or even occupy parts of it. This was how favelas got started in Rio with unfortunate social and ecological ramifications. The nearby picture shows the road right on one of the preserve edges and gives an idea of the possible challenge.

Partners in Preservation
SESC officials, like Juarez recognized this challenge and made it a virtue.  Their philosophy is that people should be integrated into the natural community and that natural communities should be integrated into human ones, so rather than fence off the forest, SESC invited the local people to participate. They did outreach to find out what the local people thought and what they wanted.  Most of the local people appreciated the forest and wanted to conserve it and they are a strong force for protection.  One thing that people wanted was a community garden, which SESC helped build on the fringe of the area of conservation. There are also plans for “agro-forestry” within the preserve.  This will mean that in some places there will be food for people.  All this means that the people living near the forest have become partners in preservation rather than adversaries to be excluded.  This is a model of how it can work.

Restoring the Magnificent Atlantic Forest
 Brazil’s Atlantic forests were magnificent and parts of it still are, but since the Atlantic forests were first to be exploited and now are more densely occupied, protecting what is left is important and restoring some other what can be restored imperative.
One of the features that makes Brazil’s coast so spectacular and beautiful is that the green mountains sweep down to the sea.   Among the most preciously rare in this already preciously rare ecology are the thin strips of forests between the beaches and the uplands.   This is mostly flat land. If you are going to try to grow something, this is a logical place to start.  If you want to build a beach front home or hotel, this is the place to do it – above the high tide and not subject to the shifting ground of the hills.  SESC’s forest is on precisely this ground and it is precisely why it is surrounded by human habitation.

SESC employed scientist and naturalist to study the flora and fauna of their preserve and found it rich in the diversity of both.  It is very unlikely that this forest patch was never cut, but SESC has owned it since 1947 and it has been intact at least since then.  The trees rarely grow to great height, as they do farther inland, since the sandy soil does not support the kinds of root systems that can hold them up.  As we walked through the wood, we saw wind throws that revealed just how shallow the root systems could be even for big trees. My guess is that this is a more ephemeral ecology.  This provides some advantages for restoration.  The fabled triple canopy forests take many more years to restore.

Mangroves
 SESC also owns a significant amount of riparian land along the Itapanhau River estuary.  Here the brackish tidal water supports mangrove thickets. Mangroves are the classic edge community. Edge ecosystems are often among the most diverse, since they combine two or more environments. They usually punch well above their weight and are crucial to the larger ecosystem they join. Mangroves are amphibious trees that grow between high and low tide. They are sensitive to frost. In the U.S., they grow only in south Florida, and a few places in Louisiana so we went to see some in the Florida Keys. The tangle of roots and branches help hold soil and protect the coast from erosion and storms. They also provide cover for fish and wildlife to breed. Mangroves are also a threatened ecosystem, since people often want to “develop” the places they occupy and the very tangle that makes them such a formidable ecology is annoying to people wanting to get around.  Removing mangrove, however is almost always a mistake, as with them go the wildlife benefits mentioned above and also protection from storms. The mangroves provide a flexible and self-repairing protection that no feat of engineering can match.

Doing the Right Things for the Right Reasons Make Sustainable
I was mighty impressed with what SESC is doing. They are integrating natural and human communities into their developments from the start, as the crucial parts of the project that they are, rather than as something to be tacked on at the end.  Juarez credits the long-view taken by SESC management and the resource they are willing to commit to the long term.  It is a model.

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Making Nature Accessible to All

Making Nature Accessible to All
It was gratifying to meet Jeremy Buzzell, Chief for the Accessibility Management Program at the National Park Service, maybe more a vindication of old school people-to-people diplomacy.  Please indulge my deviation from the main narrative.

The Complexity and Power of Networks
I connected Jeremy Buzzell with Juarez Michelotti, from SESC São Paulo at the request of then former State Department colleagues, former since this was 2016 and I had just retired from FS.  For me it was a simple matter of looking up on the internet making a few calls.  USG is USG no matter the branch. I did not know the particular people at the Park Service, but I know how the system works generally.   It was harder for Brazilian friends.  Imagine how it would be to find similar Brazilian officials for someone outside the structure.  Anyway, I called Mr. Buzzell, made the connection and mostly forgot about it. I did keep in sporadic contact with Juarez, however, because of my personal interest in his work of ecological restoration of Brazil’s Atlantic forests and when I came on my sojourn to São Paulo, I got in touch to with him to meet him in person and maybe see the forests.  So my colleague Joyce Costa and I arranged to go.  With the date set Juarez gave me the good news that coincidentally Mr. Buzzell would also be there. Back to the main narrative.

