The charity Trees for Life has launched an initiative to save ancient Scots pines across the Highlands of Scotland from becoming the last generation in a lineage of trees dating back to the last ice age.

Through its Caledonian Pinewood Recovery Project, the conservationists wants to help restore 50 areas of remnant and neglected pinewoods – mainly made up of lone, ancient ‘Granny’ pines which are over 200 years old but dying as they stand, with no young trees to succeed them.

The fragments – scattered over a large area – face growing threats from overgrazing by deer, tree diseases and climate change, and are at risk of disappearing forever over the next few years. If they are allowed to die, the extraordinary wildlife dependent on them – such as crossbills and capercaillie – will be lost too.

Scotland’s national tree

Thanks to support from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Trees for Life has already raised £150,000 for the ambitious project. It now needs to raise at least £20,000 from the public to be able to start the work.

“The Scots pine is Scotland’s national tree and symbolises the Caledonian Forest – but the last fragments of these ancient pinewoods are dying. Without action, the chance to bring back the wild forest could slip away forever, with only the skeletons of these special trees revealing where a rich woodland once grew,” said Steve Micklewright, Trees for Life’s chief executive.

“We are determined to ensure these trees are not the last generation of Scots pine in these places. This project is one of our biggest and most crucial initiatives ever, and every donation will help save these precious fragments of our natural heritage.”

In total, only some 42,000 acres of the original Caledonian pinewoods remain in 84 fragments, spread across a wide area from Loch Lomond, northwards to near Ullapool, and eastwards to Glen Ferrick near Aberdeen.

Regenerate the forest

Some of these have been largely restored, but – based on a review of previous studies by Forestry Commission Scotland and the UK Government – Trees for Life believes that at least 50 are declining and could disappear within a generation. Where seeds manage to germinate, the resulting saplings are grazed and killed by deer.

The forest fragments are also isolated from each other, which is bad news for wildlife. Red squirrels can’t reach and colonise restored woodlands from where they have been lost, while the rare capercaillie is rapidly declining in Scotland as there is too little connected forest to enable these birds to reach a stable population.

Funds will enable Trees for Life to produce detailed plans on how to save each remnant so that a new generation of Scots pine can grow, and to establish where pinewoods need to expand to survive changes caused by climate change. The charity also wants to develop innovative ways to regenerate the forest, including through mutually beneficial discussions with landowners.

Action will help ensure that young Scots pine trees are soon growing among the Granny pines. This will provide a renewed forest that is more resilient to threats, with pinewood fragments successfully joined up – making them large enough to provide a good home for the unique wildlife only they can support.

This Author

Brendan Montague is Acting Editor of The Ecologist website, and tweets at @EcoMontague.

To support the project, visit www.treesforlife.org.uk/appeal or call 01309 691292.

The charity Trees for Life has launched an initiative to save ancient Scots pines across the Highlands of Scotland from becoming the last generation in a lineage of trees dating back to the last ice age.

Through its Caledonian Pinewood Recovery Project, the conservationists wants to help restore 50 areas of remnant and neglected pinewoods – mainly made up of lone, ancient ‘Granny’ pines which are over 200 years old but dying as they stand, with no young trees to succeed them.

The fragments – scattered over a large area – face growing threats from overgrazing by deer, tree diseases and climate change, and are at risk of disappearing forever over the next few years. If they are allowed to die, the extraordinary wildlife dependent on them – such as crossbills and capercaillie – will be lost too.

Scotland’s national tree

Thanks to support from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Trees for Life has already raised £150,000 for the ambitious project. It now needs to raise at least £20,000 from the public to be able to start the work.

“The Scots pine is Scotland’s national tree and symbolises the Caledonian Forest – but the last fragments of these ancient pinewoods are dying. Without action, the chance to bring back the wild forest could slip away forever, with only the skeletons of these special trees revealing where a rich woodland once grew,” said Steve Micklewright, Trees for Life’s chief executive.

“We are determined to ensure these trees are not the last generation of Scots pine in these places. This project is one of our biggest and most crucial initiatives ever, and every donation will help save these precious fragments of our natural heritage.”

In total, only some 42,000 acres of the original Caledonian pinewoods remain in 84 fragments, spread across a wide area from Loch Lomond, northwards to near Ullapool, and eastwards to Glen Ferrick near Aberdeen.

