In part 2 of our conversation with Conservation North, Michelle Connolly gives us a lesson in forest ecology and forestry semantics. How does British Columbia and the forestry industry use seemingly ‘green’ language to justify more logging of the province’s natural forests? Who is forestry sustainable for? The planet? The species? Or the companies?
We also get a sneak peek into Conservation North’s new report on U.K. biofuel producer Drax, and how they’re continuing to source materials from rare old growth forests.
Learn more about Conservation North on their website and read the report they co-authored, Logging What's Left.
Make sure to check out the show notes on the podcast webpage for more links and helpful resources.
You can help this community grow by sharing the podcast with your friends.
In part 2 of our conversation with Conservation North, Michelle Connolly gives us a lesson in forest ecology and forestry semantics. How does British Columbia and the forestry industry use seemingly ‘green’ language to justify more logging of the province’s natural forests? Who is forestry sustainable for? The planet? The species? Or the companies?
We also get a sneak peek into Conservation North’s new report on U.K. biofuel producer Drax, and how they’re continuing to source materials from rare old growth forests.
Learn more about Conservation North on their website and read the report they co-authored, Logging What's Left.
Make sure to check out the show notes on the podcast webpage for more links and helpful resources.
You can help this community grow by sharing the podcast with your friends.
Welcome to The Clear Cut. Hi, I'm Janet Sumner, Executive Director at Wildlands League.
Kaya Adleman:And I'm Kaya Adleman, Carbon Manager at Wildlands League.
Janet Sumner:Wildlands League is a Canadian conservation organization working on protecting the natural world.
Kaya Adleman:The Clear Cut is bringing to you the much-needed conversation on Canadian forest management and how we can better protect one of Canada's most important ecosystems, as our forests are reaching a tipping point.
Janet Sumner:Okay, good afternoon Kaya.
Kaya Adleman:Good afternoon.
Janet Sumner:I don't know what time it is where you're listening, but good afternoon. We have just finished the first episode, or first podcast episode, with Michelle Connolly from Conservation North. That was a pretty great conversation and we're going to get into even more. I found with this one that I mean with all of our guests I'm always learning something, but it was. I really liked the clarity of how she explains things and the words she chooses, and it might be hard hitting or a little bit radical for some people, but it really puts the ideas in stark perspective, and so I really enjoyed listening to Michelle talk and certainly learned a lot about the dynamics of BC, old growth etc. To some extent maybe exposing the rest of the forest to being explored and not keeping people out of the intact and the natural areas, but rather partitioning the forest in a way that it actually almost increased more access into the natural areas.
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, no, I agree, I like this section of the discussion as well, I think. Personally, for me, what I found really interesting was the discussion that you'll hear about language and how that's used to convey certain attitudes or notions about forests and the forest industry, and as someone who studied greenwashing quite a bit, I think it's something that is interesting to kind of dive deeper into and to bring to this discussion in a greater context as well.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, we start. We start the conversation with Michelle where she's mentioning about nuking the forest and gives her a definition of what that is, and then the types of controls that are used in light of insect outbreaks and fires. And again that mention of language and how language shapes things and how it results sometimes in unintended consequences that you didn't know you were choosing when you use certain words. So that, for me, is a great place to start with nuking the forest and what it means for Michelle.
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, I can't wait to get into it. And, by the way, if you are just tuning in to our discussion with Michelle now, this is part two, so I encourage you to go back and listen to part one two. So I encourage you to go back and listen to part one, which is the episode titled Is Forestry Pathological?
Janet Sumner:And then come back to this one. So, michelle, I just want to unpack that a little bit. When you say about the spruce beetle and you also said about nuking the forest, so I'm assuming that you're talking about the spraying of pesticides to get rid of the or you're talking about nuking them in terms of harvesting? I know that in yes, they've used surge cuts kind of thing.
Janet Sumner:So is that also true in bc, where you've had surge cuts, where you basically have an allowable cut level, and then you say, oh, throw on an extra 10 or 15 because oh my goodness, this search we've seen spruce beetle.
Michelle Connolly:We need to get rid of it uh, yes, so I I've never heard that term surge cut before, but but yes, it basically. Uh, they enable through lowering the stumpage. So that's the mechanism through which bc collects a rent essentially off of licensees operating on public lands. It's a payment they make, so the stumpage drops to almost nothing in order to encourage the annihilation of post-disturbance stands.
