Planting Seeds

Here’s a bit of a head scratcher – there are multiple forms of deforestation. Wait? Isn’t deforestation just about cutting down trees? You’d think so, but it isn’t necessarily that simple. Deforestation isn’t simply loggers cutting down trees to be turned into houses, furniture, and paper. It is also clearing out trees for farms, both crops and cattle. Cattle farming for instance accounts for a lot of the deforestation occurring in the world, especially in Brazil. The crops the forest might get cleared out include rubber trees and cocoa plants, both of which are major cash crops in South America where much of the world’s rainforest is located. All of it takes away a significant part of the world’s oxygen producing trees. 

There have been lots of victories though. There are people who remember that once upon a time, vast swaths of forest were cut down, with no plans to replenish them. Back in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, it’s easy to see how Europeans would see the vast forests of this seemingly endless continent and act as though the supply of wood were endless. As we know, we learned differently. Fortunately, most logging companies in the West have some sort of replanting program. It takes time to replenish, especially when cutting down full grown oaks and other slow growth trees. They can take forty years or more before reaching full growth. Various pines grow faster but the wood isn’t as desirable for a variety of reasons. Some of those plans were not the best either. Part of FDR’s New Deal was a number of government programs designed to get people back to work. 

One of those programs was a replanting effort. One of the areas that it helped reforest was Northern Michigan. While it certainly accomplished that goal, anyone who has spent any time there will tell you a lot of the forests aren’t all that pretty. They’re full of jack pines planted almost in rows or scattered and clustered in ways you don’t see in an old growth forest. That’s because the people doing the planting didn’t know what they were doing. They were either throwing seeds randomly on the ground or trying to plant them in a mechanistically efficient way. The results aren’t what one would hope.

Still, all of those replanting initiatives – government and business alike - were a step in the right direction and it came about at a time when it was possible for environmentalists, businesses, and government to find middle ground. The environmentalists could be made to understand that trees meant homes for people and the businesses could be made to understand the need for replanting, and governments and businesses could be made to see that doing things like cutting all the trees next to a river led to problems later as erosion accelerated immensely without the tree’s root systems to both use the water and hold the soil. 

Unfortunately, times are different now. The positions are more extreme and every side is more intractable than ever. Yet, it is clear that some kind of middle ground has to be found. As vast as the South American rainforests are, they are not infinite. We have to figure out some way to get the resources we need to house, feed, and clothe nearly 8 billion people while still leaving something for future generations. Part of that will likely be simply consuming less. Rather than buying a new piece of furniture, it might be worth refurbishing what you have. Or build new out of scrap like pallet wood. A few less hamburgers wouldn’t hurt either. That means less forest is cut down to make room for more cows. 

Finding the best solutions that will keep people working and not living in a van down by the river while also protecting the planet as a whole will not be easy, it will take a lot of data. Data that you can share and purchase on TARTLE. Data on what conservation efforts are most effective, data on the effect of various practices and policies, data that can point the way to solutions for everyone. 

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