Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Is the Tree of Life Endangered?

The concept of a cosmic tree that connects everything is a powerful symbol in many of the world's religions and mythologies. But could this Tree of Life become a victim of deforestation?

From the oldest tree to the most isolated, from the South American village that "reinvented the world" by planting pine and palm to the Detroit woodshop that uses the wood of an invasive species, from the loss of England's forests to the symbolism of a big oak in the Basque, trees have been the focus on 13.7 Billion Years for the month of November.

Considering that two-thirds of the Earth's terrestrial plant and animal species call forests their home, that millions of people rely on healthy forests to survive and that forests are a critical source of carbon storage, it is hard to overestimate the importance of trees to the overall health of the planet.

The ancients knew it. For the world's earliest civilizations, trees were central to the cycle of life. Isis and Osiris, the first couple in Egyptian mythology, emerged from the acacia tree of Iusaaset, the grandmother of all the deities. Egyptians considered this acacia to be the "tree of life," calling it the "tree in which life and death are enclosed."

Looking to the future, trees are going to be even more crucial as the human population approaches 8.3 billion by 2030. Most of these people will be in cities -- places where trees are not normally the focus of attention. And this could be a problem -- not to mention the ongoing deforestation of the world's forests to supply mankind with food and products.

Currently, the world is undergoing what the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) calls "the largest wave of urban growth in history." The agency notes that in 2008, for the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population is living in towns and cities. This number will reach almost 5 billion by the year 2030, with the greatest concentration of urban growth in Africa and Asia.

And, according to CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, we should "expect it to get worse."

During a November 20 CNN segment about urbanization and health, Gupta noted that the near-constant sensory stimulation that bombards most urban dwellers can cause spikes in cortisol, also known as the "stress hormone."

As a result, it can be difficult for the brain to hold things in memory. High concentrations of cortisol can "reduce your self-control, dull your thinking...it may even speed up cognitive decline, just from living in a city," says Gupta. "Think of it as your brain more rapidly aging." And there you have it: Living in cities is hazardous to your health. In a word: unnatural.

In this sense, "natural" means green. Gupta noted that "recent studies have shown just glimpses of green areas will make huge differences to your overall cognitive function. It makes you less distracted, less stressed and more relaxed." So the key is to "find green spaces in your city and make sure to use them as much as possible." Urban dwellers, it seems, can help keep their brain function healthy just by looking at a tree.

But in the future, how many trees will there be to look at? "Eight thousand years ago, large tracts of ancient forest covered almost half the Earth's land area," according to Greenpeace. "Today, only one-fifth of the original forests remain...The rest have been destroyed, degraded or fragmented by relentless human activity." Indeed, forests have been in steady decline for a long time. Even the collapse of the ancient native American Anasazi tribe was due in part to deforestation.

And while the rate of global deforestation has been showing signs of decreasing, the 2010 United Nations report Global Forest Resources Assessment asserts that it is "still alarmingly high."

"Around 13 million hectares of forest were converted to other uses or lost through natural causes each year in the last decade compared with 16 million hectares per year in the 1990s," according to the report. "Both Brazil and Indonesia, which had the highest net loss of forest in the 1990s, have significantly reduced their rate of loss, while in Australia, severe drought and forest fires have exacerbated the loss of forest since 2000."

Last year's United Nations report State of the World's Forests notes the "potential negative impacts on forest resources could include reduced investment in sustainable forest management and a rise in illegal logging...Land dependence, which had been easing, could increase, raising the risk of agricultural expansion into forests, deforestation and reversal of previous forest gains."

In the Book of Genesis, the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden bears a fruit that gives everlasting life. After eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve were banished from Eden to prevent them from eating from this immortalizing tree.

On Judgment Day, according to the Book of Enoch, God will give fruit from the Tree of Life to all those whose names are in the Book of Life. But God might be handing out hamburgers instead, because by that time the Tree of Life may have been cut down to make room for cattle farming.

