How we humans change the world - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

On my way to Brussels the other day I was attracted, as I always am, by the sight of a couple of elm trees near the road. Elm trees are now so rare that I’m not sure younger readers would even recognize them.

 

It wasn’t always that way, of course. When I was a kid growing up on a farm north of Lucknow, the trees around our farmhouse were elms; twin elms growing on the lawn near the lane and a magnificent elm in our pasture field that we called a weeping elm because it spread so wide and drooped its branches.

 

But then Dutch Elm Disease invaded Ontario. These huge elms were infected and gradually died, leaving a sad, bare landscape.
When Jill and I moved to our current country acreage 50 years ago last weekend, the big elms behind the house were already skeletons with many of their limbs missing. I remember using a photo of them against a western sunset on the cover of Village Squire magazine, which we published back then.

 

We still had one live elm at the time, a half-grown tree in our front yard. It grew and grew for a few years, but then, one year, it began showing signs of being infected and, after a couple of years, it died and we had to have someone come and cut it for firewood.

 

I’m hoping that somehow those elms between here and Brussels are immune to the Dutch Elm Disease. I recall doing a story on researchers at the University of Guelph who were collecting cuttings from live elms in the hopes of finding trees that resisted the disease. But there’s no guarantee those trees will last. Coming home from Cranbrook, recently, I saw the skeleton of a dead elm along the road.

 

Invasive pests have changed our landscape. Way back in the 1990s I remember travelling down to the Bayfield area for The Rural Voice to do a story on the first evidence of an invasion of Emerald Ash Borer. There were already dead ash trees being cut down. Loggers were being urged not to transport logs from infected trees to mills in areas not infected. We knew it was  just a matter of time before the borer spread the disease to other parts of the region.

 

Today I have the stumps of two dead ash trees beside our lane. Ironically, shoots keep coming up from the roots, but I know that, even if I let them grow, they would likely succumb to the disease sooner or later. 

 

These diseases are plaguing us because of the miracle of intercontinental trade. Ships that bring food, clothing and building supplies from Asia or the mid-Pacific islands, sometimes carry pests, too.

 

I just finished proofreading the upcoming issue of The Rural Voice, due out early in September, and it contains a story on the invasion of phragmites australis, a reed that, in the photo accompanying the story, towers about four times as high as the man standing beside it. Phrags are identified as Canada’s most invasive species, topping other problems like purple loosestrife, wild parsnips, garlic mustard (this we’ve got lots of at our place that we can’t control) and more. The story involves volunteers in the Kincardine area who are fighting to save beach areas from being overtaken by the destructive weed.

 

Travel for the purpose of trade has long been part of our lives, dating back to Columbus. I remember studying in school early explorers who discovered India, Australia and Africa and how precious spices from Asia made it worthwhile sending sailing ships on year-long journeys to bring home the spices to flavour foods.

 

Flowers and other plants were often brought back from foreign sources innocently enough, only later to be discovered as causing problems. When Europeans began settling in North America, they sometimes brought familiar flowers or vegetables that were not native to Canada or the U.S. We’ve grown to live with these invaders. I suppose we’ll learn to live with these new invaders, like phragmites, too.

 

We humans don’t often realize how destructive we can be. As I wrote above about Europeans coming to North America, I suddenly had to acknowledge that we foreigners (I’m part Scottish, part Irish) also invaded North America and dislodged the native people, claiming and clearing bush for farmland and destroying the territory where native people once hunted and trapped.

 

As I look out our windows and see deer, racoons and groundhogs, I realize that it is man who is the interloper. These native animals do very little to change the landscape. We humans cleared the land, grew crops and kept neat lawns and gardens around houses of wood, man-made clay, brick and glass.

 

Thanks to the infringements made by humans, life keeps changing, despite the efforts of the volunteers around Kincardine who are trying to control phragmites. My great-grandchildren will live in a different world than I do.