Chapter 18

Hope for Nature

These before-and-after pictures show the restoration of prairie grasses and flora on the grounds of the US government atomic accelerator facility Fermilab in Illinois. The first picture was taken in 1976. The second one shows what the prairie looks like now. At one time this was the largest reconstructed prairie habitat in the world. (CREDIT: FERMILAB)

A couple of years ago I went back to Cambridge to give a talk at my old university. The weather was perfect and I decided to go for a walk in the country. So a friend and I drove to one of my old haunts. But it was only because of a little church I remembered that I could find the place. Where there once had been trees and bluebells and a small clear stream, there was now churned-up earth, a bulldozer, and some muddy pools of filthy water. And there was a notice board—“SOLD”—and the name of some developer. I don’t think I shall ever forget the shock of seeing the destruction of what had once been so beautiful. I felt pain, anger, and, perhaps most, a deep, pervading sadness.

The truth is that when corporate greed and public demand for a better and better lifestyle are pitted against the health of the environment—and the health of people, for that matter—it is the bottom line that wins. Have we totally lost the wisdom of the indigenous people who made decisions based on how they would affect their people in years to come? How many more supermarkets or luxury apartments do we need?

It is not only avarice—there is a shocking ignorance too. Some people simply do not understand, or do not want to understand, the consequences of environmentally destructive actions. Others understand only too well, but are overwhelmed by feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.

The other experience I cannot forget is when I flew in a small plane over the area around Gombe, in the early 1990s, and saw what had in 1960 been pristine forest now reduced to bare, eroded hills. Here was the result of poverty. Too many people living on land that was not large enough to support them, too poor to buy food from elsewhere, cutting down the last trees in their desperate need to feed their families.

And so, relentlessly, the planet is being desecrated in the name of “progress,” on the one hand, and as a result of poverty, ignorance, and apathy, born of hopelessness and despair, on the other.

So long as never-ending economic growth remains the goal of our governments and our major financial institutions, and so long as the corporate bottom line continues to put immediate profit above the future of our children, and so long as so many of the world’s inhabitants continue to live in unalleviated poverty, the crimes against the natural world will continue.

We who care, we who understand, must use every means at our disposal to fight back. We shall lose some of the battles—but we must not give up. And we have a powerful ally, for nature, ever resilient and resourceful, will, given time, clothe a devastated landscape with green growing things so that it becomes a place where animals can once again thrive. Of course it can take a very long time indeed for such an area to become a well-functioning ecosystem with diverse flora and fauna. But when the right people—those who truly understand the dynamics of a healthy ecosystem, who have learned by watching, and who are prepared to accept that nature may know best—work in harmony with natural systems, the healing process can be speeded up.

For instance, I know about the resurrection of the countryside around Sudbury in Canada, which was so devastated by reckless logging followed by relentless nickel and copper smelting that the whole region became a vast panorama of dead tree stumps and blackened rock faces. However, when I visited Sudbury in 2002, it was hard to believe it had ever been damaged. In the late 1970s, community members began planting trees, shrubs, herbs, and grasses in order to heal the land. They had to perform many tests and listen carefully to nature so that they could figure out ways to help plants grow in soil that was compromised by so much metal toxicity. Eventually the mining companies started to join the restoration effort, hoping to improve their impact on the environment as well as their reputation. Now Sudbury is a lush, thriving, highly vegetative region, and the wildlife is thriving in healthy fields, forests, and waterways.

I often think of Sudbury as an example of a place that seemed hopelessly ruined and has returned to full vibrancy. We have to remember that it’s possible. We have to keep telling ourselves these stories and sharing them with others, and we have to keep hope alive—and go on fighting. For the planet. For our children and theirs. The wonderful thing is that there are so many great examples of habitat restoration that it was hard to decide which ones to include.

Listening to Mother Nature

But here is one that I really want to share. I learned about it from one of my “Forest Warriors,” John Seed (see chapter 17). We were sitting under a tree on that Australian beach when he told me about an amazing initiative that is restoring a landscape, honoring the culture of the people, and demonstrating John’s huge vision and the determination, energy, and skill that make it happen. This project is known as “Restoring Shiva’s Robes.”

