Evelyn Thompson Lawrence’s story is about Sallie’s Crying Tree, a large white oak growing near the town square in Marion, Virginia. This remarkable woman has spent a lifetime reminding people that this tree — and others like it — represents our history and must be preserved.

Lawrence often says that if the Crying Tree could talk it would tell us that slavery was brutal, that people were sold like horses and dogs, that life was especially hard on black men and women. But it would also tell how valiant people are, how former slaves built communities and how their descendants are today’s leaders.

Marion is not the obvious place to expect this kind of lesson. A small town, it is nestled in the valley between the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains of southwest Virginia. It is a gateway to Jefferson National Forest and Mount Rogers National Recreation Area. Hungry Mother State Park is nearby. The town is known for its Appalachian culture and music, but not for its once-thriving, African-American community.

Lawrence’s grandmother, Sallie, was a girl with a special connection to trees. In the 1840s, when she was just five years old, Sallie’s family was owned by a local man who needed money. In order to get it, he sold her mother and father to a landowner from Lynchburg, more than 150 miles away. Left alone, Sallie had the job of being the body servant for the man’s chronically ill wife. Sallie had no family member to go to for refuge and solace, so instead, she adopted a young oak tree as her family. She would go each day to the tree — to talk to it, to cry, to pray and to hug it in times of need.

Like the tree, Sallie had to weather many storms, and yet, she stood strong. She was determined that if she ever got her freedom and had children of her own that she would make sure they got an education, especially since it was against the law to teach a slave how to read or write. When freedom finally came and she later got married, she had 10 children of her own and sent two of them to college. Her daughter Susie Madison Thompson, the mother of Lawrence, became the first black teacher to teach in Sugar Grove and one-room schools in Emory and Pearisburg.

For the last 170 years, Sallie’s Crying Tree has been preserved in the center of little Marion, behind the fire department and north of the Blue Ridge Job Corps Center. For many of those years, Lawrence has taken it upon herself to tell generations of Marion residents the history of the tree, and those individuals have joined her in preserving the health of the Crying Tree by shielding it from the pressures of urban development.

Born in Marion, Lawrence attended local schools before graduating from the University of Michigan in 1952 with a master’s degree in music. She then taught in Marion schools for 44 years and has held countless civic and religious positions, becoming a community leader in her hometown.

William A. Fields, another prominent Marion resident, remembers Lawrence as a teacher in the days before public-school integration: “She taught us to never give up, to plant roots and weather the storms — like the tree.”

Fields, who is student government advisor and leadership coordinator at the Blue Ridge Job Corps Center, takes all incoming students to Sallie’s Crying Tree to learn its lessons and to realize that they can overcome any adversity. He likes to quote Marcus Garvey, an early civil rights leader: “A people without a knowledge of their history is like a tree without roots.”

After retiring from teaching, Lawrence began spreading the history of Sallie’s Crying Tree and its connection to American history to an audience outside of Marion. In 2005, she nominated the Crying Tree to a state-wide remarkable trees project, sending a package of photos, news clippings and handwritten notes outlining the history of the tree to the Virginia Tech Forestry Department, which was conducting the research for the project. When she met with the review team, she enlisted the help of the mayor and a local tree commission, and they so impressed the team that the tree was featured in a subsequent book, Remarkable Trees of Virginia.

As a result of this publicity, people began coming from as far as Philadelphia and Atlanta to see Sallie’s Crying Tree and to stand in its presence.

The Crying Tree joins two other historic Virginia trees that powerfully tell the story of African Americans living under slavery in America. The Emancipation Oak, on the campus of Hampton University, is where many slaves once learned to read — Booker T. Washington is said to have studied under the tree. They met under the tree because there was no school house. The first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in the South occurred under that tree. The Zion Poplars in Gloucester, Virginia — a grove of trees that appears to have miraculously sprouted from an ancient tree trunk lying on the ground — mark where slaves met to worship before it was legal for them to do so. The often-overlooked trees stand behind Zion Poplars Baptist Church, a national historic landmark.

Despite the recognition given to Sallie’s Crying Tree in recent years, Lawrence continues to look out for her family’s tree. After five years of effort by the local Arbor Day committee, the Marion Town Council recently passed her request to have lightning protection installed at the tree.

Because of Lawrence, many in Marion and beyond have come to know that trees are an important part of our history. Unlike most of our treasured historic icons — dead buildings, shriveled pieces of paper, paintings and artifacts — trees are still with us. They are alive and will stand tall for future generations — if we let them. We must hold on. Thank you, Evelyn Lawrence, for the history lesson.

Jeff Kirwan is emeritus professor of forestry and extension specialist at Virginia Tech. He is a longtime supporter of American Forests and serves as Virginia’s big tree coordinator.

The post Finding Strength and Solace in a Tree appeared first on American Forests.

It gets hot in Texas.

The state’s capital, Austin, experienced 90 days at temperatures higher than 100 degrees Fahrenheit in 2011, and each summer, the city basks in sunlight 75 percent of the time. With city buildings and paved streets reflecting back this sunshine and heat, temperatures can be two to nine degrees hotter in Austin than in the surrounding countryside — a phenomenon known as an urban heat island. In 2001, Austin’s city council recognized this problem and passed a resolution implementing a Heat Island Containment Policy, which created new initiatives for combating extra heat in the city. Many of these initiatives revolved around trees, some of nature’s best temperature regulators.

THE TREE LADY

She may have only served one two-year term on the Austin City Council, but Margret Hofmann’s influence on Austin has been felt long after her elected post in the 1970s. Hofmann, a German Jewish immigrant who survived the horrors of World War II, was a devoted grassroots peace advocate and also a staunch supporter of Austin’s historic trees. Her commitment to preserving Austin’s natural treasures not only earned her the nickname of “Tree Lady,” but also led to the creation of Austin’s first tree ordinance in the early 1980s and sowed the seeds for Austin’s Heritage Tree Ordinance, which was passed in 2010.

