Obsolete Belief 2

A couple of days ago I wrote about the essay by Ervin Laszlo on “The World’s Health Problem: an Integral Diagnosis” in A New Renaissance – Transforming Science, Spirit and Society. Laszlo concludes: “the world is (1) socially, economically and ecologically unsustainable, (2) saddled with irrational behaviours and (3) governed by obsolete beliefs and aspirations.”

Our first obsolete belief is that we think the planet is inexhaustible. And here is Laszlo’s obsolete belief number 2.

We believe that “nature is a mechanism.”
As a result we think that “we can engineer nature” like we would engineer a building or a bridge. This of course is destroying the planet’s natural balances and causing the extinction of species at an alarming rate.

Why does it take so long for us to see the errors of our ways? In 1997 Hugh Montefiore wrote a little paperback about the environmental issues of the day, called A Time to Change. He wrote that responsible estimates of species extinctions were then running at up to 100,000 a year, at which rate within a century half the earth’s species will have disappeared, at the hands of mankind. We cannot afford to destroy species in this way. We are part of a complex network of living beings, all interdependent in many and various ways. Even one species extinction can profoundly affect other life forms and change the face of the planet irrevocably. And the converse is also true – the introduction of species into an area without understanding the ecology of that area can be equally catastrophic.

As the naturalist Francis Rose once observed, ‘nature is very complex. When you start to interfere by thoughtless introduction of alien species, you do so at your own peril.’ He might as well have added – “and when you make a species extinct.” Francis Rose was a celebrated and authoritative field botanist and naturalist, researcher, teacher and author, with a lifelong passion for plant ecology and conservation. He died in 2006 and The Francis Rose Reserve named in his memory at Wakehurst Place, Sussex, comprises a collection of mosses, lichens, liverworts and filmy ferns in a natural valley setting.

So why, Laszlo asks, do we still behave so irrationally? Why do we continue to ignore the finely balanced and complex nature of our ecosystems and think we can ride rough shod through the natural environment with blatant disregard for the effects of our behaviour? Why indeed?

Einstein once said that we cannot solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created our malady. Or in other words we cannot heal our planet and ourselves with the same kind of thinking that brought us to this current malady. So what is needed?

In my youth at school in the early 1960s I had a passionate interest in ecology. I studied it diligently as part of my botanical school exams and later at University. But it was only as I walked through the great National Parks of Yosemite or California’s Giant Redwoods, hiked the UK’s Yorkshire and Derbyshire Dales or tramped the Burren in Eire, and saw all the plants and creatures in their natural habitats, that I came to discover and feel a spiritual attachment to such a wonderful and varied world, and a great respect for its complexities. And that is what we need to feel again – we need to rediscover that spiritual connection with nature, to nurture an understanding that we are part of an intricate balance of life forms, part of the richness and wealth of the cosmos.

Prince Charles in his book Harmony is telling us just this. A New Renaissance: Transforming Science, Spirit and Society is telling us this. Many books are beginning to appear around this theme. When will we listen to what they all have to say?

Ancient Oaks, fungi and mycorrhiza

As children we used to call these fungi Mabel Lucie Attwell fungi. I guess this was because she used them in her cute and nostalgic pictures of children that illustrated many of our childhood books. It is of course the Fly Agaric, and very poisonous!

But not all fungi are as attractive.

As a postgraduate student early mornings would find me grubbing around under the beech trees of Derbyshire, collecting bags of what looked like nothing but earth and roots. With my tutor we would take these back to the Sheffield University laboratory. I spent hours sifting and sorting, It doesn’t sound riveting does it? Why were we doing this? Well sometimes I did ask myself that question. And sometimes I felt that my work was not of any great relevance to the world and as such I became disillusioned and dissatisfied with what I was doing. But perhaps it did have its uses. Let me explain.

What in fact we were digging up and collecting were the fungi that grow around the roots of the beech tree, and indeed around the roots of most if not all trees. These fungi form a sheath around the roots, and their fine filamentous hyphae invade into the root tissue itself. So what do they do?

They are called mycorrhiza, and the relation with the tree is symbiotic – of mutual value. Whilst the tree supplies the fungus with sugars on which to feed, the fungus in return forms a barrier to protect the tender new roots from physical damage, and also from harmful chemicals and pathogens. But also, most importantly, the fungus enables the tree to take up water and important nutrients. Without fungi such as these, plants would not have been able to first colonise the land all those millions of years ago. They would not have been able to absorb essential nutrients from soil without these symbiotic associations.

And it was this nutritional advantage given to the beech trees by the mycorrhiza that formed the basis of my studies - from these daytrip forays and the experiments that followed I wrote a doctoral thesis for my PhD, and a paper, with my tutor David Lewis, which amazingly can now be found online!

What has all this to do with today?

I listened to a BBC Radio 4 programme last Sunday morning, called Living World. And here they were discussing the ancient oaks and other ancient trees that form such an important part of the English landscape. And they are under threat. Farming methods are damaging this vital symbiotic association between tree and fungus, both from physical trampling and ploughing too close to the trees’ root system, but also from fertilizers and the high phosphate and nitrogen content of animal waste, as cows are allowed to graze around the base of the trunks. We are also introducing new bacteria and other pathogens into our finely balanced ecosystems through the importation of plants, particularly those in pots, which can bring infected soils into an area. Bacteria introduced in this way can be a threat to indigenous fungi and trees, and are responsible for the Acute Oak Decline that is threatening some of our most beautiful trees – a centuries old oak tree can be killed within two years with this infection.

On a plaque in the gardens at Wakehurst Place I found the following inscription attributed to the naturalist Francis Rose: “nature is very complex. When you start to interfere by thoughtless introduction of alien species, you do so at your own peril.” How very very true.

And perhaps my work at Sheffield all those many years ago was not so irrelevant after all. Perhaps it has increasing relevance again with our current concerns on ecology and man’s harmful effects on the environment. But I did always prefer the forays for “real” fungi that we could take home to eat! (But NOT, please note, the Fly Agaric!) We were botanists and we had the expert advice of our lecturers and tutors on what was safe and which would make us ill!