Regenerate the forest

Some of these have been largely restored, but – based on a review of previous studies by Forestry Commission Scotland and the UK Government – Trees for Life believes that at least 50 are declining and could disappear within a generation. Where seeds manage to germinate, the resulting saplings are grazed and killed by deer.

The forest fragments are also isolated from each other, which is bad news for wildlife. Red squirrels can’t reach and colonise restored woodlands from where they have been lost, while the rare capercaillie is rapidly declining in Scotland as there is too little connected forest to enable these birds to reach a stable population.

Funds will enable Trees for Life to produce detailed plans on how to save each remnant so that a new generation of Scots pine can grow, and to establish where pinewoods need to expand to survive changes caused by climate change. The charity also wants to develop innovative ways to regenerate the forest, including through mutually beneficial discussions with landowners.

Action will help ensure that young Scots pine trees are soon growing among the Granny pines. This will provide a renewed forest that is more resilient to threats, with pinewood fragments successfully joined up – making them large enough to provide a good home for the unique wildlife only they can support.

This Author

Brendan Montague is Acting Editor of The Ecologist website, and tweets at @EcoMontague.

To support the project, visit www.treesforlife.org.uk/appeal or call 01309 691292.

The charity Trees for Life has launched an initiative to save ancient Scots pines across the Highlands of Scotland from becoming the last generation in a lineage of trees dating back to the last ice age.

Through its Caledonian Pinewood Recovery Project, the conservationists wants to help restore 50 areas of remnant and neglected pinewoods – mainly made up of lone, ancient ‘Granny’ pines which are over 200 years old but dying as they stand, with no young trees to succeed them.

The fragments – scattered over a large area – face growing threats from overgrazing by deer, tree diseases and climate change, and are at risk of disappearing forever over the next few years. If they are allowed to die, the extraordinary wildlife dependent on them – such as crossbills and capercaillie – will be lost too.

Scotland’s national tree

Thanks to support from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Trees for Life has already raised £150,000 for the ambitious project. It now needs to raise at least £20,000 from the public to be able to start the work.

“The Scots pine is Scotland’s national tree and symbolises the Caledonian Forest – but the last fragments of these ancient pinewoods are dying. Without action, the chance to bring back the wild forest could slip away forever, with only the skeletons of these special trees revealing where a rich woodland once grew,” said Steve Micklewright, Trees for Life’s chief executive.

“We are determined to ensure these trees are not the last generation of Scots pine in these places. This project is one of our biggest and most crucial initiatives ever, and every donation will help save these precious fragments of our natural heritage.”

In total, only some 42,000 acres of the original Caledonian pinewoods remain in 84 fragments, spread across a wide area from Loch Lomond, northwards to near Ullapool, and eastwards to Glen Ferrick near Aberdeen.

Regenerate the forest

Some of these have been largely restored, but – based on a review of previous studies by Forestry Commission Scotland and the UK Government – Trees for Life believes that at least 50 are declining and could disappear within a generation. Where seeds manage to germinate, the resulting saplings are grazed and killed by deer.

The forest fragments are also isolated from each other, which is bad news for wildlife. Red squirrels can’t reach and colonise restored woodlands from where they have been lost, while the rare capercaillie is rapidly declining in Scotland as there is too little connected forest to enable these birds to reach a stable population.

Funds will enable Trees for Life to produce detailed plans on how to save each remnant so that a new generation of Scots pine can grow, and to establish where pinewoods need to expand to survive changes caused by climate change. The charity also wants to develop innovative ways to regenerate the forest, including through mutually beneficial discussions with landowners.

Action will help ensure that young Scots pine trees are soon growing among the Granny pines. This will provide a renewed forest that is more resilient to threats, with pinewood fragments successfully joined up – making them large enough to provide a good home for the unique wildlife only they can support.

This Author

Brendan Montague is Acting Editor of The Ecologist website, and tweets at @EcoMontague.

To support the project, visit www.treesforlife.org.uk/appeal or call 01309 691292.

The charity Trees for Life has launched an initiative to save ancient Scots pines across the Highlands of Scotland from becoming the last generation in a lineage of trees dating back to the last ice age.

Through its Caledonian Pinewood Recovery Project, the conservationists wants to help restore 50 areas of remnant and neglected pinewoods – mainly made up of lone, ancient ‘Granny’ pines which are over 200 years old but dying as they stand, with no young trees to succeed them.