Making Nature Accessible to All
Mr. Buzzell was helping SESC Bertioga make their nature preserve accessible.  The accessible trail will be a boardwalk, wheelchair friendly, with stations that allow participants to enjoy and understand using a variety of the senses. The trail will feature experience of sight, smell, touch.  We tried out some of the features to give access to people with no or low vision. I tried it out blindfolded.  They feature boxes with various natural items to be identified.  The SESC folks assured us that none of the boxes harbored spiders or snakes. They also featured 3-D (but flat) animals and plants. I managed to get correct only a fish and a bird, as I found a fin and a beak.  It is hard to identify even familiar objects by touch alone.  You need someone to guide you and someone to help with the narrative, but I imagine that you would get more adept with experience.

The trail features places to stop and to turn around, so that participants can get a little or get a lot.  It has secure rails and gentle slopes.  Besides the boardwalk, there will also be dirt trails.  A large percentage will be graded to allow for easier walking and wheelchair use.  The preserve is divided by a highway and there will be a footbridge connecting the sections.  This is also accessible, with gently sloping entrances.

It seemed to me that the SESC folks were doing everything right, but I am not an expert.  Mr. Buzzell, who is an expert, shared the opinion, so I think it must be right.
 

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Parque Farroupilha

Parque Farroupilha is a big urban park with lots of different features. It is designed to give some variety. When we lived in Porto Alegre, I used to run around the park. It is – was – not big enough and I would have to double back and go in loops, but the variety made it seem a little better.

We lived in Porto Alegre when I was in my early 30s. This is a tough time for erstwhile athletes. You just cannot run as fast as you used to. You fool yourself that somehow harder work will stave off the slowing. It does not. All that happens is that you pull some muscles more often. The good news is that eventually you get old enough that it doesn’t matter.

I appreciate the park now in a different way. I just like to look around and notice the things that I ran past too fast.

A cool thing is how the tree roots grow. Trees in the tropics and semi-tropics seem to develop much wider roots and bases. I took some pictures of these.

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Saving Tropical Forests

Simple Idea with Worldwide Impact.
She got the idea during a visit to the dermatologist. The hand-held magnifying camera that the doctor used to examine her skin could would as well to magnify and record tiny cells in wood that could be used to identify the species. Her employers were not very enthusiastic about this new idea, so she found out where to buy one of the devices and bought it herself. She showed me the original. Simple, cheap but effective.

Since she – from the Instituto Florestal do Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo Forest Service) returned from her IVLP “Promoting Legal Sourcing of Wood and Wood Products,” in 2011, her connections and cooperation with American researchers and authorities has deepened and thickened. She is in weekly contact with the USDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin and has been invited to meet and do training with the U.S. Department of Justice and Border Patrol.

Stop Illegal Cutting and Selling Wood
The goal of all this is to stop the illegal harvesting and export of rare species of trees, and the deforestation, ecological devastation and release of greenhouse gases that goes with it. Many species of Brazilian tropical hardwood are so hard and dense that they do not float in water. This makes them ideal for flooring and some aspects of construction where very dense wood is needed. Add to this their extraordinary beauty – some brilliant vermilion, others almost pure black, still others with patterns that can only be called art – Brazilian tropical hardwoods are among the most beautiful and sought-after woods in the world.
Unfortunately, many of the most popular species are not being grown sustainably and/or are being harvested in ways that damage the local ecology. The – castanha (chestnut) — the tree that produces Brazil nuts, locally called castanhas-do-pará – for example, produces a beautiful hard and dark wood. It is a magnificent tree, that can grow to 160 feet high. The Brazil nuts it produces are among the most valuable non-wood product from the forest. This tree, however, is very hard to regenerate. Its ecology requires not completely understood complexities of an intact forest. Attempts to propagate them artificially have not been very successful. So, Brazilian authorities have made the harvest of castanha — illegal in most cases. Yet this wood regularly appears for sale, usually called something else. It is hard for non-specialists to identify them with certainty and harder still to prove their identity.

