Speaker 1: Oh boy, it could happen here. That's the name of
Speaker 1: the podcast, and I'm Robert Evans, the guy hosting the podcast.
Speaker 1: Who else is with me? Is it? Is it? Garrison? Hello,
Speaker 1: Good morning, afternoon evening. Garrison Davis. Not yet a doctor
Speaker 1: Garrison Davis, not yet, soon soon to be Dr Garrison Davis.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're going to pass the exam
Speaker 1: that I know you're gonna have to pass in order
Speaker 1: to get through this class. But yeah, a little teaser
Speaker 1: for the future. Speaking of the future, this is a
Speaker 1: podcast about the ways in which the future is going
Speaker 1: to be real fucked up and ways in which maybe
Speaker 1: we could try to make it less sucked up. Um.
Speaker 1: And today we have on a guest, Mr Calvin Norman,
Speaker 1: who posted a thread on our sub breddit with the
Speaker 1: very simple, very unsettling title the woods are bad um
Speaker 1: and Calvin, you want to enter you yourself, your credentials
Speaker 1: and what you were trying to get across on that
Speaker 1: threat because I found it very affecting. Yeah, thanks for ever.
Speaker 1: So my name is, like you said, Calvin Norman, I
Speaker 1: work in forestry. I've worked in forestry for a while now.
Speaker 1: I used to be an industrial forester in the Great
Speaker 1: Lakes region, so like Wisconsin, Michigan. Then I worked in
Speaker 1: the Southeast. I did my masters down there, and now
Speaker 1: I'm in the mid Atlantic. So I've I've kind of
Speaker 1: been around the eastern United States. I haven't gotten that
Speaker 1: west yet, but and I'm a certified forest or candidate
Speaker 1: certified forest I got a year left on that, so
Speaker 1: I been around. I also do wildlife stuff. It's pretty fun.
Speaker 1: And yeah, your your thread. What I found interesting that
Speaker 1: I have a good friend who is in forestry or
Speaker 1: was in't forestry at least and got their degree and that,
Speaker 1: and we were we were at hunting in the Cascades
Speaker 1: a little earlier or a little later last year. Um,
Speaker 1: and there's this wonderful moment. We've been following a game
Speaker 1: trail up like this Steve hill side and it was
Speaker 1: kind of a clearing where we were a clear cut,
Speaker 1: but there's deep brush all around. And we get to
Speaker 1: the top of this thing, we look out and we
Speaker 1: just see, you know, these these rolling mountain of the Cascades,
Speaker 1: all covered in this the most this lush, beautiful greenery,
Speaker 1: all these these pine trees and everything. And my friend
Speaker 1: says to me, it's going to be totally different in
Speaker 1: twenty years. Um, it's already a different forest than the
Speaker 1: one I grew up with. And and that that is,
Speaker 1: that is kind of the cliffs notes of what what
Speaker 1: you're You're getting into a lot of detail here, and
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if you could just kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: start on that, explain kind of what's actually happening in
Speaker 1: our woods, or at least the woods that that you're
Speaker 1: comfortable talking about here. It's a big yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a big condent. And you have a pretty good
Speaker 1: international base. And I can't speak for the Europeans or
Speaker 1: the Canadians. There's a whole different ball game over there.
Speaker 1: And tropical stuff is just white, yeah, really cool about
Speaker 1: wild stuff. So mainly talked about the US, mainly Eastern
Speaker 1: United States. So if you look at the eastern United States,
Speaker 1: this is a forest that has never existed before in
Speaker 1: the history of the United States. UM previews, you know,
Speaker 1: prior to like nineteen twenty are forest was like depending
Speaker 1: on the source of read, between twenty and chestnut with
Speaker 1: other species mixed in there. And now we have a
Speaker 1: mainly oak dominated forest and we lost all of our
Speaker 1: chest into the chestnut blight. Um out Western You've got
Speaker 1: a couple of other things going on, but fire suppression
Speaker 1: is just changed the forest there. Uh, same here in
Speaker 1: the East coast and into the Midwest. You know you
Speaker 1: used to see a lot more fires going through. I mean,
Speaker 1: so that was lightning strikes, but no doubt a lot
Speaker 1: of it was you know, intentionally set by the first
Speaker 1: nations and people before the people that we think of
Speaker 1: as the first nations. And um, you know that has
Speaker 1: mainly disappeared except for the southeast where fire has never
Speaker 1: really stopped being at the ground, which is really cool.
Speaker 1: But even their species, which is composition, has changed dramatically. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of what we're seeing as you know, changes
Speaker 1: in human management. But there's also a number of invasive
Speaker 1: species that have changed things. You know, like chestnut blight,
Speaker 1: emerald ashbour asia, longhorn beetle is coming in. You know,
Speaker 1: those are just the past the understory. And you know,
Speaker 1: plants is a whole different ballgame. Um, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: all not great. It's all not great. I was talking
Speaker 1: with some colleagues at an agricultural show before I posted that,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about how the woods were bad
Speaker 1: and we very easily laid out a scenario where we
Speaker 1: lost the most of our remaining dominantory species. It was
Speaker 1: not at all hard to do. It took about two minutes.
