The Mother Tree Project

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In 2015 Suzanne Simard began to apply her scientific research findings to the practice of forestry.  She wanted to know if her theories will work in practice. She wanted to reverse the current forestry practice of “free to grow” that was based on the assumption Simard believes is wrong, namely that the best way to regenerate a forest is to keep out the competitors and make the desired trees “free to grow.” She wants foresters to acknowledge that the system they used for decades is not the best. There is a better way.

 

The better way she proposes she calls the Mother Tree Project. It recognizes that trees thrives best when they are connected to the other organisms in the ecosystem, not when they are isolated.  As she said, “the guiding principle of retaining Mother Trees and remaining connections within forests to keep them regenerative, especially as the climate changes.”

 

Simard recognizes that this cooperative and communitarian approach will be needed as forest are subjected to increasing pressures and stresses such a climate change, drought, insect infestation and the like. Simard is confident “Free to Grow” will not work as well as her approach. It has the added benefit of expanding biodiversity.

 

The Project consists of 9 experimental forests located across a “climate rainbow” in British Columbia, for hot and dry forests in the southeast corner to cold and wet stands in the north central interior of the province. Her team of researchers is examining how the structures and functions of the forests and the webs of relationships that play out in them in the real environment will work with the new practices and procedures she endorses. She is confident substantial improvements in forest regeneration will be the result.

 

Then she wants to establish what she calls “an emergent philosophy: complex science.” This new science will be

 

Based on embracing collaboration in addition to competition—indeed, working with all of the multifarious interactions that the forest—complexity science can transform forest practices into what is adaptive and holistic and away from what has been overly authoritarian and simplistic.

 

We can change our ways. We can do better. Our disconnectedness has been the problem. That is where we must make the fundamental changes.  What I have been called a “new attitude to nature.” This disconnectedness is not just causing problems in the forest. It causes problems everywhere. It drives our despair. It defines our alienation. We have to understand the amazing qualities of nature. As she said, it is causing huge problems with our relationship to plants in particular. Like me she is a plant guy. Instead,

 

 “by understanding their sentient qualities, our empathy and love for trees, plants and forests, will naturally deepen and find innovative solutions. Turning to the intelligence of nature itself is the key.”

 

That is the way to discover the wisdom of the forest and that is the way to learn that wisdom.

 

Transformative Thinking

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These two  principles that Suzanne Simard explained she got from the Secwepemc and Salish people are fundamentally the same as similar principles of various North American indigenous groups.   Simard endorses them (as do I).  As Simard opined:

 

“I believe this kind of transformative thinking is what will save us. It is a philosophy of treating the world’s creatures, its gifts, as of equal  importance to us. This begins by recognizing that the trees and plants have agency. They perceive, relate, and communicate: they exercise various behaviors. They cooperate, make decisions, and remember—qualities we normally ascribe to sentience, wisdom, intelligence. By noting how trees, animals, and even fungi—any and all non-human species—have this agency, we can acknowledge that they deserve as much regard as we according ourselves.  We can continue pushing our earth out of balance, with greenhouse gases accelerating each year, or we can regain balance by acknowledging that if we harm, one species, one forest one lake, this ripples through the entire complex web. Mistreatment of one species is mistreatment of all.”

 

It is fascinating and vitally important to realize that these indigenous principles are exactly what Simard’s scientific research leads her to. Simard believes that her  scientific research proves the truth of traditional knowledge. As she said, “the rest of the planet has been waiting patiently for us to figure that out.”

As Simard said,

“Making this transformation requires that humans reconnect with nature—the forests, the prairie, the oceans—instead of treating everything and everyone as objects for exploitation. It means expanding our modern ways, our epistemology, and scientific methodologies, so that they complement, build on, and align with Aboriginal roots. Mowing down the forests and harvesting the waters to fulfill our wildest dreams of material wealth just because we can has caught up with us.”

 

If Simard is right, and she has significant scientific research that points in this direction, it is truly transformative. It would be part of a new attitude to nature. If adopted, it could change the world. Sometimes we need a revolution in our thinking.

Tree People

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Suzanne Simard understands the importance of logging in British Columbia. She comes from a long line of loggers. Her scientific knowledge has revealed to her that current practices of loggers and their forestry facilitators and their conventional approaches that ignore the importance of connections in the forests between members of the forest communities is not the best.  Hopefully, Simard with her scientific knowledge of forestry and trees, together with the local indigenous people, and their traditional knowledge, that is coming closer together, can teach the British Columbian officials that there is a better way. It is an ancient way practiced by indigenous people in the area for many generations.  It is based on a different attitude to nature that recognizes the importance of the connections in the rainforest between the myriad organisms that live there.

