Note: This program first aired October 11, 2014.
If there is anything you can be sure of in nature, it is
that things will change. The natural world is not static and nothing remains
untouched by this truth. As soon as mountains are formed, they begin to erode.
The temperature falls and rises, ice covered this landscape, not once but many
times, the ocean has left its mark too. Forests we experience as known
communities are as ephemeral as spring flowers, in the grand scheme of things
here on Earth.
Knowing this truth of the world did not make this week’s news
from Bucksport any easier to hear. The paper mill that opened there in 1930
formed the economic and social backbone of Bucksport and many neighboring
towns. The paper mill that will be closing there at the end of 2014, 84 years
later, leaves a hole not only in the tax base but also in the fabric that
stitches that community together.
The make up of a natural community is determined by many
factors, the most fundamental of which are the external environmental
conditions present. If the climate is cold, we expect to see cold adapted
plants and animals, if the climate is dry, we expect to see succulent plants or
fire adapted plants. When the environmental conditions change, we expect to see
the ecological community change as well. On a landscape freshly cleared, whether
by wild fire, glacial melt, sea level drop or some other disturbance, we see
the successive changes in community composition coming in an orderly procession;
fast growing opportunistic species first, more slow growing and complex
assemblages later. In classical ecology we are taught to recognize the climax
community, the culmination of successional change that started with our blank
slate, and progressed to a fully articulated rich and diverse ecological
community. The implication is that once climax community is reached, it is self
sustaining unless environmental conditions change, thus changing the playing
field and potentially favoring species other than those on the climax community
cast list.
My father worked at the mill for 22 years, in it’s hay day,
when all four paper machines ran twenty hour hours a day, the employee parking
lots so full we might not be able to see Dad’s car when we drove by on the way
to my grandmother’s house, when men and women took what now seems an old
fashioned pride in their work, when unions fought for workers rights and won.
That mill lifted my family from the threshold of poverty, gave me amazing
health insurance, put my sister and me through college. It was not easy work,
but making paper provided a living that supported countless families year in
and year out.
Red oaks dominate the forest around my house, they are the
prevailing species in the Oak and Northern Hardwood forest climax community
that typifies my neighborhood. They provide food for thousands of creatures,
insects that feed as parasites on the growing acorns, grackles and blue jays
who eat acorns right off the tree, the myriad of forest animals large and small
who eat the acorns once they fall to the ground. These animals depend on this
tree in an existential way, if these oaks were to die out due to changes in the
environment, these animals would need to adapt to a new way of life, new food
sources, a new community in an old place.
Bucksport sits now right on the edge of the end of its
climax community. Much like we see the changes ahead due to climate change,
Bucksport must ready itself for a fundamental shift away from the very thing
that has been the organizing structure for the town for the past 84 years. By
nature’s clock that isn’t a very long time, but its long enough for a field to
turn into a forest. Perhaps the grasses mourn the loss of the sun when the
first woody shrubs grow above them and spread their leaves. Perhaps the shrubs
cry out their loss when the mighty oak’s branches cover the sky. Change is the
only thing worth betting on, we can’t hold the natural communities around us
frozen in place any more than we can keep a mill from closing, though it may
break our hearts to see it go.
It’s been 16 years since my father died, and the mill’s
death spiral started not long after, machines were shut down, shifts were cut.
The parking lot got smaller. The truth is, this has been coming for a long
time, just like the changes in global climate we as a society, are doing our
best to ignore. And just like communities in nature, a new reality will grow in
Bucksport, one calibrated to the economic and ecological conditions dictated by
not only life in the 21rst century, but by the very people who call that place
home.
References:
Want to try your hand at keying out Maine’s different
natural communities? Check out this classification key: http://www.maine.gov/dacf/mnap/features/communitykey.htm
My home ecosystem: http://www.maine.gov/dacf/mnap/features/communities/oakpineforest.htm
Living in a cave and missed the news? http://bangordailynews.com/2014/10/01/news/hancock/verso-mill-in-bucksport-to-close-by-years-end-570-to-lose-jobs/