The fragments – scattered over a large area – face growing threats from overgrazing by deer, tree diseases and climate change, and are at risk of disappearing forever over the next few years. If they are allowed to die, the extraordinary wildlife dependent on them – such as crossbills and capercaillie – will be lost too.

Scotland’s national tree

Thanks to support from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Trees for Life has already raised £150,000 for the ambitious project. It now needs to raise at least £20,000 from the public to be able to start the work.

“The Scots pine is Scotland’s national tree and symbolises the Caledonian Forest – but the last fragments of these ancient pinewoods are dying. Without action, the chance to bring back the wild forest could slip away forever, with only the skeletons of these special trees revealing where a rich woodland once grew,” said Steve Micklewright, Trees for Life’s chief executive.

“We are determined to ensure these trees are not the last generation of Scots pine in these places. This project is one of our biggest and most crucial initiatives ever, and every donation will help save these precious fragments of our natural heritage.”

In total, only some 42,000 acres of the original Caledonian pinewoods remain in 84 fragments, spread across a wide area from Loch Lomond, northwards to near Ullapool, and eastwards to Glen Ferrick near Aberdeen.

Regenerate the forest

Some of these have been largely restored, but – based on a review of previous studies by Forestry Commission Scotland and the UK Government – Trees for Life believes that at least 50 are declining and could disappear within a generation. Where seeds manage to germinate, the resulting saplings are grazed and killed by deer.

The forest fragments are also isolated from each other, which is bad news for wildlife. Red squirrels can’t reach and colonise restored woodlands from where they have been lost, while the rare capercaillie is rapidly declining in Scotland as there is too little connected forest to enable these birds to reach a stable population.

Funds will enable Trees for Life to produce detailed plans on how to save each remnant so that a new generation of Scots pine can grow, and to establish where pinewoods need to expand to survive changes caused by climate change. The charity also wants to develop innovative ways to regenerate the forest, including through mutually beneficial discussions with landowners.

Action will help ensure that young Scots pine trees are soon growing among the Granny pines. This will provide a renewed forest that is more resilient to threats, with pinewood fragments successfully joined up – making them large enough to provide a good home for the unique wildlife only they can support.

This Author

Brendan Montague is Acting Editor of The Ecologist website, and tweets at @EcoMontague.

To support the project, visit www.treesforlife.org.uk/appeal or call 01309 691292.

A huge wildfire tore through the village of Ferraria de São João, in Penela, central Portugal in June last year. Exactly two months after the excavators were back.

Only this time they weren’t there to plough up the land to plant eucalyptus, as has happened to so much of the land around the village. They were there to dig the trees up.

While Portugal’s politicians squabbled over failed forestry policy in the aftermath of the fire, residents of Ferraria de São João acted quickly.

Oaks and chestnuts

They decided unanimously to create a 500 metre “Village Protection Zone”, where fire-prone plantation species like eucalyptus and pine would be uprooted, and a protective barrier of fire-resistant, native species like oaks and chestnuts would be planted instead.

Ferraria de São João was relatively lucky. An existing area of native cork oaks above the village saved many houses from the fire.

Other places suffered more extensive damage when, on the 17th June, central Portugal suffered it’s first “fire-storm”, leaving 64 people dead, injuring many more, and destroying vast areas of countryside.

Emergency services were caught by surprise – traditionally the fire season in Portugal starts in late July. This tragedy was the worst fire event in Portugal’s history, and left the nation wondering how it could possibly have happened. 

The fire was caused by a dry thunderstorm during an intense heatwave and severe drought, where temperature records were smashed throughout the country.

Out of control wildfires

It spread at great speed due to the high winds, and because of this many places could not be evacuated in time. Many people caught up in the fire had to seek refuge in basements or water tanks, and many more fought the fires themselves.

It was eventually extinguished a week later after almost 50,000 hectares had burned, affecting nine different municipalities. 

This fire set the tone for the rest of the summer. So far in 2017 almost 280,000 hectares have burned, an area six times the average for the past decade, and equivalent to around 12% of Portugal’s forested areas.

On some days over 200 fires were recorded in the country, with thousands of firefighters fighting multiple out-of-control wildfires in different parts of central and northern Portugal.

Thick smoke, the smell of burning wood, and the sight of fire-fighting aeroplanes in the skies, drafted in from across Europe, have become ubiquitous.

Hot summers 

The area of central Portugal that has been most impacted by the fires this year is known as the “Interior Pine Forest”, but eucalyptus is now the dominant species.