Speaker 1: So not great. Uh. And then the West coast things
Speaker 1: aren't great either. And when you're talking about when you're
Speaker 1: talking about losing these species and stuff like the chestnut light,
Speaker 1: where is that coming from? How much of that is
Speaker 1: sort of as a result of climate change? Like we're
Speaker 1: having a lot of tree species have trouble here in
Speaker 1: the West because of how much hotter the summers are
Speaker 1: and how much drier things have gotten. So how much
Speaker 1: how much of what you're saying where you are is
Speaker 1: because there's been changes to the climate, And how much
Speaker 1: of it is you know, I guess kind of like globalism,
Speaker 1: like people bringing in pests and bringing in blights and
Speaker 1: stuff from other areas and it spreads like wildfire. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that we're just starting to see the beginning
Speaker 1: of climate change, like driving species you know, up the mountain,
Speaker 1: off the mountain out west and here you know, out
Speaker 1: of certain regions, you know, as things are getting hotter
Speaker 1: and drier or is you know, climbates are becoming more extreme.
Speaker 1: You know, here in the Atlantic we had one of
Speaker 1: the wettest years on record, I think it was like
Speaker 1: five or seven, whereas in the Midwest they had droughts.
Speaker 1: But before that we had two years of drought. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's more extreme, and that's that's just
Speaker 1: starting to take part. But the extinctions and near extinctions
Speaker 1: have been mainly due to non native pest um. And
Speaker 1: that's just most of it right there. Um, just because
Speaker 1: we haven't really seen the start of climate change, yeah,
Speaker 1: impacting diseases. So like out west with the mountain pinebealle
Speaker 1: you're seeing more generations of mountain pinebele comes through. I
Speaker 1: was just doing a presentation for some folks in South
Speaker 1: Dakota and something like a third of their total force
Speaker 1: was impacted by mountain pine beetle. Jeez, And and what
Speaker 1: is that like when you actually talk about this, these
Speaker 1: beetles coming in. That's the kind of thing that even
Speaker 1: as we've gotten more comfortable talking about sort of of
Speaker 1: of the different kind of collapses spawned climate change, I
Speaker 1: think that they we tend to imagine more spectacular things.
Speaker 1: These giants, sweeping fires that burned through huge chunks of
Speaker 1: states and these huge like environmental calamities. What is this, Like,
Speaker 1: what happens when one of these beetles hits a forest?
Speaker 1: One of these beetles species obviously not like a singular beetle, Like,
Speaker 1: what is actually like how quick is the effect and
Speaker 1: what kind of comes after that? Like, I I know,
Speaker 1: there's sort of a shock wave. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: a bomb going off. I'm interested in kind of tracing
Speaker 1: the root of that explosion, if that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it depends species. It species. Chestnut plate was really
Speaker 1: fast and it just seems to have torn through the
Speaker 1: chest instative range. So chest that went from Florida to
Speaker 1: Maine and out west like Tennessee kind of area there um,
Speaker 1: and it just you know, in like something like fifteen years,
Speaker 1: the entire species gone. Emerald ash board has taken a
Speaker 1: little bit longer. Got here in the eighties, started kind
Speaker 1: of going off in the mid two thousands, and it's
Speaker 1: killed a couple of billion trees. So when that hits
Speaker 1: a small forest, you know, if it's a if it's
Speaker 1: a pretty you know, beetle kills pretty fast. Like eyl dashboard,
Speaker 1: it gets into your trees. It starts with one or
Speaker 1: two and then within four or five years, it's it's
Speaker 1: in most of them in the forest. And then with
Speaker 1: emoral ashboard they're dead and five hemlock William delG it
Speaker 1: is pretty similar. It'll just show up one day in
Speaker 1: a stand and then the hemlocks are dead within five
Speaker 1: seven years. Uh. And you know, sometimes you know what's
Speaker 1: going on, you know, because emil lashboard is very clear signs,
Speaker 1: and other times you don't know what's going on because
Speaker 1: the tree can't be so tall as all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: trees are getting thinner and thinner and then they're dead,
Speaker 1: or you have pests like um oak well and that
Speaker 1: in that trees are dead, you know, in two months,
Speaker 1: and then it spreads out like a circle. You know
Speaker 1: it kind of exactly when you see like a bacteria
Speaker 1: like growth medium with the bacteria spreading out, that's oak
Speaker 1: spreads and it's just like trees are dead, you know,
Speaker 1: two months and they spread out and out and out
Speaker 1: and scary. Sometimes is there anything that can be I
Speaker 1: mean it sounds like with with most of these cases,
Speaker 1: like with what's happened with kind of like the chestnuts,
Speaker 1: and it's it's too late for a lot of that
Speaker 1: is there anything that can actually be done to stop this,
Speaker 1: Like I know we have all these structures in place
Speaker 1: to try to stop the spread of invasive species, but
Speaker 1: like once they're in there, it kind of seems like
Speaker 1: usually we're fucked. Yeah, ye that okay, Yeah. Once you
Speaker 1: get past there's what's called the invasive species establishment curve,
Speaker 1: so it's an escar, and once you get like right,
Speaker 1: like once it starts taking up, it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we're done here, so let's let's start thinking about the future.
