In early 2024, Michael Fedoroff trekked out to Tuckabum Creek in York County, Alabama. The environmental anthropologist was there to help plant 300 stalks of rivercane, a bamboo plant native to North America, on an eroded, degraded strip of wetland: a “gnarly” and “wicked” area, according to Fedoroff.
If successful, this planting would be the largest cane restoration project in Alabama history. He and his team got the stalks into the ground, buttressed them with hay, left, and hoped for the best…