How to Love a Forest - with Ethan Tapper

<v Speaker 1>Yeah, all right, welcome to the crime Pace it Bonny
<v Speaker 1>Doesn't Podcast. I'm here with Ethan Tapper, who's you're based
<v Speaker 1>out of Vermont?
<v Speaker 2>Right, that's right?
<v Speaker 1>Is that correct? And who's who put out a book
<v Speaker 1>called how to Love a Forest? Who just released it?
<v Speaker 1>When did you release it? Like a year or two ago?
<v Speaker 2>It was September twenty four?
<v Speaker 1>Oh okay, yeah, so about a year ago. And I've
<v Speaker 1>been following you on social media for a while. I
<v Speaker 1>think one of your first posts looped me in and
<v Speaker 1>then just all the stuff I see I love, I
<v Speaker 1>love it. I love the stuff you post. And you
<v Speaker 1>were the one who You were the one who told me,
<v Speaker 1>of course, to start off talking about ticks right away,
<v Speaker 1>that you guys just started getting ticks up in Vermont recently,
<v Speaker 1>like to a bad extent, which is nuts to me.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it's like the same thing when you like,
<v Speaker 1>Iceland has mosquitoes.
<v Speaker 2>Now, yeah, we didn't. Even when I was growing up
<v Speaker 2>in Vermont, we didn't have him. The first one I
<v Speaker 2>ever saw I was in Portland, Maine, like in a
<v Speaker 2>Whole Foods or something, and I didn't know I saw
<v Speaker 2>it on me and I didn't know what it was.
<v Speaker 2>I thought it was just a little spider, and so
<v Speaker 2>I was like, you know, I was in this big
<v Speaker 2>store and I was like, well, I'm not going to
<v Speaker 2>let you out here, buddy, and so I put it
<v Speaker 2>back on me, like you can hang out of me,
<v Speaker 2>you can jump off when we get back out of
<v Speaker 2>the barking. And then I found it embedded at me
<v Speaker 2>later and asked someone else. I was like, oh, is
<v Speaker 2>this what a ticket?
<v Speaker 1>Oh wow? So you didn't even fuck that's crazy. You
<v Speaker 1>didn't know what it was. I was going to say,
<v Speaker 1>you just put it on the floor. You know, they'll come.
<v Speaker 1>They'll get it when they come. Wax though, when the
<v Speaker 1>janitor comes waxes it later that night.
<v Speaker 2>You know, No, I didn't. I didn't even have a
<v Speaker 2>frame of reference for I'd never seen one before that
<v Speaker 2>was in So that was probably two thousand and nine
<v Speaker 2>or twenty ten.
<v Speaker 1>That's crazy.
<v Speaker 2>Now it's a big deal. And basically every every forester,
<v Speaker 2>every biologist, everybody that works in the field that I
<v Speaker 2>know has, you know, had at least one tickboard disease.
<v Speaker 2>I've had Live's disease pretty much all foresters have.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's horrible up there in the Northeast man, I
<v Speaker 1>mean it's it's it's just like that's one of the
<v Speaker 1>reasons that might be one of the reasons it's kept
<v Speaker 1>me out for a while. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, sorry,
<v Speaker 1>what'd you say?
<v Speaker 2>I said, you're a Southwestern boy, right.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's where I've learned. That's why I've spent most
<v Speaker 1>of my time. I was in California for twenty years.
<v Speaker 1>I left Chicago when I was like seventeen. That's where
<v Speaker 1>I grew up, and I was in California for twenty years,
<v Speaker 1>and that's where I learned botany and then yeah, I
<v Speaker 1>mean you get ticks in California. Like the first time
<v Speaker 1>I ever found a ticket was embedded in my nuts
<v Speaker 1>and I had, you know, a friend who I was
<v Speaker 1>later romantically involved with. It was very nice she pulled
<v Speaker 1>it out for me. But but it was like it was,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I was because I didn't know what to
<v Speaker 1>do and I was free. I was like panicking because
<v Speaker 1>I've never gotten. I'd never gotten before. I'd spent you know,
<v Speaker 1>when I was a teenager, I was spent my time
<v Speaker 1>like growing up in cities and riding the subway and
<v Speaker 1>shit like that, and uh yeah, and I used to
<v Speaker 1>be absolutely just terrified of him. And now I'm just
<v Speaker 1>like whatever, I'll just pull them off later. But you know,
<v Speaker 1>I go to all these habitats where they burn enough now,
<v Speaker 1>you know, on the eastern in the eastern side of
<v Speaker 1>the hundredth meridian where it's more humid, you know, east
<v Speaker 1>coast and uh, and so you don't really get them
<v Speaker 1>when they when they burn a lot. But that's that's
<v Speaker 1>perplexing to me that you guys used to not get them.
<v Speaker 1>Why was that? Do you think just because of the
<v Speaker 1>cold winters? And was there a history of burning in
<v Speaker 1>Vermont or what not?
<v Speaker 2>Really? No, I mean we think of It's actually been
<v Speaker 2>fun so now that I've since the book has come out,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, just a big part of my life
<v Speaker 2>has been traveling around doing this public speaking stuff and conferences,
<v Speaker 2>and so I've begin able to see all different forest types.
<v Speaker 2>And one of the big discoveries for me has been
<v Speaker 2>seeing what a big roll fireplaces in these ecosystems. Because
<v Speaker 2>here in Vermont we have a few fire adapted systems.
<v Speaker 2>We have a few areas of this natural community that
<v Speaker 2>we call sandplane forest, which is like pitch pine and
<v Speaker 2>a small area little pockets of some other fire adapted
<v Speaker 2>systems red pine forests, natural red and forest, and dry
<v Speaker 2>oak forest. But fire isn't a big deal here, so
<v Speaker 2>I think it was just that they were limited, you know,
<v Speaker 2>climatically to a certain extent.
<v Speaker 1>Well, you guys were glaciated too, like relatively recently ten
<v Speaker 1>thousand years ago, was all was Vermont under ice? Did
<v Speaker 1>they come that far south?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So I think we were glaciated. And I think
<v Speaker 2>that they say that the only part of the Northeast
<v Speaker 2>that ticks are native to is like Long Island, New York,
<v Speaker 2>which I believe I think is unglaciated or is right
<v Speaker 2>at the edge. That's why. Yeah, everywhere, So that happened.
<v Speaker 2>Like so like another example of you know, with these
<v Speaker 2>with climate change, like this weird stuff that's happening, is
<v Speaker 2>that we have all these issues with what we call
<v Speaker 2>the winter tick, which is this very large tick. When
<v Speaker 2>they're in gorge there, they're huge, They're like the size
<v Speaker 2>of peanut m and m's, and they're they back, they
<v Speaker 2>attack servants. So they're like been really causing damage to
<v Speaker 2>our moose populations to the point where in their first
<v Speaker 2>year of life we lose sixty to eighty percent of
<v Speaker 2>our moose and we lose them to anemia because they
<v Speaker 2>get these winter ticks on a one year old moose,
<v Speaker 2>they might have one hundred and eighty thousand of them
<v Speaker 2>on it, and they're huge. And they actually are a
<v Speaker 2>species that historically is co evolved with deer white tail deer,
<v Speaker 2>so deer because they're co evolved with them, have this
<v Speaker 2>preening behavior they pick them off. But the historic ranges
<v Speaker 2>of deer and moose didn't used to cross, and now
<v Speaker 2>that their range is cross, we have winter ticks in
<v Speaker 2>moose's range and they don't have any evolutionary relationship with
<v Speaker 2>that species, so they don't really have any way to
<v Speaker 2>deal with it.
<v Speaker 1>When you think about what it's going to take to get,
<v Speaker 1>you know, to kill a moose, I mean, the extent
<v Speaker 1>of infestation is it's just that's so disgusting, and I
<v Speaker 1>mean it's they got to look like Papaloma's like wartz
<v Speaker 1>or something.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, they do, and they have this thing that they
<v Speaker 2>we call them the ghost moose because they'll lose all
<v Speaker 2>their hair and they'll have this like white translucent skin
<v Speaker 2>from all the ticks. Yeah, I mean, it's just one
<v Speaker 2>of these things like it's like everybody. It's starting to
<v Speaker 2>feel like everybody's taken these ecosystems, you know, and just
<v Speaker 2>put like they're in a snow globe and just shook
<v Speaker 2>them up. Yeah, you have different you know, obviously tons
<v Speaker 2>of introduced species causing all this mayhem, and then even
<v Speaker 2>native species that are sort of like mixed around and
<v Speaker 2>exposed to these novel conditions that are becoming a problem.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, white tailed deer is a species like that, right.
<v Speaker 1>Or ordinative species. They used to have checks and you know,
<v Speaker 1>stop gaps that are now removed, and so they just
<v Speaker 1>get out of control like fight. You know. Fire is
<v Speaker 1>a great example of that.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Now, I mean so now, having having done events
<v Speaker 2>and done work and visited areas like Mississippi and some
<v Speaker 2>of these plains regions, it's just a remarkable thinking about
<v Speaker 2>the impact that fireus had on the landscape and how
<v Speaker 2>much these places have changed without it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's uh, I could I could say a lot.
<v Speaker 1>I was just in Florida. It's brutal to see I
<v Speaker 1>was in I think Orlando's the most terrible place I've
<v Speaker 1>ever been to. H But it's a great I mean,
<v Speaker 1>it must have been forgive the squeaking style in the
<v Speaker 1>background too. That's his dog. I'm watching. He's I'm it's
<v Speaker 1>if I put him outside, he's just gonna whine and
<v Speaker 1>we're gonna hear him anyway. So anyway, but uh, we
<v Speaker 1>all love Jimmy over here. But you know, Florida must
<v Speaker 1>have been paradise. It was beautiful, and it's just everyone
<v Speaker 1>that lives there now is so strange from what actually
<v Speaker 1>what actually evolved there and grew there. What the reality is.
<v Speaker 1>You know, it's like they got oranges on the license
<v Speaker 1>plates and then it's everything is just the car slam
<v Speaker 1>and toll roads everywhere, and highest level of corruption i've
<v Speaker 1>seen in terms of you know, development and business ties
<v Speaker 1>to politicians. There's just no regulations whatsoever. It seems like
<v Speaker 1>there's nothing to do to stop it. But yeah, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>you know, you see it everywhere. It's like it's gonna
<v Speaker 1>it is the sixth mass extinction. It's gonna hit a
<v Speaker 1>wall at some point. But I mean, you know, I
<v Speaker 1>once I learned the geologic timescale, it changed everything for me.
<v Speaker 1>It was like, oh, like this sucks, but life comes back,
<v Speaker 1>and it's just in the end, it's just you know,
<v Speaker 1>the massive amount of suffering and needless waste that we're causing.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, I mean.
<v Speaker 2>It's it's the thing Joey too that I like that
<v Speaker 2>I write about and talk about a lot, is just
<v Speaker 2>like this weird dichotomy that we've developed in our culture
<v Speaker 2>where it's like, you know, either way, nature gets screwed,
<v Speaker 2>which is not like either you know, people don't understand
<v Speaker 2>how important it is and how valuable it is and
<v Speaker 2>how it sustains its functional and beautiful and so they
<v Speaker 2>exploit it and they degrade it and they treat it
<v Speaker 2>like a commodity or you know, the people who like
<v Speaker 2>who love nature, who understand its value, they're like, we'll
<v Speaker 2>just leave it alone. You know, nature will find a
<v Speaker 2>way nature you know, to do anything is to ruin
<v Speaker 2>it and despoil it.
<v Speaker 1>Who do you know that says that? Though? Because I
<v Speaker 1>feel like that's I.
<v Speaker 2>Hear that really the prevailing system it that I hear.
<v Speaker 1>That's crazy because I hear management all the time, Like
<v Speaker 1>I that kind of because I think most people know
<v Speaker 1>that such an antiquated kind of you know, miroram way
<v Speaker 1>to view things where it's just hands off, like it'll it'll,
<v Speaker 1>it'll figure it out like I just you know, it's it's.
<v Speaker 2>I think I think it's really depressing. I mean I
<v Speaker 2>I hear like on my channels and and and At
<v Speaker 2>talks to a certain extent stuff like that. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I hear it all the time.
<v Speaker 1>And that's that's the dumbest shit I've ever heard. I
<v Speaker 1>can't believe that. I mean, yeah, it's like for.
<v Speaker 2>Me, it's just it's just another kind of abdication, you know,
<v Speaker 2>it's just like, uh, and it's just another kind of
<v Speaker 2>lack of understanding as well. It's like people are very
<v Speaker 2>people's minds are very flexible, and like whatever is just
<v Speaker 2>the easiest for them to understand, or the easiest for
<v Speaker 2>them to wrap their heads around, is they're just they'll
<v Speaker 2>just go there.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, but you don't hear a collegist saying that, though,
<v Speaker 1>do you.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, absolutely, no no ecologists, no biologsts, no people
<v Speaker 2>who actually understand these ecosysms.
<v Speaker 1>Are you just talk about like normies, just like members
<v Speaker 1>of the square community, just normals? Yeah, yeah, No, no
<v Speaker 1>offense to them. I'm just saying, you know, there's this
<v Speaker 1>there's this spot for them too. They're important assets to
<v Speaker 1>the economy that we have here in the United States
<v Speaker 1>that might be collapsing soon. But I think, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I people get up bummed down. They asked me all
<v Speaker 1>the ten like, you know, how do you go continue
<v Speaker 1>going on? You know? And I think they're mostly younger kids,
<v Speaker 1>which I totally get because I was like that too,
<v Speaker 1>But I'm like, how do I continue? One? Yeah, it's
<v Speaker 1>geologic timescale, like I said, But also too, it's we're
<v Speaker 1>recently new to this consciousness thing, Like we're still monkeys.
<v Speaker 1>We still operate on the monkey brain. We have this
<v Speaker 1>lowest common denominator view of things. You know, we just
<v Speaker 1>respond to to emotional impulses and wants and dopamine responses.
<v Speaker 1>And I want this. I want that this person has
<v Speaker 1>set me whatever. Like there's so little enlightenment and that's
<v Speaker 1>a that's a bummer. But I think it just means, okay, well,
<v Speaker 1>if it's just an enlightenment problem, I mean it's a
<v Speaker 1>big problem. It's a big requires a big solution. But
<v Speaker 1>it means there's hope, you know. It means that there's
<v Speaker 1>a way to just telling people be self aware, be
<v Speaker 1>aware of this machine, this living machine, this biosphere and
<v Speaker 1>how it works. There's no getting around it. You have
<v Speaker 1>to work with it. You can't fucking run off to Mars.
<v Speaker 1>It's not really gonna work. It's not it's a you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's it's not it's not a real it's not a
<v Speaker 1>realistic dream. And even if it was, it's not a
<v Speaker 1>place you want to actually be. Uh, you know, it's
<v Speaker 1>it's like focus on this and understand it. It's just,
<v Speaker 1>you know, everything is just still so new and there's
<v Speaker 1>still so much time.
<v Speaker 2>Well oh yeah, well, and I I mean, I do.
<v Speaker 2>I think one of one of my jobs, it feels like,
<v Speaker 2>is to go around and have this like sort of
<v Speaker 2>spread this message of hope and just being like there
<v Speaker 2>is stuff we can do and there is things we
<v Speaker 2>can save, and and that, you know, is something that
<v Speaker 2>I think people don't hear a lot of times. To
<v Speaker 2>your earlier point though about like our you know, just
<v Speaker 2>being these like monkey brains and stuff. EO. Wilson had
<v Speaker 2>a really funny thing that he said about that, which
<v Speaker 2>is that he said, we have uh, paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions,
<v Speaker 2>and godlike technology. Yeah, it's like how could that work?
