Shenandoah: The hemlock’s last stand

Posted by Jeff on Jul 13, 2016 @ 7:12 pm in Conservation | 0 comments | Last modified: July 13, 2016

Shenandoah is haunted by ghosts.

Just 15 years ago, the eastern hemlock tree, the mighty Redwood of the East, was a scenic highlight of Virginia’s Skyline Drive, creating the shady groves that put Shenandoah National Park on the conservation map.

Now 95% of them are dead, rotting on the forest floor or still standing above the canopy as gray ghosts, with a few scattered survivors living on borrowed time as their attackers literally suck the life out of them. Some of these trees were up to 500 years old.

When President Herbert Hoover and his wife, Lou Henry, needed a place to escape Washington during the Great Depression, they picked a spot in a hemlock grove along the trout-filled headwaters of the Rapidan River. Workers building the President’s cabin were explicitly ordered to incorporate an old hemlock rather than chop it down.

“Where you found hemlocks, you found particularly beautiful areas with unique ecosystems, shaded streams with brook trout and specific songbirds that needed that habitat.”

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