This is why she needed the erstwhile dermatological device. She had been working with the São Paulo environmental police and the Federal highway patrol to impound cargos of illegally harvested wood. To identify the species and it provenance, she used something like a jewelers’ loop. She could identify the species by the grain and the cells. But São Paulo is a big state and Brazil is a big country and there was only one and she was it.

Training the Police, Stopping the Traffic
She has done training from police all over Brazil and participated in symposia all over the world, talking about her techniques. Much of the training for police officers involves spotting potential violations and taking proper samples, so that they now roughly what to do. Training experts to identify species beyond a reasonable doubt, however, which is required to impound the wood or prosecute offenders, takes a long time. It is not something an average police officer can be expected to master. The skin camera, modified to look at wood, can take pictures and transmit them via Internet to her lab, where experts can decide. They also have a visual record. If it turns out that the species is not authorized, the cargo can be impounded. In that case, the police take a sample of the wood, label it appropriately with reference to the pictures, and send the sample to the lab, where it is catalogued and secured in case there is a court case.

She says that they so far have never been asked to produce the actual wood sample. The pictures have sufficed. One bad reason for this is that the real culprits are often not found or taken to court. They hire a truck driver does not know the origin of the wood he is hauling. When the truck is stopped, the real crooks disappear and write it off as cost of doing business. In this respect it is like drug smugglers, and there is in fact overlap in the business. Drugs are sometimes hidden in trucks carrying wood from the Amazon, which is also near drug producing areas of Columbia. The way that you can roughly tell the drug truck from the ordinary wood truck is that the drug truck often has a chase car, with armed thugs – a kind of evil “Smokey and the Bandit” scenario. It is dangerous for the police to stop this sort of truck. She has done more than forty training for police, including in the Amazon, reaching thousands of officers. They do not allow her to go along when these sorts of encounters are likely.

Experts have tried to apply IT and AI process to identifying wood, and she has been cooperating with American experts, especially with the Center for Wood Anatomy Research at the USDA Forest Products Laboratory, but it is currently more art than science. She said that it might work okay in the USA, where we have fewer major species to identify, but in the very diverse tropical and subtropical forests of Brazil, it has still proved to be a bridge too far. I asked about DNA analysis. This is also something for the future. Many of tropical hardwoods have not been sequenced adequately and the testing currently takes too long. When a truck is stopped on a Brazilian highway, the police legally have two hours before they decide to impound the cargo or let it pass. There is no mobile DNA test that can do that at this time. It is also easier to do DNA tests from leaves than from wood. The field, however is developing rapidly.

What did IVLP do For Her and for the USA
The United States amended the Lacey Act in 2008, which makes it unlawful to import into the United States any plant (or plant product) that was illegally harvested. It is in everyone’s interest to stop the illegal product before it ever moves AND – consequently – to remove much of the profit and incentive for those would exploit, deforest and denude large areas of the world. It is possible for buyers in the USA to be innocently duped. This creates problems for them, the court system, the cops and everybody except the crooks who deliberately broke the law. Better to stop that rock before it starts rolling.

She has been a thought leader and influential participant in the science and application of the science to protect the integrity of tropical forests in Brazil, in American and worldwide. She credits her IVLP experience with making this happen as it did. Not only did it do the usual great things of plugging her into American and international networks, where ideas propagate, but it also provided her the credulity to be heard.

Recall that she had to buy the hand-held dermatological equipment with her own money. She just did not have the clout to make it happen more expeditiously. On her return, things were already different for her and success built on success. This is especially important for her as a woman. The men she worked with had theretofore been quicker to shunt her aside. With her bigger profile came more influence and the forests of Brazil and the world have been the beneficiaries.

Please note – it is not a secret who goes on IVLP visits and nobody I talked to so far would object to being known, in fact they have been proud of their participation and I share the notes with them, but I replaced names with pronouns since there is no need to put all that on social media.

