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The Dying of the Trees
Most of us remember the magic of a certain forest, or a favorite tree. Our children, says writer and conservationist Charles E. Little, probably won't. The forests are declining. The trees are dying. Little shows how logging in the Northwest is far from the whole story, how virtually everywhere in this country our trees are mortally afflicted - even before they are cut. From the "sugarbush" of Vermont and the dogwoods of Maryland's Catoctin mountains to the forests of the "hollows" in Applachia, the oaks and aspens of northern Michigan, and the mountainsides and deserts of the West, a whole range of human-caused maladies - from fatal ozone, ultraviolet rays, and acid rain to the disastrous aftermath of clear-cutting - has brought tree death and forest decline in its wake. In his journeys to America's forests and woodlands, Little exhaustively explores this phenomenon with scientists, government officials, and citizen leaders and recounts how they have responded (and in many cases failed to respond) to this threat to global ecological balance.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 1995
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March 24, 2015
Long, long ago, before the 1970s, thousands of people would make a springtime pilgrimage to the Catoctin woods of Maryland to enjoy the flowering dogwood trees. Today, the tourists no longer come, because seventy-nine percent of the dogwoods are dead, and the rest are dying. A mystery fungus created a rapidly spreading blight, which penetrated the bark and blocked the flow of water and nutrients. It killed new dogwood seedlings. The experts were puzzled. Could the trees have been weakened by acid rain, smog, increased UV radiation, or a changing climate?
The dogwood die-off captured the attention of Maryland resident Charles Little, a conservationist and writer. It inspired him to spend three years visiting 13 states, observe dying trees, interview experts, and read papers and reports. Then he wrote The Dying of the Trees. It was a heartbreaking project, because everything he learned was grim, and worsening.
On one trip, he visited Hub Vogelmann, in the Green Mountains of Vermont, a region downwind from the industrial Midwest. Three-quarters of the spruce trees were dead, and there was no evidence of insects or disease. In tree ring studies, vanadium, arsenic, and barium began appearing in the wood around 1920. Following World War II, the wood also contained copper, lead, zinc, and cadmium. Aluminum is commonly found in forest soils, but acid rain breaks down aluminum silicates, enabling the metal to be absorbed by plants. It kills the roots. Vogelmann was sharply criticized for suggesting that the problem was related to acid rain, an emerging issue by 1979.
Acid rain was killing forests in Germany and Eastern Europe. It was killing the sugar maples in New England, Ontario, and Quebec. In the Appalachian region of Quebec, ninety-one percent of the maples were in decline by 1988. The rain was ten times more acidic than normal. It was leaching the phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium out of the soil — essential nutrients. In some places, the livers and kidneys of moose and deer contained so much cadmium that the Canadian government issued health warnings. In glaring defiance of the evidence, the U.S. Forest Service reported that the maples were healthy and improving.
Little visited Rock Creek, near Beckley, West Virginia. It was home to a remnant of the mesophytic forest, bits of which are spread across several states. This ecosystem may be 100 million years old. It was never submerged by rising seas, or erased by glaciers. It was the mother forest for the trees now living in eastern North America.
Sadly, mature trees at Rock Creek, in full foliage, were falling over, their trunks hollowed out by rot. Fungi, supercharged by excess nitrogen, were now able to penetrate the bark. Trees were producing up to 80 percent fewer seeds. John Flynn was among the pioneers in reporting the acid rain story to the national media. He was harshly criticized by both industry and the U.S. Forest Service.
Once, on a visit to England, Little met an elderly sailor who had visited Oregon as a young man. The immense virgin forests had amazed him. Little did not tell the old fellow that those ancient forests were mostly gone now, and that industry was eager to destroy the ten percent that remained. It took the Brits a thousand years to exterminate their ancient forest. Americans largely did it in one generation, thanks to better technology and mass hysteria.
The vast white pine forests that once stretched from Maine to Minnesota never recovered. Deciduous trees took their place. Ancient forests are not renewable resources. “In clear-cutting such forests, then, we not only kill the trees that are cut, but we annihilate the possibility of such trees for all time.” Forests are incredibly complex ecosystems, and logging disrupts a state of balance that took eons to develop. Many wildlife species cannot survive on cutover lands. A monoculture tree plantation is not a forest, and is more vulnerable to cold, drought, pests, and diseases.
