CIIS Public Programs Podcast

transcript

[Cheerful theme music begins] 

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 
 

Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence and hailed as a scientist who conveys complex, technical ideas in ways that are dazzling and profound. In this episode, Suzanne is joined by scholar and CIIS staff member Laura Pustarfi for a conversation about her life, her work, and her recent book Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. 
 

This episode was recorded during a live online event on June 24th, 2021. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 

[Theme music concludes] 
 

Laura: Welcome everyone. And thank you so much, Suzanne, for joining us this evening.  

Suzanne: Thank you for having me.  

Laura: So, we're here tonight to speak about your book, Finding the Mother Tree. And in the book, you talk not just about your life and research but about your experience of the forest itself. So, the forest seems to come even more alive through your words and stories in the book and I'm very excited to speak with you today.  

Suzanne: Yeah, me too. [laughs] You seem something- your background is so interesting. I can't wait for our conversation.  

Laura: Thank you. Yeah. Me too. So, I have several questions for you, and I guess we'll just jump right in, if that's all right, great. So, in the book, you talk about being a child of the forest, that the forest is in your blood and that you come from the wild, can you tell us a little bit more about growing up in the forest of British Columbia?  

Suzanne: Yeah, well, I, you know, I grew up in the Monashee Mountains, which her- a mountain range, that's just west of the Rockies. And it's the first in a series of mountain ranges that lead up to these Rocky Mountains. And because of the way the pacific air comes across these mountains, a lot of rainfall falls on them. And so, the forests are really their rainforest. We call them inland rainforest and there are a lot like the west coast forests, right along the ocean edge in that there is huge cedars, huge hemlocks, spruces and fosters a great diversity of tree species and they're just lush, lush forests. So I grew up in these forests just as a kid just playing in them, being in them. You know, my grandfather and my great-grandfather and my dad were all horse loggers. And, and so I got to know the forest through that lens as well. Not just as a kid playing in them. But seeing how people make a living from them. And my grandfather, especially Ari Simard, was a very, very careful, man, and very deliberate in how he respected the forest and how he treated it. And, and he never took more than he needed. He taught his sons how to do that. They were extremely, I don't know, connected to the forest. And so, I thought that's what I learned. That was just sort of you know, how we, how we were. And, and that, of course, informed, you know, how I think about forests and, of course, their research that I've done as an adult. You know that childhood experience was deeply embedded in me and helped me form the questions that I didn't- yeah, that we- that I wrote about in the book actually.  

Laura: Can you say a little bit more about that? How your childhood really informed those questions?  

Suzanne: Yeah, so, you know, so a lot of- the summers we spent on actually on a logger’s houseboat that, my uncle Jack built and that was influential, because my, my grandfather above this houseboat, which was full of these, you know, incredible forest cedars, hemlocks, birches, aspens. He built everything by hand. So everything was slow and handmade and he built a flume coming down the mountain and they took their huge draft horses up into these mountains every day and my grandpa would, you know, on the occasion I got to go with them, you know, he would sit down with his sons and say, okay, you know, here, we're going to make a map of the trees here today, and we're going to take this tree and that's all we're going to take. And so, so it was very deliberate. It was very careful and when you left that spot, you know, there was this little gap in the forest or maybe it was a little bigger depending on, you know, if they took out a couple of trees and then returning to that forest in a couple of years, those same patches that I got to do as a kid, they were full of trees. So they were- it was a really regenerative practice. That was really slow. I got to know the forest as this really resilient place, right, as the capacity to recover and of course, you know, climbing up to these areas where they log up the flumes which crawled, you know, almost a kilometer of the mountain all built by hand. I got to see all the different kinds of, you know, the variation in the forest, the little dips, the little hummocks. And I knew that, you know, that variability was the stuff of the life of the forest. Everything was entwined, all the plants and trees living together. I knew it a bit as a connected place and my grandpa and my dad left it as a connected place. And so that really informed my thinking, you know, now, you know, when I eventually went into forestry, not even knowing at that time that girls could go into forestry. In fact, they couldn't. I told my generation, you know, I was among the first girls. And, and when I went into the faculty of Forestry at UBC, I learned about all the parts of the forest, and then I got a job in the forest industry and I saw the place being disconnected, you know, it's very much about clear-felling the forest, clearcutting. You know, replacing these majestic old growth forests that I grew up with, and grew to love, like, each tree I knew, right? I knew the cedars. I knew the white pines, I knew the birches. I ate their dust. I hugged their bark and here, I was watching as a person who got a job in this industry, them being clear-cuts. And I was frankly, I was just like horrified because that's not how I saw the forest. I saw it as a place you cared for and, and so that got me on this big path of discovery that you know, basically has developed into my whole career.  

Laura: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I'm curious to hear more about when you were first getting started in the forest- forestry industry.  

Suzanne: [something falls] Oops. Sorry.  

Laura: Yes, take your time.  

Suzanne: It’s these little earbuds. Okay. Yeah.  

Laura: Just when you were first getting started in the forestry industry, what was it- what was it like? What was it like to be in that industry at the time?  

