Pachyderm Preservation Project

The Pachyderm Preservation Project is in support of saving old growth forests in Southern Minnesota. Old Growth Forests are at the minimum, 120 years old. By raising money for the project, we are not oly saving forests, we are guarding against destruction of and future changes in the natural land. As the Pachyderm Preservation Project grows, we will purchase land with the intent of keeping it in its natural habitat along with sustaining itself financially on an eco-friendly basis.
The Pachyderm Preservation Project is an undertaking of a collection of artists, creatives, and community members to help Pachyderm Studio purchase 28 acres of land immediately adjacent to its current 6 acres. The land is currently up for sale with the intent of clearing it for residential building. Throughout the area are gorgeous waterfalls, woods, and and old growth. It is the desire of Pachyderm and the community that surrounds it to preserve the land and use it, in its natural beauty, as a unique sanctuary of healing, art and community in the Midwest.
We need to raise $1 million dollars in order to purchase the land, and we're hoping you will be able to help. Once this goal is obtained...we will continue our efforts to protect and conserve additonal sources of natural beauty so that future generations can continue our mission.
“Men are like trees: each one must put forth the leaf that is created in him.” ~Henry Ward Beecher~
Old-growth forests are natural forests that have developed over a long period of time, generally at least 120 years (DNR definition and consistent with definitions for the eastern United States), without experiencing severe, stand-replacing disturbance--a fire, windstorm, or logging. Old-growth forests may be dominated by species such as sugar maple, white spruce, or white cedar that are capable of reproducing under a shaded canopy. These old-growth forests can persist indefinitely. Old-growth forest may also be dominated by species such as red pine, white pine, or red oak that do not reproduce as well under shade and that require disturbance to open the canopy. These old-growth forests will eventually be replaced by the more shade tolerant tree species in the absence of disturbance. Typical traits of Minnesota old-growth forests include:Some trees are at least 120 years old (often at least 2-3 feet across). Large, dead standing trees and branches (snags) are common. Large fallen trees and branches lie on the ground. The forest is a mix of young, old, and middle-aged trees (multi-aged). Small openings (canopy gaps) are visible between the tree crowns. Dirt piles and holes from tipped-over trees (tip-up mounds and pits) dot the ground.
Old-growth forests are a unique, nearly vanished piece of Minnesota's history and ecology. They are the remnants of the plant life that once covered 51% of the state's forested regions, and their harvest delivered immense wealth to individuals and the government, speeding the development of the state's early economy.
Today, ecologically significant old-growth forests are protected from harvest and represent new valves in modern forest management. Old-growth forests can be compared to similar but harvested forests, and conclusions can be reached about the effect of harvest on soils, plant and animal life, the rate of tree growth, and many other parts of a forest's ecology. This kind of research can help improve forest management approaches aimed at supplying wood reliably to the economy while guaranteeing a healthy ecosystem for future harvest and enjoyment.
A second value of old-growth forests to modern forest management is to recreate in scattered locations the conditions found in Minnesota's forests of the 1850's, before large-scale commercial logging began. Old-growth forests provide unique habitat, sheltering species which do better in old forests than young, and serving as genetic reservoirs--just some of the benefits researchers have discovered.
Old Growth Forests are Unique habitats. Snags provide nesting, foraging, and denning sites for more than 40 species of forest birds and mammals. Fallen tree trunks and large branches provide shelter and foraging grounds for salamanders, small mammals, and arthropods (e.g., beetles, spiders). Old pine trees provide nesting sites for bald eagles and ospreys, and escape routes for young bear. Species benefits More kinds of lichen and fungi species live in old-growth forests than younger ones. A larger amount of nitrogen-fixing lichens--organisms providing critical nutrients--is found in old-growth forests than younger ones. Many beetles live in old-growth than other forest types. Dragonflies are more common and in greater variety where streams and lakes are next to old-growth forests. Woodpeckers and 39 species of songbirds are more frequent in older forests than younger. Several kinds of hawks and owls prefer older forests.
Special Thanks to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources for the above information!
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself. - William Blake, 1799, The Letters
People in suburbia see trees differently than foresters do. They cherish every one. It is useless to speak of the probability that a certain tree will die when the tree is in someone's backyard .... You are talking about a personal asset, a friend, a monument, not about board feet of lumber. - Roger Swain
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Alone with myself The trees bend to caress me The shade hugs my heart - Candy Polgar
When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity? - Seneca
Because they are primeval, because they outlive us, because they are fixed, trees seem to emanate a sense of permanence. And though rooted in earth, they seem to touch the sky. For these reasons it is natural to feel we might learn wisdom from them, to haunt about them with the idea that if we could only read their silent riddle rightly we should learn some secret vital to our own lives; or even, more specifically, some secret vital to our real, our lasting and spiritual existence. - Kim Taplin, Tongues in Trees, 1989, p. 14.
As I age in the world it will rise and spread, and be for this place horizon and orison, the voice of its winds. I have made myself a dream to dream of its rising, that has gentled my nights. Let me desire and wish well the life these trees may live when I no longer rise in the mornings to be pleased with the green of them shining, and their shadows on the ground, and the sound of the wind in them. - Wendell Berry, Planting Trees
Time-honored, beautiful, solemn and wise. Noble, sacred and ancient Trees reach the highest heavens and penetrate the deepest secrets of the earth. Trees are the largest living beings on this planet. Trees are in communion with the spiritual and the material. Trees guard the forests and the sanctified places that must not be spoiled. Trees watch over us and provide us with what we need to live on this planet. Trees provide a focal point for meditation, enlightenment, guidance and inspiration. Trees have a soul and a spirit. - Tree Magick by Lavenderwater
A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself. - John Muir
Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees. - E.F. Schumacher
Trees are the best monuments that a man can erect to his own memory. They speak his praises without flattery, and they are blessings to children yet unborn. - Lord Orrery, 1749
Trees serve as homes for visiting devas who do not manifest in earthly bodies, but live in the fibers of the trunks and larger branches of the trees, feed from the leaves and communicate through the tree itself. Some are permanently stationed as guardians of sacred places. - Hindu Deva Shastra, verse 117, Nature Devas
Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness. - Kahlil Gibran
The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not adored as stone or tree; they are worshipped precisely because they are hierophanies, because they show something that is no longer stone or tree but sacred, the ganz andere or 'wholly other.' - Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
The beauty of the trees, the softness of the air, the fragrance of the grass, speaks to me. The summit of the mountain, the thunder of the sky, speaks to me. The faintness of the stars, the trail of the sun, the strength of fire, and the life that never goes away, they speak to me. And my heart soars.- Chief Dan George
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. - Hermann Hesse, Wandering
For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver. - Martin Luther
What did the tree learn from the earth to be able to talk with the sky? - Pablo Neruda