Seeds of Hope

by Jane Goodall

  Such wildlife corridors are now policy in the United Kingdom, where there are efforts to conserve not only roadside “verges,” as we British call them, but also hedgerows that are either ancient or species-rich, disused and current railway lines, and cycle trails. Even the old stone walls of northern England are protected, as the stones were carefully laid without cement, and in the crevices all sorts of plants and animals thrive.

  Banks of rivers and canals can also serve as corridors linking protected areas. Conservation groups are working with city councils as to time of year and method of managing the vegetation along these corridors. It is considered of special importance for the dispersal of plants because of climate change, since, just like animals, they may need to move to new, more suitable habitats, and corridors will play a vital role in their ability to survive. An intensive study in North Carolina showed that wildlife refuges connected by corridors had 20 percent more plant species than those that have the same kind of habitats but are isolated.

  Children and the Future

  I have often heard the saying “We have not inherited this planet from our parents—we have borrowed it from our children.” Unfortunately, this is no longer true. We have not borrowed it but stolen it. We are still stealing their future. And more and more young people know this—no wonder I meet so many, on every continent, who are apathetic, depressed, or bitter and angry. They tell me they feel that way because we older generations have compromised their future and there is nothing they can do about it.

  I have grandchildren, and when I think how we have harmed the planet since I was their age, I feel a kind of desperation. Indeed we have compromised the future for our children. But I do not believe it is too late to turn things around, and it was for this reason that I initiated our Roots & Shoots movement. Almost everywhere I go during my three hundred days of travel each year, I hear about a project where our children are lending willing hands to the task of putting right the places that we have despoiled. They are helping to restore wetlands, to clean creeks and streams, to remove alien vegetation, and to encourage native plants to grow again in habitats from which they had been driven.

  Sometimes, when there is a free space in my schedule, I ask if there is some R&S group I can visit. I know that this often serves to motivate the young people, and to remotivate those who may have become less involved, so I feel it is important, even if I am feeling too tired for such an effort. But there is a good reward, because the enthusiasm of the young people so often helps to restore me.

  One day I visited a group of youth who helped to restore a unique ecosystem in a Chicago suburb that had been seriously harmed by storm/wastewater pouring from a newly constructed shopping mall. This had created an artificial canyon and enabled a thick growth of invasive buckthorn to colonize the area. Finally the contractors blocked the illegal flow and burned off much of the brush. The Roots & Shoots group then cleared away more of the buckthorn as well as a great deal of charred material, and planted woodland grass seeds that they had collected, in readiness, the previous fall. Now the wildlife has benefited, and the general public is becoming increasingly aware of the potential of this area and more willing to contribute toward protecting it.

  One of the things I love about R&S is that the children learn, through hands-on action, that they really and truly can make a difference. Some accomplishments are outstanding, and I can use those stories to inspire others. Such was the case with the R&S group of ten- and eleven-year-olds in Illinois that decided to protest a plan to build a water-bottling factory upstream from their school. They conducted and presented such a good study that the EPA realized that they should do a proper environmental impact study! In the end, the proposed factory was vetoed.

  R&S began in Tanzania, where many groups now have tree nurseries on their school grounds. In some instances I have seen, over the years, depressing areas of trampled earth gradually transformed into “Roots & Shoots Forests.” One school is growing five thousand seedlings of native trees in a school nursery for tree-planting programs in seven villages. Two schools are adjacent to national parks, and the children are trying to protect their young trees from various animals: they discourage elephants by smearing crushed red pepper and elephant dung on the trunks and branches of young trees.

  Several groups are learning about the importance of protecting mangrove forests. One group is working on Pemba Island planting nonindigenous pines as pioneer species on an abandoned coral quarry. And I just visited an exciting project on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, where Roots & Shoots groups are working to restore the original trees and other vegetation on land devastated by the operations of Twiga Cement—an effort initiated and encouraged by the company itself. There are hundreds more Roots & Shoots restoration and tree-planting programs around the world.

  The R&S Green Thumb program in Taiwan encourages schools to replace ornamentals on their school grounds with indigenous flora to try to create a linked network of natural habitat for butterflies. And in a recent effort, R&S groups waited at each station along the route of the high-speed rail that links the north and south of Taiwan and handed seeds of indigenous plants to the passengers, asking them to plant them wherever they could.

  There are still some people who wonder why I devote so much time and energy to working with young people. It is pretty obvious, really. Of course I care desperately about conservation of chimpanzees and their forest habitat. Indeed, I care about all wildlife and wild places. But it would be of little use to spend my life working to protect those animals and those places if we were not, at the same time, raising new generations to care for what we have saved.

  And there is another reason. Young people can influence other family members. I know so many parents, and grandparents also, who tell me that they do things differently now because of their children. Also, there is a vital energy in our youth that comes alive once they understand the problems and are empowered to take action. They see the difference they can make, and it feeds their determination and their energy. And it feeds mine, too.

