Category: Conservation & Environment

Switzerland’s forests are taking over the countryside and they are abetted in their march up the mountain slopes by global warming.   It is strange to think of forests as a threat, but take a look at the article at this link.   A more nuanced view of nature makes sense to me and tracks with what I have learned over my lifetime.  It is not only Switzerland, BTW.  It happens in America too.  Above is the area around the Manassas battlefield, just outside Washington as it looked in 1861. It needed more trees then. Look at the bottom picture to see how it looks now.  

See the forest SYSTEM, not only the trees

When I was young, I thought that more trees were always better.  That kind of idea made good sense in 1968 because there seemed little chance there could ever be too many trees or too much land covered in forests.  Since then, I have learned to look at the total system.   I can now more clearly see the forest instead of just the trees and I can also understand that the forest is part of a larger system that includes forests, water, wildlife grassland, brush and even some bare sand & rocks … and people.    The most pleasant and productive systems are those that have a variety of different types and a lot of transition edges among them. Nature tends not to produce these sorts of places for very long.   

Solving one problem creates the next

Switzerland had developed a beautiful and ecologically sustainable land use that allowed for bountiful agricultural production as well as superbly managed forests.  Too many trees or forests that are too thick with trees threaten that sustainable balance.  You can have too much of a good thing.  BTW – take a look at the Swiss picture gallery.  It really is a nice place.
The seeds of this dilemma were planted more than 100 years ago. There was not much real forestry being practiced back then.  Instead there was the kind of denuding timber mining that is almost never now done anymore in rich developed countries but remains depressingly common in places w/o good regulator regimes and strong property rights. The bare slopes caused soil degradation, erosion and disastrous flooding, so back in 1876 the Swiss enacted a sensible law to prevent deforestation.  It worked.  That problem was solved.  And since yesterday’s solutions are often today’s problems, the results presented a new challenge.  

It goes up but never comes down 

Set in motion was a kind of ratchet.  In the normal course of things in an agricultural/forestry system, forests expand and are cleared.  Crop of pasture land might take the place of forest and forests might grow on lands previously occupied by crops or pasture.  If it becomes illegal to clear forests once they are established, the areas covered in trees inexorably expand at the expense of meadow and other uses.  Imagine how this happens.  A pasture is neglected for a few years allowing trees to fill in.  Now it is a young forest, which you cannot clear.  You don’t need this ratchet mechanism to produce similar results, BTW. Forests in the U.S. have also been expanding over former farm fields.  As agriculture became more efficient, less land was needed in meadow and field.  You can see this clearly in the eastern United States.  If you look at old pictures and compare them to what you see today, you notice that there are a lot more trees today than there were a century ago.  But the ratchet rules make it much harder to manage the land. 

Build on success

We really have to shift our paradigm. We are no longer the embattled preservationists we were a generation ago.  We won that battle. Now we have to be clever in land use and mange what we have preserved and what technology improvements have preserved for us.   The need to be good stewards of the land is as important as ever, but doing a good job requires a much more nuanced understanding of the overall ecology.   It will never end for us.  There is not finished state for the environment.  But it is time to move to the next stage. 

Below is what Manassas looks like now.  I like it better now.  The balance of forest in meadow is good, IMO.  Left alone, the trees, initially mostly tulip poplar, red maples and some cedars, would be around thirty feet high within fifteen years.  

Remembering that yesterday’s solutions are today’s problems, we have to assume the today’s solutions will be tomorrow’s problems.  That does not imply failure.  A good solution under particular circumstances is less useful when conditions change.  We just need to be smart. It never ends.  Perfection and final solutions are impossible, attempting to create them is undesirable and despite all this we manage to persist.  That is what makes life interesting.

