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FE6.1 - FOREST / TREE
Episode 130th October 2024 • Future Ecologies • Future Ecologies
00:00:00 01:01:33

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Season 6 kicks off in the deep dark woods: the simplified, post-industrial forests of the world — the only forests that many of us have ever known.

Join us as we meet foresters in British Columbia, Vermont, and Scotland, all working to embrace the messy art of ecological forestry. Because if we want our forests to be old growth-ier, we might not be able to just wait and leave them alone. It might mean challenging some assumptions and getting out of our comfort zone, but that's what it'll take to see the forest for the trees.

— — —

With the voices of Ethan Tapper, Brian Duff, Keith Erickson, and Herb Hammond

Music by Thumbug, Spencer W Stuart, Nathan Shubert, and Sunfish Moon Light

See also:

For photos from our time in the ancient old growth, citations, a transcript, and more, click here.

– – –

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Transcripts

Introduction Voiceover:

You are listening to Season Six of

Introduction Voiceover:

Future Ecologies.

Mendel Skulski:

Okay. Hey, Adam. Welcome back.

Adam Huggins:

Hi, Mendel. Can you believe it? Season six and

Adam Huggins:

we still have no idea what we're doing.

Mendel Skulski:

I think we're getting better, just not

Mendel Skulski:

necessarily faster.

Adam Huggins:

That is true.

Mendel Skulski:

So what's up? What's with all the hammering?

Adam Huggins:

Well, knock, knock, Mendel.

Mendel Skulski:

Who's there?

Adam Huggins:

Wood.

Mendel Skulski:

Wood, who?

Adam Huggins:

Would you care to go with me on a stroll through

Adam Huggins:

the forest?

Mendel Skulski:

Always. What kind of forest are we strolling

Mendel Skulski:

through?

Adam Huggins:

Okay, if you can picture it, the trees here are

Adam Huggins:

all young, pretty much all the same. They're the same age,

Adam Huggins:

they're the same height, they're all Douglas firs.

Mendel Skulski:

Right. We're talking like a Christmas tree

Mendel Skulski:

farm.

Adam Huggins:

A Christmas Tree farm, if the Christmas trees

Adam Huggins:

were, I don't know, 20 meters tall, and only green up at the

Adam Huggins:

very top. So they wouldn't make very good Christmas trees, I

Adam Huggins:

guess. Down here on the ground, it's mostly just tree trunks in

Adam Huggins:

every direction, and lots of dead twigs sticking out from

Adam Huggins:

those trunks. You know, poking you in the face, crunching

Adam Huggins:

underfoot. And even though it's it's sunny outside today, it's

Adam Huggins:

pretty dark down here. There's not much growing at ground

Adam Huggins:

level.

Mendel Skulski:

Okay, so what are we doing here? What's with

Mendel Skulski:

all the noise?

Adam Huggins:

Right. This is not what a forest usually sounds

Adam Huggins:

like. Welcome to my day job.

Mendel Skulski:

Oh, I hope we're not interrupting.

Adam Huggins:

Nah, you're fine. It's take your podcast co-host

Adam Huggins:

to work day.

Mendel Skulski:

Aw.

Adam Huggins:

And my colleagues and I have just managed to haul

Adam Huggins:

about a 50 pound chain hoist 10 meters up a tree, and we've

Adam Huggins:

secured it up there with these massive steel nails that you

Adam Huggins:

pound into the tree. They look like they've been around since

Adam Huggins:

the Second World War.

Mendel Skulski:

Sounds like fun.

Adam Huggins:

It's a huge pain in the ass, honestly.

Mendel Skulski:

Okay, and...?

Adam Huggins:

And now we've run the chain from the chain hoist

Adam Huggins:

down to the base of the tree. We call that the 'spar' tree,

Adam Huggins:

through a pulley, which is called a 'snatch block', for

Adam Huggins:

reasons I don't understand. And that pulley guides it to the

Adam Huggins:

base of another tree, I don't know, about 20 meters away. We

Adam Huggins:

call that the 'pivot' tree. It's called the pivot tree because

Adam Huggins:

from that tree there's another snatch block at the base. The

Adam Huggins:

chain pivots out to a third tree. We wrap the chain about

Adam Huggins:

five meters up, and we call that the 'cull' tree. So three trees,

Adam Huggins:

a chain and cables running between them, and we've got a

Adam Huggins:

smaller chain hoist over there.

Mendel Skulski:

What's that one for?

Adam Huggins:

We use that one to tighten everything up and get

Adam Huggins:

ready.

Mendel Skulski:

Get ready for what?

Adam Huggins:

To pull the third tree down.

Mendel Skulski:

Excuse me?

Adam Huggins:

We're going to pull that cull tree, the third

Adam Huggins:

tree, we're gonna pull it over. You know, trees are usually

Adam Huggins:

vertical, but we're gonna make this one horizontal.

Mendel Skulski:

I got that part. Why? Why are you pulling this

Mendel Skulski:

poor tree down?

Adam Huggins:

Oh, it's nothing personal. There are just too

Adam Huggins:

many trees here.

Mendel Skulski:

Too many trees... That's a thing?

Adam Huggins:

Oh yeah, wait just a second, this is the best part.

Mendel Skulski:

...what happened to you this summer? Did a tree

Mendel Skulski:

fall on your head? You're getting paid for this mischief.

Adam Huggins:

Yeah, pretty cool, eh? we do this with kids too.

Mendel Skulski:

You're pulling kids over?

Adam Huggins:

No, the the kids pull the tree down. They wear

Adam Huggins:

cute little hard hats and everything.

Mendel Skulski:

Okay, I'm feeling pretty lost.

Adam Huggins:

Well, you wouldn't be the first person to stray

Adam Huggins:

into the deep, dark woods and get a little bit lost. But in

Adam Huggins:

all seriousness, what I'd like to do with this episode is to

Adam Huggins:

let some light into this dark forest. For the past couple of

Adam Huggins:

years, I've been interviewing foresters across the temperate

Adam Huggins:

world, and they've all said more or less the same thing — that

Adam Huggins:

when it comes to the management of the woody places of the

Adam Huggins:

world, we've been failing to see the forest for the trees. But

Adam Huggins:

all of that is starting to change. To save the forests, we

Adam Huggins:

may have to cut down some trees. Like, a lot of trees. So many

Adam Huggins:

trees. So to kick off our sixth season of future ecologies, I'm

Adam Huggins:

Adam.

Mendel Skulski:

I'm lost in the woods...

Adam Huggins:

And this is forest tree.

Introduction Voiceover:

Broadcasting from the unceded, shared and

Introduction Voiceover:

asserted territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and

Introduction Voiceover:

Tsleil-Waututh, this is Future Ecologies – exploring the shape

Introduction Voiceover:

of our world through ecology, design, and sound.

Adam Huggins:

Okay, before we get any further, you asked me

Adam Huggins:

what happened to me this summer, and I would say the highlight

Adam Huggins:

was actually getting to spend some time with you in a very

Adam Huggins:

different kind of forest. Do you remember?

Mendel Skulski:

Of course!

Adam Huggins:

All right, I'm gonna take us back for a minute.

Adam Huggins:

We're lying on the ground on our backs, and the river is humming

Adam Huggins:

gently in the background.

Mendel Skulski:

Can I pitch in?

Adam Huggins:

Absolutely.

Mendel Skulski:

The air is warm and moist, with the faint scent

Mendel Skulski:

of vanilla leaf. We're surrounded by literally 1000

Mendel Skulski:

year old Sitka spruce trees towering over us... towering

Mendel Skulski:

over even all the other trees, which would seem enormous in any

Mendel Skulski:

other context.

Adam Huggins:

But it isn't dark.

Mendel Skulski:

No, the trees are huge, but spaced pretty far

Mendel Skulski:

apart, so the light is finding its way down to us, and

Mendel Skulski:

everything is just covered in moss. Everything is so alive.

Adam Huggins:

Even the dead things are alive! Like just a

Adam Huggins:

stone's throw away, there's this enormous standing snag, bleached

Adam Huggins:

white by the sun, and there are birds nesting in holes up and

Adam Huggins:

down its trunk. And then right here in front of us, a decaying

Adam Huggins:

log the size of a school bus.

