When most people think of Iowa farmland they envision seas of corn and soybeans. But in 1964, when Leonard and Mildred Grimes traded in their city home for the cheapest swath of farmland they could find, they saw trees.

Over the years, the couple has transformed nearly 700 acres of depleted soil into a model of forest and prairie restoration, as well as sustainable farming. According to many state conservationists, they led the way with techniques that have become increasingly popular as other farmers see value in regenerating Iowa’s long-forgotten woodlands.

“They’ve been one of the pioneers in Iowa for tree planting and forestry,” said Iowa District Forester Joe Herring.

Though Leonard, a lawyer by trade, and Mildred, a music and library science teacher, have always shared a love of trees, their main goal back in 1964 was to get their children out of the city.

“Our children were always one place or another, and it seemed like if they were out on a farm, as we had been, we could direct them better in ways that suited us,” said Leonard, with humor. “It worked.”

“It was horrible farmland,” said one of the Grimeses’ four children, Carrie Grimes Barr. “, who were farmers, told them, ‘don’t do it.’”

So the whole family got to work – repairing and disassembling 20 odd outbuildings, removing refrigerators and old cars, and restoring land depleted by years of traditional agriculture.

“We were trying to recreate Iowa the way it used to be,” said Leonard. “When we got started, old cemeteries were one of the few places you still saw it.”

In addition to its dramatic loss of native prairie, Iowa has lost about a third of its original forests; woodlands once composed as much as 20 percent of the state before farming and logging took precedence.

Collaborating with agencies like the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Bureau of Forestry, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Grimeses forested great chunks of the depleted land. “Most farmers will retire a few ‘odd acres’ and forest them,” said retired District Forester Bob Hibbs. “Leonard’s ‘odd’ was 20 and 30 acres at a time.”

The Grimeses have also experimented with various tree-growing techniques. In 1992, they direct-seeded about 50 acres. This close approximation of nature’s chosen propagation method, as well as the early settlers’, involves dispersing seed rather than planting seedlings. The seeds take root where they land, and the grower thins them over time. Leonard’s direct seeded trees have grown so quickly that he refers to them as his “instant forest.”

“When anything new came out, Leonard was willing to try it,” said Hibbs, who worked closely with the Grimeses for 30 years as they sought the best planting methods.

By now, some trees stand over 100 feet tall. Bur oak, white pine, red oak, sugar maple, cherry, and others populate the uplands. Cottonwoods, silver maple, and green ash grow in riparian buffers along streams, as did many of Iowa’s original trees.

In all, the Grimeses have planted about 200,000 trees over 240 acres. Meanwhile, they‘ve cultivated other sections of their property as traditional cropland, and converted yet others to wetland and native prairie.

From the beginning, the family also made it their mission to share their love of trees and interest in conservation with others. Since 1964 they’ve invited all Marshall County fifth-graders to the farm to fish, look at different soil qualities, and walk the forests. In 1991 they began donating 160 acres to the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation (INHF), for the Marshall County Conservation Board to use.

“The Grimeses had a whole vision for their property,” said INHF Vice President and Director of Development Anita O’Gara. “They wanted to protect and preserve the natural aspects of the land, and public access was important so they could have people experience and enjoy the land.”

Today a nature trail lures unsuspecting Marshalltown residents away from paved streets. They find themselves wandering through prairies aglitter with butterflies, restored wetland, and shaded hardwood forest, ending at the nature center, not far from the house where Leonard still lives. The Marshall County Conservation Board bases all its operations from that center, which draws visitors from as far as Russia and Japan.

Over the years, the Grimeses have received numerous honors for their conservation work, but you won’t learn it from them. The fact that Leonard’s a Harvard-educated lawyer and former mayor of Marshalltown, and that Mildred sat on about every conservation-related board in the state never comes up in conversation. Instead, you pick it up from their friends.

They’ve been named Iowa Woodland Owner of the Year, Iowa Tree Farmer of the Year, and in 2003 the Lions Club gave them the Marshalltown Lifetime Achievement Award for “ as educators, horticulturalists, civic leaders, environmentalists, and conservationists.”

According to O’Gara, their farm is unique in that it showcases a working landscape in harmony with conservation. She says that harmony can be best seen from a new observation tower constructed this year in honor of Mildred, who died in 2006 and had long dreamed of such a vantage point.

“From there you get the full perspective of what they’ve done,” O’Gara said. “Rolling hills, textured land, crops, and woods are all intermingled. Visitors can see how crops and woodland can be compatible.”

Not far from that viewpoint, Leonard continues working with the trees he began growing more than 40 years ago. He envisions his children and grandchildren harvesting some of them one day, and hopefully growing future forests too. Already, the children and grandchildren find themselves bound to the farm by a tree planted in their honor when they’re born, and another when they die.

“I really love to watch how the trees grow,” said Leonard when asked what the most rewarding aspect of his work has been. “I keep thinking almost daily about how big they are, and remembering what little seeds they were when they were planted.“

– Jamie Hansen has written on ecology and conservation for Sierra Magazine, the High Country News, and Birder’s World.

This article was published in the Autumn 2010 issue of American Forests magazine.

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A tree that in many ways defines life atop the windswept crown of western North America’s high country is in trouble. Whitebark pine, which has evolved to both live and foster other life forms in a landscape where existence is a struggle, faces decimation from blister rust, an outbreak of mountain pine beetles, fire suppression, and climate change. If something can’t be done to help these trees, whitebarks could disappear from the Sierra, Cascade, and northern Rocky Mountain summits. And along with the trees, we could lose a complex web of plant and animal life, all with the potential to become ecologically unraveled if efforts to protect this symbol of subalpine tenacity should fail.

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is a five-needled species most often found near the timberline. Younger trees are known for their whitish bark, thus the name. The trees oft en grow in small groves, the crowns can be bushy, and the trees themselves sometimes display the gnarled effects of harsh, high-altitude living.

Mature whitebark pines do much to orchestrate the way life revolves near mountain summits. To begin with, the tree’s seeds are crucial to much highelevation ecological interaction. They’re large, extremely rich, and capable of boosting a whitebark seedling’s chances in a habitat where the elements seem to conspire against survival. Despite all the inclemency they’re up against, whitebarks are successful reseeders. However, due to an evolutionary twist of fate, they can’t manage this crucial act of species self-preservation on their own.

Unlike other pines, whitebark seeds neither drop from the cones, nor wait for the wind to provide dispersal. Instead, these pines have evolved a mutualistic partnership with a bird at home in subalpine forests, the Clark’s nutcracker.

These handsome, gray, white, and black members of the Corvid family (crows, jays, ravens, and magpies), are vital to manipulating a specialized environmental niche, and in doing so, are fostering the success of its own species by simply planting a seed.

Clark’s nutcrackers are adept at prying seeds from the

whitebark cones and storing them in a throat pouch with the capacity to hold 80 to 100 of the nutritious nuts. Then the birds spread out to do their gardening. A nutcracker may fly 100 yards to a mile or more before depositing several seeds an inch or so deep in the soil. The birds seek open, sunlit meadows like recently burned areas or places where strong winter winds will sweep away the snow. Then, somehow, the nutcrackers manage to remember the location of the caches as summer turns to autumn, and the cold and unrelenting winter winds begin to blow.

Some biologists estimate that a single Clark’s Nutcracker may store as many as 98,000 whitebark seeds in as many as 30,000 sites in its lifetime. About half the seeds are then recovered as either food for the adult birds or essential nutrients for their young.

The rest have the opportunity to sprout as tough seedlings with a rapidly stabilizing taproot and the ability to survive some of the most frigid temperatures, debilitating gales, and intense solar radiation on the continent. In time, these whitebark seedlings form groves that provide the nursery shade needed for seedlings like Engelemann spruce. Then, as the Engelemann spruce mature, other high-altitude species become established. Over the years, sunny, open country near the timberline that was once thinly dotted with islands of pioneer whitebark pine is transformed into a dense forest with a complex vegetative understory, attractive to elk, bear, moose, red squirrels, and a variety of songbirds.

As the high-altitude canopy spreads and matures, it creates a microclimate supporting an increasing complexity of plants and animals. Whitebark pine groves block wind and prevent rapid snowmelt. This in turn prevents erosion and ensures a constant source of cold water to feed mountain streams throughout the summer. Trout fishermen are among those who benefit from the role these high-altitude pines play in preserving the quality midsummer flows that trout require. The loss of good trout habitat can, in turn, affect mountain life ranging from the well-being of grizzly bears to the regional economy.

Donald Peattie, in his classic book A Natural History Of Western Trees, noted, “Of all the trees in its range, is the most completely alpine. And at last it stands, or rather creeps and struggles, alone, rooted in desolate mountain rock, its limbs on the windward side dismantled, its stem foreshortened to a height of three or four feet, its limber branches so intertwined you can walk on them. There is little white bark to be seen on such a timberline specimen, and, as John Muir said, the tree seems to have been stopped in its growth by a low ceiling.”

Peattie added, “That ceiling is real, if invisible. It is determined by the shrieking gales—winds of the very planet’s turning—and by the storms of sand; by the crushing load of ice and snow that last at high altitudes sometimes nine months of the year.”

John Muir, naturalist, father of the Sierra Club, and poet laureate of the western North America high country, loved these trees that grew at the top of the world. “During stormy nights,” he said, “I have often camped snugly beneath the interlacing arches of this little pine. The needles, which have accumulated for centuries, make fine beds; a fact well known to other mountaineers such as deer and wild sheep, who paw out oval hollows and lie beneath the larger trees in safe and comfortable concealment.”

Muir reported that he once counted 255 annual rings in a whitebark pine tree that stood a scant three feet tall. Another three-footer, he said, contained 426 annual rings. Muir added that although the trees were of great antiquity, the branches remained so supple he could tie them into knots.

Autumn arrives early in whitebark pine country. While Clark’s nutcrackers prepare for the winter by planting whitebark seeds, red squirrels are busy gleaning cones and gathering them into large caches called middens. Certainly the squirrels go about this end-of-season task with no intention of sharing. But black and grizzly bears could care less. Whitebark seeds are a prime source of nutrition prior to hibernation. Grizzlies are experts at locating squirrel stashes, even in the snow. And when sow grizzlies emerge from the winter den with cubs in tow, the famished bears seek out pine seeds as an emergency ration.

The big bears carefully pick each seed from the cone, much like a kid from the South shells peanuts or sunflower seeds. Whitebark seeds are the gift of life for this rare and charismatic predator, just as they are for red squirrels, nutcrackers, and others creatures that benefit from the nuts’ rich sustenance. Were it not for the whitebark pine, grizzlies would be forced to seek food at lower elevations, and thus suffer even more frequent contact with man.

As history has shown, the grizzly is better off as a bear of the wilderness, beyond man’s daily haunts, and few trees better symbolize America’s remaining wild places than the whitebark pine. What would happen to the endangered bears of the Greater Yellowstone region if whitebark pines were to disappear remains a matter of speculation. However, biologists know that the seeds remain a critical food source. Grizzlies need the pine nuts both for their food value and for their ability to influence distribution. Whitebark seeds keep bears high in the mountains and away from temptation, thus avoiding conflicts that tend to result in more dead bears.

Getting a toehold in a rugged timberline environment takes enormous resources. However, when a whitebark pine manages to take root and grow, the trees make the best of it. Many trees live to be 500 years old or more, with some individuals tipping the scales of time at over 1,200 years, and still going. Whitebarks reach sexual maturity at 20 to 30 years, but bountiful seed crops aren’t to be expected for another three or four decades. Nothing happens overnight up where whitebark pines prefer to grow, and patience provides its own ample reward for this symbol of subalpine tenacity.

Patience is certainly a virtue in a tree that colonizes the roof of a continent. However, patience tends to be difficult among those working to maintain whitebark pines as an integral part of the future of our high-mountain wilderness, for the trees are being buffeted by diseases both natural and introduced.

As of this year, estimates indicate that as much as 77 percent of the whitebark pine community stretching from Canada to the California Sierras may be succumbing to white pine blister rust, mountain pine beetle infestation, or some combination of the two. The threat is so pervasive the Natural Resources Defense Council has petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the tree as an endangered species—the first major tree with a continent-wide distribution to be nominated for the list.

Scientists working to save the species agree that a recovery effort needs to be both immediate and far-reaching. The blister rust is an introduced assailant from Europe—the trees haven’t had time to evolve natural defenses. The pine beetles are native, and outbreaks have been common throughout the history of our North American forests. Unfortunately, climate change resulting in high-altitude warming has allowed the beetles to damage trees that may have been protected in the past by longer, colder winters.