  Chapter 19

  The Will to Live

  One of the two 500-year-old camphor trees that survived the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki that ended World War II. Only about half the trunk and a few leafless branches remained. It was designated a national monument in 1969. Prayers written on strips of parchment are hung from its branches in memory of the thousands of Japanese who died. (CREDIT: MEGHAN DEUTSCHER)

  Well, dear reader, we have come to the end of our wandering through the wondrous Green Kingdom, the world of plants. Together we have traveled along well-trodden paths, turned aside to explore small lanes, and ventured into places hitherto unknown even to me. We have been up in the strange world of the rain forest canopy to meet life-forms that never leave the trees, and delved into the eerie world under the ground, where roots and fungi live their fascinating connubial lives.

  We have traced the origins of some of the garden plants that we love today, and investigated those plants that have medicinal qualities, as well as those that, when treated and used unwisely, can harm us.

  We have learned a little about the long-ago days when nations established colonies overseas and shackled slaves in order to make their masters prosper, and we have been shocked by the harm that agriculture has wrought on humans and the environment alike by those who think only of making money and care not for the future of the planet—or, it seems, of their children.

  We have stared aghast at the harm that our species has, for centuries, inflicted on the natural world, and been stirred by the actions of those brave green warriors, standing up to the might of ruthless governments and corporations.

  These explorations have been dictated by my own travels, have happened because of the people I met who told me wondrous tales or as the result of one of those Internet sessions where one thing led to another to another, until I ended up in places I never knew existed and was so inspired I had to call or e-mail those who were connected to the amazing stories I f
ound.

  I am fortunate. I have spent time in wild places where people live in harmony with nature, taking from the land around them only as much as they need. Places where trees and plants are not just valued for the food, healing, and clothing they provide but are also truly appreciated and respected. And where they grow freely, expressing their plant natures fully and magnificently. I have also spent time among the tortured plants, plants with limbs cut and twisted into growth patterns dictated by their human masters, neglected in little office pots, sickened by applications of agricultural chemicals, lined up along busy city streets where they are exposed to all the pollution of the passing cars. Yet still they do their best, absorbing CO2 from the contaminated air, drawing sunlight through leaves coated with grime or poisons, producing oxygen for the rest of us. And, so often, brightening our day with flowers.

  Indeed, nature is resilient. Therein lies our hope. And I want to end this book with three of the most extraordinary stories of survival that I have come across. They all concern trees. After all, trees were my first love.

  The Grandmother Tree Who Refused to Die

  Every time a particular species of tree becomes extinct, the distinctive murmuring of its leaves in the wind is lost forever. Fortunately we are waking up to the situation, and there are people and organizations working to save species after species. This first story is about a most singular tree. It describes the persistence and tenacity of people who worked and never gave up, determined that this one tree and its lineage should be saved so that the impossible would come to pass.

  Cooke’s koki‘o (Kokia cookei) is a Hawaiian tree that was “discovered” in the 1860s by Mr. R. Meyer on the small archipelago island of Molokai. Though he searched everywhere, he found only three individuals of this charming new species, with its delicate star-shaped leaves. Several years later, when botanists went back there, they failed to find even one, and it was assumed that Cooke’s koki‘o was extinct.

  But not so—about thirty years later one tree was found in the same general area, probably the last survivor of the original trio. As I read about her, I found I was thinking of her as Grandmother Koki‘o, and that is how I introduce you to her! Five years later, when another group of botanists returned to the site, they found that Grandmother Koki‘o, although still living, was in very poor shape, and three years later she was dead. In 1918 Cooke’s koki‘o was officially listed as extinct in the wild.

  However, that old tree, sick though she had been, had managed to produce a few seeds before her death. And at least one of those precious seeds must have germinated, because twelve years later, in 1930, a young tree—the offspring of Grandmother Koki‘o—was found near the site of its dead parent. It was taken to the Kauluwai residence on Molokai so that it could be better looked after, and there it took root, grew, and produced seeds. From those seeds more than 130 seedlings grew—the future of the species seemed assured.

  Imagine their dismay when botanists who went to see how the seedlings were getting on found that not even one seemed to have survived. Their parent, seeded from Grandmother Koki‘o, was still living—but died in about 1950. This time, surely, Cooke’s koki‘o was finally extinct.

  But there was something magical about Grandmother Koki‘o’s lineage. I can almost imagine the spirit of that original tree hanging around and breathing new life into dormant seeds. Because, almost twenty years later, in 1970, one more single adult tree was found—at the Kauluwai residence! And so, yet again, the Cooke’s koki‘o had risen, like the phoenix, from the ashes.

  But that is not the end of the story! Eight years after it had been found, in 1978, that one lone survivor, grandchild of old Grandmother Koki‘o, was caught in a fire. Unable to escape, it burned. But by an amazing stroke of good fortune, before the mostly charred remains of the tree had lost all life, someone removed a still-living branch.

