Forest Unlimited: Webinar on Biomass Logging, Bad for Communities, Climate & Forests on April 19 at 2 pm
Forest Unlimited Supporters,
This webinar on April 19 at 2 pm is an opportunity to find out about biomass logging and biomass energy, an industry being formed to accept the huge amount of vegetation being removed or planned to be removed from forests for the stated intention to reduce catastrophic fire. From my last forest information email on an opportunity to view the film, Elemental at the Reading Cinema in Rohnert Park, you may already be aware that there is a false narrative about reducing fire intensity by the simplistic act of cutting and removing vegetative matter called “thinning”. There are serious unintended consequences for this simplistic program. One of them is that it can increase fire intensity rather than reduce fire intensity indicated in the Camp Fire (Paradise) and others. Another consequence is a development of a biomass industry that will need more and more vegetation for a growing industry, an industry as dirty as coal burning reversing actions that are needed for climate change mitigation as well as the loss from the activity itself and of the vegetative sequestration lost.
By the way, there is a factor not mentioned and needs to be. That factor is what kind of logging was done prior to a fire. Clearcutting and other industrial logging can set up an ideal scenario for increased intensity of wildfires–smaller trees, less canopy for sun drying effects, loss of moisture, more flammable growing vegetation, and the biggest sub-factor of all, wind, wind that can easily blow through increasing fire intensity. Fire maps overlaid on logging maps indicate this relationship and are supported by recent independent peer-reviewed published studies. We can change how we log forests to reduce catastrophic wildfires but that will mean we decide to put public safety over the economic activity of processing wood fiber and biomass energy. Which is more important and who decides?
Thanks for checking this out and for your support.
Larry Hanson, Board President
Forest Unlimited
contact@forestunlimited
Forest Carbon Coalition and John Muir Project presents
Biomass Logging:
Bad for Communities, Climate & Forests
Please join our esteemed panelists Katherine Egland of Mississippi’s Education, Economics, Environmental, Climate and Health Organization (EEECHO), Dr. Shaye Wolf, of Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and biologist, author, and filmmaker Maya Khosla for an in-depth discussion of biomass logging. Katherine Egland will talk about biomass logging in the Southeast United States, the impacts it has on local communities, the main corporations benefiting from these practices and how biomass logging is harming forests and our climate. Maya Khosla will cover the rise of biomass logging in California, what it looks like on the ground, the damage it is doing to our native ecosystems and biodiversity, and maybe even discuss her new film. Shaye Wolf, Ph.D. will dive into the carbon accounting of cutting down forests to burn for energy and some of the biggest threats looming as the push to expand this logging practice gains steam.
Webinar Registration Required
Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_67tPkoGZT-WqNwwWe2K62Q
Presenter Biographies
Katherine Egland is the Co-Founder and Program Director for the Education, Economics, Environmental, Climate and Health Organization (EEECHO). She is a native of Gulfport, Mississippi and has been active in the local and global community in addressing climate change and environmental injustice. She is a prolific presenter on harms of biomass logging in the Southeast and recently coauthored an article in truthout entitled Logging Is Slashing US Forests’ Ability to Absorb Carbon by Over One-Third. Kathy chairs the Environmental and Climate Justice Committee of the National Board of Directors NAACP. Her Committee is in charge of governance and responsibility of raising awareness of environmental and climate issues from a civil rights, social justice and equity perspective.
Maya Khosla is a wildlife biologist and writer. She has documented forests, fire scientists and firefighters talking about ways to be wise about wildfire. She is actively gathering both scientific data and film footage in the forests and wildlands of California documenting the impacts of biomass logging for her new film. Maya’s work has taken her across coastal India, Kenya, and the United States. Her work takes her into the field in national forests, National Parks, community wildlands and wilderness areas, to the page and to the screen. As Poet Laureate Emerita of Sonoma County (2018–2020), she directed Shelter in Poetry films for students and families.
Shaye Wolf, Ph.D., works with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute and is the coauthor of the CBD Forest Biomass Briefing Book: Biomass Energy is Polluting: A False Climate Solution that Worsens the Climate Crisis. She graduated with a Bachelor’s in Biology from Yale University and received a doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology and a master’s in ocean sciences from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she examined the effects of ocean climate change on seabird populations. During her graduate studies, Shaye worked with the biodiversity protection groups Conservación de Islas and Island Conservation in México and California; before that she was a wildlife biologist on projects with seabirds, songbirds, raptors, and spiders in Panama, Hawai’i, Florida, California, Wyoming, and Idaho.
Heather Campbell
FCC Coordinator