Trees will save our planet | VPRO Documentary

[Music] lucky I'm a useful man you got your camera I love you shut that right up your ass what what would you want to do that huh why cuz I hate like I'm an okay nervous I used to be - you jerks - yeah we're out of step the forest is suffering because of the world are suffering because we don't fit anymore the best carbon capture and sequestration device around it's called a tree it's called nature we don't need elaborate technologies to save the planet at this point in time we need to use our existing wisdom to keep what we know works trees were at the very cradle of human civilization the DNA of humans and of trees are related there is a connection between us and this primeval form of life woodlands and forests make our planet and our climate livable and stimulate biodiversity and yet last year well over forty six thousand square miles of forests were cleared only 15% of our forests can still be called primeval we visit the primary forests of North America or what's left of them and consult the trees there before it's too late well believe it or not this tree that I'm sitting next to right here as is as informative as a birds are letting me know what time of year it is the sounds of the flow underneath it the fact that if I mic this tree and tapped on another tree I'd be able to hear it over here it's a network here Gordon Hampton is an acoustic ecologist he records the sounds of the natural world this is especially important in an age where the noise of human activity is increasingly penetrating our Woodlands an acoustic ecologist understands that it's not the loud sounds that are important that's common information it's the faint sounds that has been pushing evolution as a Mersenne who said listen to what the white pine saith and then he stops because we cannot say what the white pine can say and that's every reason to listen because you and I we can talk all we want but we will never replace what nature is telling us directly and what is that what are they telling us directly you have to listen you have to listen I mean your are you asking for my white pine imitation okay white pine needle is a longleaf needle growing in fascicles three to five little off-key there that's pretty good imitation I think you know magic okay go right at the end of the last century when Susan symud started her research into the communication between trees she was the laughingstock of colleagues in her scientific field but swimming against the tide she did groundbreaking research that brought about a scientific landslide her findings were even published on the front page of the leading scientific journal at the time nature under the title would wide web and she had only just begun to unravel the social networks that connect tree communities there isn't a day that goes by that I don't sit down by a tree or you know walk through a forest or you know and if I don't then I'm I feel funny so I go find the trees and and just be with them I feel like the trees are like my comrades what is it about trees that make us so alive why are they so integral to to our lives and the health of our our ecosystems in our planet and and so I I was drawn to that Susan Simmons life's work is based on the premise that we are distant relatives of the trees and that as such we can learn a lot from primary forests this is one of the oldest forests in the mainland area hasn't been burned for about five hundred years so these trees these big ones that you're seeing are about five hundred years old if you think back to you know when North America was settled by Europeans that was well before that time when it was mostly settled so these trees are way older than most of our ancestors they're actually our ancestors we think of our ancestors as like our grandparents and our great-grandparents and then the lineage of how humans evolved from you know hominids and but actually our most ancient ancestors the trees preceded us and prior to them were you know just the development of eukaryote cells and bacteria them the prokaryotic cells so our lineage goes back to the first organisms on earth and you know that's a really humbling thing that that actually you know that the the trees are much more ancient than we are so when most of us walk through the forest we're seeing you know these huge trunks we're seeing leaves we think that these trees are individuals like I'm an individual that that they actually you know really don't interact much with each other but but you know researchers have been figure out for decades that they interact in so many ways and that that's what I study is is the social life of trees those are Mike arises and there's a big thick fungal strand there that's what that is right there amazing you know there's a white one and a yellow one when we start actually putting our DNA primers if we collected this and took it back to the lab and we amplified the DNA and then sequenced it we would find actually in this patch trees probably a hundred species of fungi so not just you know you can't see it with your eyes but you can see it with our DNA tools which is really cool so what's happened is that over ever since plants evolved and came out of the ocean they immediately started to partner with fungi and the fungi do a lot of work for the trees and the trees pay them with photosynthate with carbon that they fix in their crowns in their leaves there's so many threads and so much shared fungal species between trees that they can actually link up it's like a huge Internet and the forest is packed with these threads there are miles and miles and miles of interconnecting highways that link this tree even with its neighbors we're just starting to touch the surface of what's going on but