Across Oceans and Centuries
Alex Luke | April 2019
“The funny thing people don’t seem to understand when I bring them to Asia,” said Dave Davenport, “is that there isn’t much room for improvement with tigers; every space with enough room for one, has one.” As he continued winding his way through the Vietnamese jungle at the head of our group, I found myself lost in thought at his blunt explanation. Two weeks into a month-long national park hop through the country, we had seen or discussed myriad representative victims of the current biodiversity spiral. Everywhere we turned, we saw massive human growth driving back nature: mountains cut down for cement, roads fragmenting once pristine forest, and of course the ceaseless outward creep of cities. It was all brought into sharp focus by a casual dismissal of a student’s optimism, and I saw for the first time the most frightening reality for a budding conservationist.
Humans have a dangerous momentum going at present, in population and in land use, which has eaten up developed nations and threatens those following behind them. Of course some people recognize the danger in our behavior, like my misguided tiger-enthusiast hiking buddy, and genuinely want to fix things. The key problem with their vision of a restored biosphere is that the flourishing resilient planet humans emerged on was exquisitely without dominance—without us. The trajectory for restoration of any species will inevitably intersect with human demands for resources or space, which is precisely what our jaded guide, Dave, had seen in his travels. While it is true that humans have yet to snatch every scrap of room and resources away from less demanding species than the tiger, it may not always be that way. Growth is still our watchword, from universities to economies and technology.
Thousands of miles and many months later, I found myself on a much different rocky hillside in Appalachia—largely free from the same eco-looting I had witnessed. The Linville Gorge, for those who have never had the privilege of experiencing it, is a pristine steep sided wilderness preserve offering a glimpse into the mountain’s past. Deep in the wooded belly of the place, one loses sight of relatively far-removed human “progress” and is hard pressed to not feel optimism welling up for nature. That is, until you see the hemlocks. Towering between the smaller trees and aloof ridges, there are an alarming number of massive carcasses—the remains of eastern hemlocks finished off by an invading insect. The woolly adelgid swept down from the colder American Northeast and began eating its way through Appalachia’s natural riches before it was recognized as dangerous. This sudden vision of loss called me back to the much different anthropogenic extirpation I witnessed across the ocean—and reminded me that this was not a unique crisis.
In fact, I recalled, this was not the first decimation of Appalachian heritage by an invasive organism, or even one native to Asia! The sad prequel to what I was seeing occurred over a hundred years prior when a fungus took hold of American chestnut trees in New York. This rapidly became the problem of the Southern Appalachians when it tore through the entire native range of the tree from Maine to Florida. In the space of a few decades after 1904 a quarter of the hardwood population was gone—a ubiquitous tree species with 4 billion members formerly occupying its eastern range. Unlike the losses I had witnessed, largely resources and animals divorced from human sustenance, this was a species central to human life in the area.
Prior to the blight they had grown rapidly and abundantly, showering the forest floor with valuable chestnuts capable of feeding entire forest communities. Humans quickly realized this and seized an opportunity for a unique system of forest forage livestock production, all predicated on the annual chestnut crop. Even then, there existed such an abundance of chestnuts in the east that immeasurable quantities were gathered, sold, and shipped to families across the nation. The final gift of the vast American chestnut population was the trees themselves, growing fast and straight in an extremely suitable fashion for regular logging. All benefits combined, communities could count on timber for homes, livestock to feed them, and additional seasonal income to pad the families ensconced in the chestnut’s ecosystem.
Researchers at The American Chestnut Foundation estimate this all vanished in under fifty years following the fungal invasion. Greater than a way of life, the foundation of human settlements behind an entire seaboard was robbed by a blight unknowingly brought to the continent by growing trade with Asia. The initial bloom of an industrial globalized economy had shaded out the strength of nature, much in the same way I witnessed it on both continents nearly a century later. The one courtesy extended by the fungus, not the insects and cities of my time, was that the living root structures of many American chestnuts were left behind.
These feeble remnants occasionally send up a sprout that inevitably falls victim to the fungus, but not before a flower can emerge. This prompted government research into producing a hybrid of American and Chinese chestnut, the resistant shrub like tree that had coevolved with the blight. This was later continued by The American Chestnut Foundation, and in recent years a viable tree was bred. Armed with a 15/16th’s American/Chinese hybrid that retained its foreign cousin’s resistance to the fungus, enthusiastic conservationists stand ready to begin rebuilding the once bountiful eastern hardwood forest. This is certainly a cause for celebration in our country, and seemingly a victory against the collapse of life surrounding humanity; but I stop cold remembering what I have seen.
I hesitate to join in the enthusiastic chorus, remembering my own personal brushes with looming extinctions: that there are many more obstacles left to overcome for a reintroduced miracle species. The same way well-travelled Dave crushed the optimism of a tiger enthusiast, I would temper the joy of the successful forestry experts. In a more broad sense than the range for an apex predator, where there can be undisturbed woods, there is. Even in the most pristine preserves we still see the same processes that threatened forests a century ago—outside them, contemporary humanity is encroaching up to their protected borders. Overcoming one obstacle that functionally ended a species took nearly a human lifetime, and there are many additional roadblocks emerging today that would be foreign to someone who was alive to see the last chestnuts.