GET INVOLVED
  • Sign a petition urging the U.S. Forest Service to halt plans for logging in the Sequoia National Monument (U.S. residents)
  • Sign a Greenpeace letter thanking Kimberly-Clark for protecting ancient forests
  • Download a PDF of "Do I Dare Eat That Banana," a document created by RainforestRelief.org that outlines rainforest products to avoid
  • Download the Greenpeace Tissue Guide to find out which tissue brands are sustainably-sourced and which are made from clearcutting ancient forests (PDF download)
  • Protect an acre of rainforest through Conservation International
  • Support Trees for the Future, a non-profit organization that has been helping communities around the world plant trees
  • Download a Rainforest Action Network list of palm oil products to avoid
  • Sign a petition urging Food Standards Australia and New Zealand to make it the law to label products containing palm oil so consumers can make informed decisions
  • Sign up with Rainforest Action Network to sleuth your local bookstore for rainforest safe books
  • Take the pledge to avoid imported shrimp to save mangrove forests
  • Support the Mangrove Action Project
  • Send a Mangrove Action Project e-card
  • Visit the Arbor Day Foundation and get 10 free trees when you join
  • Join over 1 million people and sign up for free with Catalog Choice to opt out of postal mail and solicitations you receive to help save trees
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
RELATED POSTS
[Editor's note: November is Tree Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Trees appeared 375 million years ago from several different plant lineages -- long before amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, and are essential to life on Earth. They produce oxygen. They moderate ground temperatures. They prevent erosion. Some trees, like mangroves, protect coasts from tidal waves. Trees provide habitats, food, medicines and building materials. And they store carbon dioxide. Approximately 150 pine trees at least 25 years old can safely store a year's worth of the average human's carbon emissions (26 tons). And now it seems they even help fight crime. Next month: A review of the year's victories.]

image: An 1847 depiction of the Norse Yggdrasil ("world tree") as described in the Icelandic Prose Edda by Oluf Olufsen Bagge (source: Wikimedia Commons)
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Monday, November 29, 2010

Fake or Real Christmas Tree: What Would Jesus Do?

Here comes Santa Claus -- and the mass killing of trees

First established in the 16th century by the German theologian and leader of the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther as a Protestant counterpart to the Nativity scene of Roman Catholicism, the tradition of the Christmas tree began with the decorating of evergreen conifers with candles.

Luther wanted the Christmas tree to symbolize the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. Ironically, celebrating the holiday means killing millions of live trees.

The longstanding debate over which kind of tree -- real or artificial -- is better for the environment was put to rest in 2008 when Montreal-based sustainable development firm Ellipsos conducted an independent Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that found that a natural tree will generate 6.8 lbs (3.1 kg) of greenhouse gases whereas the artificial tree will produce 17.8 lbs (8.1) kg per year.

"The results are astonishing," says Ellipsos president and the study co-author Jean-Sébastien Trudel. "Considering that the artificial tree is reusable for many years, one would think that this choice is best since the natural tree requires annual trips to purchase it."

"Although plastic Christmas trees are reusable from year to year, real trees are the more sustainable choice," according to EarthEasy.com. "Plastic trees are made of petroleum products (PVC), and use up resources in both the manufacture and shipping. While artificial trees theoretically last forever, research shows that they are typically discarded when repeated use makes them less attractive. Discarded artificial trees are then sent to landfills, where their plastic content makes them last forever."

"Live trees, on the other hand, are a renewable resource grown on tree farms, that are replanted regularly. They contribute to air quality while growing, and almost ninety percent are recycled into mulch. Live trees are usually locally grown and sold, saving both transportation costs and added air pollution."

But, as Becky Tsang of the San Francisco-based Center for Urban Education About Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) writes in a recent email, "While the environmental discussion has often focused on plastic vs. real Christmas trees, not all 'real' trees are the same."

"In fact, much like produce, there is a whole range of factors to pay attention to when gauging the sustainability of the choice," says Tsang.

"The majority of Christmas trees are farmed conventionally -- in other words, they are the product of monocropping over vast tracts of land, and they involve fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides, as well as irrigation that causes waste water runoff. A conventional Christmas tree requires around a quarter of an ounce of pesticides to produce; that might not seem like much, but it adds up, and puts Christmas tree farm workers and their families at an elevated risk of pesticide poisoning."