what we have figured out is that it's a way for trees to communicate with each other they can warn each other when there's an insect for example or a disease in the area and they can up regulate their defense chemistry in order to you know prepare themselves for what's coming [Music] you [Music] we're starting to uncover the language of trees through these up below ground networks and it is just as nuanced and complicated as our own languages but I know the fundamental building blocks involve carbon and nitrogen water certain chemicals that are like our own neurotransmitters so that douglas-fir has got a relationship with this hemlock um it has a relationship with you know that douglas-fir that's even 50 meters away and those relationships are really complex just just like our own right we have friendships and we also have enemies and we have acquaintances we also have relatives we interact with our neighbors but also like our doctors and bankers we have complex societies and so today they're just as complex it's just that we never really as people look that hard or really seem to care that much at least in our recent history about these intricate dynamic special relationships between trees [Music] [Music] Pulitzer prize-winner and he proves last novel details the European colonization of North America as delineated by the deforestation of the continent trees and the original human population were decimated because of an unbridled craving for timber and money it seemed to me that the best way to approach climate change at the time I began doing the research for the book which was almost 15 years ago the best way to handle it was deforestation trees were the thing trees absorbed co2 so it was natural to focus on deforestation as the major ill that was causing the problems with climate change of course now we know that it is much much much more complex than that yet the forests and deforestation continue to play an incredibly important role this is the endgame it's it's they're still a sensation that this was once a tree each particular piece but it's in another form it's been transmuted into something humans can use it's like taking some frowzy kitchen maid giving her a good scrubbing and dining and curling her hair and putting her in a new costume it's a makeup and so forth and looking gorgeous and beautiful huh even exquisite this is probably not the trees idea of what to do in life but that's how it is Annie lives in the Far West of the United States where you can still find plots of primary forests the now 85 year old writer isn't writing fiction anymore she now focuses on the ecological crisis our planet is in the natural world is other capital oh the other that you fear when you live in your own little world and other comes into your village bringing bad things with it so the natural world is now other two Americans sad to say it's very depressing that's why I can't write fiction that's why I'm interested in finding out as much as I can and the time I have left how things are working what's really important what makes the world stumble and trip to fall to its knees which is where I think we are Europeans had a penchant for taking from the natural world the English in particular were very good at assuming command over everything that swam or flew or grew that permission to go forth and chop and take and take and never give has sort of been a ruling if if subliminally absorbed mantra for nations people have done that the people who were in North America before the settlers came had a much closer relationship with the natural world this is it this is interesting this is how if you don't have sauce you can get cedar planks from a tree using pieces of wood stones and labor and it's not easy but it can be done what's the big difference in between the way we nowadays work with the wood and the way Native Americans or this specific tribe worked with the trees in the wood the main thing I think is that we are divorced from the trees in the wood store and for the the tribal groups this was part of their community these trees had personalities and the trees use was a gift and they recognized that as a gift it was a lot of hard work but at the same time the tree allowed it so I think the the personal involvement with the tree itself is present here and not in the wood store we visit Robin Kimura a professor of forest biology whose ancestors of the Potawatomi tribe lived in these fertile woods before being relocated to the dry grasslands of Oklahoma the worldview that indigenous people held then and continue to hold today of of the world as in spirited the world full of other persons of other people who don't happen to be humans and the notion of commonly held land was a roadblock to colonization that simply stalled the notion of manifest destiny right that the land had to be converted to property from there states of comparative savagery and barbarism to one of civilization but today they all speak English and some have taken business courses home economics another higher training so their next tool that they used was the power of assimilation and they decided that if we phrase that they used native people were were dealt with under the Department of War and the notion was that it's cheaper to educate Indians than it is to try to kill them and so this was the great era a great era of educational assimilation where children were taken from their families as my grandfather was he was only nine years old and he was shipped off from his family in Oklahoma all the way back to the Carlisle Indian School where the motto of that school was kill the Indian to save the man it always seemed to me that if there could be a school designed to erase what you know there ought to be a school that could bring it