Pictures show pao Brasil – the Brazilian wood that gave the name to the country. It is very beautiful and that was its curse. The Atlantic forests were largely denuded centuries ago. Next shows some of the wood slices at the laboratory. Yes, the place has a kind of 19th Century feel. Picture #4 shows the Tropic of Capricorn. It runs right through the forest park and around the world, but that spot is evidently most important. Last is just a nice picture of the sun and the trees.

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Renewable Energy


Got some useful appointments in today.   Our first visit was with a couple of guys at the São Paulo Secretariat of Energy – renewable energy.  We were following up on a successful speaker visit and hoping to strengthen connections and contacts.  Our Brazilian friends were more than eager to do this to our mutual benefit.
Brazil is a leader in various sorts of renewable energy and they have a lot to share, especially in areas like biogas, ethanol, biomass & biodiesel.  Of course, the USA has a lot to share too in some of the same areas, but in addition in areas of storage and energy net coordination.  Mutual sharing means mutual benefit, since more brains are better and when we solve problems in diverse ways, we learn more than if we just have a few options.
Brazil, like the USA, is a continental country.  When talking about renewable power, this brings challenges and opportunity.  Brazil has a lot of wind power potential, for example, but it is poorly distributed, with the best wind power sites in the less populated areas of the Northeast.  Wind (and solar) are also inconsistent.  They need some sort of backup.
Hydroelectric power has been one of the best backups.  Energy can be brought on line (or taken off) easily. There are two developments that have been creating complications. One is that droughts have made hydropower less reliable, even has the capacity of hydropower is being reached.  A related problem is how dams have changed.  In the interests of protecting local ecology, new hydro projects tend to be “run of the river” rather than reservoir based.  A run of the river system, as the name implies, depends on the water running through the river.  River flow varies with the seasons and the weather and more importantly for power storage, it cannot be turned off and on.  The river flows as it wants.
A possible solution is natural gas.  São Paulo currently has no facilities to receive liquified natural gas, but there are three terminals in Brazil (Pecém, State of Ceará; Bahia LNG Regasification Terminal, Bay of All Saints, State of Bahia and Guanabara Bay, State of Rio de Janeiro). Brazil is potentially a big market for America LNG.  We are currently the Brazil’s third largest source of LNG, with great potential for more.  Natural gas is clean burning and gas fired plants can be turned on and off relatively easily.  Most natural gas is currently not renewable.  However, there is great potential for biogas, so building out a natural gas distribution network can transition seamlessly to carry biogas as that develops.
Another “storage” mechanism is the grid itself. A big grid means that power can be moved from places suffering shortages to those with surplus.  The wind may be inconsistent locally, but over a large area it tends to even out.  Couple that with a natural gas/hydro backup, and you have a fairly reliable “battery.”
Energy is something I have been interested in since I was in college.  This discussion was especially interesting for me and it was a joy to take part. It was very easy to see in this an area of mutually benefit. There is something even for those interested only in short term profit, since American LNG will find a good market in Brazil in the short term.  I am more interested in the exchange of ideas.
And I am constantly recalling what Thomas Jefferson said – “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”  If it is not too disrespectful to add to Jefferson, that light travels in both directions.




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Land Owner Dinner in Brunswick County

It did not rain all day, so my trip to the farms and the landowner dinner went well.
We got around forty people for the landowner dinner, a good turnout. Mike Santucci gave a much shortened version of his Generation NEXT program, tips on how to pass your forest land intact to the next generation. About 2/3 of Virginia is forest covered and that percentage has not changed very much in recent decades. But ownership is fragmenting. As forest units become smaller, they become less economically and ecologically viable. Generation NEXT does not tell you what to do, but it gives you tools to decide.

Sarah Kammer and Jen Gagnon gave presentations on why and how to be a certified tree farmer. This was more to thank existing tree farmers, who made up a majority of attendees, but also to get them to talk to friends about the program. We current have a little more than 1000 certified tree farmers in Virginia. There is a lot of room for growth. I have written about the value of sustainability on many occasions. Suffice it to say that sustainable forestry is a wonderful goal and tree farm can help sustain sustainability.