When choosing a live tree, consider a small one that comes in a pot. It can likely live in the pot through several Christmas holidays, and then when it outgrows the pot, it can be replanted outside. And if it can't be replanted, try to have it chipped -- the wood chips can be used in gardens and in the beds of shrubs and trees.

But really, the best option is no tree at all. Leave the tree in nature. When these trees are cut down, they not only lose their much-needed ability to store carbon dioxide, but the carbon dioxide that they were storing is released into the atmosphere, further adding to the concentration of greenhouse gases that cause global warming. And unless the tree is coming from your backyard, chances are it burned gasoline on its trip to your local market.

In the end, less trees means less "ecosystem services." And that means more global warming gases. Less habitat for species. More stormwater runoff. Lower air quality.

Instead, why not try a Christmas cactus? According to Ed Hume, host of the TV show Garderning in America, "It's not unusual for a single plant to be passed down from generation to generation because they're long-lived, rather easy plants to grow."

"People often ask me 'Was Jesus an environmentalist?',"says environmental minister Rev. Sally Bingham in an interview in Soujourner Magazine.

"Jesus identified with marginal people," Bingham says. "And probably today he would identify with endangered species, coral reefs, and forests, because he identified with pain and suffering, and right now creation is in pain and suffering. I would go so far as to say that if Jesus were here, he would not drive an SUV."

He wouldn't buy a Christmas tree either.

GET INVOLVED
  • Buy a Christmas cactus and start a new holiday tradition
  • Read the Ecologist Guide to a Green Christmas
  • Support Trees for the Future, a non-profit organization that has been helping communities around the world plant trees
  • Visit the Arbor Day Foundation and get 10 free trees when you join
  • Join over 1 million people and sign up for free with Catalog Choice to opt out of postal mail and solicitations you receive to help save trees
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
RELATED POSTS
[Editor's note: November is Tree Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Trees appeared 375 million years ago from several different plant lineages -- long before amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, and are essential to life on Earth. They produce oxygen. They moderate ground temperatures. They prevent erosion. Some trees, like mangroves, protect coasts from tidal waves. Trees provide habitats, food, medicines and building materials. And they store carbon dioxide. Approximately 150 pine trees at least 25 years old can safely store a year's worth of the average human's carbon emissions (26 tons). And now it seems they even help fight crime.]

image: dead Christmas tree mass grave by church (credit: Toby Bradbury)
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Friday, November 26, 2010

Moon Trees

Hundreds of trees came from seeds that have been to the Moon

On January 31, 1971, NASA's Apollo 14 was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was the third mission to land on the Moon.

Stuart Roosa was the command module pilot. Being that he used to parachute out of airplanes to fight forest fires as a smokejumper, Roosa was happy to oblige a request by the U.S. Forest Service to take some tree seeds along.

For the "Moon Tree" experiment, Roosa brought seeds of Loblolly Pine, Sycamore, Sweetgum, Redwood and Douglas Fir.

Nearly all of the seeds germinated, resulting in almost 450 seedlings that were planted at various locations, including Washington Square in Philadelphia, Valley Forge and White House. Brazil, France, Germany, Spain, Great Britain, Switzerland and Japan also received Moon Trees.

A Moon Tree was also planted at the International Forest of Friendship, an arboretum and memorial forest beside Lake Warnock in Atchison, Kansas. It is a memorial to aviators and astronauts such as Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, Jeana Yeager, Rajiv Gandhi, the Wright Brothers, Sally Ride, Chuck Yeager, Beryl Markham, General Jimmy Doolittle, President George H. W. Bush, General Colin Powell and Lt. Col. Eileen M. Collins.

Some of them were planted next to their Earth-bound counterparts. No discernible difference in their growth has been observed. It seems that tree seeds can survive spaceflight just fine. You can even buy a second- or third-generation Moon Tree seedling.