Suzanne: Well, you know, I mean, I was so proud to get a job in the industry because, you know, obviously girls didn’t get them and, and then I got one. And, and so I went to this company in the Lillooet Mountains, which is, you know, just, just on the east side of the coast range. So, they're just a little interior mountain- they're not little mountains, there are little spawning inside of the interior mountains and they’re steep mountains full of avalanche tracks. They are wrapped in alpine, and they start out in like cedar, hemlock, Douglas Fir and they go awry, steeply up. And this company was basically going into these valleys, these steep valleys and just start clearcutting at one end and they didn't stop until they got to the other end. I mean, it wasn't always continuous clearcutting. They often did leave patches in between, but, but really the focus was on to take as much as possible and you know, and make money for the mill and and so, and I got it, you know, the first, I think the first thing I did was I went out on a planting, a planting crew and I was, I was supposed to help my boss figure out whether the trees were well planted. And it was, of course, all one species where the forest was multiple species. The planters were, you know, they were exhausted. They were but they were, you know, they were planting, they did a good job with the planting, but it was just like in areas that, you know, I knew that these words would never be the same again because we had converted them into these plantations and then, and it was like plantation after plantation after plantation. And okay. So that, you know, I struggled with that because I wanted to, you know, the way my grandfather taught me was that you return the forest so that it's as healthy as when you entered it. And even if you take a few trees out and change the, you know, it can change the, you get a different suite of species coming up in a more higher overstory that is more shade tolerant but that was okay, it really reflected what was there. And then these clear-cuts, it was completely different. It was full sunlight. So you plant back what are called early successional species. And so the species composition actually was changed quite dramatically from what it originally was. So, that was huge and different and also the seedlings, you know, back in the day, they were just learning how to produce seedlings and nurseries. And they didn't, they weren't connecting with the soil. And so, I saw a lot of, you know, a lot of yellow seedlings. [audio cuts out] And also investigating what was going on. That wasn’t the only thing I did. I also, you know, as a student of a forest company that was quite well, it had a small bit- they were called woodlands departments, we did everything. So, I even laid out roads, I laid out cut logs, I did timber cruising, you know, I did everything. So I got the full taste of the whole thing. And, you know, to be honest, I absolutely loved that part, you were in the old growth forest, but the, the tragedy of it is, you're in these old growth forests to cut them down but that work of being in these old forests was incredible. I mean, there's nothing like, you know, crawling through Devil's Club and thimbleberry and you know, all these incredible plants but of course you can imagine the conflict because you- I would have to go back the next year. The next year after it was clear-cuts and then replanted. And so that was, you know, very difficult. The whole thing, you know, tested every ounce of my, you know, my morals, my credibility, you know how I thought about myself, what I thought about my grand- what my grandfather did, and what I thought about the job, what I thought about my new profession, like it was, it was a very difficult time. And of course, as a girl, you know, who was new to the industry and already you know kind of ‘can she do it?’ You know, or should we get rid of all these girls because they just can't cut it in there. So, I was really trying hard to stand up for girls, right? I was going to be there with the boys and be able to do this work. So, I had that going on as well so yeah, it was challenging but overall, you know, I love the work and, and it made me who I am today. So yeah.  

Laura: Thank you for going through that challenge and seeing those differences and you talked in your book about some of the early experiments that you were doing while you were, while you were working in the forestry industry. And I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about some of those experiments. Especially that critical experiment with the fir and birch where you first heard that crackle of communication.  

Suzanne: Yeah so, you know, so I- just to catch up on the story a bit. So, I eventually I left the forest industry because you know, there really were no opportunities for even- though I was a summer student and that was wonderful to get that job. I was not going to be moving anywhere in the industry because it was a, it was a man's world. And so, I just started moving around to where I could get an opportunity. But I really, really wanted to know, you know, what were we doing? It felt like we were disconnecting the forest like I said, and I knew it as a connected place. And, and so I started learning how to do research. I mean, I eventually got you know, a master's degree and then went on to my PhD, but my first experiments were about, you know, my first opportunity was to actually get rid of native plants using herbicides, which was, you know, because the, the forestry had made so many mistakes, right? They weren't planning to the trees back properly. You know, they were- the trees weren't in good shape and then they, you know, the plants, the vegetation, the alders and willows and birches would sort of dominate these plantations and you couldn't see the little trees growing up underneath them and so the forestry service enacted this law called the “free-to-grow regulation” and it required that, that we get rid of these native plants so that we could free up these conifers to get more light, more water, and more nutrients, and this led to a reduction in biodiversity, obviously because we were taking it away, but that also increased the disease and insects- insect infestation in these forests.  