<v Speaker 1>That dude, is that that guy's one of my I
<v Speaker 1>mean him and Sagan and and other people, Octavia Butler, Bukowski,
<v Speaker 1>like all these people, you know, they're like it's like
<v Speaker 1>if I ever design a curricula, it'll be in there.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>But but some.
<v Speaker 2>Of this stuff, like you know, like you mentioned, I
<v Speaker 2>just feel like so much of what is necessary to
<v Speaker 2>sort of like to bring people in and change courses.
<v Speaker 2>It's like, for a lot of folks, I don't even
<v Speaker 2>think it's that we need to necessarily like change their minds.
<v Speaker 2>We just need to bring them in a little deeper, right,
<v Speaker 2>which is what you do and which is what I
<v Speaker 2>try to do. And and when you know, by exposing
<v Speaker 2>them to the reality of like where these ecosystems are
<v Speaker 2>at and like what our relationship with them actually is
<v Speaker 2>and what it can be. You know that that's the
<v Speaker 2>reason why you don't see these silly philosophies from people
<v Speaker 2>like who are biologists and botanists and ecologists and you know,
<v Speaker 2>folks who actually like do this work, is because we're
<v Speaker 2>in deep enough to know that these ecosystems are precious
<v Speaker 2>and also that they need our help, right, And so
<v Speaker 2>it's sort of like, how do we trick people into
<v Speaker 2>coming in a little deeper?
<v Speaker 1>Well, yeah, it's I mean, I think it's that. But ye,
<v Speaker 1>it's not about trying to change their minds or persuade
<v Speaker 1>them because it doesn't happen overnight. But I think they'll
<v Speaker 1>change their own minds the more they learn, and if
<v Speaker 1>you politely just informed them. I'm like, look, man, you
<v Speaker 1>just don't know about this, and that's okay. Like I
<v Speaker 1>don't know how to play guitar. Like I can play drums,
<v Speaker 1>I can get a keep a beat, but I don't
<v Speaker 1>know how to play guitar, and so my opinions on
<v Speaker 1>guitar are not the ones that are worth listening to
<v Speaker 1>when it comes to playing guitar music, you know. But
<v Speaker 1>if someone taught me, if I learned something, you know,
<v Speaker 1>And that's why that's the same thing I say. So
<v Speaker 1>it's like, you know, you've got opinions on this stuff
<v Speaker 1>and no offense, but they may not be worth listening
<v Speaker 1>to because you don't know a lot about it. And
<v Speaker 1>that's part of just being a humble human being, you know.
<v Speaker 1>I you know, I don't know. People don't do that anymore.
<v Speaker 1>Of course, now everyone's a fucking expert, but you know,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know a lot about that. I'm not gonna come.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not gonna say anything. Okay, Well, let me tell you.
<v Speaker 1>I've been spending the last fifteen years of my life
<v Speaker 1>in places like this and trying to understand them, and
<v Speaker 1>you know it's for me. It's I mean, I see
<v Speaker 1>a lot of hope, man. I see the native plant
<v Speaker 1>thing went from just being this quaint, feel good thing
<v Speaker 1>about you know, I hate horticulture, to be honest with you,
<v Speaker 1>Like culture is just about beauty, which doesn't mean anything.
<v Speaker 1>It's subjective and you know what, it's just it's it
<v Speaker 1>doesn't it's not really what I do is in horticulture.
<v Speaker 1>I grow a shit ton of stuff. It's not horroriculture.
<v Speaker 1>I'm trying to like restore pieces to this living machine
<v Speaker 1>back or I'm just interested in how plants work physiologically
<v Speaker 1>and what evolutionary adaptations they might have based on where
<v Speaker 1>they're from. And so that's you know, I'll grow some
<v Speaker 1>non native stuff just to study it. But but you know,
<v Speaker 1>the native plant thing is like going into this like
<v Speaker 1>oh wow, just using plants as infrastructure. It's not just
<v Speaker 1>this feels good and it's good for the pollinators. Like
<v Speaker 1>I don't even I don't even like using that word
<v Speaker 1>pollinators anymore because to to like someone who doesn't have
<v Speaker 1>any background in this, it doesn't mean anything. It's just
<v Speaker 1>it feels corny. And if it's like a pat yourself
<v Speaker 1>on the back. Oh, it's good for the pollinators. I
<v Speaker 1>just say beneficial insects. The beneficial insects, the insects that
<v Speaker 1>benefit us as a species. They keep pest populations down,
<v Speaker 1>pests that directly parasitize us or parasitize the plants we want. It's,
<v Speaker 1>you know, everything is a check and check and balance,
<v Speaker 1>because it's that's the what an ecosystem is. You know,
<v Speaker 1>one plant is not as good as the other. It
<v Speaker 1>depends where they evolved and what what living machine they
<v Speaker 1>evolved in. They're important over there, but they're horrible over here.
<v Speaker 1>They smother ecosystems and they throw a gear, you know,
<v Speaker 1>they throw a wrench in the gears of the living
<v Speaker 1>machine here. But I but I see a lot of hope.
<v Speaker 1>So I guess when I when these when younger people
<v Speaker 1>say that to me, like how do you have hope,
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, man, I don't know how to answer that,
<v Speaker 1>Like I've got a lot of hope, Like it's you know,
<v Speaker 1>and then if you know, if it fails, then we
<v Speaker 1>just we're going to go extinct. Anyway, It's just like
<v Speaker 1>that's well, that solution just solved itself, you know, it
<v Speaker 1>problems just solved itself.
<v Speaker 2>So anyway, And I like and one thing that I
<v Speaker 2>talk about a lot and right about is like my
<v Speaker 2>land here, which is I call Bear Island, which is
<v Speaker 2>like a big part of the of how to love
<v Speaker 2>a forest and a big part of the content that
<v Speaker 2>I make and what I talk about stuff and and
<v Speaker 2>and that's sort of like it's a hopeful story because
<v Speaker 2>when I came to this land, you know, it had
<v Speaker 2>I say, it had like every problem that a forest
<v Speaker 2>could have. You know, I have been really pulling. Man
<v Speaker 2>is what we call high graded. So they'd like the
<v Speaker 2>previouest landowner had told these loggers to come in and
<v Speaker 2>just cut every tree bigger than ten inches in diameter,
<v Speaker 2>which were not just the most valuable trees but also
<v Speaker 2>the healthiest trees. So there's like no healthy trees here left.
<v Speaker 2>Fear overpopulation, you know, really intense invasive species infestation, eroding
<v Speaker 2>skid trails, like you know, piles of trash, the whole thing,
<v Speaker 2>and and I you know, over the last Now it's
<v Speaker 2>been we're at the end of eight growing season eight,
<v Speaker 2>just seeing the transformation that's possible when we like bring
<v Speaker 2>to bear all of this technology. We're not afraid to
<v Speaker 2>do tough stuff like, you know, cut a tree if
<v Speaker 2>we need to restore before us we actually have a
<v Speaker 2>tremendous amount of power, you know. I'm just like, I
<v Speaker 2>own this, this skidder piece of log and equipment, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and I'm like, oh shit, this thing is powerful. Like
<v Speaker 2>if we use it in the right way, we can
<v Speaker 2>affect some real positive change. And we just need to
<v Speaker 2>be purists.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, fill me in on the because I'm totally unfamiliar
<v Speaker 1>with the Northeast, with the habitat of Vermont. These are
<v Speaker 1>all hardwood forests. There's conifers there too, or is.
<v Speaker 2>It, Yeah, there's conifers there as well. But like, so
<v Speaker 2>the big story, Joey is that, you know, really here
<v Speaker 2>in Vermont and really throughout New England, the timing is
<v Speaker 2>a little bit different, just based on the timing of
<v Speaker 2>when places were colonized. But here in Vermont, starting in
<v Speaker 2>the early eighteen hundreds, we had basically every forest on
<v Speaker 2>our landscape was cleared for agriculture, so like we are
<v Speaker 2>in very mountainous terrain. But it's remarkable when you see
<v Speaker 2>these historic photos of what Vermont used to look like.
<v Speaker 2>What I tell people is that just assume that every
<v Speaker 2>forest you've ever been in in Vermont was a pasture
<v Speaker 2>in the eighteen hundreds. And it's actually pretty remarkable. Between
<v Speaker 2>about eighteen twenty and about eighteen fifty, with draft animals
<v Speaker 2>and saws and axes, you know, we went from nine
<v Speaker 2>five percent forested state to being a less than twenty percent.
<v Speaker 2>And we have today like somewhere between one tenth of
<v Speaker 2>one percent and one half of one percent of old
<v Speaker 2>growth remaining, but we have we are seventy five percent
<v Speaker 2>forested now. So like throughout in the nineteen hundreds, a
<v Speaker 2>lot of those forests came back, but they are not
<v Speaker 2>like the forests that were cleared from this landscape in
<v Speaker 2>the eighteen hundreds. You know, they just haven't had time
<v Speaker 2>to develop all of these these qualities of what you know,
<v Speaker 2>an old growth ecosystem would look like on this landscape
<v Speaker 2>for thousands of years and so here where fire wasn't
<v Speaker 2>a big thing, what we mostly have is these relatively
<v Speaker 2>closed canopy, multi aged predominantly hardwood, but also mixed. We
<v Speaker 2>have some conifers, eastern hemlock, eastern white pine, red spruce,
<v Speaker 2>balsam fur. But we would have had these these these
<v Speaker 2>multi aged forests with mostly like small intensity natural disturbances
<v Speaker 2>creating these multi layered canopies, tons of dead wood on
<v Speaker 2>the ground. Prior to colonization, the large ungulates on our
<v Speaker 2>landscape were like caribou and a now extinct species of
<v Speaker 2>elk called the eastern elk and those and they were
<v Speaker 2>hunted by wolves and cougars. That are all all of
<v Speaker 2>those species are in Alkon except for the moose.
<v Speaker 1>There was an elk species. When did that get driven
<v Speaker 1>to extinction? You know?
<v Speaker 2>Was that eastern elk I think was gone by the
<v Speaker 2>end of the seventeen hundreds. Oh and they actually the
<v Speaker 2>only place in the East where they've reintroduced it is
<v Speaker 2>in Pennsylvania. In the early nineteen hundreds, Pennsylvania brought over
<v Speaker 2>some elk, like on a train from Yellowstone from western Elk.
<v Speaker 2>And so they now have a stable enough population in
<v Speaker 2>part of Pennsylvania where they have a season for elk.
<v Speaker 1>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>But so they you know, and the other big story
<v Speaker 2>that I think you'd be interested in enjoy. Is that
<v Speaker 2>we think that had in our valleys somewhere between well
<v Speaker 2>probably about three hundred beaver dams per square mile, so
<v Speaker 2>that's a square miles six hundred and forty acres. It's
<v Speaker 2>a beaver and m every two acres. And so, like
<v Speaker 2>all of these valleys that are now where like people
<v Speaker 2>live and we have these villages and we have these
<v Speaker 2>agricultural fields and roads and all this stuff, were probably
<v Speaker 2>this like kind of amphibious world of these open water habitats,
<v Speaker 2>shrubby wetland habitats, beaver meadows, and the beavers were gone
<v Speaker 2>by the end of the sixteen hundreds because of European
<v Speaker 2>trapping and also this like economy that Europeans created with
<v Speaker 2>the indigenous folks here where they were trading them all
<v Speaker 2>this steel and guns and whatever cool stuff for beaver pelts.
<v Speaker 2>And they actually incited a series of wars between the
<v Speaker 2>indigenous peoples in this region because of the economy that
<v Speaker 2>they created, called the beaver wars, where they would like
<v Speaker 2>trap out their all the beavers in their region and
<v Speaker 2>go to war with their neighbors.
<v Speaker 1>Oh so it was, I mean it was due to
<v Speaker 1>over extraction of resources basically.
<v Speaker 2>For for for hat to make hats.
<v Speaker 1>The resources being the beavers, and so that's why the beavers,
<v Speaker 1>Natives and the Europeans started fighting.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, no, it was it was indigenous people fighting
<v Speaker 2>other indigenous people, oh wow, for their beaver drapt because
<v Speaker 2>of but it was because of colonization.
<v Speaker 1>Because they could sell them, and so it was market
<v Speaker 1>hunting basically, right, it was taking more than you need
<v Speaker 1>that right, what did Yeah, how did the beavers affect
<v Speaker 1>I mean, when you've got a beaver deentsity that high,
<v Speaker 1>how did that affect the landscape there?
<v Speaker 2>Well, so I think that there we have all these
<v Speaker 2>species on our landscape today that you know, they're really
<v Speaker 2>we're like why is this? Why is it here? You know,
<v Speaker 2>because we don't have any habitat for it. And these
<v Speaker 2>are largely species that are endemic to these like meadow
<v Speaker 2>like environments, which we don't really have a natural analog
<v Speaker 2>for because we don't really have fire. And for these
<v Speaker 2>early successional habitats like has big areas of like purely
<v Speaker 2>young forest, young trees, and probably what those those species
<v Speaker 2>were sustained by it was just this constant flux of
<v Speaker 2>different beaver created habitat. So you have like the open
<v Speaker 2>water habitat, and the beavers would like utilize all the resources,
<v Speaker 2>eat all the trees around there, and they would like
<v Speaker 2>go somewhere else, and then that open water habitat would
<v Speaker 2>become we call it a beaver meadow, which creates all
<v Speaker 2>these you know herbaceous plant diversity. Looks like a meadow
<v Speaker 2>with joke, you know, joe high weed.
<v Speaker 1>And set basically where more alike can reach the ground. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And then and then they would go from that
<v Speaker 2>to being like a shrubland, and then it would go
<v Speaker 2>from that to being like a young forest, and then
<v Speaker 2>the beers would come back and it would start all
<v Speaker 2>over again.
<v Speaker 1>God, man, have you have you been to Museum of
<v Speaker 1>Natural History in New York City?
<v Speaker 2>I was there last week.
<v Speaker 1>Man, I'm fine.
<v Speaker 2>I was in New York for a thing. Yeah, it
<v Speaker 2>was so cool. Went there basically every time I'm in
<v Speaker 2>New York City.
<v Speaker 1>I went there once and I tried the in for free,
<v Speaker 1>and then I fucking griped. You know, I'm like a
<v Speaker 1>cheap attank. I griped about the twenty five dollars price.
<v Speaker 1>It's probably fucking thirty how or something, you know, I
<v Speaker 1>did like a Polly Walnuts scripe about the price. I
<v Speaker 1>fucking paid it. Anyway, went in. The person I was
<v Speaker 1>with was like getting embarrassed. She was like, she's from
<v Speaker 1>she was from Europe. You know, they don't do that
<v Speaker 1>over there. But anyway, but we went in and then
<v Speaker 1>I just I was in looking at all their little
<v Speaker 1>dioramas because back in the day, they used to be
<v Speaker 1>the way that you would show people, uh you know,
<v Speaker 1>could before you know, photogra I mean there were photographs,
<v Speaker 1>but not you wouldn't find like entire picture books on
<v Speaker 1>like the Namib desert or a certain region of the world.
<v Speaker 1>So these you know, bondanists and mammal experts biologists would
<v Speaker 1>form you know, make those little dioramas to kind of
<v Speaker 1>portray the habitat the people and the plants were remarkable,
<v Speaker 1>like the plant models and some of those are remarkable,
<v Speaker 1>and all the plants are listed, you know, on the side.