Adam Smith and Ed Zimmer from DoF recognized a Brunswick County Century Forest. A Century Forest, as the name implies, has been in the family for 100+ years and has been at least partly forest all that time. This one has been in the family of the recipient for 147 years (if I correctly recall). People like the recognition. It many ways it is an adjunct to genealogy. If everything goes according to plan, our Freeman place can be a Century Forest in only 90 years.

The governor and the Virginia state forester sign the Century Forest award. Mike Santucci jokes that having a Century Forest is big incentive to keep the forest intact. Who wants to be the one to drop the baton in the generational relay.

After the great pulled pork dinner provided by the Reedy Creek Hunt Club, I gave a short tour of our Freeman tree farm. I explained the recent thinning and talked about our plans to restore longleaf and the diverse ecosystem that goes with it.

Bobwhite quail were voicing their distinct call during the talk and on the walk there and back. I could not have planned for a better soundtrack. Bobwhite are one of the iconic birds of the longleaf pine ecosystem. They used to be common in Virginia but now are much less so. Their proliferation on our land helps me think that we are on the right track.
My first picture shows Adam Smith & Ed Zimmer with the Century Forest award. You can also see the really nice place that the Reedy Creek Hunt Club has. Kudos to Mike Raney & Scott Powell.

The other pictures are from the same day but not the same place. They are SMZ on our Diamond Grove place. With all the rain, I thought the creeks would be rising, but they were not. In fact, parts of ephemeral streams were empty. This is a big change in the last decade. When we got the place in 2005, the streams were never empty, even in dry times. I think it is because the trees around had been harvested. Rainwater ran off into the streams. As the forest cover came back, the needles intercepted some of the rain and when it dripped it dripped down slower. The ground is also now covered in leaves and needles that absorb & soften the raindrops. And then the tree roots grab onto the water as is sinks in. This is all to the good. The creek in the pictures is interesting because it always flows but not always above ground. There is a big rock, as you can see in one of the pictures, that evidently goes fairly far down. The water follows the creek sometimes over and always under the sand, When it hits the rock, it comes out as a “spring. Never have I seen the creek on the rock go dry.

I am very fond of this SMZ. I especially love those big beech trees.

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Heavy rain for many days

It has been raining for days. It is raining now and it is supposed to be raining this afternoon. Still, I am going down to the farms today. We have a landowner dinner on the Freeman place. I am suppose to talk about the plans on the farm and lead a field tour. If it is raining like it has been, it will not be pleasant.

In any other case,  the rain would keep me at home. There is little joy in working on the farms in heavy rain and there are real hazards of getting stuck in the mud. The one advantage I can think of is that I can observe the watercourses. I can see the evidence of high water, but I have never actually seen the flow. I really love to watch the living water. Of course, I need to be careful not to get too close.

My streams are so familiar that I have come to think of them in almost anthropomorphic terms, as friends, but the evidence of high water flows indicates that they could be very dangerous. As much as I love my landscape, I do not want to become part of it.

I have one “stupid water story”. I have probably enhance it in my memory, but what I remember is that I wanted to cross Genito Creek and figured that I could balance on a fallen long to make the crossing. I was mistaken. I fell into the stream and the current pushed me under the log. I got out of it quickly and w/o incident, although my memory is trying hard to make it a more dramatic escape. I did ruin my phone and was uncomfortably soaked walking back to the car. It did make me think about worst case scenarios, however.
As I said, I have become very comfortable with my landscape. When I first got the place, I used to be circumspect and careful. That was probably a good idea. Hanging around in the woods and using sharp tools to pull down heavy trees and rocks is not as safe as writing about it on the computer.

Of course, if you have to go anyway, I suppose it is good to go out in a way that creates an interesting story.

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Forest Visit with Wildflowers

Silphium compositum – Kidneyleaf Rosinweed

Pycnanthemum tenuifolium
These are some of the wild flowers from around the farm. I suspect I know what some of them are, but I am not sure and would request “hive memory” help.

Went down to the farms yesterday. Walked the Freeman place with DoF Adam Smith. We thinned to a very wide 50 BA and made 1/4 acre clearings in each acre to plant with longleaf pine. The openings and mosaic pattern are a variation of the Stoddard-Neel technique I read about. It uses the principles of an open, uneven-aged forest. In the real technique use natural regeneration. I cannot, since I do not yet have a longleaf seed source. The total is about 80 acres. Adam will supervise a burning in September to clear some of the underbrush and burn up the slash. I have asked the kids to help plant few thousand longleaf in December. I will have a professional crew finish the job before Christmas in 2019.

