Telling the Stories of the Silent Sentinels

A dense stand of Douglas firs, one of the tallest tree species in the world, which can live 1,000 years. Photo: U.S. Geological Survey (public domain).

Feature: Telling the Stories of the Silent Sentinels

By Karen Mockler

The last time I visited the Pacific Northwest, I sat in my mother-in-law’s living room, gazing out at Washington’s Hood Canal. Here, the water is always changing, along with the view of the Olympic Mountains beyond — thanks to the ever-shifting clouds, now you see them, now you don’t.

What never seems to change are the trees that frame our view, a mix of red cedars and Douglas firs that probably rise 200 feet. (Behind coastal redwoods, Douglas fir ranks as one of the tallest tree species in the world.) They also hold the cliff in place, helping buttress the land against rising sea levels.

Within this swirling panorama, these silent sentinels seem like the one constant.

They aren’t, of course. They are growing and, although they can live 1,000 years, eventually dying.

Their timescale appeals to me, although I also appreciate the briefer lifespan of a century plant (25 to 30 years, in fact) or, far briefer still, the fleeting but productive lives of ephemeral plants adapted to take advantage of short, favorable seasons.

In deserts, for instance, these plants quickly grow, flower, make seed and perish. Their offspring then wait, often years, for the right conditions to germinate and carry on the line.

I live in the Sonoran Desert, so I see these unique plant cycles almost every day. Lately they’ve become a focus of my reporting.

 

The problem of plant blindness

I’m currently writing about our beloved saguaros and the impact of climate change (and invasive buffelgrass).

In recent months, I’ve written about the miraculous survival of two species of manzanita, plants endemic to the Bay Area alone and nearly lost to us by development; about the declining number of botany degrees and the possible implications for both plant species and ecosystems; about the all-too-common phenomenon of plant blindness, whereby humans register our foliage friends as nothing more than a green backdrop, indistinguishable as separate species and barely alive.

 

That invisibility often hides plants

from my fellow journalists,

but they can be entryways to

writing about so many big issues.

 

That invisibility often hides plants from my fellow journalists, but they can be entryways to writing about so many big issues.

Like almost every other living thing on the planet, plants are threatened by human actions: climate change, the introduction of invasive species, overharvesting, habitat loss from urbanization, deforestation, agriculture and its attendant pollution from pesticides and fertilizers.

And increasingly, plant species are not only threatened by these actions but lost to them completely, with nearly 600 documented extinctions in the past 250 years. That’s more than twice the number of bird, mammal and amphibian species that we know have gone extinct during the same period.

Yet plant extinctions are often less recognized than animal extinctions. Even the prettiest plants lack the hauntingly cinematic pathos of a polar bear struggling to reach the next, receding ice floe.

 

To speak for the trees

Plants can’t even move, at least not in a way most humans have the patience to recognize. They certainly lack a human voice to raise in protest. So, like the Lorax confronting the Once-ler, I wish to use my journalism to speak for the trees.

The critically endangered Las Vegas bearpoppy, found in the Mojave desert. Photo: National Park Service (public domain).

In all, an estimated 73,000 different tree species live on Earth, of which around 9,000 are thought to be undiscovered. Many are in trouble. A worldwide study revealed in October that more than a third of tree species are in danger of extinction.

And trees are not the only imperiled plants.

A 2023 report from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, estimates that 100,000 plant species have yet to be scientifically identified, and predicts that 3 in 4 of these undescribed vascular plant species are already threatened with extinction.

A 2020 study revealed that 65 plant species have gone extinct in the continental United States and Canada since European settlement, more extinctions than any previous scientific study has ever documented.

Yet of our nation's 8,840 rare plants, only 764, or 9%, are protected under the Endangered Species Act.

 

Many stories to tell

So while I’m at it, allow me to speak for the more than 360,000 other plant species out there, too.

Won’t you join me? There are so many stories to tell, from a research angle, a climate justice angle, an ecosystem angle, a cultural angle, a political angle.

Maybe one of these angles appeals to you. Shade equity, for example, is about people as well as trees.

 

The REPLANT Act directs

the U.S. Forest Service to plant

more than a billion trees over the

next decade, many of them in

forests devastated by wildfires.

 

Some angles are even good news, such as the former Biden administration’s 2022 REPLANT Act, directing the U.S. Forest Service to plant more than a billion trees over the next decade, many of them in forests devastated by wildfires — assuming the incoming Trump administration doesn’t gut the bipartisan measure.

Or consider that one of the forces driving those forest fires is climate change, affecting plants in massive and myriad ways.

Rising temperatures, altered precipitation patterns and more extreme weather events lead to an array of effects such as earlier bloom times, disrupted pollination, increased stress from drought, spreading invasive species and potential shifts in plants’ geographic ranges. Many plants, like some of our fellow humans, are beating a retreat.

 

Benefits, essential and sublime

Anyone who has ever read “The Giving Tree” knows that Shel Silverstein was on to something.

Trees give us shelter, fuel and food (both directly and indirectly, since they and other plants provide the foundation of our entire food chain).

But beyond these obvious benefits come so many others, both essential and sublime.

Plants provide the air we breathe but also improve the quality of the air, removing toxins and allergens. Plants are carbon sinks. They reduce noise by absorbing sound. They provide habitat for countless animals and shade for humans.

And if you’ve ever climbed a tree, picked an apple or rejoiced at the first dandelion’s sunburst after a dreary, drawn-out winter, you know that some benefits, while hard to calculate in health or economic terms, are just as real.

Now plants need our attention; we need to pay attention, more than ever before. Otherwise, we ignore them at our peril.

Karen Mockler is a freelance writer and novelist based in Tucson, Arizona.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 10, No. 4. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.