Satellite Conservation, Synchronized Forests and Direct Defense.

Along with a poem. A busy week for forest advocates

My work on the Anomaly of the Global Heat Anomaly, in which official analyses of the 2023 planetary heat-spike included no consideration of living systems and what we are doing to them, has been delayed by more immediate demands in terms of the Fix Our Forest Act. On May 6, the Senate Agricultural Committee held a hearing on the bill, and I have been busy examining the questions and testimony. Given the speed at which this bill is progressing toward a final vote, I’m working on something of a report to help make sense of what was said and, most importantly, what wasn’t said.

In the meantime, there is plenty else to share.

I came across some interesting work this week by Melanie Lenart, a scientist who produces the Substack newsletter, Eco-logic. She analyzed satellite data compiled by the World Resources Institute to determine that logging, since 2001, caused three times more tree cover loss than wildfire. This is one of the great ironies of the log-it-or-it-will-burn management hypothesis: it kills for more trees than it will ever save.

I like that this work was done by an independent citizen scientist. I’m increasingly convinced that a scientifically savvy public is critical to countering corporate influence on our federal, state and local land management agencies.

Here as well is a fascinating review of a new study which shows how forests “synchronize electrical signals during a solar eclipse.” For the forest, and individual trees, it’s critical they respond properly when the moon slides in front of the sun. If they continue photosynthesizing, which includes massive releases of water vapor, they could dehydrate. What’s amazing about this study, is it shows that trees don’t respond to the eclipse as individuals but as a community, synchronizing their behavior. Even more importantly, older trees respond first, well in advance (fourteen hours!) of the eclipse, and appear to instruct the younger trees on how to respond. Be sure to watch the short video that comes with the piece, in which renowned researcher, Monica Gagliano, explains how this research “reinforces the idea that older trees cannot simply be replaced by replanting, but need to be protected, because they hold ancestral memory that allows for resilience and adaptation in the face of climatic change.”

Of course, better understanding isn’t enough by itself to protect the miraculous life around us. It requires political involvement and sometimes direct defense. Such an effort has been unfolding over the last few days here in Washington State, on the Olympic Peninsula. Environmentalist Max Wilbert, who writes the Substack newsletter Biocentric, covers the story here and here.

Lastly, I had the pleasure and honor of having one of my poems published in the journal Counterflow. Counterflow is published by the Wordstorm Society of the Arts, which serves the literary community of Vancouver Island and the Salish Sea Basin. A couple years ago they began a series of issues around the theme: Restor-volution, calling for a restoration revolution. It’s great to see an arts organization embracing the need to restore and protect the living world. This poem suggests that the change needed to do this begins inside us, but how does that happen? And does nature provide the template?

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Overturn


Transmutation, the turning of self
	into something else.
It’s easy for a fallen log
	nursing a cedar
or a caterpillar
	     on its ways to moth
or even a dinosaur
squeezing through time into a sparrow.

But what does a human being have to do?
Where is the forest-litter 
in the human lifespan
	     to grind down the constituents
take apart and rearrange, with tiny, scissoring jaws?

Who would purposely devise their own 
yearly composting for the purpose?

Die before you die, the mystics chant.
Live while you live, the poets sing.
     In between
you have a business card with the word: Time
and the egoless examples 
of things.

The etched glass on the table
           holds water
but before that, rain
and before that
breathing forest, and beneath that
dreaming aquifer, and in between--soil 
sister of ocean.

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