Hofmann’s fight for Austin’s trees in the 1970s revolved around recognizing trees for their value. Hofmann once told the Austin American-Statesman, “I’ve always been amazed that we pay so much attention and spend a great deal of money on old houses — historical buildings, often no more than 100 years old — whereas we don’t consider trees that are 400, 500, 600 years old of the same importance.” Hofmann encouraged Austinites to protect and recognize Austin’s historic trees and helped create a registry of 200 of the city’s oldest, biggest trees. In 1983, her efforts came to full fruition when Austin passed a progressive tree ordinance that would set the basis for protecting the trees for decades to come.

Unlike many other cities around the country, Austin’s tree ordinances don’t just protect the public trees, but they also protect trees on private property — most city tree ordinances only cover trees on city land. Austin’s ordinances outline a classification system for trees based on size and species, and generally, the larger a tree is, the more protection it is given. And, based on the economic and practical functions these trees provide to the city, the protection is warranted.

A COOLING EFFECT

A 2006 tree canopy analysis conducted by the city’s Watershed Protection Department revealed that approximately 32 percent of the city is shaded by trees. According to Leah Haynie, Austin’s Heat Island Program coordinator, trees can reduce summer temperatures through shading, by absorbing solar energy and through evapotranspiration. In addition, it’s estimated that Austin’s trees have the potential to store up to 100,000 tons of CO2 per year, which is why departments across Austin are focused on increasing and protecting the city’s urban forest.

“Trees are working for us. They are the hardest working and most efficient of all city workers,” says Michael Embesi, a City of Austin arborist. “They continually provide benefits with little to no investment. Trees don’t take time off for vacation, sick leave or require medical coverage.”

“Here in Texas, we value our trees immensely for their cooling effects,” adds Ray Henning, line clearance superintendent for Austin Energy, which serves 420,000 customers in the Greater Austin area.

Therefore, when Austin’s city council passed its Urban Heat Island Containment Policy in 2001, a program called NeighborWoods was a key part of its plans. Each year, this program, which began in Austin’s Parks and Recreation Department and is now administered via contract through the nonprofit TreeFolks, distributes between 3,000 and 4,000 trees to Austin Energy customers for planting near city streets in the right of way. While technically these trees are on city land, Austinites are responsible for maintaining the trees and vegetation growing there, which means that neighborhood support of the program is a key to its success.

“Upfront outreach is really helpful to having success for the program,” says April Rose, executive director of TreeFolks. “Getting someone in front of neighborhood groups talking with them about why it’s important to plant street trees and what it can do for energy, ambient air temperature, property values, wildlife, etc., can get the community supportive of the program and excited about the opportunity to receive free street trees.”

Beyond NeighborWoods, TreeFolks has a variety of programs to increase tree canopy, including Sapling Days, which are held each fall. On these select days, approximately 3,000 tree saplings are given away to Austin-area residents for planting on their private property, as much of the available space for expanding the city’s urban forest is on individual homeowners’ land.

Another way the city expands the tree canopy on private land is through its Austin Community Trees program. Through this program, the city offers 10 species of large shade and small understory trees for planting on private property in neighborhoods with low tree canopies. This program specifically aims to engage neighborhoods in greening the city.

Rose says that one of the most helpful things to urban forest work in Austin is “the general spirit of volunteerism and the grassroots energy that is part of the Austin culture. People really want to get involved and support urban tree causes. We couldn’t do all that we do without the thousands of volunteers that we engage with every year and the support of the business community.”

SPEAKING FOR THE TREES

Austin’s tree ordinances and activities are driven by Austinites according to Austin City Council Aide Shannon Halley. For more than 30 years, the city’s Urban Forestry Board, a city council appointed group, has been meeting monthly to study, investigate, plan, advise, report and recommend any action, program, plan or legislation that the board determines advisable. Citizen involvement extends beyond the board, though.

In 2006, a neighborhood was concerned about the number of trees being trimmed in their community and asked for the Austin City Council to enact a tree-trimming moratorium to evaluate the issue. The council complied, and that year, a Tree Task Force was formed to look into Austin’s urban canopy practices. This task force would go on to propose a number of broad strategies for improving the city’s urban canopy practices, which included providing the framework for updating Austin’s tree ordinances to include heritage trees. The task force also recommended the formation of an interdepartmental tree group that would meet once a month.

“Many times the city’s departments have different goals,” says City of Austin Arborist Ketih Mars. “We’re speaking more with one voice now. We use these meetings to discuss conflicts and make decisions so the city can minimize any confusion for its citizens regarding tree issues.”

With approximately 6,000 trees being planted each year through the city’s Heat Island program, the city’s forestry team is eagerly awaiting an updated canopy report and tree inventory that will be available this year to see how much the needle has moved in recent years, especially considering Texas’ recent troubles with drought and Austin’s continued development.

While this new report will be a beneficial snapshot of the city’s current canopy, arborist Embesi reveals that the city is developing a comprehensive plan, the Comprehensive Urban Forest Plan, to address the city’s canopy. This plan would dive deeper than just the number of trees and would instead focus on plans that would take into account Austin’s two distinct geographic areas — one a prairie and one a plateau — with their specific ecologies and land-use needs. This plan will address trees within all of its sections: land use and transportation, housing and neighborhoods, conservation and environment, city facilities and services and more. Getting the right tree in the right place is tantamount to increasing the benefits the trees provide while also saving the city money.

Austin Energy is very aware of the money that can be saved by constructive planning of the city’s urban forest. When a tree has to be removed because of issues related to the utility line, the energy company gives the homeowner a new tree — free of charge — that is utility compatible, which means that when the tree is mature, it will still be below the property’s utility lines. This allows homeowners to take care of the tree, while Austin Energy focuses its green activities elsewhere.