At the same time, centuries-old timber management practices have curtailed the fires that once created open space for new whitebark pine nurseries. Whitebarks require a regimen of natural disturbance so that seedlings can grow to sunlight and survive. In time, the forest will close back in, starting once more under the shade of whitebark boughs. But without a natural regimen of periodic fire, whitebark pines can’t colonize.

And, as goes the whitebark pine, so go the birds and squirrels, the elk and the bears, and all the growing things that have evolved as part of this tightly knit tapestry of life at the top of the continent. The next few years will show us just how much the whitebark pine can endure. We’ll discover whether we are willing to allow this keystone species to disappear from the planet, or if we will accept the challenge of saving a tree that clings to life in a high, hard country — and in doing so, opens so many critical ecological doors.

Time to Rally: Research & Restoration Are Key

The future of the whitebark pine may be in jeopardy but the tree’s champions are a diverse, committed, and maybe most importantly, a passionate group. Scientists from throughout the region have made whitebark conservation the focus of ongoing research efforts,

working, as Aldo Leopold once advocated, to preserve the ecological integrity of subalpine communities by saving all the parts.

Whitebark benefactors include university research scientists, teachers, U.S. Forest Service professionals, U.S. Fish & and Wildlife Service and National Park Service personnel, communicators, photographers, conservation organizations like NRDC and American Forests, school groups, and everyday citizens who do what they can, from writing letters to offering contributions. Most agree it will take a concentrated, prolonged effort to insure a future for this tree, plus the variety of plant and animal life it fosters by providing an important food source for as many as 110 species.

To save a species—whether it’s whitebark pine, some charismatic megafauna, or a single small butterfly— first you have to understand both what it is and what it represents in the overall scheme of things. As researcher Diana Tomback pointed out during a recent gathering of concerned scientists, whitebark pine restoration techniques are available, but restoration requires a high level of commitment over time, along with dependable funding. Without that commitment, she said, we risk the loss of whitebark pine and greatly diminished western forest diversity.

Robert Keane, research ecologist at the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Montana, seconds Tomback’s assertion. He works in the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, and his whitebark pine restoration research includes evaluating the effects of prescribed burning, thinning, selective cutting, and fuel-enhancement cutting.

Keane and coworkers studied fuel consumption, tree mortality, and undergrowth response to various treatments at one, five, and 10-year intervals. They found that all of those factors provided desirable seed-caching habitat for Clark’s nutcrackers, the trees’ natural dispersal agent.

On the other hand, Keane and his team discovered that regeneration rates were low due to nutcrackers reclaiming a higher percentage of cached seeds: a result of declining production in adjacent stands with high blister rust mortality. Other factors included environmental elements (cold, snow, and high erosion rates), lack of plant cover, and a relatively short passage of time since site manipulation.

Keane says whitebark pine communities with a mortality rate of at least 20 percent and blister-rust infection rates above 50 percent should be treated by planting rust-resistant seedlings. This is the best way to shorten the gap between disturbance and regeneration. Long-term restoration of this complex ecosystem will depend on cost-effective, coordinated efforts, including ecological research, seed harvest from rust-resistant trees, prioritization of restoration and prescribed burning, and silvicultural cutting.

“We realize it will be impossible to implement treatment on all whitebark pine lands,” Keane said. “But there will be critical forests requiring immediate and extensive proactive restoration.” He added that many whitebark forests are in areas like national parks and wilderness areas where treatment is prohibited, so wildfire must be allowed to play a role.

“Though the outlook may seem bleak, exciting advances in research and many recent management successes exist,” says Keane. “Hopefully these will help secure this keystone species’ conservation.”

Richard Sniezko, U.S. Forest Service scientist at the Dorena Genetic Resource Center in Cottage Grove, Oregon, has devoted years to developing rustresistant seedlings for genetic restoration. Sniezko and colleagues collect whitebark pine seeds from forests in Oregon, Washington, and the WarmSprings Indian Reservation. Seedlings grown from these various “families” are tested by inoculating each with blister rust. After five years, each parent is rated for resistance based upon its seedlings’ performances.

“Many trees are highly susceptible, in that 90 percent of their progeny become infected and die,” Sniezko said. “Some families show infection rates of around 50 percent. The good news,” Sniezko said, “is that some are showing surprising resistance to white pine blister rust.” The staff is testing more than 350 selections from sites in Oregon and Washington.

Trees chosen as seed donors require both legwork and tree-climbing skills in order to ensure that samples aren’t sequestered by nutcrackers before the researchers can complete their harvest. Cones on pines that show signs of resistance are covered with special cages—it’s the only way to keep nutcrackers at bay until field workers can add to their collections.

As seed production diminishes, nutcrackers may consume nearly 100 percent of the seeds they cache. If seed crops fail, the birds can turn to other sources of pine nuts. However, whitebark pines have no other means of dispersal, except for man.

Fortunately, agencies and nonprofit groups like American Forests and the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation are advocating and supporting more planting. American Forests is partnering with state and federal agencies to plant seedlings in an ongoing effort to restore whitebark pine communities. The Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation, under the direction of Dr. Diana Tomback, is committed to conservation education as well as providing financial support for whitebark pine projects. The group hopes to promote new strategies for restoration, and build coalitions dedicated to whitebark pine preservation.

Timing and funding are critical, supporters say But most believe that, with patience, substantial effort, and a little good luck, whitebark pines can survive to remain a symbol of a landscape wrapped in clouds, caped in snow, and home to a tough little tree . . . and a bird that lives to garden.

HIGH & WILD: WHITEBARK PINES SYMBOLIZE AMERICA’S WILDERNESS SANCTUARIES

In many ways, whitebark pine is the perfect symbol for America’s remaining wild places. Some 98 percent of the tree’s range is national forestland, national parks, state lands, Indian reservations and national wilderness.

Whitebark pine communities spread south from the Canadian Rockies to the Sierra Nevada in California. A preference for subalpine habitat restricts this tree to major mountain ranges in Alberta and British Columbia, the Sierras, the Cascades and the Rockies of Montana and Wyoming.

In a report compiled for the U.S. Forest Service, forest pathologist John W. Schwandt noted that whitebark pine occurs as both a climax species at tree line, as well as an early successional species, contributing far more to high elevation ecosystems than might be concluded based on biomass and abundance alone.

In its ability to colonize and persevere at high altitudes, the tree is a pillar of alpine ecosystems, Schwandt points out. Subalpine communities depend upon whitebark pine for stability, diversity and in many cases, even existence itself. Whitebark groves allow inhospitable areas to moderate and become, over time, thriving communities containing diverse populations of plants and wildlife.

Whitebark pines are so proficient at this task that they impact life forms ranging from soil microorganisms to very big bears. At the same time, the trees stabilize erosion prone slopes and capture snow, slowing spring runoff, reducing flooding, and improving water quality in the valleys below. Schwandt says that if conditions are favorable, whitebark pines can grow to 100 feet in height, reach several feet in diameter, and persist for a thousand years. However, whitebarks growing at timberline may also display the weathered, stunted “krumholtz” look of trees battered by harsh winds, low temperatures and abundant winter precipitation.

The whitebark pine’s ability to nurture other species is well known to wildlife biologists. These trees are critical to the overall health of the lower 48’s grizzly bear population, a federally protected threatened species.

Today grizzlies are found in some two percent of their original range south of Canada and Alaska. Biologists believe that between 1800 and 1975, grizzly populations declined from an estimated 50,000 of these big bears to less than 1,000.

Grizzlies require a huge home range to provide for their voracious caloric needs—50 to 300 square miles for females, 200 to 500 square miles for males. Therefore it’s important to protect prime subalpine food sources. Whitebark seeds are both high in nutrition and available at critical times of the year.

Red squirrels also love whitebark seeds, and stay busy each autumn gathering cones to store. Squirrel activity isn’t lost on both black and grizzly bears, who use their highly developed olfactory capacity to locate the cached cones and help themselves.

Research in Yellowstone National Park has shown that grizzlies feed almost exclusively on whitebark pine seeds in abundant years. Such feasting pushes reproductive rates higher, and allows the bears to generally stay in the high country, away from human/bear conflicts.

Bears have a bird to thank for all this subalpine bounty: Clark’s nutcracker, the Johnny Appleseed of high elevation ecosystems, is a jay-sized corvid that’s talkative, loud, and hard to overlook in its home territory.

Whitebark pine’s symbiotic relationship with Clark’s nutcrackers indicate how tightly intertwined the evolution of these two species has become over thousands of years. The whitebark seed is too heavy for typical pine seed dispersal. At the same time, the nuts have evolved a high fat content that nutcrackers can’t mresist. Over time, the birds have become such competent distributors of whitebark seeds that the tree’s cone scales don’t even bother to open wide enough for the seed to fall on its own. Instead, this jaunty, intelligent jay cousin is perfectly equipped not only to pry open the cones, but also store up to 100 seeds in a special throat pouch perfect for cross country distribution.

Nutcrackers are adept at finding seedbeds open to sunlight, and may fly several miles to do so. And, unlike wind assisted pine seeds, a feathered farmer of pine nuts cares little about which way the winds blow. Nutcrackers are just as apt to distribute upwind as down. The birds’ main concern is finding a good stash site, which in turn generally proves to be a good seedbed.

Buried seeds are retrieved to feed both adults and young. Nutcrackers relocate seeds by memory, relying upon landmarks even when winter snows blanket the ground. Overlooked seeds have an excellent chance of becoming whitebark seedlings.

Few people know and appreciate the Clark’s nutcracker better than researcher Diana Tomback, a professor at the University of Colorado Denver. Her studies indicate that the future of whitebark pine and Clark’s nutcracker remains tightly interwoven.

According to Tomback, Clark’s nutcrackers begin gathering seeds in late summer. These are stored in the sublingual pouch, a sac-like extension of the floor of the mouth unique to the genus Nucifraga. Nutcrackers also have evolved a long, sturdy and slightly decurved bill perfect for tearing into whitebark pine cones and prying out the seeds.

Seeds are generally buried on steep, south-facing slopes that accumulate minimal snowpack. Tomback says nutcrackers usually store around three to seven seeds per cache, thus reducing competition for moisture and space.Seeds are planted approximately two centimeters deep, perfect for germination requirements.

A single bird may store as many as 32,000 seeds per year, three to five times the number needed to meet bird and brood’s annual energy requirements. Survival rates for leftover seeds can be 56 percent the first year, and still around 25 percent by as late as the fourth year, Tomback said.

She added that other seed distribution methods, including rodents and seeds left from disintegrating cones, provide far less reproductive potential.

Nutcrackers also deposit seeds more evenly throughout available habitat, in some cases covering several miles or more. Such mobility, Tomback said, is why Clark’s nutcrackers are responsible for the whitebark pine’s pioneering capacity. Bird and tree, she added, are both coevolved and mutualistic: made for each other no matter how wild the weather.

TO LIST, OR NOT TO LIST

Late in December of 2008, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a 1.3-million-member conservation organization, petitioned the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) to place whitebark pine trees on the federal endangered species list. In its petition, NRDC pointed out that whitebark forests are being decimated throughout their range by an invasive disease, as well as insect infestations made more severe by climate change. The organization added that the tree could be driven to extinction, leaving vast ecological gaps in high mountain landscapes, and eliminating a critical food source for wildlife, especially grizzly bears.

With no response from the USFWS to the listing petition nearly a year after a response is required by law, in February the NRDC asked a federal court to intervene.

“The whitebark pine is central to many of North America’s mountain ecosystems, and its loss would be devastating to some of our most majestic landscapes,” pointed out Dr. Sylvia Fallon, the petition’s author. “With help, the tree can be saved. Listing would result in a recovery plan and resources to advance solutions already out there, but still in need of support.”

If listed, whitebark pine would become the first broadly dispersed tree protected by the Endangered Species Act. Fallon said scientists regard whitebark pine as a “foundation species” due to its role as a pioneer, creating the conditions necessary for other species to become established in harsh alpine habitat.

An NRDC spokesperson said that some of the threats facing whitebark pines are not uncommon in North America’s western forests. However, the advent of global warming has allowed insects and disease to reach elevations where trees have not evolved biological defenses.

Until recently, according to NRDC, harsh winters kept mountain pine beetles mostly at bay. Recent warmer temperatures have allowed the insects to both increase in numbers and invade at higher altitudes.

Unfortunately, many whitebark pines attacked by beetles were already weakened by blister rust, an invasive fungus introduced from England. This fungus has been responsible for the death of as many as 50 percent of Northern Rocky Mountain whitebark pine forests during the past four decades. Sadly, 80 to 100 percent of the remaining trees suffer from pine blister rust or mountain pine beetle infestation, and will eventually die.