And so, I started my PhD, and this is the experiment you're asking about: is, you know- okay if we're going to spray the birches and the aspens and the cottonwoods and by the way, we're still doing a lot of that. Right. That's still a common practice; that free-to-grow regulation is still in place. We still have to create conifer plantations free of the biodiversity because we view them as competitive. And so, I was thinking well, you know, when you take these birches out of these plantations, we're seeing more pathogens in the firs, you're actually killing the firs and so I went to school to do my doctoral degree to figure this out. Like what are we doing? What are we disconnected below ground that would make these root pathogens really become infected and explode. Almost like, you know, it's almost like covid underground, you know, it was virulent, and it was spreading. And so, I thought, okay, you know, I've learned a little bit about these other kind of fungi, so there's about four groups, major groups of fungi. There's the pathogens that I just talked about. There is the saprotrophs and they do decaying. There’s endophytes which live inside of plants and do all kinds of amazing things. Like fix the, you know, they, they can actually fix trees, then the ones I was interested in are called mycorrhizal fungi. And these fungi I had learned were associated with all the trees in the forest. In fact, they are all over the world and the training provides photosynthetic energy for the mycelium to grow through the soil, pick up water and nutrients, and bring it back to the tree and they trade. And this helps the tree grow because it needs all these mineral nutrients to make proteins and all that, you know, lignin and cellulose and all these things. And, and so, I had learned about this little study in the UK where a scientist, David Reed, had done this lab study in the, you know, in these little root boxes; they're like little planter boxes but you could see through them and they grew these little pine seedlings and then colonize them with a single mycorrhizal fungus. And they found that these fungi actually connected these little seedlings together.  

And so, I thought, you know, maybe what we're doing is that we're destroying this fungal network, if it even exists in forests. So, the first thing I wanted to know in my doctoral work was: Is there a network below ground of these fungi? Like David Reed showed in his lab study? And if it does, what does it do? And so that's what I did. I figured out that birch and fir were connected below ground by many fungal species and the, the, the more birch shaded Douglas Fir, it would deliver more carbon, or photosynthate to Douglas fir. So sure, it was competing for light. Like, it was a shadowing over the fir and reducing the photosynthetic rate of fir. But as the photosynthetic rate of fir declined in lockstep, the birch sent more carbon, more photosynthetic carbon over to the fir and that created a balance. And this allowed the fir to survive and actually fend off whatever the pathogens that were in those soil. And so, when we had these mixed forests, there were very few pathogens and there's very few infections. It was a healthy, healthy plantation, a healthy forest. So that's what I discovered and that, you know, that was really the beginning of many, many, more years of investigation of what these networks look like and what do they do? And how important are they for forests?  

Laura: Can you talk more about that, about the relationship between the trees and fungi? And what that means?  

Suzanne: Yeah. So yeah. For sure. So, these mycorrhizal fungi, we call them obligate mutualists, and it's obligate because neither the fungus or the tree or the plant can survive and reproduce without the partnership. It's a symbiosis. And so, the fungus needs the network, it needs multiple trees, needs a link to multiple trees, so it has an insurance that even if one of those trees dies, it's got, you know, multiple linkages to trees. So that's it for the fungus. For the trees in this network, they're receiving, you know, this vast network that is basically taking up nutrients from the soil and providing it to these trees so that they can, you know, grow, they grow better, they survive better, and they get enough carbon from their neighbors, even to produce seeds. And so, this is directly related to their fitness. Which is of course, the hallmark of evolution that fitness is about survival and being able to compete. But what, you know, what, my research showed was that competition wasn't the only game in town. It wasn't the only important thing going on for fitness- that collaboration and facilitation was just as important even in these mixed forests. And so the, what that really meant, you know, was that, you know, all of our practices which were completely geared towards managing competition, we're missing half the picture which is that these trees really are collaborating at the same time and if we treat them as though they're isolated amd just wanting to dominate each other, then we miss- you know, we basically maltreat the forest. We take out parts that are absolutely essential, you know, these collaborative elements that are essential to the, to the health and integrity of the forest as a whole.  

Laura: Mhm. Yes, and that collaboration is so important, and I want to get to that a little later in more depth too and I'm curious to go back to your story as well. So, after you have completed your PhD, you move to academia. And so, I'm curious to hear more about your choice to become a professor and what it was like moving into academic scholarship at that point. 

Suzanne: That's- thank you for asking me that question. Actually, you know, after I published my work, this PhD work, which was really, you know, throwing a huge question mark over these practices which as I mentioned before are still the dominant practices today, right? We're still treating [audio cuts out] And so, I- because I published my work in Nature, is a very prestigious art journal, it's one of the best ones you can publish in, it got media attention and- which was really good. So then I talked to the media but the forest service really didn't like that because I inevitably would question forest policy and there was one interview I was doing with a journalist in Toronto and she and I was actually pregnant with my daughter at the time I was about to give birth to Hannah who is my oldest daughter now she's 23 now, but I was like, due in a week and she's saying, yeah, you know, it's really tough being pregnant and it's so great when the baby comes out. And, and what about, you know, that brushing of birch, what’s that like, and what does it mean? And I says, well for all the good they're doing, they might as well paint rocks. Well, I mean that was the last thing I should have said, but that's what I said. [laughing] And that got me into a lot of trouble, and I got reprimanded. I almost got fired and, and ultimately, it led to putting a huge question mark over everything that I did. And that led me to ultimately leave the forest service because it wasn't a place that I could explore my ideas.  

