For The Wild - MAYA KHOSLA on What the Forest Holds [ENCORE]

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today, I'm speaking with

00:00:09.260 Maya Kosla. What's interpreted as destruction is very often, very quickly, a force of creation.

00:00:20.880 Maya Kosla is a wildlife biologist and writer. She served as Sonoma County Poet Laureate

00:00:27.160 2018 to 2020, bringing Sonoma's communities together through poetry, gatherings, and field

00:00:33.520 walks after the 2017 fires. Sonoma County Conservation Council, SCCC, selected her as

00:00:41.740 one of the 2020 Environmentalists of the Year. Her poetry books include All Fires of Wind and Light

00:00:48.620 from 16 Rivers Press, 2020 Penn Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, Kiel Bone from Bear Star

00:00:57.360 Press, a Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize, and Web of Water, Life in Redwood Creek. Her writing has

00:01:05.460 been featured in documentary films including Village of Dust, City of Water, about the water

00:01:11.020 crisis in rural India. Well, Maya, thank you so much for joining us today. In preparing for this

00:01:21.280 interview, I've been mentally journeying back to the forest of Northern California that I miss so

00:01:30.760 much. And it's a real pleasure to be able to be transported there with you today. Well, thank you.

00:01:37.700 thank you for having me. So I just want to start off by saying I'm so impressed with your wealth

00:01:43.460 of knowledge on the forest of Northern California, both from a scientific and personal aspect. And

00:01:50.340 as many of the listeners know this about me, I have just found such a great deal of love and

00:02:01.180 wisdom and connection and really familial relationships with these forests and so I'm

00:02:09.820 wondering to ground our conversation if you can give us an introduction to your relationship with

00:02:15.860 the forest specifically how do you exist in relationship with these forests and what

00:02:22.660 senses are activated for you when among the trees oh nice big question to start with

00:02:29.980 Thank you. I have been working in the forests for about eight years in a more dedicated way. But before that, I think I started, if I was to say my very first interaction with the forests of Northern California was in Muir Woods National Monument, where I was doing some habitat typing of Redwood Creek, which supports coho salmon and steelhead trout.

00:02:59.980 And that was a lot of, you know, hours and hours of spending time in and next to water in the middle of the Muir Woods National Monument trees, the giants.

00:03:13.880 so it was a great first exposure and completely immersive because there was this necessary work

00:03:23.480 but also there was another side that was sort of bringing into focus some of the more poetic

00:03:32.140 aspects of interacting with that world and subsequent to that I've sort of immersed myself

00:03:39.060 in forests after fire there was always this question in Muir Woods what if a fire went

00:03:44.660 through would you visit how would that change things the fire is really a part of this cycle

00:03:49.680 and that was a question for a lot of the visitors and during walks and during guided tours

00:03:56.060 and of course not realizing that at the time I was about to plunge into my own journey of forests

00:04:04.140 and how they behave and make their incredibly powerful stage-by-stage comeback after wildfire.

00:04:13.680 And that's been, oh, I don't know.

00:04:16.460 Sometimes I think of it as probably a thousand hours per year, somewhere in that neighborhood.

00:04:23.900 Some of it is immersive.

00:04:25.160 Now, a lot of it is about just field recordings, sound recordings, poetry and, you know, poetry workshops and even artistic installations or working with others who are interested in artistic installations.

00:04:42.220 So it sort of covers quite a wide range.

00:04:46.940 Yeah. Gosh, fire, forest fires are such a point of contention.

00:04:53.540 And I'm thinking about this connection with the forest is so clearly a deeply emotional one, I would imagine, for both of us.

00:05:05.580 And with such closeness, I think, comes an intimate understanding of change.

00:05:09.640 And that change is not always a bad thing.

00:05:13.000 And so I think it's so important to recognize the dynamism of the forest and its deep-rooted ability to adapt even beyond our own comprehension.

00:05:22.020 and I'm wondering how do you mourn for some of the human rot changes to the forest while also

00:05:30.680 bearing witness to its adaptive capacity it's so interesting one of my recent poems

00:05:37.860 once we have mourned and looked away there's a change that comes into the forest without our

00:05:43.840 permission we don't know where it comes from it's mysterious and deep and there we go the

00:05:50.780 biodiversity starts to fall into place, stage by stage. So there is an initial state of mourning,

00:06:01.000 I think, when I see that through our own current knowledge and capacities,

00:06:13.600 we're putting ourselves as you know homes and communities in in danger and sometimes

00:06:22.020 you know too much danger because we there's so much you know the last few years I've evacuated

00:06:31.380 three times from home and that's fires have come in within two miles embers have come in probably

00:06:38.580 closer. And so the fire is being seen from human eyes, and human eyes are recognizing fire as a

00:06:47.860 destructive force. In forests, fire is one of the cycles, sort of like hurricanes, volcanoes,

00:06:59.700 big storms snow it's one of the cycles and in particular what's interpreted as destruction

00:07:10.920 is very often very quickly a force of creation what is determined as a mortuary is very quickly

00:07:22.540 a nursery and that the mortuary to nursery analogy i take from dr tim inglesby's work he's

00:07:31.260 he leads firefighters united for safety ethics and ecology i've been informed by his work and many

00:07:37.280 other folks works um you know so it's really not destruction and a pretty good sized group

00:07:49.380 of scientists have been documenting this opposite of destruction this beautiful creative force that

00:07:55.760 comes in after wildfire so that a lot of things that are interpreted as dead like if you see

00:08:03.160 little bottle brush leaves on the sequoia simpavirons the the tallest trees in the world

00:08:11.540 then and interpreted as oh my gosh it's sick it's dying it looks different it's all charred and

00:08:18.740 here's these tiny leaves coming up. That's not the case at all. It's just making a comeback and

00:08:24.260 five years from now, it's going to be doing fine. The real matter at hand is time. Well, there's two

00:08:32.160 real matters at hand at least. One is our own safety because our sense of time is that very

00:08:38.680 compacted emergency-based sense of time. Leave, leave now, do whatever you can, take whatever you

00:08:47.320 can, but leave. But the forest sense of time is one of eons. It's one of centuries. It's one of

00:08:55.660 a gradual comeback. And if our sense of time sort of overrides that, I want to see the forest come

00:09:03.340 back now. I want to see, you know, not so much ash on the ground, but everything else on the ground

00:09:09.500 popping up automatically right now, now, now. If we do that, if we become impatient, then

00:09:17.040 Yeah, of course it looks like the forest is dead. We're not giving it enough time. But what I've been doing through the works, independently following a lot of the works in the forests by colleagues, scientists and friends, is following the forests and their progress five years after a fire, ten years after a fire.