<v Speaker 2>So I got it just like I'm like they listed
<v Speaker 2>the Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I was so jazzed on that. I was like, this
<v Speaker 1>is fucking great, man, this is so cool. Like Field
<v Speaker 1>Museum in Chicago has a few of those too. They've
<v Speaker 1>got to they've but I think they've got a Northeast
<v Speaker 1>this is where I'm going with this. They've got but
<v Speaker 1>they've got a well Witchy at Diorama too, which is
<v Speaker 1>like one day when if I, you know, whenever I croak,
<v Speaker 1>I want my ashes putting like the well Witchy at Diorama,
<v Speaker 1>if one of my friends can sneak them in there,
<v Speaker 1>and then maybe like in the salsa bar at Taco Pee,
<v Speaker 1>you know, which is like a local taco chain down here.
<v Speaker 1>But anyway, but you know, the dioramas, I went to
<v Speaker 1>the one. I went to one of them, and you know,
<v Speaker 1>it was like a Northeast woodland and I was like, fuck,
<v Speaker 1>this is this is so beautiful and you can't see this,
<v Speaker 1>you know, in like ninety nine percent of the places
<v Speaker 1>that it used to be like now. Because I think
<v Speaker 1>of the Northeast and I think of I mean, well,
<v Speaker 1>so much of the United States is hideous really to
<v Speaker 1>be honest, but at least the human infrastructure. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>it's the ugliest landscape in the first world. But I
<v Speaker 1>think of the Northeast and I think of like that sign,
<v Speaker 1>you know, like that area of like Pennsylvania that's always
<v Speaker 1>used in the memes where it's got like Lewis and
<v Speaker 1>Clark and the fucking you know, and they're like looking
<v Speaker 1>over this valley of like Amaco signs and like dollar
<v Speaker 1>generals and shit. And because I think that's what I
<v Speaker 1>think of, Like everything's developed, but you know, I'd love
<v Speaker 1>to see little bits of those remnant forests that are
<v Speaker 1>well maintained. I mean, I was just in a place
<v Speaker 1>in Florida, like that Tiger Creek and it was like, fuck,
<v Speaker 1>this is old growth long leaf pines, old growth pinus clossa,
<v Speaker 1>these grasslands that are just incredible, all in this bleach
<v Speaker 1>white sand. It was like, man, people have no idea
<v Speaker 1>what they're missing, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Now, yeah, I think about that, like the because I'm
<v Speaker 2>a birder and and birds, if you really get to
<v Speaker 2>know birds, they like tell you so much about what's
<v Speaker 2>what's present on the landscape. And you know, when I
<v Speaker 2>go to these forests that that actually you know, have
<v Speaker 2>naturally or through human intervention developed these qualities that we
<v Speaker 2>think the forest here had for thousands of years, there's
<v Speaker 2>so much more, you know, and it's like it's such
<v Speaker 2>a weird thing like on this landscape here, and I
<v Speaker 2>think this is probably true across most of the US
<v Speaker 2>where we have we think we know what is normal,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and we think we know like what a
<v Speaker 2>forest is supposed to look like, or whatever, what an
<v Speaker 2>ecosystem of any type is supposed to look like, and
<v Speaker 2>we really don't. We're really what we're seeing are these
<v Speaker 2>landscapes and these ecosystems that have been so altered that
<v Speaker 2>they don't, you know, provide nearly as much capacity for
<v Speaker 2>life and for all of these beautiful things that than
<v Speaker 2>they could, you know. So like here a big thing
<v Speaker 2>that I do, you know, on my land and in
<v Speaker 2>my work as a forest or on my client's lands,
<v Speaker 2>is like utilizing forest management as a tool to take
<v Speaker 2>these forests, which most of the forests on our landscape
<v Speaker 2>now just reverted from agricultural land within the last hundred years,
<v Speaker 2>and they probably to become like what we call an
<v Speaker 2>old growth forest might take another two hundred years. But
<v Speaker 2>if we cut trees in the right way, we can
<v Speaker 2>divide up these habitat qualities that old growth forests had
<v Speaker 2>here and that are underrepresented across our landscape, that old
<v Speaker 2>growth forests had for thousands of years, which are the
<v Speaker 2>all these qualities that directly correlate to habitats for species
<v Speaker 2>of concern, habitats for all of this diversity of forest birds,
<v Speaker 2>which are all declining or bacious species, all the whole
<v Speaker 2>suite of these different species on our landscape. And so
<v Speaker 2>like a lot of the work that I do is
<v Speaker 2>sort of restoring those old growth characteristics actively.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's it's wild to me that you know people
<v Speaker 1>that I mean, I guess it's I mean, I guess
<v Speaker 1>I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying you knew
<v Speaker 1>people that were like involved. Like anyone who's even like
<v Speaker 1>a borderline naturalist knows that like hands off approach is ridiculous, it's.
<v Speaker 2>Bullshit, you know, No, just the normals.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, okay, because I mean it's just people who don't
<v Speaker 1>spend time there. Yeah, right, exactly, cause it's right. It's
<v Speaker 1>I mean, humans have been managing land in good ways
<v Speaker 1>and bad ways for the last three hundred thousand years
<v Speaker 1>that we've been a species, you know, and probably before
<v Speaker 1>that when we were just crazy, you know, fucking hominids
<v Speaker 1>running around because hominids are a little bit older than humans,
<v Speaker 1>but you know, probably long before then. But you know,
<v Speaker 1>you get when you don't manage it you get what
<v Speaker 1>I call the shitty woods syndrome. It's like the sh
<v Speaker 1>it's the shitty woods. It's what I grew up with
<v Speaker 1>in Chicago, Like, why the fuck you want to go
<v Speaker 1>to a forest preserve. It's a bunch of shitty woods.
<v Speaker 1>It's overgrown with invasive buckthorn, it's you can't walk through it.
<v Speaker 1>There's ticks everywhere. Uh, it's over popular with deer. There's
<v Speaker 1>deer on the dead on the side of the road
<v Speaker 1>all the time because there's nothing to keep them in check.
<v Speaker 1>There's no predators or human hunters, you know, And why
<v Speaker 1>do you want to go there? But then when you
<v Speaker 1>see a landscape that but you're also you're seeing you know,
<v Speaker 1>I would think that when I was a kid, not
<v Speaker 1>knowing that I was looking at, you know, the result
<v Speaker 1>of one hundred and fifty years of terrible land management
<v Speaker 1>and idiocy and just that kind of mentality like hands off,
<v Speaker 1>you know. And if I could have seen it five
<v Speaker 1>hundred years ago, I'm sure it would have been an
<v Speaker 1>amazing place to spend time in those the woods, like
<v Speaker 1>the forest reserves of Chicago or the prairies too. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>the prairies are the same way if they don't get fire,
<v Speaker 1>they look like shit. And I imagine most places in
<v Speaker 1>eastern North America because of how much more rain the
<v Speaker 1>east gets than the west. You know, the burn intervals
<v Speaker 1>in eastern North America were like two to three years,
<v Speaker 1>two to five and if five was pushing it. But
<v Speaker 1>you know, and if you don't burn them, it's just
<v Speaker 1>it gets smothered and it looks like shit, and the
<v Speaker 1>tips get really bad and the chiggers get really bad,
<v Speaker 1>and you know.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, well, and where I've been, like I just
<v Speaker 2>did a week of talks in Kentucky and southern Indiana,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and out there it's like not only does
<v Speaker 2>it get you know, sort of likes messed up a
<v Speaker 2>little bit, it becomes a forest. These historic grasslands like
<v Speaker 2>a big thing out there is they've got these closed
<v Speaker 2>scanpy forests now and they're experiencing this thing messification, you know,
<v Speaker 2>where they're becoming more and more fire resistant due to
<v Speaker 2>indigenous display from the landscape, from natural fire suppression, and
<v Speaker 2>from the loss of bison to a certain extent, these
<v Speaker 2>herds of hundreds of millions of bison, they've had what
<v Speaker 2>was these prairies and savannahs and oak woodlands to come
<v Speaker 2>these closed canopy forests, and so now they have to
<v Speaker 2>get people to you know, to do all this really
<v Speaker 2>intensive stuff to bring them back. You know, it's like
<v Speaker 2>it's not even like it's just like a crappier prairie.
<v Speaker 2>It's like it's a it's a forest. And everybody's like, well,
<v Speaker 2>don't we love forests, you know, don't we love for us?
<v Speaker 2>And it's like yeah, but that you know, there's there's
<v Speaker 2>a certain amount of you've got to be a little
<v Speaker 2>bit brave. And so one thing that's actually joey to
<v Speaker 2>this point about like the things that people say to
<v Speaker 2>get out of, you know, do it having to do
<v Speaker 2>any management. So here in and Vermont in the Northeast,
<v Speaker 2>there are whole organizations that are based on opposing forest management,
<v Speaker 2>just being like all like literally institutionally based a they're
<v Speaker 2>just trying to you know, all every forest needs is
<v Speaker 2>to be left alone and everything will be fine. And
<v Speaker 2>really what it is is it's a not in my
<v Speaker 2>backyard thing, and it's just not wanting, you know, being
<v Speaker 2>uncomfortable with those changes that happen when they manage forests.
<v Speaker 2>They're anti burning, they're anti any kind of cutting of
<v Speaker 2>trees anti game management in many cases.
<v Speaker 1>Does anybody tell them to shut up? I mean, or
<v Speaker 1>are they just rich so they've got to do But.
<v Speaker 2>They're well, they're persistent, they're often you know, well resourced.
<v Speaker 2>And the thing about it that that confuses people is
<v Speaker 2>that they have a narrative which is for a late
<v Speaker 2>to delay people so much easier to understand, which is
<v Speaker 2>we love trees. We love for it because you know,
<v Speaker 2>they don't the trees.
<v Speaker 1>They think nature and they think trees. They don't there's
<v Speaker 1>they can never and it must be.
<v Speaker 2>That if we love trees, like cutting trees is bad.
<v Speaker 2>But so an interesting thing to think about in terms
<v Speaker 2>of the psychology of people is, you know, those are
<v Speaker 2>the same people that often pacific about wanting to empower
<v Speaker 2>indigenous peoples and justice and all this stuff.
<v Speaker 1>And when I went, oh, I know, I believe I'm
<v Speaker 1>very familiar with the liberal self flagellating Caucasian Don't worry,
<v Speaker 1>I've got plenty of experiences.
<v Speaker 2>So but but here's an interesting thing that I discovered
<v Speaker 2>is so when I went out to these places that
<v Speaker 2>had historically burned, Indigenous people have been burning there for
<v Speaker 2>ten thousand years plus. Uh, you know. I was like, huh, well,
<v Speaker 2>they have some of those groups that are anti management,
<v Speaker 2>anti intervention. I was like, I wonder which drive for
<v Speaker 2>them will be stronger. Will it be the drive to
<v Speaker 2>you know, like like represent indigenous folks well and want
<v Speaker 2>to you know, take care of that, or will it
<v Speaker 2>be the drive to say no management? And these people
<v Speaker 2>believe they're so against any kind of intervention in ecosystems
<v Speaker 2>that their position is that there were never indigenous people
<v Speaker 2>there and that they never burned.
<v Speaker 1>Damn, that's crazy. That's just by this logic they well
<v Speaker 1>what kept them out?
<v Speaker 2>How they would rather disempower any erase entire peoples than
<v Speaker 2>deal with the uncomfortable reality of the fact that, like
<v Speaker 2>we have to take action there.
<v Speaker 1>Where are you finding these That's what I'm saying. It
<v Speaker 1>just seems like because I anyone, I mean to think
<v Speaker 1>that people actually listen to them, like anyone in city
<v Speaker 1>government or estate government listens to people like that. They
<v Speaker 1>just seem so clueless where.
<v Speaker 2>Those people their narrative is so much cleaner for often
<v Speaker 2>for politicians. So like in Massachusetts a couple of years ago,
<v Speaker 2>they succeeded in getting the entire state of Massachusetts to
<v Speaker 2>pass a moratorium on any management on state lands. So
<v Speaker 2>it's not it's not like a fringe thing.
<v Speaker 1>If this is a moratorium on on.
<v Speaker 2>What any any management for wildlife, any management for anything
<v Speaker 2>on state lands.
<v Speaker 1>Really like, don't touch anything, don't no burning, no cutting,
<v Speaker 1>no masticating, no really nothing. Of course, Oh god, good
<v Speaker 1>luck with the good luck with the tic problem. Then
<v Speaker 1>you know what is not I will say, I will
<v Speaker 1>say it's nice about that the alpha gal for everybody
<v Speaker 1>that alpha gal meat syndrome, you know, where you can't
<v Speaker 1>eat meat.
<v Speaker 2>Probably probably good for the environment.
<v Speaker 1>It's it's it's lesser impact. Yeah, it'll cause the whole
<v Speaker 1>meat industry to at least in the Northeast to collapse.
<v Speaker 1>That's good, you know, because that really does I mean
<v Speaker 1>the amount of energy it takes. And the way Americans
<v Speaker 1>eat meat too. I mean, I'm not anti meat at all.
<v Speaker 1>Vegans are some of the most annoying people, or some
<v Speaker 1>vegans are some of the most annoying people have that
<v Speaker 1>I ever ever interacted with. But you know, the way
<v Speaker 1>Americans shovel fucking hamburgers into their mouths when like, if
<v Speaker 1>you're if you're living like a triath running triathlons and
<v Speaker 1>living like an extremely athletic life. I can understand that,
<v Speaker 1>but like, no, man, you're like sitting in your car
<v Speaker 1>three hours a day and then sitting at a desk.
<v Speaker 1>You're sitting most Americans sit down most of the waking
<v Speaker 1>hours of the day. You don't need to eat that shit.
<v Speaker 1>It's horrible for you. You're gonna get colon cancer. But anyway, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>there was an article that came out in the New
<v Speaker 1>York Times a month or two ago about all these
<v Speaker 1>the burgeoning vegan scene, the involuntarily vegan scene. Uh in
<v Speaker 1>Cape cod in the northeast. It's like, oh, yeah, they
<v Speaker 1>all get the tics are so bad, they all get
<v Speaker 1>alpha gal they can't they develop meat allergies, and if
<v Speaker 1>it's really bad, they developed dairy allergies. And now they
<v Speaker 1>had their like obligate vegans. So that's crazy though, So
<v Speaker 1>you can't, you can't do anything. And that's in Massachusetts
<v Speaker 1>for the whole state.
<v Speaker 2>Now. So now that now they've relaxed it and they're
<v Speaker 2>able to do some stuff, but it's been a it's
<v Speaker 2>a struggle for them with every single thing that they do.
<v Speaker 1>Damn, you gotta find some tweakers. To set fire to
<v Speaker 1>the woods. It's it's what they do in California, you know. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>there's there's some guy it's like a bag of meth
<v Speaker 1>told them to go light the woods and the fucking
<v Speaker 1>Santa Monica on fire. And I don't know anyway, sorry,
<v Speaker 1>go ahead, Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I know. It's just it's it's a big deal out here,
<v Speaker 2>you know. And again it's like, uh, one of the
<v Speaker 2>hard things is that the narrative that I have to
<v Speaker 2>tell and what I do in like the book and
<v Speaker 2>stuff is like this much more nuanced and complex narrative
<v Speaker 2>about like where we are with these ecosystems and where
<v Speaker 2>ecosystems are at and these really counterintuitive things that you
<v Speaker 2>got to do to take care of them. And the
<v Speaker 2>narrative for those folks is so easy, you know, and
<v Speaker 2>it's easier for people to understand. And people are like,
<v Speaker 2>there's so much stuff that people are dealing with that
<v Speaker 2>they need to figure out what they think about and
<v Speaker 2>everything that they're just like, you know, okay, great, you know,
<v Speaker 2>trees good logging or cutting trees bad. You know. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>And of course that's not the nuanced perspective that we need,
<v Speaker 2>but it allows them to go on with their lives.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean, I think that's that's for anybody who's
<v Speaker 1>into ecological science or biological sciences and outdoors today. It's
<v Speaker 1>that's the uphill battle as you're you know, this is
<v Speaker 1>after two or three hundred years of these places just
<v Speaker 1>being destroyed by you know, the mind set that came
<v Speaker 1>here in fourteen ninety two, and then having to work
<v Speaker 1>up hill. I mean, so much has been a race.
