[Tape 1 of two.]
DT: All right. This is February 23, 1997, and I'm David Todd and I'm interviewing Carmine Stahl about conservation in the Houston and southeast Texas area, and I wanted to start by just thanking Mr. Stahl for sharing some time and memories with me. I have some questions and I hope that they lead to some--some memories.
One of the things I thought I might start with was some of your early days, and it looks like a continuing interest was directing camps for children. And I was curious if you could tell me a little bit about what you see as the role for the outdoors and for nature in a child's education and upbringing.
CS: Oh, I think it's extremely important, David. We--currently, I'm working with Harris County Precinct Four Parks, at Jesse Jones Park. We get thousands of school children, Scout groups--Girl Scouts, Brownies, Cubs, all of them--through the year. And, as time passes, I realize more and more how important a relationship to the world we live in is to these kids, because they--they don't have the kind of association with nature and with the natural world that people had a generation or two ago. When we were a rural society in the United States, almost everyone at least knew where--a neighbor who had some chickens and a cow, [laughs], and could go down the field and--and watch somebody mowing hay, and could go to the creek and fish a little bit or do whatever--that would associate them out there with the outdoors.
Now in our urbanized society, we have so many millions of children who have very little contact with nature, and with the world outside city walls and streets. And we get kids who come to us and ask us--when we tell them we're gonna take them on a field trip, gonna take them on a nature walk in the park, they'll ask us, "Are there cobras out there, are there tigers?"
The primary source of--of information that they've had, unfortunately, about the world around has been the fright movies that Hollywood has done, and that they've seen on television so much, over and over and over. "The Birds" and ...
DT: Hitchcock's "Birds"?
CS: ... those killer bees and--hmm?
DT: The Hitchcock movie, "The Birds"?
CS: Oh, yeah. Well--well, all this kind of thing.
DT: Right.
CS: Horror movies involving Nature, ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... and--and creatures out there that really most of the time are pretty benign.
DT: I see.
CS: And--and they're scared to death of that, and--and they're in far more danger down there on the streets where they live, you know, than they would ever be out in the natural world in the United States of America. But they're scared to death of it and this is the thing that--that really troubles me--that they have such a distorted view of Nature because of the tendency of Hollywood and television to dramatize it in--in ways that are frightening. People love to be scared, of course, and--and so on and on we go. A scary movie, scary stuff out there.
DT: Well, I notice that you had worked with the Southeast Poison Control Office, and did you find that people would call in with problems that were, you know, maybe sort of unrealistic about the fears of things with claws and thorns, that Nature was ...
CS: Yes.
DT: ... was a pretty malevolent thing?
CS: [Laughs.] Well, actually, the Poison Control Center is a very, very fine and a very astute ...
DT: Um-hmm. CS: ... facility and they do handle many, many serious cases of poisoning every year. The majority of those are poisonings from household chemicals.
DT: Is that right?
CS: Stuff Mamma puts down the drain and, you know, that--all this kind of thing.
DT: Right, right.
CS: There are some plant poisonings each year. There're quite a few berries out there that're pretty and bright and red and--and alluring ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... to kids, look like they ought to be good. So they pop them into their mouths, you know, and they get real sick from it. There are very, very few deaths in this country from poisoning from natural materials but there are a few every year. And, yes, Poison Control Center does a real good job. Household plants--unfortunately there are--lots of household plants are--most of the philodendrons, the Arum family plants that we grow in the house. Pothos, the--Devil's ivy, as we call it, on the--Dieffenbachia, all these are in that family. And they have oxalate crystals that set a person's mouth on fire and cause swelling of the--of the mouth tissue and the throat tissue and that kind of thing, creating the possibility of swelling so severe that it might cut off the--the breathing and ...
DT: I see. CS: ... those plants are 'course in every home.
DT: Sure.
CS: And they get a lot of calls from them because a little kid will start munching on a--on a philodendron leaf, ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... or--even the pets do it, you know.
DT: Sure. CS: 'Course the dogs and cats and unfortunately, despite what you might hear from some people--and I've even heard this on--on some pretty prominent programming on our local radio here--you cannot go by what critters eat. They do not know, always, what's poisonous and what's not. Cows, horses, sheep every year die, sometimes multitudes, from eating the wrong thing. Dogs and cats get real sick, you know. 'Course if a dog bites into a Dieffenbachia leaf he runs yipping around the house, or a child will scream and run to Mamma right away because it sets their mouths on fire.
DT: I see. CS: That's the fortunate thing about it. Although it's poisonous and it's--potentially dangerous, the first bite is all they take. [Laughs.]
DT: Well, that's good. Maybe it puts 'em on notice.
CS: Yeah. Well, there's enough about the poisonous plants. Really, there are a lot of poisonous plants out in nature.
DT: Um-hmm. CS: And the potential is that a kid will see a bright berry or a flower or something that looks really good to them and pop it in their mouth, 'cause little children especially have not learned to discriminate very well, and you know, kids crawl around on the floor. Put things in their mouths, whatever they find, on the floor, [laughs], ...
DT: Sure.