I couldn't even really talk about them. I decided that really at that point, I'm going to drop everything about networks and tree communication and how the social life of forest to study climate change, which was way easier to study, but you know I ended up leaving the forest service and I applied for this job in academia, not thinking I was going to get it and I never really wanted to be a professor. I didn't, I wanted to be a researcher and I didn't want to be teaching and all this stuff like and I looked at those professors and you know that I came from and UBC and I'm like I just don't want to be that, but I got the job and that was, you know, and it was wonderful actually to do and I always say I’m the accidental professor who got this job but what it did is it really opened up my ability to do more creative work. I wasn't just doing work to support policy, people wouldn't, you know, I mean I- there of course, are a lots of critique, that's the scientific method because when you publish your work, it gets peer-reviewed and criticized, and you approve it and ultimately that's what moves science forward. But the actual you know, the profession criticizing me or the industry kind of really waned a lot and I just really focused on my research at that point and really just started focusing in on what do these networks do? What do they look like? You know, what happens when they get unraveled and what are the important components of it? Like well how do we protect them? So, you know, basically that's what I've been doing for the last 20 years and to be honest, being a professor is wonderfu,l but it's also really, really hard in that, you know, the job is demanding. And I had two little girls at the time that I started Hannah and [inaudible] they were 2 and 4 when I got going. And so, you know, it just really- I had to balance motherhood with being a prof and being tenure track and trying to start my research program. And we could talk about that all night long, but just to say that it was difficult, but you know, I survived.  

Laura: So yeah, I would love to talk about that all night long and I guess, oh, so good, that you were able to move on with your, with your research. And I know now you have many, many, many, I think over 200 published, published articles now, in your research. And I'm curious too- so you mentioned in the book about hearing the views of the local Indigenous peoples earlier in your career, we talked a lot about the science and, and then later working directly with Indigenous scholars as well. So, can you tell us a little bit more about your experience learning about the Indigenous use of the forest and what your relationship is now to indigenous knowledge?  

Suzanne: Yeah. And you know, before I start that, I just want to acknowledge as, as you acknowledge at the beginning of this program, that I am also on unceded territory, the Secwépemc nation, and I'm in Tk'emlúps or [phonetic pronunciation of Tk'emlúps] and Tk'emlúps has been in the news lately because there's a residential school here, where, run by the Catholic Minister missionaries and they just uncovered 215 graves of children in that residential school and so I can't, you know, it's a shameful history, it's something that Canada is trying to come to terms with. We have a long ways to go, but you know, recognizing is the first part of healing and so here we are.  

So when I grew up, I actually grew up in this town where these, you know, we're in the, the residential school is actually [audio cuts out] and of course, you know, I was from a settler family, white family lived across the river from the residential school and it was, you know, and there were, you know, First Nations kids in my high school, my sister used to come over to the residential school and see and have friends here but most of what was going on was like, not, what was it was hidden, It was ignored, it was not recognized and most people didn't know. Of course, as a kid, I didn't know. But now I feel like ashamed and embarrassed for all of us that this has happened. And really I'm very so sorry, but as I- as a forester, I didn't really work with Indigenous people until, you know, until I was about 50. And so that's a long time, right? I started working with him about a decade ago and, you know, this story that we just talked about, about the struggle with to work with the forest industry where it was disconnecting the lab and I, and I would fight with the industry, I'd say it's about connection, it's not about disconnection, we need to honor the wholeness of this place that we need to respect these forests. And, you know, it always fell on deaf ears, and I was, you know, laughed at and criticized and all this stuff. Even in academia, I was kind of an outlier, but I was so lucky to get a post doc, Dr. Teresa Ryan, she’s Tsimshian Nation, her Tsimshian name is Smhayetsk, which means real copper. She's a salmon fishery scientist, but an ecologist as well. And we started working together. And she started to talk to me about the worldview of the Tsimshian Nation, which is that all are connected; it is about connection and it's about respect for the forest and working as though the forest and the health of it- our health was dependent, interdependent with an intertwined and, and that, you know, that we need to have a reciprocal relationship with the forest. Not just always take but to give back and care for it, you know, as though it was our own families as though our lives depended on it and I was like, “oh this is what I've been trying to grapple with”, right, this is what I've been trying to discover in myself and talk to other people about and always hitting this sort of brick wall of well, no, we're dismantling this place and we rip it apart and reductionist science. And here, I was talking to this person who was just- it was like a huge revelation for me and then Teresa then started introducing me to more and more First Nations and ecologists and scientists. And now all of my work pretty much is with Indigenous people because you know they have lived here for thousands of years on Haida Gwaii, which is you know, on the North Coast of British Columbia, you know, there's, there's evidence of inhabitation for 14,000 years where they've lived with these forests. That, you know, they're dependent on, on the forest, for their clothing, their food, for their shelter, for their medicines, that looking after the forest was very much part of their, you know, their society, it was in the reproduction of their science- society, depended on their ability to treat the forest and the land and the oceans with respect and actually, you know, be good stewards of the land and they didn't see themselves as separate. They didn’t even have a word for environment because they were all one together. And, and so my whole thinking about forests and forestry was completely, well, it was made whole, I would say. And of course, it transformed me as well and now, you know, now I, you know, trying to understand how salmon and forests and fungi and people are all intertwined together and it's really like, I don't know, it's been like a life transformative thing for me. And yeah, and I'm so excited to keep doing that work.  