As an example of how extensively it has been planted in some areas, consider that around 70% of the area that burned in June was covered in eucalyptus and pine plantation.

Eucalyptus grows well in Portugal because of the hot summers and wet winters, and the powerful pulp and paper industry has taken full advantage of this.

A combination of appalling forestry policy, lack of any enforcement at the local level, and a depopulated and abandoned countryside has meant that eucalyptus plantations now cover huge areas of central and northern Portugal.

In fact, Portugal has more eucalyptus than any other country in the world proportionally, and more than any country in Europe in absolute terms, despite being a relatively small place. In some areas you can drive for hours through eucalyptus plantations.

Rivers and streams

This has been to the complete detriment of Portugal’s natural forests, wildlife, and communities that rely on precious spring water. Nothing eats eucalyptus here – not even goats.

The trees are so successful and invasive as the oils they give off actually prevent other plants from growing near them, and prevent animals and soil organisms from living on their leaf litter.

Eucalyptus plantations are “green deserts”, devoid of biodiversity, exhausting the soils they are grown in. After a site has had eucalyptus planted, been cut three times, then replanted, and cut another two or three times, as is the custom here, not even more eucalyptus can survive in the soils that are left behind.

Compounding this is the practice of “rip-ploughing”, where hillsides are ploughed on contour with bulldozers, literally scraping off any top soil and plant life before new plantations are created.

Eucalyptus is also highly water intensive, sucking up hundreds of litres a day where it can, reducing water flow in rivers and streams, and drying up the springs that sustain many communities throughout the dry summers.

Linked to climate change

And then there’s the fires. Eucalyptus trees don’t just catch fire, they spread them. They have evolved specifically to deal with fire, where long strands of bark move the fire quickly up into the canopy, and the volatile oils they produce intensify it. Eucalyptus leaves can project fires hundreds of metres further, making fire breaks in plantations almost redundant.

Conditions in Portugal this summer created the “perfect fire-storm”. The extreme heatwave in June that affected much of southern Europe has been directly linked to climate change, as have the severe drought conditions that have impacted most of the country.

By 2050 these extreme conditions will be the norm for Portugal. That’s right, the fires will only get worse.

Contrary to public opinion and all of the evidence of the devastating impacts of eucalyptus, successive governments have only incentivised its planting, leading to a situation where there are illegal plantations everywhere, and regulations that specify safe distances from houses and roads, adequate firebreaks, and inter-planting of native species are simply ignored. 

Portugal is a sad example of how misplaced support for industrial tree plantations can go badly wrong. A supposedly “green industry”, as the pulp and paper companies and government ministers (before this year’s fires) would have you believe, has helped to create an environmental disaster, feeding the cycle of climate change impacts.

Serious political will

This should serve as a lesson to policy makers who are now putting plantations at the forefront of climate mitigation strategies globally. In the absence of serious political will to tackle the root causes of climate change, “biosequestration” is the new buzzword, involving vast tree plantations that suck up the emissions of a fossil-fuel addicted world. 

Despite all of the evidence of the social, environmental and of course fire impacts of plantations, large-scale afforestation and fairy-tale technologies such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), where huge plantations will be turned in to smoke that is then stored in old oil fields, are the best ideas that have come out of the landmark Paris Agreement so far.

If mitigation efforts are focused on sequestering future emissions with technologies that don’t exist and plantations that hurt communities and biodiversity, rather than stopping the emissions in the first place, then the strategy that is supposed to reduce the impacts of climate change will likely only make things worse.

New eucalyptus growth is already sprouting from the ashes of Portugal’s wild fires, but as the villagers of Ferraria de São João have shown, we can choose to dig them up instead.

The example set by Ferraria de São João should be followed on a global scale, as restoring natural ecosystems will make us more resilient to climate change, and protect communities from the impacts of it. 

This Author

Oliver Munnion is the bioenergy campaigner and graphic designer at the Global Forest Coalition. He lives in central Portugal.

Families from the Lao Tribe in the south are leading the way by turning away from a number of non-organic fertilisers that are used widely in the coffee industry to boost crop yields.

Instead, they are using alternatives like homemade fertilisers and pesticides, which are going a long way to improving the quality of their farms and lives.

A long line of farmers

“Our land and soil is very important to us,” says Chon Vilaysak, a coffee farmer and Lao Tribe member living within Bolaven Plateau, which is an elevated region in southern Laos, famous for its coffee production.

