Editor’s note: This commentary is by Jon Binhammer, who is director of land protection for The Nature Conservancy in Vermont.
[Y]es, I admit, I am a flatlander. Worse yet, I’m a flatlander from the Midwest. With all the interest in the Iowa caucuses lately, it got me thinking about where I went to college in Iowa, and why I’m here in the great state of Vermont. Of all the places I have lived, Vermonters and Iowans are the kindest, most generous people I know, so there’s little difference there. But what is different is that Iowa has largely lost its native prairie vegetation, while Vermont is covered in native forest.
Now, I’m not naïve, I know that the sheep craze of the 19th century denuded this landscape, and our forests are poorer for it, due to erosion and loss of forest soil organisms, but especially in the spring when I can only find abundant woodland wildflowers in ungrazed or lightly grazed areas. Most of our forests lack the full complement of herbs on the forest floor. But at least we have native trees that blanket the hillsides, providing significant wildlife habitat, carbon storage, water quality benefits, and shade for brook trout in the streams. Iowa’s forests are small, thin wedges on the steeper land along streams; and the remaining landscape — corn and soybeans.
But we still have a native forest, an ecosystem that supports us and nature, that filters our water, provides us with fuel, fiber, sap and other forest products, and as long as we are smart about managing this incredible resource, it will continue to do so.
So we should celebrate our good fortune, and protect our forests for the future. We recently heard that for the first time in over a century, our forests are shrinking rather than growing in area. It’s tempting to think that our forests are endless – a visit to a local fire tower affords a view of what some would call wilderness, but a closer look would find increasingly fragmented forest islands disconnected from each other by encroaching development. It would take some time, but the forests we hold dear could be eroded by poorly planned development in their interiors, compromising wildlife habitat for those numerous species with which we share this great place.
Our forests are hosts to some great wildlife success stories – lynx and American marten are back, peregrine falcons and osprey are delisted, bald eagles are nesting here again, loons are on almost every lake in the state. There are still challenges. Invasive shrubs are pervasive in some areas of the state, plentiful deer are overbrowsing regeneration in some corners, invasive pests threaten some trees, sprawl is punching holes in intact forest blocks. But we still have a native forest, an ecosystem that supports us and nature, that filters our water, provides us with fuel, fiber, sap and other forest products, and as long as we are smart about managing this incredible resource, it will continue to do so.
So in 2016 let’s not take our forests for granted. Let’s not be like Iowa, and instead cherish our natural heritage of native vegetation for the future.