AN URGENT NEED TO PLANT WHITEBARK PINE

The pace at which whitebark pine trees are dying in our Western mountains is extremely alarming. In the Greater Yellowstone Area, 700,000 whitebark pines were killed by mountain pine beetles in 2004 alone. With Yellowstone grizzly bears obtaining as much as two-thirds of their summer energy from pine nuts, how will the grizzlies survive? Throughout the range of this vitally important tree, from the Cascades and Sierras to Glacier National Park and the Canadian Rockies, conditions are severe. Survival of this magnificent mountain tree will require a redoubling of current efforts. You can help by letting your elected officials and natural resource agencies know that this is important for the environment, for our natural heritage, and to you.

There is no simple restoration strategy for whitebark pine. Improving conditions for natural regeneration using prescribed fire and other means continues to be a priority. But with the loss of trees far outpacing natural regeneration, actively planting whitebark pine is increasingly important, especially with blister rust-resistant seedlings now available.

Since 1999, American Forests has been raising funds to plant whitebark pine trees through its Global ReLeaf program. The largest of these projects – 34,000 rust-tolerant seedlings developed by the Regional Tree Improvement Program – will be planted this summer across 150 acres in the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho. The other six projects are:

1999 — Island Park Caldera – Targhee National Forest; 5,000 whitebark pines

2001— Henry’s Fork – Targhee National Forest; 5,000 whitebark pines

2002— Caribou-Targhee National Forest; 12,200 whitebark pines

2005— Blacklead Whitebark Pine Restoration -Idaho; 11,615 whitebark and lodgepole pines

2006— Beaver Ridge Reforestation – Clearwater National Forest; 8,300 whitebark and lodgepole pines.

2010— Willow Burned Area – Caribou-Targhee National Forest; 15,000 whitebark pines.

 — Gary Lantz writes from Norman, Oklahoma 

This article was published in the Spring 2010 issue of American Forests magazine.

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The mile-a-minute weed’s delicate, triangular leaves look bucolic enough, but I’m snatching handfuls of it off scraggly bushes that cower beneath. Petite thorns curve backward and claw at clothing; where they graze my forearms, itchy red bumps irritate for hours. I feel strangely heroic in thick gloves, ripping out the prickly strands and rescuing the now-sparse, hillside native vegetation from this wicked vine. Sweat dampens my forehead as I ball up the offending foliage like string and cast it near the path below.

As a weed warrior, I joined a local army of volunteers dedicated to defending local forests against non-native invasive plants, which were once purposefully planted for erosion control or landscaping appeal, but have now grown wildly out of control across every U.S. region.

“It’s a big mess,” says Mike Ielmini, National Invasive Species Coordinator for the Forest Service. Estimates reveal that our country’s alien-plant problem exceeds the size of California in acreage, including both public and private lands. And with our global village becoming even more interconnected, the invasive species problem will grow.

“I think it’s going to seriously affect forests in the future,” says Carole Bergmann, a forest ecologist for Montgomery County, Maryland, especially when combined with invasive non-native insects and viruses, such as gypsy moths and sudden oak death. The problem is so massive that it is widely considered to be the biggest threat to biodiversity after habitat destruction. It is a challenge that affects us locally — and often personally, as we witness invasions in our local forests — as well as nationally.

Though the invasive threat seems to have spiraled out of control, ecologists and foresters aren’t giving in. In this article, American Forests investigates our growing American invasive plant problem, and how we’re defending our forests.

Ecological Enemies

It wasn’t until the early 1980s that invasive plants began to spark national concern, says Sarah Reichard, research assistant professor at the University of Washington. That’s when the United Nations appointed a group of scientists to examine invasive weeds in natural areas. “It was eye-opening for people,” she says.

Now, over 1,000 invasive non-native plant species have been identified within the U.S., most sharing common characteristics that give them unfair advantages over natives: They can establish quickly, and reproduce rapidly and widely. A single princess tree, for example, can produce 20 million seeds that are easily transported long distances by wind and water. In addition, invasive species’ seed banks can survive for more than seven years in the soil.

Foreign heritage has excused invasives from the complex array of natural controls present in their native lands, such as herbivores, parasites, pathogens, and competition with other species. Without controls, invasive vines and shrubs create dense stands that crowd out native seedlings and dark shade that blocks succession and understory growth. Invasive vines that lurk at forest edges have the power to strangle and topple tall trees, creating canopy holes that encourage more invasive growth.

Many alien plants also create trouble for animals by crowding out the native plants that wildlife depend on for food. English ivy, for example, hides the leaf litter that robins and towhees dig through for insects. And herbaceous invasives — such as garlic mustard — replace native wildflowers that serve as host plants for butterflies.

Left unchecked, these outlaw species drown plant diversity, creating a near monoculture of ecologically worthless vegetation. Take, for example, Japanese stiltgrass, which blankets eastern U.S. forest floors in a lush carpet of green, disrupting succession of other species. The ammunition of these tiny, bamboo-like grasses is their seed abundance: Each plant produces hundreds of tiny seeds, which can embed themselves alongside roads and trails just as easily as in the forest interior.

“We don’t even know how it happens in some forests,” says Luke Flory, a researcher at Indiana University who studies Japanese stiltgrass. All it takes, he says, is a hitchhiker seed buried in a hiking boot, all-terrain vehicle, or mountain bike tread.

In the worst cases, invasives can alter the natural cycle of the forest landscape. Highly flammable cogongrass, a new threat, has the ability to turn forests into savannahs. Currently, cogongrass is the target of the largest effort in history to shut out an invasive plant: $10.6 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is at work fighting the invader in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi.

Invasives weren’t always our horticultural enemies. Years ago, we imported foreign species for the same qualities that now make them invasive: tenacity and resistance to pests. Japanese honeysuckle, prized as a shady ornamental plant, was often planted around porches. Bamboo was valued for thick, fast-growth screening; kudzu was imported for erosion control. Others arrived as stowaways that sneaked past border controls, like Japanese stiltgrass, which was once used as packing material.

Now we’re paying the price. Invasive species rob forests of valuable ecosystem services and capabilities — degrading soil quality, water abundance, and diversity. The ecological, economic, and health costs of all types of invasive species exceed $138 billion per year, with plants alone responsible for $34.7 billion in losses, according to a 1999 report led by David Pimentel at Cornell University. In the past decade, as invasives grew out of control, that figure has likely skyrocketed.

Agencies and forest managers alike know the situation is critical, but the alien-species problem is just one of many — including wildfires — pressing for funding and attention. A downturned economy has also set back our defense of forests. But can we afford to lose this ecological battle? “It’s like a hole in the bucket,” says Ielmini of the Forest Service, “We’re losing $138 billion a year just on this problem.”

Assessing The Damage

We know that invasives are everywhere, but exactly how much of the U.S. is under siege by alien plants is anybody’s guess. No U.S. agency has had the resources to do an intensive inventory on public and private land, but according to estimates, invasive plants have affected more than 100 million U.S. acres — including tens of millions of Forest Service acres, and over 2.4 million acres of the National Wildlife Refuge System. In addition, invasives spread daily: The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated in a 1998 study that invasive nonnative plants spread on public lands at the rate of 4,600 acres per day.

Different species plague each region, explains Cynthia Huebner, research botanist with the U.S. Forest Service’s northern research station. Mid-Atlantic forest invasives range from Japanese knotweed to tree of heaven, Oriental bittersweet, and dozens more. Midwestern invaders include autumn olive, privets, stiltgrass, and garlic mustard.

In southern forests, according to James Miller, research ecologist for the Forest Service’s southern research station, some 10,000 native plant species must now compete with nearly 400 non-native invasive plants. The worst invaders include Japanese honeysuckle — which has affected some 12 million southern forest acres — as well as kudzu and privets.

In the Pacific Northwest, less light penetrates the canopy of dark coniferous forests, limiting non-native invasions to some extent. But problem species still include Atlantic ivy, English holly, and butterfly bush. Saltcedar trees have become the bane of western states’ riparian zones as dense saltcedar thickets tap water tables and monopolize riverbanks without providing food to local wildlife.

“There are new species coming in probably every day,” Huebner says. A small number — possibly as small as 1 percent — of non-natives turn out to be villainous. Predicting which ones will be helpful and which will be harmful is a challenge of agency cooperation and research, both at the borders and in the field.

In every region where development touches landscapes, invasives follow. “Anything that’s disturbed is more likely to be invaded,” Huebner says. Natural disturbances — a tornado, a fallen limb, a natural treefall — create opportunity for an invasive seed waiting for a patch of sunlight. Human-caused disturbances, such as new trails, roads, or mowing, bring additional opportunities. In contrast, less fragmented wilderness forest tracts stand the best chance of shutting out invasives.

For these reasons, “urban and suburban areas are much more affected than rural areas,” Bergmann says. That’s because most invasives first take hold in urban regions, where vines and shrubs are introduced as landscaping or erosion control, or tracked in as seeds by hikers or vehicles. The plants then spread to nearby natural areas, where visibly distressed forests are enough to call some to arms.

Weed Warriors To The Rescue

The Capital Crescent Trail near Washington, D.C., cuts through a skinny urban forest tract under constant siege. “I don’t want to live in a neighborhood where vines pulling trees down is normal,” says Lynnwood Andrews, as she joins up with other weed warriors early one August morning. In a gorge below the urban trail, mile-a-minute weed grows over dense clumps of porcelain-berry — invasives conquering invasives — a poignant snapshot of ecological anarchy.

For weed warrior volunteers, part of the reward is saving a sapling from a net of porcelain-berry, or seeing plots that used to drown in vines begin to host small native bushes again. They also like the fact that they can do something tangible to defend the local forests they love.

On a small scale, such labor-intensive hand-pulling can successfully keep native plants safe while getting to the root of the problem. But knowing the enemy’s seasonal schedule is key. Because of invasives’ long-lasting seed banks, volunteers must wrangle weeds before they go to seed, or hand pulling is useless until next year, when the problem has multiplied.

Though many local parks rely on volunteers to help control invasives in patches, they’re only a small part of our regional and national defense, which managers are piecing together with limited funds.

Defending Forests

To someone looking out over an acre cloaked in leafy vines or carpeted in alien grasses, ecological ruin seems imminent. But researchers, foresters, and ecologists are figuring out how to halt the enemy advance. Prevention, they agree, is our best defense.

In Wisconsin, Department of Natural Resources Invasive Plant Coordinator Kelly Kearns is on high alert for stiltgrass, which hasn’t yet spread to that state. She’s implored residents to report any sightings of the invader, so that they can be eradicated immediately. So far, she has been successful at keeping stiltgrass out of state lines.

For a preventive strategy to work, education is key. Teaching homeowners and landscapers how to identify local invasive threats and the risks of planting invasive species (such as barberry, winged burning bush, and English ivy) would help slow the invasives’ advance. Keeping problem plants from spreading also requires careful cleaning of forestry and firefighting equipment, especially tire treads, to prevent spreading seeds to other natural areas.

The second line of defense involves early detection and rapid response. Weed warrior volunteers, cooperative weed management groups, hikers, and hunters can be invaluable in bringing attention to new infestations. At that point — when the invasion is small — hand-pulling can be effective.

When a nuisance plant becomes established in thick stands, however, agencies and land managers must resort to treatment, which can include integrated pest management techniques, annual mowing, or chemical treatment. For infestations of some species that gain a foothold — such as cogongrass — herbicides are the only option. The most common herbicides, like glyphosate (Roundup) or triclopyr (Garlon), kill all that’s green, but new grass-specific herbicides target just the grasses and leave other plants alone.

During treatment, the biggest mistake that forest managers can make is to remove invasives but ignore the next steps: re-treating an area in subsequent years, and replanting the native species. “You may end up in a money pit or make the problem worse,” says Huebner, unless you stick with treatment for years. Over time, infested acres can be returned to their natural state.

Still, we’ve much to learn. How to stop invasive plants from spreading is a topic that the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies are grappling with, Miller notes.

Better laws would help. Some states, such as Washington and Oregon, have state noxious weed laws, which require the removal of certain problem invasive species on both private and public properties. Better cooperation between landowners would strengthen our defenses, too. There’s often a gray area regarding who has responsibility for marginal lands bordering highways and railways, where invasives tend to thrive.

Meanwhile, anyone who cares to defend local forests can join the invasive-fighting ranks by learning what enemy plants look like, gearing up in leather gloves, and squelching local invasive uprisings.

– Carrie Madren writes from Olney, Maryland, and can be reached at camadren@gmail.com.

Read More: Kudzu’s Climb To Infamy

This article was published in the Winter 2011 issue of American Forests magazine.

The post Alien Invasion! appeared first on American Forests.

As we mark the 70th anniversary of the National Register of Big Trees this spring, we would like to call special attention to the dedicated network of Big Tree State Coordinators who make it possible. State coordinators verify nominations for the National Register, and provide invaluable advice and feedback to the national program. We recently began profiling coordinators in our monthly e-newsletter, Forestbytes. Here is a larger sampling of these incredible people and the unique programs they coordinate in each of their states.

