Left on their own, some deforested areas can rebound surprisingly fast with minimal help from humans, sequestering loads of atmospheric carbon as they grow.
New research from an international team of scientists, recently published in the journal Nature, finds that 830,000 square miles of deforested land in humid tropical regions — an area larger than Mexico — could regrow naturally if left on its own. Five countries — Brazil, Indonesia, China, Mexico, and Colombia — account for 52 percent of the estimated potential regrowth.
As with these reforesting projects in the UK. Stop doing something else with the land and the forest will grow back. Because the forest is the natural state of that land – it didn’t have humans planting it first time around now, did it?
One result of this is that the “never get the forests back” shit is, well, it’s shit. Much of the Amazon was clear cut before Whitey turned up and killed everyone with smallpox. All of New England was.
Secondly, those who would reforest now. OK, you do that with your land. And you can fuck off about having any of our money to do so. Because all you’ve got to do is keep the deer out and then sit there and watch.
Nae Subsidies!
We have a big plum tree in our garden. Little plum trees continously pop up everywhere.
There are a couple of places I’ve lived in Somerset – the Blackdown Hills and the Hadspen valley – where I’ve followed my dogs off the beaten track and stumbled on abandoned houses and outbuildings now consumed by the forest. It’s an arresting experience, when you see how much effort the inhabitants of those buildings must once have expended to keep the forest at bay, and how readily that forest returns.
I do remember when we came here and built the old family home. The ‘park’ at the back of the house had plenty of second growth trees on it. All gone now of course. It’s regularly mowed by the council.
So yes. If someone wanted the local bush to regenerate, all they’d need to do is leave things alone. As Paul points out.
I thought that lesson was learned after the hurricane that wasn’t reduced Seven Oaks to One Oak?
Areas where the great and good managed the recovery didn’t recover but all the areas left to their own devices soon recovered.
Yes, I’d forgotten that one….
When I were knee high to a grasshopper, there were various charidee “buy an acre of the Amazon” schemes, to prevent deforestation. I’m pretty sure I am myself nominally owner of at least one acre of the Amazon, out of juvenile idiocy, just as I am nominally owner (out of a promotion of greater profit to both myself and the promoter) of one square foot of peat bog somewhere near a Scottish whisky distillery.
I wonder what actually happened to all the money thus collected.
Stonyground: « We have a big plum tree in our garden. Little plum trees continously pop up everywhere. »
Hence your name, I imagine?
I can confirm that stopping nature from taking over is a nonstop battle. Remove the human beings from the picture and 100 years from now everything would be a one massive forest. You’d have to go looking for the cities.
BiND: « I thought that lesson was learned after the hurricane that wasn’t… »
That was my first thought too: all the manic replanting after the 1987 storm prospered far less well than areas that were allowed to recover naturally as, er, nature intended.
Much of the Amazon was clear cut before Whitey turned up and killed everyone with smallpox.
Probably not. It wasn’t the sort of agriculture they practised. What they did was more like gardening. Discouraging plants they didn’t use & encouraging plants they did. Not fields of all one crop. The classic way to grow maize is together with beans & a squash. Each plant aids the others. Manioca would be grown together with other plants.
Why this obsession with trees? Pretty well any vegetation will convert x amount of sunlight into y amount of plant matter. You might temporarily sequester some carbon in tree wood. You want to sequester carbon long term, in soil’s the best bet. Grazed pasture’s effective. The best would be land regularly ploughed & used for crops. That really does create high carbon content soil rapidly.
You got a Victorian park near you go look at it. The paths were originally laid above the level to drain water. Now the ground usually slopes down towards the path. And the paths will usually have been repeatedly resurfaced over that time. A century or more of mowing will probably have created about 3 foot of high carbon soil.
Trees that self-seeded are a joy. I’ve got an Irish Yew and a Holly which did that from parents in neighbouring gardens, both of which have been moved to where I want ’em, but tread lightly on nature and it will bounce back.
Possibly the greatest self-seeded tree is the Bramley Apple which with a bit of brown sugar crumble is simply amazing.
“This article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.”
As usual they’re lying… They used the wrong letter in their name and thought people’d never notice..
And as usual… Geographer, Environmentologist, etc…
No-one of those ever thought to ask actual biologists anything, because they already know the answer.. In detail, with models and examples and properly described sequences for various climate zones and environments.
But it bagged a nice grant, lots of travel to exotic locations, and 5 minutes of fame where they could properly virtue signal announcing they re-invented the wheel…
Steve!! Where’s your Lions at? Got Lunch for them.
Got to shoot a few more deer if you want the forests back up here.
I am aghast. Not me, guv, honest…
A consequence of rewildng is a loss of local biodiversity. You get one dominant tree species and not much else in each environmental zone.
A consequence of rewildng is a loss of local biodiversity. You get one dominant tree species and not much else in each environmental zone.
Indeed. In nature the species most suited to the environment dominates.
Back to that Amazonian forest. One of the clues to the farming activities of the Indios is the diversity. There is far more diversity than one would expect to naturally occur. Species should dominate. They don’t.
If you allowed the entirety of the UK to rewild, eventually there would be far less diversity. Conifers in the north. Deciduous woodland in the south. Maybe a bit of grassland on places like the Downs with thin soils over chalk. And the limited numbers of animal species could prosper in those environments. Diversity in the UK is the result of land management.
It’s interesting to think of what would happen if the UK did re-wild. There’s no reason to think it would return to what it was pre-humans. What got established after the ice sheets retreated was largely a matter of luck & you’re shaking the dice again. It’s not just a matter of reintroducing now vanished species. It’d require active suppression of existing species. Or you might just end up with thousands of square miles of rhododendrons, rats & feral cats.
Or you might just end up with thousands of square miles of rhododendrons, rats & feral cats.
Indeed, BiS
Or, in the absence of predators (I doubt wolves and lynx can swim the Channel) you might end up with millions of deer and hardly any trees at all. Unless the lions in Steve’s head are real.
@Philip Before you know it, the rats, cats, and the pigs will have figured out how to snack on deer.
If, given enough time, the deer themselves don’t spin off a cousin that snacks on its cousins… The herbivore to carnivore route has been walked regularly, and seems to be much easier than the other way around…
If people here haven’t read it, “The World Without Us” is an interesting read on this topic. Very matter of fact about our impact on the “natural” world (yes even the perfectly-at-one-with-the-land-and-seasons-tree-hugging-indigenous-tribes were murderous bastards when it came to megafauna), which bits of it would return to normal relatively quickly without us, and which bits wouldn’t. Written only in 2010, its references to “gender-bending” chemicals (endocrine disruptors) feels like they’re from another epoch. Probably a bit too Mother Gaia and all that for the typical Worstallian commenter, I suspect, but informative nonetheless.
https://amzn.eu/d/2fTFY4C
My school used to have tennis courts, which have been abandoned for at least 10 years. They’re now covered with trees, some are nearly 10 metres tall.
@BiG- I have a square foot of Islay too, courtesy of Laphroaig.
“Conifers in the north. Deciduous woodland in the south”.
With minor editing Wokeypedia reports:
With the continent’s geographical isolation from Britain, the British landscape developed into a patchwork of five broad wildwood provinces determined largely by local geography. These provinces were (1) pine in the eastern Scottish Highlands; (2) birch in the western Scottish Highlands; (3) oak-hazel in southern Scotland, northern England, most of Wales, and parts of Ireland; (4) hazel-elm across most of Ireland and southwest Wales; and (5) lime in lowland England.
As you see, oak was more characteristic of the northish/westish bits of the British Isles than of lowland England.