Michelle Connolly:And no, I wasn't talking about spraying for beetles. Yeah, I guess it's the right place to talk about that. You know, in professional forestry there's the belief that you can somehow control insects through logging. So, yes, if you eliminate the forests that's what I meant by nuking. I should have been more clear about that I meant industrially logging them and, of course, standard practices is clear-cut logging. So that's what those places look like. That had the spruce beetle. There's an area called the Anzac, or it's in the, it's in the parsnip drainage, north of Prince George. That's kind of what we consider the poster child of that terrible type of management that chases natural disturbances like that, natural disturbances like that. So, yes, the licensees pay a very small charge when the trees are dead and then they're considered quote salvage.
Janet Sumner:Yes, surgecut is from my time working on forestry in Alberta and with the pine beetle infestation, what they chose to do was these surge cuts which allowed companies to go in and have a surge in their allowable cut for I'm going to say it was over 10 years, but I think it might have even been longer than that and it was essentially to go in and clean up the forest. After all of this pine beetle devastation Isn't it.
Michelle Connolly:Isn't it funny the language that gets used clean up as if it was like somehow dirty before. I find that hilarious. All the language in forestry is really amusing because it's so full of euphemism. Yeah, I mean, one of the pernicious myths of modern forestry is that you can log your way out of an insect outbreak. There's no scientific consensus that that's possible. Episodic outbreaks of insects are climatically related and we can't control the antecedent conditions that promote outbreaks.
Michelle Connolly:There's a leading researcher in the US named Diana Six who talks about this. And of course, wildlife habitat and ecological functions persist in beetle-attacked stands. Forests recover far sooner from beetle outbreaks if they're left alone and they're severely compromised by logging. So lots has been written by that. Dead trees play an ecological role equal to or greater than their role as living trees. They're not wasted fiber, as the industry likes to put it, and in fact all of our old growth forests actually owe their structure and complexity to the natural workings of insects disease fire. So those elements create complexity, they're complexifying agents. But of course, those things are basically being rebranded by those in power as bad, catastrophic things that are only the result of climate change, which is not true, and they're used essentially as a Trojan horse for logging. So that's the concept of forest health, which is not an ecological term, it's an economic one, and teaching the public about this is really a central push for our group and it's going to be in the coming years because of this direction.
Kaya Adleman:Yeah. I was gonna, sorry, go ahead. Well, I was gonna say say it seems like the policy fears disturbance related to, I guess, natural processes like wildfires and insect outbreaks, versus human caused disturbances and in fact sees human caused disturbances as a solution to the natural disturbances in the forest.
Michelle Connolly:Yeah, it's actually hilarious the way that works and once you see it, you can't stop seeing it everywhere you go. Yeah, industrial forestry interests use natural disturbances as an excuse to log. Native insect outbreaks have been used to manufacture consent for logging for years. But we're seeing, we're seeing it all ramp up now because the mills are desperate for wood and the industry needs a claim to virtue.
Michelle Connolly:So they, they're, they're kind of they're using you know, humans don't deal with death very well. Right, like we don't understand. We don't really understand death. Our culture is really terrible at really contending with it, and it's almost like they're, they're, they're using, um, like the human understanding of death, uh, in forests. But it's not the same, because all forests are built on dead trees.
Michelle Connolly:Disease, death and decay are such important processes and elements in natural ecosystems in forests. But it's not the same, because all forests are built on dead trees. Disease, death and decay are such important processes and elements in natural ecosystems. That's how soil is made, that's how you create, you know, coarse, witty debris and snags and standing dead trees, like all the niches that wildlife need, are based on death and decay and natural forests. So they're really kind of they're using the fact that a lot of people now who don't get to spend time in nature and haven't observed, you know, the structure of a natural forest and haven't gotten the feelings that come from being in a self-willed ecosystem and felt that they're really kind of exploiting the fact that a lot of people equate death and decay with just bad things, and that's what's leading to this. So our work over the next few years will be a lot about emphasizing the importance of keeping these kind of processes in natural forests and making it so that people aren't scared of them.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, I think this is one of the reasons that we're doing this podcast, the Clear Cut, because what I was finding is I was seeing terminology or approaches that were being used in some parts of Canada that were kind of migrating maybe not word for word, but migrating whether it's you know that insect infestations were, or insect surges were creating a rationale, or creating the opportunity for a rationale, to access areas and create more opportunity for logging. And I've seen the same kind of thing with fire. I've seen Canada's response to the megafires become you know, or some of the industry associations become, oh well, then that means we need to log more so we can prevent these fires. Um, and I, I've seen, I've seen all different kinds of movements on this, and it seems to me that this is why I wanted to do this podcast, because I wanted to actually bring these conversations to the public. I think it is so.