Gaillardia
I also stopped by the Reedy Creek Hunt Club and talked to Mike Raney about our Tree Farm landowner dinner on July 24, which will be held a the club. They make great pulled pork. Anybody from around Brunswick County who wants to come, please contact me. It will be a good event. I will talk about the tree farm, as above, and take people on a short walk to see it. Jen Gagnon, from Virginia Tech will talk about tree farming and Adam Downing & Mike Santucci, from Virginia DoF will talk about succession planning for forest ownership.

Cyperus echinatus
Went to the other units too. Diamond Grove is growing well. I think I will thin that in 2020. I was going to do next year, but I think another year will do better. I will see. Those trees were planted in 2003. We applied biosolids in 2008, which gave them a boost. We also did pre-commercial thinning in 2008, so that are not too tight.

Liatris
I walked around Brodnax to look at the longleaf and loblolly plantations from 2016. The loblolly are very robust and are coming over the tops of the competing vegetation. Longleaf, not so much. I may have to replant some longleaf. I figure I will just do some of the easier areas and accept that it will be a mixed longleaf-loblolly forest, since natural regeneration of loblolly is strong. When they do a thinning way in the future, maybe 2032, they can take out more of the loblolly. I will think about that later if I am still thinking about such things later. The burned area still disturbs me a little. I believe it is okay, but I will need to wait to next spring to easy my troubled mind about that. We will burn the next patch of that I hope in February.
Asclepias tuberosa

Sabatia angularis

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Day in the Life July 6, 2018

Went to pick up my Brazilian visa in anticipation of my upcoming São Paulo adventure. Looking forward to it.
The weather was good enough (a little humid, but only a light and intermittent rain) to ride the bike to Washington. It is more rewarding than taking the Metro. I really enjoy riding the bike, but I like it better if I have a destination. Just riding from and back lacks something.

I am very happy with my “new” bike. All the moving parts are new, but the frame, handlebars and seat are the old and beat up originals. With all the scratches and lost paint, I am hoping that it is less attractive to bike thieves.

Washington has lots of nice bike trails The one on 15th Street (in the picture) is not wonderfully beautiful, but it is convenient. I can take it up to AEI or Brookings, and the Brazilian Consulate in right there in 15th. The danger is that it is a two-way trail along one side of the street. Drivers are sometimes not looking for you coming the other way. It is also dangerous coming onto Massachusetts and New Hampshire Avenues going south, since 15th becomes a one-way street going north and you cannot see the traffic light. The solution is to only cross when the walk light is with you. Next picture shows my half-new bike.

Last three pictures are from the botanical gardens. It is not really on the way, but I make it so. I am trying to get familiar with some of the wildflowers that we are encouraging on the farms. They have interesting names like rattlesnake master in the first picture and star tickseed in the second. I forgot to get the name of the one in the third picture.

Maybe Mariza is worried about not treating Boomer right. We are indeed treating him like a dog, but you can see that he is doing okay. That is a big dog.

Mariza – your mother is getting very much attached to Boomer. He knows how get what he wants.

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The Nature of Impermanence

Burning Doubt
I will never beat the feeling of dread when I see my scorched trees after a fire. They are not burned, but the heat plumes rose more than thirty feet. Science and experience tell me that things will be okay and that the fire is a necessary and useful part of southern pine ecology, but I can know all that and still not feel it. I am happy to report that – again and as expected – my fears were overblown. The trees on the most recently burned patch are greening out with new needles, as you can see in my first picture. The burned are in the distance. I have closer pictures but I liked the panorama. The longleaf that we burned last year are looking great, as you can see in the next picture. A forest is more than just the trees, but the trees are the first thing you see and the one that sets your mood when looking to the forest.

My management strategy for all our tree farms is atypical for Brunswick County and I am not exactly sure how it will work out. Let me rephrase – I have an idea what I want and a bit vaguer idea of how to get there, but I have lots of doubts about conditions on the ground and what will happen when I make changes.