GET INVOLVED
  • Buy a Moon Tree seedling from AmericanForests.org
  • Support Trees for the Future, a non-profit organization that has been helping communities around the world plant trees
  • Visit the Arbor Day Foundation and get 10 free trees when you join
  • Join over 1 million people and sign up for free with Catalog Choice to opt out of postal mail and solicitations you receive to help save trees
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
RELATED POSTS
[Editor's note: November is Tree Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Trees appeared 375 million years ago from several different plant lineages -- long before amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, and are essential to life on Earth. They produce oxygen. They moderate ground temperatures. They prevent erosion. Some trees, like mangroves, protect coasts from tidal waves. Trees provide habitats, food, medicines and building materials. And they store carbon dioxide. Approximately 150 pine trees at least 25 years old can safely store a year's worth of the average human's carbon emissions (26 tons). And now it seems they even help fight crime.]

image: "Moon Tree" sycamore planted at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, on June 9, 1977 (credit: NASA)
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Thursday, November 25, 2010

Wayne Pacelle: A Thanksgiving Wish for Turkeys

[Editor's note: Taking a break from Tree Month to "talk turkey" on Thanksgiving, the following is cross-posted from yesterday's blog post of Wayne Pacelle, President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States. 13.7 Billion Years applauds Mr. Pacelle's enlightened campaign to break the cycle of willful ignorance that pervades the general public -- especially when it comes to realities that, if acknowledged, would likely change bad habits that are extremely hard to break. One such habit is eating factory-farmed turkeys on Thanksgiving.]

November 24, 2010

Thanksgiving -- a holiday grounded in the principles of celebration and gratitude. Here’s one holiday that does not smack of commercialism, and it is instead a time for families and friends to assemble around the dinner table, to talk, and to feast. In the broadest sense, so many of us do indeed have much to be grateful for, including the bounty of American agriculture, and Thanksgiving is a day to reflect on that good fortune.

It is also a holiday built around the consumption of turkeys. Sadly, the domesticated birds sold from factory farms look like a caricature of the wild birds from which they descend. Today’s industrially produced birds have been selectively bred for enormous body mass and, as a consequence, many of them cannot stand or walk after only a few months of life. They have so much breast meat that they are even incapable of copulation -- reproduction now occurs only through artificial insemination. They are not healthy animals, and they suffer chronic pain. Some of them die from heart attacks -- suggesting that something is deeply wrong in their physical make-up when baby and juvenile animals perish from maladies we associate with old age.

This week The HSUS took a look into one other grim facet of industrial turkey production. We had an undercover investigator at the largest turkey hatchery in the nation, Willmar Poultry Company (WPC) in Willmar, Minnesota, for 11 days in October, and the investigator documented an awful practice associated with the disposal of baby birds not fit for production. These poults, as they are known, are killed by dumping them into a giant grinding machine. It’s death by maceration, and it is an unpleasant and little-known process of disposal.

Many of the little turkeys put into the grinder at day’s end had been injured by the machinery of these industrial facilities. Fast-moving conveyor belts carry the baby birds through the factory to have their back toes amputated and their beaks seared with lasers -- both with no painkillers at all. And if there are problems with the birds or the process, they are redirected for grinding. Others are ground alive because they are simply not needed to fill orders for that day -- too many hatched and not enough demand on those days.

We found sick and injured baby turkeys languishing throughout the day before being sent to the giant grinder after hours of suffering. Other poults who had fallen off conveyors or out of plastic bins wandered the floor of the factory, following after the workers on whom they seemed to have imprinted.

I’ve written to Willmar’s President and CEO, Ted Huisinga, to see if we can get a dialogue going with the company about improving handling, care, and euthanasia of the turkey poults who are, right now, treated so much like garbage -- the collateral damage of an industry driven solely by the bottom line. Our investigator was told that if a consumer buys a turkey in a major grocery store, there’s a 50 percent chance the bird came from WPC.

Our investigation has attracted some considerable media attention, and I hope it makes people think twice about getting birds from these factory farms. Here are some links to stories in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Associated Press, West Central Tribune, Daily Mail (UK), and ag trade journal Brownfield.

Thanksgiving is a celebration. But it is also a time to think about others. I cannot stop thinking about these turkeys, especially the babies, and their sad fate on industrial farms. At The HSUS, we all should be conscious consumers, and Thanksgiving is a good day to put thoughts into action.

