The New York Times front page article on the New Jersey Pine Barrens and the direct attack on the Pine Barrens by the southern pine beetle, made me so sad; yet again, the article helped fill me with resolve. The fact that a very small beetle about the size of a grain of rice has now been enabled through our thoughtless actions and is destroying 10’s of thousands of trees, should be a huge wake up call.
Unfortunately it seems most of us aren’t tuned in to the correct frequency to hear warnings on the “emergency channel” that Mother Nature is sending her calls out on. Therefore, those of us that are tuned in need to be even more vocal, vigilant and visible, as we help others connect the dots between our actions, climate change and the visible impacts all around us.
The article immediately brought to mind my own trip a few years ago to Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park,where I saw first hand, the damage that the western pine beetle has wrought on the lodge pole pine trees of Colorado. Devastating fires each year in Colorado are being exacerbated and fueled in large part by the millions and millions of dead and dying pine beetle infested trees. Also, my visits to family in Alberta and British Columbia have included trips to areas in those provinces that are changed forever because of pine beetle damage to Canadian forests.
According to the New York Times article: “New Jersey has warmed by about 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century, but that average obscures the change that really matters. Winter nights of about 8 degrees below zero are needed to kill most beetles. The New Jersey climatologist’s office calculates that such bitter nights used to happen several times per decade in the state. But the last night that cold in the Pinelands was in 1996, and the beetle outbreak was first noticed five years later.”
The impacts of climate change on our continent’s forests, cannot be underestimated. Yet, as the article in the New York Times points out, in fact this is exactly what is happening. One of my observations from my visit to Rocky Mountain national park was that the devastation that was taking place, and which in Colorado was very visible to the average park visitor, was a powerful but lost opportunity to educate and alert millions of visitors from all over the world to the human role in changing our climate, and how 
this is dangerously playing out in nature. Signage in the park mentioned pine beetle damage, but it didn’t connect the dots to our role in changing our climate and how this then directly relates to the reign and dominance of the pine beetle.
The New Jersey Pinelands are part of the Atlantic costal pine barrens, a temperate coniferous forest, located on the coastal plain of New Jersey with smaller areas on southern Long Island in New York and Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The area is flat, so the beetle damage isn’t easily visible except from the air, and therefore, according to the New York times article, the 10’s of thousands of beetle killed trees aren’t evoking the outcry they might otherwise illicit. How can we use the examples that nature is showing us, to educate ourselves and connect the dots to climate change? How can we make it “personal” so that people consider their actions and behaviors and think about what we are loosing by our inaction?
According to the New Jersey Pinelands Commission’s website, underlying much of the Pinelands is the Cohansey Aquifer. This formation of unconsolidated sand and gravel functions as a vast reservoir estimated to contain over 17 trillion gallons of some of the purest water in the country, enough to cover all of Jersey in 10 feet of water if this water was on the surface. The water in this shallow aquifer frequently lies at or near the surface, producing bogs, marshes, and swamps. The streams of the Pinelands are fed by this aquifer. What will happen to this aquifer if all the flora on top is destroyed?
Today is a day of thought and reflection for me. As the holiday season takes hold, and as we remember what and who we are thankful for, I hope we each also think about all the wonderful gifts and critically important natural resources that come from mother earth. We need to keep in mind her warnings and take action to prevent these resources from forever disappearing from our lives; we can’t take them for granted. Not only would this be a terrible lose, but the fabric with which our own lives are woven together could unravel in ways that threatens our very existence. I remain hopeful that we will, with the many people who are becoming active in the climate movement, help educate others so we all take these warning signs more seriously. As you and your children write your holiday cards this season, save one for your Governor, your mayor, and your congressman or woman. Let our political leaders know you and the children in your life looking to THEM to help us solve the climate crisis.
Yours,
Climate Mama
