In Depth. The Challenges of Reforestation. Louis Shalako.

Where the deer and the antelope play...

Louis Shalako

There are many challenges to reforestation, not the least of which is where to plant all of those trees.

In Canada, the federal government has pledged to plant two billion trees by 2031 in order to combat global climate change. Potential chokepoints include seed and sapling production, as well as the prospect of funding changes. These operations require multi-year investments of time, space and money. Last year’s record forest fire season sort of underlines the case in point.

The federal government, along with their partners, the provinces and territories; will be responsible for planting a substantial portion of the two billion trees. Many of them will be planted on vast stretches of public land.

“But many 2BT projects are planting on private land — and in places like Southern Ontario, there’s not enough of that land to go around,” according to experts.

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Here is the Wiki article on the history of climate change science.

A tough read. I got about halfway through it. I was actually looking for Edward Gibbon references, in which the Romans and other groups at the time recognized that the clearing of European forests for agriculture had raised the temperature to the extent that grapes and olives were now grown much further north than in their own immediate historical past. It was anecdotal evidence. It’s only reliable because of a certain agreement among the sources, and the fact that we don’t have any others. (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.) Gibbon was more than a 'philosophical historian', being something of the gentleman virtuoso. Considering the times, he might very well have read or been aware of other scientific progress of the era.

Deforestation is merely one aspect of global climate change. Other aspects are the sheer growth in population, which results in surface changes including vast expanses of concrete and asphalt paving and resulting heat islands caused by major centres of population. The sheer, vast number of vehicles on the roads, increasing by hundreds of millions per year, mostly still burning fossil fuels, are still the major factor. The difficulty here, is that it is difficult to imagine doing away with transportation entirely, and how would our current large populations be sustained—the short answer is that it is impossible, not with our current food and distribution networks.

This Washington Times opinion piece sort of pussy-foots around, and may well be a piece of climate change disinformation. Even so, he has found the reference. He mentions an increase in population (and therefore consumption of forest into farmland), and the increased burning of firewood. Firewood is not a fossil fuel, yet the burning of wood does produce carbon. We have to be careful of certain claims.

“…In one of the early chapters of the first volume, Mr. Gibbon analyzes the development of the northern European Germanic tribes that would become violent and would ultimately contribute to the destruction of Rome. He delves into the history of those tribes and speculates as to why they became such a threat to Rome and were ultimately able to prevail over the then-preponderant power in the world.

In describing the role of those tribes and of the growing threat they posed to the Roman Empire, Mr. Gibbon makes reference to “some ingenious writers.” He ascribes to those writers the belief that in the early years of the Roman Empire, northern Europe “was much colder formerly than it is at present” and that the cold weather of earlier times made the northern tribes physically stronger and better able to fight against Romans who were unaccustomed to the cold while they sought to defend the northern borders of their vast empire. As the Romans challenged the Germans, they faced an enemy particularly accustomed to cold weather and undaunted by it while they, the Romans, who came from a much warmer area, had great difficulty in fighting in a climate colder than their own.

Mr. Gibbon then goes on to add some details about the evolution of the climate, noting that “the most ancient descriptions of the climate of Germany tend exceedingly to confirm the theory.” In other words, Mr. Gibbon is documenting what he perceives to be a steady warming of northern Europe that, it must be agreed, long antedated industrialization and today’s vast reliance on fossil fuels.

Mr. Gibbon’s description seems enlightening. It suggests that global warming is not a recent phenomenon, but may have taken place periodically, and certainly centuries ago, even millennia ago. Although Mr. Gibbon’s work is hardly a scientific treatise, minimally, Mr. Gibbon’s observations suggest questions that could challenge contemporary conventional wisdom and currently accepted scientific “facts.”