Mendel Skulski:

Yeah, a horizontal tree. Your favorite.

Adam Huggins:

My favorite. I would call it a nurse log, and

Adam Huggins:

it's covered in moss and shrubs and even small trees, getting a

Adam Huggins:

head start

Mendel Skulski:

And on the ground, ferns, herbs, mosses and

Mendel Skulski:

mushrooms. The soil is so full of mycelium, it's spongy,

Mendel Skulski:

bouncy, almost like a trampoline.

Adam Huggins:

Or a mattress. I remember when we were lying down

Adam Huggins:

there, you said you could smell the layers in the landscape.

Mendel Skulski:

I smell the rich duff. I smell the soil here, put

Mendel Skulski:

down by these trees, put down by these plants, put down on top of

Mendel Skulski:

sand, put down by a river... layer after layer after layer.

Mendel Skulski:

There's a lot of time in this place.

Adam Huggins:

I really love how you put that, that there was so

Adam Huggins:

much time in that place. You could literally see the time in

Adam Huggins:

the layers of wood, in the layers of vegetation, in the

Adam Huggins:

layers of sediment.

Mendel Skulski:

Yeah, I just wish that, that we could have

Mendel Skulski:

spent more time there.

Adam Huggins:

Oh, man, it's not every day you get to spend in an

Adam Huggins:

old growth forest.

Mendel Skulski:

An old growth rainforest! Also a UNESCO World

Mendel Skulski:

Heritage Site and Biosphere Reserve, and the territory of

Mendel Skulski:

several First Nations.

Adam Huggins:

Savvy listeners might have guessed already that

Adam Huggins:

you and I were doing some good old fashioned forest bathing in

Adam Huggins:

the Hoh rainforest, on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington,

Mendel Skulski:

Followed up by the other kind of bathing in the

Mendel Skulski:

Hoh River.

Adam Huggins:

Which was very cold.

Mendel Skulski:

Yes.

Adam Huggins:

But we weren't just on location for vacation.

Mendel Skulski:

No, of course not. We were there to do some

Mendel Skulski:

serious reporting!

Adam Huggins:

Very serious.

Mendel Skulski:

In one of the very few forests left on the

Mendel Skulski:

entire Pacific Coast that has never been clear cut.

Adam Huggins:

Folks come from all over the world, you and me

Adam Huggins:

included, to experience the Hoh and to walk through the hall of

Adam Huggins:

mosses. It's hard to overstate just how rare these high

Adam Huggins:

productivity, low elevation old growth forests have become. In

Adam Huggins:

the part of the world where you and I live, the vast majority of

Adam Huggins:

these forests have been lost. Or to take it out of the passive

Adam Huggins:

voice, they've been cut down. We've cut them down. I mean, not

Adam Huggins:

you and me personally, but we in general. On the south coast of

Adam Huggins:

British Columbia, where we live, less than 10% of the original,

Adam Huggins:

high productivity old growth forest remains, and a lot of

Adam Huggins:

that is pretty difficult to access.

Mendel Skulski:

It's true. I mean, we took two ferries,

Mendel Skulski:

crossed an international border and cleared, I don't even know

Mendel Skulski:

how many kilometers...

Adam Huggins:

About 200.

Mendel Skulski:

- just to be there in person. And of course,

Mendel Skulski:

it was amazing. But then as we left and crossed out of the park

Mendel Skulski:

boundary, we found ourselves pretty quickly back in a

Mendel Skulski:

different kind of forest.

Adam Huggins:

Yeah, the forest that blankets so much of this

Adam Huggins:

coast, the forest that most of us have become accustomed to —

Adam Huggins:

an impenetrable green wall of conifers, same age, same height

Adam Huggins:

and darkness below. And before too long, we pulled into some of

Adam Huggins:

the towns that produced these forests. Communities where,

Adam Huggins:

judging from the signs on the side of the road, you and I

Adam Huggins:

might imagine that tree hugger is a pejorative term, and that

Adam Huggins:

loggers are the underdog heroes. You know, communities where the

Adam Huggins:

war in the woods never ended.

Hexxus:

New orders, boys. You're going to Fern Gully.

Mendel Skulski:

Oh, I know that voice.

Adam Huggins:

Somehow, I am not surprised. I take it that you

Adam Huggins:

have seen the 1992 animated classic, Fern Gully?

Adam Huggins:

Of course! Of course. I knew that movie by heart when I was a

Adam Huggins:

kid.

Adam Huggins:

Apparently, I still know it by heart. I'm gonna go out on a

Adam Huggins:

limb and say that for our generation, I think this piece

Adam Huggins:

of pop culture was foundational to our perspectives on forestry.

Unknown:

Hmm, yeah. I mean, definitely for me.

Adam Huggins:

For those who haven't seen it, it's about a

Adam Huggins:

lovely rainforest

Mendel Skulski:

Called Fern Gully

Adam Huggins:

That is filled with fairies and talking bats

Adam Huggins:

and what I think are little gangs of bugs, and everything

Adam Huggins:

seems peachy. Until, of course, the humans show up.

Crysta:

Humans back in the forest!

Batty:

Yeah, there goes the neighborhood.

Crysta:

Be nice, Batty.

Batty:

First thing all these trees go. Then come your

Batty:

highways, then come your shopping malls and your parking

Batty:

lots and your convenience stores, and then come [zap].

Mendel Skulski:

And then come... animated films about how great

Mendel Skulski:

the forest used to be?

Adam Huggins:

Anyway, one of the humans - a handsome blonde lug

Adam Huggins:

named Zak — with a K, without a C... 90s Zak — gets shrunk by

Adam Huggins:

magic to fairy size. And of course, he makes friends with a

Adam Huggins:

lady fairy named Crysta.

Mendel Skulski:

I think we all know where this is going.

Adam Huggins:

In typical 90s movie fashion, romance is

Adam Huggins:

preceded by heartache.

Crysta:

What are you doing?

Zak:

Carving your name, see? C, R, Y, S...

Crysta:

No, no, you mustn't do that! Here, can't you feel its

Crysta:

pain?

Zak:

Its pain?

Crysta:

Yes!

Batty:

Humans can't feel anything. They're numb from the

Batty:

brain down.

Mendel Skulski:

Sometimes I feel numb from the brain up.

Adam Huggins:

I can relate to that. Anyway, throughout the

Adam Huggins:

course of the film, Zak and Crysta, and you know, by

Adam Huggins:

extension, the rest of us, we learn a few lessons. Lessons

Adam Huggins:

like trees feel pain, logging is bad, oil is straight up evil.

Adam Huggins:

And, of course, everything is connected.

Magi:

There are worlds within worlds Crysta. Everything in our

Magi:

world is connected by the delicate strands of the web of

Magi:

life, which is balanced between forces of destruction and the

Magi:

magic forces of creation. Help it grow.

Mendel Skulski:

Wow. Can you believe that was over three

Mendel Skulski:

decades ago?

Adam Huggins:

I mean, it's like my childhood vanishing before my

Adam Huggins:

eyes. Yeah, I have a lot of gratitude for this old film, but

Adam Huggins:

I bring it up because I think it instilled within me an instinct

Adam Huggins:

that I have since come to doubt.

Mendel Skulski:

Huh? And what would that be?

Adam Huggins:

The idea, maybe, maybe just the feeling, since

Adam Huggins:

it's never explicitly stated, that cutting down trees is

Adam Huggins:

inherently bad — that it necessarily hurts the forest.

Mendel Skulski:

I mean, that's kind of gospel for a lot of

Mendel Skulski:

environmentalists, I think, right? Like we were just saying

Mendel Skulski:

how we've lost most of the old growth to logging. All the Fern

Mendel Skulski:

Gullies of the world, they are mostly gone... and maybe

Mendel Skulski:

forever.

Adam Huggins:

Yes, and we absolutely have to protect the

Adam Huggins:

few that remain, like the Hoh for sure.

Mendel Skulski:

So can we say that unequivocally? Like when we

Mendel Skulski:

were back in the Hoh, you weren't making plans to pull

Mendel Skulski:

down any of the giant Sitka spruce.

Adam Huggins:

Could you imagine?

Mendel Skulski:

No.

