Ashes to Ashes (and oaks to oaks)

Can something be tragic and inspiring at once?

For me, the ash disaster is both.

“Death to the Ash!” means "Life to the Oaks!" (and hundreds 

of other declining species)! Or at least it can...

In many forest preserves, ash trees were the major invasives that have been destroying oak woodland and savanna ecosystems.

Flaky bark means dead ash. These were left to the borers when this savanna was restored.

When scientists 

told us that the emerald ash borer would kill all our big ash trees, it seemed at first hard to believe.  

We could have waited (sort of like “climate change deniers”)
to see if the scientists were right. 

But instead we stopped cutting big ash as we restored our 

oak savannas and woodlands. 

Why stop? 

We trusted the science, and, indeed the beetles did the work for us.

There’s urgency here. Thousands of populations of hundreds of species are dying out year after year because of the shade of ash and other quick-growing "weed trees." 

Why waste our work and time?
We now cut buckthorn, box elder, basswood and similar invasives, but we leave the ash. 

Beetles
can dispatch them.

It's challenging to educate people to appreciate the evil of too much darkness. Death by shade is different from death by bullet or auto crash. It’s harder for people to understand - or feel. But whether from

Hundreds of animal and plant species now have a second chance.

shade or from clear-cutting for a mall, the ecosystem is equally dead. Oaks of all ages love light and need it. Shade is like cancer for a prairie or oak woodland, a slow and ugly killer.

In the 1800s, when the regular fires stopped, white and green ash from the ravines and floodplains began to overrun our oak woodlands and savannas just as destructively as the other invasives. But now, with ash death, a huge opportunity has opened up for tens of thousands of acres.

Owners of conservation land are making plans to convert the misfortune of the ashes to the fortune of the oaks – and a potentially miraculous recovery of the plants and animals that depend on the open oak ecosystems.  Should I list a few? Gray fox, blue-spotted salamander, creamy wild pea, ruby-throated hummingbird, purple milkweed, and great-spangled fritillary.  

In areas of many ash trees, half the work is now being done for us. Before new light gaps fill with invasives, these areas deserve quick plans and action. What does that mean? Cut other key invasives,

This dismal photo shows a dead bur oak, leaning across the foreground. It died of shade

 from faster-growing ash and basswood, in the absence of fire. Gone with the oaks are 

hundreds of other species. How can we teach people to see this? 

start controlled burns, re-seed if needed, and provide the education and political support that goes with all the above.

We mourn the ash, an important component of many non-oak forests. At the same time – we celebrate the liberation of animals and plants of the oak lands. Huge noble areas that seemed doomed now have a chance to thrive again.

Ashes to ashes

When they die, they’ll stand for years as habitat for beetles and woodpeckers and flying squirrels and great crested flycatchers. Some people will argue to cut them all down. Nature wants them to stand for the decade or more as they have their "second life" as yet another irreplaceable habitat. Someday their weathered trunks will fall. Then a slowly rotting log on the ground is yet a third habitat. That log means salamanders, frogs, snails, beetles, roly-polies, mushrooms, and places for us to sit and contemplate the miracle of lives. Ultimately, beautiful and life-giving burns will consume each log. Ashes to ashes.

Eastern bluebird on scarlet oak branch. These handsome creatures now 

breed again at Somme. Hundreds of less-easy-to-see species also need 

the dappled light of open oaks and now-rare diversity that oaks support.  

(Photo by Lisa Culp)

Oaks to oaks  

When oaks aren’t reproducing their cute little baby oaks, some people imagine we must be seeing a natural process called “succession.” It’s the opposite. When the once light-dappled floor of the oak woodland is clotted with dark invaders, whether ash or buckthorn or maple or whatever – the rich, ancient ecosystem dies. Oaks are the foundation of a community that is the Earth’s only home for thousands of species that don’t live in other kinds of woods. Now rare flycatchers, woodpeckers, mushrooms, nematodes, walking sticks, shrubs, foxgloves, grasses, sedges, ants, lichens, rare and potentially-important bacteria as well as other tree species all depend on our oak woods. Let's rescue them from the oblivion of extinction. Now's the time. Save them!