Laura: I just want to appreciate how deeply you thought about this and brought it forward. So yeah, thank you.  

Suzanne: You’re welcome.  

Laura: And yeah, so I'm wondering if we can, we can talk a little bit more about the trees themselves and about the forest and get into that part of your work a little bit more. You use this, the term both hub trees and mother trees. That’s so important in your work, the mother tree is the oldest and largest trees in the forest. And I’m curious what about that term, ‘mother tree’, draws you specifically? Why ‘mother tree’? 

Suzanne: Yeah, that’s such a good question. So, I’ll tell you how we- [wireless earbuds fall out] sorry, I’m losing this thing. I’ll tell you how we came to that term and then I’ll talk to you about sort of the pros and cons of the term. So there was some sort of criticism of my work and also [inaudible] in the industry [inaudible] you know, people are so steeped in Darwinism [inaudible] that so many research programs are built around testing that theory and promoting genetics programs, ecology programs, forestry programs are so embedded in that idea that forests and evolution is structured by competition and so when I published my work, there was a huge backlash because collaboration wasn’t part [inaudible] now we know that collaboration and cooperation or coevolution is more common than competition actually in driving species that even ourselves are a consortium of species, right; we’re not just individual people we’re full of bacteria and all kinds of organisms. And trees are microbiomes as well. And so, so anyway so there was a lot of distrust and there was also distrust on well what- if we can’t see these networks in the forest, well maybe they don’t even exist. Even on the academic side where people were building on the research.  

So, I went about to map what that looked like and I got a graduate student, Kevin Byler, and worked with my lovely colleague Dan Jarrel, and we set out to map the architecture of what that web looked like. And we looked at two species: of about a hundred of these mycorrhizas that were in that forest. So we were just looking at this tiny, tiny fraction. And what we found in making this map is that all the trees were connected to each other. Every tree was connected to every other tree through multiple avenues. Like every tree had many links to many other trees. Even within- from one to another, two individuals would have multiple links linking them together. And when you look at the map and the architecture of that network, what we found out is that it's patterned after a neural network. It's a biological neural network, and a neural network has a pattern where there's a few large hubs, and there's a lot of smaller nodes. And then, they're linked together. Our brains are structured that way as well. And, and so that's why they're called neural, neural networks. And these are these patterns are actually found in many, many parts of nature, you know, at many scales, not just the micro scale but at the macro scale but the hubs in our network were the big old trees and so you know, the bigger and older the tree, the more highly connected that was.  

And so, then I thought, okay, well, these hubs are very interesting and these old trees are interesting. And many people have been looking at the value of old trees, and forests. And, and so then we started doing a bunch of experiments. Okay? What happens if you know, you know, seedlings are regenerating underneath these old trees, they're linking into the network. What if we disassociate them from the network? What if we cut them off? And we found that their survival plummeted. It went way down, their growth rates went down, their health went down, their nutrition went down, their mycorrhizas went down, everything was compromised. And so, then we asked the next logical question is, if they're facilitating regeneration of seedlings, would they be able to facilitate their own more effectively? In other words, their own seed. And so, we ask that question next too and we found out that these old trees can actually recognize their own kin. And so that led me to think, well, what should we call these trees? Hubs doesn't sound very- it sounds very forgettable. And, and actually, I took my students to this little pub in a little town called Likely, BC. And we just thought, what are we gonna- what are we going to call these trees? You know, and we wanted to name a project we were doing like what are we going to call this project that was trying to save these old trees? And so, we thought- we came up with all these acronyms and somebody said “why don’t we call them mother trees?” And so, I said “well, mother tree isn't really scientific because there's mothers and fathers in these trees and then but we all have these big grins on our faces and we all decided by the end of the evening: yes, mother trees. 

 And so that name has stuck and helps people understand the role of the tree in the forest and that is really very much [drops wireless earbud] very much an Indigenous way of seeing things too is their role, right? What is the role of the old trees? And so, we found that the role of these old trees was to actually foster regeneration. So yeah, so that's mother trees. And it's been con- a little controversial, you know, people say, oh you’re anthropomorphizing, you're projecting yourself onto these trees and I'm like, well, you know, it's helping people understand but it's also bringing ourselves back to the forest, right? The whole criticism which you might have wanted to ask me about that but because lots of people- [inaudible] -you're very objective and you know you don't you don't anthropomorphize or personify in your subjects, you’re detached and, and to me this has been a big mistake. I mean, yes, it's led us to make some amazing discoveries in science and physics and so on. But when it comes to forest, it's allowed us to separate ourselves from the forest and by being separate, it’s too easy to exploit the forest and look what the consequences are: they're huge. And so, to me, it's actually a way of giving people permission to go back to their roots, that we are part of the forest, that are- these trees are our neighbors. There are relations, you know, these are like our moms and dads and kids and so, you know. Yeah. I mean, which is a very Iindigenous way of seeing the world that we're all connected. We're all kin. It's very concentric. So, yeah. So that's how the name came about and so and those are some of the controversies associated with the name. 