<v Speaker 1>There's so few examples to show of what you know,
<v Speaker 1>management looks like compared to what there used to be.
<v Speaker 1>And so it's just the shifting baseline syndrome. You know,
<v Speaker 1>every generation thinks what they're growing up with is normal,
<v Speaker 1>not knowing that they're inheriting the ruined spoils of their
<v Speaker 1>parents and their grandparents, et cetera.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and that's what I tell people here. I'm like,
<v Speaker 2>we all have a sense for the forests that cover
<v Speaker 2>this landscape, like what we think of forest is supposed
<v Speaker 2>to look like, and you know, the forests and you know,
<v Speaker 2>we have this shifting baseline syndrome, this new idea of
<v Speaker 2>what a normal forest is supposed to look like, and
<v Speaker 2>the forests that are here today have nothing to do
<v Speaker 2>with the forests that we're here thousands of years ago.
<v Speaker 2>They may head to some of the same species, but
<v Speaker 2>they don't have any of the qualities that the forests
<v Speaker 2>that we're here for thousands of years. Not only do
<v Speaker 2>we have a shifting baseline, a different understanding of like
<v Speaker 2>what a forest is supposed to look like, but also
<v Speaker 2>a totally different understanding of like the capacity of our
<v Speaker 2>forests to support life.
<v Speaker 1>Well, it's it's a machine with half the pieces missing.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And people are just like, you know, good enough,
<v Speaker 2>and it's like, well no, it's not good enough. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>And it's like, you know, they're just those of us
<v Speaker 2>who go a little deeper can be like there are
<v Speaker 2>all these amazing and important things that just aren't represented.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you got to get you got to get their
<v Speaker 1>asses outside, like the proverbial you, not you personally, but
<v Speaker 1>like I think about that with myself all the time,
<v Speaker 1>Like I try to lead plan walks and shit down
<v Speaker 1>here in South Texas, like just get the fuck outside.
<v Speaker 1>Like there were people that I did a plant walk
<v Speaker 1>like two or three years ago. There were kids that
<v Speaker 1>grew up here that have never been to some of
<v Speaker 1>the places I took them. I was like, fuck, that's crazy,
<v Speaker 1>Like I didn't even know that existed, you know, And yeah,
<v Speaker 1>a bunch of people met each other and it became
<v Speaker 1>friends and then you know, just stuff like that, just
<v Speaker 1>getting people out there, you know, because they're not going
<v Speaker 1>to see it on TV.
<v Speaker 2>And they're not going to see it. Like the other
<v Speaker 2>thing too. I think about this with birds all the time.
<v Speaker 2>Like I grew up in this teeny little town in
<v Speaker 2>southeastern Vermont called Saxon's River, which is three hundred people
<v Speaker 2>lived there. And I went back there because my mom
<v Speaker 2>wanted me to give a talk at the little like
<v Speaker 2>community center, and I was there this summer and as
<v Speaker 2>I was walking to the community center, I heard this
<v Speaker 2>little chirping, bubbling call and I knew what it was,
<v Speaker 2>chimney swifts. And I looked up and they were just
<v Speaker 2>chimney swifts hunting above my head the time all the time,
<v Speaker 2>and it was really interesting species. They're actually like they're
<v Speaker 2>an old growth bird, so they historically roosted in these
<v Speaker 2>big hollow trees. They can only they roost like hanging
<v Speaker 2>horizontally like a bat, and they can't only take off
<v Speaker 2>from a vertical, not from a horizontal, and they're just
<v Speaker 2>like the general second worst hunting over our heads all
<v Speaker 2>the time. And so when all those forests were cleared,
<v Speaker 2>they figured out that they could roost in these chimneys,
<v Speaker 2>and that that made it really into declining as chimneys
<v Speaker 2>get capped and as people use them less. But anyway,
<v Speaker 2>so I was like walking there and I was hearing
<v Speaker 2>and suddenly seeing all these chimney swifts, and I realized
<v Speaker 2>that my whole life, for eighteen years that I lived
<v Speaker 2>there in that town, I had been hearing and seeing
<v Speaker 2>chimney swifts, but neither hearing nor seeing them at the
<v Speaker 2>same time because I wasn't tuned into them. I didn't
<v Speaker 2>know what they were, I didn't know where to look
<v Speaker 2>for them, I didn't know to care to look up
<v Speaker 2>and so keep my ears open. And then once I
<v Speaker 2>learned about birds, suddenly they were like there.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And one way that you could think about it is
<v Speaker 2>like that's so sad, And then another way is like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, there's all these things like this, like like
<v Speaker 2>you do with plants, and like I do, you know
<v Speaker 2>with trees. Maybe like that we can take people out
<v Speaker 2>into the woods and if we can just like show
<v Speaker 2>them something, they will see more.
<v Speaker 1>It's waking them up. Yeah, it's it's I mean, it's like,
<v Speaker 1>I guess it's a little sad when you think about
<v Speaker 1>it like that. But I try to think about it
<v Speaker 1>in a way where it's like, wow, you chance, suddenly
<v Speaker 1>the whole world changes when you wake up to this
<v Speaker 1>shit and you wake up to everything around you like
<v Speaker 1>it changed. I get. I've gotten so many emails from
<v Speaker 1>people tell me, you change the way I look at everything.
<v Speaker 1>Started using INAP, I started learning about all these things,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I was like, oh, yeah, it's so much
<v Speaker 1>nicer to focus on on the weeds growing on the
<v Speaker 1>Median strip than on the billboards for some fucking slob
<v Speaker 1>with a laminated face. You know. It's it's uh, it
<v Speaker 1>changed me. Okay, So changing subjects slightly. How did you so?
<v Speaker 1>Tell me about your background? How did you get into forestry?
<v Speaker 1>How did you get into time? How'd you get into
<v Speaker 1>spending time outside? How did you start on the path
<v Speaker 1>that you're on now?
<v Speaker 2>So the you know, it's funny because like when I
<v Speaker 2>hear folks often that are in our fields talk about
<v Speaker 2>how they get into it, they're always like, I was
<v Speaker 2>always the nature kid, you know, I was always into
<v Speaker 2>forests or out in the woods, out on the wherever outside,
<v Speaker 2>and and that wasn't actually in my experience at all.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I grew up in this very rural place,
<v Speaker 2>like I said, this little town, three hundred people, surrounded
<v Speaker 2>by forests. But I just what I really wanted was
<v Speaker 2>to just get out of there. And it was boring
<v Speaker 2>and it was dull and whatever. And I ended up
<v Speaker 2>getting a scholarship to go to University of Vermont, and
<v Speaker 2>when I was there, still didn't know what I wanted
<v Speaker 2>to do, didn't have any real direction. And it happened
<v Speaker 2>that my high school girlfriend, who was still dating, she
<v Speaker 2>decided she wanted to go on this like five month
<v Speaker 2>wilderness program with kind of it wasn't outward bound, but
<v Speaker 2>it was sort of outward bound like. And she went
<v Speaker 2>on this five month expedition and she came back and
<v Speaker 2>she had just had this like life changing experience, and
<v Speaker 2>we had this moment where we weren't connecting, and I
<v Speaker 2>thought we were going to break up, you know, because
<v Speaker 2>I'd just been you know, doving around in my dorm
<v Speaker 2>room or whatever. And so I said, you know what
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to do. I'm going on a wilderness expedition
<v Speaker 2>and the next one with that program left in two
<v Speaker 2>weeks and I went on and it was a six
<v Speaker 2>month expedition. We skied north for three months and we
<v Speaker 2>built a canoe and the canoe back down was the expedition?
<v Speaker 1>Where did you go?
<v Speaker 2>And it was? It started in southern New Hampshire and
<v Speaker 2>then we went up this this kind of cool grassroots
<v Speaker 2>trail that runs the length of Vermont called the Catamount Trail,
<v Speaker 2>that's a ski trail, and then we camped out great
<v Speaker 2>by the Canadian border and uh, and then we canoed
<v Speaker 2>back on a series basically basically on the Connecticut River,
<v Speaker 2>but like on a series of rivers to get to it.
<v Speaker 1>Damn.
<v Speaker 2>And so when after that I ended up, I was
<v Speaker 2>in sort of like the primitive skills world for a
<v Speaker 2>while and I worked as a wilderness guide. I was
<v Speaker 2>living in this like yeur with a furbough floor in
<v Speaker 2>the woods to Maine for a year, and then I
<v Speaker 2>got a letter from the University of Vermont that told
<v Speaker 2>me I had to come back or I was gonna
<v Speaker 2>lose my scholarship. And I literally literally I like I
<v Speaker 2>I looked at a paper list of majors from the
<v Speaker 2>University of a mode that I must have printed out
<v Speaker 2>at the library or something, and I saw forestry and
<v Speaker 2>I didn't know what it was, but I was like, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>that's the word forest in it, so we'll try that.
<v Speaker 2>And that's literally how I ended up deciding to study forestry.
<v Speaker 2>But it was this interesting thing too, like a bit
<v Speaker 2>of a you know experience for me of like I
<v Speaker 2>had been living in the woods, you know, working as
<v Speaker 2>a guide, and I came back when I went to
<v Speaker 2>back to school. I came to it like with so
<v Speaker 2>much ego because I just thought that I understood forests
<v Speaker 2>perfectly and our relationship with them perfectly. And then it's
<v Speaker 2>like you actually learn about them, and I was like,
<v Speaker 2>holy smokes, they changed, you know that the what forests
<v Speaker 2>are changed and the measure is necessary to care for
<v Speaker 2>them changed a lot because I just realized that I
<v Speaker 2>hadn't really understood them that well.
<v Speaker 1>So in school, where you taught from where you taught
<v Speaker 1>from an ecologicalspective or were you taught from an industry perspective?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so I think UVM is much more on the
<v Speaker 2>ecological side. UBM is the abbreviation for the University of Vermont.
<v Speaker 2>They is much more on the ecological side of the spectrum.
<v Speaker 2>But still forestry is interesting because like old school forestry
<v Speaker 2>is definitely we call it cores and boards. You know,
<v Speaker 2>it's like about production, and that perspective, at least in
<v Speaker 2>certain areas, is fading away and being replaced by a
<v Speaker 2>much more holistic understanding of like, you know, what we're
<v Speaker 2>really trying to do is not to grow products, you know,
<v Speaker 2>to grow timber, but to grow forests, you know, and
<v Speaker 2>like when we when it is appropriate, how are we
<v Speaker 2>going to harvest timber from those forests? But it's not
<v Speaker 2>like about that. But then again, if you go to
<v Speaker 2>like the southeast or the northwest or the far northeast,
<v Speaker 2>and very much is this like production mindset where it's
<v Speaker 2>like we are growing wood, we're growing fiber, they would say. So,
<v Speaker 2>like I think when I did it, it was sort of
<v Speaker 2>this mix of these different things. And then an interesting
<v Speaker 2>thing that happened to me was that, you know, my
<v Speaker 2>first job, I was working in these sort of industrial
<v Speaker 2>forests and the Adirondacks, and then and then I worked
<v Speaker 2>for this consulting forestry company in Vermont, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>a big part of the job is like is like
<v Speaker 2>the logistics of managing a force, So it becomes about
<v Speaker 2>managing the ecology and more about like working with these
<v Speaker 2>loggers and roads and trails and all the markets and
<v Speaker 2>timber and all these logistics. And I got like pulled
<v Speaker 2>in that direction. And then I got another job as
<v Speaker 2>a service force or working for the State of Vermont,
<v Speaker 2>which is just sort of like a public resource, and
<v Speaker 2>that allowed me to like take a step back and
<v Speaker 2>remember what it's we're doing this for, which is not
<v Speaker 2>to cut a bunch of wood, but to have healthy ecosystems.
<v Speaker 2>And it actually ended up now I'm very grateful for
<v Speaker 2>that the experience that I had which was more focused
<v Speaker 2>on like logistics, because now what it allows me to
<v Speaker 2>do is to know how to work with the tools
<v Speaker 2>that we have, like these loggers and this equipment and
<v Speaker 2>all this stuff in a way to affect these ecological goals. Right.
<v Speaker 2>So it's like you can do a lot of damage
<v Speaker 2>with a piece of log and equipment.
<v Speaker 1>We know this, we can for us, I can think
<v Speaker 1>of a few strip malls. I'd like to take large
<v Speaker 1>pieces of logging equipment.
<v Speaker 2>Well, and it's but you can you can use it
<v Speaker 2>in a different way and you can do some pretty
<v Speaker 2>profoundly positive stuff and about how you manage it and
<v Speaker 2>and so like then I was like, you know, how
<v Speaker 2>subversive is that that we what we're going to do
<v Speaker 2>is we're gonna take this equipment that you know, at
<v Speaker 2>the very least was not created to you know, restore ecosystems,
<v Speaker 2>and then that's exactly what we're going to use it for.
<v Speaker 2>And that's been sort of my journey since then.
<v Speaker 1>Do you do you think the I mean, do you
<v Speaker 1>see among more people who are into logging, because it
<v Speaker 1>doesn't seem like it doesn't seem like logging should be
<v Speaker 1>anti environmentalist, you know, or pre hugger as they call it.
<v Speaker 1>It seems like, listen, you're you're taking from this living machine.
<v Speaker 1>You want the machine in the best running shape possible,
<v Speaker 1>and just coming in and taking everything is the absolute
<v Speaker 1>most like monkey brained, lowest common denominator shit for brained approach,
<v Speaker 1>Like you're going to burn out the land. It's fucking stupid.
<v Speaker 1>Like you want to learn, like as a loger, you
<v Speaker 1>should want to learn ecology, Like how does this machine
<v Speaker 1>function so I can extract without fucking breaking it? You know?
<v Speaker 1>Do you see more of that?
<v Speaker 2>I agree?
<v Speaker 1>Do you see more of that coming, or is it
<v Speaker 1>still like this like politicized thing between land managers and
<v Speaker 1>environmentalists and logging industry.
<v Speaker 2>I think it depends. I mean, I think that I'm
<v Speaker 2>sort of in a unique position to make both of
<v Speaker 2>those groups mad because because I, you know, I do
<v Speaker 2>management on land and that makes you know, the more
<v Speaker 2>old school environmentalists mad. And then I also talk about
<v Speaker 2>all these other values of you know, we're managing for
<v Speaker 2>biodiversity or managing for climate resilience, which makes all the
<v Speaker 2>old school loggers and forestry types mad at me. But
<v Speaker 2>really those you know, it's a funny thing because those
<v Speaker 2>sort of two polarities they galvanize each other and they
<v Speaker 2>beat up each other, and they're not even oppositional, really,
<v Speaker 2>they just both need to acknowledge that, you know, they're
<v Speaker 2>they have this really tunnel vision mindset about what we're
<v Speaker 2>supposed to do here and what we need to do here,
<v Speaker 2>and just open it up a little bit and open
<v Speaker 2>yourself up to the possibility that, like, we can you know,
<v Speaker 2>we can achieve multiple things. And the answers to some
<v Speaker 2>of these questions, if we're really asking the big questions
<v Speaker 2>are not what we would think so example of this
<v Speaker 2>is is like, how in the world is it that
<v Speaker 2>we have gotten to a place where environmentalists like don't
<v Speaker 2>like wood? You know, like wood is an amazing resource
<v Speaker 2>and it's and it's like we could be using wood
<v Speaker 2>and all of these applications that we're now using steel
<v Speaker 2>and concrete or or fucking plastic, Like.
