Ever Green by John Reid and Thomas Lovejoy.
3/5 rating. 255 pages.
Book #39 of 2023. Read September 8, 2023.
This book is all about the 5 megaforests on our Earth: why they are important and what can be done to keep them standing.
In the past, much of the Earth was covered in forest. Today, we have 5 different megaforests remaining: the Taiga, mostly in Russia; the North American Boreal, spanning Alaska and Canada; the Amazon, across much of South America; the Congo, in mid-Africa; and New Guinea, traversing both Papua New Guinea and its neighbor Papua.
While it might seem like all that is required to make a forest is enough trees, the authors make it clear how much the size of a forest matters. The designatation IFL (Intact Forest Landscape) encompasses a minimum of 125,000-acres chosen “because it’s a size that can accomplish natural processes, including small fires, trees felled by wind, and protection of lakeshores and riverbanks. Forests this size can play a role in the life cycle of species that need lots of space, such as tigers, reindeer, bears and wolves. And the forest interior is well protected from disturbances.”
It honestly blew my mind how important it is to be away from roads and human settlement. In fact, the single best way to protect forests is to limit roads into them.
“Overall, 95 percent of Amazon deforestation has taken place within 3 miles of roads or immediately adjacent to one of the region’s major navigable rivers.”
Forests are so important for the future of humanity because of their ability to sequester carbon. But even more than that, the sheer nature encompassed within these areas is incomprehensible. Losing these forests kills off countless species of animals, plants, languages, cultures. The loss of all of these is a true catastrophe. There are many programs working on taking care of and bringing more of the forests under protection so our children will be able to experience the beauty they represent.
This book does a great job of introducing many people working on this fight. Many of whom are indigenous, as they are the first line of defense between their ancestral forest lands and the enemies trying to deforest these incredible lands.
Quotes:
“In 1990, 4 percent of Earth’s land was protected. Over the last three decades, governments have collectively quadrupled this figure to 17 percent. Most nations are agreeing to nearly double that global total to protect 30 percent of all land by 2030.”
“To make megaforest conservation work – whether Indigenous lands, parks, or other areas – the single most important factor is limiting roads.”
“Tropical forest loss alone emitted around 5 billion metric tons of CO2 annually in the first decade of the 2000s. For a sense of scale, that’s more than all emissions from thr European Union over the same period.”
“Average belowground carbon in boreal forests is somewhere between 154 and 197 metric tons per acre, up to five times the average in tropical forest soils.”
“By 2002, the project had produced a simple answer about fragmentation: large intact areas are very important, the larger the better. Even the 250-acre reserves were too small for forest interior bird species, half of which vacated these patches in less than fifteen years. The edges were hotter and drier, with great mats of desiccated leaves from trees either dying or losing foliage to wind. There were more vines, thicker undergrowth, and fewer mushrooms.”
“This intact forest has 15 percent more carbon than a comparable patch of Congo woods where elephants have been eliminated.”
“They found that around 10 percent of IFLs had been lost or fragmented from 2000 to 2016, due to logging, fire, expanding farms and ranches, and the mining, oil, and gas industries.”
“Some fires are caused by lightning, but the Russian government and Greenpeace concur that the great majority – 90 percent, according to the NGO’s mapping team in Moscow – is started by people.”
“Each lost language narrows our view – not only of guests, but of the world.”
“Globally, Information communities have some measures of legal control on 36 percent of the IFLs. That’s nearly a billion acres of forest. All five megaforests have, to greater and lesser degrees, populations of their original peoples. Any credible plan to save the planet’s intact forests, therefore, necessarily involves supporting Indigenous forest peoples’ claims to and influence over megaforest territories.”
“Another [study] showed that strict protection in Brazil reduced forest loss by around 85 percent compared with unprotected forest.”
“A glowing example of FLR might be revival of salmon runs, which link ocean and forest food chains by bringing biomass from the ses into the depths of northern forests of the Russian Far East and Pacific coast of North America. They feed bears, giant fish owls, and trees. Along British Columbia salmon streams, 40 to 80 percent of nitrogen in plants has been found to have oceanic origins.”
“Instead of creating a huge program trying to reforest millions and millions of hectares, let’s create a big program to rehabilitate degraded pasture to grow food so we can stop deforesting.”
“Planting trees is a spiritual act, a life-giving, kinship-affirming prayer-in-action, one that puts people immediately and tangibly in the role of caretaker, parent, and protector.”
“Get a little lost.”
IG Link.
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