BRIAN HENDRICKS, ALABAMA

Alabama Champion Tree Coordinator Brian Hendricks wanted to be a forester since the 8^th grade. Hendricks grew up in the small community of Carthage, Illinois, where he fondly remembers fishing, going for walks in nearby woods and identifying trees with his dad. “I was fascinated by the different species,” he recalls.

Today, as state coordinator, Hendricks has devoted hard work and patience to rejuvenating Alabama’s Champion Tree program. In addition to his regular duties overseeing Alabama’s Forest Inventory & Analysis program, he took over the Champion Tree program in 2007. Hendricks – with the assistance of Auburn University Professor Lisa Samuelson – was charged with establishing a new list of eligible species, as new guidelines mandated that only naturalized or native Alabama trees be considered. Hendricks was pleased to find a positive reaction to this change, despite many lost spots on the state champion list.

Hendricks is a strong believer in public participation. “The nominators are the most important people,” Hendricks says. “We wouldn’t know about a tree if it weren’t for them.” Most of the state’s nominations come from the public, he points out; in fact, many nominated trees are actually discovered in people’s yards.

To celebrate the nominators, when a new champion is found Hendricks sends out a formal letter recognizing owner and nominator, and provides a marker for the nominator to place at the base of the tree; the marker is often presented in a public ceremony. Because much of the state is rural, Hendricks says, the ceremonies often get local media involved and become an important way to bring communities together.

In the future, Hendricks expects that Alabama’s popular Champion Tree program will only get bigger. “We just have a lot of interest. Often owners who aren’t even aware of the program initially become very excited when they discover they have a Champion Tree on their property.” One of his favorite things, Hendricks says, is hearing that excitement in people’s voices. “It’s something they’re proud and happy about,” Hendricks says. “And they should be.”

DON BERTOLETTE, ALASKA

Son of teacher parents who turned him on to the environment, he says, before the term was commonplace, Alaska Big Tree Coordinator Don Bertolette is a lifelong forester. Recently retired  from more than 30 years with federal land management agencies – filling positions in such fields as forest engineering, resources inventory, and watershed management – and holding several forestry degrees, Don is also the co-founder of the Western Native Tree Society.

Even for someone with Bertolette’s experience, though, the role of Alaska Big Tree Coordinator is no easy job. At over 586,000 square miles, Alaska is by far the nation’s largest state: Territorial waters included, Alaska is larger than California, Texas and Montana combined. It covers a vast range of climate stretching from wet, temperate rainforests to boreal forests and regions of such bitter cold that it is impossible for trees to grow. Very few roads provide access to this vast territory, which means that hunting down Big Trees presents a unique challenge and can require the use of plane, snowmobile or dogsled.

Luckily, Bertolette has approached the role with determination, and is hard at work cultivating a vital network of foresters across the state. He also continues to advocate for greater consistency and accuracy in documenting champions. These biggest trees, he feels, should not be considered primarily for their economic value, but for their scientific value to geneticists and researchers, who require consistent, accurate measurements of the capabilities of various species.

For the future, Bertolette also hopes to put more effort into outreach, including connecting with local schools, offering more resources online, and helping teach the public about measuring trees. “You can’t underestimate the educational function,” Bertolette says of the program. He himself is learning as well. While he says he still feels comparatively new to the area, he has enjoyed the opportunity to gain a better sense of Alaska’s trees.

Overall, Bertolette believes the Big Trees program is an excellent forum for helping people appreciate the role – spiritual, economic, social or biological – that trees plat within society. “We encourage participation in all facets,” Bertolette says.

JENNIFER TEEGARDEN, MINNESOTA

In her first full year as Minnesota Big Tree Coordinator, Jennifer Teegarden has made a big impression. When Teegarden took on the job, she was relatively new to the Division of Forestry and the state’s Big Tree Register. And since the register had been essentially inactive since 2005, she had a lot of catching up to do. Nevertheless, Teegarden found the time to get the register back on track, and even update the state program to coincide with the national program so that these Minnesota champions could receive national recognition. Her success can likely be attributed to her high energy, efficiency and dedication. “When I have a job to do, I’m going to give it my all,” she says.

In coming years, Teegarden looks forward to getting familiar with each of the trees on Minnesota’s register throughout the state’s four biomes, which, she notes, includes regions from rare pockets of old growth forest to mosquito-infested swamps and other remote and difficult-to-access areas.

In the meantime, this former public school teacher is working to appeal to a younger generation. Teegarden seeks out ways to make the Register increasingly interactive and fun. One example is her idea of putting on a Big Tree Hunting Geocache, a high-tech treasure hunt where participants would use GPS to locate hidden geocache containers. In addition, Teegarden hopes to work more closely with Minnesota’s roughly 100 School Forests, where teachers and students use an outdoor classroom to study core subjects like math, science and art.

Though her job and the publicity that comes with it can sometimes be nerve-wracking, Teegarden says her teaching experience – she would sometimes present to over 300 teenagers – helps her keep her cool. At the end of the day she is happy to have returned to her girlhood interest in the environment– especially forestry.

“I really love trees,” she says. “When I go out and see a magnificent specimen I get excited, and I just hope to be able to share this excitement with others.”

DONNA BALDWIN, MISSOURI

Donna Baldwin began at the Missouri Department of Conservation over 15 years ago, but her interest in the outdoors dates back even further. A Missouri native, Baldwin grew up in a heavily wooded region on the Lake of the Ozarks, where she recalls spending most of her time outdoors.

Since assuming the role of Big Tree Coordinator, Baldwin has come to see that one of her main challenges is overcoming her lack of forestry experience. “I rely heavily on the guidance of professional foresters in my state,” she says. While she depends on her well-developed team of 85 foresters, Baldwin enjoys an occasional trip to the field for the chance to see the state champions up close, and takes pride in Missouri’s several national champions.

And, forestry background or not, Baldwin has already accomplished a great deal in her short time with the Register. She has started collecting digital pictures of all newly crowned champions so that in the future Missouri can have an interactive, more digitized Register similar to the National Register compiled by American Forests.

In addition, Baldwin is working to update all printed and electronic forms of Missouri’s measuring guidelines to bring them in line with the guidelines used in the National Register. The Redbud tree is one case in point: She explains that the difference in the way forked trees are measured may mean that what ranks as a national champion with American Forests may not be a champion at all in Missouri. Baldwin wants to eliminate such confusion for the public, and make the register as easy, comprehensive and accessible as possible.

After all, what she enjoys most about her job is the opportunity to make a difference – to stimulate people and see their excitement when they nominate a tree or discover a champion. “The landowners, the public, the foresters – they all get such a kick out of it,” she says.

GLORIA VAN DUYNE, NEW YORK

Before becoming New York’s Big Tree Coordinator, Gloria Van Duyne enjoyed a career that led her from New England and then across the globe to Australia, where she volunteered for a bird-banding group.

“You never know where things may take you,” she says. In fact, she was a computer science major in undergrad school before realizing she wanted to work more closely with people.

Today Van Duyne pursues her interest in conservation at New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, where among her many other jobs she coordinates the state’s Big Tree program. While she holds the title of coordinator, Van Duyne is quick to point to the program’s collaborative nature. “It’s really a team effort. Just as a forest is made up of many trees, the success of our program depends on the many people who contribute to it.” For example, she says she relies on the work of Environmental Education Assistant Carol Pawelek (the “true engine behind the program”), the foresters across the state with the training and ability to track down Big Trees, and, of course, the nominators.

“If it weren’t for the public – meaning people interested in trees – we wouldn’t have the register,” Van Duyne says. Some New York big tree hunters, like Landis Arboretum Arborist Fred Breglia, have nominated many champions over several years. The public’s interest in the program is especially pleasing to Van Duyne, who sees what a difference it can make for those who participate. “For some people it just takes one particular tree to get them interested and involved in the community and community forestry,” she says.

Despite the difficulty caused by shrinking staff in state agencies, especially in the lands and forests divisions, Van Duyne believes the New York State Register is in its best shape in years. “I’m just happy that the program can be run as it deserves,” she says. New York’s Register is certainly an example of teamwork paying off.

This article was published in the Spring 2010 issue of American Forests magazine.

The post Championing The Champs appeared first on American Forests.

In this era of diminishing forests, declining species, and concern over climate change, those doing the often-thankless work on behalf of the natural world seldom have something substantial to cheer about. But during the last decade or so, a tiny summer resident in Michigan’s jack-pine country has given the conservation community a reason to smile. A consortium of state and federal agencies, conservation organizations, and private citizens has shown that a small bird can inspire a huge effort, and that a species once doomed to extinction can flourish because people care.

The brashly singing, beautifully plumaged Kirtland’s Warbler is five-plus inches of unabashed energy cloaked in gray, black, brown, and bright yellow. Weighing in at approximately half an ounce, the bird journeys from its winter home in the Bahamas to nest in a very specific part of Michigan’s north woods.

If the warbler’s exacting nesting requirements aren’t met, it doesn’t do a very successful job of reproducing. Scientists believe that because of its finicky tastes, the warbler never was a particularly numerous species. And when human settlement and commercial timber harvest altered natural forest cycles, the Kirtland’s numbers plummeted.

The key to successful Kirtland’s nesting is jackpine forest growing on the sandy soils this tree prefers. Another key ingredient is site disturbance that produces a mosaic of tree age classes. Kirtland’s warblers require young jack pines for nesting cover. Before human settlement, such cover was a naturally occurring pattern wrought by periodic wildfire.

Historically, jack-pine forest in both upper and lower Michigan was constantly renewed by naturally occurring blazes. Fire resulted in open space among the jack-pine islands, accelerated the growth of brushy, grassy groundcovers, and, most importantly for the warblers, created a mosaic of young pines in successive stages.

Kirtland’s warblers begin to nest under jack-pine stands when the young trees reach five feet tall, or around five to eight years of age. The birds continue to use this nesting habitat until the lower limbs begin to die back, when the tree reaches 16 to 20 feet, or about 16 to 20 years of age.

These ground-nesting warblers like their jackpine islands to encompass more than 80 acres, and the nesting territory of each pair may range anywhere from 1.5 up to 10 acres. In their reproductive desires, Kirtland’s are also picky about soil type. Almost all Kirtland’s warbler nests can be found on Grayling sand, a soil base that supports the plant communities the birds prefer.

Twentieth-century fire suppression, along with modern timber-management practices, reduced disturbance in Michigan’s jack-pine stands, and Kirtland’s warbler numbers plummeted dramatically due to reduced nesting habitat. The bird was granted endangered species status in 1967.

Biologists believed that the only way to save the warbler was restoration of adequate nesting habitat. The U.S. Forest Service and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources began manipulating federal and state jack-pine forests to provide for the successive growth the birds required, and by 1973 these revitalized areas contained more than half of the remaining nesting population.

The successful renewal of reproductive patterns encouraged even more strategic jack-pine logging, burning, seeding, and replanting…the kinds of disturbances that provide the thick stand of young trees the birds seek for nesting. By the 1990s Michigan could boast of more than 150, 000 acres of jack-pine forest specifically managed for Kirtland’s warbler recovery.

While warbler numbers steadily increased, the jack-pine stands also provided habitat for upland sandpipers, eastern bluebirds, white-tailed deer, black bears, snowshoe hares, and several rare plants that occur only in fire-disturbed jack-pine clearings.

As all this was going on, biologists were removing another threat to the fragile Kirtland’s warbler population. Brown-headed cowbirds, once native to the buffalo plains, extended their range with the introduction of the domestic cow and the plow. Cowbirds once followed the rambling bison herds, gleaning insects stirred up by, or attracted to, large aggregations of grazers. And because the herds were continually on the move, cowbirds evolved a strategy of nest parasitism, laying eggs in any available nest, moving on with the buffalo, and letting foster parents hatch and raise the cowbird chicks.

When the buffalo disappeared, cowbirds turned to the company of domestic cattle grazing amid cleared homesteads in former woodland east of the Great Plains. They began to parasitize eastern woodland songbird nests, and, although the cowbirds were only doing what came naturally, their intrusive ways took a toll on Kirtland’s warblers.

Cowbird eggs are bigger than many of the eggs in nests they “borrow.” These eggs tend to hatch before those of the host, and the chicks are aggressive and out compete warbler hatchlings. Many songbird species with stable populations are able to absorb cowbird parasitism, but with Kirtland’s numbers on the cusp, biologists decided to trap and remove as many cowbirds as possible. As a result, nesting success rose sharply.

