Written by Mark Kramer

Do you ever want to go back? I mean back in time. Rocky and Bullwinkle had the Way Back Machine. Marty McFly had the time-traveling DeLorean in Back to the Future. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure had the time-traveling phone booth. Another of my favorites is the Hot Tub Time Machine. For most of us, pondering time travel is more practical. Through the power of imagination, we can take a trip and never leave the farm. Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. Most agree they are both needed. I’ve recently been thinking of my first bike ride (without training wheels) and the first fish I ever caught.

It turns out that ecologists think about going back in time too. We think back to the time before Europeans first explored North America. Back before the introduction of exotic disease which decimated Native American populations. We think back to the time before habitat loss, before invasive species, before pollution, before over-hunting, before human population exploded and before climate change. Environmental educators use the acronym HIPPO to remember this list of the most pressing concerns for the planet. For an ecologist, going back to that time, riding in Mark’s Ecological Time Traveling Helicopter brings the power of life into clear view as we look out over the landscape in the year 1500. It’s the highest expression of art created by the hand of Nature.

We humans stumble in our attempt to translate the feeling and emotion of being immersed in such natural beauty. We splash color on canvas and write words on a page in an effort to capture the direct experience of these rare moments of reverie. The most powerful of all human experiences is to lose yourself in the flow of these creative forces at play.

Today, these historic pre-European landscapes are one valuable tool used by ecologists to guide planning for ecological restoration. If I had the Conservation Director’s Magic Wand, I would transform ABNC’s habitats back to the year 1500 with a click of my heels.

Imagining ABNC that long ago, there were verdant fields of tall grass, lush marshes nourished by the rising tide, and ribbons of deciduous riparian hardwoods converging here. In addition to the current wildlife species, black bear, whooping crane, ivory-billed woodpecker, trumpeter swan, mountain lion, and red wolf abound. Winter populations of waterfowl darken the sky as if they were a cloud at sunrise. Bison herds 100 square miles in size slowly graze across the prairie towards the horizon. Prairie chicken and bobwhite quail were commonly heard booming at the first light of day. The Akokisas Indians followed the seasonal shifts in abundance of these plants and animals for over 8000 years, until Europeans arrived.

The settlers began to colonize their new territory which left a permanent mark, shifting the ecological balance which had been in place since the last ice age. Agriculture, logging, intensive cattle grazing, Native American eradication, invasive species introduction, and an exploding human population began to impact the upper Texas coast as they do to this day.

There was a great ecological awakening in the American culture in the 1960’s. As air and water quality declined and species were threatened with extinction, a new era was born. As a child, I remember it as the age of Mother Nature. Even television advertisements had slogans like “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature”. You can Google that phrase for a glimpse back in time in the You Tube Time Machine.

Not only was ecological crisis taking place on a grand scale, but we also saw ourselves for the first time. The first view of home on Earth occurred with space flight to the moon. Young children are often confused by seeing themselves for the first time in a mirror. Not so for us humans seeing ourselves from afar; we recognized that we were witnessing a profound truth. Never before had humans witnessed the small fragility of our shared biosphere and there was a brief cultural shift in recognition. 

We take space flight for granted now and the image’s impact has faded, but it hasn’t faded for present day astronauts. A large number of astronauts report being overwhelmed with witnessing firsthand the beauty of Earth. Many describe it as being life changing. The Overview Effect produces a cognitive shift, an “ah ha” moment where Earth is seen as a tiny, blue marble hanging in the blackness of deep space. From a distance, state and national boundaries vanish, conflicts between people seem less important and we understand that we’re all in this together. From the beginning, all of life has been on a parallel trajectory. Interdependent and coevolving as if the Earth were one living organism.

It was in this era that ABNC opened its doors in 1976. We had thought and hoped that if we could purchase this beautiful piece of property and build a fence around it that Mother Nature would do the rest. We were still learning.

 Who Do You Think You Are

That’s a question not a statement. Who do you think you are? Who do you think that you are in relation to the Earth – the natural world? Maybe you’ve never considered it. It’s been said that the most dangerous world view is to have never viewed the world. An equally important question is who do we think we are? Cultural anthropologist Florence Kluckohn’s research describes our cultural relation to nature as one of three possibilities. 

 1. Man under nature suggests that cultural belief towards nature is solely an outcome of an unseen power. We make offerings to the “Gods” in hopes that the rains will come to water the fields. We believe that all outcomes arrive from an external force beyond our control - destiny or fate.

2. Man over nature suggests that our human challenge is to control and dominate nature. The environment is viewed only as a natural resource to be controlled and exploited. We need to insist that nature works with us, not that we should work with nature.

3. Man in nature describes a cultural belief that we not only live in harmony with natural systems, but that we work to sustain, enhance, and restore them. Crafting a culture that looks to nature’s time-tested adaptations and processes to sustainably live with the natural world. It’s a belief that our survival depends on those very systems.

Over time, the landscape slowly began to change. The grasslands were encroached upon by invasive woody plants, marshes disappeared, and many forms of iconic wildlife had vanished. All of these impacts were human caused, but it turns out that humans are also part of the solution. Restoration ecology is the branch of science which seeks to bring back the natives. To bring back the native plants, the native animals, and also to bring back the historic ecological processes which shaped the region.