Adam Huggins:

I think the Hoh is doing just fine on its own. The

Adam Huggins:

forests that we're going to talk about today aren't the Fern

Adam Huggins:

Gullies of the world. The forests that we're going to talk

Adam Huggins:

about are what's left behind after the cartoon villain of

Adam Huggins:

Fern Gully and his industrial machinery have rolled over the

Adam Huggins:

forest, and spit it out the other side. So I'm gonna take

Adam Huggins:

you on a little tour of the plantation forests of the

Adam Huggins:

temperate world to meet some of the folks who work in them.

Adam Huggins:

Okay. Well, let's go.

Adam Huggins:

One quick note before we do. Just to be clear, the forestry

Adam Huggins:

that I'm going to discuss, at least in the North American

Adam Huggins:

context, is settler colonial forestry, right? How it

Adam Huggins:

transformed the diverse, thriving forests of this

Adam Huggins:

continent into collections of trees, and then how we might

Adam Huggins:

turn its own tools towards restoration. There is a long

Adam Huggins:

history of Indigenous forestry on this continent, and that

Adam Huggins:

deserves its own episode another day.

Mendel Skulski:

For sure.

Adam Huggins:

All right, first stop Vermont.

Mendel Skulski:

Huh.

Adam Huggins:

With our tour guide, Ethan Tapper. He's a

Adam Huggins:

forester and author. He actually just wrote a book called "How to

Adam Huggins:

Love a Forest". And when I spoke to him last year, he was the

Adam Huggins:

Chittenden County forester for the Vermont Department of

Adam Huggins:

forests and recreation.

Ethan Tapper:

So we're a 75% forested state. 80% of those

Ethan Tapper:

lands are owned by private landowners. As county foresters,

Ethan Tapper:

we have this real interest in helping people manage that

Ethan Tapper:

private land better.

Mendel Skulski:

So Ethan is your friendly local county forester.

Adam Huggins:

Pretty much.

Mendel Skulski:

and we're in Vermont, so,

Adam Huggins:

So we're talking about Eastern hardwood forests.

Mendel Skulski:

Okay, I'm picturing maples, oaks,

Mendel Skulski:

birches... pine? ,

Adam Huggins:

Chestnut, elm, walnut, beech. Forests that turn

Adam Huggins:

bright red and yellow each fall — becoming an irresistible

Adam Huggins:

magnet for the leaf peepers of the world.

Mendel Skulski:

Leaf peepers!

Adam Huggins:

But it will probably not surprise you to

Adam Huggins:

know that the forests that we see today are very different

Adam Huggins:

from what they might have looked like in the past.

Ethan Tapper:

The vast majority of Vermont's forests 300 years

Ethan Tapper:

ago were what we would now call old growth forests. That means a

Ethan Tapper:

lot of different things. You know, that's not a monolith. Old

Ethan Tapper:

growth forests are defined by their variability.

Adam Huggins:

These forests would have been super diverse

Adam Huggins:

,with dry areas and other areas that were really wet.

Ethan Tapper:

We think that prior to the 1600s, which is

Ethan Tapper:

when beaver trapping really started in North America by

Ethan Tapper:

Europeans, we think that we had 300 beaver dams per square mile

Ethan Tapper:

in our valleys. The massive amount of beaver activity that

Ethan Tapper:

would have not just completely altered the hydrology of our

Ethan Tapper:

riparian areas and our valleys, but also, you know, provided

Ethan Tapper:

habitat for this incredible array of other species, and, you

Ethan Tapper:

know, fundamentally changed the way that water moved through our

Ethan Tapper:

landscape.

Adam Huggins:

And not just beavers, but large herbivores

Adam Huggins:

and predators too.

Ethan Tapper:

We think we had a forest dwelling species of elk,

Ethan Tapper:

which is now extinct, called Eastern elk, caribou and moose,

Ethan Tapper:

and those were our prominent ungulates, and those were all

Ethan Tapper:

gone by the late 1700s. And we had two apex predators, the

Ethan Tapper:

Eastern Cougar, which we call the Catamount, and wolves, which

Ethan Tapper:

were both also bountied, hunted to extinction.

Adam Huggins:

Long story short, those forests were cut down and

Adam Huggins:

the animals were hunted and killed for timber, for furs, but

Adam Huggins:

primarily for agriculture.

Ethan Tapper:

Certainly, the biggest single driver of the

Ethan Tapper:

clearing that we saw was pasture, and particularly

Ethan Tapper:

pasture for the Merino sheep. You know, going from 90 plus

Ethan Tapper:

percent forested landscapes in New England, we were down to 20

Ethan Tapper:

to 30%

Mendel Skulski:

Oh, that... that's a huge change.

Adam Huggins:

Oh, yeah.

Ethan Tapper:

You know, the easiest way to understand it is

Ethan Tapper:

throughout most of New England, certainly in Vermont, every

Ethan Tapper:

forest anyone has ever been in, unless it's extremely remote or

Ethan Tapper:

on like the top of a mountain was a pasture in the 1800s.

Adam Huggins:

And that's because, as small scale

Adam Huggins:

agriculture has declined, many of those pastures have been

Adam Huggins:

planted to trees or just allowed to regenerate on their own. But

Adam Huggins:

these new forests are very different from the old growth

Adam Huggins:

forests that existed prior to land clearance.

Ethan Tapper:

The forests today that we have are largely 60 to

Ethan Tapper:

100 years old. Most of them were a pasture 60 to 100 years ago.

Adam Huggins:

These forests are comprised of a single generation

Adam Huggins:

of trees, often just a single species. Take Eastern White

Adam Huggins:

Pine, for example, which is now really common in Vermont because

Adam Huggins:

Ethan Tapper:

it's an opportunist, because it's good

Ethan Tapper:

at growing in old fields, specifically. And in many cases,

Ethan Tapper:

it's growing on a site which will not really be home to white

Ethan Tapper:

pine in the future.

Adam Huggins:

Whereas, on the other hand, species like beech,

Adam Huggins:

chestnut, butternut and elm, which used to be really common

Adam Huggins:

and really important, are very uncommon, largely because of

Adam Huggins:

introduced pathogens. Like in the past, a single beech tree

Adam Huggins:

could live to be over 400 years old, and then immediately regrow

Adam Huggins:

new stems from its own clones.

Ethan Tapper:

And now it has this disease called Beech bark

Ethan Tapper:

disease. So instead of living to be 400 years old, it lives to be

Ethan Tapper:

40 years old.

Adam Huggins:

And that's just one example.

Ethan Tapper:

You know, chestnuts with chestnut blight.

Ethan Tapper:

Butternuts, which is a really cool species, the butternut

Ethan Tapper:

canker. Ash trees, emerald ash borer. Elm trees with Dutch elm

Ethan Tapper:

disease.

Adam Huggins:

So not only have some native tree species been

Adam Huggins:

almost completely wiped out, the ones that are left behind are

Adam Huggins:

just different.

Mendel Skulski:

Like their role in the forest has shifted?

Adam Huggins:

Exactly. And Ethan called this "cryptic function

Adam Huggins:

loss". You know, whenever a species has ceased to perform

Adam Huggins:

its full range of ecological services. But it's not only the

Adam Huggins:

trees. The hydrology and soils are no longer performing their

Adam Huggins:

full range of ecological services either.

Ethan Tapper:

The way that water works in general, in our forest

Ethan Tapper:

is just completely altered now. I mean, we obviously have

Ethan Tapper:

ditches and we have streams that have been straightened and

Ethan Tapper:

drained and damned. And then we also are missing many of the

Ethan Tapper:

structures that help the forest slow down water, absorb it,

Ethan Tapper:

spread it out, help it infiltrate, especially dead

Ethan Tapper:

wood.

Mendel Skulski:

Okay, so if I was a leaf peeper and I wanted

Mendel Skulski:

to see some nice fall color, I could be stumbling around these

Mendel Skulski:

younger forests in Vermont, and I have no idea that what I'm

Mendel Skulski:

seeing is, in many cases, not really a forest so much as a

Mendel Skulski:

bunch of trees that happen to grow up on an abandoned pasture.

Adam Huggins:

I mean, it begs the question, what is a forest,

Adam Huggins:

exactly? Those might be the only forests that many Vermonters

Adam Huggins:

have ever known. Okay, so that's a little portrait of Vermont.