Until just a few centuries ago, world population, including European population, was a mere fraction of what it is today. The inhabitants of the world, including those of Europe, largely depended upon wood as their principal source of fuel. Beyond that material, they had very few alternatives, and fossil fuels were mostly beyond their ability to extract. And yet, if Mr. Gibbon’s sources are to be believed (and they are assuredly not cited by Mr. Gibbon for the purpose of rebutting any contemporary theories), then a very consequential global warming occurred well before any fossil fuels could have impacted the globe…”

The south end of Stag Island.

The logical fallacy here is to state that wood is not a fossil fuel, and then somehow equate that in some ‘logical’ scientific conclusion. Science depends on more than tricky rhetoric.

On a personal level, I have spoken more than once about what I would do if I won the lottery. Let us assume a few million dollars. Nowadays, with the price of farmland up a good one-third over a few short years, you’re looking at an easy thirty thousand per acre for the land, then there would be cost of buildings, equipment, and any improvements to the land in terms of tile drainage, brush-clearing or whatever. My plan would be to buy a farm or any number of farms, each unit would be a minimum of 150-200 acres. I would put up good fences after an accurate survey. I would put up gated access points, with small gravel parking lots and a padlock. We need to get in and out, and we need to keep other people out. I would sell off farming implements and machines, insofar as I simply wouldn’t need most of it. I would take down unused or unusable structures, clean up rusting old hulks and other garbage laying around. I would systematically plant a few acres of seedlings, according to a site plan, each and every season. I would do it in strips, first the outer edges of the fields, and then working inwards. I would intersperse smaller numbers of larger saplings: live Christmas trees, if you will. Buy them in tubs, get them as large as possible. Individual sites would have a mix of conifers and hardwoods, with provision for small meadow areas for native plants and grasses, including the all-important milkweeds, which support the Monarch butterflies and their hatchlings. In the meantime, we could still lease out fields or parts of fields for crops in order to continue some level of cash flow...

Any small ditch or water-course would be lined with windbreaks and hedgerows. Natural streams would be rehabilitated, and ponds would be dug, with the resulting spoil landscaped into pleasing natural-looking rises.

Acquisition of neighbouring properties would be preferable to scattered but extensive holdings…the goal would be to produce the largest possible contiguous areas of reforestation, which would allow network effects (essentially, mutually-reinforcing feedback loops), to contribute in a kind of natural law. This includes, trees, plants, insects, wildlife, fish and other riverine creatures.

This wreck lies off Stag Island.

Okay, what would the neighbours think of some asshole coming into their neighbourhood and taking good farmland out of production. First of all, good fences make for good neighbours. Good public relations are important, especially when you’re doing anything new and different. In the middle of winter, people might be used to taking their snow machines across the neighbour’s fields. No real harm is being done, and the neighbour has the same privilege on your own land. It’s reciprocal. Okay, so why not leave a gated opening, at the back of my own property. Leave a trail, marked, through the bush-lot, so that the neighbours can at least cross your land. The rules would be simple: no fires, no littering, no hunting, and please stay on the trail. (If you want to carry a hunting firearm through my land, that might be acceptable. You could let me know, right?) Otherwise the gates will be closed and locked. A simple sign at each end would suffice. Also, when they see the deer population begin to increase, and many farmers do hunt, they might see things a little differently. By taking my land out of production, the value of your own land goes up, along with the value of the production of crops or livestock. A forest isn’t hard to look at, compared to the controversial wind farms dotting the county. Let’s be honest: some folks just plain hate them. Yet I can envisage a use for the small, old-fashioned farm-type windmills, which were ubiquitous for many, many years…

Assuming a well-maintained and sizable Victorian farmhouse, a living antique, I might actually keep it as an educational centre. Elementary school students could come for a tour, whether in spring or fall. We could explain what we are doing and why, show them the ponds and the critturs, and maybe even generate a little positive publicity for the project. As for myself, a small house, a small field office would suffice. Hell, I wouldn’t even give up my apartment in town…we’ll have work crews coming and going, and they will need certain facilities.