It might be thought of as gardening at the ecosystem scale. We remove invasive species (weeds), plant native species of grasses and wildflowers (nursery plants), and encourage predators (beneficial insects) to keep the garden in balance. A patchwork of management techniques is stitched together. This patchwork creates a mosaic of microhabitats where each prairie specialist form of wildlife fills its unique set of needs, thus supporting the greatest diversity of wildlife. Originally, this patchwork would have played out over huge areas on coastal Texas with vast acreages being burned by wildfire, grazed by bison, or left untouched with standing tall grass. Today, management at ABNC recreates those landscapes on a smaller scale. However, it comes at significant effort as shown above.

Looking through the lens of science, we focus our vision and consciousness. Sometimes focusing on the tiny unseen microscopic life through the microscope. Conversely, we survey the depths of the cosmos through the telescope. This shifting of perspective is a useful thought experiment when we consider invasive species. At the level of the organism (such as my body), we may become sick. A microorganism invades our body making us feel poorly and we go to visit the doctor. The doctor will run tests and take vital signs to determine the nature of the illness and may prescribe medicine to treat the illness. After a couple of weeks, if there is no improvement, we return for more tests. Now, the doctor may determine that you are sicker than originally thought. In fact, you have cancer and the treatment plan has changed to more intensive therapy, chemotherapy. 

Now let’s shift the scientific lens of our consciousness to view the same scenario, not at the organism level, but now at the ecosystem level. When an invasive species enters an ecosystem, it behaves much like a biological toxin. If it is a particularly aggressive ecological invader, it will begin to have effects on the vital signs of the environment. On occasion, the treatment plan may include chemicals (chemotherapy). The image above shows dying adult Chinese Tallow which were treated by helicopter with thousands of Tallow seedlings germinating at my feet.

Some of these biological indictors (vital signs) of ecosystem health are assessed by measuring species diversity, ecosystem function, climax plant communities, and the presence of apex predators. This graph reflects twenty years of monitoring data which indicates that the invasive Chinese Tallow is decreasing at ABNC.

As aggressive invasive species begin to dominate an ecosystem, the measurements of these indicators decline. In some cases, the ecosystem completely collapses under the strain. What was once a thriving diverse ecosystem has been transformed by the invasive species into a biological desert.

With help from the “Team of Conservation Doctors”, the environment may recover. Implementing proven techniques of restoration ecology, invasive species are suppressed and species diversity returns. When it comes to the return of predators, size matters. Apex predators require a large territory as a home range. The urban wilderness of ABNC contains four square miles of restored habitat which is large enough to support alligators, bald eagles, bobcats, coyotes, and river otters. Large enough if the habitat is healthy.

 Habitat 101

Let’s shift our lens of consciousness one last time to focus on habitat. First, let’s examine our habitat (Habitat for Humanity). Each room in our home is specifically designed to meet our complex set of needs. Some rooms are designed for feeding habitat (kitchen), some for raising children (nursery habitat) and some for lounging habitat (the living room recliner). Each species of wildlife has a similar, yet unique set of habitat needs in order for the species to thrive through each stage of life.

Armand Bayou Nature Center has been an ongoing ecological fixer upper. As with any fixer upper, step one is to purchase the property and begin refurbishing the home (habitats). Our initial efforts raised 6.5 million dollars as the purchase price. For over twenty-five years, the nature center has been a work in progress, slowly completing one ecological enhancement project after another.

After decades of effort and significant investment, the refuge looks like a million bucks. Literally. This life’s work has managed well over 1.5 million dollars of state and federal restoration grant dollars as well as hosting numerous mitigation projects to further the mission.

These project dollars are similar to leveling the foundation of the house of our fixer upper. We’ve completed the ecological foundation repair. We’ve repaired the slab and frame of our habitat, but we can’t walk away from our investment. If we do, the structure begins to rapidly decline. 

Now, the most challenging chapter begins. The long-term management of our initial investment is crucial. State and federal grants are keen to fund the early foundational stages of restoration (house), but for some reason are reluctant to provide grants for long-term management (painting, toilet repair, flooring replacement, etc.). Every day of the year, the Stewardship Team engages in implementing these long-term ecological management techniques as described in the ABNC Natural Resource Management Plan: controlling invasive species, propagating locally rare native plants, mimicking the historic influence of keystone species like bison (through prescribed mowing), and monitoring and training the Stewardship Alpha Elite Volunteer Strike Team.

The term for this lengthy process is known as Re-Wilding. Wikipedia defines Re-Wilding as “large-scale conservation aimed at restoring and protecting natural processes and core wilderness areas, providing connectivity between such areas, and protecting or reintroducing apex predators and keystone species”. The human footprint has now stomped out most of the best wildlands that remain in our area. However, through the process of Re-Wilding, these human dependent natural areas are now the New Wild. Armand Bayou Nature Center, The Katy Prairie Conservancy, The Bayou Land Conservancy, and The Nature Conservancy manage some of the largest remnant habitats in the Houston area. We may never be able to go back in time, but we can use the power of imagination to remember, and we can appreciate what we have remaining in the New Wild of Armand Bayou Nature Center.

For a deep dive into the Re-Wilding of ABNC tune in to: