POISONING NATURE FOR LOGGING PROFITS
The death of a tree echoes through a valley as it descends to decomposers, becoming a nurse log. In its death, seedlings establish on top, gaining protection from disease, access to nutrients and sunlight. These young seedlings are just one reminder death is a catalyst for life. Below the surface, fungal threads spread through the forest, piercing and entering cells of a raspberry plant — species merge at their edges.
Dynamics between species and the living and nonliving are complex, even in forests that are naturally regenerating after disturbances. Although forests suffer huge losses remaining forever changed from clearcut and old-growth logging, ecosystems are resilient and, in time, can be productive, life-giving forests once again.
Quite the opposite of this are forest plantations: industrial landscapes regrown just to be slashed again. Here the natural regrowth of the ecosystem is stifled with a chemical herbicide called glyphosate. The impact on the interactions between species and the nourishing cycle of life and death are catastrophic. Native plants, important fungi and bacteria are harmed from the poison sprayed on them and the soil, leaving a grey wasteland.
Glyphosate is used to make room for golden-child conifer seedlings, for the goal of unobstructed growth because everything else is dead. Where the planted seedling roots end, there’s only dirt. No symbiotic fungi to connect species, as glyphosate decreases fungal connections. Seedlings of a uniform age are spaced equal distances apart in ruler-straight rows where terrain allows.