<v Speaker 1>Where do you mean that? Where do you mean environmentalists
<v Speaker 1>that don't like wood?
<v Speaker 2>Though?
<v Speaker 1>Is that a is this is like a thing that
<v Speaker 1>people that they don't want you to.
<v Speaker 2>Use it because of like it's because of like anti
<v Speaker 2>logging sentiment. Wow, that it becomes like and then a
<v Speaker 2>lot of times the funny thing is like this not
<v Speaker 2>in my backyard. By the way, I think the not
<v Speaker 2>in my backyard thing is like one of the most harmless,
<v Speaker 2>harmful things within our entire culture.
<v Speaker 1>It's just rich people's it's just fucking rich people that
<v Speaker 1>And that's why I was saying they own the politicians too,
<v Speaker 1>because it's you know, if you're someone in a city,
<v Speaker 1>even in like a city, I'm not even talking about
<v Speaker 1>like you know, uh, citizens United, and I'm talking about
<v Speaker 1>if you're someone in a city of money, the civic
<v Speaker 1>leaders and you know, city officials are going to listen
<v Speaker 1>to you more than they're just going to listen to
<v Speaker 1>someone who's like a working class you know, single mom
<v Speaker 1>who's a nurse, you know what I mean.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, and yeah, And it's a lot of like
<v Speaker 2>and those are the you know, oftentimes there is there
<v Speaker 2>does seem to be a correlation there between that, you know,
<v Speaker 2>the people who have that sentiment and and that kind
<v Speaker 2>of stuff where it's like we're it, you know, nothing
<v Speaker 2>against people who like, you know, have strong opinions about
<v Speaker 2>how we should be harvesting resources and stuff like that.
<v Speaker 2>But it just can't be about you can't be that
<v Speaker 2>you're like against everything and for nothing. We're like, where
<v Speaker 2>do people think stuff comes from?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, man, you got it. And also there's ways to
<v Speaker 1>do it without again, without breaking the machine, the living machine.
<v Speaker 2>Right. So like this, and this is the thing that
<v Speaker 2>I tell people a lot too, is that there's there
<v Speaker 2>is a funny sort of double standard that we grape
<v Speaker 2>about in the forestry community all the time, which is
<v Speaker 2>that the vibe is like everybody loves agriculture and everybody
<v Speaker 2>hates forestry, and we're like, but what about the fact
<v Speaker 2>that like, you know, here we can do forestry. We
<v Speaker 2>can harvest resources while maintaining or even you know, like
<v Speaker 2>augmenting the function and the integrity and the resilience of
<v Speaker 2>a living system, which is whereas everywhere that we do agriculture,
<v Speaker 2>it's like this compromise, you know, or that those ecosystems
<v Speaker 2>are no longer intact. Like we we we make compromises
<v Speaker 2>all the time, and it's you know, it's not about
<v Speaker 2>do we have to make any compromises or whatever, about
<v Speaker 2>like do we want to make the right ones? And
<v Speaker 2>with agriculture, we're like, yeah, I got to eat, you know.
<v Speaker 2>And I think that the thing we talk about all
<v Speaker 2>the time is if we could just get people to
<v Speaker 2>appreciate forestry the way that they appreciate agriculture. But but
<v Speaker 2>the thing about it that's weird is that the perception
<v Speaker 2>sometimes is we're the one who are ruining the ecosystems,
<v Speaker 2>whereas that same perception isn't applied to like the people
<v Speaker 2>who are actually ruining these ecosystems, or the people who
<v Speaker 2>have like you know, building houses in places where there
<v Speaker 2>used to be an ecosystem, or you know, or we're
<v Speaker 2>growing food on the site of or they used to
<v Speaker 2>be an ecosystem.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean it's you know, it's it's a weird
<v Speaker 1>kind of misanthropy. And believe me, I get misanthropy when
<v Speaker 1>I mean I love people as individuals. This is like
<v Speaker 1>a thing George carl And used always say, I love
<v Speaker 1>people as individuals when you meet them and they know
<v Speaker 1>no one's watching them, and they're just interacting with you,
<v Speaker 1>and they're not performing, and they're not trying to, you know,
<v Speaker 1>because a lot of most people are full of shit
<v Speaker 1>to some extent, all of us, including me and you.
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure everyone's trying to, like, everyone's trying to not
<v Speaker 1>look stupid. Everyone's trying, they're performing. And sometimes but when
<v Speaker 1>you meet people's individuals and it's one on one and
<v Speaker 1>they're not performing and they're not faking it, you know
<v Speaker 1>they're they're great. But when you get them in large groups,
<v Speaker 1>they're fucking They can do horrible things and they're all
<v Speaker 1>they know people are watching and they're going to behave differently,
<v Speaker 1>or they're just not thinking and they're just parroting the
<v Speaker 1>ideologies or the things that someone next to them said
<v Speaker 1>without thinking about it. But so I get I get
<v Speaker 1>the misanthropy thing. But that's like a form of misanthropy,
<v Speaker 1>just like everything we do is terrible. We can't you know,
<v Speaker 1>like no logging, no any or you know, when people
<v Speaker 1>say that the human our invasive arguments, that drives me nuts.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, that's just the wrong You're not using the
<v Speaker 1>word correctly. You think you know what it means, and
<v Speaker 1>you don't. You have no fucking clue, you know. I
<v Speaker 1>just yeah, I think there's ways to you know again,
<v Speaker 1>once you realize you look at the ecoism as a
<v Speaker 1>living machine that you inherit. You're borrowing. It's not yours.
<v Speaker 1>You're borrowing it. You got to hand it down once
<v Speaker 1>you kick the bucket and leave, you know, before they
<v Speaker 1>put your ashes in the taco polenke salsa bar. You know,
<v Speaker 1>when you view it like that, it's like, Okay, there's
<v Speaker 1>a way to do this. It's like when I meet
<v Speaker 1>people who are against hunting, it's like, yeah, I guess
<v Speaker 1>I was when I was fucking ten and had no
<v Speaker 1>idea how the world worked, Like when I learned out
<v Speaker 1>an ecosism works. Like the Kaibab Plateaux experiment in the thirties.
<v Speaker 1>You wipe out all the pumas, the deer get population
<v Speaker 1>gets so big it then crashes, and you you've now
<v Speaker 1>caused much more suffering than would have been if you
<v Speaker 1>would have just let pumas snatch you know, deer every
<v Speaker 1>couple of days. You know. So I just again, it
<v Speaker 1>just comes to educating people, but also letting exposing people
<v Speaker 1>to it, getting people out into these places and seeing.
<v Speaker 1>Did you ever do you know anything about Japanese civil culture?
<v Speaker 2>No, not really.
<v Speaker 1>They were one of the first countries to start practicing forestry,
<v Speaker 1>and I think it was maybe it was kind of
<v Speaker 1>fucked up. It was like an authoritarian thing the emperor.
<v Speaker 1>It is like sixteen hundred and I might be totally
<v Speaker 1>fucking this up, but I only know about it because
<v Speaker 1>I was really into Cryptomaria Japonica, which is like the
<v Speaker 1>Japanese ancestor of the redwood, or the Japanese relative of
<v Speaker 1>the California redwood. And they call them sugi. They're these
<v Speaker 1>wonderful trees. They fucking massive, they look like them and
<v Speaker 1>they make wonderful wood. But there are these precious trees
<v Speaker 1>along with Camisiprius pacifia and a few other conifers, and
<v Speaker 1>so you know, they were logging everything back five hundred
<v Speaker 1>years ago, and it was getting so bad that finally
<v Speaker 1>the emperors, I'm not sure who else, but people stepped in.
<v Speaker 1>We're like, we need to figure out a better way
<v Speaker 1>to do this, because we're going to run out. This
<v Speaker 1>is we're going to break the machine, you know, And
<v Speaker 1>so they started. They were one of the first countries
<v Speaker 1>or the first nations to start practicing silviculture. And I'm
<v Speaker 1>so curious how they did it. You know, if it
<v Speaker 1>was like the way they do it like here, where
<v Speaker 1>it's just everything's planted in lines, or if they were
<v Speaker 1>trying to actually like restore forests, you know, like more
<v Speaker 1>of like a permaculture version of of silvi culture. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>it doesn't matter, so I'm getting us off on attentiy.
<v Speaker 2>But the European style was like super I mean it's
<v Speaker 2>it's different now and it's evolving, but like it was
<v Speaker 2>super plantation.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, orchards.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's sort of like purre it in you know,
<v Speaker 2>like not just that like it's a good way to
<v Speaker 2>grow would but it's like a more refined way to
<v Speaker 2>grow a forest, which is nuts. But then that you know,
<v Speaker 2>a lot of early conceptions of forestry and sort of
<v Speaker 2>like the first quote unquote forestry that was brought here
<v Speaker 2>to this continent was based on those Western European models,
<v Speaker 2>the Gifford Pinchot you know, the these kind of intensively
<v Speaker 2>managed condifer plantations. Yeah, you know, and it was like
<v Speaker 2>that also the weird the weirdness of like the wanting
<v Speaker 2>to have a more like refined forest in a way,
<v Speaker 2>or a forest that was like, uh, you know, didn't
<v Speaker 2>have any waste quote unquote waste, you know, didn't have
<v Speaker 2>any inefficiency. And that was like the highest thing, which
<v Speaker 2>is of course like what they call waste and inefficient
<v Speaker 2>that we call like ecological complexity.
<v Speaker 1>Right right, I call that a deranged mind processes just
<v Speaker 1>just pure anthroposcentric. If it's you know, yeah, waste or inefficient,
<v Speaker 1>well that's the thing that you know, when you when
<v Speaker 1>you come from this deranged mindset that doesn't know anyth
<v Speaker 1>about anything else. It's just pure anthropicentrism. You see, you're
<v Speaker 1>looking at things that have a very important function and
<v Speaker 1>a very important you know, role to play, and you
<v Speaker 1>view them as wasteful because they don't benefit you directly.
<v Speaker 1>They benefit you, but not directly. There's a couple other
<v Speaker 1>steps involved. You know, they feed something that feeds something
<v Speaker 1>that you end up needing. And again that's that's where
<v Speaker 1>I see this monkey brain mentality. It's like, oh, just
<v Speaker 1>you know, just so simplistic, uneducated and enlightened. And that's
<v Speaker 1>what I you know, I'm I'm I'm glad things seem
<v Speaker 1>like they're starting to change. There's more people pointing this out,
<v Speaker 1>you know, But what is it in terms of like
<v Speaker 1>the forestry that you guys do and that you and
<v Speaker 1>I guess we didn't even get to that yet. But
<v Speaker 1>what do you I guess what is a better model
<v Speaker 1>and what do you advocate for?
<v Speaker 2>I think, you know, so the better the better model
<v Speaker 2>is just sort of like switching it on its head,
<v Speaker 2>where it's like, I think for a long time there's
<v Speaker 2>been either this the preservation mentality, which is like the
<v Speaker 2>hands off mentality, or seeing ecosystems like their commodity or something.
<v Speaker 2>And I think that, you know, we think about it
<v Speaker 2>in terms of like the triad, which is a model
<v Speaker 2>that was developed especially to deal with kind of like
<v Speaker 2>the spotted out controversy in the late eighties early nineties
<v Speaker 2>by doctor Jerry Franklin and others West and you know,
<v Speaker 2>they were like, we need all of these different things
<v Speaker 2>from our forests. We need all these ecological benefits obviously
<v Speaker 2>from our forests, we need all these human cultural benefits,
<v Speaker 2>economic benefits, all these other things, and how are we
<v Speaker 2>going to do it? And what they came up with
<v Speaker 2>was this idea of having sort of like three broad
<v Speaker 2>categories of forest management. One is like the sort of
<v Speaker 2>unmanaged reserve. One is this the more industrial for us,
<v Speaker 2>for forests are managed for products. And then there's this
<v Speaker 2>middle category, which you could call like an ecologically managed
<v Speaker 2>for us. It's just basically a forest that's managed for
<v Speaker 2>multiple benefits. And the interesting thing about the triad is
<v Speaker 2>that those three categories are in relationship with each other. Right,
<v Speaker 2>So if you want everything, you want as much of
<v Speaker 2>that preservation, hands off stuff as a as you can
<v Speaker 2>possibly get, then we also need to have more of
<v Speaker 2>that industrial for us. And if you want fewer of
<v Speaker 2>those industrial for us, we need fewer of those reserves
<v Speaker 2>and more of this sort of middle category of forests.
<v Speaker 2>And I think that the middle category we're managing for us,
<v Speaker 2>not as a as a commodity, is the place that
<v Speaker 2>I kind of inhabit it, and even more so I
<v Speaker 2>would say I'm interested in managing these ecosystems and then
<v Speaker 2>thinking about for us products as an output that comes
<v Speaker 2>from these ecosystems. But it's not what we're actually managing for, right,
<v Speaker 2>It's like the ecosystem is the thing we're managing for,
<v Speaker 2>and from healthy ecosystems you can harvest products. And it's
<v Speaker 2>a false it's a false dichotomy right where we think
<v Speaker 2>that it needs to be one thing or the other one. Actually,
<v Speaker 2>you know, we we can absolutely be managed for healthy
<v Speaker 2>forests and managing for healthy landscapes and managing for species
<v Speaker 2>of concern and managing for biodiversity have underrepresented habitats, all
<v Speaker 2>of these things. Not every time are we able to
<v Speaker 2>like you know, actually in few cases are we able
<v Speaker 2>to maximize the return of timber. But we're still able
<v Speaker 2>to produce timber. And actually, an interesting thing to think
<v Speaker 2>about is that, you know, I did this talkdown in
<v Speaker 2>New Jersey, and in New Jersey they basically lost their
<v Speaker 2>whole forest products industry, which you might think of, oh,
<v Speaker 2>it's just an economic loss, but it's actually an ecological
<v Speaker 2>loss because their ability, because they don't have the ability
<v Speaker 2>to make their management work commercial. It all has to
<v Speaker 2>be non commercial. So it all it needs to be
<v Speaker 2>paid for from like federal or state grants or from
<v Speaker 2>out of the pockets of wealthy landowners. So you know,
<v Speaker 2>it basically means that they're doing about two percent of
<v Speaker 2>the management work that they could be if they were
<v Speaker 2>just able to work with loggers and sell some wood
<v Speaker 2>off of those products. So it's like a so suddenly
<v Speaker 2>like they can't do any you know, they're doing a
<v Speaker 2>teeny tiny fraction of the work that they want to
<v Speaker 2>do for for fire and for rare species.
<v Speaker 1>There's no man, it's basically going on.
<v Speaker 2>If we allow ourselves to like be like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>how do we use this these tools that we have
<v Speaker 2>to affect positive changes and ecosystems and then think about
<v Speaker 2>the timber more as like a byproduct of that process
<v Speaker 2>more than its own thing, then I think we can
<v Speaker 2>actually get to a better place, you know, both ecologically
<v Speaker 2>and economically in the long term.
<v Speaker 1>So Ethan, it sounds like what you're saying. It sounds
<v Speaker 1>like what you're saying is that you're you're you're saying,
<v Speaker 1>if we make sure the land itself, in this living
<v Speaker 1>system itself is healthy, then we'll and we focus on
<v Speaker 1>that and make that the main priority. Then just by
<v Speaker 1>default we will have a good amount of timber to
<v Speaker 1>harvest without breaking the machine instead of having this again,
<v Speaker 1>this really short sighted, you know, short term gain, long
<v Speaker 1>term loss idea of let's just make as much funny
<v Speaker 1>as possible and focus on on not wasting anything and
<v Speaker 1>letting any potential profit go to waste. You know, it's
<v Speaker 1>which is a really again, that's like the way a
<v Speaker 1>ten year old would look at something like a greedy,
<v Speaker 1>spoiled ten year old. It's not the way like an
<v Speaker 1>intelligent grown human adult.