00:09:41.980 and where they are left intact, where they are left to themselves, I'm finding all manner of

00:09:49.080 every species that's known to occur before the fire. So the question is, you know, they're eating,

00:09:56.820 they're breathing, they're sleeping, they're, I've seen foxes massage themselves, little faces,

00:10:03.740 looks like they're massaging themselves against newly growing incense cedar leaves. It's, I've

00:10:10.240 seen pacific fishers spotted owls right close to very very intensely burned forests even hunting

00:10:19.740 there because of course initially at least before all the growth comes back the mammals are really

00:10:24.820 easy to see so the sense of mourning then transforms into a sense of wild sense of discovery

00:10:31.740 and a need for more immersion

00:10:35.500 and a need for more learning.

00:10:38.400 I'm also saying this as a companion

00:10:41.120 to the fact that cultural burning has been known.

00:10:46.540 I don't know if you've seen that film, Elemental,

00:10:49.640 that was recently produced by Ralph Blomer.

00:10:53.400 It's a group up in Oregon

00:10:54.720 and filmed and directed by Tripp Jennings.

00:10:57.940 and and there's a line in elemental it says this is just this is the beginning it's coming right

00:11:06.520 back there's many lines like that but you know we can dwell on the morning or we can m-o-u-r-n-i-n-g

00:11:15.220 right the that sad morning or we can come back and and keep revisiting year after year and seeing

00:11:22.920 this incredible biodiversity unfurling life unfurling oh this is such a there are so many

00:11:34.240 strong threads that you pulled on thinking about deep time versus our human impatience and

00:11:45.100 And I see that in so many ways when it comes to our desire for fast-paced solutions or what we think of, you know, what we think we need to do in terms of the urgency of climate change and habitat destruction.

00:12:06.100 and i think that even feeds into our desire for instant gratification whether it's from

00:12:13.120 forests after a burn or amazon prime like it's all coming from the same place of this quick

00:12:24.040 feedback or quick shifts because our lives are actually quite short and so i can i can understand

00:12:34.580 I have a lot of compassion for us that we want to see things moving quickly and maybe in that

00:12:41.380 there's a type of security or safety and I think maybe that also stems from wanting to control the

00:12:48.620 forest or control the land rather than working with the land's rhythms and I want to kind of

00:12:59.340 explore what that means in terms of forest policies, whether that's before a burn or after

00:13:05.040 a burn. I know when Trump was in office, and I might butcher this a little bit, but I think in

00:13:09.940 the farm bill, or maybe it was a climate change bill, there was something about that the forest,

00:13:18.340 especially in California, needed to be logged so they didn't burn. And then there was also,

00:13:25.360 you know the salvage logging where once a forest has been burned cut all of the trees down because

00:13:33.180 the forest is now a liability and so I'd like to explore these policies with you and

00:13:41.700 I'm just interested to hear how you think these are created the short-term thinking and what are

00:13:52.060 the negatives when we choose policies like that versus if we are able to have patience

00:14:00.120 when it comes to forest management yeah you know just the thought it's sort of

00:14:08.160 I don't want to sound too light-hearted about it but has everyone and anyone ever thought of

00:14:14.860 grass management, grass burns too. Yeah, we never hear the term grass management. And that's because

00:14:22.760 grass has no value, commercial value. Forest management has been born and brought up by

00:14:31.120 an interest in commercial value. And so anything that goes hand in hand with forest management,

00:14:38.000 you've got to be really aware of the fact that there is a commercial aspect there. So that

00:14:45.140 I'm not saying it's the fox guarding the chicken coop, not quite, because a lot of forest managers

00:14:51.720 are very well-meaning, very reliable people. On the other hand, the idea that all forests

00:15:01.460 are have to be wide and open spaced with with with lots of light coming in between and they're

00:15:11.280 too dense that they're too crowded that you know it's a judgment call and it's a judgment call that

00:15:18.520 several folks who have not been contested in the literature including uh william baker mark

00:15:27.340 Williams, Chad Hansen, Dennis Odeon. These scientists have been calling into question

00:15:35.840 the idea that all forests have to be widely spaced. Sure, some mature forests have that

00:15:42.700 wide spacing. That's absolutely right. You walk into ancient redwood forests and you will see

00:15:48.460 wide spacing between big mature trees. That's true. But what about the little youngsters coming

00:15:55.560 up they come up crowded and they out compete each other and then and then they space out as time

00:16:02.780 goes on again back to time and what about the areas that were managed with cultural burning

00:16:10.040 cultural burning which is very much close at heart to me because cultural burning

00:16:15.620 is part of what many east indian tribes doing in the mountains in india uh burning every year

00:16:23.580 you know that sets up the forest dynamic where there is some sort of the low close to the ground

00:16:31.500 very what we call bushy it's a bad term it's it's more like shrubs and herbaceous plants that are

00:16:38.300 tall and maybe some short trees they sort of get trimmed and burned and the understory gets clear

00:16:45.840 but is that the case for all forests anyone will tell you that you don't find quails there

00:16:52.760 you don't find um fissures there where they are is where the shade is where the ferns are where

00:17:00.680 the mosses are where the lichens are that's where you find you're not finding them in these cleaned

00:17:06.680 up widely spaced forests so this exclusive idea or imposition if you will that all forests have

00:17:15.280 to be widely spaced and that's the only answer we have to work against fire and climate change

00:17:22.780 not only is it taking out way too many mature trees live and dead both as I said before you

00:17:31.940 know some people will think that the little growths on the limbs of trees and on the top

00:17:39.640 branches is a sign that the tree is giving out and about to blink out. It's exactly the opposite.