back we are standing at the cranberry lake Biological Station which may not look like a university campus but it's our best one it's here in the middle of the Adirondack wilderness and what we're really trying to do here is is to embed students in their classroom we say that we bring our students here to learn about the forest and about the lake and about the bogs and about all of the amazing beings with whom we share this place but that wouldn't really be quite true because the real reason we bring our students here is not to learn about the forest but to learn from the forest and they do that by spending weeks sitting at the feet of trees sitting on mosses getting eaten by black flies you know the reality of being a field biologist the reality of being a warm-blooded human you know in a cold and buggy place how do you do that how do you learn from the forest and not about the forest well we don't teach from books here what we teach on the land really the students are out on the trails all of the time and doing a lot of their own research as well because in a way you know we have I think forgotten how to observe we've forgotten how to learn from the land and the only way you can do that is by being present by really paying attention and I think that that that is one of the most powerful aspects of of science is it is a structured kind of focused paying attention but here instead of paying attention to digital devices or one species out of the 200 million species that are here we pay attention to our other kinfolk we pay attention to that Tanager who's singing right now pay attention to the snapping turtles that come up and lay their eggs on the volleyball court so our teachers are all around us this tree in particular is a amazing storyteller because it has five needles all bound as one are there any teachings in that the Haudenosaunee or the Iroquois I thought so this is the tree of peace this is the tree that they adopted as the icon the emblem of the Haudenosaunee confederacy why did they choose the white pine how many nations are in the Haudenosaunee confederacy yes exactly so the teaching for for Hoda nashoni or Iroquois people was that five can be bound as one and make something strong and beautiful and so that's why this is the tree of peace peace makes strength peace makes power and so there's an example of the way in which these trees can be teachers for us to and within most indigenous storytelling traditions every one of these trees is associated with a story like that so understanding the trees as storytellers is a powerful way to live in a animate landscape in combining Western science with indigenous philosophy and the indigenous principles of respect and reciprocity what we can learn from the forest is the forest being a model for for how we might live as a society Western science can tell us the mechanics of nutrient cycling of tree growth of cellulose Excel walls all good important things to know but it doesn't tell us how we should live and an indigenous philosophy couples that knowledge of how the world works with how should we live so I think about some of the things that we learn from the forest are about resilience and about healing when we can map the successional processes let's say from the pioneer species to the old-growth we can look at those things and say well what does that teach us about our human journey in relationship to the land in a sense those those pioneer species are I think sort of a metaphor for colonizing people there are species that come in and and and lay claim to to land and grow very quickly and they have a way of dominating the landscape we look at that and say that it's a colonizing model for plants that is also colonizing model of people and culture but we see that that starts to give way to greater and greater biodiversity those early colonizers are replaced by a multiplicity of other forms it grows richer and richer that older it is it grows more pluralistic and so an old-growth forest is to me something that we might aim for and imagine for old-growth societies old-growth societies modelled on the lessons of trees that tell us that every little being matters that yeah that the identity of those beings matter because they are all bringing gifts into the forest into the community that we don't want a homogeneous world of the colonizer we want a diverse and richly complex old-growth Society in the way that we value an old-growth forest as well [Music] the clearing of the world's oldest forests continues to move only last year almost 14,000 square miles of primary forests were logged when in 2011 Canadian logger Dennis Cronin was exploring a patch of primary forests he found the biggest Douglas fir he had ever seen he didn't have the heart to log this king of the forest and marked it with a unique green ribbon to signify leave tree the surrounding woods were logged but the tree was adapted by activist Ken Wu and his ancient forest alliance they fight to stop the continued logging of the majestic primary forests of British Columbia [Music] big lonely Doug second-biggest Douglas fir tree in the country as tall as the skyscrapers of downtown Vancouver [Music] certainly the feeling of awe and humility to be beside such an ancient living organism like this but at the same time if there's also a great feeling of loss of sadness because the entire forest would have been filled with giants similar to big lonely dog at one time the old goat Douglas firs are almost all gone now so there's only about 1% of those left if you if you find it then don't buy it these are living creatures that have seen a lot in their time over a thousand years our ancient forests some of the trees can be 2,000 years old from around the time of Jesus Christ that's that's