Henning relates how important it is to educate homeowners on the right types of trees to plant in the right location. “If we could get the right tree in the right place and didn’t have to spend money pruning trees away from power lines, we could spend that money for a lot better uses like improving the urban forest,” he says. “We can afford to get the right trees in the right place. We need to look at the long-term solutions.”

While the Comprehensive Urban Forest Plan underway is essential to providing some long-term solutions, like many cities around the country, Austin also finds itself with limited staff and resources to complete the work required to maintain and enhance its urban forest. Less than 25 full-time Parks and Recreation Department Forestry Program employees are responsible for 300,000 public trees in Austin, plus all of the public programs designed to help engage Austin’s citizens in helping care for and protect the city’s greenspaces. It’s a daunting task, but one that Austin’s various departments are committed to tackling together because as a University of Texas-Austin president once asked, “Would you rather your children looked at bricks or branches?”

Michelle Werts writes from Washington, D.C., and is American Forests’ director of communications.

The post Keep Austin Green appeared first on American Forests.

By Steve Bailey

“Hiking takes me back in time, to my ancestors and then the distant past,” says Lynda Rummel, a retired university professor. “Not so long ago, there was only hiking. Walking is the most basic form of human travel.”

Rummel, who lives near Branchport, N.Y., is among the many regular visitors to Finger Lakes National Forest (FLNF). She and others use this unusual national forest as a place to reflect, to connect with nature and for glorious hikes, horseback rides, wildlife observation and more.

Finger Lakes National Forest — 16,212 acres mostly on a ridge between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes in western New York — is the only national forest in New York and the second-smallest national forest in the country.

Tiny communities like Searsburg, Townsendville, Reynoldsville and Bennettsburg surround FLNF, which is crisscrossed by two-lane roads. These roads, leading to campsites and trailheads, often run beside and over gorges cut deep into the earth, but also are often in the shadows of steep hills dense with hardwood trees. This is the glacier-shaped terrain of Finger Lakes, and like much of the region, it has an agricultural function.

FLNF is one of only two national forests east of the Mississippi River that allow cattle grazing. About a fourth of the forest — 4,500 acres with 35 pastures requiring 80 miles of fencing — is used by the Hector Cooperative Grazing Association as the summer range for about 1,500 head of cattle. From May 15 to October 31 each year, forest visitors are likely to encounter beef cattle.

Those visitors come mostly from surrounding communities, like Watkins Glen and Ithaca, as well as Syracuse, Binghamton and Rochester — all of which are only a couple of hours away. Thanks to a cross-state trail that passes through the forest, some visitors come on foot. What they find when they reach Finger Lakes National Forest is an environment created almost by accident.

The area was originally known as Hector Hills, which by 1900 was a place of failed farms thanks to soil depletion and competition from other parts of the country. Between 1938 and 1941, when New York was buying thousands of acres for state forest lands, the federal government bought a noncontiguous patchwork of more than 100 farms in the region, which the U.S. Soil Conservation Service used to demonstrate soil stabilization and the conversion of crop fields to livestock pastures. In the 1950s, this land was turned over to the U.S. Forest Service, and in 1985, it became Finger Lakes National Forest, operated as an administrative unit of Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont. Cattle grazing is a remnant of a multiple-use program that began when the Forest Service got the land in the 50s. Over the years, the area has been used for hunting, timber, environmental-practices demonstrations and, of course, recreation.

The forest attracts visitors year round. Autumn offers trees and pastures ablaze with colorful trees and wildflowers like asters and golden rod. It’s also a time when hunters scour FLNF in search of deer, turkey and other game. In winter, snowmobilers, skiers and snowshoers move through denuded forests that are punctuated occasionally by the dark green of pine, fir or holly. Spring brings pastures of wildflowers and a short mud season, after which horses and mountain bikes are welcome on some trails, which often lead to primitive campsites filled with campers much of the summer.

STEPS IN TIME

The farms that dotted Hector Hills a century ago are largely unrecognizable today. Pastures are surrounded by mature forests of red and sugar maples, ash, black walnut, oaks and pines. Throughout the pastures, woods and up and down gorges are about 30 miles of trails — some restricted to foot travel, while others allow horses, skiers and even mountain bikes and snowmobiles.

The Burnt Hill Trail curves and dips through a shady hardwood forest and shrubland before coming to a gated fence. One opens the gate, closes it behind and continues on a well-worn path across the pasture. Cattle at a distance look at hikers before returning to their grazing. In a few minutes, the traveler comes to another gate and returns to a forest trail. For some visitors, seeing cattle up close is just as interesting as spotting a fawn or other wildlife.

Rummel, whose volunteer work with the hiking alliance Finger Lakes Trail Conference focuses on 60 miles of the Finger Lakes Trail, including FLNF’s 12-mile Interloken Trail, says she hikes at a moderate pace “so that I can exercise, but still notice and experience my surroundings — and stop quickly when something like a fawn in the leaves by the trail or a fresh bear track in grass covered with dew needs to be photographed.” The Interloken Trail is a small part of the more than 900 miles of trails in New York’s Finger Lakes Trail System, which extends from Catskill Forest Preserve in eastern New York to Allegany State Park in the southwest.

FLNF visitors looking for short hikes with great scenery should try the Gorge and Ravine Trails. The Ravine is in two sections, one a 0.8-mile loop with steep sections that wends through spruce and hemlock trees and crosses a ravine twice — once over a bridge and once by fording a stream that is sometimes just a dry bed. The other section is a slightly shorter and slightly easier hike that connects with the popular Interloken Trail. The Gorge Trail follows a gorge for 1.2 miles through pine and hardwood trees and also connects with the Interloken. Like the Ravine Loop, it goes up and down sharply in some places. The gorges are vivid reminders of the glaciers, which left silt that compressed into stone only to be eroded by small streams. Layers of the original silt can be seen where the stone is exposed.

