Cooperation. Not competition.

After the catastrophic fires last summer, discussions quickly shifted to salvage logging--logging in order to recover whatever economic value that remains.

Why not leave those trees alone?

In fact, we should leave those trees alone and let them go through a natural process of death, says Suzanne Simard. 

Why?  

Because old dying trees have a lot to pass along to the young ones, Simard argues.  We need to remember "how old trees contribute to the next generations — that they have agency in the next generations."  Through salvage logging, "if we go in and cut them right away, we're actually short-circuiting that natural process."

A tree in a forest is not simply a tree.  It is a part of a system in which trees take care of each other. "Trees are "social creatures" that communicate with each other in cooperative ways that hold lessons for humans, too."

The communication and cooperation is not always visible to us:

Simard used radioactive isotopes of carbon to trace how trees share resources and information with one another through an intricately interconnected network of mycorrhizal fungi that colonize trees’ roots. In more recent work, she has found evidence that trees recognize their own kin and favor them with the lion’s share of their bounty, especially when the saplings are most vulnerable.

Among the religions, I suppose Jainism is the only one that would wholeheartedly endorse such a view, given that religion's acute attention to life and the natural environment.

If trees are cooperating so much, doesn't that contradict the popular understanding of Charles Darwin's argument that it is one hell of a competition out there and that only the fittest will survive? 

Darwin also understood the importance of cooperation. He knew that plants lived together in communities, and he wrote about it. It’s just that it never got the same traction as his natural-selection-based-on-competition theory.

Nowadays we look at things like the human genome and realize that a lot of our DNA is of viral or bacterial origin. We now know that we ourselves are consortiums of species that evolved together. It’s becoming more mainstream to think that way.

 If Darwin knew that, how come science ditched it?

We started very simply: we looked at single organisms, then we looked at single species, then we started to look at communities of species and then at ecosystems and then at even higher levels of organization. So Western science has gone from the simple to the complex. It’s changed naturally as we’ve become more sophisticated ourselves. It’s become more holistic.

Holistic, in an era of uber-specialization.

Suzanne Simard has a mother of a research effort--The Mother Tree Project:

Mother trees are the biggest, oldest trees in the forest. They are the glue that holds the forest together. They have the genes from previous climates; they are homes to so many creatures, so much biodiversity. Through their huge photosynthetic capacity, they provide food for the whole soil web of life. They keep carbon in the soil and aboveground, and they keep the water flowing. These ancient trees help forest recover from disturbances. We can’t afford to lose them.

The Mother Tree Project is trying to apply these concepts in real forests so that we can begin to manage forests for resilience, biodiversity and health, recognizing that we’ve actually pushed them to the brink of collapse with climate change and overharvesting.

We can't afford to lose them.

I hope this bugs you

As a general rule, I don't like to see any bug walk, crawl, or fly through my living space.  My rule has always been that I given them their space and they should not interfere with mine.  I don't go out of my way to kill anything either, though I am not like my parents who think they should coexist with the damn cockroaches too!

I give those critters their space not only because they deserve to live as much as I deserve to live, but also because way back in middle or high school we learnt about food chains and ecosystems and that message stuck with me.  We are all dependent on each other.  Unfortunately, we humans have gained enough power over other life forms that we casually and easily decimate this complex relationship.

Here is a quick test, especially for the readers in the old country.  When was the last time you saw a firefly in the night?  Remember all those dark nights when you delighted in their movements?

Scientists have tracked alarming declines in domesticated honey bees, monarch butterflies, and lightning bugs. But few have paid attention to the moths, hover flies, beetles, and countless other insects that buzz and flitter through the warm months. "We have a pretty good track record of ignoring most noncharismatic species," which most insects are, says Joe Nocera, an ecologist at the University of New Brunswick in Canada.

In this context, I don't need any data as evidence of the decline in bugs of many sorts.  I have lived a life experiencing the decline.  While the panda and the polar bear and rhinos grab our attention as we worry about driving species into extinction, we pay far less attention to the small fellows.  The story of our life, I suppose--we always ignore the vast subaltern, as the radical postcolonial intellectuals like to talk about.

"If you're an insect-eating bird living in that area, four-fifths of your food is gone in the last quarter-century, which is staggering," says Dave Goulson, an ecologist at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, who is working with the Krefeld group to analyze and publish some of the data. "One almost hopes that it's not representative—that it's some strange artifact."
No one knows how broadly representative the data are of trends elsewhere. But the specificity of the observations offers a unique window into the state of some of the planet's less appreciated species.

People tend to forget that this is what regular science is all about--scientists go through understanding bits and pieces, day after day, while the rest of us are happy to entertain ourselves with the latest that a digital screen has to offer.  And then we are arrogant enough to complain that science is a waste of taxpayer dollars!

Changes in land use surrounding the reserves are probably playing a role. "We've lost huge amounts of habitat, which has certainly contributed to all these declines," Goulson says. "If we turn all the seminatural habitats to wheat and cornfields, then there will be virtually no life in those fields." As fields expand and hedgerows disappear, the isolated islands of habitat left can support fewer species. Increased fertilizer on remaining grazing lands favors grasses over the diverse wildflowers that many insects prefer. And when development replaces countryside, streets and buildings generate light pollution that leads nocturnal insects astray and interrupts their mating.

One doesn't have to be the cliched tree-hugging environmentalist in order to worry about all these. Unfortunately, the only thing that most of us do is to make fun of those tree-hugging environmentalists.

Paying attention to what E. O. Wilson calls "the little things that run the world" is worthwhile, Sorg says. "We won't exterminate all insects. That's nonsense. Vertebrates would die out first. But we can cause massive damage to biodiversity—damage that harms us."

Yes, indeed.  Remember that old quote, whether or not Jonas Salk really said that?

If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.