how old these forests are and European colonization is only about a hundred and 60 years in British Columbia these are way older than from the time that the the English came and settled here take a look at these rings here they're not even a millimeter wide they're like half a millimeter wide that's one year right there is ten years twenty years is like that a century is about that wide that's 100 years that's how slow ancient forests and old-growth trees grow and if you expand that over the span of this this is a twelve foot wide cedar you're looking at probably a thousand years when I was ten years old my dad bought me a natural history book that had a picture in black and white of four couples dancing on a huge stump and that totally captured my imagination I wondered is it possible that trees can actually be that big and if so do they actually exist and turns out they do in British Columbia and so when I was 10 years old we made our first trip from Saskatchewan to British Columbia and that's when I started to see ancient forests for the first time and it totally moved me it was such a charismatic ecosystem that made me really determined to help save them I followed the news religiously on all the battles over ancient force and by the time I went through the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 1991 that was that really the the height the early 1990s of the ancient forest movement so I was involved in organizing the student protests as well as the big rallies in Vancouver [Applause] you guys gotta let us go to work this morning we believe that the clock sound decision was a good decision and we would ask you people to respect that decision and if you have a problem with it don't put it in their faces go down to Victoria with it by 1993 twelve thousand people took part in the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history in clackett sound near Tofino a thousand people were arrested that summer cells basically hiking in old-growth forests and protesting disabled girl forests it's a small underneath this little girl force oh no no don't tell me animals growing their are you angry in the hunter are you angry what are you angry that you are coming up here and telling us how to live on Vancouver Island ken is working to create broad coalition's of people who want to save the forests it's not only tree huggers who mourn the trees loggers suffer - when areas are clear-cut if you follow natural systems you see that the diversity in natural systems also helped to create greater resilience it's tends to dampen the fluctuations in that occur in nature and the same is true in human societies if we diversify our economy were not as prone to the crashes that occur as a result of one industry disappearing you know Port Alberni on central Vancouver Island had the highest per capita income of any town in Canada in the 1970s based on logging the ancient Douglas firs and red cedars and Sitka spruce a few years ago I saw that it was listed as the second worst place in British Columbia to live as a result of the decline of the forest industry there's a lot of social problems lots of unemployment and that's because when you deplete the resources not only does the ecosystem start to collapse your jobs also disappear so it's a lose-lose scenario sure it's lucky I'm a useful man you got your camera I love to just shove that right up your ass why would you want to do that huh why cuz I hate like I'm an why I used to be - you jerks take my job away job man yeah don't you trust human resourcefulness and resilience enough that we might you know find ways to survive differently if the people in Silicon Valley find new technologies that can save us and the planet you know the the best carbon capture and sequestration device around it's called a tree it's called nature and we don't need elaborate technologies to save the planet at this point in time we need to use our existing wisdom to keep what we know works these native ecosystems and we can build a sustainable society with new technologies but it's not that throw the baby out with the bathwater the we evolved in this planet with a diversity of life forms if we evolved together on earth we're on the timeline did intelligence develop could it be that we are less unique than we think well we think we're intelligent right the only species on earth earth that's intelligent is the human species or maybe some animals like orcas are intelligent but when we think of intelligence we're always thinking of mammals or animals but they evolve from these trees you know we evolved from this forest so what hap you know you mean that it all stopped at some point that that evolution of what we call intelligence is not there and I don't think so so when I'm looking at the fungal Network below ground you know one of the things that we did is we mapped what this network looks like and it comes down to intelligence comes out of that map right it looks like a brain and it's the franchise connected to each other and through those puns I aren't transmitting chemicals that are the same as our own neurotransmitters you know there's there's the the basic chemicals are the same so we've got the structure we've got the chemistry ok what's the third thing well another thing that happens in our brains is we have these things called synapses a synapse is where you have two neurons that grow together and you have a chemical that goes across that gap that's a synapse okay that's part of the brain structure that's where the intelligence happens that's where that new idea comes in that synapse that's where the symphony orchestra plays it's beautiful you know songs it's where our intelligence comes from in a fungal network with area our synapses - right that where the the