Speaker 1: And as you lose more species, like what are we
Speaker 1: doing here? Or if you're like you know, in the
Speaker 1: case of the case of action, it's like this ash
Speaker 1: is going into a swamp. I have nothing else that's
Speaker 1: going to grow here, so now I just have an
Speaker 1: open wetland, like I can grow any naive trees here.
Speaker 1: Were done. So the biggest thing is preventioned like don't
Speaker 1: don't bring invasive species in or non native species in.
Speaker 1: I was talking to a lady a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and she hasn't rolled or not. She has hemlock William
Speaker 1: delj in a property, and she brought in a bio
Speaker 1: control or she assumed was a bio control from Japan.
Speaker 1: It's a beatle and yeah, in this case, it was
Speaker 1: one that had been tested and failed because it doesn't
Speaker 1: make it through the winter. But you know, stuff like
Speaker 1: that's like just just don't do that, you know, I
Speaker 1: cheat the thought there, but don't with some of these
Speaker 1: species we have, you know, you know, like hem luckily adult,
Speaker 1: we have pesticides that worked really well and that you
Speaker 1: apply the order the tree and so it's like, all right,
Speaker 1: I treated this tree. This tree is good for seven years.
Speaker 1: Some of them, like Emerald, last boar, You're done. There's
Speaker 1: just nothing you can do. So yeah, it's a prevention, prevention,
Speaker 1: and then then you can quarantine. But then you know,
Speaker 1: it's like where this county is done, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: just try to make sure that only this county dies. Jeez,
Speaker 1: you mentioned a bit earlier like thinking about the future,
Speaker 1: what does that actually look like when when we hit
Speaker 1: a situation as we have with a lot of these species,
Speaker 1: were like, all right, well this ship's we ain't we
Speaker 1: ain't stopping this. What is what like, what do people
Speaker 1: like you do next? Like what is the next kind
Speaker 1: of step for the forests or is it just sort
Speaker 1: of a smoke them ale you got them kind of thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's smoke them while you got them. So like
Speaker 1: beach park disease is going through just roasting beach in
Speaker 1: the East Coast, it's going it's going to the Midwest
Speaker 1: and so there it's kind of like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's in there and your beach or diet, take
Speaker 1: them out and if they're not, don't. There's it's nine
Speaker 1: percent fatal, but there's one percent that can make it.
Speaker 1: So you know, like maybe we find that one percent
Speaker 1: and lash nine fatal. But I've seen, you know, in
Speaker 1: the past couple of years, I've seen two that made it.
Speaker 1: So like if we don't cut them all, maybe someone surlive.
Speaker 1: Theoretically we could then like clone or breed or whatever
Speaker 1: the trees that live and and a few generations have
Speaker 1: more of them. Um, if other ship doesn't happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the chest that product has been going on for the
Speaker 1: last hundred years, and it looks like I'm taking about
Speaker 1: forty more. It's that's a controversial opinion. Some people say
Speaker 1: it's a baschet of forty but you know years Oh
Speaker 1: the chest that foundation really it's a really neat thing.
Speaker 1: So there were some chestnuts that were found resistant in
Speaker 1: some planet outside the range of chestnut blight, and so
Speaker 1: the ideas where they slowly started back breeding. So they
Speaker 1: crossed in Chinese chestnut, which is resistant to the blight,
Speaker 1: which is native to China and East Asia, and so
Speaker 1: they crossed them in with the remaining chestnut with the
Speaker 1: hopes of you know, kind of eventually breeding out the
Speaker 1: Chinese but just maintaining the American chestnut and just getting
Speaker 1: that gene in there. And so they started that back
Speaker 1: in like the thirties and forties when they realized what
Speaker 1: was happening. Well, you know, today is two and we
Speaker 1: are still without American chestnut in the forest. There are
Speaker 1: some backbread versions that are more resistant, but they will
Speaker 1: still get infected. I've been to a couple of chestnut
Speaker 1: nurseries where they're doing experiments and it's it's sad because
Speaker 1: they'll they'll get up and then they'll die. They'll get
Speaker 1: up and they'll die, and it's like, oh, there's two.
Speaker 1: There are two over there in the corner that made it,
Speaker 1: and those get you onto the next one. But there
Speaker 1: is some work out of New York, Suny in New
Speaker 1: York where they altered a chestnut and they put in um.
Speaker 1: They just they just changed the genes. So the version
Speaker 1: of the genus makes chestnut blight resistant is in that
Speaker 1: and that's getting approved by the E p A, F
Speaker 1: d A and U S d A. Hopefully that gets approved.
