Nebraskaland

56 Nebraskaland • August-September 2019 MIXED BAG NOT SEEING IT DOESN'T MEAN IT ISN'T THERE Extinction is a funny thing. Well, okay, it's not a funny thing, like ha-ha funny, but it is a funny thing like "peculiar" funny. The July 2, 2018, issue of The New Yorker magazine, for example, had an article about the extinction and grand finale of the Tasmanian tiger, the last of the species having been killed 75 years ago or so. Allegedly. The problem – people south of Australia keep seeing Tasmanian tigers. Or think they see them. Or remember that they saw them. The result is doubt: the Tasmanian tiger may be extinct but no one knows for sure. Prehistorically, many species have thrived and then disappeared. Camels once roamed what is now Nebraska, as well as mastodons, giant bison antiquus, and primal horses. I find their teeth right here in the river a few hundred yards from where I sit. The modern bison bison came frighteningly close to being nothing but a memory but now they are almost commonplace, even if only inside stout fences. Currently, the list of endangered plants and animals is downright depressing. In my lifetime I've seen the American elm and chestnut reduced to scattered survivals. Long-needle pines and ash trees now face the biological onslaught. Is it true that cottonwoods are threatened? Whatever even happened to the jackrabbits I used to see here? And magpies. I haven't seen a hog-nose puff adder here for years. In my lifetime I have seen a lot of things come and go, then come back again. Whooping cranes are still on the brink, but the hope is that like the bald eagle, careful husbandry and strict protection can bring even the endangered back. I never thought I would live to see a river otter here, and yet there one morning, one was sitting there looking at me from the roadside as if I were the one who was out of place. On the few occasions I have seen a prairie chicken on the gravel between here and Grand Island I found myself wondering, "Is that the last one?" The return of the bald eagle doesn't mean that it's now commonplace, either; we never see one without stopping and gaping, slack-jawed at the beauty. There have been rumors of wolves spotted not far from here. Neighbors all around us have seen mountain lions and we once heard one scream below our yard on a summer night … unforgettable! Are they here, or not? As elusive as some wildlife are, one can never be sure. Wild turnips (Psoralea esculenta) and scarlet globemallow (Sphaeralcea coccinea) were once common here, but now? Extinction may not be the last word because 1) it's amazing what might be hiding out there in the woods; 2) life has strange ways of persisting; and 3) sometimes humans, too often the cause of the problems, may be also the solution. There was a time (the 1850s) when an aphid called phylloxera was carried from this country to Europe where it devastated vineyards. There was some fear that real wine, which is to say wine from vinifera grapes, would never be tasted again. American grapes (labrusca) were immune to the plague but they don't make very good wine. Then it was discovered that French vines grew good grapes when grafted on labrusca rootstocks, and ... voila! We have wine again! And now French hybrids have been developed that deal with the root erosion of the pest and we have European varietals – or close – growing in Nebraska. "Extinction" was averted. Will we live to see a revival of the Tasmanian tiger? The coelacanth fish was thought to have gone extinct 65 million years ago, but then one showed up again in 1938. My own hope lies in the return of the mastodon to the Plains. While I'd probably have to do some work on our fences, my thought is that the drivers who fly across the bridge here, over a hill, and around a curve near our home and paying no attention to the deer crossing warnings, might slow up when they see a woolly mammoth at a Mastodon Crossing sign. When I ran across a statement that the Skidi Band of Pawnee is "extinct," during a meal I said to my friend and chief of the Skidi, Pat Leading Fox, "Boy, Pat, for being extinct, you sure eat a lot!" And now that the Pawnee, complete with Skidi, are back in Nebraska, the return of the mammoth doesn't seem entirely out of the question. By Roger Welsch Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus, extinct in 1936). Woodcut engraving after a drawing by Robert Kretschmer (German painter, 1818 - 1872), published in 1875.

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