CS: ... in every household, so--that's the thing to watch out for, but--there are a lot of--of very fine edible things out there in Nature, too, and we really know only a very small percentage of the--the plants that are native to North America and other parts of the world, that either are edible or--or poisonous.
DT: Well, that's--that's what brings up a question I had. It--it seems like very little is known about the world of plants and we're always learning more. And I--I'm curious how you found out about, you know, edible plants and poisonous plants and--and their effects on people. Was--did you have a--a friend or mentor or some teacher early on, or ...
CS: My mentors were my parents, primarily. My dad was one of the last of the old-time country doctors up in Arkansas in the Ozarks, northwestern Arkansas--and he loved plants. My mother did, too, especially the beautiful, delicate-flowered native plants. We would go on long jaunts when I was a child--my brothers and parents--and we would walk over the hills and climb the mountain and gather a few of the beautiful columbines growing under the waterfalls and down the hillside, bring some verbena home and plant it in our rock gardens. We had some very extensive rock gardens and--that we cultivated all the time. My dad knew the plants very well and he knew their Latin names. I grew up, you know, just with--with Latin names for the plants or--or the generic names for the plants as--being as--as easy for me as--as the common names, and--at that time almost all medicines were plant-derived. Now so many 'course are synthetically--formulated in the laboratory, which is fine, but then practically all of them were derived directly from plant compounds. This is--we're talking--I was a child in the Depression years--1920's, '30's, and early '40's, along then. And--so, Dad knew these plant properties so well.
DT: Uh-huh. CS: He taught me so many of the things that did have toxic qualities or that did have--potential edible qualities, that kind of thing, as well as to appreciate the beauty of--of the flowering plants. But, my folks--everyone was poor then, and I grew up in rural Arkansas where people depended on hunting, fishing, and even gathering some wild edible plants for a part--a serious part of their livelihood.
DT: Uh-huh.
CS: And, poke salad?
DT: Yeah. CS: Do you remember "Poke Salad Annie," the song?
DT: Sure. CS: Poke salad was a constant spring vegetable, with us every spring. We went over the fields and dells and gathered poke salad, and we also gathered things like lamb's quarter and dock and--several other thins. The berries--of course we picked berries and Grandma made cobblers and, [laughs], ...
DT: Sure.
CS: ... and we--we ate a lot of--of wild things. Actually we knew only a tiny fraction of those things that are edible and very good. If I had known at that time what I know now about the edibility of--of many plants, we'd hardly've had to go to the store, you know, but ...
DT: Right.
CS: ... this--[laughs]. But--but the things that people gather across the rural South, ...
CS: That's ...
CS: ... poke and doc and--that sort of thing.
DT: You know, that's--it's interesting because I hear that from a lot of people I've been talking to, that--they say that one of the reasons they got involved in conservation was just a very natural thing connected to the--they grew up during the Depression. They had to do without things, they had to reuse ...
CS: O.K. Um-hmm.
DT: ... things, and make the most of--of what they were, you know, able to--to find. And ...
CS: Yes.
DT: ... and that--it sort of distresses 'em nowadays to see how cavalier people are and--with disposable sort of items in ...
CS: Ah. That's true.
DT: ... in every part of their life.
CS: Absolutely.
DT: And is it like that for you? I mean, ...
CS: Yes. DT: ... beyond the--the plant knowledge that you've got, ...
CS: Yeah. I saw a lot of hungry people, hungry kids that went to the--what we called grade school and elementary school with me, who sometimes didn't have anything at all to eat.
DT: Oh. CS: There were others who would share, of course. And, we had--if someone had an apple, at lunchtime on the playground, there was always somebody at his elbow who would say, "Dibbies on the core." Yeah.
DT: Oh.
CS: This is--you know, it sounds incredible but that's--the way it was, um-hmm.
DT: Well, I--I notice that you--you worked a lot with--with underprivileged kids and disadvantaged children, you know, through much of your life and I--I'm curious how they view environmental issues when it--so often it's a--a white-collar, white-skinned ...
CS: Yes.
DT: ... middle-class issue. CS: Um-hmm. Um-hmm.
DT: And I'm wondering if--you know, if you're poor and black and you come from the inner city, what is--what do you think Nature means to them and is conservation important?
CS: Um-hmm. Yeah.
DT: What do you think?
CS: Well, I think very unfortunately that minority and very poor urban children and their--and adults, ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... have been very slow to be involved in environmental issues and conservation. They have been hard-pressed to try to lift themselves economically and socially, and that has been the thing that--that they have worked at so hard of course for past decades.
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: And there is, I think, the beginnings now--I think there are beginnings of interest in minority communities, because they're discovering that they're discriminated against environmentally, because it's those parts of the city that are the poorest where most frequently, dangerous toxic chemicals are dumped, land fills are--are developed--things like that. And--and they--mostly minority, inner-city, industrial-area populations are the ones that are most at risk environmentally and with--with the--the toxins and--and the problems that we develop. Bad air, bad water, the whole schmear.
DT: Um-hmm. Yeah. CS: And so we--we've been working hard to try to--to get minority peoples in--involved in the conservation-environmental movement. And--and it has been slow and difficult because--well, there're several reasons. One, so many of the people who live in these urban areas now have not had the kind of contact with Nature that--that we all had a generation or so ago because they'd been isolated from it.