“If you use chemicals, you will damage the soil and you won’t be able to grow many things, or you will only end up adding more chemicals in order to grow,” he says referring to problems found within soil treated with chemical fertilisers, including loss of nutrients and poor water retention.

Chon lives with his wife, Nouphai, and their seven children in Nong Luang village and like many of the farmers in this region their entire $8,000 yearly income comes from coffee farming alone.

In total, Chon and his family own 7 hectares of land, the bulk of which they use to farm a mixture of Robusta and Arabica coffee crops, with a little land used for growing fruit trees and vegetables for themselves.

Both he and his wife come from a long line of farmers: Chon’s parents previously harvested rice near the Cambodian border, while Nouphai’s family has a history rooted in coffee.

Teaching sustainable methods

Chon explains how he has always been reluctant to using chemical fertilisers on his crops but it wasn’t until he was taught new green methods by Michael Gomez Wood, the executive director and co-founder of non-profit organisation Fi-lan’thro-pe, that he started to fully benefit from sustainable techniques.

Michael set up the charity with Fi-lan’thro-pe director of Asian programmes Cana Little in 2011 to work directly with indigenous, tribal coffee farmers.

Over the last 6 years, the charity’s goal has been to create a network of communities where sustainable agricultural methods can be shared among farmers to enable them to not only earn more from their crops but ensure they don’t damage their environment for future use.

“We’ll fill every gap in the farmers’ knowledge to move their coffee towards specialty quality coffee,” Michael explains. “Then we’ll connect them with buyers who are willing to pay them a higher price for their product.”

He and Cana are teaching sustainable methods to farmers such as creating organic fertilisers, pesticides and composting.

A number of coffee regions

The fertilisers are made from fermented fruit and plant juice, which is sprayed over the coffee crops to stimulate leaf and cherry growth.

Other innovate techniques that are being used include the creation of biochar – an organic substance that works in a similar way to activated charcoal, which rids humans and animals of toxins.

“Coffee has some of the most valuable waste streams in the world such as the husk, which can be used to make biochar”, Michael says, as explains some of the benefits of using substance.

“The inclusion of 1 per cent of biochar in the farmers’ animal feed, for example, reduces 80 per cent of methane emitted from pigs, and cuts 60 per cent of methane emitted from cows.”

Fi-lan’thro-pe works in a number of coffee regions across the world including the second largest coffee exporter, Vietnam, as well as India and Indonesia.

Most compelling reasons

In Laos, the team works with local translator and environmentalist Eh Nyotkhampheuy, who meets with new and existing Lao farmers to explain the benefits of going sustainable.

“Organic farming is not easy,” admits Eh. “Nowadays farmers want to make fast cash, so they just want something that can grow quickly and sell quickly. They don’t think about the poison of using chemicals or the many benefits to going sustainable.”

For farmers like Chon, who have already made the switch to sustainable methods, the positives heavily outweigh the negatives. Understandably, one of the most compelling reasons for farmers to cut out chemical use is down to price.

“The market requires organic goods and products and if we sell organic coffee, we can sell for a higher price,” says Chon, who estimates that he can get nearly double the amount of money per kilogram for his Robusta beans on the market if they have been organically cultivated.

By cutting out the need to buy non-organic fertilisers and pesticides, farmers are also seriously reducing their outgoing costs.

Coffee cultivation process

But economic incentives aren’t the only reason that these communities are choosing to become sustainable. Chon says a number of farmers in neighbouring villages have had health issues due to the heavy use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides.

“Chemicals cause health problems. Farmers living in a village close by are using chemicals too much, which is causing problems to their health like liver problems. They have to go to hospital often,” he says. Clearly the need to go sustainable isn’t one to be ignored.

The next step now is for Fi-lan’thro-pe to secure funding so some of these families can implement the charity’s zero-waste programme.

This would introduce the likes of animal waste into the coffee cultivation process and create not only further environmental benefits but additional income streams, through the creation of new animal feeds and alternative organic fertilisers.

This would certainly be a game-changer for Lao farmers like Chon and his family, who live in some of the lowest income brackets in the world.

And for Chon this is not only an exciting step but a simple one. “Once you know what sustainable farming is you realise it’s not that hard, we are farmers so this is just our job,” he says. “Land is life.”

This Author

Robyn Wilson is a freelance journalist currently writing and travelling across Asia. She is a former news editor at Construction News. She blogs at Weird Fishes and tweets at @RobynFWilson.