More than anything else, stabilization and rejuvenation of Kirtland’s warbler populations has been a product of innovative forestry techniques, all of them centered around the jack pine (Pinus banksiana). Jack pine is a tree closely related to lodgepole pine, and the two species hybridize wherever their ranges overlap.

Jack-pine needles are two to a bundle, and measure three-quarters of an inch to two inches long. The trees may grow to an average of 55 to 65 feet tall at maturity, though some have been known to reach 100 feet in height while measuring 25 inches in diameter. Jack pines can live 200 years or more, but many begin to show signs of decay much earlier.

This tree of both the northcentral and northeastern U.S. and Canada can be found on boreal forest burns, dry hills, sandy dunes, rock outcrops, rocky ridges, and lake shores. Those growing on sandy soil often are small and bushy. Jack pine is the best-adapted to fire of all the northern conifers. Populations can quickly reestablish in the wake of a forest fire due to the species’ serotinous cones, or cones coated with a resin that must be melted by fire before opening and releasing the seeds within. Seedlings grow quickly in full sunlight, and within five or six years are thick, tall, and bushy enough for nesting Kirtland’s warblers.

Today, thanks to a sound recovery plan by federal and state officials, and ample assistance from individuals and private organizations, jack-pine stands and Kirtland’s warblers are once more surviving in sync, with swelling numbers to show for it.

When the initial recovery goal was established in the 1970s, endangered- species biologists hoped someday to count 1,000 male warblers singing on nesting territories. Recently this number was exceeded for the seventh year in a row, and as many as 1,697 calling males, each indicative of a mated, nesting pair, have been recorded—a huge gain over the 1987 count of only 167.

Biologists expect to monitor populations for several more years, and then, if the current successful trend continues, they’ll conclude that the diminutive visitor from the tropics can be counted as a major conservation success story. At the same time, however, they caution that the bird will always be management-dependent, and if conservation efforts decline, so will the bird.

“When you talk about the Kirtland’s warbler, you have to understand that it’s a conservation-reliant species that needs to be managed into perpetuity,” pointed out Paul Thompson, a U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist. “We can’t just walk away.” This means the continued planting, culling, cutting, and burning of jack-pine forest, plus the funding to keep the program alive and consistent.

Since federal wildlife recovery funds have been lean of late, conservationists hope to establish an endowment to provide for future habitat management. Currently, a national forest in Michigan spends an average of $350 an acre each year to maintain the Kirtland’s warbler habitat it oversees. Of the 150, 000 acres in state and federal forestland set aside for the warblers, some 38,000 acres must be managed annually on a rotating basis to provide adequate nesting habitat.

The use of both fire and clearcutting to produce warbler habitat has met with some public opposition. However, the negatives have been somewhat offset by nature tourism, especially by birders who flock to see the rare winged visitor from the south. At the same time, rapid replanting and recovery of clearcuts haves produced positive public relations for the Kirtland’s recovery team.

Education and public outreach have been another cornerstone of the recovery effort, and one of the programs, a popular wildlife festival, is lauded as among the best of its kind in the nation. The Kirtland’s Warbler Wildlife Festival, held on the campus of Kirtland Community College, Roscommon, Michigan, offers visitors an opportunity to see firsthand both Kirtland’s warblers and the continuing efforts to provide prime habitat for them. The warbler recovery team— including representatives from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Canadian Wildlife Service, University of Toronto Earth Sciences Center, International Institute of Tropical Forestry, the Nature Conservancy, and the Bahamas Department of Agriculture—meet annually on the campus of the appropriately named institution to discuss ongoing recovery efforts.

The 2010 festival is scheduled to begin May 15 on the Kirtland campus. No preregistration is required; however, a $5 Kirtland’s Warbler Wildlife Festival Button will be needed by anyone 15 years old or older who wishes to attend a variety of presentations and guided bus tours.

The festival—sponsored by Kirtland Community College, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service—features Kirtland’s warbler tours, nature walks, an art show, arts and crafts displays, rock hunts, area birding tours, and presentations on a variety of regional wildlife including sturgeon, trumpeter swans, warblers, insects, raptors, bats and bat houses, silk moths, native wild cats, an eagle update, plus live music and plenty of food for everyone.

Kirtland’s warbler management areas include 119 sites scattered across eight counties. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and Michigan Audubon Society host tours for birders beginning May 15 and extending through July 4. Officials point out that these tours, or those provided through the wildlife festival, remain the best way to see this endangered species.

Forest Service tours depart the Ramada Inn in Grayling, Michigan at 7 a.m. and are offered free of charge. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tours require a fee of $10. Officials stress that actual Kirtland’s warbler sightings can’t be guaranteed. Prime viewing is late May through June. Information is available at http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/hmmf/pages/warbindex.htm.

The Kirtland’s Warbler restoration story wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the private conservation organizations that came on board at the onset and continued to work, contribute, and never lose faith through decades of trial-and-error effort.

One of these organizations, American Forests, completed its first Global Releaf forest planting 20 years ago in Michigan. The trees were jack-pine seedlings, and they went into the ground as part of the overall effort to save the Kirtland’s warbler. American Forests has been instrumental in jack-pine regeneration since that date, partnering with both public and private interests to insure the long-term stability of this, one of the rarest of rare birds.

Over the years, American Forests has set the standard for forest renewal in the nonprofit sector. By the spring of 2010 the organization had sponsored the planting of more than 30 million trees as part of more than 600 projects during a highly productive 20-year period. Their goal is to plant 100 million trees by the year 2020 by planting twice as many trees in half the time.

American Forests officials will be on hand at this year’s Kirtland’s Festival, both to celebrate a resounding success story and to announce the Global ReLeaf projects planned for 2010. There they’ll join biologists, foresters, wildlife ecologists, project sponsors, and bird lovers fromaround the world, all gathered to toast an amazing comeback by a tiny battler that’s still in the game—thanks to an admirable amalgamation of caring hearts and helping hands.

— Gary Lantz writes from Norman, Oklahoma

This article was published in the Spring 2010 issue of American Forests magazine.

The post A Song of Success in the Jack Pine Forest appeared first on American Forests.

For the second time in 30 minutes my way was blocked by a swamp. But what did I expect? I was bushwhacking to find the biggest swamp tupelo. I could have gone straight ahead, following my compass bearing, but I would have emerged on the other side looking and feeling like my amphibious ancestors of 375 million years ago. Although just 15 miles southeast of Columbia, South Carolina, this forest conjures such primeval thoughts.

I made the detour, accompanied by an entourage of biodiversity bent on making a substantial and unauthorized withdrawal from my private blood bank. A few of them paid. Dearly. But most got away with enough of me to ensure that the Mosquito Meter at the nearby Congaree National Park visitor center would soon rev up from borderline Severe, through Ruthless, to War Zone as spring turned to summer. After circumventing the swamp, I forced my way through dense stands of switch cane where, I found out later, I picked up a couple hundred chiggers that also wanted, and got, a piece of me.

Now, given sufficient motivation, I can complain about the hardships of wilderness travel as well as any city slicker, but I reserve a special place for the biting and stinging hordes. They are Mother Earth’s ultimate rangers. How much of the old-growth forest of Congaree National Park, I wondered, would be left if these guardians had not been on the front lines?

As it stands, very little eastern old-growth forest of any commercial value survived the wave of logging that characterized most of American history. Recent estimates by the Eastern Old Growth Clearinghouse place the total at about one million acres, less than one-third of one percent of the current forest cover east of the Great Plains. Well over half of the remaining old forest is found in just three areas: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Adirondacks of New York, and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota each has over 200,000 acres (312 square miles) of uncut forest. Most other tracts of virgin forest are much less than 1,000 acres, often less than 100. So the 11,000 acres of old growth forest that cover half of Congaree National Park represent one of the crown jewels of eastern forests.

The Congaree is even more special than its size alone would indicate. Most eastern old growth is tucked away in less accessible coves, on steep slopes, or at higher elevations in the mountains. Old forests on flat lowlands are exceedingly rare. Congaree National Park contains the largest remaining area of old growth bottomland hardwood forest in the United States. Period.

Another distinguishing feature of the Congaree is that many of its trees literally stand above all else. According to the Eastern Native Tree Society, based on direct tape drop or laser measurements by Will Blozan and Jess and Doug Riddle, Congaree boasts the tallest known specimens of 15 species! Emerging above the canopy layer is a loblolly pine that looks down on everything from 167 feet, just 18 feet shy of the Boogerman white pine in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the tallest known tree in the East. Among the other first-place record holders for loftiness in the canopy are a sweetgum (157 feet), a cherrybark oak (154), an American elm (135), a swamp chestnut oak (133), an overcup oak (131), a common persimmon (127), and a laurel oak (125). No wonder Congaree is known as the “Redwoods of the East”!

And, like the proverbial rising tide that lifts all boats, the environmental conditions that have created such airy crowns have also nourished exaggerated stature in the sub-canopy and understory trees. Nowhere else are you likely to find a taller swamp cottonwood (115 feet), winged elm (104), American holly (91), Carolina ash (82), American hornbeam (68), pawpaw (53), or possumhaw (44). Congaree also has the second-tallest common baldcypress (141 feet), sugarberry (108), and water-elm (65).

With so many records in the height category, you might suspect that Congaree harbors many champions, and you would be right. American Forests’ big-tree point formula (circumference in inches + height in feet + one-fourth of the crown spread in feet) favors open-area trees that express their growth mainly in the girth of a relatively short trunk. Even so, Congaree is currently home to six national- and 23 state-champion trees. For every three square miles, there are two champion trees. The park is so rich in big trees that when a champion falls, there is usually a nearby contender to take its place.

The area was first surveyed for champion trees in 1977 by Dr. Chuck Gaddy, who located 30. In the following 16 years many of these champs were blown down or severely damaged by storms. Then, in 1993, Dr. Robert Jones surveyed the park and found 27 new champions. The current national champions of Congaree, all new since Jones’s initial survey, include possumhaw, water hickory, loblolly pine, laurel oak, swamp tupelo, and sweetgum.

After four miles of trail and a mile of bushwhacking past the two swamps and through the switch cane, I waded a muddy, boot-sucking stream. The Congaree is a wetland forest, and indeed it seems like water is everywhere. There are very few places in the park where you can travel more than a half-mile in one direction without having to cross a pond, lake, creek, seasonal channel (locally called a gut), slough, wet flat, or muck swamp. It is an aquatic and terrestrial maze that constantly changes. About 10 times a year there really is water everywhere as the Congaree River rises to flood the entire area.

Finally, drenched in sweat and bugged by bugs, I found the champion swamp tupelo growing on the bank of a small muddy creek deep in the heart of Congaree. Swamp tupelos growing in water typically have a swollen base that tapers rapidly within 10 feet to a trunk that may be several times smaller in diameter. The 337-point champion grows in a location only temporarily flooded, so its five-foot-thick trunk tapers only gradually, soaring 80 feet to the first major limb. Massive though it is, one gets the impression, walking through these woods, that perseverance and a good supply of bug spray are all you’d need to find a bigger one.

The next day I located the biggest loblolly pine, growing conveniently only a few dozen yards off a trail. For someone accustomed to associating pines with the mostly dry climates of the West or generally upland habitats in the East, it was surprising to find the champion loblolly with flood debris around its base, growing less than 20 feet from baldcypress knees. The champion is the very same aforementioned 167-foot-tall, tallest loblolly pine. It looks down on one of the highest temperate forest canopies in the world, and towers more than 100 feet above the understory crowns of American holly and pawpaw.

I next visited a former-champion laurel oak after a three-mile hike. My arrival was heralded by the dueling Who-cooks-for-you, who-cooks-for-you-all? calls of barred owls. While photographing a view up the trunk of the laurel oak, I had to step back to allow an eastern ratsnake to enter its shelter in the base of the tree. During my several forays into the Congaree forest I also saw plain-bellied and brown watersnakes, eastern mud turtles, pond sliders, snapping turtles, broad-headed skinks, longnose gar, white-tailed deer, marsh rabbits, six species of frogs, and 60 species of birds. With spring in the air, the only time I couldn’t hear the symphony of birdsong was during the percussion of storms. At night, at least seven species of frog took up the chorus.

Preliminary surveys of the park list 30 species of mammals, 170 birds, 32 reptiles, 30 amphibians, and 49 fish. The rich diversity of insects is hinted at by a Park Service brochure that tantalizingly lists, but says nothing about, 159 species of resident beetles, mostly of the predacious diving, crawling water, or water scavenger type. And let’s not forget the 21 species of mosquitoes, some of which I helped propagate. Such a cornucopia of wildlife is itself indicative of the health and old growth status of the Congaree forest.