DT: Yeah.
CS: They have not developed an--a love or appreciation for it unfortunately.
DT: Well, it must be like, you know, loving something that's on the moon. You know, it's ...
CS: Yeah. That's right.
DT: ... that it's not accessible.
CS: Yeah. That's it. Um-hmm.
DT: What--what other things that come to mind about--obstacles to--to blacks and browns getting involved because I know it's a--it's a real ...
CS: Um-hmm.
DT: ... problem, I guess, for the environmental movement is that--you know, the ...
CS: Um-hmm.
DT: ... the society's changing and white folks are on the ...
CS: Yes.
DT: ... decline and--and browns and blacks are on the in--you know, increase and ...
CS: Yeah.
DT: ... and, you know, are those people gonna be concerned about the same things? I ...
CS: Well, again, I think that the--the tremendous effort to achieve some equality, some justice, ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... socially, economically, that sort of thing, has been the preoccupation, and that largely to this point they've looked upon the environmental movement as being kind of a white man's hobby.
DT: Sort of a luxury item.
CS: Yeah. That's right. Um-hmm.
DT: Well, what do you think? I mean, do you--do you see things as being dire and critical or a--you know, that it's--that it is superficial to be worried about environmental trends or do you think it's--important?
CS: Oh, absolutely not, absolutely not. We've made great strides. I am impressed with what has been done.
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: We have better air now, we have better water. We have cleaner ...
DT: Yeah. CS: ... cleaner air and cleaner water because of the efforts people have made over the past 30 and 40 years. And, so many places have been cleaned up. Life has come back in--in places like the Houston Ship Channel that was ...
DT: Yeah?
CS: ... absolutely lifeless two or three decades ago.
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: It's not a place yet that you'd want to, you know, take a drink from, but, [laughs], ...
DT: Right, right.
CS: ... but it is so much better, so much better, and--the toxins that are not continually killing the ship channel are also not going on into Galveston Bay, which is one of the biggest sources of seafoods in the whole United States.
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: So much progress has been made here--Chesapeake Bay, Lake Erie, all over the country. And it is because the government has been pressed by people who are environmentally sensitive and conscious of--of our relationship to the world around us ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... and general health of humankind, that--that has made the difference.
DT: What ...
CS: The big corporate industrial interests were slow to move. They had to be budged and practically pitchforked by the government ...
DT: Um-hmm. CS: ... before they moved. And then they got on the bandwagon, and now of course, they have done--they have made--so many of them made really great strides, and I appreciate what many of--of the big corporate chemical companies have done. There's still an awful lot to be done, of course. [Laughs.]
DT: Right. Right.
CS: An awful lot to be done, and--want to protect their economic interests. Every--you know, everybody wants to look out for himself and it's the same thing with the corporate interests and so forth and ...
DT: Well, they've got shareholders and employees ...
CS: Sure. That's right.
DT: ... and I guess they feel pressed to ...
CS: Yeah. But maybe--maybe now a lot of companies have--big corporations have gone to the idea that general human health and a good environment is good for business. It is, and--in the long run, ...
DT: You don't see the contrast between jobs and environment that you sometimes hear about, in the press?
CS: No. No, no.
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: It's not a matter of jobs or clean air or water, ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... and clean soil. It--it's--it's both. This has been proved time and time again. All the doomsday predictions that we've gotten are from various kinds of interests--like, for instance, notably, petrochemical interests, the big lumber interests of the northwest--those have not worked out. As environmental laws have been introduced and enforced in these areas, things have gotten better for everyone.
DT: Better. Uh-huh.
CS: Absolutely. It costs a corporate entity a lot of money to shape up and clean up.
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: But then in the long run it pays them and it pays everyone else.
DT: Well, I guess a lot of those pollutants are also a possible resource they could sell to somebody. I mean, ...
CS: Sure.
DT: ... I've heard these stories of solvents ...
CS: Oh, yes. Yes.
DT: ... that they used to throw away, ...
CS: That's--that's part of ...
DT: ... being somebody's feedstuff, you know. CS: That's part of--of progress, that we learn how to use these--these things we're disposing of. [Laughs.] It ...
DT: Sure.
CS: ... right and ... DT: Well, you know, I was curious where--where the impetus was coming, if it--you know, the corporate interests and manager and--weren't really favorable to conservation. Where do you think the push was coming in the--I guess, maybe after Rachel Carson's book came out, when you started reading more about environmental things.
CS: Sure. Um-hmm.
DT: Who was interested in this and working on it?
CS: Well, 'course I think Rachel Carson's book was kind of a watershed, woke up lots of people. And then--conservation groups of various kinds began to form. Environmental groups began to press for--things like, "Let's get rid of DDT. It's ... "
DT: Um-hmm. CS: "--it's inimical to the environment. It's killing off a lot of our--our prize creatures, including the great American symbol, the bald eagle."
DT: Well, did you notice that, when--you know, in the '50's, ...
CS: Um-hmm.
DT: ... that a lot of the raptors were disappearing?
CS: Oh, yes. Yes. And, I was aware of it, too, simply--also because of course of various publications that were--were noting this. Survey studies done by ...
