THE FARAWAY DEPLOYMENT

Rex Burress

 

I have a show-piece military khaki cap worn by my nephew Joe Henry when he was deployed in Afghanistan. I prize that symbol of his dedication and effort for America, and I also think of it as a symbol of the way things are spread around the world.

 

We marvel at how widely plants and animals have become dispersed on earth, often without realizing the amazing methods that are involved in their distribution. Most species were rather stuck on their continent before transportation was improved, although at one time, before tectonic plates started shifting, most of the land masses were connected as one 'Gondwanaland.' The land separation contributed to the evolution of species and biodiversity of life Thus European Wild Oats became introduced to America when European colonists started arriving via ship and spreading the seed.

 

Dispersal is a two-way affair, however, and now North America species have been spread, accidentally and on purpose, to other countries much easier, and the world has become more intermixed, like it or not.

 

One species that took up residency afar, is the lovely California Poppy. It spread so rapidly in Spain they call it a weed! European oats and cheat grass may be called something more offensive by American ranchers, but such invasive species become naturalized by success, and the battle is on to keep it contained. The main contention is having enough space for everything to grow.

 

Here is the number that will verify that animals and plants have become more mobile in finding ways of travel even though often unintentionally. About 50,000 species have been introduced into America since Columbus! About 4,300 are considered invasive. Unique reasons, decisions, and accidents help cause the shuffle, even as plants and animals have been shuffled as experiments into space!

 

From the dandelion and fennel, that was brought to America in 1620 on the Mayflower as green food for the Pilgrims, to the carp from Germany in 1877, right up to present times, some species has been added to this country almost daily it seems. Consider the starling, one of the most obvious introductions in the mix; a man in England wanted all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare started in America, hence 100 starlings were released in New York Central Park in 1890, and by 1948 they had spread to California and all over the U.S., followed by the English sparrow.

 

One of the most disgusting plant shufflings has been the recent illegal smuggling of our native sedums, picked in California and sent to Asia. Thieves from Korea and China slip into wild landscapes in Northern California to pluck succulents to sell on the black market in Asia by the thousands, mostly the coastal Dudleya farinosa, but how long before they find our Butte County sedums? Our Canyon Dudleya graces many embankments in Butte County, and in the Feather River Canyon there is a rare Sedum albomarginatum found only in one place.

 

Rare cactus are illegally hunted and stripped from the desert mountains of Chile in another thievery, and the black market wildlife trade is carried on around the world. When I worked at the Oakland nature center, U.S. Customs would confiscate banned wildlife at the airport, including such immobile items as dried African clawed frogs and sea otter pelts that they would give to us for classes.

 

It's a wildlife war out there, of saving species from extinction, and from thieves trying to make a dollar...anyway they can...off any salable form of nature.

 

“Nature is ever at work building up and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.” --John Muir