Janet Sumner:All of this forestry work and managing of the forest and how forests work has become shrouded in so much detail that it's very hard for the average person to cut through and understand. Like protecting old growth. You would think that that would be a really great idea and, as you said, you were, you know part of the problem. You agreed with it and what I could see from the outside, when we were talking about old growth and when I was listening to some of my colleagues, they were imagining that if you protected old growth that it would actually almost work as a cascade. Like you've got old growth trees in this forest, so that means we're going to protect the forest. Instead, what it became was, oh, let's draw a line around this little copse of old growth trees and get the rest of the forest. And so it didn't actually work the way we thought.
Janet Sumner:It's kind of like charismatic megafauna I've seen, like caribou Policy changes have occurred and we've said, oh, we need to protect habitat. But instead what we do when faced with a big problem, we go let's airlift those caribou out, pen them and then bring them back, even though we haven't protected the habitat. So it's like every time we try to say, okay, let's have a sane approach to this, where if we manage for this umbrella species, it should have a knock-on effect for the entire ecosystem. Or, in the case of old growth, if we protect old growth it'll get entire forests protected, and we just we keep coming back to the same problem. We actually have to find out where we can say no, where it just doesn't happen.
Michelle Connolly:Yes, and what you're saying points to the importance of clarity, accuracy and precision in how we talk about what we want in BC about this topic, because there's a way in which the you know, the scene really excludes people that think they don't have enough knowledge to engage with it, and that's because of, you know, this veneer of professionalism. People on the inside going we've got it under control they always have a very rational way of describing what they want to do. That makes you know, that makes it sound like they're in control. This is how we solve this problem. But when you go just underneath the surface, you realize that it all means the same thing they want the old, they want the places that have been disturbed and they want, you know, they want everything. So we really feel that being precise in our messaging has kind of helped us be really clear about what we want, and we really think that other groups should also, you know, do the same thing.
Michelle Connolly:It's a lot of. It's a language game, as you know. Like I said, forestry is full of euphemisms and I could probably talk about that all day, but it's very important to kind of understand that this actually doesn't require some kind of technical understanding about forestry or forestry terms. We can actually speak our own language about what matters to us, which is simply protecting nature, and you can describe that as the places that are still self-hold and self-managed.
Janet Sumner:If you like listening to the Clear Cut and want to keep the content coming, support the show. It would mean a lot to Kai and I. The link to do so will be in the episode description below.
Kaya Adleman:You can also become a supporter by going to our website at wwwwildlandsleagueorg. Slash the clear cut and also make sure to leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming platform. It would really help the podcast.
Janet Sumner:Wow, this has been exactly the conversation I want to have with Michelle.
Janet Sumner:It's really quite fun, so I actually want to go, maybe to. So you've already explained to us that the BC is actually still cutting old growth. I know that Canada is starting to look at its definition of degradation and apparently we have no deforestation, or almost no deforestation in Canada because we don't have a land use change. And if folks want to listen to me talk about that, you can listen to our conversation on logging scars, because I go into depth about what I think about that conversation on logging scars, because I go into depth about what I think about that, and I think Canada is also looking or beginning to look at it's called the LULUCF land use land. I forget what all the acronyms are, but basically it's how land use change and forests operate under the climate agreements. But maybe you can just talk to us because you have talked about how managing forests simplifies those ecosystems. Can you talk about what you see as forest degradation, because I know Canada's looking to actually make a definition on that.
Michelle Connolly:Right. Well, our definition of forest degradation is very inconvenient for the big forestry interests. But, from our perspective, roads and logging degrade natural forests because they tend to destroy the complexity and the structure in natural forests that developed over millennia. So there's a continuum, of course, of forest degradation. But for you know, for simplicity and for our ability to communicate with the public and properly focus on what we actually want, we divide it into two categories. There's primary forests, so natural forests that have never been industrially logged, and then we have degraded forests that have had some kind of previous history of industrial logging. Primary forests are at the top because those are the most complex and stable and support the greatest number of species. And at the opposite extreme you have commercial plantations that are at the bottom extreme of unhealthiness because they lack the habitats our wildlife need to survive of some human use are in between, like, for example, naturally regenerated secondary forest that emerged after, you know, logging in the, say, 40s or 50s.