Speaker 1: If that gets approved, we get real, We get real
Speaker 1: further along because the resistant trees are not the same
Speaker 1: as the American chestnut. The resistant trees are more they're
Speaker 1: shorter and more shrubby, and they don't fulfill the overstory
Speaker 1: cannot be rolled in chestnut used to playing um. That's
Speaker 1: that's best case scenario. Worst case scenarios. You're like um butternut,
Speaker 1: which was driven to functional ex things at the same time,
Speaker 1: and we're just nowhere on that produce, working on some stuff,
Speaker 1: but it's nowhere. They're not in the woods now. How
Speaker 1: how much of like because I tend to roll my
Speaker 1: eyes pretty hard when we're talking in particular climate change
Speaker 1: and people are like, well, I think that science is
Speaker 1: going to save our asses from this one. We're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna develop some like miraculous carbon capture method like
Speaker 1: at the last minute, we'll we'll we'll be able to
Speaker 1: reverse everything and it'll be fine. I tend to roll
Speaker 1: my eyes at that. But this and maybe I'm not
Speaker 1: obviously I don't understand this that nearly the level you
Speaker 1: do is this kind of a thing where if there's
Speaker 1: hope for a lot of these species and a lot
Speaker 1: of these biomas, it's going to be and stuff like
Speaker 1: we figure out how to hack these trees to keep
Speaker 1: them alive, and and like is that really kind of
Speaker 1: where we are? I know some very good tree genesis
Speaker 1: and tree breaders, but I don't think that they have
Speaker 1: the capabilities of, you know, coming up with trees that
Speaker 1: are resistant to all of the various fungi and bugs
Speaker 1: that are out there. And even if they do, it's
Speaker 1: you know, you have to get them out into the woods.
Speaker 1: You have to plant million acres of forest. You've got
Speaker 1: to get them out into the woods. You have to
Speaker 1: have the nurseries to get them out. There's you know,
Speaker 1: even if you were able to create trees that resistance
Speaker 1: to all these pests, it would be impossible. So no,
Speaker 1: the only the only answer is, uh, don't don't do
Speaker 1: climate change. And to the carbon captured perspective, um, the
Speaker 1: only machine that's going to capture of the amount of
Speaker 1: carbon we need our trees. I do, I do forest
Speaker 1: carbon stuff, which is a whole different episode. I want to.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm there. I'm extremely interested in that because obviously,
Speaker 1: like we've we've been supported by a couple of companies who, like,
Speaker 1: one of the things they do to try to be
Speaker 1: nice is they'll they'll plant trees and stuff, which is
Speaker 1: not useless. But also a lot of people think that
Speaker 1: that's what rebuilding a forest is, and like, no, forests
Speaker 1: are a huge part of the problem with why the
Speaker 1: West is so flammable. As we chopped down all these
Speaker 1: trees and we grew back just the trees um to
Speaker 1: chop them down again, and that turns out to not
Speaker 1: be resilient at all to anything, because trees do not
Speaker 1: live on their own ever. Yeah, that's why it's a forest.
Speaker 1: It's not just exactly right, Yeah, no, it's yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's a planting. There's not the infrastructure to plant. Our
Speaker 1: way of climate change is not the land. It's just impossible.
Speaker 1: And so even even if even if there were the
Speaker 1: infrastructure in the lane, that we don't have the time,
Speaker 1: because you know, trees take time to grow, they work
Speaker 1: at a different time scale than humans do, even your
Speaker 1: your shortest lived trees sixty eight years. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: is one of those things where I mean, we we
Speaker 1: have this is what we taught. We kind of started
Speaker 1: this new season which is forever with which is that
Speaker 1: like there's no there's nothing we can do that will
Speaker 1: stop us from continuing to face worse and worse because
Speaker 1: because like consequences of climate change, because the carbon is
Speaker 1: already been admitted, right, you can't just pull it out
Speaker 1: warming as even if we were to like make very
Speaker 1: revolutionary changes tomorrow, there's still some degree to which it's
Speaker 1: going to get worse. Um. But when it comes to
Speaker 1: like within your field, what like carbon capture using trees
Speaker 1: and stuff, can you talk to us about like what
Speaker 1: that actually looks like as opposed to sort of the
Speaker 1: will plant a tree for every dollar you spend kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Um? So yeah, I actually I actually can.
Speaker 1: It's I do a lot of my work about forest
Speaker 1: carbon stuff. So yeah, Basically the idea is to make
Speaker 1: sure you have the best way to get carbon c
Speaker 1: equestration of the force is to have a healthy, functioning forest.
Speaker 1: And that's you know, kind of where these pests and
Speaker 1: climate change are interfering with that. And so you know,
Speaker 1: to maintain a healthy functioning force on the East Coast.
Speaker 1: You know, some of these you need to have fire,
Speaker 1: some of them not. Some of them are too wet
Speaker 1: to burn. Uh. And then you know, harvesting needs to
Speaker 1: take place in some of these. Some of these don't
Speaker 1: need to be harvested. Again, we're talking, you know, millions
Speaker 1: of acres of forest here, so we're gonna be incredibly
Speaker 1: broad and we've got to keep invasives out. You need
Speaker 1: to keep force pest to a minimum, and then make
Speaker 1: sure that you're managing the forest, you know, as best
Speaker 1: as it can be managed. And I say managed, this
Speaker 1: is not something new. Humans have been on the East
Speaker 1: Coast since you know, it depends on the artifacts you
Speaker 1: want to look at and what archaeologists you want to trust.
Speaker 1: But like twenty five to twenty thousand years ago, and
Speaker 1: the last glaciers left the East Coast eighteen thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: so we had people here before the glaciers were gone.