Little visited Colorado, where many forests were brown and dead. The original forest was exterminated about 100 years ago. The second growth that replaced it was a different mix of species, mostly shade-tolerant, which were more vulnerable to spruce budworms. These trees were densely packed together, thanks to a strategy of fire suppression — promptly extinguishing every wildfire. The dense growth was attractive to budworms, which weakened the trees. Then the bark beetles were able to finish them off. Dead forests loaded with fuel invite fire.
Native Americans controlled fuel buildup with periodic low-level burns, but this is impossible today, because of the massive accumulations of fuel. There is no undo button for a century of mistakes. The government cannot afford to thin overgrown forests and remove the excess fuel from many millions of acres, so the stage is set for catastrophic fires. There will come a day when the cost and availability of oil makes modern high-tech firefighting impossible.
Forests often die in slow motion. A speedy decline might take 25 years, and be invisible to casual observers. Forest death increased in the twentieth century, following the extermination of ancient forests. It worsened after World War II, as pollution levels increased. Climate change is likely to cause additional harm.
A vital lesson in this book is to never automatically believe anything. Master the art of critical thinking, and always question authority. Our culture is out of its mind, and many of its deeply held beliefs are bull excrement. Each generation innocently passes this load of excrement to the next, because it’s all they know.
Here’s my favorite passage: “A hand will be raised at the back of the room. ‘But what can we do?’ the petitioner will ask. Do? What can we do? What a question that is when we scarcely understand what we have already done!”
In a series of stories, Little’s book informs readers that industrial civilization and healthy forests do not mix. But it barely scratches the surface of the harms caused by the logging industry, or the many other industries. When I proudly received my golden meal ticket from the university, I was dumber than a box of rocks. I was well trained to spend the rest of my days striving for respect and status by shopping the planet to pieces.
Today, as the clock is running out on industrial civilization, it’s essential to better understand what we have already done. We won’t discover every fatal defect, because our way of life is overloaded with them, but the ones that we can see are more likely to be addressed. We are on a dead end path. We would be wise to outgrow our habits and illusions, and remember how to live.
Little recommends the obvious — sharply reverse population growth, end the extermination of forests, plant billions of trees, and stop industrial pollution. He cautions readers that we’re well beyond the point where the damage can be repaired. Our task today is damage control — learning, growing, teaching, and mindfully reducing the harm we cause each day. The book does not conclude with the traditional slop bucket of magical thinking. His straight talk is refreshing.
The dogwood die-off captured the attention of Maryland resident Charles Little, a conservationist and writer. It inspired him to spend three years visiting 13 states, observe dying trees, interview experts, and read papers and reports. Then he wrote The Dying of the Trees. It was a heartbreaking project, because everything he learned was grim, and worsening.
On one trip, he visited Hub Vogelmann, in the Green Mountains of Vermont, a region downwind from the industrial Midwest. Three-quarters of the spruce trees were dead, and there was no evidence of insects or disease. In tree ring studies, vanadium, arsenic, and barium began appearing in the wood around 1920. Following World War II, the wood also contained copper, lead, zinc, and cadmium. Aluminum is commonly found in forest soils, but acid rain breaks down aluminum silicates, enabling the metal to be absorbed by plants. It kills the roots. Vogelmann was sharply criticized for suggesting that the problem was related to acid rain, an emerging issue by 1979.
Acid rain was killing forests in Germany and Eastern Europe. It was killing the sugar maples in New England, Ontario, and Quebec. In the Appalachian region of Quebec, ninety-one percent of the maples were in decline by 1988. The rain was ten times more acidic than normal. It was leaching the phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium out of the soil — essential nutrients. In some places, the livers and kidneys of moose and deer contained so much cadmium that the Canadian government issued health warnings. In glaring defiance of the evidence, the U.S. Forest Service reported that the maples were healthy and improving.
Little visited Rock Creek, near Beckley, West Virginia. It was home to a remnant of the mesophytic forest, bits of which are spread across several states. This ecosystem may be 100 million years old. It was never submerged by rising seas, or erased by glaciers. It was the mother forest for the trees now living in eastern North America.
Sadly, mature trees at Rock Creek, in full foliage, were falling over, their trunks hollowed out by rot. Fungi, supercharged by excess nitrogen, were now able to penetrate the bark. Trees were producing up to 80 percent fewer seeds. John Flynn was among the pioneers in reporting the acid rain story to the national media. He was harshly criticized by both industry and the U.S. Forest Service.
Once, on a visit to England, Little met an elderly sailor who had visited Oregon as a young man. The immense virgin forests had amazed him. Little did not tell the old fellow that those ancient forests were mostly gone now, and that industry was eager to destroy the ten percent that remained. It took the Brits a thousand years to exterminate their ancient forest. Americans largely did it in one generation, thanks to better technology and mass hysteria.