Michelle Connolly:So yeah, natural ecosystems are organized and connected in strange and interesting ways. They're full of relationships we don't see, you know, underground fungal networks and their connections with trees, for example. And some people say natural ecosystems have hidden wiring. Well, when you degrade a forest, you're pulling out the threads in that textile. You know, if you think of a complex ecosystem like a blanket, you're degrading a forest when you start interfering with those complexities.
Michelle Connolly:People talk about the emergent properties in complex systems. So those are features in nature that are unexpected and arise from the collaborative functioning of a system, but don't belong to any one part of that system. It's something that a system has but individual members of that system don't have. So a core idea that comes up when you read about natural ecosystems is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Well, when you degrade a forest, you're slowly taking out and eliminating the elements that are critical for those emergent properties to happen and for that complexity. So that's why we think that industrial logging degrades forests. Yeah, in terms of deforestation, the logging scars research that you did, janet, was really earth shattering, because so many people had said like, yeah, deforestation doesn't happen in Canada and you kind of subverted that message by saying, actually, even by your own definition, it does happen. So yeah, most, a lot of people we talk to still think that deforestation means logging. But of course, if we adhere to the silly international definition, it's not. It's not deforestation, it's forest degradation.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, that's a deforestation, um, it's forest degradation. Yeah, that's a challenge, isn't it? We want to move to your recent report, or the, the focus on it, uh, from the international which is around the drax and maybe you could tell us a little bit about that.
Michelle Connolly:Sure so, uh. So a group in the UK, biofuel Watch. We've been working with them for a few years now to share what's happening on the ground here with audiences in England which are, of course, consuming the electricity that is coming from the Drax plant in the UK, and they are importing large quantities of pellets that come from primary forests in BC. So, because you know, at least 95% of the logging in BC comes is from is in primary forests, we knew for sure that primary forest material was ending up in the Drax plant. What we didn't realize, though, is is that, uh, the rarest old growth in BC is getting logged and some of that material is going to the Drax plant. So we did an analysis, um with biofuel watch, of the timber marks. So we use the provincial government publicly available data to look at where the raw material was coming from, and the biggest, you know the biggest loggers of rare oil growth in BC are Camphor and West Fraser. So of course they were the ones doing the logging, and the material that they were bringing out of these rare oil growth areas, which are called priority deferral areas, are ending up in the Drax pellet mills here and of course we have eight Sorry in this part of BC there are four Drax mills, so some of the material from rare oil growth is actually ending up in them.
Michelle Connolly:So the report is it's a very short report and BBC reported on it a few days ago and I think it's really surprising audiences in the UK because, of course, drax is claiming that they don't use old growth. But you know, in my in my opinion, the ultimate destination of the material coming from old growth is not what's important. The important thing is that it's getting logged in the first place. So even if it was, you know, getting made into a fancy table that a celebrity was going to use, we still don't think that the old growth should be logged, so so so I think it was a real shock for British people to learn that the material from old growth was going into that. But really, from our perspective, the original problem is that it's getting logged in the first place, regardless of what the material is going towards.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, I agree with you. I mean it's whether or not the old growth is being logged. I would imagine, though, for most people, they would like to know the source of the fiber. So whether it's your kitchen table, or whether it is furniture in your house or wood for your home or burning pellets, you want to know what your source is, and that's got to be shocking to find out that it's coming from old growth forests.
Janet Sumner:When you're being told that it's green energy and it's sustainable, that it's green energy and it's sustainable, I mean, that's the other thing I guess that I've always found really challenging around pellets, just in general, is because Canada has a reputation globally that we have promoted, that we are one of the most sustainable sources for fiber, and if you're having to constantly expand into new intact areas or new primary forests, I don't know how that can be true, because if it's sustainable, shouldn't you be able to operate on the same footprint instead of having to expand into all these new areas? So that's one of the things that's always been a conundrum for me to try and figure that out, because I don't understand how that assertion can be made.
Michelle Connolly:Yes, yes, when people say sustainable, I always ask them to define it. To us, it means something you can do for a really long time forever, basically without causing lasting or major harm to the earth. So, as you said, if all the logging in interior BC is a primary forest, how on earth is that sustainable? So it's possible, one day, you know, if we get our act together and are focusing on second growth and leaving the primary forest alone, you might be approaching a situation where you could argue that, you know, industrial logging is sustainable in some places. But you're absolutely right, it's nowhere near that right now.