Despite being one of the smallest national forests in the country, hikers can still find solitude, which Rummel says can be exhilarating. She tells of an early spring hike when she crossed a creek “roaring with melt water, using the trunk of a downed tree. “It seemed as if I was a tightrope-walking Wallenda crossing Niagara Falls; it was that scary and exhilarating. No one else was around. Four inches of snow still on the ground, nice sunshine, and it was totally quiet except for the noise of the creek. For several moments, there was no one else in the universe and no other place but this.”

HORSES AND TENTS

Erika Eckstrom, the owner of Painted Bar Stables in nearby Burdett, has a somewhat different relationship with the forest. She sees it from the back of a horse, often at a brisk pace, and takes advantage of one of FLNF’s unusual treasures — apple orchards.

On the trails north of the Backbone Horse Campground, she and her riders cross many of the pastures used by the Hector Grazing Association, as well as pine and deciduous forest, small gorges, creeks and abandoned fruit orchards, which are almost unrecognizable until fruit season. “Some of the apple trees — particularly on the southeast corner of the Backbone Trail — have some of the most delicious and wonderful apples,” she says. “In the fall, you can reach into the trees from horseback to grab apples for yourself and your horse.” The popular Backbone Trail is 5.5 miles one way, starts at the campground and is relatively flat — meaning easy for inexperienced riders.

Painted Bar Stables offers noon-to-noon trail rides with overnight camping at the Backbone Horse Campground. The riders meet Eckstrom or another guide from Painted Bar at the campground, where the horses are waiting at a hitching post. “Starting at the camp works best for most people because it provides increased flexibility,” Eckstrom says. After an afternoon ride, tents are set up; then, there is a sunset ride. Back at camp, the riders have their cars handy for charging their phones and cameras and have a way out if they’re too sore for the morning ride.

Laura Egan, a Manhattan-based visual artist, raised horses when she was growing up in Maine, N.Y., about 40 minutes from the Painted Bar Stables. Now, when she goes home on visits, she takes time to ride Mack, one of Eckstrom’s Tennessee walkers. “The landscape is beautiful,” she says of Finger Lakes National Forest, which she had never visited until she started riding with Painted Bar.

Parts of the Interloken Trail allow horses, and one of Eckstrom’s favorites is a section of the trail that goes through a pasture south of the Blueberry Patch Campground. “As you emerge into the field headed south, it’s a beautiful, grassy straightaway across the crest of the hill — perfect for a glorious canter, especially at sunset,” she says. “Then, you enter into a really lovely grove of trees. I call the grove ‘Little Red Riding Hood’s Grove’ because it looks like it’s straight out of a fairy tale with perfectly spaced trees and lush, mossy undergrowth.” That sort of experience is what draws equestrians to the forest and what draws the ire of some hikers.

Forest Service District Ranger Jodie Vanselow says the problem is the forest’s size. “We’re so small that the majority of our trails have to be multiple use,” she says. “Whenever you have multiple-use trails, you’ll get hikers who don’t like horseback riders.” Hikers, like Rummel, say that horses, as well as mountain bikes, force hikers to step off narrow trails to allow them to pass. Vanselow adds that “horseback riders want more trails just for themselves. From a trails standpoint, the horseback riders are the most limited

here; they have the fewest number of trails.”

Whatever conflict there is seems to be well-mannered. Eckstrom says that she and her riders haven’t heard any complaints. “Hikers are always very amiable when I encounter them,” she says.

NATURE ON THE WING

While birding is not one of the main attractions of FLNF — mainly because the ridge that runs down the middle of the forest keeps it off most species’ migratory flyways — the forest does attract its share of bird species and bird lovers. Its few migrant species include some hawks and songbirds, as well as monarch butterflies. The forest’s cattle ponds and wetlands also attract waterfowl in the fall.

Dr. Gerald Zupruk, a neurological surgeon and enthusiastic photographer who used to live in Trumansburg, near FLNF, says he made good use of the forest and was especially fond of Teeter Pond, the largest of several manmade ponds in the forest. “It’s the kind of place where if you walk in and sit down a while, the wildlife shows up — the birds get more active.” Geese often seemed to forget he was there.

Zupruk also says he liked the fact that FLNF is not as popular as some of the parks and other public lands in the Finger Lakes area. “It’s more pastoral,” he says, referring both to its actual pastures and to its peacefulness.

It’s not peace that Dr. Charles R. Smith looks for in the forest. He is after birds. Smith, a naturalist and a senior research associate in Cornell’s Department of Natural Resources, has been studying birds for more than half a century and has been working on various projects at FLNF since 1988. “Most of my work has been with grassland birds, their distributions and habitat uses on FLNF,” he says.

Those grassland birds include bobolink, northern harrier, grasshopper sparrow, American kestrel and the rare Henslow’s sparrow. Other birds, such as American goldfinch, yellow-billed cuckoo, eastern towhee, brown thrasher and yellow warbler, at FLNF use the shrublands. Forest birds include American woodcock, northern goshawk, ruffed grouse and scarlet tanager. There is also wild turkey. Despite this variety, birders — those people who keep life lists and chase rarities — will find few birds of interest here, but Smith, like many others, finds much of interest in FLNF, including the first breeding record of a pine warbler at the forest in 2010.

Also capturing his attention are butterflies, and he reports that within FLNF, he has documented 62 species, about half the number of species reported for the entire state of New York. Just this summer, he discovered a butterfly in FLNF whose presence he had predicted (“Juniper hairstreak. Its larva feeds only on eastern redcedar.”) and Harris’ checkerspot.

At Finger Lakes Natural Forest, the natural world accommodates cattle and horses, birds and butterflies. It is forests, gorges, manmade ponds, abandoned farms and old orchards that still produce apples to delight horses and riders alike. And, its many visitors recognize the value this little forest provides.

“I try to leave no sign of having been there — just a boot print at most,” says hiker Rummel. “I’m there to fit in and be a part of a natural world that’s much, much bigger than I.”

Steve Bailey, a former New York Times editor, teaches journalism at Salisbury University.

The post More Than Lakes appeared first on American Forests.