On my last day in the park I paddled a canoe 12 miles, round trip, in search of the biggest sweetgum. Having grown up in a home bracketed by sweetgums with their star-shaped leaves and spiky spheres of fruit capsules, I was particularly curious about this tree’s growth potential. But no sweetgum I have ever seen even hinted at the behemoth that grows near Cedar Creek in the park’s trackless, eastern wilderness. As if its remote location made for insufficient privacy, this shy giant is largely hidden in plain sight by a dense understory of pawpaw and American hornbeam, and a three-foot-thick shroud of poison ivy that encases the trunk from near eye level to about 90 feet up. Frustratingly, most views of the crown are obscured by the champion’s neighbors. You have to mentally piece together scattered glimpses of small sections to fully appreciate its size. It’s like seeing a monstrous shape in a thicket: “What is it?” “I don’t know, but it’s big–really big.”

I circled the tree several times from different distances to find two perspectives that together inspired jaw-dropping reverence. The trunk at breast height stretches a tape 203 inches, for a diameter well over five feet. From another spot, a section of the tree’s crown showed several huge branches, one about three feet in diameter, that were bigger than my normal concept of a sweetgum trunk.

The tree’s reported height of 160 feet, if accurate, would make it the world’s tallest sweetgum. But what really sets the tree apart as an old growth forest giant is the overall structure. You can find big lower trunks and large limbs on much shorter open-grown trees, but only in an ancient forest will you find such a huge-limbed crown elevated on a redwood-like trunk with the first branch nearly 100 feet above the ground.

The biggest sweetgum and the other champions of Congaree are great examples of how big old growth forest trees differ from big open-area trees. Their age and structure combine to create forest characteristics that make old-growth forests very different from the vast majority of modern eastern forests. Hike through Congaree and you will often find downed logs randomly oriented, sometimes crisscrossed, and in all stages of decay, many of them too large to step over.

You will see dead standing trees, or snags, and the hammering and drumming of woodpeckers will be more prevalent than in younger forests. All nine species of eastern woodpeckers can be found in the park, including the endangered redcockaded. Undoubtedly the likely extinct ivory-billed woodpecker was a former resident.

There will be tree-fall gaps, trees of all ages and sizes, and pits and mounds created by toppled trees. The bark of old trees is much deeper and textured, their crowns are flatter, and their trunks are often twisted and buttressed. There is an openness, often described as cathedral-like, that allows you to see deep into the forest. With a naturalist’s eye, or a pack full of field guides, you will discover an exceptionally rich biodiversity. Congaree has 15 species of shrubs, 23 vines, and 81 trees including 15 species of oak. On your next hike in a “normal” eastern forest, see if you can find any of these features.

Increasingly, we recognize the scientific, ecological, evolutionary, and aesthetic values of old-growth forests, but this is a modern sentiment that flowered near the last possible moment. Historically, old growth was seen almost exclusively as a feared or derided barrier to agricultural progress, or as a commodity to be harvested with little regard for, or awareness of, the consequences. Fortunately, the Congaree Swamp has been naturally protected from conversion to agriculture by the unstoppable floods of the Congaree River that forms its southern boundary (apparently, the Army Corps of Engineers was busy elsewhere). But by 1905 much of the area had been acquired by Francis Beidler, owner of the Santee River Cypress Lumber Company. Most of the floodplain was still protected by inaccessibility, but for a while loggers ringed trees near the larger waterways to let them die standing. Later, after these trees had dried, they were cut and floated to mills downriver. But in the perpetually dank atmosphere of the swamp, many trees retained enough moisture to sink anyway, never to be recovered. Loggers gave up by 1915, leaving most of the virgin forest intact.

In the 1950s, Harry Hampton, a prescient newspaper editor and outdoorsman, led a one-man campaign to protect the Congaree Swamp as a natural preserve. Unfortunately, his tireless efforts fell on deaf ears. But in 1969, when high timber prices suddenly made logging the swamp economically feasible, Hampton’s idea was taken up by a grass-roots campaign that soon resulted in the designation of Congaree Swamp as a National Natural Landmark. In 1976 it became protected public land as the Congaree Swamp National Monument. Since then the Congaree has been designated an International Biosphere Reserve (1983), a Globally Important Bird Area (2002), and our second newest national park (2003).

It used to be that 10-foot-diameter sycamores, 150-foot-tall tuliptrees, 200-foot-tall white pines, and 1,500-year-old baldcypresses were a relatively common feature of eastern forests, and old growth areas were extensive. Today, thanks to American Forests, you can see national-champion trees scattered about the country that approximate the growth potential of our eastern native trees. And thanks to the foresight and selfless action of a small number of people, you can still see small, protected enclaves of old growth that convey the true biological and aesthetic potential of our eastern forests. But if you go to Congaree National Park, you can see it all.

Whit Bronaugh hails from Eugene, Oregon.

This article was published in the Summer 2009 issue of American Forests magazine.

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Acclaimed author and ecologist Douglas Tallamy explains the reasons behind the decline of native flora and fauna, and how we can work to reverse it from our own backyards.
Photos and story by Douglas Tallamy

You have probably never thought of your property as a wildlife preserve representing the last chance we have to sustain plants and animals that were once common throughout the US. But that is exactly the role our suburban and urban landscapes are now playing – and will play even more in the near future.

If this is news to you, it’s not your fault. We were taught from childhood that the plantings in our yards are made mostly for beauty; they allow and encourage us to express our artistic talents, to have fun, and to relax. And whether we like it or not, the way we landscape our properties is seen by our neighbors as a statement of our wealth and social status.

But no one has taught us that we have forced the plants and animals that evolved in North America (our nation’s biodiversity) to depend more and more on human-dominated landscapes for their continued existence. We have always thought that biodiversity was “happy somewhere out there in nature”: in our local woodlot, or perhaps our state and national parks. We have heard nothing about the rate at which species are disappearing from our neighborhoods, towns, counties, and states. Even worse, we have never been taught how vital biodiversity is for our own well-being.

We Have Taken It All

The population of the US, now over 304 million people, has doubled since most of us were kids, and continues to grow by roughly 8,640 people per day. All of those additional souls – coupled with cheap gas, our love affair with the car, and our quest to own ever larger homes – have fueled unprecedented development that continues to sprawl over 2 million additional acres per year (the size of Yellowstone National Park). We have connected all of our developments with four million miles of roads; their paved surface is five times the size of New Jersey.

Somewhere along the way we decided to convert the forests that used to cover our living and working spaces into huge expanses of lawn dotted with a few small, mostly nonnative trees. So far we have planted over 62,500 square miles – some 40 million acres – in lawn. Each weekend we mow an area eight times the size of New Jersey to within an inch of the soil and then congratulate ourselves on a job well done.

And it’s not as if those little woodlots and “open spaces” that we have not paved over are pristine. Nearly all are second-growth forests that have been thoroughly invaded by alien plants like autumn olive, multiflora rose, bush honeysuckle, privet, Oriental bittersweet, buckthorn, and Japanese honeysuckle. More than 3,400 species of alien plants have invaded over 200 million acres of the US.

To nature lovers, these are horrifying statistics. I stress them so that we can clearly understand the challenge before us. We have turned 54 percent of the lower 48 states into a suburban/urban matrix, and 41 percent more into various forms of agriculture.

That’s right: We humans have taken 95 percent of nature and made it unnatural.

But does this matter? Are there consequences to turning so much land into the park-like settings humans enjoy? Absolutely, both for biodiversity and for us. Our fellow creatures need food and shelter to survive and reproduce, and in too many places we have eliminated both. State Natural Heritage Centers have estimated that as many as 33,000 species of plants and animals in the US are now imperiled – too rare to perform their role in their ecosystem. These species can be considered functionally extinct. The songbirds that brighten spring mornings have been in decline since the 1960s, having lost 40 percent of their numbers so far. One hundred twenty-seven species of neotropical migrants are in steep decline. In fact, a survey of our nation’s bird populations, commissioned by former President Bush, has found that one-third of our nation’s birds are endangered.

Why We Need Biodiversity

For most of us, hearing such numbers triggers only a passing sadness; few people feel personally threatened by the loss of biodiversity. Here’s why you should. Biodiversity losses are a clear sign that our own life-support

systems are failing. The ecosystems that support us – that determine the carrying capacity of the earth and our local spaces – are run by biodiversity. It is biodiversity that generates oxygen and cleans water, creates topsoil out of rock, buffers extreme weather events like droughts and floods, pollinates our crops, and recycles the mountains of garbage we create every day.

And now, with human-induced climate change threatening the planet, it is biodiversity that, if given half a chance, will suck that carbon out of the air and sequester it in living plants. Humans cannot live as if they are the only species on this planet. Why? Because it is other species that create the ecosystem services that are so essential to us. Every time we force a species to extinction, we are encouraging our own demise. Despite the disdain with which we have treated it in the past, biodiversity is not optional.

Parks Are Not Enough

I am often asked why the habitats we have preserved within our park system are not enough to save most species from extinction. Years of research by evolutionary biologists have shown that the area required to sustain biodiversity is pretty much the same as the area required to generate it in the first place. The consequence of this simple relationship is profound. Since we have taken 95 percent of the US from nature, we can expect to lose 95 percent of the species that once lived here unless we learn how to share our living, working, and agricultural spaces with biodiversity. Ninety-five percent of all plants and animals! Now there is a statistic that puts climate-change predictions of extinction to shame.

And studies of habitat islands with known histories, such as Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal and Ashdown Forest in England, suggest that these predictions are accurate. Species are lost in the same proportion in which a habitat is reduced in size. The good news is that extinction takes a while, so if we start sharing our landscapes with other living things soon, we should be able to save much of the biodiversity that still exists.

Redesigning Suburbia

What will it take to give our local animals what they need to survive and reproduce on our properties? Native plants, and lots of them. This is a scientific fact deduced from thousands of studies about how energy moves through food webs.

Here is the general reasoning: All animals get their energy directly from plants, or by eating something that has already eaten a plant. Insects are the group of animals most responsible for passing energy from plants to the animals that can’t eat plants. This fact is what makes insects such vital components of healthy ecosystems. So many animals depend on insects for food (e.g., spiders, reptiles, amphibians, rodents, and 96 percent of all terrestrial birds) that removing insects from an ecosystem spells its doom.

But that is exactly what we have tried to do in our suburban landscapes. For over a century we have favored ornamental landscape plants from China and Europe over those that evolved right here. If all plants supported wildlife equally, that would be fine. But every plant species protects its leaves with a mixture of nasty chemicals that makes them distasteful at best, and downright toxic at worst. With few exceptions, only insect species that have shared a long evolutionary history with a particular plant lineage have developed the physiological adaptations required to disarm the chemical defenses in their host’s leaves. They have developed over time to eat only the plants with those particular chemicals.

When we present insects from Pennsylvania, for example, with plants that evolved on another continent, chances are those insects will be unable to eat them. We used to think this was good. Kill all insects before they eat our plants! But a plant that cannot pass on the energy it has harnessed cannot fulfill its role in the food web.

We have planted Kousa dogwood, a species from China that supports only a few insect herbivores, instead of our native flowering dogwood (Cornus florida), which supports 117 species of moths and butterflies alone. In hundreds of thousands of acres, we have planted goldenraintrees, ginkgos, and dawn redwoods from China instead of one of our beautiful native oaks, and in doing so we have lost the chance to grow and support 534 species of caterpillars, all of them nutritious bird food. My research has shown that alien ornamentals support 29 times fewer animals than do native ornamentals.

Plants Matter

In the past we have ignored the vital role plants play in our landscapes. Plants, of course, are the only organisms that capture energy from the sun and turn it into the simple sugars and carbohydrates: the food that supports nearly all the food webs on earth. Every time we bulldoze a native plant community, we are reducing the amount of food available for our fellow creatures. In fact, the amount of life that can exist in an area is directly proportional to the amount of vegetation in that area. Because plants have physical structure, they also provide housing for animals.

We can no longer landscape with aesthetics as our only goal. We must also consider the function of our landscapes if we hope to avoid a mass extinction that we ourselves are not likely to survive. As quickly as possible, we need to triple the number of native trees in our lawns and underplant them with the understory and shrub layers absent from most managed landscapes. Homeowners can do this by planting the borders of their properties with native trees such as white oaks (Quercus alba), black willows (Salix nigra), red maples (Acer rubrum), green ashes (Fraxinus pennsylvanica), black walnuts (Juglans nigra), river birches (Betula nigra), and shagbark hickories (Carya ovata).

Those trees should be underplanted with woodies like serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis), bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora), arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum), hazelnut (Corylus americanus), and blueberries (Vaccinium spp).

Studies have shown that even modest increases in the native plant cover on suburban properties raise the number and species of breeding birds, including birds of conservation concern. As gardeners and stewards of our land, we have never been so empowered to help save biodiversity from extinction, and the need to do so has never been so great. All we need to do is plant native plants!

