The California Coastal Yew tree is, well, a tree that grows on the California coast and on up into the Pacific northwest a bit. I’ve mentioned this tree before, but given a recent Biden administration decision, almost certain to be overturned by the incoming Trump people, it’s worth another quick look.

At first glance this yew tree is nothing special. For decades, in fact, it was one of the irritating “junk” trees that made the lives of lumberjacks more difficult. Growing in among the “good” trees, that is the trees lumberjacks want to cut down for our nation’s wood supply, the CC yew was in the way and had to be cut down and hauled out of the way aggressively. Millions of these trees were killed and trashed by the logging industry because, frankly, it was a lot easier to clear cut an area of “good” trees when the nasty junk trees were out of the way.

Then a remarkable thing happened.

It was discovered the bark of this little junk tree made a chemical called Taxol, named after the tree’s scientific name, Taxus Brevifolia. This chemical is a remarkable one, in that when introduced into certain cancer patients, especially breast cancer victims, the Taxol loves to go out and kill cancer cells. It even kills cancer in a way not seen before, and that really has helped cure lots of folks.

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But here’s the problem: initially it took the bark of roughly eleven CC yew trees to provide the Taxol needed for a single patient. And, since the lumber industry long considered them to be, as noted above, worthless junk trees, there just weren’t that many of them left out there.

Happily, after decades of work, a way was found to produce the anticancer drug synthetically, albeit not without a great deal of effort. That’s a good thing, because absent a synthetic, we might well be scouring the hills of northern California in search of a vanishing species.

According to the Stanford Medicine, more than half the medications we humans consume started off in plants. More than 60% of known cancer medications come from plants, which makes the rate at which we bulldoze tropical rain forests and other lush locations even more scary. It is entirely possible the cure for the illness that will ultimately end your own life was destroyed clearing “junk” plants an hour ago — just say’n.

Which, of course, brings me once again to the Greater Sage Grouse, a chicken-sized bird I have written about before, in terms of the efforts made to protect its environment and keep it from becoming extinct. My previous column on the Grouse was about four years ago, as the Biden administration was just getting started. Four years later, the Grouse’s future is far bleaker. You see, unfortunately for this chicken-sized bird, it likes to hang out in the same places oil-and-gas people like to look for fossil fuels.

As reported in Colorado Politics (in the Out West Roundup section, one of my favorites), President Joe Biden’s administration this month, in the waning days of his time in office, issued additional instructions on public land use in hopes of further protecting the Grouse.

Now, we all know the incoming administration is committed to turning us away from a sustainable energy future and back to a greater reliance on fossil fuels. Never mind the fact — a fact quite inconvenient for the MAGA crowd — we are already producing oil and gas at the highest levels in American history. Heck, right now we are the world’s largest producer of oil and gas.

The reason you think you are paying more for gas than you used to isn’t because President Biden restricted production — far from it. Actually, under Biden oil production has dramatically increased. If you want to point a finger at who is responsible for high gas prices, it turns a certain buddy of Trump and apparently Musk, named Putin, invaded one of Europe’s most important oil producers in Ukraine, disrupting the world’s oil markets. Regardless of the MAGA chatter, oil production here is way up and world forces are at work on gas prices, not petty domestic ones.

Which, of course, brings me back to the Grouse.

I mentioned where they like to hang out. As noted, Biden recently imposed tighter restrictions on oil, gas and, yes, wind energy production on some 6,500 square miles of federal lands in the western United States. This is in large measure an effort to protect the range of the Grouse, in hopes the species might thrive and produce more baby Greater Sage Grouses (Grousi?).

Why should you care? And more to the point, why should you care Trump will almost certainly cancel the executive order and direct even more fossil fuel production in the Grouse habitat?

Well, two reasons.

The first is the simple, yet all too elusive to MAGA folks fact we live in a better world when diverse species and habitats are protected. We live in a richer world when our kids see a wider miscellany of critters and plants.

But second, there is a more personal reason. As noted, plants (and to a lesser degree animals) have been discovered to be vital sources of medications that can help your life be both better and longer. If you are in an accident, or have a stroke, the doctors may well administer heparin, which comes from pigs and cattle. The medication given to premature babies to help their lungs grow comes from an animal source, as does the MMR vaccine that saves kids (and some adults) from measles, mumps and rubella. Oh, and insulin, which has been in the news recently, comes from animals. The list goes on.

So, it is unlikely, but not impossible, you will die from something that could have been treated if a certain Grouse had not gone extinct after a certain former reality TV star somehow squeaked back into the Oval Office and ordered the Grouses’ ultimate extermination. Unlikely, but not impossible.

Remember the California Coastal Yew tree.

Nobody thought that was useful either.

Until it was.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.