276 pages
6 x 9
12 illustrations
America was built on white pine. From the 1600s through the Civil War and beyond, it was used to build the nation’s ships and houses, barns, and bridges. It became a symbol of independence, adorning the Americans’ flag at Bunker Hill, and an economic engine, generating three times more wealth than the California gold rush. Yet this popularity came at a cost: by the end of the 19th century, clear cutting had decimated much of America’s white pine forests. In White Pine: The Natural and Human History of a Foundational American Tree, ecologist and writer John Pastor takes readers on walk through history, connecting the white pine forests that remain today to a legacy of destruction and renewal.
Since the clear-cutting era, naturalists, foresters, and scientists have taken up the quest to restore the great white pine forests. White Pine follows this centuries-long endeavor, illuminating how the efforts shaped Americans’ understanding of key scientific ideas, from forest succession to the importance of fire. With his keen naturalist’s eye, Pastor shows us why restoring the vitality of these forests has not been simple: a host of other creatures depend on white pine and white pine depends on them. In weaving together cultural and natural history, White Pine celebrates the way humans are connected to the forest—and to the larger natural world.
Today, white pine forests have begun to recover, but face the growing threat of climate change. White Pine shows us that hope for healthy forests lies in understanding the lessons of history, so that iconic species survive as a touchstone for future generations.
"A slim but quite powerful volume."
Booklist
"Pastor's book, which combines a charming professorial sensibility with the expertise and keen observations of a veteran scientist, is history for a layperson, an introduction to forest ecology, a cautionary tale of reckless natural resource harvesting and a roadmap for sustainable foresting practices to conserve precious woods and enable their flourishing...White Pine's information and reverence for life, as well as the conditions life requires, endow it with value for the layperson, historian and seasoned scientist alike."
Shelf Awareness
"This book contains the rich history of a foundational tree species that has helped sustain life and ecosystem health while shaping a nation. Pastor’s discussion of the fine historical details, such as the Pine Tree Riots, how mean annual increment was created, how white pine blister rust was important for motivating Congress to pass the Plant Quarantine Act, and transition from Indigenous reverence to European exploitation and utilitarianism to modern conservation and sustainability, makes this a must-read for all forestry professionals, naturalists, and others receptive to the teachings of history in pursuit of conserving a legendary tree species and forest ecosystems."
Plant Science Bulletin
"White Pine celebrates the tree, the bedrock of northern natural history, the economic scaffolding of a fledgling nation.… Pastor’s story is excellent and extensive."
Northern Woodlands
"Dr. Pastor’s writing in White Pine wonderfully tells the ecological and cultural importance of white pine. Dr. Pastor keeps the text scientifically appropriate while including touches of humor and informative anecdotes. Readers of all backgrounds interested in natural history, culture, and the cross-section of the two will enjoy this book."
Natural Areas Journal
"White pine, a cultural icon and source of riches to generations, remains an awe-inspiring and yet enigmatic species in forests across eastern North America. Through engaging history, delightful personal narrative, and wide-ranging research, all accented by his wonderfully detailed pen and ink drawings, John Pastor presents the most insightful book yet on one of America’s foundational trees."
David Foster, Director Emeritus, Harvard Forest, author of "A Meeting of Land and Sea" and editor of "Hemlock"
"In a beautiful blend of cultural and natural history, White Pine takes us on a journey to deeply know one species. From that depth comes the surprising discovery of all the life connected to it and a hopeful guide for our shared future."
Lauren E. Oakes, author of "In Search of the Canary Tree"
"John Pastor’s wonderfully evocative writing about this iconic American tree is rooted in a lifetime of science and scholarship. It’s as much a deep history of the relationships between humans and nature as it is the story of a tree and its environment."
Charles Canham, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, author of "Forests Adrift"
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Evolution and Arrival of White Pine
Chapter 2. "A Great Store of Wood and Above All of Pines..."
Chapter 3. A Logger's Paradise
Chapter 4. Thoreau, the Maine Woods, Forest Succession, and Faith in a Seed
Chapter 5. The Watershed
Chapter 6. A Scientific Foundation of White Pine Ecology and Management
Chapter 7. Rusty Pines and Gooseberries
Chapter 8. Roosevelt's Tree Army
Chapter 9. Rebirth by Fire
Chapter 10. Restoring the White Pine
Chapter 11. Climate Change and the Future of White Pine
Afterword
Bibliography
Notes
About the Author
Index
Read chapter 1 below or download it here.