Douglas Tallamy is professor and chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware.

WHAT TO PLANT WHERE

Certain native staples are essential to any forest restoration within the suburban/urban matrix:

• New England: Sugar maple, white pine, and paper birch

• Mid-Atlantic: White oak, American beech, river birch, and red maple

• Midwest: Bur oak, honeylocust, and crabapple

• Deep South: Live oak, loblolly pine, and tupelo

• Northwest: Douglas-fir, yellow cedar, and beaked hazelnut

However, diversity is the real key to restoring native plant communities.

In New England, for example, consider replacing Norway spruce with Atlantic white cedar, or northern white cedar underplanted with native hawthorns and alternate-leaf dogwood. These plants produce abundant bird food in the form of insects and berries.

In mid-Atlantic states, sycamore is valuable in riparian restorations and biological corridors through suburban backyards, despite its susceptibility to early season anthracnose. Also consider one of the hickories – shagbark for rich, welldrained soils, and pignut, shellbark, or mockernut for upland plantings. The conifer conundrum in the mid-Atlantic states can usually be solved with eastern redcedar, a wonderful evergreen that can be an accent plant anchoring a suburban home, an effective, fast-growing screen, or a formal alley bordering a long driveway.

Midwest oak-savannah ecosystems can benefit from adding understory plantings of bottlebrush buckeye, rough dogwood, pawpaw, and wafer ash. Wafer ash, incidentally, is the primary host for the giant swallowtail butterfly, while pawpaw is the sole host for zebra swallowtails. And disease-resistant American elms are now available for urban restorations east of the Mississippi.

In the Deep South and Southeast, sourwood, the southern sugar maple, and water oak are valuable additions to native plant communities, as well as abundant groupings of native azaleas like pinxterbloom, flame, and pinkshell azaleas. We hope that we can soon liberally plant disease-resistant American chestnuts in the piedmont and mountainous regions of the South as well.

In drier areas of the Pacific Northwest, consider adding Garry oak and western hemlock to street and riparian plantings, underplanted with Pacific dogwood, blue elderberry, and moosewood viburnum when appropriate.

This article was published in the Autumn 2009 issue of American Forests magazine.

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Later this year when the US Department of Agriculture releases its first official update of its 1990 map of plant-hardiness zones, expect to see drastic changes. Mapmakers will attribute many of the zone boundary changes to the massive increase in temperature data, and to major advances in computer mapping technology. But that is only part of the explanation. “The type of climate we have for plants now is what we had 20 years ago, but roughly 200 miles to the south,” explains Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University who develops models to predict future climate impacts around the country. In other words, the hardiness zones on the old map are now off, in some cases by as much as 200 miles.

The USDA map was not at fault. Shifting plant hardiness zones are also a reflection of actual on-the-ground changes in ecosystems across the country. Climate change — with its associated myriad impacts — is rewriting the American landscape.

Already, average temperatures in the United States have risen more than 2°F in the past 50 years, opening new habitats for some species, while driving others from regions that have suddenly grown too hot. In New England, for example, whole suites of species are climbing farther up slopes and closer to the Canadian border. One recent study found that the border between boreal and hardwood forests has already climbed approximately 100 meters (300 feet) higher into New England’s mountains over the past 40 years. This upward climb is expected to continue.

The migration is driven by two factors — the loss of once-suitable habitat that has grown too warm, and the gain of once-unsuitable habitat that is now warm enough to support a new suite of species. Each species responds differently, depending on its temperature tolerances and other ecological needs. The iconic sugar maple, for example, could decline by more than 50 percent in New England as warmer temperatures weaken the trees and allow more southerly competitors to invade. Eventually, much of New England’s classic maple forest could be overrun by oaks and hickories: temperate trees that currently dominate the forests of Virginia, West Virginia, and similar latitudes. Likewise, the sugar maple and its cohorts are steadily encroaching on the territory that once belonged solely to the firs and spruces. In time, New England’s blazing fall color — largely fueled by the sugar maple’s bright orange-red foliage — could be confined to the tallest peaks. Or, possibly, Canada.

Across the country, rising temperatures are also beginning to affect a particularly remarkable group of trees. California’s coast redwoods are the tallest trees in the world, sometimes reaching more than 320 feet toward the heavens. In fact, the world’s tallest known tree is a coast redwood that measures just over 379 feet tall. The tree is called Hyperion, after the Titan god of Ancient Greece who was son of Gaia and Uranus — literally Earth and Sky.

Despite their mythological proportions, coast redwoods are held captive by the subtleties of fog. The California fog belt, which stretches from southern Oregon to California’s Monterey County, encompasses the entirety of the coast redwood’s range. During California’s dry summer months, coast redwoods acquire more than half of their water from this fog.

The prevalence of fog in this region is an accident of geography, winds, and sea currents — fog forms along California’s coast when warm, moist air interacts with the region’s cool ocean waters. Anything that affects this balance between air moisture and water temperature can impact fog formation. Climate change could tip the scale from either side: warmer summers can both strip the air of its moisture and increase sea surface temperatures, either of which could hinder fog formation.

Recent research indicates that fog production has already declined by as much as 50 percent within the past century, suggesting that climate change has already begun to make an impact here. The implications for redwoods are dramatic, although the results will probably move too slowly for any one human to witness. Drier conditions affect the growth and survival of redwood seedlings more than mature trees. As a result, mature redwoods may stand for centuries past the point when their forests have grown inhospitable to seedlings. Only after these giants begin to perish without replacement will the impacts of climate change be fully realized.

Or change could come much faster, in the time required for lightning to spark a fire in bone-dry forest debris. Fire is a regular visitor to California’s ecosystems. Even the moist redwood forests burn, on average, every six to eight years. Current predictions and past evidence suggest that such fires will become more frequent and more fierce in the coming years. For example, fires raged in the Sierra Nevada’s giant sequoia groves every two to three years during an unusually warm period between the years 1000 and 1300, rather than the more typical three- to eight-year cycle. A similar change could be seen in today’s coast redwood forests.

Mature redwoods are rarely killed by forest fires, but understory plants — including redwood seedlings — are more vulnerable. And even established redwoods may be felled by repeated fires, which can carve out cavities in the heart of some trees. These hollowed trees are weakened by repeated fires and eventually fall. Such events will open gaps in the redwood canopy, allowing light to reach the forest floor and perhaps speeding the establishment of new understory plants. These, in turn, would also affect the fire cycle.

Fire may also be the ultimate change agent in the Rocky Mountains, where the kindling and tinder are already provided. From Mexico to British Columbia, the diminutive mountain pine beetle — roughly the size of a grain of rice — has been decimating whole forests of lodgepole and ponderosa pine. The beetle has already killed 6.5 million acres of pine forest in the US, and an astonishing 14 million acres in British Columbia. Ultimately, the beetle is expected to destroy almost every individual ponderosa and lodgepole pine with a diameter greater than five inches. This amounts to 80 percent of British Columbia’s pine forest.

The beetle is no introduced pest—it has co-existed with these pines for ages. And while this is not the first time the bark beetle has killed trees, or even whole forests, this may be the first time the devastation has been so ferocious.

The difference is not the beetle, but the climate. Healthy pines are able to withstand beetle attacks by flooding their tunnels with sap. But these trees are not healthy. Drier and hotter conditions associated with climate change have left the trees weak and vulnerable to attack. The beetles, however, are thriving under the changing climate. Earlier springs and later falls grant the beetles a longer growing season, while less severe winters have freed the beetles from their greatest population control device—a hard freeze.

Combine the exploding pest population with weakened hosts, and the current infestation becomes understandable.

It is almost impossible to predict what the future holds for the ponderosa and lodgepole pines, so recently the dominant trees along the full length of the Rocky Mountains. While the smallest trees are expected to survive the beetles, they could still fall victim to raging forest fires that many forest managers worry will begin to plague the region as more and more trees die. And sudden deforestation — with or without forest fire — is also likely to result in dramatic erosion, which will redistribute topsoil and essential nutrients.

Some evidence suggests that ponderosa pines currently found in the Cascade Mountains will shift more toward the Pacific Northwest, where they could increase by 5 to 10 percent over the next 100 years in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington. A similar shift toward cooler and wetter regions could also be seen within the Rocky Mountains. The ponderosa saplings that survive the beetle attack may be the last of their kind in some areas, as more drought- and heat-tolerant species expand into the region.

Confronted with warming temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and rampaging pests, ponderosa pines are at least spared one known climate change impact—rising sea level. Sea-level rise is one of the most predictable and dramatic consequences we can expect to see as a result of climate change. And while most trees and forests will be spared, mangroves are already suffering the effects of the rising sea level, a problem climate scientists agree will worsen in the coming decades.

“We’re probably looking at three feet of sea-level rise over the next 80 to 90 years,” says Hayhoe. “Most of the Keys and the Everglades will be pretty much completely flooded.”

Three feet of sea-level rise is more than many mangroves could survive in their present location, and whole forests will need to migrate inland with the rising waters. In the Florida Everglades, for example, mangroves are expected to claim more than 600,000 acres of new habitat. This gain, however, does not consider mangrove habitat that will be lost. The same rising waters that will create more than 600,000 new acres of mangrove-suitable habitat inland will also swallow whole swaths of existing mangrove forest along the current coast. In many areas the water will simply be too deep to support mangrove trees.

The Everglades — the largest protected mangrove forest in this hemisphere — are a unique example. Many mangrove forests, however, are not protected. These trees are often bound by human development — caught between the water and an impassable barrier of concrete and asphalt — and will have few opportunities for inland migration as sea level rises. Some mangrove forests may be reduced to small patches of trees. Others could disappear altogether.

No good models exist yet to predict the future range of mangroves along the US Gulf Coast. The trouble with predicting the future — for mangroves, redwoods, or any species — is the vast number of variables that must be considered. Mangroves, for example, will be confronted with a long list of threats that include rising sea level, increasing temperatures, more frequent and violent storms, and human habitat alteration. In some areas, natural or human-influenced subsidence and erosion are also important factors, effectively accelerating sea-level rise.

The threats associated with climate change vary from species to species and habitat to habitat, but one thing remains constant: no tree or forest is affected by just one thing.

“It’s not just one factor,” explains Hayhoe. “It’s all the confounding factors, each of which is negative. They just add up on each other.” The cumulative effect is difficult to predict, and often devastating to the species it affects.

Amid these complexities, some things are certain. Temperatures will continue to rise. Sea levels will continue to encroach on the shore. Altered precipitation, migrating pests, and more frequent and violent storms will remain with us far into the future. “These trends will just continue,” says Hayhoe. And as long as they continue, our forests will continue to respond.

We think of forests as timeless places where life holds still. But this is no more than a comforting fallacy, born of the contrast between our short attention spans and trees’ great patience. Forests do change, albeit slowly. Trees shift their ranges via windblown seeds, buried acorns, and flocks of hungry birds. As our climate continues to change, these natural migrations will be pressed to keep pace with shifting temperature extremes and precipitation patterns. Some trees could expand their ranges mightily, while others could disappear almost entirely from the American landscape.

Ultimately, climate change will draw new lines between species and ecosystems. Some changes may be subtle and hard to notice, such as the gradual decline of coastal redwood forests over the coming centuries. Other changes will be hard to miss, such as the absence of blazing sugar maple trees in much of New England’s autumn landscape.

“If you haven’t seen changes yet, you probably will soon,” says Hayhoe. “If you are a careful observer, you probably already have.”

Cristina Santiestevan writes from the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

This article was published in the Winter 2010 issue of American Forests magazine.

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As I descended a sandy hill of open piney woods, two deer crashed into the thick hardwood forest before me, almost seeming to escort me to Econfina Creek.

I heard the swift Florida Panhandle stream before I saw it. Numerous rapids, log strainers and hairpin turns mark this upper section, making it louder than most small Florida rivers and streams. For a canoeist or kayaker, the unique Econfina, especially the upper portion, is a roller-coaster ride suitable only for experienced paddlers. The creek races through the clay, sandhill and limestone canyons it has carved over time, but can’t seem to escape. But I came to hike part of the cross-state Florida National Scenic Trail that hugs the tall banks. On shore there was a calmer feeling, one of enchantment.

Walking along the copper-colored stream, I was awed by giant beech and magnolia trees. There were also spruce pine, red oak and white oak, hickory, and the twisted reddish trunks of sparkleberry.

Pausing frequently, I was fascinated by numerous swirls and eddies created by the current. The river’s sweet song alternately faded or grew louder depending on the shape and width of a particular section. The banks became higher and steeper, often festooned with green moss and cascades of ferns. Tiny feeder streams also made music as they dropped into the main river channel. Some formed exquisite narrow waterfalls.

