#forestry
Nice read for the weekend:
In #Wisconsin, the #Menominee Tribe’s #Sustainable #Forestry Is Visible From Space
The Menominee Tribe’s tradition of doing “what’s best for the forest” has become a global model for #sustainability.
“The #forest looks pristine,” he says, as a flurry of snow falls through the open canopy. “These big maples and basswoods are around 150 years old. But we have been logging here for over a century, and we still have more trees than when we started.” In June, the tribe’s forestry officials began exploring the potential for selling the carbon accumulating in the forest on the U.S.’s growing market for carbon-offset credits.
There are probably more than a billion trees today in the Menominee forest, which is an hour’s drive west of Lake Michigan. We were there in late February, the day after the biggest snowstorm of the winter. We were standing near the Menominee’s sawmill in Neopit village, from where trucks move the lumber across America to make everything from basketball courts to domestic furniture and hand-crafted toys. But even close to the mill, big healthy trees with the highest potential price tag get to grow old.
The trick, says Lohrengel, is husbandry for the long term. “We come in every 15 years, take out the weak trees, the sick trees, and the ones that are dying, but leave the healthy stock to grow some more and reproduce,” he says. “We don’t plant anything. This is all natural regeneration, and the way we do it the forest just gets better and better.”
Score one for environmental respect/sanity...
Trump’s Removal of Protections for Old-Growth Trees Was Illegal, Judge Rules
A Trump appointee rolled back protections in six national forests two days before the administration’s term ended.
#Dartmoor in #springtime. The landscape of Dartmoor is quite varied although it is geologically a #granite intrusion into the Earth's crust it has been shaped by weathering, erosion and human intervention, such as #agriculture and #forestry. Here we see a #river #valley in the background and a #TreeStump in the foreground. The weather was as benign as can be expected there as you can tell by the blue #sky and light clouds.
● NEWS ● #CounterPunch #Forestry #Nature #Wildlife ☞ Warriors for Whitebark Pine: Fighting for an Imperiled Forest https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/04/warriors-for-whitebark-pine-fighting-for-an-imperiled-forest/
#Mongolia to train consultants on #tree planting to combat #climate #change
source: http://www.china.org.cn/world/Off_the_Wire/2021-11/15/content_77873737.htm
#Khurelsukh, who has recently initiated a national tree-planting campaign called "Billion Trees" aimed at planting a billion trees by 2030, made the remarks during a national #conference on #forestry.
My therapist said I should post more positive things.
Inhabitants
An Indigenous Perspective
Inhabitants: An Indigenous Perspective is a feature-length documentary that follows five North American tribes restoring their ancient relationships with the land while adapting to today’s climate crisis.
The film travels across diverse bioregions of North America, from deserts and coastlines, to forests, mountains, and prairies, highlighting the dramatic effects of climate change and stories of indigenous land stewardship practices, which continue to be resilient in the face of a changing climate. The film focuses on five stories: the return of prescribed fire practices by the Karuk Tribe in California; the restoration of buffalo on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana; sustained traditions of Hopi dryland farming in Arizona; sustainable forestry on the Menominee reservation in Wisconsin; and the revival of native Hawaiian food forests in Hawaii.
Although these stories are not connected geographically, and only represent a small portion of the many diverse indigenous communities leading efforts to maintain their cultural practices and identity, they all share the common dimensions of “traditional knowledges.” According to Guidelines for Considering Traditional Knowledges in Climate Change Initiatives,"[traditional knowledges] broadly refer to indigenous communities’ ways of knowing that both guide and result from their communities members’ close relationships with and responsibilities towards the landscapes, waterscapes, plants, and animals that are vital to the flourishing of indigenous cultures."
Climate change poses an immediate threat to Indigenous Peoples’ health, well-being and ways of life. Tribal nations are on the front lines of confronting climate change, including increased frequency and intensity of wildfires, higher temperatures, ecosystem changes, ocean acidification, forest loss, and habitat damage. Climate change also raises questions about what will become of spiritually and culturally significant ecosystem services that are essential to maintaining many tribes’ identities. Indigenous communities are disproportionately harmed by the changing climate as they depend more on natural resources than the US population as a whole. Negative impacts include threats to traditional foods such as fish and crops which have provided sustenance as well as cultural, economic, medicinal, and community health for countless generations.
Emerging threats have galvanized a concerted effort by several tribes to forge ahead with climate-change adaptation strategies. They are leading the way guided by indigenous traditions and are quickly adapting to and even directly counteracting the shifting climate. Examples like the Hopi dry land farming techniques show how to deal with extremely arid and hot weather; the raising of Native Bison on the prairie lands of the Midwest improves carbon sequestration while removing the need for feedstocks; and forest fire management that is being guided by native forestry practices are just a few of the stories that give insight into how much wisdom and importance the indigenous land use practices reflect; and how crucial it is that their story is heard. The indigenous land management practices in the forests, deserts, prairies and coastlines of North America have much to offer to the current conversation surrounding climate adaptation and mitigation.
The First Peoples are estimated to have lived in North America for 15,000 years. In a few short centuries Native Americans have had most of their population systematically erased, almost all their land taken, and also been forced to deal with the disastrous effects of industrialization on their remaining resources. Tribal communities have proven to be remarkably resilient, surviving in some of the most extreme environments and having endured very aggressive marginalization. We can now create a platform for helping these marginalized people share their wisdom about how to live in these lands and how their history and tradition can inform and guide us. This documentary is an effort to give Native Americans an opportunity to share their stories of resilience and wisdom in the face of extreme climatic stress. We as a society can listen and learn from these stories of time tested land use practices. Now is the moment to support Native peoples in becoming leading voices on how to design, create, imagine and live in a more sustainable and resilient world.