00:17:46.760 Redwoods survive like that. Those little ball brush leaves are the key to redwood post-fire

00:17:53.580 survival. So actually hammering forests with what you mentioned, salvage logging after fire,

00:18:01.980 But also thinning actions before fire is imposing our value system on forests without necessarily taking into account that both the so-called widely spaced, beautiful, big stature forests and the tiny little one trees, forests with smaller trees coming back in after fire.

00:18:30.980 both of them existed and there's a lot of evidence for that i mean that's how how little

00:18:37.300 ones you see little ones carpet the forest floor at the beginning stages after fire that there's

00:18:46.060 all this conifer regeneration and and other regeneration and of course mammals and small

00:18:52.240 birds are attracted to it and everybody else is attracted to that because now now everybody has

00:18:57.400 food because the small mammals are back so all those little ones are pretty crowded and you can't

00:19:04.340 say they're unnatural just because they crowd that's just how they grow they seeds fall to the

00:19:09.500 forest floor and they grow and then at some point if they get out competed some of them survive and

00:19:16.020 and the rest maybe not but to impose this idea that you know we've got a widely space create

00:19:24.580 wide spacing around all these forests. It goes hand in hand with the commercial forest management

00:19:31.680 because for anyone to survive doing that, they've got to take out some of the biggest trees. It's

00:19:38.620 just going to happen. I've seen it over and over again. I've been monitoring for over 10 years.

00:19:43.420 You've got to take out some of the biggest trees in order to be able to make some kind of

00:19:48.100 a profit on it break even even you know so so of course a lot of big trees are taken out

00:19:56.900 in the name of what they call thinning or fuels management so there's the policy side of it and

00:20:03.580 of course you've got laws you know that oh now now we've got this idea that oh my gosh we've

00:20:09.180 got too many dead trees there's all these beetle kill trees there's all these fire related dead

00:20:13.900 trees. Well, the problem with taking out all the dead trees or even leaving very few per acre

00:20:21.320 is that those are the housing complexes. I call the standing dead trees the low-income housing

00:20:28.060 of the wild because everybody lives there. Everybody makes homes out of it. There's cavity

00:20:34.180 nesters of all shapes and sizes, birds and mammals that all make their homes in there.

00:20:39.360 So now, if dead trees are being removed, those are the housing complexes being removed. And of course, you know, the idea is that being circulated is that they burn faster and will give rise to just a much bigger fire acreage. And that's actually been proved to be untrue.

00:21:03.100 One of the examples of that is Dr. Sarah Hart did a 12-year study.

00:21:08.780 I think she's from Colorado.

00:21:11.140 She did a 12-year study of dead trees versus not dead trees and areas that were dominated by standing dead trees.

00:21:19.280 and over and over and over she found that the areas that were dominated by you know standing

00:21:26.760 dead trees did not burn a whole lot differently from those which were all live trees so it's

00:21:33.900 these value judgments are being given and then we're tangled up with commercial extraction

00:21:40.100 because just that's just the way it's been in the forests all the all this time

00:21:44.320 Mars cross fire

00:21:55.140 Wind of desire

00:21:59.080 Well I'm not free

00:22:02.580 If I'm not wired

00:22:06.580 I'm still child

00:22:09.020 And I feel my power

00:22:12.380 Void

00:22:16.380 In the void

00:22:19.760 In you

00:22:23.380 Void

00:22:30.820 In the void

00:22:34.500 I think the question of economics is one that really rules forest management, of course.

00:22:58.380 It's not about what's best ecologically, and I'm thinking about places I've been, especially

00:23:11.560 in the Sierras and the forests that are east of the I-5 freeway, for those of you who have

00:23:22.120 driven around Northern California specifically. And I remember feeling so devastated seeing

00:23:31.920 big fires roll in and then large trees, some of which were still alive, being taken and just

00:23:40.540 clear cuts. Then you think about all of the erosion that then happens and the soil that

00:23:46.140 becomes even more damaged by post-fire logging. And I think it's interesting too that there's no

00:23:55.960 value placed on standing dead trees for habitat. And I'm thinking about deep time again and when

00:24:05.560 a forest is able to regrow, the fires bring new shoots and mushrooms like morels and then the

00:24:12.940 deer come in and they eat the morels and they poop and the soil gets the fertilizer from the

00:24:18.480 animals that are living in these places and able to walk through more easily and and then when you

00:24:24.140 strip all that away just thinking of the forest soil and what is able to regrow there over time

00:24:30.620 if we can you know just thinking about the depletion between logging and then pre-fire

00:24:37.500 logging post-fire logging and so on and so forth it's like what are we setting up the forest to be

00:24:42.340 able to do it's almost like we're taking away some of their immune immunity strength to regrow

00:24:50.340 in a healthy vibrant way and so yeah just considering all of the ways that it's detrimental

00:24:58.640 to log post fire and I think it's really challenging because for those of us who

00:25:06.820 are just living our lives and we aren't necessarily really engaged in policies or

00:25:12.960 forest management. But we're seeing these things not really knowing why they're happening or maybe

00:25:19.200 believing that it is better to clear cut these forests because we're scared, because our homes

00:25:26.720 are there. And so I think it's hard for people to know how to stand and request from their local

00:25:35.220 governments or state governments or even national governments of how to manage these forests

00:25:40.640 in a better way. And so I guess maybe I'm getting to a question around

00:25:46.780 how do those of us who live in these areas build relationships with fire and forest? And how do we

00:25:57.440 engage, whether if that's on a political level or a management level, like how do we have our

00:26:04.080 voice is heard because I don't want us to be listening to this and thinking oh well we don't

00:26:09.880 have any power here we just need to sit back and watch it all burn and watch it all be clear-cut

00:26:16.120 and we don't have any say in how these places that surround us are tended for the future

00:26:24.840 yeah so well thank you so much for touching on so many things about connected to helplessness I guess

00:26:33.560 I see incredibly powerful films like Elemental, and in fact, by the way, Bring Your Own Brigade, that very clearly documents in one instance how fast a fire, how much faster a wildfire can move through a thinned or even clear-cut forest.