The Hindus believe that one of their supreme gods, Shiva, was so dazzling in his original form of pure light that the other gods pleaded with him to tone it down a bit. And so Shiva, in his compassion, agreed to do so, and appeared as the sacred mountain Arunachala. This has been his only form ever since. At the foot of this mountain is a huge temple honoring him. The temple covers acres, and is one of the largest in India.

This mountain is, of course, considered a very holy place, and millions of pilgrims flock there each year. In 1988 the Rainforest Information Centre in Australia, where John Seed works, received an appeal from an Australian nun who had lived at the base of the mountain for twenty years.

“She seemed desperate and despairing,” John told me. She explained how, when the temple was originally founded, Shiva was clothed in a lush forest, and even tigers could be met walking along its flanks. But gradually the trees were felled until only thorn scrub and goats remained of “Shiva’s robes.” She ended with this final request: would John and his group help to reforest this so-special mountain?

John wrote to her saying that they were only interested in protecting forest—but somehow he could not post that letter. Instead, he listened to his heart, sent her some money, and told her how to start an NGO. And as time went by, he couldn’t help collecting and sending more money. He also started visiting as often as he could, and encouraged other people to go there and help as well.

The act of reforestation turned out to be tremendously difficult work. The only suitable time for planting out seedlings was after the monsoon. But conditions were hard, as great rivers of mud poured down the deforested mountain slopes.

To make the most of the planting season, some five hundred local villagers, both men and women, were employed each year. It was time-consuming work, since almost every seedling had to be surrounded by its own rock wall, and the little trees had to be protected during the summer months, when blistering heat blew in from the deserts.

Meanwhile, millions of pilgrims continued to walk, clockwise, around the mountain to get spiritual enlightenment. And this gave John Seed an idea. On his visits to Arunachala he started telling some of these pilgrims that although Shiva could have appeared as an “eroding, muddy, barren piece of rock, he had chosen one covered with a mighty forest,” and if the people took good care of the trees, perhaps they would get enlightened faster. For surely it would be a spiritual task to help in the reweaving of Shiva’s robes.

It worked. Word spread, and more and more people began volunteering their time to help with the reforestation effort. But suddenly John was seized with doubt. Was he not being arrogant to think that he could speak like this, as though he had some kind of authority to speak for Shiva? He climbed the mountain to ask forgiveness and seek the truth in the spiritual energy of the place. As he sat there, a troop of monkeys came to spend time close by—the most powerful wildlife experience of his life. He felt it was a sign that he was doing the right thing.

The next breakthrough occurred when they got permission to establish a tree nursery on the temple grounds. Once the temple got involved in reforesting Shiva’s robes, things really took off. Soon other village temples began to help in the reforesting, and before long they were growing up to three million infant trees each year for planting up on the mountain and the surrounding area, along the roads and riverbanks and around the lakes.

Some of the trees that robe the sacred mountain are now over twenty years old, and the trail up the mountain is shaded by thick foliage that is home to monkeys and other small animals—though the original tigers have not returned. Today the program is self-sustaining, with tree planting and tending carried out by local NGOs. There are environmental education programs, and villagers are helping with sustainable farming and sustainable livelihood options. And most significantly, John told me, the local people are beginning to understand and honor the connection between the new ecological awareness and the ancient spiritual traditions—a shift in consciousness that he hopes will continue to grow and expand.

“Mop Crops”

One of the things I have been fascinated by as I gathered stories for this book is the way people have turned to the plants for help. Indeed, some species have been conscripted into armies—armies to help us as we try to right the wrongs we have inflicted on Mother Nature. These are powerful armies, able to extract impurities from the soil and the water. They are known as “mop crops.”

Using plants to clean soil and water is not a new idea—it was first proposed as a way to treat wastewater three hundred years ago. And by the end of the nineteenth century two species, pennycress and a small violet, were being used for this purpose.