Michelle Connolly:And, of course, drax is being I get asked a lot about. You know how much we dislike Drax and, to be totally honest, drax is enabled by some academics, by the BC government, by professional foresters signing off on it. And they're getting away with this because local interests are essentially assigning the following descriptors to primary forests they're calling them waste, residuals, unhealthy, low value, low quality, damaged, diseased, fire prone, those. Those are all descriptors for natural forests. Right, that's? That's the euphemistic thing I was talking about.
Michelle Connolly:So, as as much as Drax is annoying in that they, you know, they're sourcing from here, I actually place more of the blame on on our own government and and our local enablers. You see the language I just mentioned. In government and industry press releases and promotional videos and company reports, their industry and BBC government is trying to manufacture consent for logging more primary forests by referring to them as being low quality somehow. So you know, I always point to an interview that a university did with a biomass magazine a few years ago where he describes how we've got an abundance of quote low grade or low quality fiber and he suggests that we should relieve the landscape of this forest and replace it with a healthier forest, which would mean to forestry a plantation.
Michelle Connolly:So it's all about the use of language, convincing people that natural forests are worthless and that the best thing and the most virtuous thing that we can do is to replace them with, you know, a human created system can do is to replace them with, you know, a human created system. So that's that's like the underlying belief of everybody in this system. It's really not just Drax and, you know, unpopular opinion here, but I actually sort of felt sorry for the company and the people being interviewed because they have no idea what's going on here. They have no idea I have a.
Kaya Adleman:I have a question. When you said that from the article the fiber that's being taken out of those priority deferral areas, those are areas that are outlined by the BC government to not be logged in. Is that correct?
Michelle Connolly:Yeah Well, thank you for the question. I should have clarified that. So two years ago the BC government pulled together five experts on oil growth technical experts, two ecologists, two foresters and an additional person and they were tasked with identifying and mapping the rarest old growth in BC. So they did that and the final product is actually publicly available online. They mapped the very rarest, most vulnerable. They mapped all the old growth, but then they also looked at the subset the most kind of rare according to forest type. So, for example, where most of the forest type has already been eliminated, they map the rarest forms of old growth on the ground.
Michelle Connolly:And then the BC government identified those areas as what they called priority deferral areas. The concept of a priority deferral area does not invoke protection, so all it means is that it's been identified as the rarest old growth. At least half of those priority deferrals are not under any kind of protection right now, so they're all open for business and that is where Canfor is still logging West Fraser and then allowing Drax to obtain some of the material from those places, at least in this part of BC. So the concept of a priority deferral is really just a place that's been identified as really rare. The government has not outlawed any logging in them.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, so can I just ask a further question, Because you said that you were in the report. You were able to use the government's own data to figure out the flow of fiber to the mills. How were you able to do that? How does that work? The harvest billing?
Michelle Connolly:system and then we also used spatial information that was attached to that. So we were able to have the maps of the priority deferral areas and overlay that with areas of cut blocks recent cut blocks from 2023. So we restricted the analysis to 2023 because we wanted the most recent snapshot of what was happening. So we were able to basically see the overlap between the priority deferrals and where these companies were logging and then which logs from that were ending up in the Drax mill. So it was Biofuel Watch. Actually, they had a person do most of the analysis on this, and so he teased out of that data that much of this material was the you know material ending up at the Drax plant was coming from the deferral areas.
Janet Sumner:And while I agree with you, the fact that they're being logged is the problem. I've often had the conversation and maybe this is taking us towards what does the future look like? But I've often had the conversation and maybe this is taking us towards what does the future look like? But I've often had the thought that if we were to be able to diversify economically how we use fiber and the fiber that we use, then it might create it would create a more resilient economic future for local communities. It would decrease demand and I guess that's what I'm hoping.
Janet Sumner:So if you're creating these, I guess, what I'd call fast products, if you're producing pellets, it's going to literally go up in smoke within the year, so that's a very fast used product and it can then just generate more demand. And that's what I'm seeing happening across Canada, where provinces are saying let's expedite access or increase annual allowable cuts in some cases, like Ontario has, so that we can have more pellets and more creation of pellets. So if we were to take a look at the fiber system and actually make it so that it could still create economic value for people, because you live in an area that depends on the economy of forestry or that it's been centered around that. Is there a way to start a diversification that would, at the same time, decrease demand and and and uh and pressure to move into new natural areas, while at the same time allowing us to use second growth and maybe other products that we create out of the forest? Or what does that forest future look like for you?