fungus and the root come together in that symbiosis that's the synapse and there is chemicals that are crossing over it where a fungus and a fungus meet together and grow together that's a synapse and so now we've got three parts of what we think as the physical structure of intelligence [Music] and so then I'm thinking well you know like we're so reductionist in our thinking why wouldn't you know we consider that to be the basis of intelligence so what stops us from thinking their intelligence well its Mooji it's our own hubris right that we think that we're the best and the greatest and of course we are but actually when you start looking at nature and these patterns these have evolved to be they work and they repeat and they evolve and so you see these structures that are the same as our own neural networks you see them in the forest because they worked and they these they persisted through millennia so yes I think that the forest is an intelligent place [Music] I think you want to go to the left of the rock there's a big flat one right ahead of us here sorry I think you want to go over here it looks okay Sarge and you can noise come a little bit this way we could nose right into this flat one here boom we're about to hit yep okay hop let me hop out and see if we can do this this catherine's island which is a remote from the rest of the mainland of course was never burned and so by virtue of its isolation this place escaped cutting it escaped the fire so you get a sense of what the primeval Adirondacks were like here we are faced with adaptation to climate change and these mosses came out on land three hundred and fifty million years ago and they're still here and i like to think about why is that what did they get so right that they outlive dinosaurs and and 99% of all of the other species that have ever been and i think that in part it's because they fit their habitats they don't change the habitats they don't try to dominate the habitats they live on what is provided for them they may they fit in and they're small they're simple and elegant and they give more than they take these are not dominating plants these are co-operators these are mutualists and that is what has allowed them to endure all of the changes that that life on Earth really has seen and come through unscathed and it seems to me that that is a lesson four for human people - that's what the bosses want to see be like us pay attention Susan Simmons research into trees and forests also focuses on what we can learn from woodlands to stay healthy both as individuals and as a society these this cutting is from the Pacific yew tree and this tree has got a lot of relevance for me because I got breast cancer so it was very traumatic for all of us and I was treated with the chemistry of the yew tree used that grow right around my house in in in the mountains and so you has been used by a long long time by their Aboriginal people of North America they knew for from thousands of years of working with this plant that it has certain chemical properties that help treat illnesses and I thought you know the balance of the forest with these medicinal plants in the understory and the big old ancient trees above them and the deciduous trees working together that they probably all together communicate and affect the the production of this medicine that we now know is so important to our own health and that if we know more about the communication between these plants maybe we can grow and conserve things like you trees or learn how to grow them in old forests so that we enhance their medicinal properties which is going to be great for humans and it's also great for the trees we've gone through this long period since you know basically since Darwin came up with survival of the fittest and we in and that about you know a natural selection and it's about how plants and animals compete with each other and they evolve I mean I'm not saying that that's not a good model it is a good model it's just that we took it too and applied it to so many things that I don't think Darwin ever intended I mean you know we sort of said Oh competition is dominates all things in ecology that you know collaboration for example doesn't isn't very important and Darwin studied collaboration too and implants and I'll you know quite deeply we don't really you know think about that but you know in in the management of ours of our ecosystems and forests and agriculture we took that competition model and we started applying it to how we cultivate things and we said only competition matters and these plants do not collaborate they simply compete you know it's like every person for themselves and a tree will only you know interact with its neighbor by robbing it of light or robbing it of resources and so we have to manage that resource base for that tree but to me that's wrongheaded thinking that that the wood white web shows that trees are connected they share resources they also compete there's no doubt about that but they also share in this very intricate sophisticated dance there's a community and and there is keeping that community whole and healthy is important to each individual just like in our own societies and I think that you know sometimes we we get we go us get astray right like our economic models for example teach us to be competitive and that our companies are competitive and that's how we make money and that's true but you know there's also a lot of latitude and sharing things and being respectful for each other and reciprocating with each other I think that we innately know that as human beings that we we have that benevolence in us and and we sometimes we get we lose sight of that especially when we've got you know these you know larger pressures on us