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Consider the animals that spend their entire life or generations within a few square acres. |
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Consider the flying squirrels huddled together in their hollow tree den. Gone. |
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Consider the gray squirrels in their winter tree den. Gone. |
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Consider the red squirrels in their subterranean homes and their huge food caches put aside to survive the winter. Gone. |
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Consider the woodland vole, in its tunnels 3 or 4 inches below the surface, tunnels and underground caches crushed by huge machinery, their food sources gone. |
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Consider the southern red-backed vole, nesting among root systems, foraging under the surface and under the snow, its networks of tunnels crushed and gone. |
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Consider the deer mice and white-footed mice and their nests and food caches in their tree cavities. Gone. |
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Consider the shrews - the masked shrew, the smoky shrew, the long-tailed shrew, the pigmy shrew, the northern short-tailed shrew - their homes and prey. Gone. |
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Consider the moles - the eastern mole, the star-nosed mole, the hairy-tailed mole - their tunnels crushed and the surface of the ground dried to hard-pack by the summer sun, eliminating the earthworms, insects, millipedes, centipedes, snails, slugs, and sow bugs they need to survive. |
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Consider the bats - the little brown myotis, the northern long-eared bat, the indiana myotis, the silver-haired bat, the eastern pipistrelle, the big brown bat, the red bat, the hoary bat - searching for their familiar maternity trees where they gathered in colonies and hollow tree trunk roosts where they rested during spring, summer, and fall. Gone. |
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Consider the pileated woodpecker, returning time and time again to feed on carpenter ants in a favorite pine, a hemlock, an oak. Gone. Think of all the birds relying on their tree cavities for their own nest sites. Gone. |
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Consider the black-capped chickadee and white-breasted nuthatch and red-breasted nuthatch and flicker and red-bellied woodpecker and yellow-bellied sapsucker and downy woodpecker and hairy woodpecker and great-crested flycatcher and tufted titmouse and eastern bluebird and carolina wren and house wren and brown creeper and others searching for their tree cavities to use as nesting sites. Gone. |
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Consider all these birds in their favorite feeding areas, looking for tiny insects in the bark of trees. Gone. Consider the birds looking for maple seeds, ash seeds, birch seeds, acorns. Gone. Consider the birds and mammals searching for pine and hemlock cones. Gone. |
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Consider the tree fungi, food for squirrels and deer and other animals. Gone. |
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Consider the saw-whet owls and the screech owls in their hollow tree roosts. Gone. |
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Consider the barred owl or the great horned owl, roosted in a favorite tree. Gone. Consider their stick nests, reused for years, now perhaps even with eggs or helpless fledglings already hatched as the chainsaws roar blindly during mid-winter. Gone. |
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Consider the wild turkeys, roosted in tall white pines. Gone. |
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Consider the ruffed grouse on its drumming log. Gone. |
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Consider the porcupine, waddling down from its rocky lair, searching for its favorite trees in a now barren landscape. Gone. |
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Consider the raccoon, helpless in extreme winter temperatures, asleep in torpor as its hollow tree home comes crashing down. Gone. |
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Consider the snowshoe hare, relying on densely stratified forest for feeding and shelter. Gone. |
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Consider the animals relying on snowshoe hare for food - the bobcat, the fisher, the gray fox, the red fox, the eastern coyote, the hawks, the owls. |
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Consider the whitetail deer, once safe in their hemlock grove in winter, scattered in terror. Think of the moose, running in fear. |
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Consider the bobcat, travelling its familiar corridor through the forest, routes established through years of its life and generations of others, suddenly in an alien environment, unfamiliar and treeless. Consider the fox and the coyote wandering,looking for familiar scent posts to guide them, searching for their food sources in vain. |
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Consider the fisher, searching for the familiar snags where it found food and the hollow trees that formed its network of dens. Gone. |
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Consider the ermine and the long-tailed weasel, searching for mice and voles. Gone. |
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Consider the beaver, muskrat, otter, and mink, and the painted turtles and spotted turtles and snapping turtles, and the salamanders and snakes, and all the other inhabitants of the streams and ponds as the runoff of exposed soil flows in, and the undetected and unacknowledged oil and gas spills seep in. Consider the delicate balance of the water supporting macro-invertebrates, caddis flies and mayflies and dragonflies and damselflies and other winged creatures. |
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Consider the black bear, with its long memory and intelligence, awaking from hibernation, coming upon this scene. It searches for something familiar, but finds nothing and moves away in fear. There is no forest here, only ugliness and the smell of man - exhaust fumes, oil, gas - lingering on the ground. |
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Imagine the sounds, the smells, and the sight of the bulldozers, skidders, massive logging trucks, chainsaws, and the crashing timber in the once silent forest. |
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Now picture this swath of destruction in a neighborhood of human homes in your village, your town, your city. What would you call it? How would you feel? What if you had been away and returned to find this done to your brother's home, your sister's home, your mother's home, your lover's home, the homes of your best friends? And would it really be any different if they were the homes of strangers? |
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The web of life that existed is gone. Nature may recover, as it always seems to. It will take many years, but the forest, the living entity, will return in one form or another. Or will it? We have tipped the balance in massive ways and the outcome is impossible to know. The balance of life is fragile and unknowable. In our self-centeredness, we imagine we can control the forces of nature in a superior way. What, who, gives us the right? Who speaks for the animals? Their voices are stilled. Who speaks for the forest? |
Tracking & Nature Center 