My clover meadows were full of bees this spring.  They were still around the sunflowers, although I didn’t plan to write re bees, so I just took a picture of the flowers.  It is a very pleasant thing.   Today I watched a depressing program on “Nature” on PBS talking about the collapse of honey bee populations.   I read about that a couple years ago, but thought that it was mostly studied and addressed.    As I recalled, the colony collapse (called colony collapse disorder or CDC) had multiple causes, but none of them really extraordinary.    There were some mites and parasites.  A lot of the bees were not getting a good and balanced diet and some were overworked (they move colonies around to pollinate different crops). 

Sure enough, the “Nature” show was made a couple years ago.   More up to date information can be found here and here.   It is a problem, but it is manageable.    The USDA is vigilant and we can be too w/o going nuts.  I worry a lot about things like the emerald ash borer, gypsy moths, pine beetles etc and with the help of extension services, DOF and others, I help address them.

The thing I object to is the apocalyptical tone.  Many things will or could be disastrous if not properly managed or addressed.   That is why we manage and address them.    We always get that BS saying something like, “if nothing is done…” or “if current trends continue …”   But something always is done and current trends almost never continue.

Of course the news that a problem is not going to mean the end of life as we know it is not big news.  People like to be alarmed and they also look for extraordinary causes to ordinary events. In the bee case, they blamed pesticides, global warming, GMO and even cell phones.  Society’s general malcontents take the opportunity of an impending catastrophe to attack the things they don’t like and they are a little annoyed when the catastrophe turns out to be a dud.

Anyway the bees are back, which is good because we need the bees. They pollinate many of our crops, but, of course, we need bees because of the plants we introduced from Europe into America.  Honey bees are not native to North America, so no native American plants require honey bee pollination. The Indians in colonial Virginia evidently called honey bees “white man’s flies” and were astonished that the colonists even put flies to work. Honey bees are in North America because we brought them. It was a good move.  Not all invasive species are bad. But it does show once again that there are no environments in the world unaffected by humans and we need to make sure manage well rather than abdicate and claim we can separate ourselves.

It looks like vines are going to take over the world.   I am fighting vines on the tree farm.   The recent thinning and biosolids fertilization on the Chrissie’s pond tracts has benefited them as much as the trees.   I am not sure of all the kinds, but I have at least oriental bittersweet, wisteria, trumpet vine, Virginia creepers, Japanese honeysuckle and wild grape.    (I don’t have kudzo and I am thankful for that.) Each presents different challenges.

The oriental bittersweet is the worst, although not the most pervasive.   It is destructive because it winds around the truck and branches of the trees.   It deforms them and I think it would kill them in time.   The trumpet vines are very pretty, but they overtop the little trees.  Virginia creepers are just heavy.  They cover trees and weigh them down but are not very hard to control if you keep at it.   Wild grape is like that too.   All vines are vulnerable to controlled fire and I look forward using this tool to taking care of the vines, along with some of the ticks, next year.   

Until then, I am doing the holding action.   Yesterday I tramped through the brush and physically cut down the clinging vines.  I also trimmed off some of the lower branches of the pine trees.  It makes it easier to see what you are doing and besides the lower branches act as ladders for the vines.   I must have done this for more than 1000 trees.   Of course, there are 500+ trees per acre and +/- 110 acres of pine on CP, so it is a little like peeing in the ocean and anticipating a flood, but not all the trees are affected by the vines and I have gone after the worst infestations.   That ought to hold them off until I can burn them up. 

The Japanese honeysuckle is only present on the Freeman property.  I have not seen any on CP.  It is also pretty and the scent is nice, but it ruins trees. I have a problem only at the edges. They don’t grow well in the shade.  I have not been expending too much energy fighting these invaders.   The trees on the Freeman track are tall enough and thick enough to resist for a couple of years and in a couple of years we will do first thinning and then I can do controlled burning.    This is essential, since the opening to the sun and the biosolids applied after the thinning will encourage them.  The first burning will control the honeysuckle, as well as those other vines that will grow up, and a second one a couple years later will essentially wipe them out.