Laura: It’s such a compelling name, it's hard to forget, and it's such a way of seeing the trees differently in the forest, those big trees. Such a compelling idea. 

Suzanne: Yes, so when you go into the forest and you see these big old trees, and they're so easy to see because they’re the tallest, biggest trees. Every forest has got structure like that where you’ve got some big trees, and a lot of little tr- and little trees, but your eye gravitates to them, and they have gravitas, right? And you can see the importance in the, in the resilience of the forest, but it turns out they're also incredibly important from a carbon stocks point of view too; they contain most of the carbon, these big old trees, compared to smaller trees and they are also, you know house most of the biodiversity like the root systems that have fungi associated with an old tree is much, much more diverse than a smaller planted tree and so they’re the scaffolding of biodiversity as well as huge carbon pools. So, they, they're, they have gravitas in the forest. 

Laura: And I did want to ask you about some language, although less about the controversy and more about the words that you use in the book, like, intelligence and perception, agency, and even sentience. And so, you use those words to describe trees, which have also received a lot of critique [Suzanne: Criticism.] from the scientific community. And I'm curious, if you could tell us more about why you choose to use those words and what it really means about the trees. 

Suzanne: Well, let's do, let's start with the easiest one, which is perception. So, perception is making sense of your world, right? Being able to, you know, sense the things around you, perceive and trees, plants, they understate. You know, they can't move, but they have so many...such incredible, insane ability to sense around them, they know, you know, they know the size of their neighbors, they know where they are- and believe me, I've done years and years of research, looking at competition and understanding that trees can know where their neighbors are and they shape themselves accordingly, they'll put, you know, they'll grow over in the direction of the light or they’ll root over in the direction of the water, or the sound of water. And there's been research on that too.  

So, they're very perceptive and, and they also, you know, so then the next word, the next easy word is agency, so they're perceptive and they can respond. Right? They can- their responses are in real-time like instantaneous; they instantly respond to whether they're stressed or replete, whether something's chewing on them or they've got water trickling by their roots. You know, the biochemical responses are immediate and instantaneous and so, that then allows them to explore, you know, take advantage of, you know, their environment to increase their fitness and so they have agency in that, right? They, they have, they, you know, their root systems, for example, those roots have made decisions about which directions to go in, right? They, you know, you might not call, want to call this a decision, but they actually do see priority over certain behaviors because it helps their fitness. And so that gives them agency for their future.  

The word intelligence. So, the word intelligence, I started using that word because when I mapped this network and realized it was a, it was patterned after a biological neural network and I thought, well, you know, that's pretty sharp, that's highly evolved, you know. And like I said, there's so many patterns in nature that have that pattern because it's efficient, and it’s resilient. Which often those two things are traded off with each other but in forests, they kind of go together and they help, again, fitness, and, and so then, I, you know, I started looking of course- [inaudible] -search just looking at the resources themselves because you know in the competition theory, just, you know, really only worried about light water and nutrients. And so, then I started looking at well, what are these carbon compounds moving between the trees? And the main one is glutamate, which is one of our neurotransmitters in our own brains. And so, I'm thinking: okay, so we've got these patterns, we've got these processes, they even have synapses where, you know, these trends- these compounds are transmitted across these fungal plant synapses. And I thought, well and they're so perceptive and they have agency and their behaviors change, they have behaviors, they even remember things, you know, and their, and their genetics can be changed instantaneously through epigenetics, we measured that, isn't that really intelligent? And so, then I just thought that why won't- it even though it's a word that we ascribe to humans, and we in, you know, in the English language, we're pretty short on words and so- but I thought okay. Okay, I'm just going to use that word. And actually, since I've been working with the Indigenous people and they're trying to recover their ancient languages and talking to them and they said, you know, English language, is- it needs work because we have words for all of these things and we don't have to anthropomorphize. We have separate words for these connections in the forest, which they already knew about, by the way. And, and so the- that language is very- languages. Many languages are very deep, very specific. They've got so many words that describe the phenomenon that they don't have to borrow from think words that describe human beings. So, anyway intelligence, that's where that came from. That's why I talk about it in that way.  

And then sentience is a little bit- even going a little bit deeper in that is thinking, you know, more about, you know, the combination of all these things of having a say in your future of, of, you know, and I'm not equating it with consciousness or because that, you know, again, you know, the human experience is about consciously making these choices. And I don't know if trees have conscience, but they have all these other elements that show, that indicate to me that, that they have a lot of skin in the game and they know what they're doing. So yeah. 

Laura: Yes, definitely, it seems like they have- the trees have an intelligence of their own.  

Suzanne: And then that works in the forest itself. Not just the individual trees, but how they all work together. 

Laura: And I'm curious, you mentioned a little bit about how they actually can recognize their kin and know who's their kin and who isn't genetically related. Can you say a little bit more about that?  