00:26:53.920 So that's not only is the carbon gone, but also we've got the carbon emissions related to that leading to more climate change impacts, because once the carbon is gone, at least a good fraction of it is going straight up into the atmosphere, no matter which type of processing is done.

00:27:13.560 And that's climate change for tomorrow, worse wildfires for tomorrow. So that carbon accounting is not being done during this clear-cutting operations, but also the fact that the next fire can actually move much quicker.

00:27:29.540 and that's exactly what has happened in some of the tragic fires and yes one eye is turned

00:27:37.220 to tragedy in the beginnings of both those very recent powerful films however I want to turn my

00:27:45.920 eye to where do these homes clearly survive Dr Jack Cohen who has done some of the seminal studies

00:27:54.520 of home structures surviving wildfire has said specifically you don't have to live in a concrete

00:28:02.680 bunker in order to be able to have your home survive a wildfire it's such an it's imprinted

00:28:10.740 that that message is imprinted into my brain as a sense of hope not that you want to plant

00:28:18.800 yourself right in the middle of where historic wildfires have been, you know, going, have found

00:28:26.740 their path fast and furious. No, not necessarily. Don't be building right into that. But on the

00:28:33.120 other hand, there's a sense of optimism. I know two people, I went ahead and jumped into some

00:28:41.200 local post-fire monitoring as soon as the 2020 Wallbridge fire in West of Healdsburg was over

00:28:50.020 and found all these animals coming back in. Tremendous, beautiful bird diversity, mammals,

00:28:59.780 and specifically my area of focus was two homes, one that stood standing after the wildfire

00:29:10.200 surrounded by redwoods the other one that did not stand after wildfire did not survive the wildfire

00:29:16.300 also surrounded by redwoods what was the difference and so for me and in this case the

00:29:23.500 difference had a lot to do with watering around the home irrigation and the fact that they had

00:29:30.460 some water just a few hours they left the irrigation on and it was watering not just

00:29:37.700 around the house but I think the roof as well so so here you go there's there's a difference there

00:29:43.680 there's the possibility of a structure stand remaining standing after the same wildfire there

00:29:50.300 were two houses that were just basically next door to each other and so the other home also

00:29:56.000 surrounded by redwoods but of course structurally very different and not having that irrigation

00:30:00.800 set up to where it would irrigate the land immediately adjacent so I really feel strongly

00:30:10.740 about talking about some of those positive stories because what's being built up more and more is the

00:30:16.920 fear of wildfire that the trees are going to bring your house down during a wildfire and what's been

00:30:24.440 shown over and over is that where there's a ground fire over 100 feet from homes, those homes

00:30:32.620 have a capability, a capacity to stay standing if careful measures are taken. What are those

00:30:40.780 measures? Where are these stories of post-fire survival? I'm seeing one or two crop up and I

00:30:48.280 feel like focusing on those stories to help us beef up against the sense of intense fear that

00:30:57.520 blames forests over and over again especially where the blame leads to so much deforestation

00:31:04.020 that it actually makes climate change and future wildfires worse so and the other thing you were

00:31:10.560 talking about is you were talking about the snags being left in place um you know the snags people

00:31:15.940 oh my goodness look at that standing dead tree it's going to burn up it's an aesthetic value

00:31:20.960 it's an aesthetic it's an imposed value those snags being housing complexes and you know of

00:31:29.800 course the woodpeckers started off there's bugs then there's woodpeckers following the bugs

00:31:34.300 then there's all these other cavity nesters following the woodpeckers even the larger mammals

00:31:40.060 sort of not bears, but definitely some of the small ringtails and flying squirrels, ground

00:31:48.320 squirrels, excuse me, the tree squirrels, and even Pacific Fisher. So these animals can come in and

00:31:56.380 use these snags, the cracks in the trees, the faults, the flaws in the trees, the reason people

00:32:03.040 take trees down. Oh, no, look at that. It's going to be sick. It's going to die. We better take that

00:32:08.560 down. All that stuff is being used. So on one hand, I want to see the positive stories of

00:32:16.040 homes and structures surviving wildfire. On the other hand, I want to see the positive stories

00:32:21.320 of all these animals that rely on these standing dead trees and also the living trees with flaws

00:32:27.700 and cracks in them, where they can make their little spaces and raise their young. So as much

00:32:33.280 spaces we give ourselves we can give to the other members of of the earth i guess there's

00:32:42.900 a question that's coming up for me around fires and soil and thinking about the arguments people

00:32:51.540 make like oh well the fires of today burn hotter and faster and instead of rejuvenating the soil

00:33:00.120 or opening the seeds of redwoods or other species that need fire to proliferate, that

00:33:07.780 these hotter fires are actually killing the soil and they're killing the microorganisms

00:33:15.900 and the mycelium.