DT: Before Rachel Carson's book came out.
CS: ... by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department--various entities, you know, that are charged with making these kinds of studies and surveys with--among animal--wildlife populations. State Fish and Wildlife departments, that sort of thing. And so, we began to see that what was happening from DDT and some of the other tremendously disastrous pesticides that were being used then, you know.
DT: Yeah. CS: And--it was a hard fight, really, to get rid of DDT but finally the government--we--we got some laws passed ...
DT: Sure.
CS: ... and it was abolished in this country.
DT: Uh-huh.
CS: And--now of course as a result, everybody sees--the bald eagle's back. It has come back with--you know, like gang-busters. So have ospreys and brown pelicans and all these other birds that were--were practically eliminated by that.
DT: Uh-huh.
CS: Um-hmm. And it was a hard fight. [Laughs.]
DT: I bet. Well, when did you first sort of become aware of, not so much the value and world of nature that you're talking about before, you know, the food and the poisons that plants could provide...
CS: Um-hmm.
DT: But more the sort of political side of things, you know, how these things should be addressed by the government or by society.
CS: Um-hmm. Um-hmm.
DT: When did you start to get aware of that?
CS: I guess I got a gradual awareness--actually gradually growing awareness--through reading, ...
DT: Uh-huh.
CS: ... associations of various kinds and--my own observations. As time has gone on I have watched--from the angle of--of hunting and fishing--I did quite a lot of that when I was a kid. It was a way of life where I grew up and it was a part of--of people's livelihood in rural Arkansas where I grew up actually.
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: We ate opossum, we ate raccoon, [laughs], ...
DT: Yeah.
CS: ... we ate most anything we could lay hands on, lots of rabbits. And we fished, you know, for--for our meals frequently, ...
DT: Right.
CS: ... and, I have watched over the years--I don't fish now, I don't hunt now, you know, I just--somehow can't do that. Although I still eat fish and I'll eat a little venison if somebody gives it to me or a duck but--but I--I'll have to say I can't handle killing anything anymore.
DT: That's interesting.
CS: But--right, and I don't--I don't have anything against people hunting within the game laws and within ...
DT: Uh-huh.
CS: ... within--or--or fishing, you know. That--that ...
DT: Which is a personal decision on your part.
CS: It's just my personal ...
DT: Yeah.
CS: ... thinking but--I began to notice that the--the streams were becoming more and more murky. I began to see obvious evidence of pollution on the streams, oil slicks moving down the creeks and--well, cruddy banks where the water laps the ...
DT: Right. CS: ... edges and things like this, you know, and--that troubled me a lot, and ...
DT: When was that? I mean, I guess there was a whole range of years but when ...
CS: Yes, across ...
DT: ... do you think it was first becoming obvious to you?
CS: I would say probably in the '50's and '60's. Uh-huh. Yeah, and ...
DT: And ...
CS: ... then--a growing awareness of that just--by my own personal observation, combined with the reading that I was doing, you know but--of course, ...
DT: We ...
CS: ... lots of news in the papers from about that time on about--various kinds of pollution, oil spills, one thing and another and the damage it did.
And--trying to remember just--when in our local area I became aware and--and active in trying to help a bit with cleanup of some of our--our local streams here. I did a little testifying from time to time as the evidence emerged that Cypress Creek, Spring Creek, were heavily polluted, that--a lot of subdivision sewage treatment plants upstream were discharging raw sewage into them.
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: And kids swimming down those creeks as they have for several generations, ...
DT: Sure.
CS: ... and getting sick from it and the doctors here at Northwest Medical Center warning people to not let their kids swim in those creeks back then.
DT: This was in the '50's?
CS: This--I would--I'm trying to remember. I believe the '50's or early '60's perhaps. No, I believe this was mainly in the '60's.
DT: O.K.
CS: Finally this became so--so obvious through--through the Houston newspapers, through journalism, one--one thing and another, that--the Houston City Health Department had told all these subdivision treatment plants--and 'course this area out here in North Harris county was being developed so rapidly then. When we first moved out here, FM-
1960 was just a little country road. And then across a period of the next few months, 300,000 people moved in next door to us, you know. [Laughs.] And ...
DT: Boy. You got neighbors.
CS: Yeah, right. There is something like the population of the city of Austin that lives up and down in the watersheds of Spring and Cypress Creeks.
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: And there are more than 240 subdivision sewage treatment plants that empty into those two creeks, which then proceed on down, join the San Jacinto River and a mile further down are part of Lake Houston, ...
DT: That we drink.
CS: ... which is 40% of Houston's drinking water. You know, as you become aware of that kind of thing, you say, "Hey! This doesn't compute very well." [Laughs.]
DT: Sure.
CS: And, the city health department did finally clamp down on these sewage treatment plants and--and told 'em, "Clean up your act. Don't dump any more raw sewage in here or we'll shut you down." Well, it's a pretty good threat to people in any subdivision that they can't ... [Tape 1, Side B.]
CS: ... flush their potty. DT: Sure.
