Redwood Reader

19. HISPANOLA
Humboldt County is a special place for people trying to restore the natural balance. It will be a special place for people studying the recuperative power and ability of natural systems. In many ways the problems we face are relatively simple and obvious, and they have the ability to become fractals of recovery for larger regions. In my own case, a small tributary of the Mattole in steep terrain and heavy rainfall had been roaded, logged, and burned causing all kinds of residual damage going on for decades. As massive of a problem as it was, it still is only sediment from the landscape and not toxic or contaminating materials. The same is true for air quality. We have little ozone or dry nitrogen emission output over the landscape and so escape some burgeoning problems around urban areas. The accelerated recovery noted for CO2 is helping repair but some things are too far-gone for vegetative recovery. My own property will continue to shed material from unnaturally vertical walls for a long time unless some massive terra-forming is considered practical or doable. Even then faults, instability and heavy rainfall will keep things moving, but in the summer there is now shade and fish in places and the creek hasn’t jumped its banks in a few years.
Back in the eighties a friend of my brother came to visit us here in Humboldt. He had grown up with my younger brother, they went to school and more importantly hung out together. His family had relocated to the US from Haiti in the Papa Doc days, and his Dad and uncle had a car dealership in the city (NY). He related his experiences from visiting family there. He said unofficial ruffians ruled the streets and kept the people in line. Several coup-de-tetes had occurred in the past. When we asked about the forests he said they had been cut down a long time ago so there was no place for rebel fighters to hide. He said the army regularly cut the re-growth back, and that the poor fought over every stick that was cut to use as firewood. The people were not allowed to live in the mountains; they had to be in the towns.
Regardless of the accuracy of his views on policy, we clearly see the seeds of disaster sown. The Caribbean Sea is notorious for hurricanes and other large rain events. The precipitation interface has been impacted severely and the people moved downhill below the destabilized mountain. Sediment flows no doubt filled the rivers causing them to jump the banks. Huge mudslides buried towns. These are predictable outcomes after tragedy from Mitch, the Philippines and Venezuela’s December 2000. In all these cases poor people living in makeshift shantytowns downhill from deforestation (the reasons vary but the results do not) were swept away in debris flows.
Mitch recorded 72” of rain in one storm, but nobody said it was a once in a hundred year storm. Several years ago here in Humboldt we had twenty inches of rain in 24 hours in Honeydew three times in six weeks, and I had to wonder what is the a hundred year storm. It looked like more rain had done less damage than in 1964, partly because much of the destabilizing cutting in the Honeydew area had occurred before the flood, and we experienced the benefit of re-growth doing its job. This means that, in the long run, changing the timber practices in 1972 is having an overall positive effect, even if it is hard to see at any given moment or at any single site. There is far less land destabilized than was the case earlier in the last century. Local events continue to occur because we can’t replace the timber industry and regulators are still unaware of glomalin as the cause and cure of mudslides. This will change after fact-finding and debate. Once floor preservation becomes the key select cutting with minimal footprints will be the way to go. A slope regulation can allow larger harvests on more stable lands, while protecting a watersheds’ glomalin coverage and preserving stability.
Another story today concerning dust storms in North East Asia mentioned massive deforestation as a cause. What is the connection to Humboldt here? Some of this is reaching us as airborne pollution. Dust from Africa has been found to be loaded with microbes. We often felt the flu appeared to come in with weather patterns bringing storms from Asia. So can we link microbes to dust to flu outbreaks? Can we contain flu by replanting forests and thus reducing intercontinental dust? We may never know without setting land aside and changing the way we work in production areas.
Woody bamboos around the world are rapidly disappearing as forests are harvested. With individuals spontaneously flowering, making seed and dying every 20 to 100 years, there is real danger of cutting too much too fast. This is a special problem for many endangered species that rely on bamboo for food and habitat. More than half of woody bamboo species are threatened. They grow in places around the world except Europe and North America. Species dependent on woody bamboos are facing dwindling forest reserves as human use and development use up the stocks. This is a widespread problem covering many species of bamboo and animals, in many nations on at least three continents. Bamboo is renewable if given enough time and allowed to propagate itself. The long term reproductive cycle fits in well with CO2 storage but does not relieve pressure on forests to provide peoples insatiable needs.
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