00:33:18.680 Do you, it's so, it's hard because part of these like, you know, how much can we trust

00:33:26.620 the anti-forest fire rhetoric because I think so much of blaming the forest and of blaming fire

00:33:36.040 is to blame and otherize the earth and that is what colonialism and capitalism

00:33:44.980 has done so well is to sever us from the living earth and to say it's it's bad it's evil it's

00:33:53.780 dangerous. It's not in rhythm with us. Like we need to control it. We need to harness the power

00:34:03.420 of it and be the dominant ones. And so, you know, when I hear things like, oh, fire is actually

00:34:11.040 really bad ecologically. Because like I said, you know, one thing people are saying is that it's

00:34:16.740 burning up the health of the soil. Do you think that in some cases that is true? Or do you think

00:34:24.580 like, how do you dissect comments like that? It's a great question. Thank you. I focused a lot

00:34:31.580 on postfire forests coming back in where there's a lot of mature trees. And maybe I should also

00:34:38.840 focus on areas where there aren't that many mature trees where they've been being taken out. In fact,

00:34:45.960 When I think about it, sometimes on the way to one of the sites that I regularly visit, basically all over California, from Sequoia in the south all the way to Lassen in the north, I'll pass an area where there's very small trees left in place.

00:35:04.000 and quintessential image is a big tree it's been burned okay so there's a really large stump that's

00:35:13.880 also been burned but it was obviously cut before the fire because it's a stump that has already

00:35:18.800 been burned over so it's a huge stump and then in the backdrop there's a lot of small trees

00:35:26.520 and they've all been charred to the to the knobs they've been charred all the way out

00:35:32.360 by the fire and my attention was drawn to this juxtaposition between this this big

00:35:39.940 once tree that turned into a stump during maybe one or another thinning project before long before

00:35:48.980 the fire who knows how many years before the fire and then the little ones were left and the poor

00:35:53.300 little ones didn't make it at all and the reason this I was inspired by another colleague Doug

00:36:00.940 bevington who was searching for images do you see do you see this offer do you see this thin

00:36:07.620 landscapes with you know the largest trees removed and what's happening and i am seeing big big big

00:36:15.480 what they call high severity like very very little survival of standing trees high severity fire

00:36:21.300 in these areas and over and over again i will search around and sure enough i'll find one or

00:36:30.440 more either like a big log like so big it's fallen over right so it's taller than I am

00:36:37.860 the diameter is way way more than my height or I'll see this stump that's been burned over and

00:36:47.640 it was obviously removed before the fire or I'll see both I'll see a bunch of both and so I've

00:36:52.380 developed this habit of taking a photo of that with with this backdrop of tiny trees and I can

00:36:58.120 send them to you I've just got I'm just collecting them right now it seems to me fair because you

00:37:05.460 know the thinning was done in the name of forest health we need to go in there and and see who's

00:37:10.900 coming back there what's growing there you know I need to give that a fair shake too because I

00:37:17.480 don't focus there because primarily because it's silent but that's just my impression right at that

00:37:23.760 moment. Maybe it will come back. There is really no functioning forest that I can see. The elements

00:37:30.160 that I like, like a beautiful creek with ferns and mosses, lichens on the trees, some swath of

00:37:37.980 live trees, sort of close to the heart of the flow of the creek in this riparian corridor,

00:37:44.960 oaks coming back, little re-sprouts coming down up from the ground, the root re-sprouts,

00:37:51.400 those little signs I'm not seeing them in those areas so I sort of my tendency is to just give up

00:37:58.400 on those areas really quickly but I'm that is an area that burned fast and furious that is an area

00:38:05.360 that burned hot and that is an area that needs help but those are areas that were already

00:38:10.680 interfered with and I don't know whether the soil is dead or not I would have to come back I mean I

00:38:17.360 want to trust it a little bit and see if I can come back five years from then and see what

00:38:24.560 happens. For the most part, however, those areas are clear cut. Not only are they clear cut,

00:38:31.660 but it's down to the bare soil at the end of the clear cut. And what that means from my standpoint

00:38:40.600 point is that the mycelial network, subterranean mycelial network is also being fragmented by this

00:38:48.980 mechanical operation. And that's been proved in the literature over and over. So, you know,

00:38:55.600 if it wasn't clear cut, maybe we would have a chance to see whether things come back. But

00:39:01.780 years after a clear cut, I've seen four or five years after a clear cut, nothing is coming back.

00:39:07.760 there's even trees being planted and they're dying and because they need help in in the

00:39:14.000 beginning the little seedlings need help they need the shade the moisture provided by the logs etc

00:39:21.300 one of the regeneration studies um conifer regeneration studies i just helped with as a

00:39:26.620 sort of independent i helped tanya chi out in the field she's a scientist i work with sometimes

00:39:34.420 and you know we were seeing so much regeneration in areas that hadn't been cut for a long time

00:39:43.280 there's a soil buildup there's this slight sponginess underfoot whereas in those areas

00:39:48.900 that burned hot and fast that had a lot of evidence of previous recent cuts pre-fire thinning

00:39:55.880 we were not seeing that come back now I mean those are small examples all of what I have said

00:40:04.300 are small examples. Is that happening everywhere? I don't know. I think it's worth looking at. But

00:40:10.900 they are areas and we do have the data, for example, you know, how fast does a fire go?

00:40:16.580 That's easily available. Where does a fire go the fastest? That's easily available.

00:40:22.860 We don't have to sit, stand by and be helpless. We can take a look at those things. And

00:40:28.080 there's no need to sort of relegate forests to the the forces that are at work right now which

00:40:38.520 is primarily the extraction industry saying and understandably so in some ways without any

00:40:44.220 opposition gosh we better take what we can it's the fires are just burning it so but the question

00:40:51.000 is what does that mean does that mean all the old growth apparently that's counted now i mean

00:40:56.620 the mossed grove of yosemite national park is being taken down as we speak and i'm not just

00:41:04.400 talking about i'm not talking about the older trees the very very old trees but really big

00:41:10.980 trees well over 20 inches in diameter are being taken down i i documented it very recently

00:41:18.380 in the name of oh my gosh a wildfire will hit it and we need to do a fuels reduction

00:41:23.660 so since that's actually been disproved in the literature yeah like it's sort of hit or miss

00:41:31.860 if you take it down we don't know if it's gonna go through an intense fire or not it's sort of

00:41:38.340 hit or miss it's not really a proof so then you know there is a lot that we can do I feel

00:41:53.660 Dig in from this place, my bird, you'll say

00:42:02.580 Do what you can

00:42:05.060 Dig in from this place

00:42:12.480 We can walk any direction

00:42:25.220 Don't need a map to lead us home

00:42:31.880 A trail will just spring up around her

00:42:42.960 As like an enormous door

00:42:47.880 Oh, there's so much to this.