 

Simard’s logging ancestors understood how important logging was to the people who lived there, but they must learn to understand that trees are more than a resource to be exploited. Logging can be a renewable resource, but it requires a respectful attitude to the creatures that occupy the forest ecosystems. Simply seeing forests as a resource is not good enough.

 

Simard learned from an indigenous person named Subiyay who talked of

 

“the trees as people.  Not only with a sort of intelligence—akin to us humans—or even spiritual quality perhaps not unlike ours. Not merely as equivalent to people, with the same bearings.

 

They are people.

The tree people.

           

I don’t presume to grasp Aboriginal knowledge fully. It comes from a way of knowing the earth—an epistemology—different from that of my own culture. It speaks of being attuned to the blooming of the bitterroot, the running of the salmon, the cycles of the moon. Of knowing that we are tied to the land—the trees and animals and soil and water—and to one another, and that we have a responsibility to care for these connections and resources, ensuring sustainability of these ecosystems for future generations and to honor those who came before. Of treading lightly, taking only what gifts we need, and giving back. Of showing humility toward and tolerance for all we are connected too in this circle of life. But what my years in the forestry profession have also shown me is that too many decision-makers dismiss this way of viewing nature and rely only on select parts of science. The impact has become too devastating to ignore. We can compare the condition of the land where it has been torn apart, each resource treated in isolation from the rest, to where it has been cared for according to the Secwepemc principal of k’wseltktnews (translated as “we are all related” or the Salish concept of neca?mat ct (“we are one”).”

 

It was very interesting to me that the scientific knowledge Simard had acquired and the knowledge gained by Indigenous people of the forest through living there for millennia had come to such amazingly similar conclusions—namely that we are all connected.

Connecting Ocean to Continent

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The key to the scientific research of Suzanne Simard relates to mycorrhizal fungi which are are beneficial soil fungi that form a symbiotic relationship with over 90% of plant species. That means both get something from the other.  It is a beneficial relationship for both. The fungi ins the soil act as an extension of the root system to improve the forest plant’s nutrient and water uptake. These fungi, or mycorrhizae (“fungus-root”), create underground networks that supply plants with phosphorus and water, while receiving in return carbohydrates (sugars) in return that they are unable to create well. This network is her prime research subject.

 

 

Suzanne Simard’s research is far from over. She continues to try to figure out how forest communities operate. So far, her team’s research has shown that the mycorrhizal fungal communities which they detected underneath the ground in the temperate rainforests of British Columbia differ depending on the number of salmon that were returning to their natal streams. They still don’t know exactly how far into the forest those networks transport salmon that returned to those natal streams, but they do know those networks transport nitrogen from the carcasses of salmon that did return to their natal stream to the surrounding land around those streams.

 

As a result, the team searched for the bones of salmon that had been carried into the forest by bears, wolves, and eagles. The bones were all that were left of those carcasses once these creatures were finished dining on salmon. As Simard, said, in her book Fidning the Motehr Tree, “The bones were all that were left once the flesh was eaten and the residual tissue decayed, nutrients seeping into the forest floor.”

 

They are trying to determine how the restoration of stone traps which the indigenous people were forced to abandon by successive Canadian governments affects the transportation of nitrogen from the ocean to inland. For example they would like to know the extent to which the spawning salmon feed the cedars, birches, and spruces for thousands of miles inland along the shores of those rivers. As a result of research already completed, they know that “Salmon in this way [are] connecting the ocean with the continent

 

Simard acknowledges that indigenous people of the area, including the Secwepemc “knew how vital salmon was to the interior forests, and to their livelihoods and they’d cared for the populations according to far-reaching principles of interconnectedness.” In other words, the indigenous understood as the European colonialists did not, that interconnection was crucial to the health of everything that lived in those coastal temperate rainforests.

 

It was a pity that those colonial powers failed to appreciate that the indigenous people had learned a lot about the land they occupied during their thousands of years of occupation.  Had the colonial powers recognized that and not assumed that the Europeans had superior knowledge, those communities would not have been devastated as they were. This was just one more example of how presumed European superiority was a deadly unfortunate illness that affected everything in the forest. It could have been so much better.