CS: So that had a good effect. [Laughs.] And a lot of those were cleaned up but there's an occasional spill even yet that--even we, from our park, going down Spring Creek on a canoe trip, and have found--a case or two of--of sewage treatment plants just dropping raw sewage right into that stream again, which again goes down and becomes part of Houston's drinking water.
DT: Oh.
CS: And I think that's totally unconscionable.
DT: Yeah. Why, it doesn't seem like they're thinking about their neighbors down stream, ...
CS: Absolutely not.
DT: ... and some of those neighbors are probably themselves actually ending up drinking that same water and ...
CS: Yes. DT: ... fouling it at the same time.
CS: Yes. Yes. DT: Well, you mentioned Cypress Creek and I'd noticed that you had worked with the Cypress Creek Parkway. And I'm curious if you could tell a little bit about that and also, what you felt was the real impetus to set that string of pearls aside. I mean, was it flood control or was it for open space or habitat or what was the thought behind it?
CS: One of the subdivisions that's--one of the oldest in this area--the earliest developed, was Inverness Forest, northwest just a little way of 1960 and I-45, and Inverness Forest was developed right down into the flood plain.
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: A lady who purchased a home in there named Judy Overby--saw several times her neighbors' homes being flooded. All of those that were in the flood plain, which was a lot of them, were flooded every time the creek got into any kind of--of good flood.
DT: And this was in the early '70's?
CS: Yes, I guess the early '70's--late '60's, early '70's probably. And, she said, "Something must be done about this." At that time there were no laws whatsoever prohibiting a developer for developing--from developing in the floodplain. And this is one of the things that has always incensed me, is that developers will do that, knowing full well that those houses are going to flood, and that all these poor dumb Yankees that come down here and buy those houses, ...
DT: Sure.
CS: ... are going to get flooded out, and it's going to be a tragic thing.
DT: You can--I mean, it's just a ...
CS: Um-hmm.
DT: ... statistical thing, I guess, you know, ...
CS: Yeah, the ...
DT: ... what the rainfall events are and the flood gauge is.
CS: ... this flat Gulf Coast region. It--it happens in every flood plain. We don't have much elevation above those flood plains. We've got a little. And all this development should be outside it. Judy went on a program of trying to publicize this sort of thing, and--County Judge had--Jon Lindsay had just been elected--picked Judy up as part of his staff, made her a special assistant, and asked her to develop this Cypress Creek Parkway project to buy up all this property, so that developers wouldn't and couldn't develop down into the flood plain, and so that green space could be saved, synonymously, for the future of--of the people of Houston in this area. And so there was--those two reasons were the big motivation for the development at Cypress Creek ...
DT: That's really fortunate, I mean, and very ...
CS: ... Parkway Project. Um-hmm.
DT: ... far-sighted.
CS: Yes. Now there's something like 4,000 acres up and down Cypress and Spring Creeks in those flood plains that are--are public-owned parkway property. And, only a small percentage of those 4,000 acres is currently developed. Some parks, like the one I work at, Jesse Jones Park, Mercer Arboretum--a number of other parks up and down close to the creek. We have a lot of property there that is undeveloped but--as parks. But it's--it's there as green space and it's not being used to build--if our--our 225 acres in my park were instead put in houses, two or three to the acre in there, 400-500 houses--this flood we had in October, 1994, ninety--yeah, '94--can you--can you imagine the millions upon millions of dollars of damage that that would've done? Instead, the water came out across the--the flood plain there, half a mile up. Yes, it got in our Nature Center and we had to do some repair there and there's a little cost there. But such a--a tiny fraction of what the cost would've been otherwise and the flood--flood plain forest takes it just fine, there's no problem there. Very few animals die in a flood like that. Squirrels climb the trees. Rabbits hop up to a little higher ground. So do the deer. The birds fly up on a ...
DT: Sure.
CS: ... perch on a limb. So, you know, the animals in the forest have been taking this for tens of thousands of years and--and managed it very well.
DT: And probably benefiting from the silt.
CS: Oh, sure. Absolutely, and if that drops another layer of sediment there, which is rich and fertilizes the forest again.
DT: And so long as you're not tied to a slab that's got piers in the ground, you're fine.
CS: That's right. And, we have to have homes. We have to have homes, we have to have business places, we have to have parking lots and all of those things. But, the grave problem that humanity faces right now--not just in the Cypress Creek Parkway system in North Harris County--but faces all over the world is the--is the exploding human population, ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... because people have to have a place to live. They have to have an area to grow plants to eat.
DT: Um-hmm. CS: They have to have it for agriculture. They have to build commercial buildings and they have to make highways, and all of these things continue to lay more and more of the earth under concrete and slab and that sort of thing. And it increases every problem--every environmental problem that we have, because the more houses you build, the more floods you're going to have, because water that falls on the forest, or in a grassland--see, it falls on the--the canopy layer of the trees in a woods. It slowly trickles off those leaves and drops to the secondary layer and then down to the shrub layer, and--and then trickles off the shrub layer into the forest floor and trickles around the dead leaves on the forest floor and--and the decaying logs there--and finally trickles on into the streams. It does all of this slowly.
