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WHAT’S UP IN NEW DEVELOPMENT
Sometimes I think about what life would
have been like for my grandpa, growing up in
the Depression. How'd he get from Whitehall
down to Gaines School? He used to tell me
about that being a dirt road, and also catch
ing the train into Athens to see a movie. In
that particular way, it must have been fairly
magical.
What was the land like then? The boll wee
vil would have recently struck. Then there's
the chestnut blight wiping out the champions
of the forest, not to mention Dutch elm dis
ease and the Dust Bowl out west. The land
must have seemed like it was dying.
Combined with the economic harshness of
the times, it must have been hard not to take
an eschatological point of view. Had God for
saken the world, with forests and crops dying
and great masses of people's lives in ruin for a
generation?
In my grandpa's era, the deer population
for the state was estimated to be only a few
thousand, mostly in the southern portion of
the state. With most of the land barren from
having recently been in cotton, I wonder if
he ever saw a deer growing up. Today, they
frequently graze on Mom's hostas out in
Winterville.
A few hundred years back, in the time of
pioneers and explorers like Bartram, the world
was quite different, with bison frequently
sighted through mighty forests well-cleared by
fire, with great canebrakes along the rivers.
It's hard to imagine a forest or riverbank not
choked by the jungle of privet, bamboo and
other invasives that make the woods along the
Oconee practically impenetrable now.
The reintroduction of white-tail deer in
the '40s could probably be considered our
first foray into restoring megafauna region
ally, but there have been other more recent
developments. Ted Turner's popularization of
bison meat can certainly be given some credit
for the handful of farms in the region that
have recently started raising the American
buffalo instead of cows. While wild buffalo
once roamed much of pre-settlement Georgia,
cattle dominate today, kept in large pastures
that don't much resemble the diverse wood
land mosaic of the past. Could the return of
bison as livestock result in a more ecologically
robust approach to the management of grazing
land?
Elk were reintroduced to Great Smoky
Mountain National Park in 2001, after a
two-centjry absence from the region, and
the population has grown from an initial 52
individuals to around 130 today. However, a
species here and there does not an ecosystem
make. In order to keep an ecosystem in bal
ance, predators have to be factored in. While
bears, bobcats and coyotes are still present in
the area, cougar and wolves are for the most
part gone from the South. Efforts to restore
the endangered red wolf are also underway,
although that effort is mostly concentrated on
barrier islands, where interaction with humans
can be minimized.
The restoration of native species hasn't
been just about megafauna, though. Those
animals have returned to a landscape much
changed from when they
departed (or rather, we
removed them). The
American chestnut, almost
wiped out by the chestnut j
blight in the early 1900s,
was once described as the
"Redwood of the East,"
historically reaching 150
feet tall and 10 feet in
diameter. The trees were
incredibly important in
the Appalachians, repre
senting roughly one out
of four trees in the forest
and producing prolific fc r - j
age for animals like elk
and deer. The American
Chestnut Foundation and
other organizations have
been working to breed
blight-resistant American
chestnut trees, crossbreeding the American
species with resistant Chinese trees. These
trees could be ready in the next few years for
a broad reintroduction beyond the research
farms where they are currently grown.
The longleaf pine is another species native
to the area which was nearly lost, in this case
not due to any introduced disease, but purely
by logging. This tree and the unique ecosys
tem that accompanies it once dominated the
coastal plain, creating a park-like savanna,
kept open by frequent fires.
Beyond their ecological value and former
dominance in the Southern landscape, both
of these trees were once hugely important
economically, and the success of their respec
tive restorations could hinge on the ability to
craft a forestry model that incorporates both
ecologically and financially sustainable man
agement strategies.
With the exception of top predators,
removed for their danger to humans and live
stock, and disease in the case of the chestnut,
it was often the most economically useful
aspects of these iconic plants and animals
that in the end doomed them. These key spe
cies, with their tremendous presence, convert
the products of their ecosystems into forms
that are easily accessible to us. Consider the
grazing bison, taking the grasses we find ined
ible and converting them into easily harvested
meat, or the longleaf pine, taking water,
soil and air and creating an incredibly useful
building material. They also provide ecosystem
services like cleaner water and air that are
hard to quantify but extremely important.
If we can tie these economic and eco
logical values together into one system, the
woods our children and grandchildren inhabit
will be every bit as magnificent as those found
by explorers like Bartram.
Kevan Williams athensrismg@tlagpole.com
Elk have returned to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park How might
restoration and reintroduction ot other iconic native species reshape the local
landscape 7
ecGuntrr Table
' I hr Hr*t I mm I hr I imvounfnj
Happy hour
Monday-Friday 4-7pm
Wednesdays Live Music 6pm
9/21 nnpoLcon solo
9/28 Jim PCRKIM
< tpen 4pm Mon-Fri and l lam Sat k Sun
£ 8\ the loop V\t to Tall Bm Bncragr lo.
If 2095 S. Mi 11 edge Ave.
706-548-3359
L U7\CH
‘Buffet
MON - FRI 11 :30am-2:30pm $7 95
SAT fit SUN 12pm-3pm $8 95
Wgg Dinner Mon-Sun Spm-lOpm
||Pf Op«n 7 Day* * Ol B Cad Broad St.
j|§ 706 SS9 OOOO * ww indiaalh^ns coi
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usic^series
at The State Botanical Garden of Georgia, Athens
00^
■\2
Flower Garden Stage
September 27
Arvin Scott Quartet
Call 706-542-1244 or visit Garden Gift Shop.
More info at www.uga.edu/hotgarden.
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A i i Cf u p t Pi n j/l u i -n Tnti h i t
The Mystique of the Automobile
A Festival of Cars, Art and Fashion
Saturday, September 24th, 2011, 12-5 pm
Lyndon House Arts Center
293 Hoyt Street, Athens, Georgia
Vintage Cars, Art & "Music of the Decades"
2 pm Narrated Car & Fashion Show
12-2 pm Children's Art Activity
Ware L yndon Historic House Tours
Memorabilia and Vintage Motorcycles Inside
y
Cars By Invitation-Only Public Most Welcome
• \
www. mystiqueoftheautomobile. org
In osstn+eshtp with The Boomers Befleering. Sharing Learning
w. boomerswathtm. urg
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SEPTEMBER 21, 2011 • FLAGPOLE.COM 7