My fight against the tree of heaven, on the other hand, is going well.   The boys helped with hack and squirt (where you whack the tree with machete and squirt in the herbicide) using Arsenal from BasF in 2006 and we made a big dent in the thickets, but I think the most effective after that was when we converted much of the area that had been covered in tree of heaven to wildlife pasture. Some are still sprouting out, but it is much easier to get at them.  I can control the meadow and when the pine trees get big enough to shade out the new tree of heaven, they will not be much of a menace in the woods.

Of all the things I do on the farm fighting back the invasive species is probably the most useful.  If not controlled, they can take over wide swaths of acreage. I believe that my efforts over the last couple of years have saved acres of my pines.  When I come across places I missed, I sometimes find deformed little trees strangled by vines. The tree of heaven had already taken over at least five acres before we pushed them out. Most of these plants were introduced because somebody thought they were pretty or good (Chinese use tree of heaven in folk remedies) and they are indeed good at growing in North America. There really is nothing wrong with them except that they are too good at the competition.  If you don’t mind having nothing but vines and tree of heaven, you really don’t have a problem. Of course, I am trying to grow an American forest.   

You can see what happens when people stop caring by driving along the freeway on Route 66.   Everything is blanketed in vines.  It looks like somebody dropped a green cloth over the landscape.   The trees below are gradually dying.  Vines have a great, if parasitic strategy.   They don’t have to waste energy making woody stems.  They just grow up and cover whatever is nearby. 

If left alone, I suppose in thousands of years some kind of balance would assert itself.   Of course, none of us will live long enough to see it happen, so I will keep the balance on my little acres.  

There are lots of things not to like about the climate legislation passed by the House, but it may be the best we can do at this time and it might be possible to improve it later. 

For me, it was interesting to see how lobbying worked, IMO sometimes in good ways.   For example, the bill as it stands now guarantees that forest offset market opportunities will be created for family forest owners in America.   A few days ago, it looked like this would not happen and/or the breaks would only be available to foreign offsets. 

The USDA will have the lead role in implementing the offset markets for forests.  Why is this important?   The USDA is staffed by people who are close to the earth and have a practical knowledge of what works.  I trust these guys more than average regulators.

The bill ensures that “early actors,” family forest owners, who have already taken steps to manage their properties responsibly, will be rewarded for their carbon-positive activities.  This is important to me personally.   I have been working hard last couple of years to make my forests more sustainable (and have written about it).  It would be unfair for our less responsible compatriots to be able to profit from their profligacy.    

The bill will allow all biomass from family forests to be used to meet the Renewable Electricity and Renewable Fuels Standards.  The original definition in the Waxman-Markey bill and the 2007 Energy bill didn’t do that. 

Finally, the bill allows a range of green building standards, including those that allow the use of wood from American Tree Farm System® certified forests.  We had some trouble with LEEDS certification.   Our tree farm would was not included in some of the initial standards. 
That is why we need lobbyists.   If government is going to make far reaching rules, you need someone around to educate the legislators.   Frankly, I would not have known that the things above were even threatened. Some make a big difference.

The LEED thing is a good case in point. LEED are so-called “green buildings.”  Unfortunately, they didn’t take in the full life cycle of a product.   Concrete, for example, is a good building material in its final form, but it creates a lot of pollution and emits great amounts of CO2 during its production.   Green buildings sound like a good idea, and our political representatives might vote for it, but the details are important.

Most people would just like to mind their own business.  Unfortunately, government doesn’t always give us this option and regulations can be used as offensive weapons.  We need lobbyists to protect ourselves from the active-aggression of those who will use government to further their own interests at the expense of ours.

I would just like to grow my trees, but all sorts of regulations impact my choices. Some of the regulations are made by ignorant people. For example, lots of people oppose controlled burning and would like to outlaw it.   They don’t understand the ecological necessity. 

The picture up top, BTW, shows a good thing. It is a controlled burn that will make the forest ecosystem healthier. It is good for the trees and good for wildlife. It will make the trees grow faster and sequester MORE carbon.   That is not immediately apparent, is it?  You can see how the practice might be outlawed.   That is why I am glad we have lobbyists to look out for us.

Please refer to my original source at this link.