Being Beech Leaves

Forestry specialists once thought that the only tree that could flourish in an area with sandy, nutrient-deficient soil near Bamberg, Germany were pines.  So that is what they planted.   They also planted beech trees to help the pines by neutralizing their acidic needles in the soil with their fallen beech leaves.  They did not expect to harvest any of the beeches and saw them only as a helper species.

What the foresters discovered over time was surprising.  As they expected, the beech leaves added an alkaline humus to the soil that was able to store water, unlike the sandy soil.  In addition, the leaves of the beeches slowed down the wind that blew through the forest which reduced the amount of water that evaporated from the forest.  This added water allowed the beeches to grow more and they actually grew taller than the pines.  

Forestry students found that a beech forest was up to fifty degrees Fahrenheit cooler than a nearby thinned pine forest on a hot summer day.  The thinned pine forest allowed sunshine to heat up the forest floor and the wind could dry it out as well.  So the supposed “helper” trees, the beeches, actually changed the microclimate of the forest to their benefit and they grew better than the pines because of this.

I heard this story in The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben, a German forester who is challenging some of the commonly held ideas that the forestry industry holds about trees.  Wohlleben has been observing trees for decades and is investigating his ideas in a forest which he now manages.

Since I have a passion for trees and I think we can learn a lot about life from them, I wondered how this particular story could instruct human life.  I liked the idea of changing a microclimate.  Well, I didn’t have to wait long before a news story caught my interest.

The story  was that Charlie Angus, MP for Timmins-James Bay and NDP Indigenous Affairs Critic was putting forth a motion to get the government to make an emergency injection of $115 million for Indigenous Child Welfare Services to comply with legal orders from the United Nations Human Rights Tribunal.  In January, this tribunal found that the Canadian federal government has “consistently failed to provide” services to First Nations children compared to what the provinces provide for other children in Canada.  The tribunal has issued two compliance orders to get the federal government to take immediate action to end funding shortfalls.  The government has committed $635 million dollars in its budget but the bulk of that won’t be spent for another five or six years.  Meanwhile children and families are suffering.

Charlie Angus

Angus who represents Northern Ontario communities such as Attawapiskat knows first hand what this suffering looks like. To read more about this check out an earlier blog post .

Senator Murray Sinclair of the TRC said, "Canada's discriminatory policies have led to greater failed, and failing, interventions into the lives of Indigenous families than residential schools, and serious changes must be undertaken," he said Monday. "I cannot overstate how important it is that the federal government immediately comply with the orders of the independent Human Rights Tribunal."

A member of Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s economic  advisory council, entrepreneur Carol Anne Hilton wrote, "I support this motion to call on the federal government to take immediate measures to implement the human rights tribunal's direction for compliance with the immediate measures to end racial discrimination of First Nations kids."

Well, this reminded me of the story of the pine and beech trees.  The pines which were the trees of interest, supposedly the more hardy, powerful and financially important species seemed to me like the status quo of government inaction on this issue.  Picture, if you will, evenly spaced out pine trees, not touching each other with pine needles high in the sky, far from the forest floor. 

However, the climate in Canada  for this issue has been changing.  There are more news articles and TV coverage of Indigenous issues than ever before and we hear about kids committing suicide and the sad state of affairs on reserves.  The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has publicized the stories told by Indigenous people of their experiences in residential schools.  Artists and musicians are telling these stories and personalizing them.  Canadians are learning about these issues and are often shocked and horrified at the fourth world conditions that people are living in, while feeling hopeless about their ability to make any difference.  

It seemed to me that all these artistic expressions, personal stories, news stories and the people who are hearing them are like so many leaves on the beech trees.  They are filling in the spaces amid the pine trunks.  They are shading the forest floor and slowing down the wind so people can listen, really listen and learn.  They are slowing down the evaporation of stories that are here one day and gone the next in the mainstream media.  The stories are staying with us, we are digesting them, we are feeling all kinds of emotions and we are wanting change.  The climate is changing in the midst of government bureaucracies and policies.

And so on Nov. 1, 2016, the motion was brought before the House of Commons and it passed unanimously.  The beech trees are flourishing.  Certainly, the NDP will play a big role in making sure this money gets spent in the right places to affect change.  And for the rest of us, it is easy to email politicians and encourage them to do the right thing or to congratulate them on making a decision you think is good.  The important thing to remember is that all the beech leaves together changed the climate in the forest.  Fallen beech leaves, new beech leaves, mature beech leaves and papery brown dead leaves that stay put on branches even in the winter -- they all played their part.   

This is a different way of understanding how things work.  It bears thinking about because it is our story. This is a story that the trees have been telling and now so are we.

Wohlleben, P. (2015). The Hidden Life of Trees: What they Feel, How They Communicate. Vancouver: David Suzuki Institute.