“Phytoremediation” is the fancy term that describes the use of various plants in cleaning up different kinds of soil and water pollution. Most plants in heavily contaminated areas will get sick and die, but some are resistant, and even fewer actually thrive. These plants “mop up” and accumulate high levels of toxin in their bodies, thus bringing contaminants up from the ground. The plant, its job done, can then be cut down and the toxins safely destroyed. Gradually, after successive plantings, the soil is cleansed.

A major threat to human health and the health of ecosystems is the high level of poisons and heavy metals that have contaminated soils and waterways. Through careful research, a growing number of mop crops have been identified to help in the job of purifying this contaminated land and water. In 1999, for example, it was found that various species of fern were able to remove arsenic (which is a metalloid) from the soil. And since then at least twenty other indigenous American plants have been identified that, between them, can remove lead, copper, nickel, and other metals. Poplar and willow trees are being used to clean up a heavily contaminated area around an oil refinery.

Some plants can even help to clean up radioactive contamination. The increasing desire for nuclear energy poses very real risks to environmental health. That such concerns are justified was amply evident after the Chernobyl explosion and was brought home again, forcibly, by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. In addition to these headline-grabbing incidents there are countless leakages (usually downplayed by the industry) from nuclear facilities around the world. I know because there is one not too far away from where I live in England.

Hemp, that innocent and actually benevolent plant, was used in the cleanup effort after the Chernobyl disaster. Hydroponically grown sunflowers were also used, and they were especially effective in cleaning up the contaminated water. The success at Chernobyl inspired researchers in Japan to plant sunflowers near the Fukushima nuclear disaster, hoping they would help absorb the radiation.

A couple of years ago I saw a powerful demonstration of the purifying power of plants when I visited an ongoing effort in Taiwan to clean the waters of the Lujiaoxi Wetland, heavily polluted with domestic waste, before it flows into the Dahan River. The stream has been diverted: and now some twelve hundred tons of filthy, stinking water per day are exposed to the cleansing, healing influence of a variety of carefully selected plants before joining the river again.

First I was shown an area where pollution-tolerant native vegetation has been planted: the area looked dull and lusterless, the water that flowed through it dark and lifeless. After this first cleansing, the stream, less murky but still without visible life, passed through another type of vegetation.

Next I walked through a region of tall grasses and other plants, some in flower, where already the water was much cleaner, and I saw insects, some crabs, and a few birds.

Finally we came to the hundred-acre, human-made wetlands, where many species of birds were feeding. There were even more insects and crabs. Dragonflies darted above us, and butterflies fluttered. From there the cleansed water, shining and alive, flows into the Dahan River.

Other Ways of Cleaning Water

All those plants press-ganged into helping us to clear up our filth. We owe them a great debt of thanks. Fortunately, “mop crops” are not the only way to clean water polluted by industrial, household, and agricultural runoff and by acid rain. Most other techniques involve pumping out the water, cleaning and returning it, and/or removing accumulated sediments. And while this is most often for our own good, here’s a story about the huge efforts made on behalf of endangered water plants.

Imagine small, shallow lakes with crystal-clear water. It is spring, and they are covered by a blue haze that dances in the breeze. We are in the Bergvennen area in the Netherlands, and the lakes are habitat for a number of unique plants, one of which is the water lobelia (Lobelia dortmanna). It spends its life completely under the water until the spring, when its beautiful pale-blue flowers rise up above the surface on slender stems.

My botanist friend Rogier van Vugt had fallen in love with this little plant after reading about it as a child, and he was devastated to learn, years later, that agricultural fertilizer from the surrounding farmlands had increasingly contaminated the lakes. Sediments had built up, algae had proliferated, and the water had become murky. The lobelia’s rosettes of underwater leaves were not receiving enough sunlight for efficient photosynthesis, and it seemed doomed for extinction.

But then, thanks to the efforts of conservationists, the local authorities agreed to remove the sediment and then pump in well water to reduce acidity. The result was spectacular.

Rogier told me that he drove across the country to see the renewed lakes for himself. What he found there blew his mind. The number of lobelias had exploded. “The blue of literally thousands, maybe millions of water lobelia flowers hung like a mist over the crystal-clear water of the shallow lakes,” he said.

