“My species has the audacity to wage war against a biosphere that offers us life.”
“We cannot care for ecosystems without recognizing that we will always rely on them and we will always tax them… that human life will always come at a cost. We cannot choose if we will impact ecosystems, if we will impact people across the earth, if we will impact the lives of future generations. We can only choose what that impact will be.”
“The world is being degraded by those who do too much and those who do nothing.”
Some hard hitting material from author Ethan Tapper - a new breed of forester. It has been quite awhile since we focused and presented a quick survey of a book that is worthy of a read. How to Love a Forest by Ethan Tapper was one of my Christmas reads and it warranted a shoutout. Even if forests are not part of your interpretive heritage job, you owe it to yourself and the planet to read this book. And if forests are part of your bailiwick then it is a must read.
The basis of the book is proposing a new radical and responsible, relationship- based, land ethic -“a vision of freedom and power, resilience and humility, legacy, beauty and change.” People have the power and freedom to choose what that relationship and responsibility looks like. The visitors to our heritage sites, that we connect with, need to be exposed to (perhaps reminded of) many of the well expressed points that Ethan Tapper presents.
I especially found the chapter on humility powerful. Ethan mentions how it takes humility to admit that we are dependent on so many things that our incredible technology cannot replace or control. “Even as we infiltrate and alter every natural community on earth, we remain reliant on ecosystems for the air we breathe , the water we drink, the food we eat and the delicate climate we inhabit. We remain tethered to ecosystems.”
Humility is: understanding that grasping the entirety of ecosystems is still beyond our knowledge base. The author expresses it beautifully when contemplating an eroding cliff face that is becoming “something new, one thing becoming two, becoming many. (One) … could parse the biological communities woven around the cliff, all the organisms to whom the cliff is habitat, all the creatures whose breath, in winter, forms delicate ice crystals in the gaps of the rocks. Still the unearthing of every secret, and full expression of the cliff would elude us.”
One of many excellent pieces of prose is the following one that I suggest should handed out or be “placed” in some prominent position (over the visitor entrance door or desk) to ensure every visitor reads or hears it, in every park setting and every natural history museum, and botanic garden.
“…like this tree, I am a wild thing- a product of the biosphere, the thin veneer of life that surrounds this planet. Like every living thing I cannot exist without forests, without carbon pulled from the atmosphere by green leaves giving my body the ability to breathe and to move, without water, without soil, without oxygen exhaled by plants. … oxygen is a gift given freely by the green life of the biosphere, a vital and invaluable resource produced by ecosystems that ask nothing more than to be allowed to exist.”
His perspective on forestry especially is very enlightening. Loggers are not evil for taking trees from the forest but, “they were wrong for the way they took them: for failing to honour the value and the beauty of the forest, for failing to take the responsibility for the legacies that they left in their wake.” As a forester, he now sees himself not as a caretaker of trees but caretaker of the forest community.
“Beneath the legacies of human negligence and ignorance and greed , I caught glimpses of a world of promise.”
The author is quite clear that loving deer and hunting deer, loving trees and felling trees—can be radical expressions of a bigger picture community compassion. You need to delve into his writing to discover why he says, for example, that the cutting of a tree could be “an expression of compassion and humility, an act of healing, an act of love, that management could be restorative and regenerative.” He has realized that the management of a forest along the commodity path or “leave it alone” path are not the only options.
He expresses the benefit of leaving naturally decaying trees in place very effectively. The following is just one snippet: “As a tree’s biological life fades, its ecological life persists-a feast for other creatures. Countless lives will be born from her. As the tree decays, it will be decentralized, becoming a cooperative of millions of tiny things, the foundation of a complex and precious living community.”
I learned a new word from Ethan -necrosphere- he introduced me to a new ecological term for “the midwives of mortality responsible for the profound and beautiful process of tree death- the bacteria, the fungi, the boring and defoliating insect community of death - guide trees toward the end of their lives.” Ethan shares life lessons through the lens of observing natural processes: “thousands of tiny creatures are hard at work turning these scaffolds of cellulose and lignin into soil that will nourish the forest of the future. Today a community of living things is building something beautiful for whomever/whatever will follow.”