The vast white pine forests that once stretched from Maine to Minnesota never recovered. Deciduous trees took their place. Ancient forests are not renewable resources. “In clear-cutting such forests, then, we not only kill the trees that are cut, but we annihilate the possibility of such trees for all time.” Forests are incredibly complex ecosystems, and logging disrupts a state of balance that took eons to develop. Many wildlife species cannot survive on cutover lands. A monoculture tree plantation is not a forest, and is more vulnerable to cold, drought, pests, and diseases.
Little visited Colorado, where many forests were brown and dead. The original forest was exterminated about 100 years ago. The second growth that replaced it was a different mix of species, mostly shade-tolerant, which were more vulnerable to spruce budworms. These trees were densely packed together, thanks to a strategy of fire suppression — promptly extinguishing every wildfire. The dense growth was attractive to budworms, which weakened the trees. Then the bark beetles were able to finish them off. Dead forests loaded with fuel invite fire.
Native Americans controlled fuel buildup with periodic low-level burns, but this is impossible today, because of the massive accumulations of fuel. There is no undo button for a century of mistakes. The government cannot afford to thin overgrown forests and remove the excess fuel from many millions of acres, so the stage is set for catastrophic fires. There will come a day when the cost and availability of oil makes modern high-tech firefighting impossible.
Forests often die in slow motion. A speedy decline might take 25 years, and be invisible to casual observers. Forest death increased in the twentieth century, following the extermination of ancient forests. It worsened after World War II, as pollution levels increased. Climate change is likely to cause additional harm.
A vital lesson in this book is to never automatically believe anything. Master the art of critical thinking, and always question authority. Our culture is out of its mind, and many of its deeply held beliefs are bull excrement. Each generation innocently passes this load of excrement to the next, because it’s all they know.
Here’s my favorite passage: “A hand will be raised at the back of the room. ‘But what can we do?’ the petitioner will ask. Do? What can we do? What a question that is when we scarcely understand what we have already done!”
In a series of stories, Little’s book informs readers that industrial civilization and healthy forests do not mix. But it barely scratches the surface of the harms caused by the logging industry, or the many other industries. When I proudly received my golden meal ticket from the university, I was dumber than a box of rocks. I was well trained to spend the rest of my days striving for respect and status by shopping the planet to pieces.
Today, as the clock is running out on industrial civilization, it’s essential to better understand what we have already done. We won’t discover every fatal defect, because our way of life is overloaded with them, but the ones that we can see are more likely to be addressed. We are on a dead end path. We would be wise to outgrow our habits and illusions, and remember how to live.
Little recommends the obvious — sharply reverse population growth, end the extermination of forests, plant billions of trees, and stop industrial pollution. He cautions readers that we’re well beyond the point where the damage can be repaired. Our task today is damage control — learning, growing, teaching, and mindfully reducing the harm we cause each day. The book does not conclude with the traditional slop bucket of magical thinking. His straight talk is refreshing.
June 17, 2017
The content of this book, while old at this point, is fine. The writing style of Mr. Little is insufferable. Every point is a chance to make a smarmy jab at someone or point out how well educated he is. This is exactly the attitude that turns off huge portions of the population from environmentalism or science in general. Fifty percent of the words could be removed and the book would be 100% better.
May 30, 2021
I picked up the book casually from the lounge of our school forest and was totally captivated as soon as I started reading. As a younger generation forester in training, I found the book reveals to me a different forest than the one that I am learning about and hiking through. It tells the stories of the immense changes that have taken place in the different forests across the United States. We often hear about the story of the decline of American chestnut, but there are many more tree species -- flowering dogwood, red spruce, ponderosa pine - that are just as iconic to the American forests, which have gone through great declines due to various anthropogenic causes that include far more than invasive fungi and pests. Acid deposition and air pollution are weakening forest health, in slow motion. The book helped me to open my eyes to see things that are beyond what I look at when I walk through a forest: the decline of flowering dogwood, the shifted soil environment, the bias present in our forest research because of the funding process, the disappearing old-growth groves...