Michelle Connolly:Yeah. So to start, I would say that BC's forest industry actually makes a comparatively low contribution to the GDP of about 3%. So the contribution of industrial forestry, of the forest industry and the economy will likely continue to be forestry-derived. However, we think that should actually just come from second growth, not natural forests. Commenting on what the future economy will look like, we really do think that more responsible management of secondary forests can yield material that can be used for other products definitely so when someone mentions the bioeconomy, that's how I imagine it. We need an economy based on responsible management and some extraction from the previously logged areas, and that can probably look like many things, to be honest, like we're somewhat agnostic about what those things are. When it comes to secondary forests, I think that's the realm of you know people that have a background in economics. I really think that that's actually where forestry expertise shines is like how to manage places for other things. I think that it really ought to be focused just on secondary forests.
Michelle Connolly:I do think that there is a future for, you know, doing more forestry in second growth, you know, perhaps an economy based around restoration. Somehow that's going to be the direction we have to go in, um, and I don't know much about restoration at all, but I know that, um, we're going to have to do it in a lot of the you know horrific looking industrial plantations that cover this part of BC. Like we have no choice, we're going to have to go in there. Um, they're going to have to go in there. They're disaster zones. So if we can somehow have that sort of win-win, which might sound a bit naive Unfortunately I've been hearing a lot of that kind of like win-win talk coming from the other end. That's actually about logging primary forests.
Michelle Connolly:There's an academic from UBC who's a proponent of extracting from bioenergy sorry, extracting from primary forests in order to somehow deal with wildfire risk and using that material for, you know, pellets or other elements of the bioeconomy. And of course, we see those problems and point them out because we can't really you can't help, you can't help these issues by pulling out the most commercially valuable trees from those forests. So I do believe that we do have hope for a positive future in our region, but the basis for that actually is to have coherent policy on protecting biodiversity and what the areas that it needs. And we've never had that Like despite the fact that BC is the most biodiverse province in Canada. We have no coherent conservation policy.
Michelle Connolly:We've never systematically looked at like what do grizzly bears need, you know? What does northern goshawk need? What do rare plants need? We've never done that. It's Wild West here, right. Rare plants need. We've never done that. It's Wild West here, right. So before we start looking at the economics, we actually need to follow through on what the government's committed to, which is a whole paradigm shift and prioritizing nature. That needs to happen first, but we can concurrently actually talk about what kinds of economic futures we want coming from secondary forests too.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, we had a good comment by Francois Dufresne, who's the CEO of FSC Canada, who said we need to change the paradigm around to say what can the forest provide, and then have that conversation right. And then I would add the frame that you and I have both been talking about is staying out of those primary forests. What can the forest provide?
Michelle Connolly:Unfortunately, fsc actually certifies primary forest logging here and one of the things we discovered was that pellets were coming from FSC certified forests that were logged. We were invited to Japan a few months ago to talk about to Japanese financiers, media and industry, to talk about what's happened here, and one of the things they wanted us to discuss was certification and, to be totally honest, like I'd never taken certification seriously at all because I just I didn't think it mattered, and really what I realize now is that it's actually enabling more destruction, because in Japan they apparently take the FSC certification quite seriously and they were shocked to learn that FSC certified primary forest logging was ending up in pellet plants. So that was a shock for me as well. Looking into that, and of course the other certification schemes are also guilty of that, which are the ones that are considered even less rigorous from an ecological perspective. So CSA and SFI, so all the certification schemes out there support primary forest logging and certify products coming out of primary forests.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, no, it's definitely a concern. There are improvements to be made in certification, that's for darn sure. Yeah, absolutely so. Kaia, do you have any concluding remarks? Or, Michelle, do you want to make any concluding statements or even posit any intriguing questions?
Michelle Connolly:Also, michelle, feel free to speak to an audience If someone just like an average person listening to other community groups, and one of the messages that we try to convey really strongly is that you don't need special expertise to get involved in resisting the logging of primary forests in your area. Make up your own mind about what your priority is as a community group. Your goals should come from you. Don't listen to the so-called experts about you. Know what's happening, make decisions for yourself, map out what the primary forests are in your area and then, you know, design your own campaign around trying to protect them.