Suzanne: Yeah. So you know we started out with that logical question like as a scientist, it’s really fun to be able to go to the next question. Right? What's the next important question? And that was like, that was the obvious next question and so I started working with somebody who is working on kin recognition in plants, Dr. Susan Dudley, who was really a pioneer in this area and she's a Canadian professor at McMaster University, and she'd been working with these little herbaceous plants called sea rockets and they’re clonal plants and she had discovered that they can recognize each other whether they’re kin or strangers and that the- it affects their adaptive traits. So you know how, how their roots grow how many, how much mycorrhizas there are and they figured out these, these behaviors were actually transmitted through the root systems and so then I thought, well, if all of our trees, all the roots are mycorrhizal and if there is, you know, if there's any kin recognition in trees, that would have to also be, you know, through these roots that have to recognize each other through their root systems.  

And so, I got a graduate student Amanda Issi, and then another graduate student, Monica Goreslock, and then you know, several. Now I've had another one, Eva, and on and on it goes; we're doing more and more experiments on you know, you know, that. Yeah. And we found out that yes, Douglas Fir does recognize its own siblings and we did- the way we did it is we just grew Douglas Fir with siblings, so from the same parent, siblings. And strangers. So, from different parents and we looked at many, many different siblings and many, many different strangers, and we found that very robustly, that you get that yes, they can distinguish a stranger from a sibling, and they do this by transmitting more carbon to the sibling, they also will change their root behavior. Like they'll make more elbow room, basically, for the sibling and that sibling also grows bigger mycorrhizas and they grow better and you know, so some of these siblings and some of these strangers, we grew connected to the old trees and not connected to the old trees. And yes, we found out that that recognition process happens through the mycorrhizal networks, or at least the networks are involved in- [inaudible] -and forest, as a, you know, such a locally regenerative place that local trees, local seedlings- the local genetic adaptability is really, really important in the health of the forest. And when we look at these naturally regenerated forests and compare them to planted forests, they do so much better. And I think it's because they're locally adopted, their root systems are more complex and when they're stressed out, if they get stressed, they're able to respond more easily.  

Laura: Mhm. Mhm. Earlier, you mentioned about thinking about climate change as another area of research that you almost went down. I'm curious more about the connection between trees and climate change.  

Suzanne: Yeah, I mean, now, you know, probably almost every ecologist in the world, all their work has got some element of climate change associated with it because it's omnipresent, it's, it's here. It's affecting all of us in our lives. It's affecting our forests, all around the world. So yeah, I mean, forests are hugely important in the equation of climate change. So, if you want to call it that. So, forests cover a third of the terrestrial area and, and yet, you know, they are huge carbon sinks for the terrestrial ecosystem, they store about 80% of terrestrial carbon. You know, the oceans, of course, are separate but they are also big sinks for carbon, but on the terrestrial side, forests are the most important ecosystem. I mean, bogs are important too and swamps and they, you know, on a per hectare basis, they are bigger sinks, but there's a lot fewer of them than there are forests. And so, forests are essential in, in the equation of climate change of, how do we mitigate climate change? So that, you know, so that we can slow it down so that we can allow our forest to adapt and respond to migrate the trees and genotypes and migrate if they need to, and they will need to, because if we lose these forests and we are losing them, unfortunately, we, you know, they, they're stressed from climate change but we're also losing them to our own practices, right? We're still clear-cutting old growth forests which is like, really? We should not be doing that because these store their huge carbon pools. So yeah, it's absolutely essential that we protect our old growth forests and what we have left. Stop clearcutting them. And then, focus whatever cutting that we need to do in second-growth forests or forests that have already lost, most of their, a good portion of their carbon stocks.  

So just, just to fill in that point a little bit more, so when you harvest it, when you clear-cuts a forest, you know, half of the carbon is above ground, and about half is below ground. When you clear-cut that above ground part, it's gone. Right? Where does it go? Well about 65 percent of it is turned into toilet paper and paper which just dissolves into the atmosphere within a year or two and then a, about a third of it ends up in these longer-term, carbon storage pools but they're not as long term as an old tree that is going to continue to grow for decades, if not centuries and continue to store more carbon. And so, we lose so much right off the bat from clear-cutting. And then, of course, you know, the soils also get disturbed. And we lose a portion from disturbance of the forest floor, which and I know I'm going into a lot of detail, but I'm just trying to emphasize that, you know, we do a lot of damage by clea-rcutting and we don't have to if we leave, you know, old trees, mother trees standing, you can take a few trees out like my grandpa did, selectively log, reduce the amount of cutting we do because it's so excessive. We’re over-consumptive and then we can protect the stocks that are there and really mitigate and slow down climate change. But I can't emphasize enough how important this is. It's so crucial that we get a grip on this because we're at the cusp now, right? We can either log the last sticks because we can make a few bucks, or we can actually save them for the life sustaining support systems that they truly are to us. 

Laura: Mhm and this is the work that, that you're, you're doing. In terms of those connections between trees and the ways that we should respect the forest. And the trees, it has these huge ripple effects and huge impacts in terms of climate change around the globe.  