Adam Huggins:

Let's put a pin in that for now, and hop across the pond to the

Adam Huggins:

Scottish Highlands... through the power of radio. Okay, you

Adam Huggins:

ready?

Mendel Skulski:

Uh huh...

Adam Huggins:

3, 2, 1, hop!

Brian Duff:

My name is Brian Duff. I work for Forestry and

Brian Duff:

Land Scotland, and I'm based in Glenmore Forest Park.

Adam Huggins:

I chatted with Brian earlier this summer. He

Adam Huggins:

works up in this mountain range called the Cairngorms.

Brian Duff:

Yeah, Cairngorms is in the north northeast of

Brian Duff:

Scotland. It's the largest area in Great Britain that is above

Brian Duff:

4000 feet. They're very rounded hills, so they're quite unusual

Brian Duff:

from that point of view, well weathered over the millennia.

Brian Duff:

And they're also part now of the National Park, the Cairngorm

Brian Duff:

National Park, which is the largest national park in Great

Brian Duff:

Britain.

Adam Huggins:

And unlike in New England, where European

Adam Huggins:

colonization resulted in lots of small private landowners,

Adam Huggins:

Scotland has a legacy of large private landowners.

Brian Duff:

Scotland's got a tradition of estates and in the

Brian Duff:

past that was kind of used for recreation purposes, i.e.

Brian Duff:

hunting, culling, deer, grouse shooting, that sort of thing.

Mendel Skulski:

Hmm, these would have been the playgrounds of the

Mendel Skulski:

upper class gentlemen hunters that we talked about in Season

Mendel Skulski:

Four, huh?

Adam Huggins:

Definitely. But these folks weren't just

Adam Huggins:

hunting. The woodlands where Brian works have a long history

Adam Huggins:

of silviculture as well.

Brian Duff:

It was exploited heavily for timber in the 18th

Brian Duff:

century. It was a deer forest, as they called it. And that's

Brian Duff:

quite a weird expression in Scotland, because there wasn't a

Brian Duff:

lot of forest in a deer forest. It was mostly just deer, to be

Brian Duff:

honest.

Adam Huggins:

For reasons which will become apparent later, the

Adam Huggins:

idea of a forest that has more deer than trees absolutely

Adam Huggins:

chills my blood. And at Glenmore, that was before the

Adam Huggins:

war.

Brian Duff:

Then the first world war came, and guys, funny

Brian Duff:

enough, from Canada, came and... flattened the whole forest,

Brian Duff:

virtually.

Mendel Skulski:

Flattened?!

Brian Duff:

Yeah, yeah. It was quite, quite incredible,

Brian Duff:

actually. 450 guys and they built a railway system and two

Brian Duff:

saw mills, etc. And it's just quite incredible. They were

Brian Duff:

there for less than a year.

Mendel Skulski:

Hmm, nobody does it quite like us.

Adam Huggins:

Resource extraction know-how, baby.

Adam Huggins:

Canada's greatest export. Anyway, when Forestry and Land

Adam Huggins:

Scotland acquired Glenmore,

Brian Duff:

When we took this land on, there was only about 80

Brian Duff:

hectares or so of native woodland left. And at that time,

Brian Duff:

before and after the Second World War, the rest of it was

Brian Duff:

planted up with what we would call non-native species now. And

Brian Duff:

that would be species from America, like spruces, larch,

Brian Duff:

douglas fir as well from the Pacific coast. And nobody really

Brian Duff:

thought anything more about that.

Mendel Skulski:

What's there to think about? That seems fine.

Adam Huggins:

What could go wrong?

Mendel Skulski:

What could go wrong? So just like in Vermont,

Mendel Skulski:

over in Scotland, they've got forests that are not only very

Mendel Skulski:

young. They are very different from the historical woodlands.

Adam Huggins:

Yes, different in terms of species, age, structure

Adam Huggins:

and also density of trees.

Brian Duff:

During this reafforestation, a lot of

Brian Duff:

planting of Scots Pine was done, and that was done at what we

Brian Duff:

call commercial spacing. So at year five, we're looking for two

Brian Duff:

and a half thousand trees per hectare.

Mendel Skulski:

And I take it, that's a lot. Is this what you

Mendel Skulski:

meant by having too many trees?

Adam Huggins:

Yeah, we actually don't really know what the

Adam Huggins:

historic density of Scots Pine woodlands would have been but

Adam Huggins:

just for reference, an old growth forest out here on the

Adam Huggins:

coast would have maybe 80 to 120 trees per hectare.

Mendel Skulski:

Okay, so this is like an order of magnitude more.

Adam Huggins:

Yes, two and a half thousand trees is wild.

Adam Huggins:

Some of the densest forests I've ever been in are around 1500

Adam Huggins:

trees per hectare, and it's actually difficult to even walk

Adam Huggins:

through those. Speaking of which, we have one more forest

Adam Huggins:

to visit... or to revisit. We're headed back to the West Coast.

Mendel Skulski:

Aha... back to where we started off?

Adam Huggins:

Yes, back to my neck of the woods – Galiano

Adam Huggins:

Island. That particular forest is broadly representative of the

Adam Huggins:

forests left behind by industrial forestry throughout

Adam Huggins:

our region, if a particularly extreme example. It's called the

Adam Huggins:

Pebble Beach reserve, and my organization, the Galiano

Adam Huggins:

Conservancy, purchased it back in the late 1990s

Keith Erickson:

They had this 160 acre piece of land that was

Keith Erickson:

a forest plantation that had been nuked, in terms of

Keith Erickson:

industrial forestry terminology, or the terminology I use for

Keith Erickson:

industrial forestry. And so the next question was, what are we

Keith Erickson:

going to do with this?

Adam Huggins:

This is Keith Erickson. He was the one running

Adam Huggins:

the chain hoist at the top of the episode.

Adam Huggins:

Chain hoist guy!

Adam Huggins:

As I am sure he would love to be known. He's a biologist. Worked

Adam Huggins:

for the Galiano Conservancy for many years and has been a mentor

Adam Huggins:

to me. But when he got his first job out of university a couple

Adam Huggins:

decades back right here at Pebble Beach, he was pretty

Adam Huggins:

green behind the ears. And luckily, he found his own

Adam Huggins:

mentors on the job, the late director of the Galiano

Adam Huggins:

Conservancy, Ken Millard, and the renowned eco forester, Herb

Adam Huggins:

Hammond.

Herb Hammond:

I still remember how startlingly degraded it was.

Herb Hammond:

It was not just a plantation, but it was a plantation where

Herb Hammond:

trees had been planted after the site had been windrowed. And

Herb Hammond:

they just scraped all the material, the fallen trees, all

Herb Hammond:

the organic matter and a good share of the topsoil into these

Herb Hammond:

windrows. And then in between, they planted them with nicely

Herb Hammond:

spaced trees. And the plan on MacMillan Bloedel's part was to

Herb Hammond:

harvest that mechanically.

Adam Huggins:

MacMillan Bloedel, the major logging company that

Adam Huggins:

owned, cleared, and planted this lot, used it as kind of an

Adam Huggins:

experimental, free-for-all test site. They were trying to

Adam Huggins:

eliminate an endemic parasite called laminated root rot that

Adam Huggins:

affects Douglas fir trees, and they imagined harvesting the

Adam Huggins:

trees using giant machines like the one in Fern Gully.

Mendel Skulski:

Uhh.... I'm picturing, like, cutting down

Mendel Skulski:

rows of trees as if they were wheat.

Adam Huggins:

That's actually not too far from what they were

Adam Huggins:

imagining as well. But it didn't work out like they had hoped.

Adam Huggins:

Take a walk in this forest today, and Keith will tell you

Adam Huggins:

about the kind of ecosystem that that plantation turned into.

Keith Erickson:

You get a sense of that... bulldozed, low light

Keith Erickson:

conditions, dense Douglas fir, very monoculture, not much going

Keith Erickson:

on here. Youu look at the soil — pits and mounds and the

Keith Erickson:

undulating structure in the mature forest. And here you look

Keith Erickson:

out, it's pretty darn flat. Jump up and down in the mature

Keith Erickson:

forest, and of course, it's got a little bit of spring to it,

Keith Erickson:

and you jump up and down here, and it's like mineral soil.