From that moment, Rogier told me, he realized that while human action can destroy, it can also restore “and create the most breathtaking nature.” And that knowledge led to his lifelong dedication to protecting plants. Meanwhile, the water lobelia and a number of other species have been taken off the list of endangered species in that area.

Some of the Most Endangered Plants in the World—North America’s Grasslands

The grasslands with which I am most familiar are those of East Africa, particularly the Serengeti Plain of Tanzania, but I have also come to know some of the places in the United States where the North American prairies used to stretch. Every year I spend a few days in Nebraska visiting wildlife photographer Tom Mangelsen in the cabin on the Platte River built by his father. Here I can recharge my batteries during the migration of the sandhill cranes. They arrive every spring, along with many other kinds of waterbirds, to fatten up on the grain left over from the harvest. In the evening they fly in from the fields to roost along the river, hundreds of thousands of them filling the sky.

One day Tom and I were driving along the long, straight roads cut between huge cornfields, and we began talking about the unsustainable industrial agriculture that had so changed the area since he was a boy. Today almost every field has its sprawling and somehow sinister center pivot that relentlessly pumps water for irrigation from the great Ogallala Aquifer deep down below. And the aquifer is already depleted and polluted from the runoff from the chemicals sprayed on the corn. Our mood grew somber.

Then Tom said, “Let’s go to our special place,” and he turned off onto a narrow grass road where almost nobody ever goes. We rolled down our windows as the car moved slowly along the bumpy surface, and in a few moments we had entered another world—a little oasis of original prairie, with the spring flowers and grasses, butterflies, and a small, startled quail. The air smelled different, and when Tom cut the engine, there was a stillness. Tom didn’t know who owned this precious stretch of a time gone by, but we breathed a prayer that it will stay this way forever.

It was almost painful to realize how beauty of this sort once stretched for thousands of miles across North America. And I found myself envying a young woman named Eliza Steele, about whom I had just been reading. In 1840 she traveled to Illinois and saw, for the first time, the tall grass prairies as they once were. Entranced, she wrote, “A world of grass and flowers stretched around me, rising and falling in gentle undulations, as if an enchanter had struck the ocean swell, and it was at rest for ever.”

In Eliza Steele’s day, the state of Illinois (approximately fifty-six thousand square miles) was almost completely covered by grasslands. And the prairies, like the pristine one I visited with Tom, covered nearly one third of North America, stretching from Canada to Mexico, from the Rockies to Indiana. When the white man arrived in North America, things began to change as more and more prairieland was converted to agriculture. Today less than 1 percent of the original grasslands remains, and this habitat, like the grasslands of Australia, is one of the most endangered in the world.

The relentless plowing of the Central Plains removed the prairie grasses that had adapted to the environment by evolving very long root systems, which served to hold the soil in place. This led to the disastrous Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Some 150,000 square miles were affected and 2.5 million people were forced to abandon their homes. (CREDIT: US DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE)

Native prairie grasses have adapted to the environment of the windswept plains by developing very long roots that stabilize the soil and trap moisture even during dry times. Once this grass has gone, the topsoil is vulnerable to erosion from wind and rain and is eventually blown away. As I mentioned earlier when talking about how important roots are because they keep soil in place, the early settlers’ deep plowing of mile after mile of native prairie led to the horror of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Vast black clouds of dust were swept across the country—much of it actually landing in the Atlantic. It affected some 150,000 square miles of the Central Plains, and caused 2.5 million people to leave their homes.

The first project dealing with prairie restoration, in 1935 (when I was one year old), was initiated by Aldo Leopold at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in Madison, Wisconsin. Eighty acres were successfully planted with native prairie plants, but at that time conservationists were mainly interested in protecting existing wilderness rather than restoring what was damaged.

It would be nearly thirty years before a horticulturist from Nebraska, Ray Schulenberg, started work to restore one acre of native prairie on a farm in Illinois. From the seeds collected and planted, five hundred species grew. The success of this project triggered other initiatives, the first of them being at a highly unlikely spot—Fermilab in Illinois, which happens to be on the US government atomic accelerator lab ground. With the help of volunteers from the lab, the community, and the local university, one thousand acres of prairie was restored. The incredible difference in the landscape before and after restoration is illustrated on the opening page of this chapter.