<v Speaker 2>No, it's and it's not the like it only that
<v Speaker 2>mindset only works if we're thinking about it on such
<v Speaker 2>a short time scale, right, It only works like if
<v Speaker 2>we actually allow ourselves to think about ecosystems more broadly
<v Speaker 2>and how we rely on them more broadly, and what
<v Speaker 2>we want our long term future on this planet to
<v Speaker 2>be as a species. Right, Like, none of those decisions
<v Speaker 2>make any sense. They're shooting ourselves in the foot.
<v Speaker 1>The parallels, the parallels between what we're talking about right
<v Speaker 1>now with forestry and the larger American problem probably exists
<v Speaker 1>many other places too, but I'm most familiar with America. Unfortunately,
<v Speaker 1>the parallels are just I mean, this is like we've
<v Speaker 1>just summed up the short term gain. Long term loss
<v Speaker 1>is like a mentality that's taken over corporate America right now,
<v Speaker 1>and it's taken over universities, and it's taken I mean,
<v Speaker 1>you know, don't maintain for the health of the system itself.
<v Speaker 1>Just just neurotically fixate on these little things that will
<v Speaker 1>bring you the most money and the most return and
<v Speaker 1>ignore everything else. And that's meanwhile, like society as a
<v Speaker 1>whole and the land as a whole and the biosphere
<v Speaker 1>as a whole just starts crumbling and falling apart, and
<v Speaker 1>you can't figure out why. You know, it's it's a
<v Speaker 1>fucking disease. It sounds like, well yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And this is the thing that like I feel like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, when we think about this long term management, like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, in long term I guess I would say stewardship,
<v Speaker 2>which is this not a new concept, right, but a
<v Speaker 2>very ancient concept on this landscape, and uh, it provides
<v Speaker 2>for like all the stuff that we want, right, It
<v Speaker 2>provides us with resources, and it provides us with uh,
<v Speaker 2>you know, a beautiful, beautiful life with all these amazing,
<v Speaker 2>beautiful communities and all the things that we need to live.
<v Speaker 2>It's right there, and you know, it just doesn't allow
<v Speaker 2>us to, uh, this short term thinking just doesn't allow
<v Speaker 2>us to grasp this incredible opportunity. I'm the opportunity to
<v Speaker 2>like to have this, you know, this beautiful world that
<v Speaker 2>we get to give to our Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I know. And I used to think that that
<v Speaker 1>mentality because I've been shitting on this mentality for a
<v Speaker 1>long time. Obviously not in forestry, because I don't know
<v Speaker 1>much about forestry, uh except that I hate the way
<v Speaker 1>plantation forests look and that they're not real for us.
<v Speaker 1>I used to think this was just an issue of greed,
<v Speaker 1>Like it's just it's just greed, you know, it's just
<v Speaker 1>Gray saw it with the with the railroad when I
<v Speaker 1>worked there. I mean, you see it everywhere in society.
<v Speaker 1>Let's you know, fuck the poor, fund the poor because
<v Speaker 1>defund public services because we need those are wasteful and
<v Speaker 1>we need to focus on what's gonna you know, enrich
<v Speaker 1>the shareholders or the whatever. I use to think it
<v Speaker 1>was just greed, But I mean the more I look
<v Speaker 1>at it, the more I realize, like what a neurotic
<v Speaker 1>fixation it is on the things that don't matter and
<v Speaker 1>just complete idiocy too. I mean, it's it's incredibly stupid.
<v Speaker 1>It's incredibly again, it's short term gain and long term loss.
<v Speaker 1>It's stepping over a dollar to grab a dime. It's
<v Speaker 1>it's sacrificing the well being of the world you live
<v Speaker 1>in for things that are not that that are temperamental.
<v Speaker 1>You know, it's it's just it's fucking wild. You know.
<v Speaker 1>It's like it's don't worry about nuclear work as we
<v Speaker 1>could just live in a hole in the ground with
<v Speaker 1>our rations and you know, I can set up an
<v Speaker 1>underground gym and you know, I'll have a screen that
<v Speaker 1>broadcasts pictures of you know, beautiful beaches. And it's crazy,
<v Speaker 1>it's it's it's like a fucking is this like the
<v Speaker 1>result of lead poisoning or what just like with our species.
<v Speaker 1>I'm serious, it's not a fas not a stretch, you know,
<v Speaker 1>something that the neurological wiring got shorted somewhere in the
<v Speaker 1>gene pool and now you've got where we're at today,
<v Speaker 1>and it's like a large majority of people in power
<v Speaker 1>suffer from this. It's a contagious mindset, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Well, and then again, like I guess that you don't
<v Speaker 2>feel this in the same way, but then I feel
<v Speaker 2>it sort of from both sides, where I'm like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>constantly confronted with these two delusional mindsets, one of which
<v Speaker 2>is that we can just commodify and exploit this biosphere
<v Speaker 2>and you know, at no cost to ourselves or to
<v Speaker 2>the world of the future, or maybe they just don't care.
<v Speaker 2>And then the other side, which is that there's nothing
<v Speaker 2>good we can do right that we like this sort
<v Speaker 2>of old school environmentalist mindset where it's like our whole
<v Speaker 2>job is to like just stop doing everything. And so
<v Speaker 2>I've started talking about this concept that I call deep environmentalism,
<v Speaker 2>which is like sort of like thinking about reimagining what
<v Speaker 2>we do as environmentalists. You know, as co opted as
<v Speaker 2>that term has become, I'd probably identify more as like
<v Speaker 2>a conservationist than an environmentalist. But still, like, if we
<v Speaker 2>were really thinking about the ideals of environmentalism, which is
<v Speaker 2>to like protect this world and that's precious about it,
<v Speaker 2>and we were to update that and actually make it
<v Speaker 2>like that a mindset that would allow us to have
<v Speaker 2>a world that we could actually live in and that
<v Speaker 2>would actually sustain all the stuff we need. It would
<v Speaker 2>be not just about stopping doing the bad stuff, you know,
<v Speaker 2>in this sort of old school environmental mentality, which is
<v Speaker 2>like silent spring and you know, the first Earth Day
<v Speaker 2>and all of these really important things, but then adding
<v Speaker 2>to that like an imperative to also restore ecosystems, and
<v Speaker 2>also an understanding of like how are we going to
<v Speaker 2>make these choices about like where we get resources from.
<v Speaker 2>And I think that we would all agree that the
<v Speaker 2>way that we do that is not by closing every
<v Speaker 2>factory and idling every piece of log and equipment, but
<v Speaker 2>it's like having real decisions about getting that stuff probably
<v Speaker 2>closer to home, you know, instead of just doing what
<v Speaker 2>we do now, which is displacing the impacts of our
<v Speaker 2>consumption onto people's and ecosystems somewhere else that don't have
<v Speaker 2>the privilege to say not in my backyard, right And
<v Speaker 2>if we were to think about that stuff critically. For
<v Speaker 2>a resource like wood, I think we'd want more of it,
<v Speaker 2>not less. Fuck yeah, and we'd want it to be here.
<v Speaker 1>And also, you know, instead of doing plantations, instead of
<v Speaker 1>planting orchards of trees, you know, even though it might
<v Speaker 1>cost a little bit more to get in there and
<v Speaker 1>harvest that when you need to, because they're not a
<v Speaker 1>range in a nice line. There's other ways you could
<v Speaker 1>plant things, and you could plant all the understory species
<v Speaker 1>that go with them, and you could plant again to
<v Speaker 1>restore a living moche.
<v Speaker 2>You could manage, and you could manage within you know,
<v Speaker 2>the confines of like modeling our management after natural processes
<v Speaker 2>that actually exist on the.
<v Speaker 1>Landscape's culture supposed to be. You know, I should on
<v Speaker 1>permaculture at supposed to be. Yeah, it's what I should
<v Speaker 1>on permaculture all the time, I really do. It's fun.
<v Speaker 1>I just I've met so many kooks in that it's
<v Speaker 1>become a cult. But what it is supposed to be
<v Speaker 1>actually sounds pretty cool. And when you take in an
<v Speaker 1>awareness of native ecology, and native just means it evolved there.
<v Speaker 1>It's part of that living machine. It's it's it's all
<v Speaker 1>it means. It's not like some purity tests, it's not
<v Speaker 1>how far back do you have to go to make it.
<v Speaker 1>When you take in the native part of it, like permaculture,
<v Speaker 1>if it was like native based ecology based permaculture, it
<v Speaker 1>actually sounds pretty cool. You just you know, it's like Christianity, Like,
<v Speaker 1>most people who are Christians that I encounter don't actually
<v Speaker 1>follow the words of Christ. They're just suckers who go
<v Speaker 1>to church and then the church tells them how to
<v Speaker 1>vote whatever. Uh. But uh, but you know, it's that
<v Speaker 1>mentality that that humans are humids are just a cancer,
<v Speaker 1>and it's like, no, we're fucking not. The modern economic
<v Speaker 1>mindset is a cancer. But there's other ways to live.
<v Speaker 1>Like there's elements of modern society that are you know,
<v Speaker 1>poisonous and flawed, but you know, humans as a species
<v Speaker 1>are not. We've got examples of many other ways that
<v Speaker 1>humans have lived. Oh sure that has not destroyed you know,
<v Speaker 1>or been about shitting where we eat, you know, and
<v Speaker 1>there's come on, well, you know.
<v Speaker 2>What's What's one of the things too, is like if
<v Speaker 2>we condemn ourselves, we're going to lose out on probably
<v Speaker 2>like our ecosystem's best chance to to be you know,
<v Speaker 2>look into a better future in any kind of time
<v Speaker 2>frame that's probably relevant for our space. Yeah, yeah, Like
<v Speaker 2>I think I have a funny story to tell you
<v Speaker 2>about about this, which is that I went to a
<v Speaker 2>forestry conference out in Washington, and you know, the second
<v Speaker 2>that I hit the Oregon border. The only type of
<v Speaker 2>silvi culture. Don't want to have a forest dres. I
<v Speaker 2>saw it was these big one hundred and twenty eight here,
<v Speaker 2>clear cuts, you know, and like that we're being replanted
<v Speaker 2>with these monocultures are dug.
<v Speaker 1>For Yeah, familiar.
<v Speaker 2>And then when I went I went to the Boresty
<v Speaker 2>conference and I was like, hey, like, you ever hear
<v Speaker 2>about anybody who doesn't do one hundred and twenty eight
<v Speaker 2>clear cuntsentery playing with the monoculture of douglasher And everybody
<v Speaker 2>was like, you know, I feel like I've heard of
<v Speaker 2>someone who do. I'm like, oh my god. Because so
<v Speaker 2>one of the things that is interesting is that we
<v Speaker 2>go into these we get caught in these loops, so
<v Speaker 2>like loops such as you know, they're like, okay, well,
<v Speaker 2>you know, this is the species of tree that our
<v Speaker 2>mills are set up for, right, and this is the
<v Speaker 2>species and the size and the type of management that
<v Speaker 2>is a good fit for the logging equipment that the
<v Speaker 2>logging contractors that we have is you know, and without
<v Speaker 2>forgetting right that the reason that those loggers have that
<v Speaker 2>equipment and the reason that those mills have that you know,
<v Speaker 2>the capacity to take that one species and that one
<v Speaker 2>size of tree is because of the management techniques that
<v Speaker 2>was producing the wood for that right, So it's like
<v Speaker 2>it feeds itself. And then at some point you just
<v Speaker 2>got to ask a question. It doesn't have to be
<v Speaker 2>like how do we end logging in Oregon? It's like,
<v Speaker 2>how do we just do this in a little bit
<v Speaker 2>of a better way so that we can still have
<v Speaker 2>all of these all these economic benefits and all of
<v Speaker 2>these cultural benefits and still you know, have this workforce
<v Speaker 2>that's there, but then just to infuse that with a
<v Speaker 2>little bit more ecological you know, thoughtfulness and and you
<v Speaker 2>know like maybe plants another species of tree.
<v Speaker 1>Or yeah, maybe you don't just want one that's just
<v Speaker 1>that you know there seems like that might be a
<v Speaker 1>flaw in the thinking. I think, yeah, you know.
<v Speaker 2>I think maybe like let them like you know, just
<v Speaker 2>like maybe have some areas where you let them grow
<v Speaker 2>bigger than forty years old. I think, like it's not hard.
<v Speaker 1>You know, if I bet if you take some of
<v Speaker 1>those beef boys, and I said it with respect, it's
<v Speaker 1>like a lot you know. The because I lived in
<v Speaker 1>sisk County for a while, Siske County California, Northern California
<v Speaker 1>where I saw it was brutal. Some of the shit
<v Speaker 1>I saw up there. In terms of forestry, it was
<v Speaker 1>all Southern Pacific Lumber Company, which I think was affilly
<v Speaker 1>with a railroad. And then it was Sierra Pacific. And
<v Speaker 1>I had friends that were botanists that would do surveys
<v Speaker 1>for Sierra Pacific, but they would just God, they just
<v Speaker 1>fucked up some of these forests. Man, just do the plantations,
<v Speaker 1>and then you'd get an understory of a Ceanotha's species,
<v Speaker 1>which is in buckthorn family, rim theycy and you'd get arctostaphlos.
<v Speaker 1>I think it was Pachela, which is a beautiful plant
<v Speaker 1>relative of blueberries. It's ay like really red skin relative
<v Speaker 1>of uber ersi, which you probably get in Vermont. And
<v Speaker 1>so that would grow in the understory, and then you'd
<v Speaker 1>get as the forest would grow, they would get you know,
<v Speaker 1>the lower limbs of pines. It was mostly Ponderosa pine
<v Speaker 1>would die, Ponderosa and Jeffrey and then you know, they
<v Speaker 1>would just they would just be sitting there. But these
<v Speaker 1>and these pines are planted way too close together. Like
<v Speaker 1>when you plant them is a plug is a little
<v Speaker 1>tube seedling. It's great. Yeah, they got ample space, but
<v Speaker 1>in ten years suddenly their branches are touching. Now. I
<v Speaker 1>saw this in Chile too, which is a fucking nightmare.
<v Speaker 1>Like all the forestry that was done in Chile during
<v Speaker 1>the Pinochet, the fascist regime in the seventies and eighties,
<v Speaker 1>like those are just tinder boxes now. And with California
<v Speaker 1>and Sisky County was the same way, Like the lower
<v Speaker 1>branches die. So now you've just got this dry kindling
<v Speaker 1>that's still attached to the trees. The branches are dead,
<v Speaker 1>they got shaded out. All the understory species of like Persia,
<v Speaker 1>which is in the rose family archdel staffelos. See and
<v Speaker 1>know this. They're understory species that were growing with these
<v Speaker 1>pines when there was still ample sunlight growing there now
<v Speaker 1>but now they're in the understory, they're starting to die.
<v Speaker 1>So you've just got this massive inferno waiting to go up.
<v Speaker 1>And you know that guy, he's a good kid, Jesse,
<v Speaker 1>the Sacramento Food forest guy. He's always talking about the
<v Speaker 1>He's always you know, he's always like, this is why
<v Speaker 1>the fucking pine forests, you know, they burn and blah blah.
