What are Logging Scars?

What happens to the areas of Canada’s forests that have been impacted by full-tree harvesting? According to international rules the term ‘deforestation’ only occurs when a forest is converted into another land use, like a shopping mall, farm or housing development. We don’t count formerly forested areas that are now barren as deforested, if the area remains designated for forestry. But could it, should it be classified as forest degradation?

Our own Senior Forest Conservation Manager, Dave Pearce unpacks Wildlands League’s 2019 Logging Scars report on the subject. We discuss the genesis of this pivotal report. What kickstarted our investigation into areas that were still barren 30 years or more after logging? What did we assume going into this, and what did we discover? The findings may surprise you. 

Check out the Logging Scars webpage to read the report and see the eye-opening images.

Make sure to check out the show notes on the podcast webpage for more links and helpful resources.

You can help this community grow by sharing the podcast with your friends.

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https://wildlandsleague.org/theclearcut/

Episode Transcript

Janet Sumner (00:00):
Welcome to the Clear Cut.
Hi, I'm Janet Sumner, ExecutiveDirector at Wildlands League.

Kaya Adleman (00:08):
And I'm Kaya Adelman, Carbon Manager at
Wildlands League.

Janet Sumner (00:14):
Wildlands League is a Canadian conservation
organization working onprotecting the natural world.

Kaya Adleman (00:21):
The Clear Cut is bringing to you the much-needed
conversation on Canadian forestmanagement and how we can better
protect one of Canada's mostimportant ecosystems, as our
forests are reaching a tippingpoint.

Janet Sumner (00:41):
So good morning, kaya.
I'm happy to be here with you.
It is absolutely rainingoutside.
That's because spring hassprung here in the Toronto
region.
Actually, I'm in theScarborough Bluffs and I got a
chance to watch the apocalypseeclipse or eclipse apocalypse or
whatever you want to how it wasbeing treated the other day,

(01:01):
and I'm very near to theScarborough bluff so you could
see the uh, the area of totalitymoving across the lake.
I wasn't in the area oftotality, but I, I could see it
out on the lake, which wasactually really, really cool.
I, I totally enjoyed that, didyou?
What was your experience?
Were you or did you have clouds?

Kaya Adleman (01:23):
No, we didn't, we actually.
So, um, I'm in Montreal and wewere in the area of totality.
Um, and it's also, just sidenote, very cool that you got to
see like the eclipse kind ofmove across um, lake Ontario.
But, um, I went to Mount Royalpark for an hour with my eclipse
glasses and it was really cool,like it.
Um, it was a little bit cloudy,a little bit obscured, but you

(01:47):
could, really you could see itpretty, pretty well, um, I would
say, and it was cool to watchalso in the background, like the
light change over time.
Um, and it felt like there's,it was packed.
There were so many people there, a, A lot of people had
traveled to Montreal to watchthe eclipse and they were

(02:08):
actually having an event in ParcJean Drapeau and the metros
were so packed.
Whoever got there early, I guess, was very lucky and could enjoy
all the events and festivitiesthere.
But you could see it prettywell if you just stepped outside
your home and looked up at thesky.
It was pretty cool and it feltlike a very human moment, kind

(02:28):
of reminded me that we're alljust living on a planet, um,
spinning hundreds of millions ofkilometers per hour through
space, and it made, I don't know, makes you feel.
You know we're just like allthe people living on earth.

Janet Sumner (02:45):
Yeah, there was a lot of feelings of connection, I
think, that day and it wasinteresting on all the different
social channels to watch yourfriends.
Some were on balconies withtheir kids, some were out at a
park or a beach, and I saw onepicture that made me laugh
enormously was one of our boardmembers.
He posted this picture ofclouds and he goes oh yeah, I

(03:08):
can totally see it distinctly.
It was very, very tongue incheek, you know.
It's like obviously the eclipsehad come and he was just
looking at cloud cover when heposted that it was so distinct
and colorful and amazing andused all the adjectives that
were used on all the images thatwere actually amazing and et
cetera.
So that was eclipse day.
But today we're going to diveinto a report that was done by

(03:31):
Wildlands League a number ofyears ago but is having
influence on today's currentconversations, and that's a
report called Logging Scarves.
And the reason it's having animportant impact on
conversations today is becauseCanada is considering, is
actually formulating, how todefine degradation,
deforestation and degradationfor forestry.