Mendel Skulski:

Okay, I'm sensing the pattern. Wherever

Mendel Skulski:

you might go, healthy old forests have some similarities.

Mendel Skulski:

They have trees of varying species, varying ages. Some are

Mendel Skulski:

old, some are very young. They have wide spacing and gaps, so

Mendel Skulski:

plenty of light gets down to the understory. They have lots of

Mendel Skulski:

dead trees standing and dead trees lying down. They have

Mendel Skulski:

layers of different vegetation, which makes for a lot of little

Mendel Skulski:

niches for all the different species who make their homes in

Mendel Skulski:

forests, and you can even bounce on their soil like a trampoline.

Adam Huggins:

Yes, they are complex and messy and lovely,

Mendel Skulski:

Mhm... whereas industrial forests kind of look

Mendel Skulski:

like industrial farms.

Adam Huggins:

Tree farms! They are often just called tree

Adam Huggins:

farms.

Mendel Skulski:

Right, so,monocultures of trees. The

Mendel Skulski:

same age, the same height, at high densities, and so you lose

Mendel Skulski:

all that light, and from that you lose the diversity and the

Mendel Skulski:

wildlife habitat.

Adam Huggins:

And that is most forests. Sometimes they're

Adam Huggins:

created intentionally, like at the Pebble Beach reserve, and

Adam Huggins:

sometimes they occur when disturbed sites are abandoned,

Adam Huggins:

like those Vermont pastures.

Mendel Skulski:

So what can we do about it? You can't just

Mendel Skulski:

magically make a forest older...

Adam Huggins:

No, that's not how time works, and we are not

Adam Huggins:

fairies.

Mendel Skulski:

Well, Imean, speak for yourself.

Adam Huggins:

Fair enough. You're right, we can't make

Adam Huggins:

forests older at will, which is another reason why it's so

Adam Huggins:

important to protect our remaining old forests. But we

Adam Huggins:

can help younger forests acquire old growth characteristics. We

Adam Huggins:

can make them old growth-ier.

Mendel Skulski:

Huh. And that's a technical term?

Adam Huggins:

It's what you might call a term of art. We

Adam Huggins:

really don't have the language for this yet, but what we're

Adam Huggins:

trying to do is imbue younger forests with old growthiness.

Mendel Skulski:

Okay, cut to the chase. How are we supposed to do

Mendel Skulski:

that?

Adam Huggins:

I will tell you... after the break.

Mendel Skulski:

And we're back. I'm Mendel.

Adam Huggins:

I'm Adam. This is Future Ecologies, and I have

Adam Huggins:

just finished taking Mendel on a whirlwind tour of the plantation

Adam Huggins:

forests of the world.

Mendel Skulski:

The deep, dark woods.

Adam Huggins:

And now we're going to follow a trail of

Adam Huggins:

gingerbread crumbs to grandmother's house.

Mendel Skulski:

Meaning, now you're gonna tell me why you

Mendel Skulski:

were pulling a tree down.

Adam Huggins:

Yes, that, yes.

Mendel Skulski:

Come on, Adam, what would the fairies say?

Crysta:

No, no, you mustn't do that! Can't you feel its pain?

Adam Huggins:

Okay, well, let's talk for a minute about the

Adam Huggins:

fairy-approved strategy. We left off with the question, how can

Adam Huggins:

we take a young, simplified forest and make it older and

Adam Huggins:

more complex? And the traditional answer to that

Adam Huggins:

question would be to protect it and leave it alone, let time do

Adam Huggins:

its work, right?

Ethan Tapper:

Old growth forests are amazing. They're diverse.

Ethan Tapper:

They provide all this really amazing habitat. They store lots

Ethan Tapper:

of carbon.

Adam Huggins:

Ethan Tapper again, our forester from

Ethan Tapper:

And so how do we make forests old growth? And the

Ethan Tapper:

Vermont.

Ethan Tapper:

most intuitive explanation for how we do that is that we leave

Ethan Tapper:

them alone for a long, long time, and they become old

Ethan Tapper:

growth, and they sort of start to embody all of those different

Ethan Tapper:

values. And that's what they call proforestation.

Mendel Skulski:

Proforestation... I mean, I guess I'm pro

Mendel Skulski:

forestation, right?

Adam Huggins:

You know, I wasn't familiar with this term either,

Adam Huggins:

but basically, proforestation means letting forests grow and

Adam Huggins:

recover on their own.

Ethan Tapper:

In general, I believe that most of the people

Ethan Tapper:

who are involved in proforestation believe that this

Ethan Tapper:

is what it means to love a forest. It makes all the sense

Ethan Tapper:

in the world. If you love a forest, you don't cut any trees

Ethan Tapper:

and you leave it alone.

Mendel Skulski:

Yeah, I mean that that seems like the obvious

Mendel Skulski:

and reasonable reaction to seeing clear cuts everywhere.

Mendel Skulski:

Those places look horrible and so fair enough to feel like do

Mendel Skulski:

exactly the opposite of that.

Ethan Tapper:

Yeah, those two polarities, it's almost, I

Ethan Tapper:

think, like indicative of so many of the problems that we

Ethan Tapper:

have where we think it has to be like completely one thing or

Ethan Tapper:

completely the other, because we can't picture a world in which

Ethan Tapper:

it's sort of one thing and sort of the other and both things and

Ethan Tapper:

neither.

Mendel Skulski:

So Ethan is saying that the world might

Mendel Skulski:

actually be a little bit more nuanced than Fern Gully would

Mendel Skulski:

have us believe.

Adam Huggins:

Maybe. I mean, I think it's important to

Adam Huggins:

acknowledge that so many of us who got inspired to care for the

Adam Huggins:

more than human world, we start from a strong desire to protect

Adam Huggins:

it.

Ethan Tapper:

I came to forestry from a place of not necessarily

Ethan Tapper:

being interested in management, but just from loving forests and

Ethan Tapper:

just from wanting to be around them and in them. And really,

Ethan Tapper:

actually, I think when I started, I was just sort of more

Ethan Tapper:

interested in protecting them, and, you know, figuring out how

Ethan Tapper:

to leave them alone. Through the course of my career, and through

Ethan Tapper:

the course of my time at the University of Vermont, really

Ethan Tapper:

started to understand the beauty and the importance of

Ethan Tapper:

management, that these forests were not systems that could just

Ethan Tapper:

exist, that they were extremely altered, highly degraded, and

Ethan Tapper:

that there was a role for people in making them really healthy

Ethan Tapper:

and vibrant and abundant ecosystems.

Mendel Skulski:

So we're talking about a middle path between

Mendel Skulski:

leaving forests alone and managing them like tree farms.

Mendel Skulski:

But what's what's wrong with proforestation? Why not just let

Mendel Skulski:

them grow old on their own.

Adam Huggins:

Well, we can, and frankly, we do. Once a forest is

Adam Huggins:

no longer under the purview of industrial forestry, we tend to

Adam Huggins:

just leave it alone, right? We protect it. But I think there

Adam Huggins:

are several good arguments for why we should get more hands on.

Adam Huggins:

And the first one is that forests take a long time to

Adam Huggins:

develop old growth characteristics. It's right

Adam Huggins:

there in the name.

Ethan Tapper:

So if you're in a forest that is 100 years old, it

Ethan Tapper:

might take another 200 years to develop that full complement of

Ethan Tapper:

functions and values, you know, just by leaving it alone.

Mendel Skulski:

Yeah. Who has that kind of time.

Adam Huggins:

You know, if we want improved habitat and carbon

Adam Huggins:

storage now, we don't have that kind of time. Also, like any

Adam Huggins:

kind of monoculture plantation, forests are highly susceptible

Adam Huggins:

to disease and disturbance.

Mendel Skulski:

Makes sense.

Adam Huggins:

So whether it's laminated root rot or bark

Adam Huggins:

beetles or budworms, windstorms or mega fires, there's a

Adam Huggins:

significant risk for these forests that they will never get

Adam Huggins:

the chance to grow that old if we leave them alone.

Mendel Skulski:

Got it. They don't only take longer to get

Mendel Skulski:

there. They might not make it at all.

