Myth of an Unbroken Forest

Near the Atlantic coast of North America in what will someday be known as North Carolina, a gray squirrel scans cautiously as an Osprey glides overhead. The bird tilts its wings, slowing above the nest, hovering in the wind for a split second. The bird extends its legs and lands in the sticks and marsh grasses, forming the Osprey nest. The squirrel reaffirms that the Osprey is no longer a threat and stands. The squirrel thinks, “Time to move. It's time to head west.” 

An old myth prevails, “A squirrel could travel to the Mississippi River on an unbroken canopy of deciduous forest.” This idea depicts complete coverage of closed-canopy forests from the Atlantic Coast to the Great Plains.

 Current research from geology, dendrochronology, archaeology, and historical records offer us a vastly different view.

If our squirrel is placed 20,000 years BP, she will encounter open boreal woodlands dominated by hemlock, pine, and fir and extensive grasslands. 

Let’s place our squirrel 10,000 years BP, as the oldest documentation of humans in North Carolina at the Hardaway Site dates to 8000 BCE. The climate at this time in North Carolina supported woodlands dominated by beech and maple. Our squirrel will not find an unbroken canopy at this time. She will have to cross open grasslands that support large herds of mammoth, caribou, and bison, supporting large carnivores. This is a dangerous place for a grey squirrel to be on the ground. Indeed, this ecosystem is far from the ideal habitat for squirrels as precious mast resources from oaks were far to the south and thousands of years before their dominance in North Carolina. By 7000 YBP, current species occupy the southern forests. Warming and drying during this time allowed the prairies and grassy woodlands of the southeast to expand their range. Xeric oak and oak-hickory forest types increased. Cooler-climate species migrated northward and upward in elevation. Due to the transcience of forest types through the geologic record, it’s impossible to say what forest type is original or wholly natural. Forests change in time and place.

Let us move our squirrel further up in time. Let’s place her at 1491. Now, our squirrel is experiencing North Carolina before any European contact. Again, the myth perpetuates that our squirrel will find a “natural” ecosystem. Our squirrel is met with a vast mosaic of human-altered landscapes. Huge, open agricultural areas measured in thousands of acres were common. Native Americans burned. The fires increased longleaf and other yellow pines, increased the number of oaks, reduced midstory and understory, increased the spacing of trees, improved grasses used by game animals, and cleared areas for hunting and farming. Our squirrel has yet to find a “natural” or the “original” forest.

Let us move her again. This time, let’s try 1607. This time, let her accompany arriving Europeans and experience the forest as they found it. Canebreaks were extensive in the river floodplains, while oak-hickory-chestnut and pine forests were the primary upland forest cover. Early explorers marked the low population density. Populations in the Americas had been reduced by 90%. In the absence of occupation, the abandonment of Native American agricultural fields and the reduction of fires set to maintain those fields allowed the colonizing of extensive areas by forests. These forest assemblies weren’t “natural” but the remnants of succession caused by earlier human occupation and subsequent abandonment. 

No specific time can represent the southern forest's “original” condition. Human activity has shaped the forest for millennia and in some cases near the glacial maximum, human occupation predates the forest.

We should manage the forest for the present goals and desired future conditions rather than idealize the past attempting to return the forest to a false ideal.