My favorite quote from the book:
"I do not wish to be cynical about the good-hearted people who are trying to save the trees. But I do worry about the decoupling -- about not understanding that the system is sick and that while we can rush in with palliatives and first aid here and there, we cannot cure the underlying illness by this means. It surely is the human industrial society that has brought this tree sickness on. But I do not think we can automatically assume that the same genius at organizations and technological innovation that produces automobiles with climate control and DNA cow-injections to increase milk production and the Mario Brothers on Nintendo machines to create what advertisers call a better life -- that the same genius can use the same tools and techniques and capabilities that have been destroying the planet and make it well.
I love those who plant trees, despite the odds, and those who labor long in field tests and laboratories to develop a way around arboreal mortality. But the facts must be faced, and argued about, and then dealt with frontally, not eluded or suppressed or painted over by breathless good-news press-release optimism. "You are looking into fog," write Wittgenstein in a self-chiding aphorism that we might well apply to ourselves, "and for that reason persuade yourself that the goal is already close. But the fog disperses and the goal is not yet in sight." We have a problem on this planet that we had better see clearly and not shrink from. Too many trees are dying. "
Another favorite quote that Charles Little quoted from Henry David Thoreau: "The question is not what you look at, but what you see." -- Henry David Thoreau, journals, November 16, 1850
My favorite quote from the book:
"I do not wish to be cynical about the good-hearted people who are trying to save the trees. But I do worry about the decoupling -- about not understanding that the system is sick and that while we can rush in with palliatives and first aid here and there, we cannot cure the underlying illness by this means. It surely is the human industrial society that has brought this tree sickness on. But I do not think we can automatically assume that the same genius at organizations and technological innovation that produces automobiles with climate control and DNA cow-injections to increase milk production and the Mario Brothers on Nintendo machines to create what advertisers call a better life -- that the same genius can use the same tools and techniques and capabilities that have been destroying the planet and make it well.
I love those who plant trees, despite the odds, and those who labor long in field tests and laboratories to develop a way around arboreal mortality. But the facts must be faced, and argued about, and then dealt with frontally, not eluded or suppressed or painted over by breathless good-news press-release optimism. "You are looking into fog," write Wittgenstein in a self-chiding aphorism that we might well apply to ourselves, "and for that reason persuade yourself that the goal is already close. But the fog disperses and the goal is not yet in sight." We have a problem on this planet that we had better see clearly and not shrink from. Too many trees are dying. "
Another favorite quote that Charles Little quoted from Henry David Thoreau: "The question is not what you look at, but what you see." -- Henry David Thoreau, journals, November 16, 1850
September 17, 2008
I picked this up in a used bookstore in Eureka, California. I had just visited the redwoods for the first time and was in an environmental mood. The author looks at the lumber industry and the condition of our forested lands. He tells about many kinds of trees, including redwoods, sequoias, and bristlecone. He recounts the damage being done by acid rain, forest fires, and industrial emissions. The book tells it like it is without an alarmist tone. I enjoyed reading this.
A woods walker knows when there is an infestation [of gypsy-moth caterpillars] from the sheer noise of thousands of caterpillars defecating frass, the droppings which rattle on dry leaves below in an unmistakable pitter-pat that for all the world sounds like a summer rain, even though the sun may be out and the day clear. It is not a comforting sound.
A woods walker knows when there is an infestation [of gypsy-moth caterpillars] from the sheer noise of thousands of caterpillars defecating frass, the droppings which rattle on dry leaves below in an unmistakable pitter-pat that for all the world sounds like a summer rain, even though the sun may be out and the day clear. It is not a comforting sound.
February 15, 2024
The full picture of how our forests throughout the U.S. are stressed. The author has first hand interviews with experts(scientists) who can explain what we are going through now and in the past 30 years due to the increase of several factors(moths, bugs, CO2) which are killing our national forest.
His writing is easy to read and intended for the public. We must begin doing different management of our national forests so all the Nature is not seriously injured.
His writing is easy to read and intended for the public. We must begin doing different management of our national forests so all the Nature is not seriously injured.
July 12, 2019
the understory study of the Overstory, perhaps one background read by Powers. Bought book at Kiwanis Thrift in Black Mountain, NC. Published 1995, subtitled The Pandemic of America's Forests.
Then, as now still.
Then, as now still.
October 12, 2009
Enough can't be said of the importance of thinking before you act. Here is an example of that on a large scale. Many people just don't see how things are so interconnected, tip the scale here and something goes haywire there. this book is a wake-up call that can't be ignored.
January 12, 2017
This book was good. I like that Mr. Little has an objective viewpoint on the topic, which still reveals a great amount of danger that north American trees are in. Many of these can be directly or indirectly attributed to industrial society. If trees die, animals and fungi die.
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