News out of Africa is often dire, frightening or gruesome, but on Feb. 11 the Sunday New York Times ran a front-page story on a very positive development in Niger: the reclamation of land from desert to usable soil.
The timing is interesting since Niger is the country that figured prominently in the Joseph Wilson/Valerie Plame saga that has been playing out in the Lewis “Scooter” Libby trial, though there was no mention of any of them or yellow cake uranium in last week’s story titled “In Niger, Trees and Crops Turn Back the Desert.”
Described as a “persistent place of hunger and deprivation,” during the last 20 years, millions of new trees have been planted and the country is now far greener and more fertile than is was 30 years ago.
The actions of native farmers have reversed what some believed was a permanent change to dry, unusable soil, compounded by drought. The loss of trees had led to soil blowing away and dry wells.
It quite simply took a change in mindset. Farmers stopped looking at trees for the short-term economic benefit of chopping them down for firewood, to cultivating them and selling branches, pods, fruit and bark from living trees.
They stopped pulling out saplings to make way for crops and instead worked their millet, sorghum, peanuts and beans around them.
With trees in place, farmers found the soil became more stable and would support crops. More surprisingly, this has occurred despite population growth in the same areas that have grown most dense.
The trees that have been replaced there hold not only the soil but also the water with their root systems. One tree has even been found to fix nitrogen in the soil for fertilization.
A food shortage did grip the country again in 2005, when lack of rain and a less than bountiful harvest could not keep up with the increased population. But the chief of one village, where “regeneration was a huge success,” said it had benefited from the regrowth of trees, and told the Times that not one child died of malnutrition in 2005.
While many may quibble about the moral of this story, I suggest that one message is that once trees are gone, that’s when they’re importance is recognized.
Luckily, the Niger farmers could replant and restore their land.
If we continue to remove large growth trees to build more houses in Lower Township, we may not realize their importance to our area until it is far too late.
The preservation of the former Ponderlodge property is a step in the right direction and there are significant wooded areas, but they are not unlimited and larger and larger homes are being built along the bayshore area, where many older trees still stand.
In the quiet Town Bank area, there are now what looks like four clear-cut lots on Clubhouse Drive. There was at least one older oak tree there before the equipment came in and tore it down.
It is this creeping, lot-by-lot development that I believe is more dangerous to our local en-vironment than some larger scale projects, primarily because no one seems to be monitoring or protecting the very thing that some of us believe is the beauty and unique quality of this area.
I moved here 20 years ago, and while not opposed to progress, I would like to believe that 20 years from now we will still have significant old growth trees to admire.
To insure that, I think the time has come for the township’s governing body to recognize that those trees need protection and shouldn’t be at the mercy of the whim of someone who just wants one cut to get it out of the way or because it or its leaves are considered a nuisance.
I’m not objecting to the removal of unhealthy trees or ones that completely preclude the building of a permitted size home, without the need of variances, on a particular lot. We are not an urban area and the remaining woodland we have is worthy of protection before it is lost completely.
Just as we have learned over the last generation locally, the need to protect wetlands and to replace those lost to development, and internationally, the world value of tropical forests, where we are lucky to have trees that have been standing for generations, we should acknowledge their right to survive.
Township council should develop a tree protection ordinance that requires a legitimate reason for removal and mandates a replacement program for all tress removed.
We don’t know what the township would be like without any trees and I don’t think we should stand by and wait until that happens.
Without a lot of financial investment and little help from the government, the farmers in Niger were able to reverse a dangerous course that would have ultimately led to the starvation of themselves and their families. They have learned to live with the trees.
We don’t have as much at stake, but quality of life goes beyond mere bed and board. Once a 50, 75 or 100-year-old tree is gone, it cannot be easily replaced.