 

This was a fundamental error that has been perpetuated ever since. Hopefully scientists like Suzanne Simard and her fellow researchers will be able to teach the current Canadian forestry authorities that the indigenous people know a thing or two about their forests and they would do well to listen to the wisdom of the people who live there and will not always assume that they know better. The Canadian authorities need a new attitude to nature and that attitude can be obtained from their indigenous partners in the temperate rainforest.

Forest Detectives

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Suzanne Simard worked with students and a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Teresa “Sm’hayetsk” Ryan of the Tsimshian nation in the Bella Bella region of British Columbia. Teresa was both a traditional basket weaver and fisheries scientist. As an aboriginal person she was keenly interested in whether or not the restoration of fishing practices using stone traps that had been banned in the area by early colonial powers could reinvigorate the salmon fishery that had been devastated after colonial powers assumed jurisdiction over those fisheries more than a century ago. At the same time, she wanted to know if a return to traditional methods of fishing might also reinvigorate the cedars of the regions by augmenting their food supply with carcasses of salmon. This could be beneficial to the forests communities as well as the people that were also part of those communities.

 

In that same inlet scientists from the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University had discovered nitrogen rings of cedar and Sitka spruce  and in plants , insects, and soils. They had learned that the nitrogen came from the carcasses of salmon from the ocean carried by bears carried to the forest where they ate part of the salmon but not all. Salmon is an incredibly rich food source as bears, eagles, and humans had learned.

 

Each bear, they learned, preying on spawning salmon, transported on average 150 salmon per day into the forest! As a result, “the roots of the trees foraged for the decaying protein and nutrients, the salmon flesh providing more than three-quarters of the tree’s nitrogen needs.” The scientists could analyze the trees and determine from where their nitrogen came. That was one of the reasons Simard said she was a “forest detective.” Simard said, “Scientists could use the year-by-year variation in tree-ring nitrogen to find correlations between salmon populations, and changing climate, deforestation, and shifting fisheries practices. An old cedar tree could hold a thousand-year-record of salmon runs.”

 

In the process of doing this work much to her amazement, Suzanne Simard had to overcome the skepticism of her scientific peers and her own personal shyness and in doing so she became an international scientific star, providing a Ted talk, podcasts, National Geographic film, and reached thousands of people around the world. I first heard her on CBC radio and then read her famous book that became a best-seller. A best-seller about trees can you imagine that. Yet, that was not all, her concept of the Mother Tree made it into the film Avatar where millions of people heard of it.

 

It was amazing what the forest detectives could learn. It would make Crime Scene Investigators look modest. The main thing they learned was that everything in the forests was connected. Nothing was isolated. Connection was everything.

 

The forest detectives provided scientific proof for what indigenous people had known for millennia!

 

Heiltsuk people

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There never was a forest that white people did not like to destroy.  Based on our history, this appears to be an obvious truth.  When European settlers arrived in North America, they went about destroying the astounding forests of North America with industrial panache. They were good at destruction.  That was their attitude to nature. Nature was something they had a moral and religious duty to destroy. They declared war on nature.

 

Many of the original inhabitants of North America had a very different attitude to nature. Most of them [though sadly not all of them] did not see nature as something that should be harvested. Primarily they saw nature as their nurturing mother—Mother Nature. And who would kill one’s own mother?

 

One interesting example of this, was the Heiltsuk people on the west coast of Canada. These people are sometimes referred to as Bella Bella, an indigenous nation of the Central coast of British Columbia centred on the island community of Bella Bella. They had thrived there for at least 8,000 years.

 

They built tidal traps along the coastline to harvest salmon passively. They kept careful track of the populations of the salmon and adjusted their harvests when necessary. They did not want to destroy the salmon population on which they depended. They kept the fish that were trapped at low tide, but released the biggest egg bearing female salmon to allow them to travel up the rivers to spawn. They smoked the salmon, or dried them or cooked them while burying the guts and left-overs in the forest floor. They returned the bones of the fish to nourish the forest ecosystem (as did the bears) This practice enhanced the salmon populations and the productivity of the forests, rivers, and estuaries. As Simard said, “The forests, rich with salmon, returned the favor by shading the rivers, shedding nutrients into the waters, and providing habitat for the bears, wolves, and eagles.” This was an example of the indigenous principle of reciprocity that was so important to them, as explained by Robin Wall Kimmerer in her wonderful book Braiding Sweetgrass. Sadly, the colonialists had a different attitude to nature. They did not worry as much about reciprocity. They were more interesting in taking.