Alex Luke | April 2019
“The funny thing people don’t seem to understand when I bring them to Asia,” said Dave Davenport, “is that there isn’t much room for improvement with tigers; every space with enough room for one, has one.” As he continued winding his way through the Vietnamese jungle at the head of our group, I found myself lost in thought at his blunt explanation. Two weeks into a month-long national park hop through the country, we had seen or discussed myriad representative victims of the current biodiversity spiral. Everywhere we turned, we saw massive human growth driving back nature: mountains cut down for cement, roads fragmenting once pristine forest, and of course the ceaseless outward creep of cities. It was all brought into sharp focus by a casual dismissal of a student’s optimism, and I saw for the first time the most frightening reality for a budding conservationist.
Humans have a dangerous momentum going at present, in population and in land use, which has eaten up developed nations and threatens those following behind them. Of course some people recognize the danger in our behavior, like my misguided tiger-enthusiast hiking buddy, and genuinely want to fix things. The key problem with their vision of a restored biosphere is that the flourishing resilient planet humans emerged on was exquisitely without dominance—without us. The trajectory for restoration of any species will inevitably intersect with human demands for resources or space, which is precisely what our jaded guide, Dave, had seen in his travels. While it is true that humans have yet to snatch every scrap of room and resources away from less demanding species than the tiger, it may not always be that way. Growth is still our watchword, from universities to economies and technology.
Thousands of miles and many months later, I found myself on a much different rocky hillside in Appalachia—largely free from the same eco-looting I had witnessed. The Linville Gorge, for those who have never had the privilege of experiencing it, is a pristine steep sided wilderness preserve offering a glimpse into the mountain’s past. Deep in the wooded belly of the place, one loses sight of relatively far-removed human “progress” and is hard pressed to not feel optimism welling up for nature. That is, until you see the hemlocks. Towering between the smaller trees and aloof ridges, there are an alarming number of massive carcasses—the remains of eastern hemlocks finished off by an invading insect. The woolly adelgid swept down from the colder American Northeast and began eating its way through Appalachia’s natural riches before it was recognized as dangerous. This sudden vision of loss called me back to the much different anthropogenic extirpation I witnessed across the ocean—and reminded me that this was not a unique crisis.
In fact, I recalled, this was not the first decimation of Appalachian heritage by an invasive organism, or even one native to Asia! The sad prequel to what I was seeing occurred over a hundred years prior when a fungus took hold of American chestnut trees in New York. This rapidly became the problem of the Southern Appalachians when it tore through the entire native range of the tree from Maine to Florida. In the space of a few decades after 1904 a quarter of the hardwood population was gone—a ubiquitous tree species with 4 billion members formerly occupying its eastern range. Unlike the losses I had witnessed, largely resources and animals divorced from human sustenance, this was a species central to human life in the area.
Prior to the blight they had grown rapidly and abundantly, showering the forest floor with valuable chestnuts capable of feeding entire forest communities. Humans quickly realized this and seized an opportunity for a unique system of forest forage livestock production, all predicated on the annual chestnut crop. Even then, there existed such an abundance of chestnuts in the east that immeasurable quantities were gathered, sold, and shipped to families across the nation. The final gift of the vast American chestnut population was the trees themselves, growing fast and straight in an extremely suitable fashion for regular logging. All benefits combined, communities could count on timber for homes, livestock to feed them, and additional seasonal income to pad the families ensconced in the chestnut’s ecosystem.
Researchers at The American Chestnut Foundation estimate this all vanished in under fifty years following the fungal invasion. Greater than a way of life, the foundation of human settlements behind an entire seaboard was robbed by a blight unknowingly brought to the continent by growing trade with Asia. The initial bloom of an industrial globalized economy had shaded out the strength of nature, much in the same way I witnessed it on both continents nearly a century later. The one courtesy extended by the fungus, not the insects and cities of my time, was that the living root structures of many American chestnuts were left behind.
These feeble remnants occasionally send up a sprout that inevitably falls victim to the fungus, but not before a flower can emerge. This prompted government research into producing a hybrid of American and Chinese chestnut, the resistant shrub like tree that had coevolved with the blight. This was later continued by The American Chestnut Foundation, and in recent years a viable tree was bred. Armed with a 15/16th’s American/Chinese hybrid that retained its foreign cousin’s resistance to the fungus, enthusiastic conservationists stand ready to begin rebuilding the once bountiful eastern hardwood forest. This is certainly a cause for celebration in our country, and seemingly a victory against the collapse of life surrounding humanity; but I stop cold remembering what I have seen.
I hesitate to join in the enthusiastic chorus, remembering my own personal brushes with looming extinctions: that there are many more obstacles left to overcome for a reintroduced miracle species. The same way well-travelled Dave crushed the optimism of a tiger enthusiast, I would temper the joy of the successful forestry experts. In a more broad sense than the range for an apex predator, where there can be undisturbed woods, there is. Even in the most pristine preserves we still see the same processes that threatened forests a century ago—outside them, contemporary humanity is encroaching up to their protected borders. Overcoming one obstacle that functionally ended a species took nearly a human lifetime, and there are many additional roadblocks emerging today that would be foreign to someone who was alive to see the last chestnuts.