Forests are more than timber and fibre and a crop to be quickly and efficiently harvested without regard for the future. To remove the messy necrosphere and complex dynamic diversity, forest engineers unknowingly undermined (and many still are undermining) the forests’ resilience, vibrancy and health.
The author stresses that forest benefits are not luxuries but necessities providing renewable resources that are key to ecological, cultural and socio-economic human foundations as well as providing fundamental freedoms of existence. These benefits belong to all living things and to generations of future children.
With individual freedom one could “develop “ a forest- fragment it with houses, driveways, and lawns, mine its gravel and overexploit its timber as a source of wealth and power for one family for generations. Destroying a forest – means an ecosystem that had and could have enriched and sustained the lives of thousands of people and trillions of organisms for centuries - no longer can. These kind of choices “undermine the resilience, the self-reliance and the freedom of countless others.” **
Ecosystems have coevolved over millenia having formed elaborate physical, chemical and behavioural traits, helping them to coexist in dynamic equilibrium. At the same time this makes them unique, and vulnerable to invasive species, especially when challenged by human disruption that has fragmented, altered and climate change impacted their communities. If you are dealing with the problem of invasives at your site, you need to read his perspective.
At this moment in time when many espouse their desire to attain freedom of choice, Ethan also brings forward the necessary concept of responsibility that goes with that. His legacy chapter, about the US Vermont state where he lives, lays it out plainly: “Like the first people, the new people of the valley sustained themselves on the riches of the ecosystems. Unlike the first peoples, the new people viewed the ecosystems of the valley as things to be conquered and subjugated, mined for personal wealth.
Unlike the first people, they cleared the ancient forests, drained the wetlands, straightened the rivers, hunted the wildlife to extinction. Breathing earth’s air and drinking earth’s water, they farmed the rich soils, their crops pollinated by wild insects, sustained by the soil organism communities, and watered by the clouds seeded by trees. They built a complex society over the land, where development creep with ecosystem exploitation and destruction produced remnants of ecosystems, lying like carcasses by the sides of the road. People cannot choose the legacies they inherit only what they would make of them.”
He states clearly that everywhere, people continue to use their power to exploit ecosystems and to seek their own freedom at the expense of their children’s. Their actions are shrinking the biosphere, effecting the functioning of those ecosystems as well as the living conditions of other people in the world. Our lives will always come at a cost = we will always need energy, food and shelter. We have the free choice to consume with our eyes open or closed. Our job is to open more eyes.
The author talks about the present issue with people who see freedom as something to be taken away rather than something to be shared. I believe this is a concept worth discussing with visitors. “They (people) have been told that the only measures of their success are the riches they take for themselves: the wealth and power, the happiness and the freedom they can mine from this living world. Each believes they are independent racing against the others, grasping for individual freedom.” The author discusses the connections that have been forgotten.
“Each person holds a tiny piece of power: the freedom to destroy ecosystems or protect them, to destroy or protect each other” Just like trees, our roots are intertwined. Interpretive centres could initiate discussions around the concept of freedom, and interrelationships including their meaning and impact on all forms of “communities”.
Ethan pleads with the reader that we can either allow this biosphere - our home - to sink further into dysfunction and disarray or we can make (and assist others to make) the radical and bittersweet decisions necessary to choose a different path. The inconvenient and the uncomfortable decisions need to be wrestled with at our interpretive centres.
I will leave you with two of his thoughts:
“I believe that this forest, its creatures, its patterns and processes, its relationships and connection, has intrinsic value - the right to exist.”
“I see a better world as one where humans are actors, not bystanders, where we are brave and humble and imbued with responsibility.”
** ( Ethan unravels a biting analogy that I could not resist sharing)
“Like invasive plants by the highway, the chain and box stores rise from the asphalt to outcompete local businesses, extracting profits that enrich distant executives and shareholders, dominating the landscape-smothering its uniqueness, replacing diversity, and complexity with instable, sterile monoculture.” (but don’t forget they provide “low-paying jobs for local people stocking shelves with cheap products subsidized by the suffering of people, species and ecosystems somewhere far away where less stringent environmental regulations, human rights laws and labour laws exist).