 

When the colonialists assumed jurisdiction over these lands, including forests and waters, they were not as wise as the Indigenous people had been. The Indigenous prohibited the use of stone traps.  As a result, the inevitable happened. As Simard explained, “The salmon were overfished within the first two decades and have not yet had time to recover fully.”

 

Of course, in more recent times, thanks to the new white administration, things have got even worse. Climate change and a warming Pacific Ocean, both caused by modern industrial systems have intensified the problems. The number of fish have been reduced to the point of near exhaustion. Fewer and fewer reach the spawning grounds. As Simard, “It’s part of a general pattern of destroying interconnecting habitats.”

 

The same is happening just to the north of the Heiltsuk community. As Simard said, “to the north on Haida Gwaii, the last of the cedars, some more than a thousand years old, are being clear-cut on Graham Island, leaving the forest along the spawning rivers degraded and the Haida wondering what will happen to their way of life.” This led to Simard asking the Big Question: “When will this stop, this unravelling?”

 

Simard’s research also shows the harmful effects of clear-cutting. I have talked to a business man involved in the manufacturing of products made of wood, and he explained to me that it was important for us to remember that forests are a what he called a perpetual resource.  That assumes though that the best forestry practices are followed and clear cutting is not one of those. As Simard has shown, trees like communities and benefit greatly in many ways from the old Mother Trees that ground them.

 

A Nurturing Forest

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Suzanne Simard’s scientific research shows that the traditional view of humans and plants, which assumes there is a vast chasm between them, is a gross oversimplification. They are more alike than we ever realized before. Simard explained it this way in her book Finding the Mother Tree:

 

“Our modern societies have made the assumption that trees don’t have the same capacities as humans. They don’t have nurturing instincts. They don’t cure one another, don’t administer care. But now we know Mother Trees can truly nurture their offspring  Douglas-firs it turns out recognize their kin and distinguish them from other families and different species. They communicate and send carbon, the building block of life, not just to the mycorrhizas of their kin but other members of the community. To help keep it whole. They appear to relate to their offspring as do mothers passing their best recipes to their daughters. Conveying their life energy, their wisdom, to carry life forward. The yews too were in this web, in relationship with their lifelong companion, and with people like me recovering from illness or just walking through their groves.”

 

This is certainly a radically new attitude to nature. The more we learn about the world the more amazed at it we are. And the more we realize how nature is like us. We are all kin. We are all one.  Really, this all follows from the ideas of Charles Darwin, one of the greatest scientists of all time.

 

Isolation Bad; Connection Good

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Suzanne Simard’s research proved that contrary to conventional forestry protocols, Douglas fir seedlings tended to perform better if they were linked to a healthy unrelated Douglas-fir mother tree than if they were isolated. Forestry practice had assumed that surrounding trees should be removed as they would be competitors for the Douglas-fir. However, seedlings that were kin to the Douglas-fir Mother Tree did even better. This suggested strongly that Douglas-fir Mother Trees could recognize their own kin. As she said, “health depends on the ability to connect and communicate.” The worst thing that can be done for trees is to clear cut! Of course, humans are similar. Humans flourish when they are connected to others.

 

When Simard was a rookie forester, she had been mocked for resisting clear cutting, but later her research proved that clear cutting was the worst thing they could do. Trees thrived in a forest community. Again, like people, trees thrive in a community. “The forest is an integrated whole,” she said. Once more, just like people who are part of the world around them, so it was with trees.

 

Simard in fact paid particular attention to the community under the ground where there was a multitude of silky fungal threads that fanned through the soil delivering moisture, or nutrients, or even messages from older big trees to younger ones that needed help. It sounds incredible, but her science proves it. She started off with questions and ended up with answers:

 

“Were those threads, which looked like an underground spider’s web, joining trees and plants together to capture much needed moisture for the whole community? …Maybe they had nothing to do with it, since the prevailing wisdom was that trees only compete with one another to survive. That’s what forestry school had taught me, and it was why my logging company liked fast-growing trees spaced well apart in rows. But that didn’t make sense in this ecosystem where trees and plants seemed to need one another for survival. One extremely dry season, a profound dryness the trees were not adapted to cope with, and they could succumb to the blistering heat.”

 

Trees like people thrived in communities.

 

Traditional western science had always assumed that there was in huge chasm between the human world and the plant and animal worlds. Humans have intelligence, animals have instincts, and plants have neither.

Maybe plants and animals are much more alike than we thought.

More recent science, like that of Suzanne Simard is casting doubt on the traditional science and forestry. Nature is a lot different than we think. Maybe we got it all wrong. Maybe we need a new attitude to nature.