Speaker 1: So these forests have never not had humans hands on
Speaker 1: them and never not been touched to manage by humans. Um,
Speaker 1: And you know, we gotta make sure we're doing the
Speaker 1: best we can you know some of that means that
Speaker 1: we're managing force with what's best for the you know,
Speaker 1: that means managing force for what's best with the force
Speaker 1: in mind, not with best what's best for the end
Speaker 1: of the quarter, what's best for your bank account. That's
Speaker 1: hard to do because force are getting more and more
Speaker 1: expensive to manage and to you know, manage to say
Speaker 1: able here in the East Coast, we gotta do a
Speaker 1: lot of fencing. We gotta keep deer out of force
Speaker 1: because their populations are so high, it's just ridiculously high,
Speaker 1: and they've never got to come back down. You know,
Speaker 1: we have to spray invasive species, we have to pull
Speaker 1: invasive species. You gotta go through and you've gotta make sure,
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're preventing all those kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: And so we can take you know, you can if
Speaker 1: you do a good shelter, would you can like make
Speaker 1: four dollars out of it and then you could put
Speaker 1: all that money back into growing your next generation of force.
Speaker 1: So forces is really going from a profit making venture
Speaker 1: on a lot of cases to like you're barely making
Speaker 1: money or you're you're like breaking even or losing money.
Speaker 1: It's it's no longer you know, if you really want
Speaker 1: to do it, great, You're not always making money, which
Speaker 1: is hard for people to get their head around. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's the kind of thing that in a
Speaker 1: reasonable world, huge amounts of money would be diverted to
Speaker 1: from other things. Like I don't know, Um, I feel
Speaker 1: like you guys could do a lot with one f
Speaker 1: thirty five worth of cash. I feel like that would
Speaker 1: solve almost all of our problems. Yeah, because the problems
Speaker 1: that you see in force, we don't cost a lot
Speaker 1: to fix, but it it costs a lot for a
Speaker 1: forced owner, be that you know, an agency or person,
Speaker 1: it costs a lot. Yeah. It's like all of the
Speaker 1: issues around climate change kind of all circle around, like
Speaker 1: growth based economics and a lot of the like nothing
Speaker 1: has a shared cause, but they all have this similar
Speaker 1: aspect to them where yeah, every every part of them
Speaker 1: gets worse by the extreme focus on economic growth at
Speaker 1: all costs and that suffers that that that makes everything
Speaker 1: and everyone suffer. So, you know, it would be nice
Speaker 1: if since we have a government, it would be nice
Speaker 1: if they do, you know, give more funding towards uh,
Speaker 1: stuff like this type of fourth management, which I know
Speaker 1: they do some, but you know, a fraction of it
Speaker 1: compared to what they give to like the Pentagon or
Speaker 1: you know, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I mean even big you know,
Speaker 1: forestries technically agriculture, but even like you know, like corn
Speaker 1: and like grow agriculture, it's a lot. Yeah, they have
Speaker 1: they corners massive subsidies compared to compared to everything else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the NRCS, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, they do
Speaker 1: a lot with you know, farm agriculture, and you know,
Speaker 1: they it's very difficult for forest ollers to get that
Speaker 1: kind of money into forests. If we could get you know,
Speaker 1: that money, it would be a game changer. But we're
Speaker 1: not there. Uh, there is some change being made in
Speaker 1: the administration. But yeah, that's like stuff and that doesn't help,
Speaker 1: doesn't help today. It doesn't still unpassed today. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can't unkill trees. Yeah, I guess is there anything that
Speaker 1: you're optimistic about within your field right now? If you
Speaker 1: I think that would be handy both in terms of
Speaker 1: like is there any sort of is there a light
Speaker 1: at the end of the tunnel um, Because I'll admit, like,
Speaker 1: when I think about not having the forests that's pretty
Speaker 1: much the most black pilling thing I can imagine, like
Speaker 1: for myself, Like, that's the that's the thing that I
Speaker 1: have trouble coping with emotionally more than anything else. There's
Speaker 1: lots of horrible things about what's coming, but that's the
Speaker 1: one that like really scares me the most. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think we're gonna lose forests as a thing. They're
Speaker 1: just where to become. You know, if without things we've done,
Speaker 1: then become less, they're gonna be fewer of them, and
Speaker 1: they're gonna become much less diversive functioning. You know for
Speaker 1: a lot of these you know, invasive species, be they plants,
Speaker 1: you know, especially invasive plants. We have a lot of
Speaker 1: we don't they control them. I was just writing a
Speaker 1: thing about controlling wavy basket wavy leaf basket grass. It's
Speaker 1: a new invasive species to my area. It's highly controllable
Speaker 1: and we know how to do it. It's just again
Speaker 1: a question of people, you know, getting out there and
Speaker 1: money to do it. You know, if we have the
Speaker 1: people of the money, we can solve that problem. Oh
Speaker 1: also we stop you know bringing that in their bat
Speaker 1: even better, we you know, actually took you know I
Speaker 1: PM right now, IPM. But quarantine and pest management seriously,
Speaker 1: and you know, people like stopped throwing you know they
Speaker 1: look like plant out of the park just because like
Speaker 1: I don't want to kill it, Like let's let it
Speaker 1: be free. Don't do that. Goldfish, don't don't throw them
Speaker 1: in the lake. That's why you have huge gold fish
Speaker 1: coming out of like Florida. Don't. Don't just cut pets
Speaker 1: loose and stuff like that. And if we can get
Speaker 1: a lot of that under control, would be in a
Speaker 1: lot better place. Again, I don't think they're forced to
Speaker 1: disappearing in the future unmanaged. I think they just become
Speaker 1: fewer and less diverse and less funky, and then you
Speaker 1: lose spaces species based on them, like birds, you know, wildlife,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. And also I mean one
Speaker 1: of the things that also they have to become less accessible,
Speaker 1: both because there will be less of the man um
Speaker 1: as things get more fragile, Like how else do you
Speaker 1: keep some of these invasive species out but keeping people out,
Speaker 1: which is I think a bad move for a lot
Speaker 1: of reasons. But I don't know. I also don't know,
Speaker 1: like is it possible to have a global society where
Speaker 1: there is not just trade but the movement of people
Speaker 1: on a wide scale and not have this kind of
Speaker 1: ship crossing. Right. Like, that's when I think about as
Speaker 1: as someone who's more or less an anarchist. When I
Speaker 1: think about the only things that a border should exist
Speaker 1: to do, it's it's keep stuff like that out. But
Speaker 1: I just I don't know how possible that is, Like
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff is I mean, is this
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that's just spread by carelessness because
Speaker 1: it kind of seems like it can be spread to
Speaker 1: by people who think they're taking care Yeah, and both
Speaker 1: is the answer. There's some very good research out there
Speaker 1: about the relatedness between global trade and you know, invasive species.