  One branch, the last link in an unbroken lineage that stretched back over more than a hundred years to the tree’s ancestor in the Hawaiian forest. That one special branch was grafted onto a related species at the Waimea Arboretum on Oahu. And there, with expert care, the graft took. And grew. True, there was sap from a different species in its veins—but the life force, surely, was inherited from Grandmother Koki‘o.

  As time went on, more and more plants from that original graft were distributed all over Hawaii. They seemed to prosper. But—and it was a very big but—not one of them set seed. For almost a quarter of a century those young trees grew without producing, between them, even one seed. Not even one.

  Not until a horticulturist on Oahu finally managed to get viable seeds from one of the young koki‘os. Those seeds grew, and one of the precious seedlings—now the great-grandchild of Grandmother Koki‘o—was sent to the local Audubon center, where it grew, but reluctantly. The others died.

  Alas, it was not strong, this miracle tree. How fortunate, then, that at this point Nellie Sugii, director of the Hawaiian Rare Plant Program, was asked to help save it. She was determined to succeed, for she knew the extraordinary history of its ancestry. Nellie worked with tender embryonic plants grown from seeds, trying to find a way to get more vigorous seedlings.

  I asked her how she felt when given this awesome responsibility. She replied that in the beginning it was quite frightening, but thrilling at the same time. “The procedure was new, and tried only a few times,” she told me. And on those occasions the seedlings had not survived.

  But although she felt apprehensive, she was excited to try. And “totally elated” when a few tiny seedlings started to turn green and began to grow. Perhaps she succeeded because she has a connection with the plants she grows.

  One of the Cooke’s koki‘o seedlings nurtured by Nellie. One day, with luck, it will return to its ancestral homeland in Hawaii. (CREDIT: NELLIE SUGII)

  “I watched them every day,” she told me, “and talked to them and bossed them to grow… and be strong. And they did.” She also used to play a lot of Hawaiian classical music to Grandmother Koki‘o’s great-great-grandchildren, and sometimes rock ’n’ roll. “I like to think they enjoyed it as much as I did,” she said.

  It is because of Nellie’s painstaking (and ongoing) efforts and her dedication that Cooke’s koki‘o can, at long last, produce viable embryos that are germinating and producing healthy seedlings. These have been cloned, and one of them is now growing and producing fruit on the island of Molokai, the place where Grandmother Koki‘o originated, on the property of Rikki Cooke, a descendant of the family for which the tree is named.

  Surviving the Atomic Bomb

  This is the incredible story of three trees that survived the atomic bombs that were dropped in 1945 on the unsuspecting citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Although the deployment of these bombs almost certainly played a major role in ending World War II, it also led to the immediate deaths of more than 100,000 innocent Japanese civilians. The contamination of the environment with radioactive materials led to the suffering and death of thousands more people for years to come. And vast areas of human habitation and the natural world were laid waste. Indeed, the creation of those bombs represented one of the most monstrous tools of war ever unleashed by the human species, and as we know only too well, the threat of nuclear war still hangs over the world today.

  The first of the three survivor trees was a Gingko biloba that had been planted in 1850 as a temple tree. It survived the destruction of Hiroshima, although the temple itself was destroyed. Eventually, as life returned to the shattered city, there were plans to cut the survivor down to make way for a new temple building. But thousands protested such a heartless suggestion, and in the end the plan for the temple was reconfigured. I have not been there, but I have seen pictures that show how the steps up to the entrance pass on both sides of that tree, and seem to hold it in their embrace.

  In 1990, I went to Nagasaki to give a lecture. I found the city lush and green—which startled me, as I had been looking, in dismay, at photographs taken forty-five years e
arlier that showed the lunar landscape that was the aftermath of the second atomic bomb.

  My hosts filled me in on some of the history. Two months after the explosion, they told me, a group of scientists and military had visited Nagasaki to assess the impact of the bombs. One of them, Lieutenant R. Battersby, wrote an account of what he saw. Everything, he said, was destroyed. Trees had lost all their leaves and branches or been uprooted. Sometimes a great trunk had been snapped in half. It must have been like a scene from Dante’s Hell.

  To his amazement he found two five-hundred-year-old camphor trees that were still alive. The upper part of their trunks had been ripped off, and the remainder had lost many branches and all their leaves. Once, they had been very tall trees—now, mutilated, they were only some thirty feet high.

  Those two trees in Nagasaki are still living. I was taken to see one of them—it had been designated as a national monument in 1969. This survivor, like the gingko in Hiroshima, had prayers, written in tiny kanji on strips of parchment, hanging from its branches, placed there by those who will never forget. It is revered, a holy shrine and memorial to all who died and suffered. I stood there a long time, humbled, in tears.

  One of my most precious possessions is a leaf from this tree, given to me by my Japanese host, a powerful symbol of nature’s resilience.

  The Tree That Survived 9/11

  This story comes from another dark chapter in human history. A recent horror, which all but young children will remember. A day in 2001 when the World Trade Center was attacked, when the Twin Towers fell, when the world changed forever.