The Year

of Dying

It was early in the f ire season, in the year that

would later become known as the Year of

Dying: the year the human population of Earth

started, f inally, reluctantly, to contract. Forest

warden Rocky

Bannerjee picked her way carefully across the

forest f loor of her hillside, somewhere in the

southern reaches of Reforestation Project #13.

She was doing her annual lichen survey, which

was one of the reasons she was walking so

carefully. To stand on one of the rare lichens

she was meant to be surveying well it just

wouldnt do would it

Another reason for walking so carefully was

that the ground was slick with moisture You

could say many things about RFP 13 but not

that it didnt take the rain part of temperate

zone rainforest extremely seriously Which

was of course a very good thing in the f ire

season

The lichen survey was a crucial one the

biodiversity of temperate zone rainforests was

largely measured by the number of lichens

found there The more biodiverse a forest was

the more lichens it had and as a pretty good

rule of thumb the reverse also held

So More lichens meant more biodiversity

which meant more niches were f illed which

in turn meant that more carbon was drawn

down And that was the whole point of the

Reforestation Projects

Come on Rocky muttered Just one more

species and were in the clear We could really

really do with one more species 13

Not enough different species and bam

Government funding would be slashed Rocky

would lose her job worse the forest would

lose its status as a Carbon Sink Project and it

would be opened to the public for recreational

purposes And these days recreation mostly

meant going for a walk in

the woods and coming out again with all the

blackberries chestnuts and mushrooms you

could get your hands on

Youd think people would learn

Six thousand years of treating nature as a

resource had gotten them into todays mess or

rather todays galaxy of messes And yet they

still thought of the natural world as a bunch of

free stuff

Fortunately many governments had now

decided that forests were carbon sinks that

could help humanity back away from the brink

of extinction

Hence the Reforestation Projects

They were wildly successful Many rare species

of plants had returned seemingly out of

nowhere Soil carbon was building up to say

nothing of the carbon stored in the living trees

Rocky studied the trees carefully One shouldnt

hope for an Arthonia Thoriana of course

but with any luck she might spot a Pyrenula

Hibernica or an Ussnea Articulata

But after two days of searching she still had no

luck

Suddenly she stopped dead in her tracks

Shed spotted a vine that shouldnt be here

Amphicarpaea bracteata by the looks of it

American hog peanut

On an English hillside

Well that wouldnt do That wouldnt do at all

With a large side helping of No Eff ing Way

The thing hadnt come here by itself Someone

must have planted it here knowing these

plants could spread like wildf ire Knowing that

an infestation of an invasive nitrogenf ixer like

this could end the protected status of RFP 13

Who Rocky wondered had done this And

why The hog peanut was often used in food

forests But food foresters tended to respect

wild nature including the recently rewilded

Who then

She meticulously uprooted every vine she

could f ind careful to disturb the soil as little as

possible

A shame said a voice behind her Those could

have made a decent meal for someone you

know

She turned to see Daniel an old farmer from

the village Theyd never talked much he

wasnt the talkative type Spent his days in the

tavern bleakly staring into his drink

But now he spoke

All this used to be my land you know Well my

dads but I was to inherit it Good pasture But

then the government suddenly decided they

wanted a forest didnt they And now Im

Daniel Mathers Rocky said I arrest you for

destroying an off icial carbon sink

Ooh destroy eh I merely added a plant Good

nitrogenf ixer at that

A forest is a system Daniel Rocky answered

You cant just go adding invasive species Now

are you coming quietly she fumbled for her

taser Never in all her f ive years as a forest

warden had she even had to threaten someone

with it and now

now it turned out that Daniel had brought a

sawnoff shotgun An ancient thing but still

very very functional

And when the sun went down over RFP13

its last rays touched the motionless f igure of

Rocky Bannerjee Her eyes were f ixed on a

Pyrenula Hibernica that would unfortunately go

unreported as the Year of Dying had racked up

another tally mark

Thijs Goverde

Thijs Goverde is a

writer of childrens

books Climate change

and other sustainability

issues have been

central to his work

since 2010 Since

2017 he has also been

planting and tending a

1 hectare food forest

wwwthijsgoverdenl

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