American Forests Science Advisory Board member Dr. Jerry F. Franklin is a professor of ecosystem analysis at the College of Forest Resources, University of Washington. He has been called the “father of new forestry” and is one of the country’s leading authorities on sustainable forest management and maintaining healthy forest ecosystems.

Why did you choose to go into forest ecology?

I decided that I wanted to go into forestry when I was nine years old, but it wasn’t until my first year in forestry school that I recognized that I was most interested in ecology.

What is the most surprising thing that you have learned or discovered?

I have had many, many epiphanies and continue to have them even after nearly 55 years as a professional forester, but one of the earliest and most important was recognizing the important role that trees continue to play in forest ecosystems after they are dead. They did not teach me that in forestry school!

What is your favorite aspect of your field?

The favorite aspect of being in this field is getting to spend a whole lot of time out in the woods!

Where was the most interesting and impactful place you were able to travel to in the name of science?

There are too many places that have been both interesting and impactful, including such far off locations as Tierra del Fuego. However, if I had to pick a single place that was most valuable in learning about forest ecosystems, it was H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in the central Oregon Cascade Range.

If you weren’t a scientist, what would you be?

Probably the other thing that I am: a teacher.

What was the most difficult moment or encounter that you’ve experienced in pursuit of your work?

Most of the difficult moments have been related to resistance in the forestry profession to new ideas, such as the value that are provided by old-growth forests.

Where is your favorite spot to experience nature?

My favorite spot to experience nature is the Glacier Peak Wilderness in the northern Cascade Range of Washington.

What do you think the biggest issue facing forest health is today?

Having people understand the many sides of the forest health issue and the many interpretations that can be put on the term “forest health” itself. The production forester has a very different perspective on this than a forest-ecosystem scientist.

The post Forest Frontiers: Jerry F. Franklin appeared first on American Forests.

By Cory Hatch

Karl Buermeyer stops his white pickup ON THE SIDE OF A DIRT road and motions to a few whitebark pine trees rising from a mat of pinkish-purple fireweed. On one of the tree trunks, there’s a scar of missing bark. Thick streams of now-solidified sap have spilled over the wound. A non-native fungus brought over from Europe called blister rust made a sugary canker that rodents subsequently gnawed away — hence the missing bark. Everything above the point of infection will eventually die, including the tree’s cones. If the tree can’t produce cones, it no longer contributes its genes to the landscape and is considered by researchers and forest managers to be ecologically dead.

Back in the pickup, Buermeyer, a vegetation manager for Bridger-Teton National Forest, drives deeper into the heart of the Mount Leidy Highlands, an area just east of Grand Teton National Park in northwest Wyoming. This is wild country. Most of the peaks range between 8,000 and 10,000 feet, and the area is thick with predators such as grizzly bears, mountain lions, Canada lynx and wolves, along with prey species like elk, moose and deer.

As Buermeyer drives, the forest opens, and large patches of fireweed give way to sagebrush, which in turn give way to groves of aspen and finally to forests of lodgepole pine, subalpine fir and spruce. Occasionally, whitebark pine branches — each branch sporting a pair of dark-purple cones at its tip — stretch skyward. But among the healthy conifers, dead trees are readily apparent.

A broad, high-elevation valley appears, and we get our first good look at the scope of the devastation. Beetle-killed pines — called ghost trees because of their gray trunks and branches denuded of needles — stand among the live spruce and fir. An entire west-facing slope of Mt. Leidy is covered with dead whitebark. In the Rocky Mountains from Colorado into Canada, blister rust has conspired with native mountain pine beetles against high-elevation forests, leaving massive destruction in their wake.

At risk is an iconic American landscape. The 20-million-acre Greater Yellowstone Area — a region of mostly contiguous habitat in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming — is one of the last ecosystems with a full complement of flora and fauna in the lower 48 states. Whitebark pine sits atop that ecosystem, serving as the anchor for high-alpine and watershed habitats and as food and shelter for species ranging from Clark’s nutcracker to the grizzly bear.
As of 2009, about 95 percent of Greater Yellowstone’s whitebark pine habitat had experienced some mortality, says Dr. Jesse Logan, a retired entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service. Fifty percent of the ecosystem’s whitebark “have been impacted to the point where you lose ecosystem function,” Logan says.

The loss of ecosystem function means snow will melt faster, causing more runoff in the spring and less water in creeks and rivers during the summer. Grizzly bears, which rely on the seeds to build up fat for the fall and winter, will likely seek more food near the valleys, putting them in danger of conflicts with humans. Whitebarks will no longer anchor soils and provide protection for other high-elevation plant species.

While researchers, environmentalists and land managers have rallied to save the species, the outlook is grim. “The bitter irony is that just as we’re learning about how important whitebark pines are, we’re losing them,” says Louisa Willcox with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “That is a heartbreaking thing to realize.”

TWIN THREATS

In the early 1900s, blister rust — which only infects five-needle pines, like whitebark — entered the United States by way of ships that brought the fungus on white pine seedlings from Europe.

“This organism has what is considered the most complicated life cycle on the planet,” says Dr. Diana Six, a professor of forest entomology and pathology at the University of Montana. “It’s the last organism that I would think would be successful out there.”

Nevertheless, blister rust managed to make a living by infecting two different types of hosts: ribes, a genus that includes roughly 150 flowering plants, and five-needle pines. Early eradication efforts focused on the ribes. Federal land managers “hired hundreds of college students to go out ripping up native gooseberries and currants,” Six says. Since ribes are plentiful and blister rust spores from one plant can travel hundreds of miles in windy conditions, eradication efforts failed.

Five-needle pines fall victim to blister rust when a spore lands on a needle or a branch, penetrates and moves down into the living tissue. The fungus then spreads all the way around the branch. Once the branch is completely girdled, it dies. When blister rust finally makes its way into the trunk of the tree, “that’s when it gets super serious,” Six says. “Whatever is above that point of infection dies. When you kill the top of a whitebark pine, that is ecological death.”

