greenstorm (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greenstorm) wrote2021-05-11 03:37 pm
greenstorm) wrote2021-05-11 03:37 pm
Entry tags:
Regardless
I spent the last two days in the field for work. They were short days, and the drive in was only about an hour each way on easy roads. I was doing work that's new to me, basically wandering around a clearcut making sure that baby trees were planted back properly.
I work in forestry. My employer doesn't really allow me to comment on my job. My profession wants me to educate the public. I have a lot of thoughts about the western world's current emphasis on planting trees as an environmental solution to ...everything. It is not. Even if the right trees from the right genetics were planted, even if the ground those trees were planted into was protected in some way in the long term, even if that type of ground would do best as a forest, planting billions of baby trees is a minor part of a larger solution. Because it makes a great soundbite, because people like baby trees and simple solution, it's what's done.
Don't get me wrong, migrating trees to help adapt to global warming is probably super important.
It's just that the world we're going into with inconsistent climate, high likelihood of fire and even very warm/dry fire plus the requirement for carbon sequestration, and maybe some sort of breakdown of our huge unwieldy high-input agricultural system... that world really needs some proper grasslands. We need, not lawn, not monocultures, but deep-rooted prairie that keeps most of its biomass below ground for when fires or other climate artifacts sweep over, that feeds groups of ungulates that pass through, and that's quick to go from species movement to seed to more species movement as climate continues to shift, and that drives carbon/humus deep into the ground. We need wetlands. I mean, we need forests too. We need intact old forests, we need young forests.
But the thing folks have trouble with is specifically that diversity is great. People really like grasping onto a single solution and waving it around, instead of saying "that's great, but it's only a hundredth of a solution".
But still. I spent the day wandering around in the sunshine looking at baby trees. The block was gentle, not too steep and not too many branches and trunks and bits on the ground so the walking was ok. There was a nice cool wind. Four species were going back into an area where two were taken out, and a lot of what was taken out was dead pine, replaced with barely-visible green sprigs.
And any day spent outside, any day, is a good day. Any day spent in the bush, even if the bush has been cut down, is a good day.
These were good days.
I work in forestry. My employer doesn't really allow me to comment on my job. My profession wants me to educate the public. I have a lot of thoughts about the western world's current emphasis on planting trees as an environmental solution to ...everything. It is not. Even if the right trees from the right genetics were planted, even if the ground those trees were planted into was protected in some way in the long term, even if that type of ground would do best as a forest, planting billions of baby trees is a minor part of a larger solution. Because it makes a great soundbite, because people like baby trees and simple solution, it's what's done.
Don't get me wrong, migrating trees to help adapt to global warming is probably super important.
It's just that the world we're going into with inconsistent climate, high likelihood of fire and even very warm/dry fire plus the requirement for carbon sequestration, and maybe some sort of breakdown of our huge unwieldy high-input agricultural system... that world really needs some proper grasslands. We need, not lawn, not monocultures, but deep-rooted prairie that keeps most of its biomass below ground for when fires or other climate artifacts sweep over, that feeds groups of ungulates that pass through, and that's quick to go from species movement to seed to more species movement as climate continues to shift, and that drives carbon/humus deep into the ground. We need wetlands. I mean, we need forests too. We need intact old forests, we need young forests.
But the thing folks have trouble with is specifically that diversity is great. People really like grasping onto a single solution and waving it around, instead of saying "that's great, but it's only a hundredth of a solution".
But still. I spent the day wandering around in the sunshine looking at baby trees. The block was gentle, not too steep and not too many branches and trunks and bits on the ground so the walking was ok. There was a nice cool wind. Four species were going back into an area where two were taken out, and a lot of what was taken out was dead pine, replaced with barely-visible green sprigs.
And any day spent outside, any day, is a good day. Any day spent in the bush, even if the bush has been cut down, is a good day.
These were good days.