Redwood Reader

One apparent pattern of the current administration is the gutting of federal oversight agencies like the GAO, FEMA, the mine safety people and so forth. Add this to disregarding the best available science, even discredit the scientist, and you get a scenario similar to the Bay Area sturgeon count. DFG reported a 90% decrease in white sturgeon. Tom Stienstra (www.sfgate.com) then reported that fishermen were upset that DFG had sampled the wrong section of the Bay and that there were far more fish than thought.
Generally we are witnessing more poor science where it is still paid lip service to, and more instances where it is simply ignored, or set up in a way to get desired results, more attacks on the scientists themselves and reshaping or ignoring their reports from farm chemicals to global warming to fisheries, and the confusion of conflicting results often obtained merely to obfuscate unwanted results. We also note funding continues for studies that are clearly based on past knowledge since discredited yet providing convenient results for partisan announcements, like the repeated forest carbon studies that don’t measure soil carbon and then announce trees can’t help with global warming or increased greenhouse gases.
So it is with the forest fungi. President Bush announced this week a proposal to use some kind of super fungi to create a gasoline substitute from cellulose. We know folks have been working on this for a while but it came out of the blue and had very little supporting information. We probably don’t care too much if the fuel at the pump is from a new source if we can drive away.
Similarly, reading the Peaceful Valley Farm Supply spring catalogs, which I haven’t done in years, reveals many “new” organic pest controls, a few new drip options (compared to a decade ago), some fungi inoculants but little else really different. One thing they did carry was Paul Stamens new book. Paul is probably one of the leading lights on growing fungi and bringing new species into cultivation. However, most of his work deals with the commercial aspects of growing decomposer fungi. Mycorhizzia is difficult to grow because of its nutritional regime. In our own thinking we have learned a great deal from Paul as well as David Aurora’s Mushrooms Demystified, and more generalized readings following them. They point out the amazing diversity and abilities of forest fungi, like standing on a ridge and pointing out an entire unknown valley spread out before them.
This is the point where commercial thinkers start to see some potential for new products or medicines in individual species. Reductionism has done much to provide new products from life forms but has not done as well adapting natural systems, the problem being that reduction leads away from seeing interconnectedness and evolving parameters and interactions over time, such as succession, repression and opportunism. Yet the biome rests on these basic principles, and we can see the same mechanisms at work in any forest, field farm or lawn, and since the dawn of life on earth.
For these reasons we are very disappointed in the direction of research at PNW (Pacific Northwest Reaseach station of the Forest Service in Corvallis. This is the area so much great info has come from, including luminaries like James Trapp. The station itself seems to be dedicated to understanding cultivation of forest mushrooms for economic gain, mainly as food. The scope of the thinking is so misdirected that it is stunning. All we can provide is lumber and a few edible mushrooms? What about all the industrially significant enzymes created by fungi? What about the mycelium pulsating to the seasonal beat and depositing glomalin to ensure water supplies? How does a diminishing supply affect macro issues like forestry, fish, landsliding and wildfire? We have shown that glomalin can illustrate exactly what is lost from natural systems when development occurs. We have shown the critical importance of glomalin in soil stability, and how to prevent or minimize future problems, and that this issue goes a long way toward cleaning up our heavily sedimented rivers.
After almost two years of writing no better solution than paying for carbon storage seems available. We need to pay people to grow big trees and keep them growing. Since most North Coast restoration money is coming from oil wells in the Santa Barbara wetlands it would seem industry should take this next step, providing more rural money for restoring the natural infrastructure of our nation. Carbon dioxide capture is what built the value into the landscape when the whites arrived. We have been on an ignorant path of unraveling the scheme in many ways and are only beginning to figure it out after all these years. Yet we find plenty of occurrences where natural instinct, rule of thumb and common sense have noted the limlts and stayed within the basic rules of sustainability. In the twentieth century we have lost a lot of that, yet we know beaver trappers were not concerned with aquifer health, or loss of glomalin in the Eastern forest where water storage is not as critical issue as in the West, so there is a lot of built in cultural ignorance.
Now we know what works and what is hurting us, and we can put these together for a positive solution time tested by nature. The large amounts of greenhouse gases are there for the taking. We must consider this something that will not recur regularly once the causes are understood and controls go into place. Everything we have learned about accelerated growth rates is temporary based on fluctuations. If we control the amount of emissions, rethink land use and BMP’s to reduce the amount of glomalin destruction, and harness natures growing ability to provide clean air and water as well as food, then the CO2 concentrations will fall Good examples are in China, where deserts are shrinking due to massive tree planting schemes, and the Sahel region where similar projects have been ongoing for years. We note in both cases invading deserts have been contained, showing these areas get enough rainfall but had lost their ability to store it in the biological zone. Tree planting means restoring the glomalin and the longer it can be left to its own devices the better the outcome.
Make no mistake, this is enough to do for an entire century. Forest improvement stands ready to take advantage of new practices and some are awaiting enough interest to actually happen. One example is inoculation of seedlings by many varieties of mycorhizzia, which has reportedly led to spectacular above ground results in tree growth. Soil moisture must be understood a property of glomalin deposition and accumulation, sedimentation as its unraveling and destruction.
Glomalin is not the only issue demanding attention. Sudden Oak Death threatens several species with heavy damage, but has been found as a minor pest in many other species, including Doug fir, redwood, California bay, madrone and many others. So far there is little discussion on overall forest health. Yet it would appear nearly every species is experiencing leaf spots and other signs of low level infection. The question is how much will this slow overall forest productivity? Will this loss lead to slower recovery of glomalin deposits? That is to say, are we about to witness a decline in the forests ability to regrow itself?