Adam Huggins:

And then finally, there are actual timber

Adam Huggins:

considerations here. If you have all of these dense trees that

Adam Huggins:

are going through the same phase of life at the same time

Adam Huggins:

together, they're all competing for the same resources, and that

Adam Huggins:

stresses them out. It curtails their growth. So if you want

Adam Huggins:

nice, big trees eventually, you need healthy trees. And if you

Adam Huggins:

want healthy trees, you might need less trees. And frankly, if

Adam Huggins:

we want to use wood, but we don't want to be seeing clear

Adam Huggins:

cuts, then we're going to have to find a way to fall in love

Adam Huggins:

with selective tree cutting.

Mendel Skulski:

Right... we all use wood products.

Ethan Tapper:

There's something really radical about consuming

Ethan Tapper:

local resources, consuming local renewable resources, which would

Ethan Tapper:

often is even if that makes us uncomfortable.

Adam Huggins:

This is a conversation that I think is

Adam Huggins:

going to take us a little bit out of our comfort zone. And

Adam Huggins:

Ethan experienced that directly, the first time that he visited

Adam Huggins:

an acreage that he would come to own.

Ethan Tapper:

It had every problem that a forest could

Ethan Tapper:

have, truly. I mean, it had massive invasive plant issues.

Ethan Tapper:

It had been high graded. So loggers had come, they cut all

Ethan Tapper:

the healthiest trees, which are the most valuable, and left all

Ethan Tapper:

the least healthy trees. And the first time I walked through it,

Ethan Tapper:

I actually remember walking through and saying, I cannot

Ethan Tapper:

find any healthy trees. I have not seen a healthy tree on 175

Ethan Tapper:

acres. It had old skid roads, forest roads that were eroding.

Ethan Tapper:

It was just tough, really, really tough. And this has come

Ethan Tapper:

to be a piece of land, you know, a forest that I love

Ethan Tapper:

intrinsically. It doesn't have to do anything for me, doesn't

Ethan Tapper:

have to give anything to me. I think it and its biological

Ethan Tapper:

community has the right to exist, and yet I could not

Ethan Tapper:

pretend that, in light of all of these things, that just leaving

Ethan Tapper:

it alone could be a kindness. Going out there and doing things

Ethan Tapper:

as bittersweet as cutting trees, killing deer, spraying herbicide

Ethan Tapper:

on invasive plants were acts of compassion.

Mendel Skulski:

Wow... we've talked about killing deer in a

Mendel Skulski:

previous episode. Are... are we going to talk about herbicide

Mendel Skulski:

now?

Adam Huggins:

No, that is for another time. The point here is

Adam Huggins:

that there's a lot of land where proforestation is just not

Adam Huggins:

working out so well.

Mendel Skulski:

Okay, so then the alternative is giving these

Mendel Skulski:

woodlands some hands-on attention. What does that look

Mendel Skulski:

like? How do you actually restore a forest?

Adam Huggins:

I have been waiting for you to ask me that.

Adam Huggins:

This is where it gets really fun. So on my little island, at

Adam Huggins:

Pebble Beach in the 90s, back when Keith and Ken and Herb were

Adam Huggins:

thinking about this, there really was no recipe for this

Adam Huggins:

work. There wasn't any guide. And so Herb turned to the

Adam Huggins:

forests themselves to provide the answers.

Herb Hammond:

We set out to do something initially that no one

Herb Hammond:

had ever done, and that's to restore an old growth forest

Herb Hammond:

from a tree plantation following clear cutting. There was no

Herb Hammond:

question that there wasn't a step by step kind of process

Herb Hammond:

here. So what we relied upon was, let's create as many

Herb Hammond:

examples of natural disturbances that would have occurred in a

Herb Hammond:

young forest that would lead it eventually towards the diversity

Herb Hammond:

that would make up an old growth forest.

Mendel Skulski:

So the idea is basically mimic natural

Mendel Skulski:

disturbances.

Adam Huggins:

Yes, and this idea is a through line through all of

Adam Huggins:

the conversations that I've had.

Ethan Tapper:

It's important to recognize that old growth

Ethan Tapper:

forests are not just valuable because they're old. They are

Ethan Tapper:

valuable because of the attributes that they have. And

Ethan Tapper:

we can create these conditions, not perfectly, but certainly to

Ethan Tapper:

a much greater extent than would be represented in our forests

Ethan Tapper:

today, centuries sooner than they would naturally occur.

Adam Huggins:

Remember, these are all very different forests

Adam Huggins:

that we're talking about, so the techniques vary a bit from place

Adam Huggins:

to place, but at heart, the concepts and values are quite

Adam Huggins:

similar. And the first and foremost intervention that many

Adam Huggins:

of these forests just desperately need is to be

Adam Huggins:

thinned.

Mendel Skulski:

And by thinned, you mean cutting down a certain

Mendel Skulski:

percentage of the trees?

Adam Huggins:

Yes... in a way... but it's more of an art form

Adam Huggins:

than that, because it ends up being less about what you're

Adam Huggins:

removing than what you're leaving behind.

Ethan Tapper:

I'm not thinking about the tree that I'm cutting.

Ethan Tapper:

I'm thinking about the forest that I am manifesting, which is

Ethan Tapper:

diverse and complex, more like these old forests that were here

Ethan Tapper:

for 1000s of years, and to which all of our native species are

Ethan Tapper:

adapted.

Brian Duff:

If you've got a whole plantation of the same

Brian Duff:

trees growing at the same height with no variation, it's about

Brian Duff:

trying to influence that and to break that up.

Ethan Tapper:

And to just create weirdness, what we would call

Ethan Tapper:

complexity, or I call weirdness — irregularity, little mixes of

Ethan Tapper:

habitat that are novel and unique.

Herb Hammond:

Mimic what nature does. Windthrow is one of the

Herb Hammond:

main natural disturbance regimes in these systems.

Adam Huggins:

Hey, Mendel — do you know what windthrow is?

Mendel Skulski:

If I had to guess, it's when the wind blows

Mendel Skulski:

trees over.

Herb Hammond:

And windthrow is there for a purpose — to open up

Herb Hammond:

the canopy, to allow more light in for a diversity of plants,

Herb Hammond:

and then with that, a diversity of animals that depend upon the

Herb Hammond:

plants.

Brian Duff:

So every 15 years, we'd be going in and thinning

Brian Duff:

and opening it up and opening it up.

Adam Huggins:

And once we make the forest less dense through

Adam Huggins:

thinning, there's all sorts of different techniques to create

Adam Huggins:

diversity in the forest that remains. There are elements of

Adam Huggins:

pro forestation.

Ethan Tapper:

Legacy trees are just trees that we're leaving

Ethan Tapper:

them in the forest forever, so we're never going to cut them

Ethan Tapper:

down. These don't have to be the most valuable trees from a

Ethan Tapper:

commercial perspective in your forest. So these can be trees

Ethan Tapper:

that are hollow, that are full of cavities. You know, are sort

Ethan Tapper:

of half dead, that have all of these functions which are

Ethan Tapper:

actually really important wildlife habitats.

Adam Huggins:

And even in the most simplified forests, there

Adam Huggins:

remain these little opportunities for diversity.

Herb Hammond:

There was a few places where there was still

Herb Hammond:

indigenous vegetation, oceanspray and red elderberry,

Herb Hammond:

alder. A few little patches, and those became focal points that

Herb Hammond:

we wanted to build off — our anchors for the restoration. And

Herb Hammond:

then the other thing we did was tip trees over which created

Herb Hammond:

root balls and root cavities, which provided exposed soil for

Herb Hammond:

indigenous plants to seed and take root in.

Ethan Tapper:

You know, don't just make it a clear cut, even

Ethan Tapper:

though that's what most people will intuitively want to do,

Ethan Tapper:

because it will look really neat and tidy. Make it messy.

Brian Duff:

That whole thing has changed even in my lifetime in

Brian Duff:

forestry, when I first started, you know, the forest had to be

Brian Duff:

clean, and no foresters would accept trees just blown over or

Brian Duff:

lying about, as it were.

Ethan Tapper:

You're looking for opportunities to put dead wood

Ethan Tapper:

on the ground.

Brian Duff:

Dead wood is a very vital part of structure of the

Brian Duff:

forest.