It would be an interesting social experiment. The operation might even qualify for carbon credits, which can be sold to maintain some kind of cash-flow, admittedly the land would already be paid for. Once the forest is built, the cost to maintain it is fairly low. Here’s another thing. Bickford Woods is the single largest contiguous patch of forest in this part of the county. To purchase adjoining farms would be a great advantage, for the project as well as the wildlife. Too many species are at risk simply due to habitat loss. In my lifetime, I have seen one porcupine in Lambton County, and that was thirty or forty years ago. They’re not officially extinct in Lambton, but the fact that you never see porcupine roadkill is a kind of evidence. This is why bears and other large predators are simply gone. There are too many roads, too many vehicles, too many guns and too many hunters, and not enough large forested tracts for them to ever take hold again as a population. My fantasy project really won’t do much to change that.

Which reminds me, I really ought to check that lotto ticket, and maybe even buy another one.

The Lotto 6-49 is up to a sick $60 million or so. I could happily live on a couple of million for the rest of my life. A simple stipend from the Louis Shalako Foundation, would be sufficient for my needs—at least one of those farms would have a viable house to live in, and I would have interesting work to occupy my final days.

It’s a nice dream, as I am sure the reader will admit.

An education centre and certain amenities.

In addition to Bickford Woods, large tracts of forest still exist in Lambton, for example Pinery Provincial Park, perhaps Walpole Island, and the Amjiwnaung Reserve within the city limits. Imperial Oil has quite the chunk of forest, north of Hwy 40 and East of South Indian Road. Interestingly, the south end of Stag Island is unpopulated. This would be a wonderful opportunity to reforest much of the island, reachable by boat or helicopter only…for a project like this, it would require participation and protection by federal and provincial governments. Otherwise, it’s just going to end up ringed with palatial houses, boat houses, docks…it’s only a matter of time, considering just how little undeveloped waterfront property exists.

In a somewhat related matter, there is the issue of lake and riverbed degradation, which affects fish stocks and all related species that prey on them, or are otherwise dependent on them or the same sort of environment. A stretch of Lake Huron shoreline extending southwest of Kettle Point, shows evidence of extensive dredging, where homeowners have dredged channels through what is fairly shallow water, so they can get their private craft out into the lake proper. Some of it is historical, dating back to before regulation, some of it is authorized, in the sense that someone actually got a permit—which might be a lot harder to justify these days, and which would require an environmental assessment, and then some of it is unauthorized. The folks, having all that lake at their doorstep, don’t see much of a problem cutting down along the face of the bluff, on an angle, and somehow dragging a boat and trailer down to the beach: the only problem then is the shallow water. Hence, the dredging. You can see such a ramp at the McKewen Conservation Area along Lambton 7 in Plympton-Wyoming.

So they’re digging up, in season, prime spawning habitat, in order to get their own fishing and sporting craft out onto the water. This may seem counter-intuitive, but the sheer lack of launch-points, private or otherwise, is at least partly the cause of folks putting in their own rather disruptive little channels. The choice, of course, is to trailer the boat quite some distance, and launch it and pay a fee, or dock the damned thing right on their own beach. This is why some of the small creek mouths do have small lagoons—which also have to be dredged periodically, and over the years, very small campground and marina operators have come and gone, including on the west side of the Kettle Point Reserve.

My own plan is of course mere fantasy, although any farmer, any landowner can plant trees, windbreaks, and hedgerows, which tends to prevent soil erosion and to improve the soil and its productivity. The government’s plan actually makes a lot of sense, assuming they can pull it off.

At the risk of going on way too long, the valleys of Bear and Black Creek, the North and South Sydenham rivers would be prime candidates for buffer strips, maybe as little as a hundred feet wide in places, where tree-planting would pay dividends in terms of clearing up sediments, shading and cooling the water, and providing wildlife corridors across the county.

 

END

Canada to Plant Two Billion Trees.

The opinion piece in the Washington Times.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Bickford Woods Management Plan.

Images: white-tailed deer.  Screenshots are from Google Maps.

Why I Love Edward Gibbon.

Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Amazon.

He loves Gibbon too.

See his works on ArtPal.

Thank you for reading.