The True Price of a Tree

By David Suzuki

We were standing in an ancient forest that was threatened with clear-cut logging. He was the CEO of the company that had been allotted the tree farm license that enabled him to drive a road into the valley and begin the industrial extraction of the trees that would destroy what took millennia to evolve. We had engaged in an animated argument about the fate of that forest while standing face to face less than half a meter apart.

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"Unless, of course, you tree huggers decide you'll pay money to save it so you can enjoy it. Think your cronies can raise enough money to save the entire forest? Logging is what keeps the economy of this province growing and makes it possible for you preservationists to wear clothes, drive cars, and watch TV."

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But the perspective through which I viewed the forest-of which that tree was a part—was radically different. That one tree was a tiny part of a community of organisms thousands of years in the making. That community is made up of trees ("merchantable timber," or "fiber," in the jargon of the industry) that are a tiny minority of the lifeforms that comprise the forest.

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This is the community that we recognize as a forest, complex and interlinked beyond comprehension and all held together by the air, water, and sunlight that suffuse them.

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Consequently, companies require geneticists to breed fast-growing strains of commercially valuable trees, tree planters, herbicides to clear out "weed" (i.e., commercially worthless) species, insecticides to eliminate pests, fertilizers to restore nutrition to the soil, and firefighters. Large clear-cuts and the use of heavy machinery expose soil flora and fauna to sunlight, wind, and air. This alters water retention in the streams and rivers that are the lifeblood of the forest, radically transforming the remaining species mix.

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The entire forest is like the goose that laid golden eggs in the children's fable; as long as the goose is fat and healthy, it will yield golden eggs indefinitely. In the short-term perspective of global economics, as in the children's story, forestry companies attempt to gather all of the eggs at once by killing the goose.

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Returning to the CEO's statement that the tree only acquires value when it enters our economy by generating revenue, consider what the tree does before humans define its value. Hundreds of years old, that tree has absorbed carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) from the air, thereby playing a part in life's climate engine, and releases oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis-not a bad byproduct for all animals like us that are completely dependent on that oxygen for survival.

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All of these natural services performed by that single standing tree affect human health and survival, yet they are entirely ignored by our economy. It's long past time when we started lifting our horizons and values beyond the extremely limited perspective of conventional economics.

List of paragraphs:

A. As I pointed out in the book Good News for a Change: Hope for a Troubled Planet, by selective logging at or below the growth rate of the trees in a forest, trees can be profitably "harvested" indefinitely instead of once every hundred years or more. Nor is the diversity that is the key to resilience and regeneration sacrificed when trees are selectively removed.

B. Recent studies on urban forestry indicate that compared to natural wild areas, isolated city parks do not offer the same microclimate stability. There, only invasive species and drought-tolerant shrub species thrive rather than native canopy trees. Because of this, urban planners cannot rely solely on localized tree-planting initiatives to emulate the effects of natural forests.

C. The soil is a living organism made up of tens of thousands of species of microorganisms-viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa-and larger nematodes, worms, insects, and mites. Plants and animals blanket the forest floor, lichens and mosses coat rocks and decaying wood, snags and fallen logs provide nutrition and protection for countless organisms.

D. "You see that tree over there?" he shouted, pointing to a giant that was probably many centuries old. Without waiting for my response, he continued, "It doesn't have any value until it's cut down." I was dumbstruck by the statement, giving him the opening to carry on.

E. Foresters rationalize these practices as "proper silvicultural management," as if they know what it is that creates the original forest that was cut down. Of course, they have no idea. They lack both a proper inventory of all the constituent species that make up the forest and a blueprint that explains how all of the components are interconnected.

F. What had made me speechless was the realization that he was right. In the value system inherent in the form of economics our society has embraced, only when money is exchanged for goods and services is the transaction recognized as having economic worth.

G. Likewise, the roots of the tree cling to soil even under the hardest of rains, thereby inhibiting erosion while siphoning vast quantities of water up into the canopy, where it is released through transpiration, hence ameliorating weather. From roots to tips of branches, the tree offers a habitat for countless forms of life, from lichens and fungi to insects, birds, and mammals.

H. What foresters refer to as a "second-growth forest" is not a forest at all but a tree plantation - an attempt to grow trees like a crop of tomato or corn plants. But of course, such a "managed forest," or "fiber farm," no longer has the resilience, regenerative capacity, or self-protective devices of a natural forest.

I. Consequently, while carbon offset credits offer a lucrative alternative for developing nations to preserve forest areas, local enforcement often fails to prevent illegal logging operations along unmarked borders. This instability makes it difficult for conservation groups to project the long-term financial viability of these corporate partnerships.

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