00:42:54.460 and I'm thinking about how the forests are really

00:43:03.000 it gets hard to put a blanket solution on all forests like I think about with salmon habitat

00:43:15.100 restoration and adding in coarse woody debris and there's these grants from the government or

00:43:21.700 projects from cal fire or whoever and it's very much like okay every hundred feet you put a log

00:43:28.540 jam in it's like well that doesn't make sense for every creek it doesn't make sense for every river

00:43:33.880 and i think that way about pre or post fire management that each little section of forest

00:43:44.380 is so different and has a different history based off extraction and when we think of managing

00:43:50.980 into the future, it's really hard to have these sweeping statements that I think are being

00:43:59.060 sold to us by government agencies or big organizations that are contracted out to do

00:44:05.900 this work. And I also think, of course, it's used to log more. It's like these excuses or

00:44:13.820 justifications. And it makes me think of the debate over restoration versus conservation

00:44:24.240 or proforestation versus climate change mitigation. And I think because we are in a

00:44:35.220 type of post-logging world at this point, and what I mean by that is if you think of the Pacific

00:44:41.300 northwest california up to alaska what 98 of the old growth forests have already been logged

00:44:47.640 so we're working with such a small amount of intact forest and of course the bigger trees

00:44:55.280 most likely are the most monetarily valued and so when i think about um how do we

00:45:06.740 manage at this point where you know some of these plots have been logged three four five times over

00:45:16.100 and are regrowing plantation forest and so hearing about your experiences where you're looking at

00:45:23.620 forest with post fire with large trees and then I think okay well what is what are forests that

00:45:30.480 have been plantation forest burned like what are the differences between forest and the ways they've

00:45:38.260 been treated and then I think also yeah of course if you are a large logging company or forestry

00:45:45.100 company and you own hundreds of thousands of acres of either plantation forest or something

00:45:51.140 like a plantation forest you want to quote protect your investment and it's not about an investment

00:45:58.900 for seven generations or an ecological investment it's a timber investment and so I don't know if

00:46:05.560 I have a direct question I'm kind of just in the mud of the complications of industry versus

00:46:12.820 ecology and all of the different levels that so many forests I mean it's like how do we even say

00:46:21.560 forest at this point because you know okay well here's the Siskiyou national forest versus the

00:46:26.460 glass and national forests like well these were just borders put on by the government

00:46:30.100 and you know even within those hundreds of thousands of acres forest there could be you

00:46:36.780 know 10 acres next to 100 acres next to it's all so different I guess is what I'm what I'm getting

00:46:42.240 at and I'm just sitting in the complexity of it and maybe just blabbing a bit like the way that

00:46:49.740 I'm processing it all and I'll stop now before I just keep going into this vortex and see if there's

00:46:55.840 any way you can help uh throw me a rope in this place i'm in oh that's a great image by the way

00:47:04.180 and i i like how you traveled from the streams to the to the plantations you know the stream

00:47:09.940 restoration work with a every hundred feet can can you can throw some conifers in and not every

00:47:17.220 creek needing it it there's this movement toward process-based restoration um in california and

00:47:24.400 I'm sure it's been moving through other states as well, where they are incorporating large and

00:47:31.960 small woody debris into very deeply incised creeks. And in some cases, well, creeks feeding

00:47:37.980 meadows, really. And in some cases, it's incredibly helpful. Hand in hand with some of those projects,

00:47:45.960 it looks like there's definitely some extraction element going on. So that, you know,

00:47:53.900 So you've got the, almost like the Creek Restoration Project ends up being, going hand in hand with some level of extraction in the forest.

00:48:06.360 And some of it is timber and, but then of course, some of it is sort of hiding behind the veil of this beautiful restoration project that's happening.

00:48:14.880 so what's really interesting is that we are actually speaking about forests more than we're

00:48:21.300 speaking about grasses grasslands meadows chaparral vegetation all of which is incredibly

00:48:29.380 important for biodiversity support some of which comes back in stages at the end of a fire the

00:48:36.480 grasses and chaparral come back and you have these incredible you know biodiversity of chaparral

00:48:43.880 nesting birds, like the green-tailed toey and other toeyes and the quails, will come back to

00:48:51.220 inhabit this forest that is making its comeback in stages with the ground cover being very thick

00:49:01.120 initially. What's really interesting is part of these restoration projects that no one really

00:49:07.940 talks about is, is herbicide application. Once these forests are cut, they're actually broadcast

00:49:18.220 sprayed with herbicide. I just witnessed it earlier this year for the first time in, you know,

00:49:24.600 in person. Before that, I'd heard about it and seen photos taken with the warning sign,

00:49:30.220 the skull and crossbones warning 1% glyphosate, do not enter. And then there's a date provided

00:49:37.820 after which you can enter. And then after the herbicide applications over, and I'm talking

00:49:44.620 broadcast applications, they're planting the trees. And of course, some of the tree plantations

00:49:52.660 fail, which leads me to tree plantations. And a recent piece that I've read, a paper that came out

00:50:02.120 by Dunn, Steve Dunn of Oregon, and several of his colleagues, I don't think he's a lead author in

00:50:09.900 that, although he's been a lead author in many other papers, talking about plantations actually

00:50:15.460 burning with such high severity, like they burn so fast and furious, so hot, that they sort of

00:50:24.740 burn, sort of that influence spills over into the adjacent forests that are not necessarily

00:50:31.320 plantations so that's the danger of a plantation is a this juxtaposition this very close cheek by

00:50:40.540 jowl juxtaposition between the plantation forest and you know it's sort of a more layered multi-layered

00:50:47.820 slightly more natural forest that's also been cut at some time in its history like you're saying

00:50:53.460 um the danger is that that plantation is going to influence fire behavior in the next area

00:51:01.720 and the fact is that this plantation style is all we have when we hit bare ground i mean

00:51:08.860 when people are trying to plant they're just planting plantation style i'm not seeing anything

00:51:15.760 highly varied with a lot of beautiful trees i'm not seeing the chaparral i'm not seeing

00:51:22.380 the native grasses I'm not seeing the native slender stems monkey flower I'm not seeing that

00:51:30.380 come back I'm just seeing oh we want trees well trees are not forests you can plant any number

00:51:38.140 of trees some of which will die of course because of the you know the sort of raising to the ground

00:51:46.400 of the habitat that came before, but you can't plant a forest.

