Read the full transcript of retired US Forest Ranger Rex Mann’s talk titled “An American Tragedy, How a Mass Extinction Can Help Save Our Forest” at TEDxYoungstown 2018 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
A Mountain Tale
It’s December 1983 in the North Carolina mountains. The sun’s gone down, a cold wind makes you button up your coat and move closer to the campfire. My two young sons and three nephews are circled around that fire, smelling the wood smoke, listening to the fire pop. All eyes are fixed on my dad, Howard Mann. He’s a mountain of a man in his old brown hunting coat, overalls, flannel shirt, black logging boots.
He’s telling about a way of life that existed in those mountains for two hundred years, closely tied to this tree, the American chestnut. He’s talking with great passion about what the tree meant to his people. Its huge size, the wonderful wood used for everything from cradles to coffins. And the never-failing crops of chestnuts that nurtured the mountain people, their livestock, and abundant wildlife that they depended on. Then his voice changed.
And in a sad tone he told how in 1904 chestnuts began to die from a strange disease, a blight. In just forty years, all four billion American chestnuts were dead. Laid end to end, four billion trees would circle the globe one and a half times. As I stood behind that circle of kids, I saw something no one else saw, a tear sliding down his wrinkled old face. I’d never seen my dad cry before, even when suffering, agonizing pain, or grief.
The American Tragedy
Everything changed for me in that moment. I’d heard chestnut stories all my life, but it hit me. This tree wasn’t just the foundation of an amazing ecosystem stretching from Maine to Georgia.
It was the foundation of a culture, a way of life, now gone forever. Loss of the chestnut was an American tragedy, described by ecologists as the worst environmental disaster ever to strike our country.
But this disaster could help save our forests. It was a warning shot across the bow, foreshadowing the fate of many more tree species yet to come. If we do nothing. As goes the future of American Chestnut, so goes the future of all our forests. My dad’s story has inspired me to become a forester.
A Forester’s Journey
And for forty-two years, I walked in places so beautiful it left you speechless. Yellowstone with all its wonders. The mystery of the Everglades. The southern Appalachians in their autumn colors. But one thing continued to haunt me.
For years, the gray ghosts, the trunks of the long dead chestnuts still stood and gazed down at me as I worked in the woods. And I understood the profound sadness my dad felt for this tree. There’s a battle raging in our forest with many tree species lost to insects and diseases brought in through world trade. Chestnut was the first fallen soldier. There are many more.
We’ve lost American elm. We are losing eastern hemlock and ash trees by the millions. With each loss of a species, our forests become less resilient, less able to cope with future threats. Our modern urban lifestyle is separating us from the land. We say we love nature, but most of us don’t understand it.
The Hidden Crisis
You may not even know these terrible losses are occurring right now. We drive through our forests, we look down from airplanes, we see lots of green and we think all is well with the world. But understand, each plant and animal living in that forest is interconnected. Every life form plays a part in keeping that system healthy. Like dominoes falling, there is a cascading negative impact when we lose a species on many other species, including our own.
Loss of hemlock shade causes streams to warm. Trout no longer reproduce. Half the medicines in use today were first derived from plants or animals. Half the oxygen required for life comes from trees. Scientists believe we are beginning the greatest extinction event since the loss of the dinosaurs, but this one is caused by mankind.
We are not separate from nature. We have basic needs that can only be supplied by forests. We allow species to disappear at our own peril. I do have some good news. Chestnut is still beloved in Appalachia.
Hope for the Future
For thirty-five years, dedicated citizen scientists, volunteers, have implemented a breeding plan laid out by a world-famous plant breeder based on sound science. The techniques involved have been used for decades to breed disease resistance into our food crops, but they’ve never before been used on a tree. The chestnut we’re developing is basically pure American in how it looks and how it grows, but now genes that convey disease resistance are incorporated into that tree. For the first time in history, science and technology have advanced to a point where we have the tools to restore much that we’re losing. We have the wealth as a nation.
We have the means. But do we have the will? I don’t know how long I have to spread the word. When I retired in 2007, I was diagnosed with stage four non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It was in my bone marrow.
And after five months of awful chemotherapy, it went into remission. It struck me that what was happening to my body was similar to what’s happening in our forests. When a disease enters a system, it can be treated and go away or it can spread like wildfire, sparking other diseases. I could not shake the notion that I was left here for a reason. That’s why I’m up here telling you about Chestnut restoration, instead of sitting where you are.
A Call to Action
In just a few years, we’ll begin to put this new chestnut back into the woods. Restoration is not as simple as just planting trees. It’s very complex. But here’s how you could help. You can spread the seeds of this movement with your social media technology.
Things an old dinosaur forester has no clue how to use. I’m trying. I am trying. Thank God for grandkids. I can furnish information, but I need your help to spread this story.
If we do nothing, this extinction event will gather steam, more species will be lost. Our children will inherit a world far, far poorer in natural resources. But when we succeed in restoring chestnut, we will have created a model, a template for other citizens who care to stop this madness and figure out how to restore our losses. Whether your contribution is volunteering for restoration, financial, or spreading the word, you’ll look back someday and say, “I’m proud. I was a part of that.” In your lifetime, you can make a significant difference.
No one has the right to deny our children the benefits of the natural world we have enjoyed. If we have the means to stop this destruction, we have a deep obligation to do so. I believe we have the means. That’s why I’m devoting the rest of my days to this historic mission and being a part of something never before done in human history, bringing back a tree, the American chestnut, once thought lost forever. My dad would be very proud today.