<v Speaker 1>This is not this is not a forest. This is
<v Speaker 1>a fucking plantation. Blah blah. I mean, he's right that
<v Speaker 1>they're horrible. I mean, I had a friend that inherited
<v Speaker 1>a bunch of land. Well, they bought this property that
<v Speaker 1>was abandoned lumber company in like two thousand and six,
<v Speaker 1>and man, it was just rows of planted pines and
<v Speaker 1>we had to go in limb up all the trees,
<v Speaker 1>remove a bunch of trees like every third one, remove
<v Speaker 1>all the dense underbrush like the manzanita and the sea
<v Speaker 1>and of this, and then set up burn piles because
<v Speaker 1>you can't you have to be really really on top
<v Speaker 1>of it when you burn out west because it's so
<v Speaker 1>dry and the wind is so bad. It's not like
<v Speaker 1>in the East where like don't have to be on
<v Speaker 1>as on top of it. And it was just a
<v Speaker 1>mess to deal with. And we were doing it not
<v Speaker 1>to like I mean, it was all the collegests there
<v Speaker 1>like who have the land, but we were doing it
<v Speaker 1>just because we were worried about the fire risk. It
<v Speaker 1>was so fucking dangerous, you know. And then actually there
<v Speaker 1>ended up being a big fire in Weed, California a
<v Speaker 1>few years later. It was a fucking nightmare. But I mean,
<v Speaker 1>I imagine and you would see like foresters all the time,
<v Speaker 1>like at the school there whatever. But if you take
<v Speaker 1>somebody's beef boys and you make them take in ecology
<v Speaker 1>class and then you know, maybe even take them on
<v Speaker 1>a field trip and give them some mushrooms and get
<v Speaker 1>them to you know, fucking let them, you know, do
<v Speaker 1>like have them go on solo vision quest or something
<v Speaker 1>for I'm only half joking too, because then you know,
<v Speaker 1>you start to think about it, You're like, man, this
<v Speaker 1>is actually cool. Like I met so many people that
<v Speaker 1>got into forestry. They're like, I was just getting into forestry.
<v Speaker 1>I was just getting into agriculture management, and goddamn, I
<v Speaker 1>thought that was actually kind of cool. Like people that
<v Speaker 1>were from cultural backgrounds that were not environmentalists at all.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm not an environmentalist at all. I don't call
<v Speaker 1>myself an environmentalist. But people that weren't from backgrounds that
<v Speaker 1>even really appreciated nature that later got into it and
<v Speaker 1>they started to see and those are the people that,
<v Speaker 1>it seems like, yeah, like yourself, that are best equipped
<v Speaker 1>to run these living systems. And that's what it is.
<v Speaker 1>You're running a living machine.
<v Speaker 2>I hope. So yeah, and I think there's other people
<v Speaker 2>out there like me, which is just like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>people who are interested in thinking outside of the box
<v Speaker 2>a little bit, you know, and like being disruptors a
<v Speaker 2>little bit. It doesn't take much. And it's like a
<v Speaker 2>lot of these things like that. There are all these
<v Speaker 2>little innovations that I've been using as I work with
<v Speaker 2>loggers that they're not used to, you know, and and
<v Speaker 2>make the work that they do more ecologically responsible, and
<v Speaker 2>you know, they don't cost him any more money. Most
<v Speaker 2>of them actually save them money. Yeah, And it's just
<v Speaker 2>about being willing to You don't have to give anything
<v Speaker 2>up except for you know, just breaking the norm a
<v Speaker 2>little bit, and if you're comfortable doing that, you can
<v Speaker 2>actually really you know, change how this stuff is done.
<v Speaker 2>And the other thing I wanted to say too, speaking
<v Speaker 2>of California, is you must follow Redwood's Rising.
<v Speaker 1>I don't, and I don't think so may platforms.
<v Speaker 2>This guy, griff Griffiths, he he works for Redwoods Rising,
<v Speaker 2>which is this partnership between oh California's State Park, Save
<v Speaker 2>the Redwoods League, and a couple other organizations. And one
<v Speaker 2>of the things that they do is basically the same
<v Speaker 2>management that I do, or similar management to what I
<v Speaker 2>do in these redwood forests that have been clearcuts. So
<v Speaker 2>the redwind forests were clear cut and then they naturally
<v Speaker 2>regenerated or they compassed or they were aerial seated with
<v Speaker 2>redwoods and they grew up into these really dense even
<v Speaker 2>age stands of redwood trees. And so what they're doing
<v Speaker 2>very similar to what I'm doing, is harvesting trees strategically
<v Speaker 2>to try and create this like multiage structure. And as
<v Speaker 2>they're doing that, like I am, you know, they are
<v Speaker 2>generating forest products and it's totally fine. They're like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>this is what allows this work to occur. And we
<v Speaker 2>were harvesting redwood timber and we're actually not taking anything
<v Speaker 2>away or enriching the forest, you know, and that's like
<v Speaker 2>the ultimate to me, with the ultimate windwin.
<v Speaker 1>So explain to me what like the management that you
<v Speaker 1>advocate for and how it differs from what is what
<v Speaker 1>it's been the norm for so long. What do you
<v Speaker 1>call that?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so we would call it ecological forestry, So basically,
<v Speaker 2>like you know, what the old school way would be, like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, we're doing all these techniques and ultimately we're
<v Speaker 2>trying to do is you know, maximize return. We're trying
<v Speaker 2>to grow as much timber of the highest value as
<v Speaker 2>we can. We're working with multiple species, so as many
<v Speaker 2>you know, high value species, high high value timber that
<v Speaker 2>we possibly can get from ever given acre, and everything's
<v Speaker 2>sort of focused on that. But here we don't have
<v Speaker 2>a lot of plantation forestry, so it's within the context
<v Speaker 2>of like utilizing natural regeneration, harvesting trees in such a
<v Speaker 2>way that trees naturally regenerate, and trying to like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>grow that timber as fast as possible. What I do
<v Speaker 2>is we look at natural disturbance regimes, and we look
<v Speaker 2>at old growth forests, and then we try to utilize
<v Speaker 2>like how forests naturally experience disturbances to inform then how
<v Speaker 2>we cut trees to create these natural structures, you know.
<v Speaker 2>So like it's not true everywhere, but like the most
<v Speaker 2>common thing that we're trying to create is we're harvesting
<v Speaker 2>individual trees and small groups of trees, which are mimicking
<v Speaker 2>individual tree mortality and small group mortality, you know, to
<v Speaker 2>create this multi layered canopy with this multi aged forest,
<v Speaker 2>with gappy, irregular canopy with tons of dead wood on
<v Speaker 2>the ground. The other thing that's that's different is that historically,
<v Speaker 2>when a tree got large, you would always cut it,
<v Speaker 2>and you would cut it for one of two reasons.
<v Speaker 2>One reason you would cut it would be because it
<v Speaker 2>was big and not valuable. And if it was big
<v Speaker 2>and not valuable, they would call it decadent. In quotes,
<v Speaker 2>they'd call it decadent and said they had to cut
<v Speaker 2>it to get it out of the way so you
<v Speaker 2>could grow younger, more valuable, faster growing quote unquote rifty trees.
<v Speaker 2>And if it was big and it was valuable, you
<v Speaker 2>had to cut it because it was economically mature and
<v Speaker 2>it had matched out actium potential value relative to the
<v Speaker 2>risk of keeping it in the woods. So the results
<v Speaker 2>of that is you just never had this one critical
<v Speaker 2>piece of forest ecology, which is these big old trees.
<v Speaker 2>And so like we also I also retain tons of
<v Speaker 2>what we call biological legacy trees, which are these trees
<v Speaker 2>they're almost like a like a micro reserve within a
<v Speaker 2>managed stand. They're like they're basically they're being retained in perpetuity,
<v Speaker 2>and their whole job is just to be big, to
<v Speaker 2>be old by become a snag fall on the ground.
<v Speaker 2>You know, all of those things that are attained by
<v Speaker 2>trees at these later stages of life, so that the
<v Speaker 2>risk and with a lot of these things, like I
<v Speaker 2>get so excited just to like put deadwood on the ground,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and to like create all these structures and
<v Speaker 2>this multi aged structure, to have this dense understory and
<v Speaker 2>overstory at mid story and these gaps and ecanopy. And
<v Speaker 2>the thing that I remind people all the time is like,
<v Speaker 2>if you're a bird, you know, and and you're a
<v Speaker 2>bird that nests in the understory, and because all of
<v Speaker 2>our forests are even age, there are all trees at
<v Speaker 2>the same age, there's there's not really any good multi
<v Speaker 2>age forests around. You just have nowhere to go, you know,
<v Speaker 2>or you're you're working in a suboptinal habitat. When that
<v Speaker 2>habitat appears on the landscape, you don't care if that
<v Speaker 2>tree fell over on its own or if I cut
<v Speaker 2>it down. All you care about is that that habitat
<v Speaker 2>is there now. And I think that like we need
<v Speaker 2>to stop being purists about some of this stuff and
<v Speaker 2>just be like, how do we actually you know, create
<v Speaker 2>these forests that are that are that are more full
<v Speaker 2>of life. But again, so like the parts of that
<v Speaker 2>that are different from old school forestry are keeping big
<v Speaker 2>trees there, keeping dead wood on the ground. There's also
<v Speaker 2>this this you know in the air quotes utilization mentality,
<v Speaker 2>which is that we had almost like the moral imperative
<v Speaker 2>to remove every stick a wood that we cut from
<v Speaker 2>the woods, which a lot of these you know trees,
<v Speaker 2>they by the time they get out to them, you know,
<v Speaker 2>the latter cut them down and puts a chain around
<v Speaker 2>and pulls them off to the log land and get
<v Speaker 2>them on a log truck, they actually have negative value.
<v Speaker 2>And so I'm like, well, why don't we just lead
<v Speaker 2>those in the woods to create this deadwood habitat that
<v Speaker 2>we really need and everybody will make more money and
<v Speaker 2>will do a better job in the forest. So that's
<v Speaker 2>a change. And also not trying to create like these
<v Speaker 2>just generation after generation of like timber trees, but to
<v Speaker 2>actually like to be harvesting trees within the context of
<v Speaker 2>a more complex forest.
<v Speaker 1>So you guys, I mean, that's what I was going
<v Speaker 1>to ask you about too, is the diversity of species
<v Speaker 1>that you have. I mean, you guys are planting obviously too, right,
<v Speaker 1>No no planting, just natural regeneration or.
<v Speaker 2>What natural regeneration.
<v Speaker 1>Well, that's cool that you guys have have enough of
<v Speaker 1>a seed bank for that. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Now, I mean I think I think now we're going
<v Speaker 2>to end up planting, I think just because of climate change,
<v Speaker 2>but we're really not doing it on a large scale net.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah you don't need to, right yeah. So, but so
<v Speaker 1>it's already like a diverse forest. It's not a plantation.
<v Speaker 2>It's not a monoculture, correct, Yeah, And we also have
<v Speaker 2>like you know, for us with these natural processes, these
<v Speaker 2>disturbance processes. You know, of course we're doing more than
<v Speaker 2>just like recruiting many different species of trees, right Like
<v Speaker 2>when we cut trees down, we're also have this explosion,
<v Speaker 2>the temporary sort of explosion of herbaceous plant diversity that
<v Speaker 2>shrubs that are recruiting trees, and so we actually get
<v Speaker 2>you know, not just like a bunch of different species
<v Speaker 2>of trees, but like this whole succession of different cool stuff.
<v Speaker 1>So you so, how do you how do you determine
<v Speaker 1>what individual trees to cut?
<v Speaker 2>I mean, it depends, it depends on a lot of
<v Speaker 2>different stuff. What I try to do is is there's
<v Speaker 2>this concept out here. I don't think it's widespread, because
<v Speaker 2>I've talked to folks all across the country about it,
<v Speaker 2>and I think it seems like only folks in the
<v Speaker 2>Northeast know about it, which is this concept of a
<v Speaker 2>natural community. And basically the concept of a natural community
<v Speaker 2>is it's a it's a more expansive definition for like
<v Speaker 2>the thing that we call a forest or another ecosystem
<v Speaker 2>as the case may be, where it's like inclusive of
<v Speaker 2>all of the living in trees, the plants, the animals,
<v Speaker 2>all the living stuff, the physical environment, the non living stuff,
<v Speaker 2>and then the natural processes and all of that is included,
<v Speaker 2>and then it's kind of like an attempt to describe
<v Speaker 2>that ecosystem beyond even like what it is now. So
<v Speaker 2>when we have this landscape of these altered ecosystems, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I might be looking into a stand that is one
<v Speaker 2>hundred percent eastern white pine, and I might be able
<v Speaker 2>to tell from the indicator plants, you know, especially, and
<v Speaker 2>you know other you know, things I can tell about
<v Speaker 2>the soil and whatever blow up the aspect where it
<v Speaker 2>is located, the position on the slope that it's actually this,
<v Speaker 2>this forest that is today one hundred percent white pine
<v Speaker 2>is actually original of their harwood forest, which should be
<v Speaker 2>this multiaged forest that's comprised of these rich site tree
<v Speaker 2>species like sugar maple, American basswood, white ash. You know,
<v Speaker 2>in the understory we see some of our rich site
<v Speaker 2>indicator plants which would be here, like blue cohash and
<v Speaker 2>searsucker sedge, some of our spring ephemeral love flowers made
<v Speaker 2>in hair fern aty anthem and like all this like really,
<v Speaker 2>you know this very specific site, but you know, you
<v Speaker 2>might have none of that stuff that's present at the moment.
<v Speaker 2>And so what we try to do is to look
<v Speaker 2>into those forests that we have today, compare that to
<v Speaker 2>that sort of natural community character that we can deduce,
<v Speaker 2>and then to manage, you know, to cut trees in
<v Speaker 2>a way that sort of steers them in that direction,
<v Speaker 2>and sometimes you need to. It takes multiple steps. So
<v Speaker 2>like if I'm looking at a hundred percent white pine forests,
<v Speaker 2>I might not I might, but I might not just
<v Speaker 2>go cut all the white pine trees, Like we might
<v Speaker 2>want to create small openings to start to recruit those
<v Speaker 2>hardwoods that are going to then naturally regenerate, and then
<v Speaker 2>over time, over the next thirty years, we're going to
<v Speaker 2>gradually remove that white pine overstory, probably retaining some of
<v Speaker 2>those trees as biological legacies anyway, but then bringing it
<v Speaker 2>along into this multi aged forest that's well suited to
<v Speaker 2>the site.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I was gonna say so it would be you know,
<v Speaker 1>because I would think if I if I was doing
<v Speaker 1>something like that, it would be Okay, there's too many
<v Speaker 1>of this one thing. So the higher density species, if
<v Speaker 1>there's more of a density there's one species, I would
<v Speaker 1>remove a few of those and let in some more
<v Speaker 1>diversity or a part of it.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, but it depends like the we want to
<v Speaker 2>We want species diversity for like climate resilience reasons, and
<v Speaker 2>we want and for habit because we're very vulnerable, you know,
<v Speaker 2>if we only have one species of tree, all these
<v Speaker 2>different elements of global change. But but then you know,
<v Speaker 2>you you could also have forest types like that rich
<v Speaker 2>near the Harbord forest that might be naturally seventy sugar maple.
<v Speaker 2>So then it's like you have to balance the need
<v Speaker 2>for that diversity with the thing we also need to
<v Speaker 2>manage for which is like you know, forests that are
<v Speaker 2>well suited to where they're growing species. Yeah, it is, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and you have you know, other systems. So like you
<v Speaker 2>got to come out here and check out the forest,
<v Speaker 2>because you'll have like you'd be walking up a north
<v Speaker 2>facing slope and you'll have all that stuff sugar maple,
<v Speaker 2>white ash, bass woods, maine hair fern and the understory.
<v Speaker 2>And then you'll you'll crest the top of a hill
<v Speaker 2>and go down into a south facing slope and it'll
<v Speaker 2>be American beach and red oak and red maple, this
<v Speaker 2>rich or this dry poresite community, you know, and you'll
<v Speaker 2>have like blueberry and huckleberry and bracken fern and these
<v Speaker 2>poor site species just just based on the aspect of
<v Speaker 2>the hill.