But heavy rainfall that hits a parking lot, or 400 or 500 roofs in a subdivision and all their driveways and--and streets, whoosh!!! It all goes through the drainages, real quick into the creek. The creek builds up very fast, and it floods--just downstream very rapidly and we have more and more--well, within the past ten years, on Cypress and Spring Creeks, we have had at least three hundred-year floods, what were considered to be the hundred-year floods--because of this--this--this particular problem. And, ...
DT: The population. There are not enough ...
CS: The population explosion. That's right. DT: Well, what do you--I've often read about--naysayers saying, "Well, Malthus and E.O. Wilson and these people who are concerned about population, ... "
CS: Yeah.
DT: "--well, "The Population Bomb" was wrong and the Malthusian predictions were off base." And then, I also hear people say, "Well, they're right, it's just the timing is off. You know, that it ... "
CS: Um-hmm.
DT: "the effects may be a little bit later coming." Well, which camp do you fall in with?
CS: Um-hmm. Well, the timing was off on--on their Doomsday predictions about that, yes. But, I guess I'm sort of halfway on these things. Human populations are exploding and the--the environmental problem all over the world is exacerbated by that. It's the--almost the base of it right now, the exploding human population. It's the biggest factor in it.
DT: Well, do you ... CS: All environmental problems. And--and humanity is expanding even so at an enormous rate. We would've probably lost half the earth's population to famine if we had not kept pace with the Green Revolution that produces, through agriculture, many, many times the produce per acre, especially of the grains that're the basis of food around the world--wheat, rye, oats, rice, those things. If--if we had not managed, through agricultural technology, to produce this green revolution, we would not be able to feed the world's population. But because of that, we have kept some pace but the green revolution's showing very, very significant signs of wearing out now, because it demands these hybrid grains that are so high-yield, and the other hybrid fruits and vegetables that're high--very high-yield demand so many more pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, chemicals to keep them going like that, and--in time, pests become immune to pesticides. The insects ...
DT: Um-hmm. CS: ... develop immunities, and--other problems develop. The chemicals build up in the soil from the--the commercial fertilizers and so on, and--I really am worried about how far and how long sustainable agriculture--our sustainable food supply, you know, will be here for the world, ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... as the population continues to explode.
DT: Well, which do you think is more of a concern, the population growth in a country like India that has a $2,000-per-year per capita income ...
CS: Yeah.
DT: ... but has a growth rate that may be two or three times the U.S.'s, or the growth rate in the U.S. where it's maybe much lower but the people who're born and, you know, who propagate, consume much more, ...
CS: Um-hmm.
DT: ... and which do you think is more severe?
CS: [Laughs.] Well, I think we're going to have to--to learn to--to live with less, absolutely, ...
DT: Uh-huh. CS: ... yeah. As time goes on I think that's inevitable, that--people in the developed countries and with very high standards of living are going to have to learn to live with less. We're--we're going to have to do more sharing of the earth's agricultural space and--and its produce. Keep these human populations alive.
There has been some real progress made in population control around the world, too, and--unfortunately it's in the underdeveloped countries that--still that--notably Africa, Hispanic America, ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... that population growth is still at--at its--its most rapid pace and where--where the world's--basic forests--rain forests of course are being--are being wiped out so fast because of the need for these people to have a living.
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: Brasilia and--the Amazon, Africa--those populations are exploding so fast and--and the rain forests and 'course all of that is such a commonplace now everybody knows about that. The kids learn about it in school and this is great.
DT: Right. CS: Kids are getting some environmental education. They know that because the rain forest in Brazil is being wiped out that world climatic change may be--may be something that can be a--a real disaster to the earth, that rainfall may be limited in places that have been accustomed to it, that floods'll happen in other places, etc. Um-hmm.
DT: Well, you mentioned the Brazilian rain forest. I read a lot about that also and I was mentioning it to somebody. And he said, "Well, you know--how much attention do we pay to the Great North American Prairie, ... "
CS: Yeah.
DT: "--what happened to it, or ... " CS: Yeah. I see. Yeah. Uh-huh.
DT: "--or the Big Thicket," and if there are things that are much more local, that a lot of students don't know about. I'm curious how you weigh those things out. You know, the ...
CS: Yeah.
DT: ... the problem of the rain forest, which I guess still is probably a great resource for oxygen for the whole world.
CS: Yeah.
DT: But then there are these things that're more local, that are in our neighborhood.
CS: I would really like to address that. Could we take a pause for just a moment? Would that be possible?
DT: Sure. Sure, let's do that. ......
DT: We're resuming now. Still February 23, 1997 and talking to Carmine Stahl, of course. And we were talking about the issue of the American prairies and their conservation and other sort of local resources and how that compares to problems in other parts of the world that may be better known.
CS: Yes. Here in--in the United States we have not been very good conservationists for most of our history unfortunately. 'Course when people were settling this country and moving west to what was then the Great West--Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, places like that--the world's largest deciduous forest grew through that part of the world, and it appeared that the resources of forest, prairie, all this vast land and its rich resources was something totally unlimited, and--by the populations of that time, it might've been. But--so people did not take much care of the things that--cutting down the forest was the thing to do, of course, and--planting crops and those had to be planted. And then when we got out on the prairie and plowed and planted, of course, we erased almost all of the tall grass prairie that once was so grand across the--the heartland of America and--and the Plains.
