by Jane Goodall
This mountain is, of course, considered a very holy place, and millions of pilgrims flock there each year. In 1988 the Rainforest Information Centre in Australia, where John Seed works, received an appeal from an Australian nun who had lived at the base of the mountain for twenty years.
“She seemed desperate and despairing,” John told me. She explained how, when the temple was originally founded, Shiva was clothed in a lush forest, and even tigers could be met walking along its flanks. But gradually the trees were felled until only thorn scrub and goats remained of “Shiva’s robes.” She ended with this final request: would John and his group help to reforest this so-special mountain?
John wrote to her saying that they were only interested in protecting forest—but somehow he could not post that letter. Instead, he listened to his heart, sent her some money, and told her how to start an NGO. And as time went by, he couldn’t help collecting and sending more money. He also started visiting as often as he could, and encouraged other people to go there and help as well.
The act of reforestation turned out to be tremendously difficult work. The only suitable time for planting out seedlings was after the monsoon. But conditions were hard, as great rivers of mud poured down the deforested mountain slopes.
To make the most of the planting season, some five hundred local villagers, both men and women, were employed each year. It was time-consuming work, since almost every seedling had to be surrounded by its own rock wall, and the little trees had to be protected during the summer months, when blistering heat blew in from the deserts.
Meanwhile, millions of pilgrims continued to walk, clockwise, around the mountain to get spiritual enlightenment. And this gave John Seed an idea. On his visits to Arunachala he started telling some of these pilgrims that although Shiva could have appeared as an “eroding, muddy, barren piece of rock, he had chosen one covered with a mighty forest,” and if the people took good care of the trees, perhaps they would get enlightened faster. For surely it would be a spiritual task to help in the reweaving of Shiva’s robes.
It worked. Word spread, and more and more people began volunteering their time to help with the reforestation effort. But suddenly John was seized with doubt. Was he not being arrogant to think that he could speak like this, as though he had some kind of authority to speak for Shiva? He climbed the mountain to ask forgiveness and seek the truth in the spiritual energy of the place. As he sat there, a troop of monkeys came to spend time close by—the most powerful wildlife experience of his life. He felt it was a sign that he was doing the right thing.
The next breakthrough occurred when they got permission to establish a tree nursery on the temple grounds. Once the temple got involved in reforesting Shiva’s robes, things really took off. Soon other village temples began to help in the reforesting, and before long they were growing up to three million infant trees each year for planting up on the mountain and the surrounding area, along the roads and riverbanks and around the lakes.
Some of the trees that robe the sacred mountain are now over twenty years old, and the trail up the mountain is shaded by thick foliage that is home to monkeys and other small animals—though the original tigers have not returned. Today the program is self-sustaining, with tree planting and tending carried out by local NGOs. There are environmental education programs, and villagers are helping with sustainable farming and sustainable livelihood options. And most significantly, John told me, the local people are beginning to understand and honor the connection between the new ecological awareness and the ancient spiritual traditions—a shift in consciousness that he hopes will continue to grow and expand.
“Mop Crops”
One of the things I have been fascinated by as I gathered stories for this book is the way people have turned to the plants for help. Indeed, some species have been conscripted into armies—armies to help us as we try to right the wrongs we have inflicted on Mother Nature. These are powerful armies, able to extract impurities from the soil and the water. They are known as “mop crops.”
Using plants to clean soil and water is not a new idea—it was first proposed as a way to treat wastewater three hundred years ago. And by the end of the nineteenth century two species, pennycress and a small violet, were being used for this purpose.
“Phytoremediation” is the fancy term that describes the use of various plants in cleaning up different kinds of soil and water pollution. Most plants in heavily contaminated areas will get sick and die, but some are resistant, and even fewer actually thrive. These plants “mop up” and accumulate high levels of toxin in their bodies, thus bringing contaminants up from the ground. The plant, its job done, can then be cut down and the toxins safely destroyed. Gradually, after successive plantings, the soil is cleansed.
A major threat to human health and the health of ecosystems is the high level of poisons and heavy metals that have contaminated soils and waterways. Through careful research, a growing number of mop crops have been identified to help in the job of purifying this contaminated land and water. In 1999, for example, it was found that various species of fern were able to remove arsenic (which is a metalloid) from the soil. And since then at least twenty other indigenous American plants have been identified that, between them, can remove lead, copper, nickel, and other metals. Poplar and willow trees are being used to clean up a heavily contaminated area around an oil refinery.
Some plants can even help to clean up radioactive contamination. The increasing desire for nuclear energy poses very real risks to environmental health. That such concerns are justified was amply evident after the Chernobyl explosion and was brought home again, forcibly, by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. In addition to these headline-grabbing incidents there are countless leakages (usually downplayed by the industry) from nuclear facilities around the world. I know because there is one not too far away from where I live in England.
Hemp, that innocent and actually benevolent plant, was used in the cleanup effort after the Chernobyl disaster. Hydroponically grown sunflowers were also used, and they were especially effective in cleaning up the contaminated water. The success at Chernobyl inspired researchers in Japan to plant sunflowers near the Fukushima nuclear disaster, hoping they would help absorb the radiation.
