View From The Canopy #33
Hello and welcome to issue #33 of View From The Canopy newsletter. Enjoy this week’s selection of forest news while the trees are busy leafing out in the northern hemisphere.
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News articles 📰
[USA, CANADA]
Lumber mania is sweeping North America
For some people, the journey into America’s lumber crunch starts with the decision to build a new home, or at Home Depot, where the pandemic-driven home renovation craze has contributed to making basic materials pricey and hard to come by. For others, it starts with the memes. The price of lumber has soared over the past year, and it’s an incredibly hot commodity.
[B.C., CANADA]
Forestry crew at loggerheads with Fairy Creek activists
Investigations are underway after a heated confrontation between loggers and old-growth activists with the Fairy Creek blockade on southern Vancouver Island was captured on video this week.
[MOZAMBIQUE]
Mozambique Mints a New National Park — and Surveys Its Riches
In the wake of wars, natural disasters and insurgencies, Mozambique is experiencing an environmental renaissance. One of the results is a new and stunningly beautiful national park.
[INDONESIA]
Belgium-sized swath of forest faces the chop from Indonesian palm oil
Indonesia could lose an area of tropical rainforest bigger than Belgium to oil palm plantations over the next three years without existing measures to slow this loss, activists warn.
Opinion 💬
[ON, CANADA]
Time running out to protect Catchacoma old-growth forest
[…] The logging company insists that this is like “weeding the garden” and that it emulates natural disturbance that is suppressed by humans such as fires. But it is actually wind that is the prime natural disturbance in Ontario’s shade-tolerant hemlock dominated forests, not fire. In fact, the remaining trees in recently logged areas are now more subject to blowdown due to opening up of the forest canopy by removing large old-growth trees.
read at The Peterborough Examiner
Research & Reports 🔬
[USA]
Biden lays out vision for protecting 30% of US land, waters by 2030
Today the Biden Administration formally laid out its vision for conserving 30 percent of America’s land and waters by 2030. The report [PDF], released by the Departments of Commerce, Interior, and Agriculture, includes few specifics but conceptualizes how the U.S. can better protect and restore biodiversity, improve the resilience of ecosystems to climate change, and increase the accessibility of the nation’s parks and wilderness areas.
[CANADA]
One of Canada’s biggest carbon sinks is circling the drain
Canada's continent-spanning forest used to remove massive amounts of CO2 from the air each year. It was a hugely valuable "carbon sink", slowing the pace of climate change and benefiting our logging industry. But that carbon sink has steadily collapsed to the point where the forest now emits CO2. That adds fuel to our accelerating climate crisis, and spells trouble for Canadian logging.
That is the grim story told by the data in Canada's latest National Inventory Report
Featured Forest ✨
Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada
Photo © Taylor Green
This weeks featured forest is the The Great Bear Rainforest; a temperate rain forest on the Pacific coast of British Columbia, Canada comprising 6.4 million hectares. The forest features 1,000-year-old western red cedar and 90-metre Sitka spruce.
The Great Bear Rainforest was officially recognized by the Government of British Columbia in February 2016, when it announced an agreement to permanently protect 85% of the old-growth forested area from industrial logging.
The Great Bear Rainforest is one of the largest remaining tracts of unspoiled temperate rainforest left in the world. The area is home to species such as cougars, wolves, salmon, grizzly bears, and the Kermode ("spirit") bear, a unique subspecies of the black bear, in which one in ten cubs displays a recessive white coloured coat.
Miscellaneous 🍂
Secrets of the dead wood: ancient oaks hold key to new life
England has more ancient oaks than all other European countries put together. This is largely thanks to the long-held obsession of royals and the aristocracy with creating medieval parks to hunt deer, as venison was considered a “noble” meat. Within these landscapes, oaks had space to flourish, and thanks to careful management, Richmond is one of the best places to see them.
Scientists are checking up on the health of forests by analysing the sounds in them. They test their vital signs by measuring the croaks, tweets and hums of resident creatures. If they can hear a full range of animals they can be confident an ecosystem is doing well. However, if gaps start to appear, it’s a sign something is up.
The Northern Forest Atlas produces graphic tools for naturalists and ecologists. This site contains photographic and digital images, diagrams, videos, and illustrated articles.
Selected Book 📚
The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature's Great Connectors
by David George Haskell
David Haskell has won acclaim for eloquent writing and deep engagement with the natural world. Now, he brings his powers of observation to the biological networks that surround all species, including humans. Haskell repeatedly visits a dozen trees, exploring connections with people, microbes, fungi, and other plants and animals. He takes us to trees in cities (from Manhattan to Jerusalem), forests (Amazonian, North American, and boreal) and areas on the front lines of environmental change (eroding coastlines, burned mountainsides, and war zones.) In each place he shows how human history, ecology, and well-being are intimately intertwined with the lives of trees.
Scientific, lyrical, and contemplative, Haskell reveals the biological connections that underpin all life. In a world beset by barriers, he reminds us that life’s substance and beauty emerge from relationship and interdependence.
For those that missed last week’s Featured Book by Suzanne Simard; here is a few more links to more interviews and reviews of her new book:
Until next week ✌️
I hope you enjoyed the view from the canopy. If you've come across any interesting articles or you've written something yourself please hit reply and let me know about them.
See you next week!
Cheers,
Johan
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