Herb Hammond:

We not only top trees to introduce rot.

Brian Duff:

So there'd be hand winching, ring barking.

Herb Hammond:

The next thing we tried was girdling trees.

Brian Duff:

That's where we take the cambium layer off the bark,

Brian Duff:

the cambium layer off the tree, and kill it standing up.

Herb Hammond:

... to make snags. And I still remember that it was

Herb Hammond:

just a matter of days, or maybe a week or two, before we had

Herb Hammond:

pileated woodpeckers back on the site

Brian Duff:

Anyway. We just have to go in with it.

Mendel Skulski:

And to think I was shocked when you were

Mendel Skulski:

pulling one tree over. These guys are like a windstorm, a

Mendel Skulski:

wildfire, a plague of locusts, and an earthquake all at the

Mendel Skulski:

same time.

Adam Huggins:

Yeah it turns out there are lots of different ways

Adam Huggins:

to kill trees. The chain hoist system that I introduced you to

Adam Huggins:

is just one particularly creative way that the late Ken

Adam Huggins:

Millard devised to simulate windthrow. But you can kill

Adam Huggins:

trees with pulleys, with knives, with saws. I think you could do

Adam Huggins:

it with fire too. There are probably other ways.

Mendel Skulski:

Surely.

Adam Huggins:

For our next intervention, it's not only the

Adam Huggins:

trees that need to be thinned out.

Brian Duff:

I don't know what it's like in Canada, but

Brian Duff:

certainly here it's this can be quite an evotive subject. People

Brian Duff:

still have this sort of like, I don't know, Bambi feeling about

Brian Duff:

about deer? I don't know

Mendel Skulski:

Oh, deer.

Brian Duff:

I think as an organization in the whole

Brian Duff:

Scotland, Forestry and Land Scotland cull nearly 40,000 deer

Brian Duff:

a year. So we're one of the bigger players in Scotland, and

Brian Duff:

it's still not touching what it should be, really, and that's a

Brian Duff:

crazy thing. Because we don't have an apex predator.

Mendel Skulski:

We know that part of the story from Season

Mendel Skulski:

Three. But what's the problem here? Are the deer hungry enough

Mendel Skulski:

to eat all your freshly downed logs?

Adam Huggins:

Oh, I mean, in this case, it's not the logs

Adam Huggins:

that we need to be worried about. If you're creating gaps

Adam Huggins:

in the canopy and you're hoping that a diversity of forest

Adam Huggins:

species are going to grow up to fill those gaps, in most places,

Adam Huggins:

it's just not going to happen without fewer deer. And unless

Adam Huggins:

you have natural predators, which is not the case for any of

Adam Huggins:

the forests in this episode, then you need to be the

Adam Huggins:

predator. You need to hunt them.

Brian Duff:

I think there's a lot of people argue when the

Brian Duff:

last wolf was shot in Scotland, but probably 250, 300 years ago

Brian Duff:

now. So there's been nothing since then. Basically, if it's

Brian Duff:

not old age or a bullet, nothing's going to stop deer,

Brian Duff:

really.

Mendel Skulski:

Yikes.

Adam Huggins:

I mean, it's true. And in Scotland, they sell the

Adam Huggins:

venison.

Brian Duff:

All our venison goes to what we call a game dealer.

Brian Duff:

You know, we got a contract with them. They come and pick the

Brian Duff:

carcasses up from our larder, and it goes into the food chain,

Brian Duff:

basically.

Mendel Skulski:

I'm part of the food chain! How do I get my

Mendel Skulski:

hands on some of this venison?

Brian Duff:

We've done a couple of successful open days, what

Brian Duff:

they call Hill to Grill, to get in the public along to see the

Brian Duff:

whole process, and to taste the product. Because venison is a

Brian Duff:

fantastic meat to eat, and we should be actually using much

Brian Duff:

more of it.

Mendel Skulski:

Sure yeah, I'll put in a little plug for

Mendel Skulski:

venison. I mean, it's actually one of the most delicious meats

Mendel Skulski:

I've ever tried. It's kind of funny that they... it seems like

Mendel Skulski:

they need to put in a lot of effort just to market it.

Adam Huggins:

You know what they don't have to put much effort

Adam Huggins:

into marketing?

Mendel Skulski:

What?

Adam Huggins:

The wood! Timber sales can actually help pay for

Adam Huggins:

the forest restoration, at least in Scotland, where they often do

Adam Huggins:

clear whole areas of introduced valuable species, like Douglas

Adam Huggins:

fir, in addition to their forest thinning.

Brian Duff:

Timber is harvested and sold on a commercial basis

Brian Duff:

to the local timber trade, when we're doing clear felling and

Brian Duff:

thinnings. So the larger material, saw logs will go for

Brian Duff:

manufacturing products, and smaller round wood goes to this

Brian Duff:

board factory — orientated strand board, or pallet wood as

Brian Duff:

well, and sometimes fencing materials.

Adam Huggins:

So this kind of commercial cost recovery can

Adam Huggins:

generate useful materials locally. At a minimum, it helps.

Adam Huggins:

And in some cases, it actually enables the restoration to be

Adam Huggins:

done in the first place.

Ethan Tapper:

And that was really eye opening, realizing

Ethan Tapper:

that commercial forest management is not just a

Ethan Tapper:

necessary compromise, it's also what allows work to occur.

Mendel Skulski:

Okay, hold on for just a second. Isn't there

Mendel Skulski:

like an inherent conflict between managing forests

Mendel Skulski:

commercially and managing them for old growthiness? Like even

Mendel Skulski:

if we can do commercial forestry more selectively, there's got to

Mendel Skulski:

be trade offs, right?

Adam Huggins:

There's always trade offs. Mendel,

Ethan Tapper:

The ecologically ideal situation would be cutting

Ethan Tapper:

all these trees to create these canopy gaps, and to thin around

Ethan Tapper:

our healthiest trees. And we'd be just leaving them on the

Ethan Tapper:

ground, because there'd be more dead wood there at that time.

Ethan Tapper:

But the difference is that, because this is a commercial

Ethan Tapper:

forest management project, not only are we producing local

Ethan Tapper:

renewable resources, which is incredibly valuable, but it is

Ethan Tapper:

the commerciality of that project that is allowing it to

Ethan Tapper:

occur. So we wouldn't have been in there, creating gaps, putting

Ethan Tapper:

dead wood on the ground, doing any of this stuff, if it wasn't

Ethan Tapper:

commercial. And so in that way, it's I... I really believe it to

Ethan Tapper:

be a really happy compromise.

Mendel Skulski:

Okay, so there, there is still a compromise.

Adam Huggins:

If you trust Ethan, a happy compromise.

Mendel Skulski:

Hmmm... but I guess what he's saying is that

Mendel Skulski:

it's worth it, because otherwise we'd be back in that black and

Mendel Skulski:

white, clear cuts or proforestation kind of world

Mendel Skulski:

view.

Adam Huggins:

Yes, the argument is that it is possible to take

Adam Huggins:

some wood out and still leave some on the ground. And you

Adam Huggins:

know, it's going to be a different balance in every

Adam Huggins:

place. Perhaps in some areas we want to remove more wood to

Adam Huggins:

generate value for the community, or to limit fire

Adam Huggins:

risk, right? Perhaps in other areas, we can afford to leave

Adam Huggins:

more on the ground, and allow it to build the soil. What really

Adam Huggins:

struck me listening to all of these folks from around the

Adam Huggins:

world, is that what we're talking about is a kind of

Adam Huggins:

forestry that balances the needs of the forest as a whole with

Adam Huggins:

the lives of individual trees, and that brings the humans back

Adam Huggins:

into the forest.

Brian Duff:

What I'm not creating here is a tree museum.

Brian Duff:

I would really like it to be managed in the future. You know,

Brian Duff:

the woods should be there for people, whether it be through

Brian Duff:

recreation, but especially through working. Should actually

Brian Duff:

have more people involved in the forest, really, if we can, not

Brian Duff:

less.