Michelle Connolly:Like I said earlier, there's a kind of like elevated professionalism that gets in the way of regular people being involved in advocating for natural forest protection, and I think that deters a lot of people from getting involved. That's definitely the case in BC. This kind of like only experts have the right to comment on the destruction of biodiversity. That is not the case. So, yeah, one of the things that we're trying to do is to inspire other community groups forming and doing the same and doing something similar if their local priorities are biodiversity protection.
Janet Sumner:That's fantastic. Yeah, I think it's going to depend on all of us to care and love for our forests to keep them standing.
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, I mean they're mostly on public land, right? So it's not like it's all of us.
Michelle Connolly:Yes, absolutely, and you know we didn't talk about this a whole lot, but having that emotional connection to nature is actually what will drive you and what will give you the motivation to continue fighting for them. I think, you know, a cultural disconnection from nature is part of the reason that we're seeing these issues with not you know, the dropping of, basically annihilation of nature.
Janet Sumner:So, yeah, spending time in our local forest is a really big, important thing for us to do, and we encourage other people to do it as well, who are saying, well, I'm seeing what we're doing and I'm not seeing it come back. And often they go into those areas of study because, like you, they love the natural world and they love being out in the forest and maybe for a time they believe that it's all going to be good and that we can manage it. But at some point they may retire and come to a conclusion that, oh my goodness, it's not doing what I thought it was going to do. So I think that it includes all of us, everybody, whether you're working in the industry or you live in an area, or maybe you live outside of an area, but you visit the forest and have a love for it. It's good to get involved.
Michelle Connolly:Yes, in fact, our best allies are people that worked on the ground in the forest industry. We hear from loggers, truck loggers, quite regularly, because they're the people that have seen what's happening. They've lived it and seen it, so they're natural allies with us because they understand.
Janet Sumner:Yeah Well, michelle, you did not disappoint. This is a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much. And yeah, so, thank you so much. And a few times I had to kind of just pull my head because I couldn't laugh or sort of I was smiling too hard. But yeah, I really, really appreciate the conversation. It's been an absolute treat.
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, thanks Thanks for taking the time to talk to the Clearcut and to us. I feel like I learned actually a lot. Yeah, thanks, thanks for taking the time to talk to to the clear cut and to us. I feel like I learned actually a lot, so thank you.
Michelle Connolly:Thanks very much for having me on the program. It's a real privilege to speak with you both.
Kaya Adleman:Hey, are you liking the clear cut as much as we like making it? Your donation helps us bring more of these important stories to life. Your donation helps us bring more of these important stories to life. You can actually support our work by going to our website, wwwwildlandsleagueorg. Slash the clear cut, or you can click the link in the episode description below your support means the world to us.
Janet Sumner:Okay, one of the things that I liked about this episode, or what Michelle talks about, is that fire and insect outbreaks are complexifying agents in a healthy forest and yet what we're using them now as almost like a Trojan horse or a reason that we need to go in and do more logging reason that we need to go in and do more logging. I found that language really helped me understand what I kind of sort of knew intuitively was going on, and she says manufacturing consent for a lot yeah.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, that was very interesting and and just how that um, that this idea that they've identified where old growth is, is being used and turned into wood pellets and being shipped for incineration in a Drax mill as a zero emission climate solution.
Michelle Connolly:Mm-hmm.
Janet Sumner:It's just like you can't make this stuff up. This just is some dystopian I I don't know world where up is down and down is up. It doesn't make any sense to be treating old growth that took three or five hundred years to grow as a zero emission coming out of a, a drax plant. It's frightening, frightening, absolutely frightening.
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, definitely. I think it's definitely reflective of the, just as Michelle was talking about language and how that's used to obscure the realities of certain policy outcomes or just to obscure the reality of burning biomass in coal power plants overseas.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, and we should not think about this as being limited to British Columbia. I mean, michelle is focusing in on British Columbia because these are the forests that she works on, but in terms of wanting to see more biomass being used or turned into biofuels or wood pellets, that is something that many other provinces have looked at. They're trying to increase the. They've even in some provinces like Ontario, they've even increased the annual allowable cut to make room for the larger harvest level so that we can create more wood pellets and ship them wherever.