Speaker 1: But that also you look at like colonialism and colonial societies.
Speaker 1: There were these things called introductory societies who loung get
Speaker 1: the name wrong, but basically they are clubs. It's like,
Speaker 1: all right, I would like clubs of people like I
Speaker 1: would like to see this new place that I live
Speaker 1: in like the old place. Like the European starling was
Speaker 1: introduced in New York because you know, one guy wanted
Speaker 1: to see all of the birds of Shakespeare in America.
Speaker 1: Christ Oh, I get even better for one for you.
Speaker 1: The moth formerly known as gypsy moth as se as,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that word um is now found in
Speaker 1: America because of this one guy. I'll put the name
Speaker 1: in the chat for you so you can say it,
Speaker 1: because I know how much you love saying French names
Speaker 1: of the most. Here comes the wave of comb it's
Speaker 1: a better anti French racism. Oh no, no, yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It doesn't matter. We still get Okay,
Speaker 1: well this nobody does about my Italian accent. It's just
Speaker 1: the French. It's once again the Italians deserve it as well.
Speaker 1: They tell us about at end. Yeah. So so this guy,
Speaker 1: he was a French scientist who he left France. He
Speaker 1: came to the US for a little while. He had
Speaker 1: got Massachusetts. He was also also an amateur entomologist, and
Speaker 1: he was like, oh, you know what I think American
Speaker 1: needs is I think they need a silk industry. Now
Speaker 1: they have a negative silk moth. It doesn't produce good silk,
Speaker 1: it doesn't breed fast. So he brought in the matric.
Speaker 1: I gotta do the scientific name because we changed the
Speaker 1: name on it because the common name is a slur.
Speaker 1: So we're not doing so la matria disparo. So he
Speaker 1: brought this this moth in from Europe. Uh, and he
Speaker 1: started trying to breathe these two moths, which are not
Speaker 1: related at all. It didn't work, obviously, and then he
Speaker 1: just kind of, you know, he went he went off
Speaker 1: to be an astronomer, and he just let these moths
Speaker 1: go in his backyard and he didn't tell anyone they
Speaker 1: were there. And then all of a sudden these things
Speaker 1: escape and now they're killing trees, you know, across the
Speaker 1: eastern United States, and they're in Washington, Oregon. I think
Speaker 1: they're in DC a little bit too great. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's that's such a good parable, like a
Speaker 1: parallel to the invasive species that is French people. That
Speaker 1: really does just tie up all all aspects of that amazing.
Speaker 1: It makes me think a lot everything you're saying about
Speaker 1: kut Zoo, which which is in the I've heard some
Speaker 1: people say they're getting a handle on it. I don't
Speaker 1: know how to evaluate that at the moment, but when
Speaker 1: I was last living down there, it was just like
Speaker 1: devouring the entire southeast. Yeah, you can handle it again
Speaker 1: if you want to spray it. You can. You can
Speaker 1: get what's called chew groove, so a bunch of goats
Speaker 1: you can get a handle on it. But again that's
Speaker 1: money and effort. So it's just a question. So you
Speaker 1: do get delicious, delicious goat made? Oh my gosh, I
Speaker 1: tell you what. The people who do go invasive management
Speaker 1: they haven't made. Would they dont goats out to people?
Speaker 1: They get paid for the goats and they also get
Speaker 1: their goats fence, or would they slaughter them? They even
Speaker 1: pay that, you know, that's a good business model as
Speaker 1: someone with a couple of goats. That does sound like
Speaker 1: the dream. Um yeah, God, they don't work on all
Speaker 1: the invasive species I do as they probably don't eat
Speaker 1: those beetles huh No. No, they also like plants with
Speaker 1: thorns on them either, and it's very few goats can
Speaker 1: handle an entire French person either. So yeah, we can't.