and we think you know we've got to we fit into our society we kind of get on this track that you know that there's seems like there's no other way but we we've always got to come back to that root of that we are sophisticated multi-disciplinary creatures just like trees and for us [Music] with even the noise pollution you know that surrounds us there's a train off in the distance a plane overhead all this stuff but why for a moment would I want to have a pessimistic attitude that all of this can't change we invented the plays what we can't tell them where to go where not to go the trains the cars we designed this situation we're in and we can design the future the question is what do you want right and coming here to the forest is a perfect place to ask that question because I want to spend more time forest it looks like we have an example of a nurse log that's dissolved into the earth leaving behind its children once these trees were tiny seedlings growing on a nurse log the nurse log has melted away into the soil and the children have grown into Giants themselves leaving hollow spaces underneath where the nurse log once rested in a few years these will be down serving as nurse logs themselves for new seedlings we hope it's it's an ancient place thank God there are ancient places and it's rather wonderful to see and in a thing that can't be seen anymore but still leaves such shape behind absent presence do you care as much about humans as you do about trees and forests no no I don't care as much about humans as I do about the trees on the forest why is that I don't know just the way I made I guess there are so many humans but the trees contribute more to the health of the earth than humans do so if you want to put it on the scale of which is which is the more kindly toward the natural world the trees will win out every single time the earth has been through five extinctions it's still here the creatures who were lost in those extinctions are gone we've been around for half a million years really stretching it but that's not a long time for the earth so it might wish to shake us off much as a cat or dog will scratch behind its ear to dislodge some fleas we know that the natural world is constantly changing its constantly undergoing new conditions and reshaping itself humans are not static either until recent centuries in the past humans flowed as did the natural world as animals who migrated to different places where there was better rain or drier conditions so it's it's important for us to go to the folks who have an understanding of the natural world not to Silicon Valley not to mad ideas about tossing flakes of aluminum into the air or the sea but to the way the world has been and see what it took to get it right once we start to understand how something actually works we can get in tune with it we're out of step the forest is suffering because of it the world is suffering because we don't fit anymore and I think we have to learn how to how to make ourselves into part of the natural world start grilling loss imagine you know you have a life that you're you live in you know a concrete jungle maybe and you've got your headphones on maybe you're even in a basement with you know building software or something or or and you can't go out into the forest you can't go to the ocean you're kind of stuck and you don't even know that you're stuck like for me that would be help right and and we kind of doing that to ourselves and I think that the trees are and the other creatures are going would you know what kind of a life is that right and we we are chaining ourselves to this way of life that we are not evolved to have those kinds of lives and so if we can break out of our chains and get out there and being in the in the forest be at the ocean because once we're away from it and stuck in these places and it's cut off from nature then we stop caring about it and we kind of stopped caring about who we are [Music] you belong in the forest - we all do we all belong in nature and we've got to reconnect with it I think and then make decisions we have to make collective decisions about you know that we care about that they're gonna conserve those places then you know that's the emancipation of us that is you know and along with it the forests and the environment will become healthier - and oh and I guess you could say there it will be emancipated as well but I think it's already free and it's gonna do what it it's gonna do regardless of what we do but we will be healthier as a species if we if we break out of our own chains we can as responsible creatures which human beings rarely are but if we would think and use our common sense we could also have sections of the property of our country or of the world that were wild forever wild no humans at all in them leave it alone let the forest do what it does without human interference and I think we'd be happier the world's would be happier and there'd be a lot less co2 in the air [Music] thank you for watching for more on this subject take a look at the playlist you can also watch this recommended video don't forget to subscribe to our Channel and we'll keep you updated on our documentaries [Music]

Channel: vpro documentary

Views: 31,220

Rating: 4.7980294 out of 5

Keywords: vpro documentary, documentary channel, vpro, tree, trees, forest, forests, douglas fir, ecology, trees and ecology, forest and ecology, biodiversity, trees and biodiversity, ancient trees, primeval forest, wood wide web, deforestation, deforestation north america, annie proulx, documentary trees, documentary wood wide web, tree science, tree communication, tree biology, tree ecology

Id: RjDWLaGjGi0

Length: 50min 39sec (3039 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 15 2019