00:51:51.700 And that's a quote I got from Maya Menenes, who spoke at COP26.

00:51:57.580 I just think that we just need to put our fear in the right place.

00:52:02.980 We are in a quagmire.

00:52:04.340 You're absolutely right about speaking out of the quicksand

00:52:10.180 of all these various strands of information.

00:52:14.540 uh some of which is a little slanted if i may be allowed to be frank uh slanted toward you know

00:52:23.020 the extraction paradigm oh my gosh it's it's all dying they're all unhealthy we've got to space

00:52:27.220 them out we've got to take a lot more trees out we've got to take out 80 of the trees one

00:52:31.520 publication this year we got to take out more more and more and the more more more is sort of

00:52:37.380 interesting because nobody's looking at how or very few people are looking at how farce behaved

00:52:43.400 in those places where more and more has been taken out. It's actually just as fast and furious,

00:52:49.720 if not more, than areas where it hasn't been taken out. There's some cases where it actually

00:52:55.880 slows down. If a fire encounters, you know, wet soil and moss and ferns, it is going to slow down

00:53:04.340 because it's all the moisture there. It's so interesting that there is such a heavy influence

00:53:10.260 of fire behavior imposed by you know the treatments that have been in place and are in place

00:53:18.640 and yet we're not really recognizing that this is this is really a human hand in fire rather than

00:53:24.360 just fire out of control it's the human hand in fire that we're not seeing

00:53:28.540 mm-hmm yeah thank you so much for your work and your devotion and the way you can see through

00:53:41.680 confusion and rhetoric and the powers that think they are trying to wield

00:53:50.500 a narrative that is really short-sighted and clearly on the side of industry using any excuse

00:53:59.880 to log more and more and it kind of feels like this coming from a space of desperation

00:54:09.320 like I think about when settlers came to the west coast of North America

00:54:16.480 back you know 100 200 300 400 years ago and seeing the grandeur and these huge old growth

00:54:27.060 trees that they thought would never end you know they they thought they could just keep cutting and

00:54:31.720 cutting and there would be endless supplies and I think at this point we realize no you know there

00:54:40.740 are limits like the earth has limits the forest has limits and and now it's almost like this

00:54:47.620 addictive scrambling to just take everything we can get before something ends before before we're

00:54:57.220 not able to anymore it's kind of the same thing with like making money or even this type of post

00:55:03.500 pandemic world some of us are seeing where it's like as soon as the restrictions are off it's

00:55:10.040 like okay go go go go even though we saw a time when emissions were down but it's uh it's like

00:55:17.860 binge until we can't anymore mentality and I think it's really challenging to manage or I don't even

00:55:28.420 like that word honestly but tend a forced well and right relationship when so so much of the

00:55:38.140 management is done in a type of what I see as a binge mentality. So yeah, it's really complex,

00:55:45.540 but I think the more of us who start to decipher truths and understand ecological processes in

00:55:55.660 deep time and also realize like the forest isn't for us. It's not just for us. It's not just for

00:56:03.020 us to control or to use or to make money off of the forest has its own life lives plural I mean

00:56:12.880 and I loved how you said a forest isn't just trees and I see that with I was very much wrapped up in

00:56:19.400 the reforest industrial complex in the redwoods and it was amazing to feel the urgency and the

00:56:26.820 desperation to just plant trees plant trees plant trees and it's like well that's not how trees

00:56:32.720 grow though and it's not how strong resilient trees grow for sure where they're placed in dry

00:56:39.400 soil without their mother trees or under the shade of larger trees or having the connections

00:56:46.000 through the mycelial mats like these processes are are very beautifully complex and I have

00:56:56.160 definitely gotten to a place where for me I think focusing on protecting what is there and then

00:57:03.200 allowing time to tend to a ecosystem and just kind of stepping back and saying you know we don't know

00:57:15.000 what to do we don't actually have the answers and even though I can have compassion for us wanting

00:57:21.940 to help. I think in a lot of ways we're doing more harm than we are helping, but of course when

00:57:29.440 everything is based off economic growth at an endless rate, it's really hard to give anything

00:57:35.560 time because we want a rate of return now or in 40 years. So gosh, yeah, I'm so transported. I'm

00:57:44.600 sitting in Alaska right now freezing my butt off really. It's really cold today. The north winds

00:57:50.040 are blowing hard the everything's frozen but I'm like very much back in the forests of California

00:57:56.360 thinking of their beauty and their diversity and just really praying for them that

00:58:03.500 they'll find a way through our manic decision making and uh have space to grow into the future

00:58:14.060 it's really interesting because i see something that's missing there's uh two or three things

00:58:25.300 that are missing in the conversation one is that there's actually a lot of jobs that could be

00:58:32.120 created um through just the home hardening defensible space work that absolutely needs

00:58:40.520 to be done more and more, especially because people are still rebuilding. People are still

00:58:46.260 coexisting with areas that have a very strong history of fire. So if the focus was just homes

00:58:55.000 and survival of structures, there'd be a lot of jobs out there, probably more because

00:59:02.420 the focus is hands-on, what do I do? What are all the structural changes that I need to put in?

00:59:10.020 It's not just one bulldozer, one operator and one ground person and blasting through a forest.