A couple of years ago I saw a powerful demonstration of the purifying power of plants when I visited an ongoing effort in Taiwan to clean the waters of the Lujiaoxi Wetland, heavily polluted with domestic waste, before it flows into the Dahan River. The stream has been diverted: and now some twelve hundred tons of filthy, stinking water per day are exposed to the cleansing, healing influence of a variety of carefully selected plants before joining the river again.
First I was shown an area where pollution-tolerant native vegetation has been planted: the area looked dull and lusterless, the water that flowed through it dark and lifeless. After this first cleansing, the stream, less murky but still without visible life, passed through another type of vegetation.
Next I walked through a region of tall grasses and other plants, some in flower, where already the water was much cleaner, and I saw insects, some crabs, and a few birds.
Finally we came to the hundred-acre, human-made wetlands, where many species of birds were feeding. There were even more insects and crabs. Dragonflies darted above us, and butterflies fluttered. From there the cleansed water, shining and alive, flows into the Dahan River.
Other Ways of Cleaning Water
All those plants press-ganged into helping us to clear up our filth. We owe them a great debt of thanks. Fortunately, “mop crops” are not the only way to clean water polluted by industrial, household, and agricultural runoff and by acid rain. Most other techniques involve pumping out the water, cleaning and returning it, and/or removing accumulated sediments. And while this is most often for our own good, here’s a story about the huge efforts made on behalf of endangered water plants.
Imagine small, shallow lakes with crystal-clear water
. It is spring, and they are covered by a blue haze that dances in the breeze. We are in the Bergvennen area in the Netherlands, and the lakes are habitat for a number of unique plants, one of which is the water lobelia (Lobelia dortmanna). It spends its life completely under the water until the spring, when its beautiful pale-blue flowers rise up above the surface on slender stems.
My botanist friend Rogier van Vugt had fallen in love with this little plant after reading about it as a child, and he was devastated to learn, years later, that agricultural fertilizer from the surrounding farmlands had increasingly contaminated the lakes. Sediments had built up, algae had proliferated, and the water had become murky. The lobelia’s rosettes of underwater leaves were not receiving enough sunlight for efficient photosynthesis, and it seemed doomed for extinction.
But then, thanks to the efforts of conservationists, the local authorities agreed to remove the sediment and then pump in well water to reduce acidity. The result was spectacular.
Rogier told me that he drove across the country to see the renewed lakes for himself. What he found there blew his mind. The number of lobelias had exploded. “The blue of literally thousands, maybe millions of water lobelia flowers hung like a mist over the crystal-clear water of the shallow lakes,” he said.
From that moment, Rogier told me, he realized that while human action can destroy, it can also restore “and create the most breathtaking nature.” And that knowledge led to his lifelong dedication to protecting plants. Meanwhile, the water lobelia and a number of other species have been taken off the list of endangered species in that area.
Some of the Most Endangered Plants in the World—North America’s Grasslands
The grasslands with which I am most familiar are those of East Africa, particularly the Serengeti Plain of Tanzania, but I have also come to know some of the places in the United States where the North American prairies used to stretch. Every year I spend a few days in Nebraska visiting wildlife photographer Tom Mangelsen in the cabin on the Platte River built by his father. Here I can recharge my batteries during the migration of the sandhill cranes. They arrive every spring, along with many other kinds of waterbirds, to fatten up on the grain left over from the harvest. In the evening they fly in from the fields to roost along the river, hundreds of thousands of them filling the sky.
One day Tom and I were driving along the long, straight roads cut between huge cornfields, and we began talking about the unsustainable industrial agriculture that had so changed the area since he was a boy. Today almost every field has its sprawling and somehow sinister center pivot that relentlessly pumps water for irrigation from the great Ogallala Aquifer deep down below. And the aquifer is already depleted and polluted from the runoff from the chemicals sprayed on the corn. Our mood grew somber.
Then Tom said, “Let’s go to our special place,” and he turned off onto a narrow grass road where almost nobody ever goes. We rolled down our windows as the car moved slowly along the bumpy surface, and in a few moments we had entered another world—a little oasis of original prairie, with the spring flowers and grasses, butterflies, and a small, startled quail. The air smelled different, and when Tom cut the engine, there was a stillness. Tom didn’t know who owned this precious stretch of a time gone by, but we breathed a prayer that it will stay this way forever.
It was almost painful to realize how beauty of this sort once stretched for thousands of miles across North America. And I found myself envying a young woman named Eliza Steele, about whom I had just been reading. In 1840 she traveled to Illinois and saw, for the first time, the tall grass prairies as they once were. Entranced, she wrote, “A world of grass and flowers stretched around me, rising and falling in gentle undulations, as if an enchanter had struck the ocean swell, and it was at rest for ever.”