Individual landowners are getting into the act too, voluntarily working to restore the original prairie to their properties. They understand that diversity is important and that it is necessary to introduce as many as possible of the original endemic species. There is also a growing realization that controlled fires are important for the health of the prairie ecosystem. These efforts on a series of ranches are helping to create corridors for butterflies, birds, and other wildlife.

I learned about this when I went with my good friend Alan Bartels to stay at the ranch of Bruce and Sue Ann Switzer and their family. They have joined forces with two neighbors and are successfully combating the invasive eastern red cedar trees on their combined holdings of more than fifty thousand acres. They have restored cultivated rye fields (which needed irrigation) back to native grassland, so that the original prairie plant and wildlife is returning. I was particularly interested to learn about the restoration of the blowout penstemon—a few years ago it was almost extinct. But thanks to the work of local scientists, and with the help of Alan and a group of local children who have been planting seedlings on the Nebraska Sandhills, including the Switzer family’s property, this beautiful and fragrant flowering plant is now making a comeback.

I recently spent a day with the Switzer family—three generations working together to restore the local Nebraskan prairie lands. Their ranch also has an ecotourism business where they can show visitors the unique endangered flora and fauna of the American prairies. (Back row, left to right: Adam Switzer [Bruce and Sue Ann’s son], Bruce Switzer, me, Sue Ann Switzer. Front row, left to right: Ella Switzer, Emmett Sortum, Sarah Sortum, Henry Sortum.) (CREDIT: ALAN J. BARTELS)

Another exciting development is prairie ecotourism. Increasing numbers of the visitors who come to explore the unique flora and fauna of the area are hosted by the Switzers at their ranch. And because of this they are able to stay and work there as a family. The grown-up children of Bruce and Sue Ann have moved back. One of them, Sarah, told me of the plans they are making, with other ranchers, for further restoration of the land. Sarah’s five-year-old son, Emmett, solemn under his giant cowboy hat, idolizes Grandpa Bruce. He follows him everywhere, learning more each day about the prairie habitat and about good stewardship. The family hopes he will stay even after he is finished with school and help them look after this beautiful land. It is people like this who are truly my “seeds of hope.”

Wildlife Corridors

One important way to fight and even reverse the increasing fragmentation of wilderness areas is by creating wildlife corridors. Usually, these are only possible when NGOs, private landowners, and government agencies join forces to create contiguous plots of land that link major conservation areas.

One of the goals of JGI’s TACARE program in Tanzania is to create a leafy corridor that will link the hundred or so surviving members of the Gombe chimpanzee population with other remnant groups. For they cannot survive indefinitely without the benefit of new genes from outside. We have no way of knowing whether they will use it, and there are those who do not believe corridors of this sort can be effective, but there is a lot of evidence showing that, at least in some cases—and particularly for plants—corridors can be crucial.

Just this spring (2012) I was driving from Turin to Florence in Italy, and I noticed that the edges of the road were brilliant with red poppies. Occasionally a whole field blazed with glorious color, and these reminders of the fields of my youth were linked by the populations along the roadsides. It made me think of Lady Bird Johnson’s legacy in Texas, where she had wildflower seeds scattered along the medians and strips of land along many of the major roads.

Such wildlife corridors are now policy in the United Kingdom, where there are efforts to conserve not only roadside “verges,” as we British call them, but also hedgerows that are either ancient or species-rich, disused and current railway lines, and cycle trails. Even the old stone walls of northern England are protected, as the stones were carefully laid without cement, and in the crevices all sorts of plants and animals thrive.

Banks of rivers and canals can also serve as corridors linking protected areas. Conservation groups are working with city councils as to time of year and method of managing the vegetation along these corridors. It is considered of special importance for the dispersal of plants because of climate change, since, just like animals, they may need to move to new, more suitable habitats, and corridors will play a vital role in their ability to survive. An intensive study in North Carolina showed that wildlife refuges connected by corridors had 20 percent more plant species than those that have the same kind of habitats but are isolated.

