Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Major bummer

One of the downsides of globalization is that all sorts of critters are ending up in all sorts of places they didn't used to be, and not fitting in well. One of them is the Asian longhorned beetle which was discovered in Worcester a couple of years ago, with the result that every tree in the city was cut down and chipped. The beetle kills maples, willows, and birches.

Now they've found it in my neighborhood, and right across the street from the Arnold Arboretum no less. If it got from Worcester to Boston, it obviously must be at points in between. Now I have to worry about my woods in Connecticut, and indeed, all of New England. Sure, over geological time, land masses are joined and then severed, mountains rise and fall, and species that were once excluded from an ecosystem suddenly show up and wreak havoc. It's nature. The point is, it's happening much more often nowadays than it did before Homo sapiens came along and started stitching together the entire globe.

Maples and birches are as essential to the New England landscape as the Berkshires and the Connecticut River. It would be unbearable to lose them.

1 comment:

C. Corax said...

That's truly a major bummer, Cervantes. Effing catastrophe, though I doubt anyone truly believed that cutting and burning the Worcester county trees was going to do the trick.