Janet Sumner:And just so everybody is clear, wildland sling is not against the burning of biofuels for energy. We just think that the carbon all has to be counted and it also is presumptive on a sustainable harvest, which is questionable if you're going to be taking down three or 500-year-old trees, they're certainly not going to be. You're not going to have regrown that complex forest ecosystem for at least another 500 years. So there is no world in which you can argue that that's coming from a sustainably harvested forest or that it is carbon neutral. And that's certainly the case across Canada as well, because if you're taking down trees that are even 80 or 100 years old, it's going to take to regenerate that forest it would take at least 80 to 100 years and if you've been listening to the podcast, you probably know that we would only argue that you're able to regrow some trees, not necessarily a complex system like a forest.
Kaya Adleman:Argue that you're able to regrow some trees, not necessarily a complex system like a forest Mm-hmm, right, I think, maybe just to pivot away from biomass specifically. But I think for me one of the standouts from our conversation with Michelle is this idea of what is radical. I mean, michelle says herself that in the first episode that when she was describing her career trajectory that some environmental groups for her were too moderate, and that's kind of the genesis of the formation of Conservation North. And she herself even alludes to this idea that her values are often perceived as radical. And I would kind of want to challenge that. I don't think her values are radical at all. I don't think it's a radical idea that, given, as Michelle says, 80% of the world's forest has been industrialized, we should not continue to expand that industrial footprint into the remaining 20% that's left. I don't necessarily think it's radical that we should be protecting these places, given the current state of the climate and the rapid decline of global wildlife and species populations. And I don't think it's a radical idea that communities who live in these forests should have agency or a say in what goes on in them.
Kaya Adleman:And we did talk a lot in this episode about language and how it's used in a way that issues and policies are framed to manufacture a public perception, to gain control of a dialogue, and I think that's kind of where this term radical falls in. It's often thrown at a lot of people working in these spaces by those who have kind of vested political and economic interests to maintain the status quo. But I guess I would encourage people to maybe even like in their lexicon of looking at language in forestry issues when that term radical is used, maybe just apply some critical thinking skills to it, like why is it? Why is that word being used? Why? Why does someone who's being labeled as radical? Why do they care about protecting natural and primary forests?
Kaya Adleman:Is it because you know, we're all tree hugging hippies, as one of my old teachers used to say, who have this malicious agenda to destroy industry and stop economic growth? I don't think. Do the solutions that are being proposed by advocacy people like Michelle? Are they unreasonable? Are they outlandish? I mean, I don't think that they sound outlandish from what she was describing on the episode. I think that's definitely one of the key takeaways for me is this idea of language and applying some thinking and analysis of the words that are being used, why they're being used, by whom are they being used, et cetera.
Janet Sumner:That's radical I'm just kidding. I was going to say I really appreciate you highlighting that, because it can't possibly be radical to say we need to stay out of some of the intact natural forests, which is essentially her message, right, and so I agree with you. I'm glad that you pushed back on Michelle's and she was almost apologetic about it.
Janet Sumner:So I'm really glad that we featured her on the podcast and we gave her a platform from which to speak because, if anything, I think that Michelle is very rational and in her arguments and puts forward a really good set of arguments to be considering. You know what happens with insect outbreaks and fires and how we treat them and the concept of, you know, maybe not logging the last of the natural forests that we have left in Canada and seeking a way to reconfigure, logging or reconfigure forestry in terms of second growth, etc. So when you look at those as just plain statements, they don't seem that radical, or not to many. I don't think, and I would hazard a guess, that that's not the case for many people who are listening to the podcast. So thanks for bringing that up. Not the case for many people who are listening to the podcast.
Kaya Adleman:So thanks for bringing that up. Yeah, I think it's important to analyze ideas and concepts as they are instead of putting language on them that or putting adjectives to those ideas and concepts that can obscure their true purpose and intention.
Janet Sumner:Or try to silence.
Kaya Adleman:Yes.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, all right. Well, thanks for another great conversation to Michelle. Thank you very much for appearing on the podcast and, as always, kaya, thanks for making the magic happen behind the scenes so that we can get the podcast published every week or so.
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, thank you, this was a good episode. Yeah, thank you, this is a good episode.
Janet Sumner:If you like listening to the Clear Cut and want to keep the content coming, support the show. It would mean a lot to Kaya and I. The link to do so will be in the episode description below.
Kaya Adleman:You can also become a supporter by going to our website at wwwwildlandsleagueorg. Slash the clear cut and also make sure to leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming platform. It would really help the podcast and stay tuned for new episodes by following us on social media.
Janet Sumner:That's at Wildlands League on Instagram, twitter and Facebook or LinkedIn, of course.
Kaya Adleman:See you next time.