-- Wayne Pacelle, President and CEO, Humane Society of the United States

[source]

image: HSUS
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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

41 Pounds

Stop junk mail, save trees, save species

The average adult receives 41 pounds of junk mail every year.

According to the non-profit anti-junk mail organization 41pounds.org:
  • More than 100 million trees are destroyed each year to produce junk mail
  • 42% of timber harvested nationwide becomes pulpwood for paper.
  • The world’s temperate forests absorb 2 billion tons of carbon annually
  • Creating and shipping junk mail produces more greenhouse gas emissions than 9 million cars.
  • About 28 billion gallons of water are wasted to produce and recycle junk each year.
  • You waste about 70 hours a year dealing with junk mail.
  • The pulp and paper industry is the single largest consumer of water used in industrial activities in developed countries, and it’s the third-largest industrial greenhouse gas emitter (after the chemical and steel industries).
  • 44% of mail goes to the landfill unopened.
  • On average, we receive 16 pieces of junk mail a week, compared to only 1.5 personal letters.
  • The majority of household waste consists of junk mail.
  • 40% of the solid mass that makes up our landfills is paper and paperboard waste.
  • Junk mail inks have high concentrations of heavy metals, making the paper difficult to recycle.
  • $320 million of local taxes are used to dispose of junk mail each year.
  • California’s state and local governments spend $500,000 a year collecting and disposing of AOL’s direct mail disks alone.
  • Transporting junk mail costs $550 million a year.
  • Lists of names and addresses used in bulk mailings reside in mass data-collection networks. Your name is typically worth 3 to 20 cents each time it is sold.
Cutting down trees for junk mail is unnecessarily destroying forest ecosystems that countless species need intact to survive. It just makes no sense. It's a total waste. And unfortunately, little has been done to stop it.

One way to stem the flood of waste is to contact the companies that are sending you junk and ask them to stop. Or switch to email communication only.

Some companies -- like 41 pounds and Catalog Choice -- are set up to help deal with this issue.

So next time you get a pile of paper in the mail you didn't ask for and you don't want, take a moment to think about a tree -- and the animal or animals that might be missing it.

GET INVOLVED
  • Join over 1 million people and sign up for free with Catalog Choice to opt out of postal mail and solicitations you receive
  • Stop junk mail with 41pounds.org
  • Support Trees for the Future, a non-profit organization that has been helping communities around the world plant trees
  • Visit the Arbor Day Foundation and get 10 free trees when you join
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
RELATED POSTS
[Editor's note: November is Tree Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Trees appeared 375 million years ago from several different plant lineages -- long before amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, and are essential to life on Earth. They produce oxygen. They moderate ground temperatures. They prevent erosion. Some trees, like mangroves, protect coasts from tidal waves. Trees provide habitats, food, medicines and building materials. And they store carbon dioxide. Approximately 150 pine trees at least 25 years old can safely store a year's worth of the average human's carbon emissions (26 tons). And now it seems they even help fight crime.]

image: mirvettium
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Tuesday, November 23, 2010

The Tree of Heaven Struggles to Reach the Sky

For a group of artists, one of the Western world's most unwanted trees is a vital resource

It is considered a pest. A weed. An invasive species. An intruder. An eyesore. A symbol of post-industrial decay. A regular feature of blighted urban areas.

It has been derided as the "ghetto palm" and the "stink tree." Its smell has been described as rotting peanuts.

But, as Betty Smith wrote in her bestselling 1943 book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, "Some people call it the Tree of Heaven."

Say hello to Ailanthus altissima, a deciduous tree of the Simaroubaceae family native to Taiwan and China, where it has a much different legacy -- and might as well be from Heaven for all the value it has provided to Chinese traditional medicine and silk production.

Called chouchun in Mandarin, it is repeatedly mentioned in Chinese medical texts -- as well as the oldest extant Chinese dictionary -- for its supposed ability to cure mental illness and treat bowel ailments, asthma, epilepsy and heart arrythmia.

It is also grown extensively in China as a host tree for the Ailanthus silkmoth (Samia cynthia), a saturniid moth used to produce silk fabric. While its larvae are content to feed on a variety of trees and shrubs, the female moth will only lay its eggs in its eponymous tree.