And--and then of course in the northwestern part of the United States now we're--we're probably at the most critical place with--with--cutting those resources up there that--the great forests of the northwest.
I think about some local things here. At the time this area was first settled, 1830's, around here--1820's, '30's--along these creeks and rivers were cypresses that were a thousand years old. I've seen old photographs of cypresses loaded onto railroad flat cars cut into sections, and--the diameter of the cypress was much more than the railroad flat car--hung over both sides like that.
DT: Is that right!
CS: These were wonderful trees. There's not a one of 'em left in Texas anymore. There's a cypress in Louisiana and one in Florida that are both believed to be over a thousand years, 12 hundred years on the one in Florida. But, none like that in Texas anymore. We have in the park where I work, the oldest and largest in Harris County--some over there that are 400 years old and it's amazing to me that those were left down there. But, I suppose it was an inaccessible place at that time that saved 'em. But you know, if people--I know that lumber was needed before the time of treated wharves, piers, pilings, that kind of thing. Cypress is such a water-tolerant wood that it will last so many, many years. It was--it was used almost exclusively in wharves and piers and pilings and ship-building and that kind of thing so much. And, it was needed for that but if only those folks had left just a few of those thousand-year-old trees for us to look at now, you know.
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: Wouldn't it be fun--neat to walk up and look at a--at a tree like that?
DT: Yeah. Very special.
CS: But we don't have one. They took the last one out. Human--greed, I guess you could say, you know, or human need, and they--they were big money, ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... at that time and for that time, and that's why they were taken out. Now the same thing is--is happening in the northwest, where old growth forest trees 700, 800, a thousand and more years old are being cut daily. I personally don't think anything a thousand years old ought to be cut down and killed. [Laughs.]
DT: Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
CS: And--and so much of that's being done up there in--in our northwestern forests and in the forests of British Columbia, ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... and Alberta, for--things that are not replaceable. It's--it's amazing how many hundreds of thousands of acres of trees are--are cut down up there every year to provide throwaway chopsticks for the Japanese. [Laughs.]
DT: Oh. That's true. I had read that, more locally, that the Columbia Bottoms was--you know, some tracts were cut down there recently, mostly for fax paper.
CS: Yes.
DT: And, you know, some of them--beautiful hardwoods, ...
CS: Yeah. um-hmm. DT: ... oaks and so on, and I think I could follow you. Do you have other sort of thoughts about how the landscape around Houston has changed--I mean, before we were born, and maybe during our lifetimes?
CS: Um-hmm.
DT: It's changed so rapidly, and so dramatically.
CS: And--and Houston with all its problems is one of the greener cities in the United States, ...
DT: Oh, yeah.
CS: ... 'cause there was plenty of space here for Houston to expand, and a lot of the development leap-frogged over green spaces--woods, meadows, prairies, and--expanded on out rapidly, and we still have a lot of these pockets left within Houston. If you fly over Houston, you get up in the top of the skyscraper, you see a lot of green stuff out there, ...
DT: Sure. CS: ... which is really marvelous. A lot of it's been planted back.
Many developers took very little care. Although our development here has "forest" in the name of it, by the time the developer got through here there were probably half a dozen scraggly, tall, skinny pines left here. [Laughs.]
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: When we first moved into our home, 27 years ago here, our back yard was woods on out for half a mile, to the next street or road.
DT: Pine forest or ...
CS: Hmm?
DT: ... Pine forest or mixed?
CS: Mixed, pine and hardwood, ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... and very nice. Deer would come up in our back yard at night, that kind of thing.
DT: Is that right.
CS: We--we loved that. And--but of course we had no objection when development went on through the--the other half of the subdivision there and that was developed because we knew some more folks needed homes, too.
DT: Sure. CS: But, the developer took absolutely no care as some developers have, ...
DT: Um-hmm. CS: ... with leaving woods there. A lot of developers have learned that it's really good business to leave some beautiful trees for--for people, nice mature trees for them to move in under into their house ...
DT: Sure. CS: ... when they get there. That didn't happen here. But, people began to get busy planting, as we did here in our own bushy yard. Looks like a jungle now, [laughs], unfortunately. But planting shrubs and trees and--for a long period there, some--several years, after the woods was wiped out behind us, we hardly had a bird within a mile of us.
DT: Um-hmm. CS: We hardly had anything. There was no bird song, nothing. But as people began to plant and the shrubs and the trees began to grow that they had planted here, the birds began to come back. Now we have all kinds of birds and wildlife here. We have squirrels get in our pecan tree in the back yard. We have watched a big, fat possum waddle across the yard at night. Armadillos come into the back yard and--one night I looked out our bedroom window and there was a couple of young raccoons sitting in the--in the tree outside and--that kind of thing is really neat to me, ...
DT: Sure.
CS: ... and especially the birds. We love ...
DT: Must be encouraging to see that come back.
CS: Yes, yes. And--and people themselves--most people want trees. There are some who don't, you know. But most people want trees, they want shrubs, they want flowers, they want landscape, ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... and--that is good for the environment all around.
DT: Right.