Alban Gannon adores his guide dog of four years, Usher. “He’s a darling of a guide dog. I’ve cared for all my dogs but he’s a real sweetie.”

But Gannon is very scared that he is going to lose Usher. According to Gannon, in April, charity Guide Dogs, who provided the German shepherd, threatened to take him away, saying that Gannon had been evasive about allowing the charity carry out its annual checkup on the dog’s health and wellbeing.  

SIGN THE PETITION

Gannon said that the charity claimed that they sent him letters about the inspection, but his severe blindness meant that he could not read them, so was unaware of when he was supposed to meet a representative of the charity.

‘Aggressive and patronising’

Gannon, 59, said that the charity has been aggressive and patronising towards him. After being told that his dog would be removed, he was then told that the charity had changed its mind, only to receive a letter saying that he needed to sign up to an agreement in order to keep Usher.

“I’ve got to sign up to a plan to aid greater communication between us. That doesn’t sound too bad. But it’s very nebulous the way it’s worded,” Gannon said.

Gannon lives in Brighton, but travels frequently to Ireland for family reasons. He said that Guide Dogs has asked him to provide telephone numbers of his friends so that they can find out where he is. However, he does not want to provide this information due to bad experience in the past.

“I found that two friends of mine had had phone calls from Guide Dogs asking where I was. But Guide Dogs hadn’t contacted me directly,” he said.

Gannon, who has been blind for some 40 years after losing his sight in his early 20s, has had four guide dogs in the past. “I understand why some people would lose a guide dog under certain circumstances, but I’ve been nothing but gentle.

Very agoraphobic

“Guide Dogs hasn’t been able to justify taking my dog away from me. They’re ignoring my questions but at the same time they want me to jump through hoops,” Gannon said.  

Gannon, 59, said that the situation had damaged his health, including sleeplessness and flare-ups of gout. He fears that losing his dog would severely affect his life.

When he had been without a guide dog in the past he had become very agoraphobic, he said. “I doubt I’d ever go out. “I’ve become so used to working with a guide dog I wouldn’t be able to cope. I’d be empty.”

Without a dog provided through the charity, Gannon said he would have to find the money to buy one himself, and then train it, which would take at least 18 months.

“I’m kind of on the run at the moment. They’re just looking at any excuse to take my dog away. I just don’t trust Guide Dogs any more,” he said.

A spokesperson for Guide Dogs said: “The health and wellbeing of the people we support, and our dogs, is of the utmost importance to us. We’re currently working with Mr Gannon to establish the best way forward for his guidedog partnership with Usher.” She added that the charity could not comment further owing to confidentiality issues.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and the former deputy editor of the environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

The European Commission has called on the EU’s most senior judges to penalise Poland for flouting an emergency ban on logging in Białowieża Forest, the best preserved forest ecosystem in Europe.

In July, the court ordered all chainsaws and harvesters to be stopped immediately while it considered the case. EU judges issued the emergency ban due to intensive logging taking place in the forest, which is in breach of EU nature laws.

Polish authorities have claimed that they are removing trees to tackle a bark beetle infestation. Last year, the government approved a plan that would allow a threefold increase in logging in the forest – about 140,000 hectares of pristine woodland on the border between Poland and Belarus, parts of which are untouched by humans.

The forest is home

But many scientists and the European Court confirm that bark beetles are not a threat to the forest, and if the natural ecosystem is left alone, it will thrive. Dead trees are extremely important for the biodiversity of the forest, they argue.

The timber harvesting has been opposed by the Polish public, scientists and environmental campaign groups including Greenpeace, WWF and ClientEarth. The forest is home to many rare birds, lynxes, wolves and the biggest wild-ranging herd of European bison.

But Polish environment minister Jan Szyszko not only ignored the court’s temporary ban, but declared his intention to openly, the first time this has happened in the history of the European Union, according to campaign group Client Earth.

ClientEarth lawyer Agata Szafraniuk said: “We hope, for the sake of the forest, that the court will uphold the emergency logging ban and do everything to make Minister Szyszko obey the law, which is here to protect Bialowieza’s unique nature.

“Ten years ago, when Mr Szyszko was first Polish Environment Minister and was served another emergency interim measure to protect nature, he changed his attitude and complied. He must do the same now,” she added.

Activists removed

The Polish government now has four days to respond to the court, which is then expected to make its decision by the beginning of October.

