A Modern Coal Miner"s Canary
In days gone by not so long ago, the death of a coal miner's canary was a warning to the miner that gases accumulating in the mine had reached unsafe levels.
The message was clear, "Get yourself to safety!" The little yellow birds gave a clear and unmistakable reading of the environmental climate of the underground shafts in which so many husbands, sons, and fathers spent their days.
Here above ground on planet Earth, the state of health of our trees is sending us a similar message, a message to which we must respond.
The latest great, almost ageless, family of trees to be suffering rapid decline are the red oak family.
In a short twenty years, a period of time that is but a blink of an eye in the history of these particular trees; something has gone terribly wrong, and these grand beings are sliding quickly into the evening light of what has been an almost timeless presence.
There have been many complete losses and severe declines among our arboreal friends in a short century of biological time.
In many of our trees' tribulations and losses, the hand of man was clearly evident as introducing the causal factors for which these trees had no natural defense.
What we witnessed were great unintentional losses that came from plucking at the threads of nature's fabric.
In the case of the gypsy moth, the goal of producing cheap silk by importing these insects was never realized, but millions of acres of eastern hardwoods and evergreens took the fall.
The decimation of the grand American elm trees occurred as a cousin of the native American bark beetle, the European bark beetle, hitched a ride to our shores on timber products from Europe.
These beetles proved to be pernicious vectors of the fungal agent that is the cause of Dutch elm disease.
So too were problems imported with the introduction of the Asian long-horned beetle and the emerald ash borer that are currently wreaking havoc on the trees of our streets, parks, and forests.
In these instances of ruinous losses we could point to what went wrong, and we could all agree to learn something from it.
We can point to specific actions that precipitated the onset of these diseases.
But among the many losses and rapid declines of great trees, the spectral of bacterial leaf scorch in the oaks may elicit the loudest cry of concern to date.
It is said that the bacterium that causes this devastating illness has always been present in the environment, but now quite suddenly it is of contagious proportions.
Although we are currently able to inject antibiotics into the vascular systems of trees afflicted by this ailment, much in the same way that antibiotics are administered to people to combat infectious agents, this appears to be but a stop-gap measure.
There seems to be no cure in sight.
We have the technology, but we have very little hope.
In spite of our awareness of the many catastrophic tree blights that have occurred in recent history, a close look at the imminent loss of the red oak family is still startling.
The pin oak, one of the most popular of the red oak family of trees, is suffering and dying in frightening fashion.
In the Midwest and western United States, the rapid and mysterious decline of the quaking aspens may be a second loud cry of concern.
The reason this matters is that another long established resident of the Earth is leaving us, and the cause is as mysterious as the ailment.
We can't accuse the arboreal beings of not being able to manage their lives.
Over centuries they have shown us that they do this quite well.
They are the largest and longest lived of all life forms.
So what is going on here? We can surmise that conditions surrounding these trees have become so unfavorable that they can no longer withstand a pathogen that has forever been in their environment.
Simply put, they are no longer capable of adapting to the world we are handing them.
It may be too late for our grand oak and aspen trees.
If we can't heed the warning being echoed by these very troubling losses of some of nature's most wondrous life forms, it may also be too late for us.
Are we already following them and just not seeing the consuming black hole that we are allowing into our living world? If we are to benefit even a little bit, other than through abundant firewood, it might be by agreeing that difficult choices regarding how we live with our world need to be made.
True and courageous leaders, political or otherwise, must stand up and acknowledge the obvious.
The canary has fallen ill, and we must initiate the necessary directives that will place restraints on our bottom-line imperatives.
We need to be pushed, kicking and screaming if necessary, back to the top line of life where living is a testimony to our caring; and the Earth is treated as the sacred vessel that it is.
The message was clear, "Get yourself to safety!" The little yellow birds gave a clear and unmistakable reading of the environmental climate of the underground shafts in which so many husbands, sons, and fathers spent their days.
Here above ground on planet Earth, the state of health of our trees is sending us a similar message, a message to which we must respond.
The latest great, almost ageless, family of trees to be suffering rapid decline are the red oak family.
In a short twenty years, a period of time that is but a blink of an eye in the history of these particular trees; something has gone terribly wrong, and these grand beings are sliding quickly into the evening light of what has been an almost timeless presence.
There have been many complete losses and severe declines among our arboreal friends in a short century of biological time.
In many of our trees' tribulations and losses, the hand of man was clearly evident as introducing the causal factors for which these trees had no natural defense.
What we witnessed were great unintentional losses that came from plucking at the threads of nature's fabric.
In the case of the gypsy moth, the goal of producing cheap silk by importing these insects was never realized, but millions of acres of eastern hardwoods and evergreens took the fall.
The decimation of the grand American elm trees occurred as a cousin of the native American bark beetle, the European bark beetle, hitched a ride to our shores on timber products from Europe.
These beetles proved to be pernicious vectors of the fungal agent that is the cause of Dutch elm disease.
So too were problems imported with the introduction of the Asian long-horned beetle and the emerald ash borer that are currently wreaking havoc on the trees of our streets, parks, and forests.
In these instances of ruinous losses we could point to what went wrong, and we could all agree to learn something from it.
We can point to specific actions that precipitated the onset of these diseases.
But among the many losses and rapid declines of great trees, the spectral of bacterial leaf scorch in the oaks may elicit the loudest cry of concern to date.
It is said that the bacterium that causes this devastating illness has always been present in the environment, but now quite suddenly it is of contagious proportions.
Although we are currently able to inject antibiotics into the vascular systems of trees afflicted by this ailment, much in the same way that antibiotics are administered to people to combat infectious agents, this appears to be but a stop-gap measure.
There seems to be no cure in sight.
We have the technology, but we have very little hope.
In spite of our awareness of the many catastrophic tree blights that have occurred in recent history, a close look at the imminent loss of the red oak family is still startling.
The pin oak, one of the most popular of the red oak family of trees, is suffering and dying in frightening fashion.
In the Midwest and western United States, the rapid and mysterious decline of the quaking aspens may be a second loud cry of concern.
The reason this matters is that another long established resident of the Earth is leaving us, and the cause is as mysterious as the ailment.
We can't accuse the arboreal beings of not being able to manage their lives.
Over centuries they have shown us that they do this quite well.
They are the largest and longest lived of all life forms.
So what is going on here? We can surmise that conditions surrounding these trees have become so unfavorable that they can no longer withstand a pathogen that has forever been in their environment.
Simply put, they are no longer capable of adapting to the world we are handing them.
It may be too late for our grand oak and aspen trees.
If we can't heed the warning being echoed by these very troubling losses of some of nature's most wondrous life forms, it may also be too late for us.
Are we already following them and just not seeing the consuming black hole that we are allowing into our living world? If we are to benefit even a little bit, other than through abundant firewood, it might be by agreeing that difficult choices regarding how we live with our world need to be made.
True and courageous leaders, political or otherwise, must stand up and acknowledge the obvious.
The canary has fallen ill, and we must initiate the necessary directives that will place restraints on our bottom-line imperatives.
We need to be pushed, kicking and screaming if necessary, back to the top line of life where living is a testimony to our caring; and the Earth is treated as the sacred vessel that it is.
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