In 1740, French Jesuit missionary and amateur botanist Pierre Nicolas d'Incarville was sent on a mission to China. With a package of seeds delivered to the Royal Society via the caravan routes to St. Petersburg, he introduced Ailanthus to the Western world.

At first, it was widely embraced in Europe, where chinoiserie dominated much of the continent's decorative arts. In 1784, it arrived in the United States. And for much of the 19th century, it was a common street tree, favored for its rapid growth and resistance to pollution.

But by the 20th century, it was considered a noxious weed in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, where 44 states, Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. list it as an invasive species. It has spread along a third of Virginia's highways, for example, extirpating many native species.

The Tree of Heaven is hard to kill. Severing the tree from the main stem only causes it to re-sprout aggressively from its base, making it extremely difficult to eradicate. And its roots are remarkably strong and energetic in their search for water. A seed that finds its way into a tiny crack in concrete will often lead to a tree whose roots are powerful enough to damage sidewalks, foundations and even sewer systems.

But as forcefully as it grows downwards, it also shoots upwards -- and rapidly so, reaching heights up to 50 feet (15 meters) in just 25 years. Indeed, its scientific name is derived from its Indonesian vernacular name Aiianto, which means "reaching for the sky."

"No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky," Smith writes.

"It grows in boarded up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly...survives without sun, water, and seemingly earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it."

In 2005, Ingo Vetter, Annette Weisser and Mitch Cope founded the Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop, a group of artists working exclusively with wood processed from the Ailanthus altissima, what they refer to as "a resource unfailing in Detroit," populating "abandoned lots and deserted factory sites."

By harvesting these unwanted invasive trees for sculptures and products, the Woodshop transforms a symbol of urban decay into a creative and useful resource. They have exhibited their Tree of Heaven-based work around the world, at such venues as Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Hamburg), Iaspis (Stockholm), SMART Museum of Art (Chicago), Subvision (Hamburg), Akademie der Künste (Berlin), Noguchi Museum (New York) and MoCAD (Detroit), among others.

"Roaming through the deserted inner city areas, the quantity and height of Tree of Heaven specimens functions as a signifier for how long a place might have been abandoned," say the Woodshop's founders.

"Commonly disregarded as a weed better to be extinguished, we look at it as a post-industrial resource, and take advantage of its ubiquity. Since the tree is growing very fast, the wood is of poor quality by conventional standards but processable if correctly cured. We actually like the unpredictability of the material and work with it instead against it."

A tenacious survivor, the Tree of Heaven may hold onto life so fiercely because it is so short-lived: Few individuals make it past their 50th birthday.

GET INVOLVED
  • View photos of Ailanthus altissima in the urban space taken by the Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop
  • Support Trees for the Future, a non-profit organization that has been helping communities around the world plant trees
  • Visit the Arbor Day Foundation and get 10 free trees when you join
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
RELATED POSTS
[Editor's note: November is Tree Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Trees appeared 375 million years ago from several different plant lineages -- long before amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, and are essential to life on Earth. They produce oxygen. They moderate ground temperatures. They prevent erosion. Some trees, like mangroves, protect coasts from tidal waves. Trees provide habitats, food, medicines and building materials. And they store carbon dioxide. Approximately 150 pine trees at least 25 years old can safely store a year's worth of the average human's carbon emissions (26 tons). And now it seems they even help fight crime.]

image: a large specimen of Ailanthus altissima in Götterbaum, Germany (credit: Darkone)
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Monday, November 22, 2010

The Tree of Gernika

Instead of guns, pro-peace reformers from ETA's banned political party can find strength in Basque's beloved oak

Outside the Basque region in northeastern Spain, the town of Gernika is perhaps most symbolized by Pablo Picasso's famous 1937 anti-war painting Guernica, which depicts the German and Italian aerial bombing of the town on April 26 of the same year. The attack was requested by Spain's Nationalist forces under the command of the dictator Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.

But during medieval times, this cultural region had a decidedly more peaceful symbol -- a tree.