The fungus has spread across the country from both coasts to at least 38 states, infecting five-needle pines such as sugar, west limber and whitebark. In Wyoming, researchers first discovered the fungus in ribes species in Yellowstone National Park in 1944. In Greater Yellowstone, 20 to 25 percent of five-needle pines show evidence of blister rust.

But blister rust isn’t the only threat facing Greater Yellowstone’s five-needle pines. Unlike blister rust, mountain pine beetles are a native insect that co-evolved with western forests, which means that some species, like lodgepole pine, have developed chemical and mechanical defenses against the bug. Before temperatures began to warm, these pines might have coped with the beetles. A healthy tree could “pitch out” the invading beetles with a rush of sap, but whitebark pine live at elevations where the climate was too harsh for the beetle to survive for long. Therefore, whitebarks developed few of the lodgepole pine’s defenses. Only during periods of particularly warm weather could beetles make it high enough to infest whitebark tree stands.

It was by studying one of these warm periods that entomologist Logan and his colleagues first got a hint of the troubles to come. “In the 1930s, there was mortality that was associated with mountain pine beetle,” Logan says. “It was really warm for a period of time.”

Warm weather helps mountain pine beetles avoid the deep spring and fall freezes that can kill the beetle before its cells can protect themselves with a natural defense that can be described as the insect’s version of antifreeze.

By the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990, Logan was running simulations on warming scenarios and whitebark. “The results indicated that, with a general warming climate, we could really begin to see problems in whitebark,” Logan says. “Both the extent and intensity of mortality — the productivity of beetles and how the tree seems unable to defend itself — all struck us from the beginning.”

“Not only is whitebark not well defended like lodgepole, but the defensive chemistry is backwards,” Logan continues. “Whitebark is high in compounds that the beetle uses to signal other beetles to focus attacks on the tree.”

By 2003, a beetle outbreak unprecedented in known human history began to sweep across the Rocky Mountains. In 2005, Canadian researchers used Doppler radar to document a beetle hatch that produced an estimated average of 4,950 beetles per hectare with a maximum of 18,600 beetles per hectare.

Environmental photographer James Balog has used time-lapse cameras in seven locations across the Rocky Mountains to document beetle infected lodgepole, ponderosa and whitebark pines. “To our absolute and utter astonishment, by the fall, we had dead trees in every picture,” Balog says.

“The most captivating time-lapse sequences go from summer to winter,” Balog continues. “You watch the tree go from green to red then a dried out, dusty orange, and then, the needles start falling off. When you get these sequences weighted down with these big snowstorms, it’s very beautiful. It’s a dichotomy of the sadness and the horror of the tree dying and this beauty.”

SAVING A SPECIES

Farther along the dirt road of the Mt. Leidy Highlands, vegetation manager Buermeyer unlocks a gate, and we head to the base of Grouse Mountain. Here, the Rocky Mountain Research Station is conducting an experiment to find out the best way to regenerate whitebark pine.

We park and bushwhack into the forest to see one of the largest whitebarks in the Greater Yellowstone Area. Forest Service crews have marked this 96-foot-tall behemoth with spray paint and have sprayed it down with a beetle insecticide called carbaryl. This is one of several “plus trees” in the region, trees that researchers and foresters have identified as potentially being genetically resistant to blister rust.

Every year, certified climbers scale the trunks to the top of plus trees and encase the cones with metal baskets to prevent the seeds from being harvested by Clark’s nutcrackers, red squirrels and other species that feast on the cones. After the seeds mature, the climbers return, remove the baskets and harvest the seeds. The seeds then go to a greenhouse in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where they are raised to seedlings and bombarded with blister rust spores. The seedlings that survive are then deemed suitable for replanting.

Forest Service personnel have already planted blister rust-resistant whitebark pine trees in Caribou-Targhee and Bridger-Teton National Forests, says Liz Davy, a silviculturist and ranger with the Forest Service. American Forests has two Global ReLeaf projects assisting with the planing efforts in Caribou-Targhee this year. There’s also a rust-resistant whitebark pine seed orchard in the works for Gallatin National Forest in Montana. “In three more years, we’ll be ready to have trees planted for rust resistance,” Davy says.

Some of these rust-resistant seeds could find their way to Grouse Mountain. As we walk toward the peak, Buermeyer points to plastic flagging around the trunks of trees used to indicate test plots for the Grouse Mountain experiment.

On some plots, crews will thin the spruce and fir around the smaller whitebark pines in the understory so they can get more sun, a process called daylighting. On other plots, crews will use prescribed burns and clear-cutting to get the young whitebarks to “release,” meaning they grow tall enough to rise above the understory and start producing cones.

Ahead in the distance, Buermeyer spots a Clark’s nutcracker. The bird chatters raucously as it flits from one whitebark to another, stuffing its sublingual pouch with seeds that it will later cache in various nooks on the landscape for safekeeping. Researchers think this noisy little bird is almost entirely responsible for natural whitebark pine reproduction. “In a good cone year, cache more seeds than they can eat,” entomologist Logan says. “Some of these seeds are not utilized, and that’s where the new trees come from.”

The problem is that the nutcracker is not nearly as reliant on the tree as the tree is on the nutcracker. “If the number of cones reaches a critical-low threshold, then the nutcracker switches to other food sources,” Logan explains. “The concern is that the wide area of mortality that has occurred with the pine beetle outbreak will be magnified by the switch of nutcrackers to other food sources.”

Therefore, another technique researchers are testing in the Grouse Mountain experiment is logging small patches of forest to create the kind of clearings where the Clark’s nutcrackers like to cache their seeds.

As we continue to climb, Buermeyer leads us out onto a ridge overlooking a broad bowl rimmed with dead whitebarks. This is where researchers hope to plant 1,000 rust-resistant whitebark seedlings.