In Eliza Steele’s day, the state of Illinois (approximately fifty-six thousand square miles) was almost completely covered by grasslands. And the prairies, like the pristine one I visited with Tom, covered nearly one third of North America, stretching from Canada to Mexico, from the Rockies to Indiana. When the white man arrived in North America, things began to change as more and more prairieland was converted to agriculture. Today less than 1 percent of the original grasslands remains, and this habitat, like the grasslands of Australia, is one of the most endangered in the world.
The relentless plowing of the Central Plains removed the prairie grasses that had adapted to the environment by evolving very long root systems, which served to hold the soil in place. This led to the disastrous Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Some 150,000 square miles were affected and 2.5 million people were forced to abandon their homes. (CREDIT: US DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE)
Native prairie grasses have adapted to the environment of the windswept plains by developing very long roots that stabilize the soil and trap moisture even during dry times. Once this grass has gone, the topsoil is vulnerable to erosion from wind and rain and is eventually blown away. As I mentioned earlier when talking about how important roots are because they keep soil in place, the early settlers’ deep plowing of mile after mile of native prairie led to the horror of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Vast black clouds of dust were swept across the country—much of it actually landing in the Atlantic. It affected some 150,000 square miles of the Central Plains, and caused 2.5 million people to leave their homes.
The first project dealing with prairie restoration, in 1935 (when I was one year old), was initiated by Aldo Leopold at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in Madison, Wisconsin. Eighty acres were successfully planted with native prairie plants, but at that time conservationists were mainly interested in protecting existing wilderness rather than restoring what was damaged.
It would be nearly thirty years before a horticulturist from Nebraska, Ray Schulenberg, started work to restore one acre of native prairie on a farm in Illinois. From the seeds collected and planted, five hundred species grew. The success of this project triggered other initiatives, the first of them being at a highly unlikely spot—Fermilab in Illinois, which happens to be on the US government atomic accelerator lab ground. With the help of volunteers from the lab, the community, and the local university, one thousand acres of prairie was restored. The incredible difference in the landscape before and after restoration is illustrated on the opening page of this chapter.
Individual landowners are getting into the act too, voluntarily working to restore the original prairie to their properties. They understand that diversity is important and that it is necessary to introduce as many as possible of the original endemic species. There is also a growing realization that controlled fires are important for the health of the prairie ecosystem. These efforts on a series of ranches are helping to create corridors for butterflies, birds, and other wildlife.
I learned about this when I went with my good friend Alan Bartels to stay at the ranch of Bruce and Sue Ann Switzer and their family. They have joined forces with two neighbors and are successfully combating the invasive eastern red cedar trees on their combined holdings of more than fifty thousand acres. They have restored cultivated rye fields (which needed irrigation) back to native grassland, so that the original prairie plant and wildlife is returning. I was particularly interested to learn about the restoration of the blowout penstemon—a few years ago it was almost extinct. But thanks to the work of local scientists, and with the help of Alan and a group of local children who have been planting seedlings on the Nebraska Sandhills, including the Switzer family’s property, this beautiful and fragrant flowering plant is now making a comeback.
I recently spent a day with the Switzer family—three generations working together to restore the local Nebraskan prairie lands. Their ranch also has an ecotourism business where they can show visitors the unique endangered flora and fauna of the American prairies. (Back row, left to right: Adam Switzer [Bruce and Sue Ann’s son], Bruce Switzer, me, Sue Ann Switzer. Front row, left to right: Ella Switzer, Emmett Sortum, Sarah Sortum, Henry Sortum.) (CREDIT: ALAN J. BARTELS)
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bsp; Another exciting development is prairie ecotourism. Increasing numbers of the visitors who come to explore the unique flora and fauna of the area are hosted by the Switzers at their ranch. And because of this they are able to stay and work there as a family. The grown-up children of Bruce and Sue Ann have moved back. One of them, Sarah, told me of the plans they are making, with other ranchers, for further restoration of the land. Sarah’s five-year-old son, Emmett, solemn under his giant cowboy hat, idolizes Grandpa Bruce. He follows him everywhere, learning more each day about the prairie habitat and about good stewardship. The family hopes he will stay even after he is finished with school and help them look after this beautiful land. It is people like this who are truly my “seeds of hope.”
Wildlife Corridors
One important way to fight and even reverse the increasing fragmentation of wilderness areas is by creating wildlife corridors. Usually, these are only possible when NGOs, private landowners, and government agencies join forces to create contiguous plots of land that link major conservation areas.
One of the goals of JGI’s TACARE program in Tanzania is to create a leafy corridor that will link the hundred or so surviving members of the Gombe chimpanzee population with other remnant groups. For they cannot survive indefinitely without the benefit of new genes from outside. We have no way of knowing whether they will use it, and there are those who do not believe corridors of this sort can be effective, but there is a lot of evidence showing that, at least in some cases—and particularly for plants—corridors can be crucial.
Just this spring (2012) I was driving from Turin to Florence in Italy, and I noticed that the edges of the road were brilliant with red poppies. Occasionally a whole field blazed with glorious color, and these reminders of the fields of my youth were linked by the populations along the roadsides. It made me think of Lady Bird Johnson’s legacy in Texas, where she had wildflower seeds scattered along the medians and strips of land along many of the major roads.