Redwood Reader

Last night PBS ran two episodes of its new show Secrets of the Earth. Each brought a good deal of insight into issues wewehave been discussing here. Science is piling up the data although it seems analysis or comparisons are relatively slow in coming, a legact of over reductionism.
The first show was about changes in the Yellowstone River since about 1950. There has been no aspen recruitment in the Park since the 30s, right around the end of federal depradation policies. Aerial photos from them showed a aspen willow treed area along the river and next to it. These areas are grass today, not a stick of woody green to be seen. So there were further riparian effects from this- the banks were falling in, scour had widened the river so that vegetation was at some distance from flowing water. In fact the area looked like a springtime pasture with very short grass and not much else. The area is Park. The decline of the river was worrisome to some Oregon State University researchers, and they tried to figure the problem. There was no contamination , global warming couldn’t account for the difference between in Park and out of the boundaries. Neither did fire answer the question. The problem was solved by the introduction of wolves to the ecosystem. They began by showing how important each kill was to all the other associated life forms, and how elk visited less frequently areas where the wolves were running. In the end, the story turned on elk over-browsintg willow and aspen in the riparian zone.
As the elk browsed their favorite willow and aspen shoots in complete safety and comfort, they wound up denuding the area. Elk aren’tt grazers so the grass remained intact. But the banks of the river collapsed without the willows knitting them together, the river jumped its bank numerous times, widening the scour and filling the pools. Once the wolves were reintroduced, elk didn’t stay in one place as long, so willow shoots, aspen treea and other native plants began returning. The creek stabilized, vegetation reached the edge of running water again, channeled flow began removing sediment and a beaver family appeared where there were none for two hundred years. Beaver need an acre of trees apiece a year for food and building material or they don’t inhabit a place. These beaver came from somewhere else to take advantage of ideal conditions recreated by simply using large predators to keep the animals moving. While some effect is probably reduced browse from the kills, moving the animals is far more effective for the ecosystem. It lightens supply demands in small areas and distributes nutrients from carcasses and dung to a much wider area. Browse reduces fire danger as well, thinning shoots and fuel ladders.
This story is very similar to our North Coast situation in many ways. Deer appeared to be brazen and everywhere when I got here in the early eighties, and they were a known problem for gardners in the hills and edges of towns. A few years later a ban on lion hunting went into effect, and the big cats started being more commonly seen. The lions seem as brazen as the deer, making kills in peoples yards and actually attacking several people in recent years. In my own case I had been fencing live oak and pepperwoods so they would be able to grow above the point where deer can get at the growing tip. Once a tree has done that the deer can’t stop it from becoming a tree. Before that though, they can browse a seedling of those species every year for decades, and the plant will live as a tiny dense shrub. Two years of fencing and they are seven foot tall, probably because the root system has outpaced the above ground portion. This was another helpful recruitment method for large trees.
Nowhere in this story was anything about underground systems, fungi or glomalin mentioned and yet good management always supports pro-glomalin activities. We just wish these guys would go into these studies knowing about glomalin because they could shed more light for the same work in these cases. The effect of returning large marine predators was another interesting story, and again related to destroyed glomalin and ag chemicals impacting fisheries.
The second episode was scarier as an American, revealing for what it showed and just as revealing that again we have parallel research without the researchers seemingly aware of it. First a study of leopard frogs across the US found atrazine in the water in miniscule (one part in a tenth of a billion-.1mcg/L) quantities was causing male frogs to become hermaphrodite, growing eggs in the testes and occasionally even ovaries. Atrazine is a commonly used agriculture product. Healthy frogs were found everywhere atrazine wasn’t being used. Going into the lab, frogs grown with atrazine in the water showed the same defects as the wild ones. Good water, good frogs. AN amazing aside was that higher doses had less effect on the frogs, possibly kicking in self defense mechanisms. At any rate, as the dose went up symptoms went down. Here we are reminded of the German studies a decade or two ago that showed clean water at parts per million were rife with chemicals at parts per trillion, for which the US still doesn’t have a safety limit. Closer scrutiny revealed huge amounts of cosmetics, medicines, estrogen and caffeine in the rivers in the morning as a result of people starting the day in the usual ways. With 75000 manufactured compounds interacting and active at tiny doses, this is a huge problem.
Another researcher on this show studies the effects of tap water. She figured more pollution would cause more problems, so she studied sperm from men from NYC, LA, Chicago and her home town in Missouri. Missouri had the lowest sperm counts and health much to her surprise. Without naming the exact chemicals she found it was agricultural chemicals in tap water had effected all the men there, even those who weren’t in agriculture or particularly exposed to the chemicals directly. Right after the first article and approximately the same portion of the country as the frog hunters(who went everywhere) the story seemed to be screaming Atrazine. We’d at least hope she could use or test the idea.
Lastly, even as they spread the specter of massive contamination from manufactured products, bioremediation looms into view as a viable mechanism for most all these problems. Indeed if all people disappeared today the ongoing life functions would correct all these problems eventually. Fungi and bacteria are capable of breaking any carbon compound into smaller safer units. The more highly toxic initially the more specific you need to be to start. A good clue was given in that clover grows better in ground soaked in diesel. Not that we want to fertilize with diesel, but we may want to plant clover on terrestrial spill sites. THE use of plants to remove heavy metals was discussed as well, which is what plants do- remove nutrients from the soil. By tying mercury up in plants, or having it respired out prevents fixer bacteria from forming it into the dangerous form methyl mercury. This segment also pointed out the old adage about men who plant trees living longer because they want to watch their work grow. It was a sugar farmer trying to reduce ag runoff by increasing the treed riparian boundary in order to lessen nitrogen runoff harming the Great Reef off Australia.