A week ago I received a campus e-mail urging me to see the "lovely ephemeral wildflowers" at Christy Woods over the weekend.
However, as a manly man, the message was quickly dismissed. When Saturday rolled around, though, having no plans, I decided to do it — and I was not disappointed.
For being smack dab in the middle of Muncie, Christy Woods is a fantastic place to view the various wonders of nature.
Call me what you will, but wildflowers are downright exquisite. As a man I'm not afraid to say that. So, fitting to the topic at hand, I'll embrace my inner flower and make this column as flowery as possible, ripe with fluffy adjectives and naturalistic imagery and issues.
As the guided tour wound through the oaks and maples of Christy Woods, we stopped often to view the delicate and fleeting flowers that decorate the forest floor. I hadn't come prepared to write about the flowers so I've forgotten their names. All had odd sounding monikers though, like Rumpelstiltskin's footwort or bloodroot, or my favorite, the Dutchman's breeches.
The farther we traveled, the more serene and detached I felt. Woods tend to do that to me. When I was able to block out the surrounding urban sounds, I realized that I could have been anywhere, in any one of the great forests. Losing myself among the trees, if only for an hour, was cathartic. Being surrounded by all that diversity, in the middle of Muncie no less, made me wonder why there aren't more places like it.
I guess it's difficult to expect many places like Christy Woods without proper funding to protect them. This is especially true in East Central Indiana where so few wooded areas exist. According to a recent Star Press article, less than 2 percent of Delaware County is made up of woodland, with only nine Indiana counties faring worse.
The article goes on to describe the efforts of the local Red-tail Conservancy and its stance that an area with few natural habitats should receive increased attention to preserve what is left. However, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources' comprehensive wildlife conservation strategy does not help in this fight. Most of their efforts are concentrated in the northern and southern parts of the state, leaving Central Indiana without representation.
The DNR does little without the help of local conservation efforts though. That's why it's important that we support agencies like Red-tail if we hope to receive any attention at all from the state.
This made me wonder if there was anything else we could do to promote biodiversity, and, locally speaking, the answer is probably no. But what about the 60 percent of land used for farming, though?
I contacted Andrew Westfall, an agronomy technician working for Purdue University, who said, "From an agricultural perspective, biodiversity is important because it improves genetic strains which lead to an increase in plant and human health."
He went on to discuss the problems with growing only corn and soybeans, which leaves our food supply susceptible to disease. Westfall cited the rice grassy stunt virus and the potato famine as past examples.
The good thing is that we as consumers can change this trend by buying fresh, locally-grown foods.
Our loss of diversity is nothing new. Ever since our ancestors climbed down from the trees, we have been spreading out and affecting our environment. It has not been a problem until recently.
Westfall, in what I assume is an uncharacteristic tangent for an agronomy technician, veered the conversation towards the Holocene extinction, which refers to the loss of many species in the present epoch, including the decline of vertebrate species population by more than one-third in the last 50 years.
"At the same time, humans have placed high demand on the world's resources, to the point where the Earth is unable to keep up in the struggle to regenerate," he said.
Westfall goes on to describe the delicate balance we must achieve: That with higher diversity of life, the greater the opportunity for economic development, increased human health and flexible reactions to new challenges such as climate change.
If I learned one thing from watching "Bio-Dome" 20 times, it was that we should think globally and act locally. After all, Muncie isn't the worst place to live (thanks to Terre Haute).
And like the wildflower plays its part, brightening up the world it lives in, we should do the same.
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