Speaker 1: We can't trust the goats to solve all these problems
Speaker 1: for us. It is nice that they're helping. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know, so I I try to. Are there things
Speaker 1: either in terms of like it acts people can take
Speaker 1: or probably more more realistically, organizations people could support that
Speaker 1: you think are actually helping try to stop as much
Speaker 1: of the woods from going bad as fast or reverse
Speaker 1: the some of the stuff we've been talking about today,
Speaker 1: like how can we try to have some some room
Speaker 1: for people to do something if if there is anything
Speaker 1: people can do other than check your fucking shoes for
Speaker 1: beetles when you come back from wherever, burn all of
Speaker 1: your clothing anytime you leave the state. Okay, that's that's
Speaker 1: a good start. That's a really good start. Not even
Speaker 1: to say sometimes it's the county stop. When you go
Speaker 1: on a road trip, you stop your car at the
Speaker 1: county line and you roll it off of a cliff
Speaker 1: with tanner righte and just let it burn. But don't
Speaker 1: don't push out of the woods. We've seen that. Not
Speaker 1: into the woods. No, into the ocean where everything's fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they say, that's what they say about the ocean. Great.
Speaker 1: I tell I tell people I work between the farm
Speaker 1: field and the stream. I don't do stream or water
Speaker 1: stuff because there's chemistry in there, so I don't know
Speaker 1: what happens over there. That's fine. I assume everything is
Speaker 1: great there. It does seem to be going fine. Um.
Speaker 1: I think the best thing that you could do is
Speaker 1: in individuals is don't cut random stuff loose. Learn the
Speaker 1: plants of your area. Yeah, learn what's around you and
Speaker 1: what should be there. And like when you see something
Speaker 1: that shouldn't be there and you know it's in invasive,
Speaker 1: remove it. We're legally possible, obviously, don't go like someone's
Speaker 1: like arboretum and it's like like pulled plants out. That'd
Speaker 1: be real bad, burned down small farms wherever you find. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh man, the egg people will not be happy about that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean I'm not gonna say anything. Um
Speaker 1: So I think you know, learned plants trees is neat um.
Speaker 1: And then if you um, you know, think of if
Speaker 1: you're thinking about like, you know, how can you help
Speaker 1: manage force? You know, if you lots of people either
Speaker 1: own forests or people who owned forest and you know,
Speaker 1: encourage them to get a force management plan or land
Speaker 1: management plan and get that. And then also if you
Speaker 1: got a lawn, rip your lawn out again where possible
Speaker 1: and use native plants. I do. I do some you know,
Speaker 1: some lawn change stuff. And it's just frustrating the amount
Speaker 1: of lawns out there. It's like, you know, one of
Speaker 1: these people, one of these reasons we're losing so many
Speaker 1: you know, birds, and we have fewer birds and bird
Speaker 1: species because like they can't eat grass. These things eat
Speaker 1: fruits and insects and seeds which you don't get in grass.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you don't own a forest, that's fine,
Speaker 1: and I'm i I'm a huge advocate of that. I
Speaker 1: try to be on the show and people, again, we
Speaker 1: always get this thing where there are people who will
Speaker 1: critique when we talk about some of these small scale solutions.
Speaker 1: Is like, oh, you know, turning your turning your lawn
Speaker 1: into a a permac culture garden with local species isn't
Speaker 1: going to like produce enough food to feed your families. Like, no,
Speaker 1: it's not about that. If you could get a couple
Speaker 1: of thousand people to do it, and they convince another
Speaker 1: couple and like so on and so on and so on,
Speaker 1: then suddenly, if you're increasing significantly the amount of carbon
Speaker 1: sequestered by that lawn and you're also making a better
Speaker 1: habitat for birds and whatnot, that that scales. It is
Speaker 1: a thing that scales. If we got a significant number
Speaker 1: of people with lawns to replace them with something like
Speaker 1: we're talking about kill kill, that grass that almost certainly
Speaker 1: isn't fucking native to your area. Plant stuff that is,
Speaker 1: and and and try to reintegrate at least your lawn
Speaker 1: back into the local ecology. If you got a million
Speaker 1: Americans to do a version of that, you that's not
Speaker 1: an insignificant thing. Um. Yeah, And it is something that
Speaker 1: you can do in a lot of states. There's programs
Speaker 1: to support it. In my state, there's a program specifically
Speaker 1: for like changing lawns over and that program is backed up.
Speaker 1: They are out of money until they spent it all already.
Speaker 1: There's definitely interest there. Let you sell it to whoever, whoever.
Speaker 1: Anyone gets it if they want it, it just goes
Speaker 1: up on Craigslist, all right, Yeah, put it on Craigslist,
Speaker 1: give it to the highest bidder. Um. The other thing
Speaker 1: you can do is go outside, like support your local
Speaker 1: land management agency. Most of these, like forest Service and
Speaker 1: park Service, they depend on money spent by users to
Speaker 1: go spend money at the forest. The only thing people
Speaker 1: can do your fucking boots first though, Oh yeah, definitely that.
