Extinction

This post is about an endangered species.  Since much of my blog is about collecting mutants, let me make something very clear at the beginning here.  As I've stated before, I do not collect rare plants.  When I visited this plant last weekend, I took nothing but photographs.  (I think that most of you would already know that- I just want to avoid having anyone get weird and accuse me of something.)

The Clearwater River in Idaho is home to forests of Taxus brevifolia, the Pacific Yew.  In that area, the yews comprise the dominant forest species.  Everywhere else in its range, the Pacific Yew is a minor component of forests.  Ever since I read about that, I've been wanting to go visit.  I suspect that there are wonderful brooms to be found...  perhaps ones even cooler than the golden one I found last year.  

In my readings, and through conversations with people familiar with the area, I learned that there are a handful of endemic species in there.  Apparently, the deep canyons in that watershed served as refugia during the last ice age.  While species froze out elsewhere, some were able to hang on in there until the ice sheet and glaciers retreated.  One such species is Phlox idahonis.  Since I love exploring wetlands, I was highly interested in seeing this plant in the wild.  It is very, very rare, living in three or four wet meadows in a very tiny area.

I did a number of Google image searches to see what it looked like.  Not many images are available.  One person had a fairly nice shot of the flowers- claiming that he could tell you where the plant was, but then he'd have to kill you.  

Such melodramatics might have had more weight if I hadn't been able to find directions to exactly where the plant grew in about 10 minutes.  There are published papers, describing the process of monitoring the populations.  Happily, this plant is a fairly plain cousin to our gawdy garden hybrids, so I imagine that there is basically zero collection pressure.

For comparison, try doing a search of the following three plants- all three are roughly the same in terms of rarity:

Phlox idahonis

Sarracenia oreophila

Nepenthes clipeata

You'll notice that not only is there are whole lot more material on the latter two, but there are significant conservation efforts underway.  Those plants are under significant collection pressure.  In the case of the Sarracenia, which grows in Tennessee, you will most assuredly not find directions to its wetland abodes.  I'll have more to say on that in a bit.  (Oh, and Nepenthes clipeata grows in a remote area of Borneo.  You could find out exactly where it is pretty easily- but good luck driving to it!)

Dad told me that he had always been curious about that area.  A family friend had worked in the logging operations that cleared the land for the Dworshak reservoir, and he had often spoken of how beautiful it was down there.  Last Sunday, we decided to take the drive.  

It took forever.

The most striking feature of the land there is how deep the river canyons are.  We are talking a couple of thousand feet deep.   At the lower elevations, dryland vegatation is dominant- with forests of Pinus ponderosa.  As we drove along the river, I tried to imagine the landscape 12 thousand years ago.  The plateau above was probably tundra and snowfields, while the bottoms of the canyons were green- filled with fir and the kind of vegetation that we see at higher elevations today.  

We climbed out of the canyon again and headed up into farm country, then montane forest.  The road was paved nearly the entire way.  Finally, we turned off the paved road and went a few miles down a gravel road.  It gradually petered out into a small dirt road with a dead end.  When I got out of the truck, I spotted the Phlox in about 10 seconds.  Our trip was well-timed, as the plants were in full bloom.  The foliage looks similar enough to other upright Phlox species that I could have recognized it out of bloom, but it would have taken some careful searching.

I looked around the meadow a bit.  Eurasian exotics such as Centauria maculosa and Tanacetum vulgare were colonizing the area.  These are the botanical equivalents of the Borg from Star Trek, or maybe the aliens from the Ridley Scott films.  In other words, they are bad-ass mother-fucking invasives from hell.  The Centauria didn't seem to tolerate the wet conditions that the Phlox prefered, but the Tanacetum was right in there, choking the life out of it.    

This disturbed me greatly.  While people are out there carefully cutting brush away from carnivorous plant habitats and jealously guarding the über-secret locations of their populations...  this plain-looking little Phlox is languishing in a meadow with redneck pickup tracks and invasive weeds.  

So much of our attention as humans is directed to the pretty, the exotic, and the cosmetically pleasing.  Hobbyists righteously crusade to save plants that are far less imperiled than this one, but that have more aesthetic appeal.  In short, nobody gives a shit about a spindly little Phlox that lives in Idaho.  It doesn't eat bugs, or have ridiculously large, beautiful flowers or leaves.  And it certainly doesn't have the stately, otherworldly presence that certain species of owl have.

I've been thinking a lot about this plant- and my relationship to it as a human.  I have plenty to say about that, actually, though I'm not sure today is the day to say it.  

What I will offer- as a question/ food for thought...  This species, and others like it, were likely in severe decline before humans arrived in North America- let alone by the time European settlers showed up.  Extinctions happen.  The vast majority of species that have lived on earth are now extinct.  Only a tiny, tiny minority survive- or rather, their descendants survive- the slow, grinding algorithm that is natural selection.  

I doubt that we are going to be the ultimate cause of this plant's extinction, though it seems pretty clear that Eurasian exotics (our fault) are going to finish kicking its poor butt out the door.  This makes me sad.  But to expand that sadness into some grand statement about the natural order of things is, at best, deluded.  The Phlox itself is incapable of suffering, or of any thought at all.  There is no larger order to be offended or violated.  Likewise, there is no god-given right to kill and exploit.

The real issue here isn't so much one of right and wrong- of following some imaginary moral code-  as much as deciding what kind of world we want to live in.  Do we want to eat and displace most other species, and let our grandchildren inherit a world of rats, cockroaches, algae, spotted knapweed and tansy?  Do we want to preserve some of the molecular kaleidoscope that we were born into so that future generations can see it?  Should we try to approximate what the world would look like before we evil primates showed up and spoiled the magical and fictional Eden?   (My vote is for the kaleidoscope option, btw.)

Ultimately, I think that as our species continues to grow into the role of caretaker of this planet, we will need to grapple with these ideas.  Anyone who claims to have the corner on truth and moral certainty with these issues is full of shit.  

I hope that made sense.  It has been a long week and I'm very tired- but I wanted to get a post ready on time, especially since I saw some cool stuff to share.

Oh, and by the way- I still haven't made it to the fork of the river where the yew trees are.  I wish that I could spend my days wandering the woods.