I passed more giant beech trees; carved initials were refreshingly absent. It was as wild and remote a hiking trail as one can find in Florida, and I was heartened by the fact that most of the surrounding land will remain undeveloped as part of the Northwest Florida Water Management District’s 41,000-acre Econfina Creek Water Management Area (WMA).

Driving the project’s strong preservation and conservation measures is the fact that the Econfina provides the lion’s share of water to Deer Point Lake Reservoir, the primary drinking-water source for the Gulf Coast town of Panama City and surrounding environs. It is also an important freshwater source for St. Andrew Bay, a vital nursery for marine life.

But it wasn’t enough to simply protect the Econfina Creek corridor. Hydrologic testing found that almost 29,000 acres of sandhills west of the creek make up a major aquifer recharge area for several high-magnitude springs that feed this vibrant watercourse.

Fortunately, the Water Management District (WMD) was able to purchase most of this land from Rosewood Timber Company (Hunt Petroleum/Prosper Energy) of Houston for a little under $802 an acre in the 1990s.

George Fisher, retired senior planner for the WMD, was instrumental in the purchase. “It was a good price,” he said, “but our future cost to restore the uplands will be pretty heavy because they had been through a couple of timber cycles of sand pines; native vegetation was pretty much destroyed. Trying to reestablish it will really be a job.”

Enter American Forests and the Global ReLeaf program. The WMD received funding to plant 160,000 longleaf pine seedlings in 1996 and 195,000 seedlings in 1998 in an effort to restore the uplands. More longleaf pines were planted in subsequent years. This species of tree was once dominant in these and other uplands throughout the Southeast, covering nearly 90 million acres. However, by most estimates a scant three percent of this habitat type remains due to logging, development, farming, fire suppression, and conversion to faster-growing pines for paper production. The longleaf’s dense yellow wood was prized for its ability to resist termites in the era before pressure-treated lumber. Only about 10,000 acres—featuring impressive pines 300 to 400 years old–are considered old-growth.

While most of today’s longleaf forests are found on public lands, having grown back from forests cut in the early 20th century, private landowners are taking a new look at the longleaf pine’s drought-resistant qualities. A quiet longleaf revival is beginning to take root. Both public and private land managers throughout the Southeast are planting so many longleaf seedlings that nurseries are having trouble keeping up with demand.

At the Econfina Creek WMA, seedling longleaf pines have now climbed out of the low-lying grass stage and are beginning to look like a young forest. Thousands of clumps of native wiregrass, a tall bunchgrass that resembles baling wire, have also been planted. Wiregrass helps to spread fire more efficiently, an important component of the longleaf ecosystem because prescribed fires must now mimic natural fires that once swept through the uplands every one to three years. These slow creeping fires help to keep invasive hardwoods in check, and also promote a lush understory that is necessary for the survival of several protected animal species. One of them, the gopher tortoise, is considered a keystone species since its deep burrows can provide homes for numerous species of frogs, mice, snakes and insects.

When fire approaches, gopher tortoises and similar animals race down their protective burrows. Other animals outrun the flames, climb high into the canopy, or simply fly away. Very few animals are caught in these slow-moving fires. The smell of smoke triggers a long-ingrained sense of alarm.

Soon after a fire, herbivores such as deer, rabbits and gopher tortoises all gorge themselves on succulent new plant growth, and so their predators benefit as well. The plants attract insects and produce seeds and blossoms, and these, in turn, draw an array of bird life. One feeds the other.

William O. “Bill” Cleckley, Director of the Division of Land Management and Acquisition for the WMD, stated that in addition to benefiting wildlife, “The reintroduction of growing-season prescribed fires to the restored landscape will induce flowering and seed production of remnant native groundcover plant species, which will significantly increase the biodiversity of the longleaf pine and wiregrass habitat.” According to Cleckley, groundcover plant species richness could reachmore than 150 species per square hectare (about 2.5 acres), and at least 18 rare or endangered plant species now inhabit the upland sandhills of Econfina.

Longleaf pines are the most fire-tolerant tree in the South, so frequent fires give them a competitive advantage over other trees. Their needles contain volatile resins that will burn even when damp. Longleafs can thrive in dry sandy environments since they sink a long taproot into the ground. Flames usually burn only the outer scales of their paperlike bark, while the more fragile and vital inner layers are left intact. Even foot-tall longleaf pines, still in what is called the “grass stage” because they resemble large clumps of grass, can usually withstand a fire. Burning green needles create a type of moisture shield for the plant’s terminal bud. Generally only a very hot fire, one fueled by drought and a heavy buildup of fallen leaves and pine needles, will kill a young longleaf pine.

To gain a better understanding of what the recovering uplands of Econfina will one day look like, I took a stroll on the Florida Trail just west of the river. I first walked through a thick sand-pine forest that had been planted by the previous owner. Then, through the trees, I could see what appeared to be golden prairie grass. Moving closer, I realized the “prairie” was a rolling hillside of feathery wiregrass in seed, the result of prescribed burning during the previous summer. Wiregrass in seed can be three times taller than wiregrass that is not in seed. Scattered throughout the area were tall longleaf pines about a half-century in age, marking one of the few remnant maturing longleaf tracts that the district was able to purchase. I was viewing the future of thousands of acres of young longleaf forest on the Econfina Creek Water Management Area. The recovering tracts will one day resemble a “prairie with trees”—a description given by early pioneers who drove wagons through the vast, parklike expanses of longleaf forest.

Another unique environment found at Econfina is steephead ravines. Steepheads are like three-sided box canyons up to 100 feet deep that have small seepage springs and clear streams at the bottom. Steepheads erode from the bottom up as groundwater seeps through porous sand and leaks from an exposed slope. The sand above collapses and is carried away by the stream, so steepheads are continually cutting into the sandhill uplands. Since these shady wet environments are generally 10 to 15 degrees cooler than the dry uplands, steepheads harbor a unique array of plants and animals, including rare salamanders that often reside beneath mossy rocks and logs.

Besides obvious ecological, recreational, and water supply/recharge values, the Econfina Creek lands are valuable from a historical perspective. For millennia the area was inhabited by early Native Americans, from mastodon-hunting Paleo Indians to Muskogee Creek bands that moved in from Alabama and Georgia in the 18th and 19^th centuries. Some native descendants remained in the area and have formed the Muskogee Nation of Florida, headquartered in a vintage one-room schoolhouse in the tiny town of Bruce, about 20 miles west of Econfina Creek. The group, which has 1,100 members, has been earnestly seeking federal recognition since 1978.

Early white settlers established a wagon trail through the hilly land along the creek country that one early observer called the “mountains of Florida.” Perhaps the best known early pioneer was William Gainer. He settled among a group of large emerald springs that feed the river near present-day Highway 20; the springs bear his name.

Gainer had been a scout and engineer for Andrew Jackson during his invasion of west Florida in 1818, and liked what he saw during the incursion. “This is a beautiful and productive place with great potential,” he wrote to relatives in North Carolina soon after settling. “Tell our relatives and any close friends about it, but no one else.” Gainer established a thriving plantation along the river, raising cotton, cattle and other farm products.

While canoeing the calmer middle portion of the river one summer, I ran into Martha Barnes, a graying matriarch who had pioneer ancestors buried in a nearby cemetery. She was visiting one of the river’s 11 clear azure springs. “I’ve been coming here since I was a kid,” she said. “We used to play Tarzan and swing off the vines. There was no Highway 20 then; we used to come up on dirt roads. I bring my grandkids here now. I love the fact that it will remain wild and undeveloped.”

And as the surrounding longleaf pines grow taller and fill the recovering forests, the Econfina CreekWater Management Area will only get better with time.

Doug Alderson is the author of four books and numerous magazine articles. To learn more about his work, log onto www.dougalderson.net.

This article was published in the Spring 2009 issue of American Forests magazine.

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David Sibley, well-known for the illustrations and identification skills exhibited in his exceptional book The Sibley Guide to Birds, has taken his work in a new direction: trees!

This fall, just in time for your last-minute Big Tree nominations, The Sibley Guide to Trees made its debut to great critical acclaim. The guide, a wealth of knowledge on tree identification, is crafted in Sibley’s aesthetic and easy-to-understand style. Excited about this great new book, American Forests interviewed the man behind the guide.

Q: Your previous guide was geared toward birds. Could you explain why you felt passionately enough about that subject to write and illustrate an entire guide?

A: Like many people, I’ve always been fascinated by birds. They’re fun to watch, always surprising, and identifying them in the field is challenging, so there’s always something to strive for, some mystery to be solved. For me, the field-guide project was all about learning (and making sense out of) all the variations in birds. I really enjoy those moments of discovery when one little fact falls into place and reveals a much larger pattern. And that’s what birding, and the years of putting together the bird guide, provided again and again.

Q: What made you decide to change your focus from birds to trees for your next book?

A: I was attracted to the challenge of sorting out the big patterns in another group besides birds, and really wanted to work on another big project where I could make discoveries and learn new things. I chose trees because they were around me all the time, easy to see, and possible to identify from a distance; in that sense tree-watching is similar to bird-watching. I also thought there was an opportunity to make a real contribution simply by producing a guide to trees that took a different approach.

Q: What sets this tree guide apart from the rest?

A: I tried to create a tree guide that was similar in its approach and style to modern bird guides. Trees are so easy to study that most existing field guides emphasize close-up features like bud scales or leaf hairs. I wanted to emphasize things that could be seen at a distance, the same way I identify birds. The heart of the book is the illustrations; readers should be able to simply flip through the pages looking for a picture that matches their observation, rather than working with a text-based key. Also, the book is arranged taxonomically, with related species together. I think one of the goals of nature study is to develop an understanding of the larger patterns, and readers of this book should develop a sense of the similarities and differences between poplars and willows, or white oaks and red oaks, etc. simply by flipping through the pages and seeing those species together.

Q: What challenges did you encounter in compiling this tree guide?

A: Aside from the taxonomic challenges, I’d say the toughest thing was dealing with the scale of the illustrations. In the bird guide I simply painted the entire bird for each species, but if I tried to paint an entire tree showing the details necessary for identification, each painting would have had to be at least 10 feet tall! It took a long time to work out which parts of the tree to paint, what size to paint them, and how to arrange them on the page.

Q: We recently had a series of taxonomic changes to our National Big Tree Register, mostly involving the hawthorn genus, which inspires the next question: How did you decide what species and subspecies to include?

A: This was a very big challenge. First, I had to decide where to draw the line between trees and shrubs, and then I had to come up with a list of species and subspecies. I started with Elbert Little’s list of North American trees, and then modified that based on the Flora of North America project, the USDA Plants database, and John Kartesz’s Biota Of North America Program (BONAP) data. This was also modified by new research in a few cases, but there will always be disagreement and debate about these questions. I think the existence of variation within species is more important than the names or status given to those variations, so I simply tried to illustrate or describe all of the subspecies and to mention any debate over status.

The hawthorns are a special case, with 100 to several hundred species, depending on who you ask, so I took the easy way out by illustrating about 30 of the most widespread and distinctive forms. Maybe in a future edition I’ll be able to give them more comprehensive coverage, but I think it will be a long time before the differences are sorted out and botanists can all agree on a list of hawthorn species!

Q: What resources did you use to complete the guide?

A: I tried to learn from all of the existing tree guides and many other field guides before I started work on this book; picking and choosing the features that I liked, and deciding how to incorporate them.

The field research was helped enormously by the fact that the Arnold Arboretum and Mount Auburn Cemetery are located here in Boston, so I could see a lot of different trees close to home. For the paintings and text, I used my own photos, sketches, and notes, along with lots of books and online references, which are mentioned in the guide’s acknowledgements – including, of course, American Forests’ National Register of Big Trees.

Q: You have been an advocate of conservation, especially on behalf of birds. Can you tell us more about the efforts you’ve made toward conservation, and the role that trees and forests have played in them?

A: Working on this book for the last seven years has really broadened my environmental view. I have always known that diverse and healthy forests are essential as habitat for birds and other animals, but it wasn’t until I started looking carefully at trees that I realized how much forests have changed in the last few centuries. It’s easy to look at birds and imagine that they are the same species that Audubon or even Columbus would have seen, following the same migration paths and timetables. But during that time period, the trees have changed dramatically. When you consider the clearing of forests, introduced diseases, and introduced trees, the forests in the eastern U.S. today are fundamentally different from those that early European settlers saw.

In that and many other ways, I think one of the big insights we can gain from looking at trees is that the boundary between natural and human habitats is completely blurred. Our lives are intertwined with the trees. There isn’t a natural world and a man-made world; it’s all part of the same system. What happens in Alaska affects us in New England, and what we do in our backyards is connected to everything else.

This article was published in the Autumn 2009 issue of American Forests magazine.

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