Ethan Tapper:

And that, to me, is like the most profound

Ethan Tapper:

expression of what it means to be the steward of a forest at

Ethan Tapper:

this moment in time. Like, we get the world that we get. Here

Ethan Tapper:

we are. And we have the forest that we have. The question is,

Ethan Tapper:

what are we going to do about it? We already have the power to

Ethan Tapper:

address these issues. We just have to decide to do it. Not

Ethan Tapper:

leaving these forests alone, but asking "what can we do to make

Ethan Tapper:

these ecosystems healthy again" is truly radical, and truly an

Ethan Tapper:

expression of love for them.

Mendel Skulski:

Okay Adam, I just have one question left.

Adam Huggins:

And what would that be?

Mendel Skulski:

Does any of this actually work?

Adam Huggins:

Oh, I mean, there are always successes and

Adam Huggins:

setbacks with work like this, but the short answer is... yes.

Herb Hammond:

I remember us having this conversation that we

Herb Hammond:

would never live long enough to see this place feel different

Herb Hammond:

and look different, but we were really wrong. It was a matter of

Herb Hammond:

months, or a year plus, and it had a totally different look and

Herb Hammond:

feel to it than it did when we started.

Mendel Skulski:

You're telling me you can see changes inside of

Mendel Skulski:

a year.

Adam Huggins:

Oh yeah. Forests can be amazingly responsive.

Adam Huggins:

Much of the forest diversity might be pushed to the brink,

Adam Huggins:

but wherever it remains, it's ready to bounce back. For

Adam Huggins:

instance, in Scotland, they have the capercaillie. It's an

Adam Huggins:

endangered bird, kind of like a grouse. And for the

Adam Huggins:

capercaillie, after just a few decades, breaking up the tree

Adam Huggins:

canopy is already showing results.

Brian Duff:

There's more light getting in, there's more heat

Brian Duff:

generated, there's more insect life. The capercaillie seem to

Brian Duff:

thrive on that.

Adam Huggins:

But results like these take persistence and

Adam Huggins:

coordination at a landscape scale. Brian's work with

Adam Huggins:

Glenmore is part of a project called Cairngorms Connect that

Adam Huggins:

links a number of large landowners that are all working

Adam Huggins:

together to recover ancient woodlands, to manage deer, to

Adam Huggins:

restore wetlands. It's an incredibly exciting, holistic

Adam Huggins:

vision for the whole region, and I wish I could talk about it

Adam Huggins:

more.

Mendel Skulski:

Maybe some other time.

Brian Duff:

The thing is, it's such a long term vision. At

Brian Duff:

Cairngorms Connect, we say 250 years. You know, in human terms,

Brian Duff:

that's difficult sometimes to get your head around. In

Brian Duff:

ecological terms, it's nothing really. You know we're talking

Brian Duff:

about pine woodlands being here for 8000 years, since the last

Brian Duff:

ice age.

Adam Huggins:

But that doesn't mean that they don't already see

Adam Huggins:

results.

Brian Duff:

The areas we felled out in the 1990s in Glenmore

Brian Duff:

have regenerated really well, and now we've got what we call

Brian Duff:

our Pinewood reserve — nearly 1000 hectares there of pure

Brian Duff:

regenerated pine woodlands. And it looks, it looks fantastic.

Brian Duff:

Forest regenerating of all shapes and sizes of tree. The

Brian Duff:

plan is in 200 years, people will be walking through from one

Brian Duff:

end of Cairngorms Connect area to the other, through this

Brian Duff:

gnarly old pine woodland.

Adam Huggins:

It's incredible to think that we have the power to

Adam Huggins:

change the forest, but if we want that change to be for the

Adam Huggins:

better, we have to allow the forest to change us too.

Herb Hammond:

So the first step in order to get there is to

Herb Hammond:

change our relationship with forests. And changing our

Herb Hammond:

relationship with forests means to move from exploitation and

Herb Hammond:

extraction to protection and restoration.

Keith Erickson:

The most important thing that I've

Keith Erickson:

learned from that is about creating a relationship with a

Keith Erickson:

place, and being attuned to the place where you live and where

Keith Erickson:

you work. And I got to know that land so well in the time that I

Keith Erickson:

was able to study it and to try and help it to heal. And there's

Keith Erickson:

a real relationship that gets born out of that. And it's about

Keith Erickson:

us becoming part of the landscape and finding our place

Keith Erickson:

there.

Mendel Skulski:

Hmm... so what about you, Adam, have you found

Mendel Skulski:

your place in the forest?

Adam Huggins:

I mean, somewhere between a windstorm and an

Adam Huggins:

earthquake, yeah, I'm helping to make an absolute mess, and I am

Adam Huggins:

having a lot of fun doing it. And, you know, I guess what I

Adam Huggins:

have learned is that if we're doing forest restoration, if

Adam Huggins:

we're trying to restore a forest, we have to embrace the

Adam Huggins:

messiness of it. We have to make an art of the messiness. Because

Adam Huggins:

messy things are full of life, destruction and creation.

Mendel Skulski:

Hmm well, maybe Fern Gully had it right all

Mendel Skulski:

along.

Magi:

Everyone can call on the magic powers of the web of life.

Magi:

You have to find it in yourself.

Adam Huggins:

There are lots of people to thank for this

Adam Huggins:

episode, and also a lot of material that did not make the

Adam Huggins:

final cut. So for all of our patrons on Patreon who support

Adam Huggins:

the show, you can expect some extras that dive deeper into

Adam Huggins:

some of the conversations that we've raised here. And in the

Adam Huggins:

meantime, I'm actually involved in a forest restoration project

Adam Huggins:

right now. On a site called Quadra hill here on Galiano

Adam Huggins:

Island.

Mendel Skulski:

Well, please let us know how it goes.

Adam Huggins:

I definitely will. Okay, as always, Future

Adam Huggins:

Ecologies is an independent podcast supported by our amazing

Adam Huggins:

community on Patreon. If you like what we do, you can help us

Adam Huggins:

to do it, by contributing any amount at

Adam Huggins:

futureecologies.net/join

Mendel Skulski:

All of our patrons get access to early

Mendel Skulski:

episode releases, exclusive bonus content, and our community

Mendel Skulski:

Discord server.

Adam Huggins:

And our biggest supporters get to show off with

Adam Huggins:

stickers, embroidered patches,and now toques! That's a

Adam Huggins:

beanie for American listeners.

Mendel Skulski:

In this episode, you heard Keith Erickson, Herb

Mendel Skulski:

Hammond, Ethan Tapper, Brian Duff,

Adam Huggins:

and just a little bit of Ria Okuda, my colleague

Adam Huggins:

at the GCA.

Mendel Skulski:

And music by Thumbug, Spencer W Stuart,

Mendel Skulski:

Nathan Schubert, and Sunfish Moon Light.

Adam Huggins:

You can find Ethan's new book, How to Love a

Adam Huggins:

Forest, at ethantapper.com/book. You can learn more about

Adam Huggins:

Cairngorms connect at cairngormsconnect.org.uk. And if

Adam Huggins:

you're curious about my day job at the Galiano Conservancy. You

Adam Huggins:

can find us galianoconservancy.ca

Mendel Skulski:

This episode was produced by Adam Huggins, and me

Mendel Skulski:

Mendel Skulski, with help from Eden Zinchik, and cover art by

Mendel Skulski:

Ale Silva.

Adam Huggins:

Special thanks to Ethan for nudging us into

Adam Huggins:

telling this story; to Lizzie Brotherston for connecting us

Adam Huggins:

with Brian; to all my colleagues at the Galiano Conservancy for

Adam Huggins:

letting me record them while working; To Thomas Heinrich, who

Adam Huggins:

interviewed some folks in the San Juans who will be featured

Adam Huggins:

in a sub-episode because we just couldn't fit them in here; and

Adam Huggins:

to Tal Engel for his engaging conversations on this topic. We

Adam Huggins:

also found the Northwest Natural Resource Group's new book A

Adam Huggins:

Forest of Your Own to be really helpful in putting this episode

Adam Huggins:

together.

Mendel Skulski:

Okay, we've got an amazing season lined up for

Mendel Skulski:

you full of great new stories.

Adam Huggins:

Keeping us very, very busy.

Mendel Skulski:

And you know what that means?

Tony:

Yeah! Beaucoup overtime.

Hexxus:

Oh what a miraculous device. I'm really getting the

Hexxus:

hang of this.

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