B Y IAN FOERTSCH
Fagus Grandifolia, the American Beech, is dying all over the east coast, from an unnatural alliance of a minute scale insect and a scarlet fungus. Beech Bark Disease (BBD), is part of our hemisphere’s rich tradition of imported forest pathogens and par for the course, we’re unable to stop it.
My study of BBD started this fall, when I began to work with GMC biology professor Natalie Coe, researching how environmental variables could play a role in BBD infection and progression. I’ve spent my weekends at the Deane Preserve, measuring, observing and recording how the disease has affected the preserve’s population of American Beech.
As a natural resources management major working for a professor who specializes in biochemistry, our perspectives have been somewhat perpendicular. Throughout our weekly meetings, the biology students conducting parallel research updated our working group on matters relating to genetic analysis, protein identification and two dimensional electrophoresis. My reports of diameter at breast height and disease orientation, which are generally observations anyone could make with a pair of eyes and a yardstick began to sound somewhat pedestrian. I was destined to be a supporting actor in this ecological tragedy, an eternal Paul Giamatti to the biologist’s Crowe.
My big break into the limelight came with my discovery of how the marking tape used in the initial phase of the study had somehow provided a favorable microclimate for the disease and resulted in otherwise healthy trees becoming infected. Satisfying oohs and aahs from the biology superstars.
My scientific confidence soared, inflated by rationalizations of how the field presence of a wise and worldly NRM major was necessary to draw the myopic biologists out of their endless analysis paralysis. I imagined myself as the arboreal savior of renown, healer of beech, lover of dryads.
Obviously, I have neither transformed into an ent nor won a Nobel prize. In a world where our management is always adaptive and our monitoring is for conservation, the only results that really matter are those that we can apply. Confusion regarding the value of knowledge is a common mistake. My discovery was interesting, but ultimately useless because it has not and will not result in any actionable information, at least not without a whole lot of legwork.
The goal of the project has always been; “Save the Beech Trees.” In this sense, for all my tramping about in the woods, I have yet to actually do anything of value for the poor, dying american beech. Knowledge may be power but what really matters is not what you know, but what you can do.