CS: 'Course these things also help reduce the costs of heating and elec--and air-conditioning--the trees do around us, the shade. They produce oxygen. [Laughs.]
DT: Uh-huh.
CS: They reduce noise, and car exhaust pollution.
DT: I see.
CS: Um-hmm.
DT: Well, IT--I know you--as a plant expert, have you--been involved at all in trying to educate people about planting native plants and ...
CS: Yes, very much so.
DT: ... and xeriscape type plants?
CS: Very much so. The spectacular, beautiful, tropical-looking things and southwestern desert-looking things and ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... and--and things that come from exotic places, of course, are--are nice and no--you know, I have no objection to people planning those when they--they give them pleasure but, I do encourage--and we have done this for many, many years through all the Arboreta around and the nature programs in--in the area--encouraging people to plant native plants because they take so much less water, care, fertilizer. The water thing is really big. How much water people put on their yards every year to save them through our long, droughty summers.
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: And, if you plant things that xeriscape your yard--you know, to some degree plant things that really don't need all that water, and--things that will grow well here and things that will be long-lived here. So many things that we've--we've had introduced just don't do very well. The native things always do better, ...
DT: Right. CS: ... always do better.
And the things that are introduced sometimes naturalize and become a very, very bad problem, like the Chinese tallow trees and--and ...
DT: Sure. Sure. Can you--can you talk a little bit about that, you know, the exotics and invasions, have--what you've seen?
CS: Oh, absolutely. 'Course with some of those things, like fire ants and tallow trees, [laughs], are pestilence, you know. Tallows were introduced by well-meaning nurserymen around the turn of the century, early 1900's actually, for several reasons. One, they were observed to be a very rapid-growing shade tree. Two, they produced a lot of color in the fall, which few trees do here in the South. And three, they have some waxy berries that potentially could produce a candle-developing industry. In--in the early 1900's, candles were still big. But just after this tree was introduced, petroleum waxes became cheaper and became the thing to make candles with, of course.
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: And, these tallow trees went absolutely wild. They corresponded with an explosion in the population of grackles, blackbirds, in North America.
DT: Is that right!
CS: Blackbird--there are far more blackbirds now than there ever were when Columbus discovered America. [Laughs.]
DT: Uh-huh.
CS: And they're also a big problem, as you've probably read in the--roosting in the trees at night around the county courthouses everywhere ...
DT: Sure.
CS: ... in Texas. But, ...
DT: Bring your umbrella.
CS: Yeah, right. What happened--this is a man-made problem. When--when those--great forests were cut down in Ohio and Illinois and Indiana and Missouri, and grains were planted there. That was ideal for the blackbirds, they're grain-eating birds. Their populations immediately exploded. Same thing happened with the starlings that were introduced to this part of the world. And, the--the--their flocks now number in--in the hundreds of thousands. We've had flocks counted at roosts here in Texas that were estimated at over 10 million blackbirds, yes, roosting in--in a patch of woods at night.
And blackbirds love tallow berries. So they eat those tallow berries and--and 'course they're toxic to human beings but birds can eat a lot of things that humans can't. They eat those tallow berries, they fly and they drop the seeds--all across the countryside. And tallows grow so fast, and they grow anywhere here. They grow in standing water. They--they can take the water over their roots for a much longer period than most of our native trees, and they grow out in dry places. They grow on the prairie where trees have never grown before. The rice fields. If you leave a rice field fallow for two or three years--which you should occasionally, you know, ...
DT: Uh-huh.
CS: ... a big rice farmer will want to leave some of his fields fallow for a while. Leave 'em fallow for a couple of years and you've got a forest of tallow trees as high as this ceiling. They grow so rapidly and so thickly, and respond to that sunshine so fast. [Laughs.]
DT: Well, do you see many other exotics in Jesse Jones Park? Do you see nandina or ...
CS: Well, we see a lot of privet. Privet is ...
DT: Privet.
CS: ... is another introduced plant, privet ligustrum sinensis is ...
DT: O.K.
CS: ... originated in China. It was introduced to Europe many centuries ago and it became a great hedge plant there. ... [Tape 2 of two, Side A.]
CS: ... It was cultivated for hedges in England and all across Europe, ...
DT: Um-hmm.
CS: ... and then introduced to this country for the same purpose early on, and here in the South it naturalized. We never know when a plant's going to naturalize or when it won't. The azaleas of course unfortunately don't naturalize in the woods. Wouldn't it be a pretty woods--woodland if they were all blooming out there right now? But they don't do that, but many plants do. I'd say a minority of plants that we introduce, exotic plants--a small minority of them do naturalize and take to the--to the soil and the climate and--the amount of sunshine and rain that we have here. Privet is another one that has filled the woods now and displaced many, many native plants.
DT: Hmm. CS: Yeah. It's--it--you know, none of these things are without some merit. Tallow trees do grow fast. They do provide quick shade and they do have beautiful fall color.
DT: Um-hmm. CS: But the drawbacks! Millions and millions of dollars have been spent eradicating that thing, by rice farmers, and by other farmers. Goodness, they'll take over any place in our area that they're given a chance whatsoever - along the hedgerows, invade the forests, as a glade opens.