Speaker 1: And don't don't bring shit in. Don't don't bring your
Speaker 1: like weird thing in, like your weird plan, because you
Speaker 1: don't want to kill it your entirely seed based diet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you don't, If you hunt, great, that supports conservation.
Speaker 1: If you don't want to hunt, you can still buy
Speaker 1: duck stamps and these other things. That's support wildlife management.
Speaker 1: In the US, wildlife is funded by the users, So
Speaker 1: those people who buy guns and AMMO, buy arch your equipment,
Speaker 1: and who buy hunting licenses. So if you want to
Speaker 1: support wildlife, the best thing you can do is buy
Speaker 1: a hunting license, even if you don't hunt. That's it's
Speaker 1: kind of counterintuitive, but it's the core of the North
Speaker 1: American mode of wildlife. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good point,
Speaker 1: and it is one of the It's also one of
Speaker 1: those areas when we talk about ways in which theoretically
Speaker 1: there's room to build in roads between left and right
Speaker 1: in this country, conservation and hunting should be one right,
Speaker 1: and there are hunters on the right who are actually
Speaker 1: talking a pretty good, like reasonably about conservation, Like it
Speaker 1: is an area of shared interest. Everybody likes wild places,
Speaker 1: so just quote unquote wild We just talked about how
Speaker 1: none of them are actually wild. They've all existed with
Speaker 1: human beings for forever. But like, yeah, we like we
Speaker 1: like the outdoors, Yes, the outdoors. Yeah. Well and what
Speaker 1: you know, people ask me like, so I hunt? I
Speaker 1: have Micross clothes right over there. Who sweet crossbow? Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to get a gun. I have been
Speaker 1: wanted to get a crossbow pilled for a while now.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I wouldn't mind getting crossbow killed myself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: shoulder holster for a crossbow. There we go. Oh yeah
Speaker 1: that's great. Yeah. No, this is not a super expensive one,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty much a rifle. Yeah, I mean ballistically
Speaker 1: at the ranges who use them, there's not any meaningful
Speaker 1: difference really. Yeah. And if you're a person who you
Speaker 1: know doesn't like guns, it doesn't trust yourself around him. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're very safe. So yeah, get get you one of
Speaker 1: those if you want. It's a fun time cross I
Speaker 1: also like it a lot more than my uh my
Speaker 1: guns because it doesn't yet coil. But that's enough about that.
Speaker 1: Well that's great. Um, is there anything else you wanted
Speaker 1: to get into Calvin before we kind of roll out today? Uh?
Speaker 1: You touched on forest carbon stuff that's a whole man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff on that that's a whole other world.
Speaker 1: I am interested in talking more about that, but perhaps
Speaker 1: we should do have a dedicated entire thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: we should definitely dedicate an entire thing that. It's an
Speaker 1: incredibly important subject UM and I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: to say about how different um indigenous groups have been.
Speaker 1: Like up in the Northwest in particular, we have a
Speaker 1: lot of um kind of tribal efforts at stuff like
Speaker 1: not just with the with the forest, but also with
Speaker 1: like the coastline and whatnot in rebuilding certain populations along
Speaker 1: the coast in the Midwest. When i'mer does a great
Speaker 1: job with forest management, I'm actually doing a webinar thing
Speaker 1: about one of our forest pesting we're having then come
Speaker 1: talk about their management. Well, we invited them. I'm not
Speaker 1: actually sure if they're going to do it yet, but
Speaker 1: the practice we use is based on what they use
Speaker 1: it there. So yeah, it's it's really cool what various
Speaker 1: first nations do. Yeah, I just want to plug trees. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my favorite type of tree probably the redwood. Used to
Speaker 1: live in Arcade to go running in them every day. Um,
Speaker 1: I know that's kind of a cliche answer, what's your
Speaker 1: what's your favorite tree? This is one behind me here,
Speaker 1: No one can see my background. It's white oak. You
Speaker 1: can't make white oaks. So yeah, yeah, that is an
Speaker 1: important tree. Forest products are like one of the only
Speaker 1: things that supports supports forest management. So it supports forest
Speaker 1: so you don't be afraid to use, you know, sustainably
Speaker 1: managed wood and wood products. Find capitalism and drink a
Speaker 1: shipload of bourbon. Always a good call. Really, Um? Alright, well,
Speaker 1: Calvin Norman, any any less pluggable to plug um plants?
Speaker 1: If you want to learn plants, that's great. You want
Speaker 1: to learn about what's going on your native you know
Speaker 1: your areas around you. There's lots of groups that do that.
Speaker 1: Your local extension service helps you out with a lot
Speaker 1: that most of their stuff is free. So plug that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go outside and plug that. I don't do twitter good. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: well go outside, hugg a tree. Calvin Norman, thank you
Speaker 1: again so much for coming on. Um. If you want
Speaker 1: to see Calvin's original thread, just type in the woods
Speaker 1: are bad, uh and it could happen here, read it,
Speaker 1: or just go to the it could happen here, read
Speaker 1: it and scroll down a bit you'll find it. Um.
Speaker 1: That's gonna do it for us today until tomorrow. Go
Speaker 1: out into the woods. Who go out into the woods,
Speaker 1: but wash your fucking boots first. It could Happen Here
Speaker 1: is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
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Speaker 1: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.