<v Speaker 1>That's gonna be so important to me. Man, I've never
<v Speaker 1>been to New Hampshire for my careful way careful inviting me.
<v Speaker 1>I'll actually do it. Man, Can I sleep on your
<v Speaker 1>floor right?
<v Speaker 2>No? I saw you went and visited Kyle.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, I'll do it. I'll come out there. I'll
<v Speaker 1>make time next streak do it.
<v Speaker 2>I'll show you. I'll show you.
<v Speaker 1>I mean.
<v Speaker 2>So it's like we think about it too here. You know,
<v Speaker 2>you sort of have to think about it on multiple scales,
<v Speaker 2>so you're like, you know, one of the other in
<v Speaker 2>addition to like, because of land use history, we don't
<v Speaker 2>have level of diversity like within our forests that we
<v Speaker 2>would have had thousands of years ago, you know, that
<v Speaker 2>multi generationality, of these other qualities we also don't. We're
<v Speaker 2>also lacking landscape level diversity. You know. So three even
<v Speaker 2>just three hundred years ago, there were these you know,
<v Speaker 2>beavers that were creating these areas of young forest on
<v Speaker 2>the landscape where all the trees over a large area
<v Speaker 2>would die and then regenerate these megaflocks of these hundreds
<v Speaker 2>of or even billions of passenger pigeons that were you know,
<v Speaker 2>creating these massive holes in these forests just by by
<v Speaker 2>nesting there and destroying all the trees.
<v Speaker 1>That's gonna be wild and you.
<v Speaker 2>Know, and so we're also seeing all of the species
<v Speaker 2>of wildlife that are associated with what we call early
<v Speaker 2>successional forests are also declining on the landscape, and so
<v Speaker 2>we like, sometimes we want to also create these areas
<v Speaker 2>where we're creating larger openings to create habitat for those species.
<v Speaker 2>And then we want to think about you know, sometimes
<v Speaker 2>you're just in a forest and you're like, well, there's
<v Speaker 2>just a healthy oak tree right there, and even though
<v Speaker 2>you know, maybe it's like not the best suited for
<v Speaker 2>this site, it's the only oak tree for a few acres,
<v Speaker 2>and so you sort of think about it on the
<v Speaker 2>individual tree level as well. So with all the management
<v Speaker 2>that I do, I think about it sort of on
<v Speaker 2>all those different levels. And one thing that I always
<v Speaker 2>do is I am I'm part of a new program
<v Speaker 2>from Audubon. I'm an Audubon endorsed forester, which is like
<v Speaker 2>spoocy receive this pest special training and endorsement to manage
<v Speaker 2>forests for bird habitat. And one of the things that
<v Speaker 2>they do is when you make a forest management plan,
<v Speaker 2>you take like you take a shot of a twenty
<v Speaker 2>five hundred acre area around the given parcel where you're working,
<v Speaker 2>and you identify all of the different habitat types and
<v Speaker 2>all the different forest ages and you know, in the
<v Speaker 2>different compositions within that twenty five acre area, because we
<v Speaker 2>want to have sort of like you know, a certain
<v Speaker 2>amount of early successional forests, a certain amount of especial
<v Speaker 2>forests and other qualities within each twenty five hundred acre
<v Speaker 2>block on the landscape. And so if you're looking at
<v Speaker 2>that twenty five acre block and you're like there's no
<v Speaker 2>young forest, or there's a lot of young forests and
<v Speaker 2>no older forests, then you might make choices on how
<v Speaker 2>you manage a forest based on that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean. But the thing that I think is
<v Speaker 1>really cool that you're doing is you're obviously out there
<v Speaker 1>every day or every other day. You're out there a lot,
<v Speaker 1>basically walking around on the land and observing things and
<v Speaker 1>noticing things and then making decisions based on that, which
<v Speaker 1>I don't think most forests are doing. I don't. I
<v Speaker 1>just don't they've got, you know, from what I could tell,
<v Speaker 1>especially you know what, from what I've seen out west.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, people get hired to go out there and
<v Speaker 1>do survey something, but it's it's a chain of command,
<v Speaker 1>and the people making the decisions are far removed from
<v Speaker 1>you know, the boots on the ground observations and decisions
<v Speaker 1>that are made.
<v Speaker 2>It's pretty cool to work for myself, I'll say that, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and just to do like you know, someone
<v Speaker 2>who's who's a little bit. I think the way that
<v Speaker 2>my mind works, I'm always like trying to think of
<v Speaker 2>a better ways to do stuff, and and so I
<v Speaker 2>don't I don't think i's trying to do that I
<v Speaker 2>think a lot of people are just trying to do
<v Speaker 2>the job that they were trained to do well, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and a lot of and a lot of them are.
<v Speaker 2>But that doesn't you know, it doesn't mean that the
<v Speaker 2>job that a forester was trained to do forty years
<v Speaker 2>ago was a good fit for what we're actually being
<v Speaker 2>asked to do now, you know, I think there is Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I I think there's just uh a need for update,
<v Speaker 2>updating our mindset of what our goals are, like, what
<v Speaker 2>are we actually trying to do and to be like
<v Speaker 2>our job as foresters needs to care for for us,
<v Speaker 2>A for us is an ecosystem that can provide stuff
<v Speaker 2>for us, but is also its own thing. And the
<v Speaker 2>point of all of this is, you know, a force
<v Speaker 2>to sustain human communities and apps to also sustain these
<v Speaker 2>natural communities. And it can't be one of those things,
<v Speaker 2>you know, it can't be that we're just managing a
<v Speaker 2>first human benefits without reference to its to it's you
<v Speaker 2>know the fact that it is also an ecosystem. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's beautiful in its own right.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's I mean, that's an insane outlook and it's
<v Speaker 1>also thoroughly stupid, and it's it causes so many more
<v Speaker 1>problems down the line. Again, short term gain, long term loss.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I think doesn't it doesn't work.
<v Speaker 1>You're someone you're someone that obviously loves the land and
<v Speaker 1>the things that you're seeing on at the living organisms
<v Speaker 1>you're seeing on it. Do you think this kind of
<v Speaker 1>First off, how many aggres do you have are you
<v Speaker 1>in charge of?
<v Speaker 2>I own? I own? Oh, I own one seventy five
<v Speaker 2>that I live on that's Fair Island, and then I
<v Speaker 2>manage I don't know, maybe fifteen thou like that.
<v Speaker 1>That's a I mean, it's it's significant acreage. Yeah, that's
<v Speaker 1>a large question. Do you think that do you think
<v Speaker 1>that this kind of I mean what you're doing as
<v Speaker 1>a single person up or single you know, running your
<v Speaker 1>own business, do you think that do you think this
<v Speaker 1>could ever be applicable on a large scale? Say you
<v Speaker 1>got someone in charge of a major company who wasn't
<v Speaker 1>a greedy shithead and wasn't disconnected from this.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, I know it is. I know it is, and
<v Speaker 2>you know, like it's it's really like the stuff that
<v Speaker 2>I'm talking about too, is you know, like when I
<v Speaker 2>work with I work with timber companies, and I work
<v Speaker 2>with bloggers, and I work with mills, and I work
<v Speaker 2>with all kinds of different people and and you know,
<v Speaker 2>none of the stuff that I'm asking for is has
<v Speaker 2>to be like a threatening thing. And like I have,
<v Speaker 2>I have a whole group of loggers that I work
<v Speaker 2>with all the time, Like I have that I keep
<v Speaker 2>them busy, we're cutting wood all the time. They're happy,
<v Speaker 2>you know, they're doing well for themselves, they're making good money.
<v Speaker 2>And part of this is like approaching this stuff in
<v Speaker 2>the right in the right way sometimes where it's not
<v Speaker 2>like I'm not coming for you. I'm not coming for
<v Speaker 2>your job. I'm not I'm trying to help you, and
<v Speaker 2>I'm trying to like to bring us all along in
<v Speaker 2>a way that is good for everybody. And it's not
<v Speaker 2>it doesn't have to be this like big scary thing.
<v Speaker 2>It can be this thing about like how do we
<v Speaker 2>all do better? And like the loggers that work for me,
<v Speaker 2>they don't make less money than the loggers that don't
<v Speaker 2>work for me, they make more, right, because it's not
<v Speaker 2>just about uh, you know, austerity.
<v Speaker 1>Number right, there's not a numbers get away with underpaying
<v Speaker 1>our employees, you know, while pleasing the shareholders.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I want everybody to do well and and
<v Speaker 2>and it's a proof of concept, right that we actually
<v Speaker 2>can do environmentally responsible ecosystem management and everybody can do better. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>And that's like I think that that's a big, a
<v Speaker 2>big part of it that makes it less threatening, makes
<v Speaker 2>less people freak out a little bit less is when
<v Speaker 2>we do it, we start from a place of respect
<v Speaker 2>and like care and compassion and we go forward from there.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Man, I mean those loggers are the people you
<v Speaker 1>need to get on on board. You know. It's like,
<v Speaker 1>it's it's crazy. I mean, they're they're out there. You know,
<v Speaker 1>I was. I was fucking border patrol down here and
<v Speaker 1>I you know, these guys, it's it's whoever you encounter
<v Speaker 1>in the brush. I mean, most of these dudes are
<v Speaker 1>just working class mooks who are like, you know whatever.
<v Speaker 1>They're not like all gung ho about the political side
<v Speaker 1>of it. They just need a job. But they'll come
<v Speaker 1>on and they'll they'll come up on me and they'll
<v Speaker 1>sniff on me whatever. I don't care. I've used to it.
<v Speaker 1>They'll sniff on me like a dog. What are you
<v Speaker 1>doing here? And I I just love talking to them.
<v Speaker 1>It's so fun. I just fucking I just you know,
<v Speaker 1>most of the time they just get bored and quickly
<v Speaker 1>disperse and run away, which is fucking great. That's kind
<v Speaker 1>of part of why I do it. But sometimes if
<v Speaker 1>they're bored, you know, I'll tell them and I'll be like,
<v Speaker 1>you should log things, do ie net. You should start
<v Speaker 1>trying to to look take pictures the cool stuff you
<v Speaker 1>see instead of just sitting in your truck. Man, get out,
<v Speaker 1>like you got opportunities to see stuff you have. You know,
<v Speaker 1>you can go all these like take pictures, I mean
<v Speaker 1>with the hope that like maybe one of them will
<v Speaker 1>get you know, indoctrinate. It's like it'll be slow, you
<v Speaker 1>know what I mean.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, this is the thing you were talking about
<v Speaker 2>with like the individual person versus individual people being great
<v Speaker 2>versus like groups of people. Is I'll bet if you
<v Speaker 2>like drill down with those guys, you know that they'll
<v Speaker 2>tell you they're like, you know, like these with these loggers.
<v Speaker 2>You're talking to them and they first they're like, they
<v Speaker 2>don't want to talk to me, and then they're like,
<v Speaker 2>next thing, you know, we're talking about how their grandpa
<v Speaker 2>used to like make his own baskets. He go collect
<v Speaker 2>willow shoots and make his own baskets and they transplant
<v Speaker 2>showy orchids. Yeah, it's like all this cool stuff like that,
<v Speaker 2>where you know, I think a lot of this stuff
<v Speaker 2>we just like build up all these like structures and
<v Speaker 2>worldviews around a lot of this stuff that's just so
<v Speaker 2>common sense and it's for everybody. And if we can
<v Speaker 2>like break it down a little bit, I think we
<v Speaker 2>can arrive it at a bed place just strategically.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm just thinking like a criminal here, if you know,
<v Speaker 1>my strategy is to convince people to see what I'm seeing.
<v Speaker 1>And if my strategy is that, the last thing I
<v Speaker 1>want to do is, you know, I want to recruit people.
<v Speaker 1>I don't want to just shit, I'm not going to
<v Speaker 1>fight them and ship on them and shame them, you know.
<v Speaker 1>I want to recruit people. And so like I had
<v Speaker 1>a fucking guy at I got sent the secondary inspection once, uh,
<v Speaker 1>when I was crossing the border on foot down here
<v Speaker 1>in South Texaco. I live round on the Mexican border,
<v Speaker 1>Like I can smell Mexico's garbage fires every night. But uh,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and the guy, the guy recognized me, like
<v Speaker 1>are you that that crime pace guy? And I was
<v Speaker 1>like yeah. I was like, yeah, it's me and and
<v Speaker 1>he was like, oh man, I like that stuff. It's
<v Speaker 1>but what's up we kill you lawn, you know, And
<v Speaker 1>I was I was like, here's my ind you know.
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, man, have you ever spent time in some
<v Speaker 1>of the like remnant crumbs of habitat there down here?
<v Speaker 1>It's fascinating. There's so much cool stuff down here, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like there you have no there's plants that grow here
<v Speaker 1>that don't grow anywhere else in the world. And he's like, oh, really,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and he was I mean, I'm sure he
<v Speaker 1>never thought about it again, but it was you know,
<v Speaker 1>that's a that's an opening. I think you can convince
<v Speaker 1>some of those it's yeah, man, there's a better way.
<v Speaker 1>There's a better way, and it's not shutting down all logging,
<v Speaker 1>and it's not I mean, people need wood. It's about
<v Speaker 1>learning how to run the living machine, for the health
<v Speaker 1>of the living machine being the main focus, and then
<v Speaker 1>getting you know, the the lumber is a benefit like
<v Speaker 1>har harvesting the the fruits of it, you know, like
<v Speaker 1>the and they'll be abundant fruit. There'll be a abundant
<v Speaker 1>you know fruit. If you can run it, right if
<v Speaker 1>you can keep it for the health of everything else,
<v Speaker 1>the health of the beavers, the understory species everything.
<v Speaker 2>It's really an analogy for the whole world, right, which
<v Speaker 2>is that we have this planet which is actually abundant, right,
<v Speaker 2>And and then it's our responsibility not to just be like, what,
<v Speaker 2>you know, what can we mind from here? What can
<v Speaker 2>we you know, pull out of here? And instead to
<v Speaker 2>be like what does this place have to offer us?
<v Speaker 2>You know, and like how do we sustain this place?
<v Speaker 2>And then reaped the fruits of all of the amazing
<v Speaker 2>things that it has to offer within this that that
<v Speaker 2>it already has, right, Yeah, Like there's enough stuff here
<v Speaker 2>for us to be alive. Yeah, And it just is
<v Speaker 2>it just is like about shifting that flipping that mindset.
<v Speaker 1>Around, I think, yeah, and it goes you know, it
<v Speaker 1>goes for people too. It's like I want everyone to
<v Speaker 1>be educated and have the opportunities and not be worrying
<v Speaker 1>about you know, how am I going to pay for
<v Speaker 1>healthcare if I get sick? Or how am I gonna
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it goes so much, you know, you could
<v Speaker 1>take it everywhere, Like I want the collective society I'm
<v Speaker 1>a part of to do better and be more well
<v Speaker 1>off and more enlightened and more intelligent and you know,
<v Speaker 1>and uh and we're definitely not there, but you know
<v Speaker 1>it's possible.
<v Speaker 2>By the next time you and me talk, we'll have
<v Speaker 2>this all clean.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah god, yeah, man, I could keep talking to you.
<v Speaker 1>I'm so curious about some of the forests up there
<v Speaker 1>and the stuff you see.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, let's uh, let's try again soon.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, man, I appreciate your time. Thanks again, and uh
<v Speaker 1>yeah man, I'll stay in touch and I'm gonna come
<v Speaker 1>I'll probably come busy you at some point here next
<v Speaker 1>year or two.
<v Speaker 2>Let's do it, all right, man,