The commission launched the legal case, which has been fast-tracked at every stage, in 2016, after a formal complaint by ClientEarth and seven other campaigning organisations.

This week, activists from across Europe have joined Greenpeace Poland to stop the logging. Dozens of people have been chaining themselves to trees and logging machinery to stop foresters.

Marianna Hoszowska, head of communications for Greenpeace Poland, has argued: “Some of the activists have already been removed by guards, but we aren’t moving until we know that this forest is protected.

“We will not let this ancient and fragile ecosystem be cut down for profit. We won’t stop resisting until the entire forest is recognised as a National Park.”

Strict protection zone

In July, a meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Poland reiterated concern about the running commercial logging damaging the Bialowieza Forest and urged Poland to immediately halt wood extraction in the old-growth forests.

Poland had allowed the increased logging activities without evaluating the potential impacts on the Outstanding Universal Value of the Forest, for which it was inscribed on the World Heritage List, UNESCO said.

Meanwhile, the Belarusian government has increased the strict protection zone on its side of the forest by 1,250 hectares. The court’s verdict on the ban is expected in the next few days.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and the former deputy editor of the environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

Our understanding of the Earth we inhabit is undergoing a radical change. The modern ideas of the Earth as the environment in which humans make their home, or as a knowable collection of ecosystems more or less disturbed by humans, are being replaced by the conception of an inscrutable and unpredictable entity with a violent history and volatile mood swings. Earth System scientists have reached for rough metaphors to capture this new idea – images of “the wakened giant” and “the ornery beast”, of Gaia fighting back and seeking revenge, of a world of “angry summers” and “death spirals”.

This new conception of the Earth System is inconsistent with the understanding of a Nature victimised and colonised by humans that has emerged since the 1960s. It is an understanding captured in phrases from the 1990s like “the end of Nature”, “nothing but us”, and “the Earth’s cry for rescue”, and morphing into more recent renderings like a “humanised Earth”, “the kind of Nature we wish to have”, “Nature no longer exists apart from humanity,” and “It is our choice what happens here.” Whether the mood is one of lament or triumph, in all of these expressions Nature is our victim or our servant.

The Earth has turned against us
Yet Earth System Science now tells us that, rather than dying, Nature as the Earth System has in fact come alive or (perhaps a better metaphor) is waking from slumber. It’s true that wherever we look we see human influence, but at the same time we see stirring an angry, ornery, vengeful Earth that is more detached from us than it has been for 10,000 years. Contrary to the comforting expectation that in the Anthropocene we can have “the kind of Nature we wish to have”, as we enter the new epoch we will meet an Earth that is further and further from the Earth we might want. And against the belief that the world we will inhabit is the one we have made, the world we will have to live with is the Earth we have turned against us.

In other words, these views of the end of Nature and of a humanised Earth subject to our choices may have been appropriate to the Holocene, but Holocene thinking has been supplanted by Anthropocene thinking. This all follows from the primary fact that the Anthropocene is a rupture, whereas all of these views about the death of Nature and so on do not recognise that a rupture has occurred, but write as if there were continuity, a continuous process of human colonisation going back thousands of years, albeit one that has intensified in recent decades.

Is the new goal to save ourselves?
So, on this new Earth, notions of human domination – whether positively as mastery or negatively as victimisation – have to be discarded. It follows that the benign ideas of good stewardship and a loving Mother Earth are redundant too. Nature is no longer passive and fragile, suffering in silence, “the sister [who] cries out to us”, in the words of Pope Francis. In the Anthropocene, it is no longer tenable to believe that “our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us.” In the Holocene, to view the world, as the encyclical does, as “entrusted … to … men and women” was a plausible working hypothesis. But no more. Now when Mother Earth opens her arms it is not to embrace but to crush us.
 
Our goal can no longer be to save Nature, but to save ourselves, from ourselves and from Nature, knowing that every disturbance to the Earth System reduces the chances of doing so. Nature is no longer (as Pope Francis writes) “a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness”, but a grim report in which scientists speak to us and grant us a glimpse of disrupted natural patterns and a chaotic climate.
 
Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that it is both a sublime Earth that presents itself to us as beautiful when becalmed and terrifying when enraged, an intimate planet and an alien one, Mother and Other.

This is an edited extract from Clive Hamilton’s book Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene, published by Polity Press (and by Allen & Unwin in Australia). The article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine, September/October issue 2017.

Clive Hamilton is Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, Australia.