Suzanne: Yeah, it's huge. You know, deforestation accounts for most of the biodiversity losses and terrestrial biodiversity losses or you know, land use change, maybe I should say, you know, more so land use change. But yeah, I mean that's the number one culprit and, and then, you know, of course on the carbon balance side, it also is one of the, even though we don't- [inaudible] -count it, you know, which is in Canada, is incredible. We don't even count it as what the causes. But it is and it also, you know, by simplifying our landscapes, turning them into plantations, we actually increase the risk against wildfire, beetle infestations, insect infestations, which then amplifies, you know, the, the pulses of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. So, it's just absolutely- I can't- it's so crucial that we get this right. 

Laura: Mhm. Mhm. My next question is also a little bit more looking towards the future. So, what does the future hold? What research are you working on? I know you started the Mother Tree Project, and can you tell us a little bit more about that project and what you're planning?  

Suzanne: Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's a, it's such an exciting project, it's a really large experiment. It covers a lot of total gradient that's 900 kilometers long. It involves 24 forests where we're, we're comparing clear-cutting and not cutting with a range of retention methods, where we leave mother trees, you know, as singles and clusters and bigger clusters and thin them out, trying to and try to figure out, you know, what is the best approach to regenerate the forest, to store carbon, to save biodiversity, and that you know, that will keep these forests intact with climate changes.  
 

So, it's a space for time experiment where we use space and variation across space in climate to try to project what things will look like in the future and therefore, we can plan, right. You know, we can plan how we're going to harvest, if we're going to harvest. How would we harvest the forest here and so that it'll still be good you know, fifty and a hundred years down the road and so what we're finding is that, yeah, leaving these old trees and the more we leave, the better the regeneration is, the more diverse it is, it's really abundant actually and, and that we can also migrate genotypes from warmer climates to underneath these old trees and they protect them, which is incredible. They actually increase the survival rate of these new migrants by 20 to 30 percent. And, at the same time, you know, as we predicted, you know, the more trees we leave, the better the carbon storage and the fewer species we lose and most of the species loss from clearcutting are in our forests are mosses and lichens.  

And mosses and lichens are like, those are, you know, hugely important in old growth forests, I think most people who have been in old growth forests are always stunned by what's hanging from the branches, and these big, pillowy moss layers underneath, but clear-cutting. And basically, you, you annihilate those, those species. Well, you- a lot of them are lost. Not, it's not a complete annihilation, but- so this is really helpful. It shows that forests are resilient if we treat them properly and, you know, if we care for them, um, if we're careful and selectively log, we can still take some trees from the forest, care for it, and it will still maintain its functions. And, you know, and the other thing is that carbon is kind of an amazing thing, right? It is the stuff of life. It is how sunlight is converted into chemical energy and then is stored in wood and cycled and it's, it's really the energy capital of our ecosystems and it represents- it actually is a really good indicator of all kinds of things like how water is filtered through the soil, you know, what, the hydrology? How healthy is the hydrologic cycle? How healthy are the food webs? It kind of is a good representation of those things.  

So, what we've learned is, if we manage with carbon as our indicator of health, it's actually a really good indicator and that's really helpful because then you can start to use it as a currency, as well. Right? Right now, we value our forests based on two by fours, cloth, and paper. Okay, well that's pretty, you know, narrow-minded, but if we value it on carbon, say, we can put a price on carbon. It actually captures a whole bunch of ecosystem goods and services along with carbon capture so, yeah, it's- so we've learned that and it's you know, it's really, really great because it can inform forest policy directly. 

Laura: Yeah. Like I'm curious more for people who want to get involved or for example, I'm a recent graduate of the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion Program at here, here at CIIS and, and what advice would you give to either recent graduates or people just getting started or, or anybody who wants to get involved? What advice would you give to people who want to, want to be part of this?  

Suzanne: Yeah, well, I mean, good for you. And this is an incredible field to be in, any, you know, this intersection of [inaudible] is its, it really is the nexus of where we need to be to solve our huge problems because it really- we are spiritual beings. So, are all the creatures in the forest and, you know, so we need to understand that. And so, this is an exciting time too, climate is changing. So, the science itself needs to move quickly. We need really smart people working together in teams to figure this out, to look at these, this juxtaposition of all these values, to find a better way forward. I think it's the most important job you can do right now. Other than, of course, you know there's all kinds of important jobs, but from a global perspective, from a sustainable- like our future, this is the most important job you can do right now and if you have a passion for it and you may, you know, keep that fire in yourself that you love it. You're going to, you're going to be fascinated, you're going to do great. There's so many things we don't know that we've got to figure out. And, and I just applaud anybody who goes into the field, we need you, we need you to work together. We need your brains, we need your passion. We need your resilience, just, yeah. Build your career, and you will absolutely love it as much as I have. I think, you know, it's amazing.  

Laura: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And I think the trees and the forest need us too. 

Suzanne: They do. Yes. 

Laura:  Very much so. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Suzanne.  

Suzanne: Thank you very much. As the Coast Salish say, [we are all one], we are all one. 

Laura: Thank you. 

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Jason McArthur, and Patty Pforte. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 
 
CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities.  

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