If only Alabama knew how to get rich on its own gold.

Every time I start counting through the state’s stores of gold – blooming everywhere in fall fields – I wonder how in the world we have failed to cash in on our own Fort Knox, our native sunflowers.
No, not the cultivated sunflowers you buy in a seed packet from California or Michigan, not the sunflower seeds rodents chew on around your birdfeeders. I mean the sunflowers native to Alabama, the ones that have been coming up wild here in Alabama for hundreds of thousands of years. 
From all I can tell, Alabama is the center of sunflower diversity globally. There are 50 to 60 species and recognized subspecies of sunflowers in the world. Half of those are native to Alabama – including at least 25 known species, and another double handful of subspecies and common hybrids.  No other state comes close – not Georgia, not Texas, not California, not the Carolinas, not Florida. The number of sunflower species native outside North America can be counted on one hand. 

It’s as if Alabama is at the center of a nuclear explosion of sunflower species. Study them for any length of time, and you’ll recognize that there are sunflowers in Alabama like nothing ever described before. Alabama sunflowers continue to explore what it’s like to be sunflowers, experimenting with new forms of flowers, new kinds of seeds, new chemistries — until they learn to master every opportunity in our diverse landscape.
They’re all different. Some are confoundingly different, like the waist-high longleaf sunflower which is almost entirely restricted to northeast Alabama, or the rayless sunflowers of coastal savannas, which lack any trace of yellow petals and show off midnight purple discs dotted with gold stars. But most bear some resemblance to the manufactured sunflowers we buy in seed packets, with flowers that can be as wide as your hand or as small as your thumb, with petals that range from deep buttery gold to pale lemon yellow, and center discs that can be yellow, red or purple. 

They’re all beautiful, as if they’re desperate to be seen.
What have we done with this abundance of sunflower riches? 
Nothing. Not a thing. 
What could we have done? A single sunflower species native to the western prairies has become one of the world’s most important food plants, ranking among the top 5 oil-producing plants in the world. In that single sunflower species, scientists have found chemicals that have potential as anti-microbials, as antioxidants that can prevent damage to cells and tissues, with hypertensive qualities that can be used to treat cardiovascular disease. They can be used as preservatives, for wound healing, even for herbicides.

The same western species has become one of North America’s most widely cultivated “wildlife” species, mistakenly planted by bird feeders and deer feeders alike — even though the artificially enlarged seeds are designed to be processed by machines rather than wildlife. I am stunned when I watch my hunting club buddies mow down native sunflowers that deer and turkey have been using for millennia – and replace them with sunflowers designed to be digested by machines, not wildlife. Perplexing, isn’t it?
 I wonder what we might find if we studied the human benefits in Alabama’s 25 or so distinctive species, which as far as I can tell have never been analyzed? How would quail and grouse and turkeys and goldfinches respond if we made sure they had access to the wild Alabama sunflower seeds they evolved to eat, rather than force-feeding them the fatty seeds we engineered to cook French fries?
Alabama is sitting on a gold mine. Look for a field of Alabama native sunflowers, and invest yourself in it.

Bill Finch

Two young men from Local Motives visited Alabama for the first time and got a very good lesson in biodiversity and why this state is so important. It is a short video. Just click HERE.

Bachman’s Warbler once filled the canebrakes in Alabama.

Bachman's Warbler Protocol Photo 205

Of the 10 mainland North American species declared extinct by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week, all but one were from Alabama.

The spirit bird of the Southeast, the ivory bill, once had its stronghold in Alabama pinelands and swamps. It was the tenor sax of the forest band. Its loss is deafening in all the forests where we work. You should try to imagine what it sounded like when you walk through the woods, just so you understand that no forest in Alabama will be the same without it.

Bachman’s warbler is just as heartbreaking. It followed in the steps of the Carolina parakeet and many other species that likely used or depended on native bamboo forests in the Southeast. Bamboo canebrake is one of Alabama’s most ignored landscapes – though many believe the very name Alabamu (the thicket gatherers) is a reference to how important canebrake once was to the people of the state.  We should prioritize the restoration of canebrakes on the Alabama River and the Paint Rock River, where cane and species like Bachman’s warbler were once abundant.

The aquatic losses in Alabama continue to be stunning. Four mussels lost were part of the larger Mobile drainage in this state (including the flat pigtoe, a fact overlooked in recent press releases). It’s worth remembering that just a few decades ago, scientists assured that these species would go extinct if lock and dam systems were built on their rivers – but federal officials deliberately delayed listing them so that the dams could be built.

Three of the lost mussels were from the Tennessee River where it sweeps through Alabama between Paint Rock and Muscle Shoals, probably once the most species rich mussel beds in the world. Sixty percent of the nation’s mussel diversity, and almost 25% of global diversity, was crammed into Alabama, an area representing just 1 percent of the country’s land mass.

Maybe you’ll have an easy time forgetting they are gone forever if you see only their dead shells. But imagine their “flowers” – the lures and other devices these mussels used to attract fish to move young from one section of a river to another. It was a relationship as complex, as beautiful, as significant to the whole riverine ecosystem as the relationship between bees and flowers.

It’s increasingly difficult to give a full accounting of species lost to extinction in Alabama, but the number is now more than 100 in just the past two centuries. That’s far higher than any other mainland state. It’s a reflection both of the extraordinary diversity of the area, and of the extraordinary lack of concern for what happens to biodiversity here.

Amazingly, in Paint Rock and elsewhere in the state, we are still discovering new, and exceedingly rare, species that are likely found only in small areas of Alabama. It’s hard to know whether to be joyful or fearful when we find one. It will be decades before they are ever listed as endangered or threatened, given how deliberately cumbersome we’ve made the listing process. Our track record indicates that many are likely to go extinct in the meantime.

Only a massive new effort to protect the future of all Alabama species, those we know and the many we don’t know, will save one of the world’s most important storehouses of biodiversity.  

Some would argue that Chris Blankenship is one of the most effective Commissioners of Conservation Alabama has ever known.

So when the Commissioner asks to come visit to find out what’s going on in Paint Rock Valley, you don’t hesitate. 
We met the commissioner and Thomas Reddick, The Nature Conservancy’s Director of Forest Management in Alabama, just as 8 to 10 inches of rain was finishing its run through the valley — it was a spectacular day of waterfalls and tree falls and slippery slopes.

 
But the commissioner took it all in like the Alabama boy he was, and offered us some real insights into conservation potential in the state, even as he peppered Thomas and the Paint Rock team with questions about the future of the Research Forest. He listened patiently to Thomas and Bill’s schemes to restore shortleaf pine savannas, and offered advice (and sympathy) on the challenges of managing large tracts like this one. He seemed as amazed as we are at the incredible diversity of this forest. 

It was a good day, a long day, the kind of day you sleep long and well after. We look forward to his return visit!