Children and the Future

I have often heard the saying “We have not inherited this planet from our parents—we have borrowed it from our children.” Unfortunately, this is no longer true. We have not borrowed it but stolen it. We are still stealing their future. And more and more young people know this—no wonder I meet so many, on every continent, who are apathetic, depressed, or bitter and angry. They tell me they feel that way because we older generations have compromised their future and there is nothing they can do about it.

I have grandchildren, and when I think how we have harmed the planet since I was their age, I feel a kind of desperation. Indeed we have compromised the future for our children. But I do not believe it is too late to turn things around, and it was for this reason that I initiated our Roots & Shoots movement. Almost everywhere I go during my three hundred days of travel each year, I hear about a project where our children are lending willing hands to the task of putting right the places that we have despoiled. They are helping to restore wetlands, to clean creeks and streams, to remove alien vegetation, and to encourage native plants to grow again in habitats from which they had been driven.

Sometimes, when there is a free space in my schedule, I ask if there is some R&S group I can visit. I know that this often serves to motivate the young people, and to remotivate those who may have become less involved, so I feel it is important, even if I am feeling too tired for such an effort. But there is a good reward, because the enthusiasm of the young people so often helps to restore me.

One day I visited a group of youth who helped to restore a unique ecosystem in a Chicago suburb that had been seriously harmed by storm/wastewater pouring from a newly constructed shopping mall. This had created an artificial canyon and enabled a thick growth of invasive buckthorn to colonize the area. Finally the contractors blocked the illegal flow and burned off much of the brush. The Roots & Shoots group then cleared away more of the buckthorn as well as a great deal of charred material, and planted woodland grass seeds that they had collected, in readiness, the previous fall. Now the wildlife has benefited, and the general public is becoming increasingly aware of the potential of this area and more willing to contribute toward protecting it.

One of the things I love about R&S is that the children learn, through hands-on action, that they really and truly can make a difference. Some accomplishments are outstanding, and I can use those stories to inspire others. Such was the case with the R&S group of ten- and eleven-year-olds in Illinois that decided to protest a plan to build a water-bottling factory upstream from their school. They conducted and presented such a good study that the EPA realized that they should do a proper environmental impact study! In the end, the proposed factory was vetoed.

R&S began in Tanzania, where many groups now have tree nurseries on their school grounds. In some instances I have seen, over the years, depressing areas of trampled earth gradually transformed into “Roots & Shoots Forests.” One school is growing five thousand seedlings of native trees in a school nursery for tree-planting programs in seven villages. Two schools are adjacent to national parks, and the children are trying to protect their young trees from various animals: they discourage elephants by smearing crushed red pepper and elephant dung on the trunks and branches of young trees.

Several groups are learning about the importance of protecting mangrove forests. One group is working on Pemba Island planting nonindigenous pines as pioneer species on an abandoned coral quarry. And I just visited an exciting project on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, where Roots & Shoots groups are working to restore the original trees and other vegetation on land devastated by the operations of Twiga Cement—an effort initiated and encouraged by the company itself. There are hundreds more Roots & Shoots restoration and tree-planting programs around the world.

The R&S Green Thumb program in Taiwan encourages schools to replace ornamentals on their school grounds with indigenous flora to try to create a linked network of natural habitat for butterflies. And in a recent effort, R&S groups waited at each station along the route of the high-speed rail that links the north and south of Taiwan and handed seeds of indigenous plants to the passengers, asking them to plant them wherever they could.

There are still some people who wonder why I devote so much time and energy to working with young people. It is pretty obvious, really. Of course I care desperately about conservation of chimpanzees and their forest habitat. Indeed, I care about all wildlife and wild places. But it would be of little use to spend my life working to protect those animals and those places if we were not, at the same time, raising new generations to care for what we have saved.

And there is another reason. Young people can influence other family members. I know so many parents, and grandparents also, who tell me that they do things differently now because of their children. Also, there is a vital energy in our youth that comes alive once they understand the problems and are empowered to take action. They see the difference they can make, and it feeds their determination and their energy. And it feeds mine, too.