3 Things I Learned in Grad School This Week -Oct 2 2016

​Bald Cypress and Loblolly Pine
I visited the National Park next to my future study site this past weekend. The place is wild. It floods during rains, catches on fire during lightning, and is home to all kinds of animals. Walking through it deafening insects punctuated by Pileated Woodpeckers and Barred Owl raucous encompassed my ear space completely. It was so loud the entire time that it became a background hum – white noise. The place reminds me of The Princess Bride’s Fire Swamp. About 5 times a year it floods anywhere from 1 to 5 feet and moves sediment and nutrients throughout current and archaic riverbeds.

​The place itself is truly wild and is one of the last (If not the last – I’ve got to look into this more) bottomland hardwood forests remaining (in only the US, maybe elsewhere…more research is needed). This habitat was the habitat of the United States’ Southeast from Texas up into North Carolina. Not anymore. This last ~30,000 acres is about all that’s left.
As unique as the habitat is the true characters of this place are the trees. The most idiosyncratic of which are the Loblolly Pines and the Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum). The Loblolly Pines (Pinus taeda) here are some of the tallest trees in that country and the tallest this side of Rockies (basically everything except the Redwoods). They’re also super old. The have a thick trunk with Ponderosa-like bark, rough and scaly.
The Cypress are crazy looking. They have super bloated trunks that narrow into the proper tree about 15 feet from the ground and shoot into the canopy about 80 feet above. The weirdest part are their ‘knees’ though: their roots pop out of the ground into these biotic stalagmites. This means that in an undisturbed and old Cypress stand you’ve got about 100 knees sticking out of the mud and leaf litter for every 10 trees. It’s like the maw of some swamp creature slowly devouring the fat trees in their way. Why do the Cypress have knees? No one knows. It is hypothesized that they provide stability for the tree or act as a type of ‘snorkel’ when it floods. 

Loblolly Pine - pinus taeda

Bald Cypress - Taxodium distichum

Experiment vs Observation
I am getting closer to thinking like a scientist. The simple dichotomy between an experiment and an observation was made apparent to me this week. An experiment is something that you can control where an observation is simply that.  I had never thought about the repercussions of that simple binary and what that means for developing theses, paradigms, and testing theories. My problem now, and I think indicative to conservation in general, is how to understand protection of species and habitats. So much of conservation is observation and so little of experimentation is relevant because it is so big. Conservation exists in a system. Observation leaves you watching species die and prairies converted into oil pipelines while you write a paper about it. On the other end, you can’t experiment on a system as large as the earth without intractable repercussions (I guess that’s called life). Qualitative research provides a middle ground with pragmatic research where you the researcher contribute to the outcome of your study with your engagement. Stewart Brand also recommends a similar caveat with his idea of the Vigilance Principle as opposed to the researcher’s maxim of the Precautionary Principle (if introduction of a new product or process whose ultimate effects are disputed or unknown should be resisted).
 
Benevolence
In philosophy we discussed agency, oppression, and deviance. One of the terms that came up was the idea of benevolence in regards to sexism. Benevolent Sexism is basically the idea that women need to be protected by men. Overtly, you can express that women are equal, that they deserve equal rights, etc but actions, behaviors, and policies are designed to protect them or provide for them more than men because they need it more. I wonder what Rhonda Rousey would have to say with this?

The first thing I thought of though when understanding this term was the relationship to post-colonialism and environmental issues. Benevolence in Post-colonialism manifests itself a couple ways I think. First, the disfigured aide stemming from White Guilt to old colonies creates a dependent nationalism that actually inhibits independent growth and postmodern actualization (basically: let’s send a bunch of development loans to poor black and brown people because they just don’t know how to fend for themselves). Second, whenever we see videos of the Arab Spring, the vacuum created afterwards, or similar acts of civil disobedience, a group pity of their situation and sense of relief that we in the first world aren’t there takes over. From there, what do we do and how do we help runs through the collective unconscious: send troops, send bombs, send support? No, that’s too much – unless terrorists find that vacuum enticing. Well, that’s unacceptable. Enter the Faustian handshake of now caring for a people that cannot take care of themselves. I might be totally wrong but it gets messy and benevolence helps me to understand how seemingly good intentions of a first world populace can get mangled in the real world of geopolitics.

Less clear to me and more insidious is how the concept of benevolence manifests itself in our relationship with the environment, environmentalists, and environmental projects. Zizek said ( I think in Violence but maybe in Desert of the Rea) that environmentalism will be co-opted by capitalism but that is the wrong path because you cannot solve the problem with the same mechanism that created the degredation. It took me several years to understand what that meant and I still don’t know If I agree with it. Environmental and Restoration Firms provide developers and municipalities with the appropriate tools to swerve through the hard fought regulations, sometimes the only biodiversity and land protection. I’ve seen how developers off-handedly say that they’ll ensure they’re in line with the regulations. Fast forward and land has concrete on it. I’m reminded of the scene in Jurassic Park when John Hammond’s dream of giving a vision of dinosaurs to kids is walked over by the lawyer who says they’ll have a coupon day.

​I see actual environmental success coming from productive relationships between industry and conservation. I really do. I believe that benefits from both can occur. But I am thinking that the concept of Environmental Benevolence is detrimental to this. Seeing environmental concerns as weak or something you have to tolerate only gets you crumbs because no one is invested. Dana White didn’t anyone wanted to see female fighters. Then he saw Rhonda Rousey fight and he thought of a huge market share of a female audience. Let her demonstrate to the UFC that female fighters are worth watching and both parties will make money. The same can be said for forests, wetlands, and prairies: activate their ecology and they will provide.