Island Press caught up with John Pastor, author of What Should a Clever Moose Eat? to learn more about natural history, ecology, and the North Woods. Check out the Q&A below, then order your copy of the book to see why Discover magazine said, "Even if you've never been to the North Woods...you will come to appreciate it through ecologist Pastor. With an eye for fine detail and the gentle explication of a born teacher, Pastor crafts a rich biography of one of North America's most beautiful and diverse ecosystems, from the geology of its foundations to the birds in its skies."
You have studied the North Woods for the past 30 years. What first sparked your interest in this area? What has continued to captivate you since then?
Northern regions, the fur trade (which happened largely in the North Woods), and the early exploration of the northern half of the continent have fascinated me ever since I was a young boy. When I was in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, I decided to do my Ph.D. thesis in the North Woods, and I have been thinking about and/or working in the North Woods ever since. The combination of maple, pine, birch, aspen, spruce, fir, and other species not only makes the North Woods an extremely beautiful place to do field work, but the strong contrasts in how different plant and animal species affect the North Woods ecosystem offer us an almost endless array of interesting scientific problems.
Some activists have called for the designation of the North Woods as a National Park or National Monument. What would such a designation mean for the future of the North Woods?
I think this could help with local and regional conservation problems, but it will not help with the largest challenge facing the North Woods, which is global warming. The North Woods only came into existence 6,000 years ago when warming temperatures after the Ice Age allowed maple, birch, pine, spruce, fir, and other species to migrate from different directions into the region from Minnesota to Nova Scotia. With further warming, the unique combination of species which is the North Woods could disassemble and largely disappear.
The difference between the past and future responses of this ecosystem to climate change is that the assembly of the North Woods 6,000 years ago was a natural process, whereas the disassembly of the North Woods in the near future will be a result of our moral failure to take responsibility for changing the way the planet’s climate works.
What role does connecting ecology and observation of the natural world play in tackling the myriad of environmental challenges facing the world?
Ecology, natural history, and observations of the natural world provide the foundation of knowledge we need to face and solve environmental problems. Without this science, we are blind not only to how to solve the problems, but even to the existence of these problems. Even more so, a fascination with how the natural world works is an important part of what it means to be a human being. As Robert Michael Pyle has said, “What we know we may choose to care for. What we fail to recognize, we certainly won’t.” I firmly believe that if people could know, really know, what beautiful, living, working systems lakes, rivers, prairies, wetlands, beaches, and forests are, they would do everything they could to preserve them. Causing the extinction of a species or the demise of an ecosystem would then seem a crime equal to the defacing of the Mona Lisa or the Pietà.
What role can natural history play in helping us understand the effects of climate change on the North Woods? What responsibility do humans have to try and mitigate damaging effects?
The most important aspect of the natural history of an organism is how it interacts with other species and the environment throughout its life cycle. We know precious little about that for most species: most of what we know about the natural history and life cycles of most species is the paragraph on them in a field guide, and not much more. The life cycles of two species that depend on each other or control each other may become decoupled as they respond in different ways to climate change. This may already be happening with warblers and an insect they prey upon, spruce budworms. Spruce budworm caterpillars are emerging earlier in the spring with warming temperatures, and warblers are no longer able to control their population and prevent them from defoliating spruce and fir. To understand if and how interacting species’ life cycles become decoupled with climate change, we need to know much, much more about their natural history.
You write that “natural history questions often arise from simple, serendipitous observations that anyone can make on a walk through the woods.” What opportunities are there for citizen-scientists to get involved in natural history observation or research?
The most useful thing people can do to learn about or contribute to the scientific study of natural history is to begin keeping notebooks and records on the seasonal and annual changes in things like timing of leaf out, bud burst, flowering, emergence of mammals, turtles, and other animals from winter hibernation, emergence of insects throughout the summer, and arrival and departures of migrating birds, and anything else wherever they live. Such records will be valuable not only in understanding the range of life cycles of different species but also how they will change with global warming. For example, naturalists and ecologists are now going back to Thoreau’s notebooks to see how plant and animal species might be responding to global warming during the past two centuries. There are a number of good books on how to keep a field journal, including guidance for drawing illustrations – Keeping a Nature Journal by Clare Walker Leslie and Charles Roth is one of my favorites. Citizen scientists can share these observations with scientists and other observers by uploading their notes to the USA National Phenology Network. Citizen scientists can also assist natural history museums transcribe museum records on specimens into databases for scientists to study by going to Notes from Nature. Finally, find a local natural history organization such as a chapter of Audubon (birds), the Xerces Society (butterflies and insects), Wild Ones (wildflower gardeners), or other similar organizations and become involved with and learn from like-minded people.