This past fall we had the honor of documenting the prescribed fire traditions of the Karuk Tribe in Northern California and the sustainable forestry operations of the Menominee Tribe in Wisconsin. These stories are being woven into a feature length documentary Inhabitants due out in 2020. Folks have been asking a lot about the Woodlanders series and although I took a break last summer to focus on this feature film we are ramping up for a new season of short films starting in the Pacific Northwest next month. Thanks for your patience and support. — Costa Boutsikaris (2019)
#Woodlanders is an online film series that seeks to document the work of people who care for and depend on forests for their livelihood and well-being throughout the world.
Even among today’s progressive movements of local economy and food systems, the vast global knowledge of forest livelihoods and economies are mostly undervalued and undocumented. From woodcraft and nut tree cultures of ancient Europe, to mushroom and forest medicines of Asia, there many fascinating ways of creating sustainable economies from the forests while maintaining their ecological health and complexity. While filming Inhabit - A Permaculture Perspective I fell in love with woodland cultures and felt called to research further. Over the past year I began to create an accessible archive of these stories and I hope to share this inspiring world with you. Sustainable relationships with forests regenerate and protect these wild places while also offering livelihoods to humans. Each episode will focus on a person or culture who has a sustainable relationship and/or livelihood with a forest. Join me on the journey and learn how much forests can offer. — Costa Boutsikaris
#Inhabitants #documentary #film #nature #environment #climate #FirstPeoples #IndigenousPeoples #tribal #lands #community #people #climate-change #land #reservations #land-use #aboriginal #management #fires #bushfires #wildfires #forestry #dryland #farming #food #food-growing #well-being #wisdom #way-of-life #culture #tradition #food #food-growing #practices #natural #resources #ecology #stewardship #knowledge #education #adaptation #Karuk #Blackfeet #Hopi #Menominee #Hawaii #TraditionalEcologicalKnowledge #conservation #protection #preservation #sustainability #resilience #CostaBoutsikaris #InhabitFilms #docu-films
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q51FMbTOn_Q
More of everything
A film about Swedish Forestry
Subtitles are available in #English, #German, #Portuguese, #Finnish and #Swedish
Mankind has caused a two-fold global existential crisis. Interlinked threats of climate change and loss of biodiversity are now our most difficult challenges. The policy decisions made in the next few years will be critical. How we manage the world’s forests is central to maintaining biodiversity, protecting ecosystem functions and preserving the climate. Halting the destruction and fragmentation of natural forests as well as restoring, expanding and adapting the world’s forests to climate change is fundamental.
Scientists and the environmental movement have for decades warned about the negative effect that burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) has on climate and environment. There is no question - the fossil era is over. We must urgently phase out fossil energy, as quickly as possible. The focus, however, must be on reducing all combustion and decreasing energy use, not to replace one carbon-source with another.
At the international level and within the EU, various solutions and policies aim to regulate emissions and stimulate what is hoped to be sustainable solutions. Biofuels from forests are highlighted as a climate-friendly important piece of the puzzle by lobbyists from the biomass and forest industry. In the film, we ask whether burning trees really is a climate-smart alternative?
Decisions will be made, or have already been made, on climate and energy policies that affect the world’s forests. Policies on bio-economy and energy from biomass risk being in strong conflict with protecting biodiversity and mitigating climate change.
The Swedish forestry model is promoted as a success story, promising both climate change mitigation and safeguarding of biodiversity, but is this really true? In this film, a number of prominent independent scientists and experts are helping us examine the claims that the forest industry is spreading about the Swedish forestry model and the bio-economy.
The impact of the Swedish forestry model is not limited to Sweden but has implications for the rest of the world as well. Some of the world’s and EU’s largest forestry, hygiene, paper, furniture and wood companies such as SCA, Holmen, Stora Enso, Sveaskog, IKEA and Essity, all originate from or have their base in Sweden. Some of these companies source wood and pulp and operate in many parts of the world, thus spreading the Swedish forestry model around the globe.
In times of climate change, the forest industry claims to hold the magic wand: Wood. Wood is to be used for everything from energy, disposable articles in cardboard and paper, packaging and makeup, to fuel, for an ever-expanding transport sector. To push this narrative, the forest industry spends millions on advertising, public relations and lobbying in order to present their products and raw materials as the solution for a sustainable future. Representatives of the forest industry and members of Swedish parliament praise the Swedish forestry model which they claim has taken Sweden from ”a more or less deforested nation” hundred years ago to a rich forested nation today.
The forest industry portrays Sweden as a country with vast and increasing forests. The industry goes as far as to claim that: “The forest industry is making biodiversity possible” and that Swedish forestry is balancing the needs of the economy and the environment, and that 2 to 3 trees are being planted for each tree that is felled. Slogans like; for more than 100 years Sweden has been planting more trees than it cuts down, are being spread.
More of everything?
Can we really say that a planted monoculture of pine or spruce in straight lines is a forest? Or is a forest something more than just trees?
#MoreOfEverything #documentary #film #nature #environment #trees #forest #biodiversity #ecosystem #forestry #Sweden #ErikEriksson #ProtectTheForest #docu-films