It’s hard not to get discouraged. Beyond a few trees at the bottom of the bowl, every mature whitebark pine is dead. Some of these trees were so old that they likely existed before Europeans ever set foot in the Mountain West. The most ancient whitebark pine is thought to be roughly 1,250 years old. With such a long life cycle, whitebark pines typically take 60 to 80 years to fully mature. It’s unlikely Buermeyer and I will ever see this view restored with mature whitebark pine trees.

If the current trend of a warming climate continues, the outlook is even bleaker. “Eighty years from now, most of the U.S. will not support this tree,” professor Six says. “They’ll never get to move up to the top of the mountain because the mountain pine beetle will take them out.”

Still, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2011 announcement that the tree warrants protection under the Endangered Species Act, but is precluded by other, higher priority species, whitebark pine trees have gained notoriety and research dollars, says NRDC’s Willcox.

By planting rust-resistant seedlings and with other restoration activities to help the whitebark pines that already exist, researchers and land managers say there’s still time to ensure that the species maintains a presence in the Rocky Mountains.
Another rowdy, Clark’s nutcracker call brings a hint of hope. Buermeyer hands me one of last year’s whitebark pine cones picked clean of its seeds. A few steps more and I find one of this year’s cones, also picked clean, its seeds destined for a dark hole in the soil.

Cory Hatch writes from Victor, Idaho; is a freelance science journalist; and serves as wildlands director for the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance.

Learn more about our endangered western forests.

Read more: American Forests Steps Up Efforts to Save Greater Yellowstone Area

The post Saving a Species appeared first on American Forests.

By Carrie Madren

When a hurricane hits the coast or a tornado rips through the countryside, they create devastation — wrecking natural landscapes, as well as lives and livelihoods. Hurricane Katrina affected five million acres of forest across Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama and caused more than $1.25 billion in timber damage in Mississippi alone. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami — triggered by a magnitude 9.2 oceanic earthquake — slammed coastlines across the western Pacific, killing hundreds of thousands of people and in some regions destroying everything aboveground, including mangrove forests. The lateral blast from the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens instantly destroyed four billion board feet of timber, and nearly 200 homes were claimed during the disaster.

Across eastern North America, winds from tornadoes and downbursts (strong downdrafts that cause damaging winds) disturb thousands of forested acres each year, devastating both conservation areas and timberlands according to a 2000 study. Foresters managing for timber may lose decades’ worth of tree growth and must scramble to salvage what’s fallen before insects and diseases claim their product.

Such events also affect wildlife communities — in both good and bad ways. For instance, while damage by ice or tornadoes may create more clearings for food sources, like berry-producing shrubs, small mammals may have more difficulty foraging in thick, downed debris. Wildlife that live or feed in trees, such as bats and birds, can become displaced, throwing the ecosystem out of balance.

As communities struggle to pick up the pieces and mourn what’s claimed by hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, wildfires and windstorms, forests, too, must rebuild and sink new roots to rise from the wreckage.

HIGH WATER

Rising floodwaters can take down forests from the roots.

After the Great Midwest Flood of 1993, which caused nearly $20 billion in damage and covered 400,000 square miles, nearly all the trees in four stands of Sanganois Wildlife Management Area near Beardstown, Ill., were submerged for more than six months and died.

Whether it’s a river overflow or a coastal storm surge due to a hurricane, floodwaters can mean trouble for trees and forest ecosystems. First, floodwater currents, loaded with debris and silt, can erode the soils around shrubs and trees, exposing roots. In strong currents, debris may even strip bark from trees, uproot plants or strip shrubbery.

In addition to the initial physical impact, because many of a tree’s fine, oxygen-absorbing roots grow in the upper six inches of soil, these roots can die off as the soil becomes waterlogged. Without a robust root system, trees don’t absorb enough water and become weakened. As a result, foliage wilts or dies, and these weakened trees are a target for insects and disease.

Coastal flooding — often the result of a storm surge or hurricane — can cause significant damage by flooding freshwater areas with salt or brackish water. This saltwater intrusion can spell trouble for plants that rely on freshwater. Increased salts in the soil make it more difficult for tree roots to take up water because of changed osmotic pressure.

“The result is what’s called physiological drought. Even though there is water, the tree can’t take it up, and it’s the same as if there was no water,” explains U.S. Forest Service research ecologist John Stanturf of the Forestry Sciences Laboratory in Athens, Ga. “Under severe conditions, an already-stressed tree, such as one that has lost its leaves by shearing in hurricane winds, can’t recover and refoliate and may die outright.”

A few years after the Great Midwest Flood, land managers noticed that new shrubs and seedlings began to thrive in the affected areas, though the types of trees differed from the older, established stands that were killed by the flood. Some tree species — such as silver maple, green ash, sweet gum and black willow — are thought to be more tolerant to flooded soils than other trees like black locust, black walnut, tulip poplar, sugar maple and American beech. Regardless of species, though, it may take mature, surviving trees several years to recover from a summer of flooding according to the South Dakota Department of Agriculture.

HURRICANE WARNING

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, winds of speeds up to 140 mph toppled trees and turned sand and debris into airborne sandpaper, stripping any trees or shrubs left standing of their leaves or limbs.

“Not much stands up to the highest wind speeds, except maybe live oak because of their growth habit and anchorage,” says Stanturf. “The farther inland you get, the wind energy dissipates, and you get less breakage and blowover,” he explains. “But even inland, you still get significant damage from the loss of major branches.”

Katrina’s damage extended as far north as Memphis, Tenn. A 2007 study published in Science used NASA satellite images to estimate 320 million trees dead or damaged in Mississippi and Louisiana alone from Hurricane Katrina. In combination with Hurricane Rita later that year, Hurricane Katrina was called “the largest single forestry disaster on record in the nation” by The Washington Post.