You illustrated the book and teach a biological illustration class at the University of Minnesota. What role can art play in how scientists study the natural world?
Biology departments used to require that students learn how make drawings of observations, but in the past several decades this has gone by the wayside. This has been a big mistake. Drawing a specimen or landscape forces you to notice things that you would never notice even by taking carefully written notes. Many of these observations could be the grist for future research. More importantly, drawing or painting an organism engaged in different activities or from different viewpoints or with different techniques helps keep my mind open to new possibilities and ways of thinking about the world.
Was there anything you found in the course of researching and writing this book that surprised you?
After over 30 years of living in and researching the North Woods, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of things, but I was surprised by something while writing every chapter. The most important surprise is how much we still have to learn about the North Woods. A number of years ago I mentioned to a friend we were on the verge of a relatively complete understanding of how the North Woods works. Boy, was I wrong.
What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
Naturalists and ecologists often ask questions that most people consider, well, peculiar. Such as “What should a clever moose eat?” The purpose of this book is to explain why people should care about the questions naturalists and ecologists ask. As we become more urban, many people, especially children, are becoming increasingly estranged from nature. Yet natural history underlies many of today’s policy and legislative issues, including global warming, the sustainable harvesting of resources, the control of predators and insects, and the preservation of species. Natural history is the underpinning to conservation, to natural resource management, and to human health and food supply. We need to help people re-engage a sense of delight and wonder in the natural world to address these practical problems.
If the reader lives in the North Woods, I hope this book encourages them to go into the woods and observe things for themselves. If the reader does not live in the North Woods, then the natural history of where they live is the best place to start. When I was in college, there was a popular poster that proclaimed: “The real world is outside. Get into it!” I hope this book gets people outside into whatever biome they live in.
Want more from John Pastor? Check out the #ForewordFriday: North Woods Edition to read an excerpt of the book or read his blog on the movement to designate the North Woods as a national monument.
How long should a leaf live? When should blueberries ripen? What should a clever moose eat?
Ecologist John Pastor answers these questions and more as he explores the natural history of the North Woods in his new collection of essays, What Should a Clever Moose Eat? Beginning with the geological history of the region and moving through the arrival of plants, herbivores, predators, and finally humans, Pastor is a joyful observer of nature who makes the North Woods come alive for scientists and non-scientists alike. Take a walk in John Pastor’s North Woods—you’ll come away with a new appreciation for the game trails, beaver ponds, and patterns of growth around you, and you won’t look at the natural world in the same way again.
Check out an excerpt of the book below.
Unable to gather support from Maine's congressional delegation, supporters of a North Woods national park are now setting their sights on a new goal: getting President Obama to designate the North Woods as a national monument. We asked John Pastor, an ecologist with 40 years of experience studying the North Woods and author of What Should a Clever Moose Eat?, to weigh in on the debate.
The North Woods is a magnificent band of forest, stretching from northern Minnesota to Nova Scotia, and is home to moose, wolves, beaver, bobcat, lynx, loons, and many other iconic northern animals. The North Woods is where the range of sugar maple to the south overlaps the range of balsam fir and spruce to the north. This is the land of fall colors, Christmas trees, and maple syrup.
The beauty of the North Woods has been preserved in many parks, recreation areas, and wilderness areas throughout much of its range. These parks have been kingpins of the economy of the surrounding region. But, as Aldo Leopold said, natural preserves are also “land laboratories” where we can learn how nature works to help us better manage the natural resources outside them. These land laboratories need to be large to encompass the scales of ecological processes such as fires, watersheds, and animal movements, among many others. Many of our ideas in ecology have been shaped by research in the large preserves of the North Woods. How fire controls the dynamics of forests was first documented in the million-acre Boundary Waters Wilderness of northern Minnesota. The long-term research on wolf-moose and moose-vegetation relationships in the 575,000 acre Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior are classic studies in population and ecosystem dynamics. The concept of a watershed to protect the headwaters of the Hudson River was the basis for the preservation of the six million-acre Adirondack Park in New York.