00:59:16.520 It's a lot of people with fine skills trying to work on home hardening and defensible space.

00:59:23.640 And that's just that's to me, that's the bright promise.

00:59:27.700 That's the bright hope, which is that there are so many jobs that are available.

00:59:32.900 You know, so the economic standpoint is that same money can be put into areas avoiding, you know, that will clearly lower the risks for communities.

00:59:44.720 So to me, that's one big bright hope. And the other big bright hope is, is just going into some of those, I guess, now we could say they're remnant, because as you say, this just so much has been removed forests, just going into them and listening, you know, listening to, you know, the trickle of water to the sound of the birds, the birds warning, initially warning each other that you're there.

01:00:10.600 and then they stop doing that because you're pretty still in going about your business and

01:00:15.780 they're going about theirs and and maybe an occasional mammal you know some somebody climbing

01:00:22.600 up the tree a bear that shows up around the corner there's the other bright hope the fact that

01:00:29.720 when you listen and you stop there's still we still have a chance of keeping things intact

01:00:37.900 based on the nuggets that are left.

01:00:40.080 If we could just let those nuggets grow,

01:00:42.080 nuggets meaning small swaths of forest

01:00:44.940 that have been fortunately,

01:00:47.080 they're out of access, mechanical equipment,

01:00:50.000 it's high risk there, it's a high slope,

01:00:51.960 it's very rocky.

01:00:53.960 Whatever the combination of miraculous circumstances is,

01:00:57.920 they've been left alone.

01:00:59.080 And sure enough, they support this high biodiversity

01:01:03.320 and this incredibly interesting structure

01:01:06.300 you're not going to see elsewhere because it's all planed out. And the memory of the place,

01:01:12.320 you know, that the place has for making its own comeback is sort of wiped out by the mechanical

01:01:19.220 treatment, at least for 50 or 100 years, the 50 or 100 years we don't have in terms of extraction.

01:01:27.260 And in the race to extraction, I just have to say with forest management,

01:01:30.820 How much more is being taken out than is being put back? That should really sober us and give us a way to direct our hopes of, you know, if we leave it in place, those wildfires of tomorrow could, you know, not be exacerbated at the very least, because all that carbon dioxide being pumped into the air, heating the planet by slow degrees is going to be on the ground.

01:01:59.140 you know that that sort of that slogan keep it on the ground that um folks uh colleagues have

01:02:06.960 extended to keep it in the forest um you know so um i i just think that those are the sources of

01:02:16.860 hope you know just you just try try really hard to focus on and concentrate on the sounds and

01:02:24.140 sights of the things that are most loved. Beautiful, Maya. I would love if you could read

01:02:31.460 a poem or two. Oh, yeah, sure. I was thinking of this because I've done so much to translate

01:02:40.500 the field into verse, so to speak. Not rhyming, of course. This is a dedication. This poem is a

01:02:52.860 dedication to Doug Bevington and his family. And it's really sort of based on a photo of his

01:03:00.580 daughter in a newly regenerating forest where the young trees are actually taller than she is. And

01:03:07.440 it was taken a few years ago. And it's called Cloaks of Charcoal. The burned trees are gathered

01:03:14.340 by the hundreds, each cloak of charcoal, a sooty shipmast floating upright in a sea of new leaves

01:03:23.300 and thick slices of earth. All around are expanses of cedar, fir, pine, blackened from their base to

01:03:32.760 eye level, alive. Dawn brings a busy uproar, wrens, bluebirds, black-backed woodpeckers,

01:03:41.660 lazily buntings, pygmy nuthatches, red-breasted sapsuckers. The first touch of sun clings to

01:03:49.920 treetops like honey. A child is bending to pick miner's lettuce. Her father has found morels by

01:03:58.380 two-mile creek. Hope that was tough as heat-cracked rocks grows soft, buoyant as leaves

01:04:06.620 fluorescing from half-boned trees. The land holds all, a mosaic of fiery intensities, showers of ash

01:04:17.020 on floors heaped with debris. The land's memory becomes its healing, its secrets, its breads,

01:04:25.860 butters, and preserves, released. The child has found herself among monkey flowers,

01:04:33.740 shooting stars, clarkias, and solitary bees, constellations of seedlings stretching out

01:04:42.840 from decades of sleep. She listens to mountain quails calling attention to the riches.

01:04:50.480 She sees leavings, prints where bear and deer have foraged.

01:04:55.100 the walking animals have known for millennia the insects for longer smoke runs through their

01:05:04.260 instincts like greetings in a familiar language rivers of birds have always been riding in on

01:05:12.020 the rivers of insects that swarm towards the source the salts of burned branches have always

01:05:19.660 been sinking, slow melting in rain. The larvae chew their way through woody tunnels. Foxes

01:05:28.580 and ring-tailed cats switch from perch to perch. Now the child, too, is singing.

01:05:37.860 Thank you, Maya. That was beautiful.

01:05:42.580 Well, this has been such an incredible conversation. I really appreciate your time and care.

01:05:47.840 thank you so much Anna and for your wisdom and the sharpness of your questions you just you must

01:05:55.740 know so much about California and I actually look forward to learning from you if you can

01:06:01.720 if you are going to visit someday soon oh thank you wow well I feel honored and yeah I really love

01:06:11.140 working up here it's the landscape is stunning but there's nothing like the forest down that

01:06:17.940 town south they're such characters and each tree has such i don't know like i i'm kind of puffing

01:06:25.840 up my chest as i'm imagining them um they're grand even the ones that aren't large yet they

01:06:33.060 they have the ability to be such powerful ancestors so i miss them a lot and i love

01:06:41.580 being able to think about them with you thank you for listening to for the wild podcast the

01:06:51.060 music you heard today was by lake mary forest vale and bird by snow for the wild is created

01:06:57.600 by Ayanna Young, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glaspell, and Julia Jackson.

For The Wild - March 27, 2024

MAYA KHOSLA on What the Forest Holds [ENCORE]

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