The Gardens & History Farm’s missions: saving NW native plant species and pioneer relics: eras BC to WW II, with a focus on botanical and cultural diversity. WWU’s SAM project led to the recent posts’ focus on herbicides, many native plant species illustrate extinction
slopes. Followers’ comments broaden that interest with an amazing list of forces contributing to plant extinctions, particularly within the Salish Sea. It appears that Puget Sound’s most meaningful history begins after 1945:
Clear-cutting: “I remember the slash fires in the spring and Fall on the Tree Farm. Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, have not noticed them burning for decades now” … as forestry practices have changed.
Herbicides: “Canadians sensitivity to the Nootka Island photo is the stark whiteness of the clear-cut” … compared to the brown aerial photos of smaller US private tree farms. White indicates large: 1) frequencies, 2) strength, and 3) amounts of herbicides applied, with excesses washing to the sea.
Economics: New forestry practices may have added a trillion $’s revenue per year for schools and forest owners (including public DNR lands … statement implies 50/50, not 1/99 that it is); WA planted 56 million Douglas Fir clones last year, making “sustainable diversity” an oxymoron.
Ownership: Most large private tree farms are corporate with far and distant owners. “When I think of redwoods today, I think of the Oakland A’s going to Las Vegas.”
Clones: Douglas Fir, by biomass, leads; but there are many other clone crops today: apples, strawberries, wheat …
Rodenticides: “not only sprayed, but a lot of seed stock (grains especially) are treated with a rodenticide. How do I know this? We planted winter wheat, and I popped a few kernels in my mouth before planting
Pesticides: “Herbicide and pesticide use has exploded 1990 to present” (see graphs). Neonicotinoids, banned in the EU, are destroying bees and insect populations. Unfathomable amounts of herbicides are destroying habitats for insects and wildlife populations nationwide. Herbicide spraying continues in forestry, although aerial spraying has been mostly replaced with manual hack and squirt.’ Up-to-date information on herbicide use in forestry is hard to obtain.” PLC affirms; it appears many of these topics have been scrubbed from the Internet.
Resistance: “Mutating insects, fungi, etc. are often halted within biodiversity, but clones, all having the same DNR, are a nourishing Petrie dish. Each generation of clones creates need for pesticides with greater: 1) frequencies, 2) strength, and 3) amounts.” The graphs of growth in resistance match the growth of both herbicides and pesticides.
Puget Sound: an imperfect toilet, it takes 152 days to flush completely (with no new pollutants incoming). The Georgia Straits currents run south; Canada’s toxins are Puget Sounds’ problem.
Plastics: 2019 was the 1st year all ~200 UW’s Puget Sound monitoring stations reported plastic nodules, that evaporate with toxins entrapped, travel by air and are now found in Rocky Mountain lakes. (93% of plastics in the ocean derive from 8 Asia and 2 Africa rivers, but no nation can talk unless they “walk the walk” 100%.)
The list goes on and on: Crispr, GMO post Crispr, human pollution, new viruses, plutonium, 6G microwaves, Artificial Intelligence, accelerating climate change, etc. Modern history, not ancient, all within this writer’s lifetime. Key points: 1) all after 1944 and 2) so many forces lining up (20 mentioned herein) to attack Puget Sound. Our governments, deeply involved in sharing a cloned species, clear-cutting, herbicide and pesticide forestry revenue and profits, are compromised. If there is a “straw that breaks the camel’s back,” the more negative variables that exist make the probability great. Will our grandchildren wake up one day to a suddenly dead sea?
It appears that most of the environmental challenges facing mankind today were created after the year:
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