Photo credit: John Pastor
But east of the Adirondacks, there are few nature preserves of the size needed to understand how this part of the North Woods works. The largest is the 209,000 acre Baxter State Park in Maine, home to Mt. Katahdin at the end of the Appalachian Trail. But now, due to the generosity of the Quimby Family Foundation, an additional 100,000 acres is available for preservation adjacent to Baxter State Park. This is the area Thoreau wrote about in “The Maine Woods.” Together, Baxter State Park and Katahdin Woods will be the largest preserve of North Woods east of the Adirondacks. Discussions are underway for this tract of land to be awarded federal protection as a national monument, recreation area, or perhaps park.
Katahdin Woods and Baxter together will make a valuable land laboratory for learning about the North Woods. This area of Maine differs from the rest of the North Woods in several important respects that will determine how it will respond to climate change, the largest ecological problem facing this biome. There is a strong gradient from wet maritime climate in Maine to a dry continental climate in Minnesota, and it is unlikely that the North Woods will respond to climate change in the same way at both ends of its range. Maine is the center of the range of red spruce, which does not extend much farther west than the Adirondacks, and how red spruce will respond to a warmer climate is currently unknown.
Three hundred thousand acres of natural preserve in the center of Maine’s North Woods would greatly enhance our ability to address these and other questions in ecology. As is the case with almost every national park or monument, federal designation for Katahdin Woods is bathed in controversy at the moment. But if we take the long view Aldo Leopold had, the preservation of Katahdin Woods will eventually be hailed as a vision with great foresight.
We asked our authors: In today's age of slacktivism, has Earth Day become meaningless as a way to make impactful environmental change? Check out what they had to say below.
Travis Beck, author of Principles of Ecological Landscape Design
April 22nd, Earth Day, is also National Jelly Bean Day. How should one celebrate National Jelly Bean Day? The internet suggests guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar, making jelly bean jewelry, or, simply, eating lots of jelly beans. The internet also suggests a number of ways to celebrate Earth Day in my immediate area. They include an Earth Day Celebration, an Earth concert, an Earth Day cleanup, a film screening, a moonlight hike, a 5k run/walk, an Earth Day festival, and an Earth Day fair. Or, if you’ve been invited to United Nations headquarters on that day, you could sign a global climate agreement.
All of this—the jelly beans, the festivals, and the signing ceremony—falls under the heading of marketing. The Earth needs good marketing. It’s too easy to ignore the pervasive, perplexing, and long term environmental issues we face in the rush of everyday life. Those recent video spots from Conservation International with Julia Roberts as the voice of Mother Nature, etc. are impactful, but a bit grim. Why not go on a moonlight hike instead, take in a film, wander a fair, or think about your nation’s CO2 emissions? And while you’re at it, enjoy a few jelly beans. Green ones.
John Pastor, author of What Should a Clever Moose Eat?
We have holidays to celebrate the planting of trees, the harvest, the four key points that define the Earth’s orbit (the solstices and the equinoxes), so why not a holiday to celebrate the whole Earth? And so we do, Earth Day, April 22. When Senator Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day in 1970, he hoped to promote environmental activism and demonstrations, especially on campuses. Today, some campuses still have demonstrations against environmental degradation, but these are not as large as they once were. But I am encouraged by the growth of many environmental and nature organizations since the first Earth Day, such as the Xerces Society for the conservation of rare insects, WildOnes for the establishment of native plant gardens, and many others. Demonstrations on Earth Day may not be as common, but people seem to be putting their energy into actively doing something for and learning about nature and the environment. Nonetheless, the idea of Earth Day as a day to celebrate the wonder of life on our planet home is still worthwhile. So celebrate Earth Day: if it makes you feel good, find and join a local environmental or nature organization in your area.
Yoram Bauman, author of Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change
Earth Day is a way of connecting like-minded people who care about sustainability, and hopefully (as with the Yes on 732 carbon tax campaign I’m part of in Washington State) those connections lead to more and deeper types of involvement!
Rob McDonald, author of Conservation for Cities
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”- a hackneyed quotation, but a true one. Yes, the kinds of minimal individual actions sometimes promoted for Earth Day don’t add up to much themselves. Given the magnitude of the challenge of climate change, for instance, biking to work one day a week is a pretty minor step toward reducing my carbon footprint. Similarly, avoiding food waste in my home is only a teeny step toward reducing global agricultural production. These kind of good first steps have some value on their own, but their real value is getting people to be educated and committed to an issue. For a small subset of people, these kind of first steps lead to bigger, more significant steps. Or they may lead to political support for broader legal or policy changes that do have a meaningful environmental impact. So, instead of criticizing the “slacktivists”, tell them what other steps they should take next, if they want to prove greater dedication to the environmental cause.