In those days, the various representatives of Basque villages in the province of Biscay held meetings under the shade of trees, none more famous or revered today as a big oak named Gernikako Arbola (Basque for "Tree of Gernika").

When assemblies moved indoors in the early 16th century, the old tree gained a symbolic meaning, representing the traditional freedoms (or Fueros) of the Biscayan people -- and by extension the people of Basque as a whole.

The green saltire that diagonally bisects the Ikurrina -- the official Basque flag -- is said to represent the oak and the historical laws that it symbolizes.

It is also the name of the Basque anthem, which states, "The Tree of Guernica is blessed among the Basques; absolutely loved. Give and deliver the fruit unto the world. We adore you, holy tree."

Rooted in Carlism and the loss of the relationship between the Basque provinces and the Spanish crown under the Ancien Régime, Basque nationalism has long called for independence from Spain and France, but has also been the source of much violence. The armed separatist group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, Basque for "Basque Homeland and Freedom") has claimed the lives of 825 people since the late 1960s.

Recently, there has been talk of a Spain without ETA. The group, which called a cease-fire in September, has not killed anyone in a year.

ETA "has never been as weak and cornered as it is now," Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez told Spain's parliament last month, according to an AP report. "The end of ETA is near."

As some former members of ETA's banned political wing Batasuna call for a permanent cease-fire and move towards the formation of a legitimate party, perhaps they can help the abandonment of ETA's fearful symbol -- a snake wrapped around an axe -- and instead call for a return to the deeper roots of the Gernikako Arbola.

After all, the medieval Basque representatives would not have enjoyed a protective shade if their great oak had met an angry axe.

GET INVOLVED
  • Support Trees for the Future, a non-profit organization that has been helping communities around the world plant trees
  • Visit the Arbor Day Foundation and get 10 free trees when you join
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
RELATED POSTS
[Editor's note: November is Tree Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Trees appeared 375 million years ago from several different plant lineages -- long before amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, and are essential to life on Earth. They produce oxygen. They moderate ground temperatures. They prevent erosion. Some trees, like mangroves, protect coasts from tidal waves. Trees provide habitats, food, medicines and building materials. And they store carbon dioxide. Approximately 150 pine trees at least 25 years old can safely store a year's worth of the average human's carbon emissions (26 tons). And now it seems they even help fight crime.]

image: the trunk of the Gernika "old tree" (1742-1892), re-planted in 1811, now held in a templet (credit: Shaury)
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Friday, November 19, 2010

The Bell Tolls for Anne Frank's Tree

A tree gave hope to one of the most famous victims of the Holocaust. Now it is dying

Native to a small mountainous region in the Balkans, the horse-chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) is a deciduous tree that has been cultivated throughout temperate regions around the world.

In both world wars, it played a decidedly sinister role -- as a source of starch that was turned into acetone to make cordite, a smokeless propellant used in military armaments.

But during World War II, a single horse-chestnut tree meant hope to a girl who would posthumously become one of the most famous victims of the Holocaust: Anne Frank.

On June 12, 1942, Frank received a diary from her father for her 13th birthday. In it, she chronicled her life from that day until August 1, 1944.

Three times in her diary she mentioned a horse-chestnut that she could see from the attic window of the house in Amsterdam where she and her family hid from the Nazis for two years.

"From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind," she wrote on February 23, 1944.

Now around 170 years old, this famous horse-chestnut is dying.

Anne Frank House spokeswoman Annemarie Bekker said that a fungus has hollowed out two-thirds of the famous tree, which has been sick for the past decade, according to Jessica Ravitz of CNN.

"A battle began in late 2007 between city officials who wanted to chop it down and activists who insisted it stay," writes Ravitz. "But a court injunction, a second-opinion analysis and a committee mobilization later, it still stands, barely alive and supported by steel."

Five years ago, the museum began collecting the tree's nuts to grow seedlings. Saplings of the tree have already been sent to parks and schools around the world named for Anne Frank. Later this year, a sapling will be planted at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem, the official Holocaust memorial of Israel.

On April 18, 1944, Frank wrote, "Our chestnut tree is already quite greenish and you can even see little blooms here and there."