Don’t Copy Nature; Do Try to Understand Natural Principles
A diverse ecosystem that respects and uses natural principles but does not merely mimic nature, that is what I want on my land and what I hope to learn from my land. When talking to people generally, I often use words like “restore.” People like the idea of restoration. I do too, but I know restoration is not an option. We have too many changes in Virginia, too many invasive plants and too much human interaction ever to restore what was once here. Beyond that, there would be no way to know what you should restore. Even with precise (and impossible to obtain) information about what was here and how everything was connected, in what year was everything exactly the way it should be?

The answer is never. Nature is never finished. Virginia of 1608 is different from but not better than the Virginia of 2018 or how it was during the last ice age or when dinosaurs roamed Our beloved longleaf pine ecosystem began its development on coastal plain exposed by much lower sea levels during the last ice age and “invaded” this land as its home range disappeared under the rising seas.

All we can do is move forward using the principles in an iterative way, trying something, learning something and then trying again with the profound understanding that this too is passing, and knowing that much you get from being in nature is being in nature.

You Can Never Walk Twice in the Same Forest
When I fell in love with nature, it was the feeling of the eternal that attracted me. In nature, I saw permanence, belonging and balance. Sure, we foolish humans often upset the balance. I blamed ignorance and greed. It was an easy morality tale. But I expected that if we left it alone long enough, nature would come back “as it should.” I thought my opinions were science-based, but they were not. Today what I love about nature is the impermanence. Each moment is unique to be appreciated for what it is. A small alteration may grow into a great change that everybody sees or maybe you won’t perceive it at all, but (paraphrasing Heraclitus) you cannot walk twice into the same forest. That is what I love now.

… And Know the Place for the First Time
It is a shame that the term “know your place” carries with it so many pejorative connotations, but I am going to use it here in a positive, maybe even a transcendent way. Looking back over my life, I think that I have spent it trying to know my place in human society and in the greater nature. Before I get anybody excited about the meaning of life, let me say that I have not found it and I know that I never will. This is not a despondent thought. No, it is a glorious one to know that you cannot know, and feel your own impermanence. It means you can enjoy all the steps on the journey. I have brief glimpses, epiphanies sometimes when I am in the flow, almost always when I am engaged with natural systems. It is a mystical feeling that I can report but not properly describe, when I feel part of all that was, all that is now and all that will become. I know others have had similar. The moments do not last long, but the memory sustains.

I don’t know what I would do if I was deprived of contact with nature. I don’t think I am strong in that way. I think I would crumple at being removed. My place is as an interacting part. Pull it out and there is nothing more.

What’s Happening Down on the Brunswick Farms
Lots of interesting developments at the farms. The thinning looks good. I walked all over the place and came up with hundreds of things I want to do. Now I have to narrow it down to a couple I can accomplish. You see the thinned pines in picture # 3. I took that picture through the wildflowers in front of them. Speaking of restoration, you know that lots of those beautiful flowers are not native. This is not a picture you could have taken in 1607, or more correctly painted. But the changing landscape conforms to natural principles. Queens Ann’s Lace, a beautiful flower in the carrot family, had been in North America for more than 300 years. It has earned its place.

Next is (right above) one of the pollinator habitat plots. I want to thank NRCS for helping with this. We got a grant to help defray the costs of seeds. I have more, but I include only one, since they are just starting. We got them in late because the seeds were hard to get. You can see the sunflowers coming up if you look closely. They will provide quick cover and the perennial warm season grasses and forbs will come in after. Sunflowers are “native” to North America, but this variety is not from around Virginia. Again, what does native or restoration really mean anyway?

Above are some bald cypress I “discovered”. I knew that my friend Eric Goodman had planted them in 2012, but I never could find them and thought they died out. The recent harvest next to them revealed them and is now giving them the sun they need. They are in a wet rill (pictured below) and should do well with the more sun. They are doing okay now. I found a couple dozen.

Below shows both sides of the fire line. We are burning 1/3 of this track each year, creating patches of early succession landscape.

Below shows our 2012 plantings from the area under the power lines. Some people hate power lines and they detract from use of land, but on the plus side they provide long narrow acreage of early succession habitat.