Damage inflicted by hurricanes depends on a variety of factors, including location, how the forest was managed and the age and height of a stand. While a loblolly pine plantation with trees 10 to 15 feet high may not sustain much damage, an older stand with 50-foot-tall trees of the same species would sustain more damage, according to Stanturf. In addition, because trees tend to support and protect other trees, there’s often more damage along openings in a forest, such as along roads or powerline swaths.

Beyond the wind damage, the storm surge that accompanied Hurricane Katrina damaged forests from the ground level. Sea waters surged more than three miles inland in some regions and more than 30 feet along much of the Mississippi coastline, causing the widespread damage inflicted by coastal flooding.

Forest recovery after a hurricane or other event depends on a particular forest’s management objective. Some hurricane-ravaged forests may be left to regenerate on their own, taking decades to a century to fully recover and reestablish. In some cases, cleanup is necessary to protect the forest from further destruction, as tree debris can become a breeding ground for insects and fungi. Other responses include salvage logging to recover the timber value that’s been lost and to reduce fire hazards, explains Stanturf. Seven years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, both replanted and surviving stands are recovering.

Though a post-hurricane or tornado forest isn’t initially the same type of forest that existed before the event, “it might develop into the same type of forest if managed well and if that is what a landowner wants and has the resources to accomplish,” explains Stanturf.

DEEP FREEZE

When heavy ice and wet snow coat tree limbs, the layers can be thick enough to break branches, twist limbs and crack tree crowns. Such an ice storm blanketed southern Missouri’s Mark Twain National Forest in 2009, snapping miles of telephone poles, limbs and trees.

After an ice storm or blizzard has passed through a forest, the first order of business is unblocking roads, especially roads that lead to residences, then clearing roads for larger vehicles. “We make sure people are safe first of all,” says Douglas Oliver, the Forest Service district ranger responsible for Mark Twain National Forest’s Poplar Bluff Ranger District. Then, trees are cleared from ditches, and workers ensure there aren’t hazardous trees or limbs dangling over recreation areas.

Similar to hurricane cleanup, timber may need to be salvaged before it rots and becomes worthless — or a breeding ground for pests. When the chainsaws stop, Oliver says, salvage teams have reported hearing swarms of insects boring into the downed wood. Such sheer volume of hungry insects can threaten nearby stands of surviving trees, likely weakened from the ice or wind.

Beyond insects, weakened, still-standing trees are vulnerable to disease and other physiological decline. At Mark Twain National Forest — where tornadoes and a 100-year flood have also occurred in the last five years — many surviving trees are more susceptible to ailments such as oak decline, which has afflicted red and black oak in the eastern U.S.

The summer after an ice storm or blizzard also can bring another danger. The layer of downed tree material can increase wildfire risk if conditions are extremely dry. Such a well-fueled fire could create catastrophic conditions to the point of soil sterilization, Oliver says.

In ice- and snow-damaged areas, trees that sustain light to moderate damage can begin to regenerate within a few years as the forest ecosystem as a whole recovers, but after the worst storms, enough biomass may cover the ground that new seedlings from natural seed banks can’t break through. After the cleanups in the Missouri forest, Oliver says that occasionally forest managers will do supplemental planting — especially if a silviculturist determines the need for more pines, for instance — but many times replanting isn’t necessary, as the forest regenerates on its own in subsequent decades.

AN EXPERIMENT IN SUCCESSION

When Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980 — triggered by a magnitude 5.2 earthquake — the explosive blast caused an enormous landslide with 600 mph winds and up to 600-degree-Fahrenheit heat across some 250 square miles of forests. What’s more, the searing heat caused snow and ice to “become the consistency of concrete, but moving at 60 mph,” reports ecologist Charlie Crisafulli at the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station. “The landscape was grossly transformed from this coniferous forest with sparkling lakes into what appeared to be a gray, lifeless landscape.”

The variety of geophysical forces that volcanoes can unleash on a landscape includes bulldozing lava flows, rock-fall avalanches, billowing ash and gas plumes and searing heat. Typically, if trees are left standing, they are scorched.

At Mount St. Helens, even as ash and tephra (fragments of volcanic rock and lava) blanketed the landscape, the volcano’s widespread aftermath didn’t quite kill everything. Isolated individuals and oases of plants, small animals and fungi survived, becoming building blocks for re-growth. Late snow banks and frozen lakes protected some buried roots, bulbs, saplings and shrubs, and come spring, whole communities of plants and animals emerged.

Two years after the eruption, Congress created the 110,000-acre Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, managed by the Forest Service. Here, ecological recovery has been allowed to take place at a natural pace. In contrast, land around Mount St. Helens owned by a private timber company was salvage logged, and acres were replanted with Douglas and noble fir for commercial forestry.

“Adjacent to the monument, the lands in the blast area were tinkered with, and that became a natural experiment created by the eruption and the management decisions,” Crisafulli explains. In the reforested areas, conifers now dominate the canopy, making the understory dark, with little biodiversity, but within the monument, the eruption was like a reset button for the surrounding landscape.

The first signs of life to emerge were native grasses, plants and shrubs, along with birds, small mammals and insects. “Populations were spared that served as sources for repopulation in adjacent areas,” says Crisafulli. As the landscape slowly regenerates, where trees once dominated, unique, diverse grasses, herbs and shrubs that aren’t found in other stages of ecological development are flourishing, and ecological progress is clear.

LESSONS IN RECOVERY

Researchers are still learning how ecosystems recover and how we can help forests survive a natural disaster. “We try to tinker and restore. We run in and salvage log it. We replant it with the late-successional species, such as conifers, and they grow very quickly,” says Crisafulli.

In the South, where many forests are grown for timber, researchers are discovering that some varieties of trees can tolerate natural events better than others. “There’s some indication that longleaf might be more wind resistant than loblolly pine,” ecologist Stanturf says.

But time heals all wounds, and the fierce forces of nature are nothing new for forests, governed by the equally powerful force of re-growth and renewal.

Freelance journalist Carrie Madren writes from northern Virginia.

The post Recovering From Disaster appeared first on American Forests.