In March of the following year, Frank died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. Just a few weeks later, the concentration camp was liberated by the Allies.

In 1947, The Diary of a Young Girl was published in Amsterdam. The Guardian listed it as one of the top 10 definitive books of the 20th century.

Of her beloved horse-chestnut, Frank wrote, "As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be."

GET INVOLVED
  • Leave a leaf on Anne Frank's interactive tree
  • Send a Give-a-Tree holiday card -- for every card sent, one tree will be planted in honor of the recipient
  • Support Trees for the Future, a non-profit organization that has been helping communities around the world plant trees
  • Visit the Arbor Day Foundation and get 10 free trees when you join
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
RELATED POSTS
[Editor's note: November is Tree Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Trees appeared 375 million years ago from several different plant lineages -- long before amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, and are essential to life on Earth. They produce oxygen. They moderate ground temperatures. They prevent erosion. Some trees, like mangroves, protect coasts from tidal waves. Trees provide habitats, food, medicines and building materials. And they store carbon dioxide. Approximately 150 pine trees at least 25 years old can safely store a year's worth of the average human's carbon emissions (26 tons). And now it seems they even help fight crime.]

image: the horse chestnut tree, at right, outside the Anne Frank house, seen December 2009, supported by steel beams (source: CNN. credit: Anne Frank House)
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Thursday, November 18, 2010

The Forgotten Forests

A panel of forest experts says that temperate rainforests store more carbon than tropical ones

The fact that the deforestation of tropical rainforests is a primary cause of the release of global warming gases into the atmosphere has been well documented.

But now a panel of scientists says that the "cooler" rainforests -- such as the boreal and temperate rainforests of North America -- store more carbon per acre than their tropical counterparts.

"We are all aware that tropical rainforests are important, that their deforestation is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions," said Stuart Pimm, the Doris Duke chairman of conservation ecology at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University in North Carolina, during a Washington D.C. conference call, according to an article in Southern Oregon's Mail Tribune.

"But these are in many ways the forgotten forests, the places we tend to overlook," said Pimm, who held the call along with other scientists to increase media attention on the state of these vital forests and to highlight the findings of a new book on the subject, Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation.

"We're trying to get them to look at the endangered rainforests we have right in our backyard," said Dominick A. DellaSala, chief scientist and president of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and the primary author and editor of the book, which features the work of over 30 of the world's leading forest experts.

According to the panel, North America is home to 35 percent of the Earth's 250 million acres of temperate and boreal rainforests. These forests store about six times the worldwide annual carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels.

"Protection levels for these remarkable rainforests are far too low to sustain them under a rapidly changing global climate and ever expanding human footprint," according to the Geos Institute press release on book. "And because they have been ignored in recent efforts to curtail greenhouse gas pollutants from deforestation, they are destined to become the world’s forgotten rainforests."

In the U.S., the highest carbon storage forests are located in western Oregon, Washington and Alaska. Worryingly, less than 14 percent of those forests are protected from logging or other threatening activity, according to DellaSala, who is also president of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.

"The U.S. should lead by example," said DellaSala, "and we should expect at least as much of ourselves as a nation that we ask of others, especially those with fewer resources to address deforestation."

GET INVOLVED

  • Sign a petition urging the Forest Service to halt plans for logging in the Sequoia National Monument
  • Protect an acre of rainforest through Conservation International
  • Support Trees for the Future, a non-profit organization that has been helping communities around the world plant trees
  • Visit the Arbor Day Foundation and get 10 free trees when you join
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
RELATED POSTS
[Editor's note: November is Tree Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Trees appeared 375 million years ago from several different plant lineages -- long before amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, and are essential to life on Earth. They produce oxygen. They moderate ground temperatures. They prevent erosion. Some trees, like mangroves, protect coasts from tidal waves. Trees provide habitats, food, medicines and building materials. And they store carbon dioxide. Approximately 150 pine trees at least 25 years old can safely store a year's worth of the average human's carbon emissions (26 tons). And now it seems they even help fight crime.]

image: temperate rainforest, Mount Hood, Oregon (credit: Duk)
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