(03:54):
And this is happening becausethe European Union has a DR on
deforestation and degradation,saying that they don't want to
take fiber from places that arefrom forests that are degraded
or deforested.
So the work of Wildlands Leagueon this, and led by Trevor
Hessling as our policy director,was groundbreaking and it

(04:20):
really is having reverberationsto this day and is impacting and
is a reference point for us interms of our work that we're
doing.
On the deforestation anddegradation definition, sure

(04:49):
that it incorporates the factthat we have a legacy after
harvesting that suggests thatthe parts of the forest are not
coming back and are not.
We don't have this magical wandthat we wave, that when we cut
trees down, that theymiraculously regrow a hundred
percent of the forest, and so weneed to be much better at
accounting for that.
Anyway, so this report is reallygood and I wanted to make the
point before we start in and Ithink you'll hear this there is

(05:14):
a sort of a passing reference toit, but just so it's clearly
understood is that when we didthe exercise, or when Trevor did
the exercise, it was aboutgathering a lot of Landsat
imagery and some of the bestimagery that we could get
Landsat imagery and some of thebest imagery that we could get
and some of that allowed him togo down to a 40 centimeter
resolution, which was fantastic.
Most of Canada's I think all ofCanada's resolution across the

(05:36):
country at a national level isat 30 meters.
So this 40 centimeters was wasa very different analysis and we
were able to look at that atover 200, close to 300 sites.

Kaya Adleman (05:45):
But the important part was mapping that.
That's the mapping that thefederal government does
specifically yeah, the 30 meterone.

Janet Sumner (05:51):
yeah, exactly now.
Um, after he did all of thatwork and and hand drew lines, a
computer drew lines etc.
To figure out what the spatialgeography was of the areas that
looked to be barren or withouttrees.
And it wasn't just without treesbut it was without trees where
you should have had trees.
So, for example, if it was awetland, we weren't expecting to

(06:14):
have trees there and we didn'tfactor those in, but areas that
we expected to see trees orwhere tree regrowth should have
happened, we were looking at howmuch of that was barren or
where tree regrowth should havehappened.
We were looking at how much ofthat was barren.
Then he decided to do arepresentative sample so that
the ground truthing of thiswasn't just oh, you know, let's

(06:35):
go to my 10 favorite sites, butrather I want to make sure I've
got a representative of the ageclass, the forest type, the
length of time it hasn't beenlogged, the length of time when
it was logged, those kinds ofthings.
So he did the math on all ofthat and then went out into the
field and ground truth or fieldtested the results and refined

(06:57):
those based on what he found inthe bush no-transcript piece for

(07:32):
us on carbon as well.

Kaya Adleman (07:34):
Yeah, I'm glad that we're adding this work to
the conversation on our podcastbecause we have heard before
we've had guests talk about howyou can look at Google Maps and
see logging scars and see thefootprint of logging scars all
across Canada If you zoom in onthe boreal forest.
But this work really kind ofhones in and goes over those

(08:00):
impacts with a fine tooth combat a site specific level.

Janet Sumner (08:04):
Yeah, exactly, all right, kaya, I'm very happy
today that we're going to betalking about one of the
products that Wildlands Leaguehas put out in the last 10 or 15
years that I just really reallylove.
It's groundbreaking, it's aview of the forest that most
people don't get, and I'm superstoked to be talking about this

(08:28):
today, and I'm glad that you andI are here to dive into this
together.

Kaya Adleman (08:33):
Yeah, me too.
It was.
Actually I had to actually diveinto the details of this
product for my interview withWildlands League, so I'm excited
to be able to put thatknowledge and information to
good use and maybe learn somemore things in the process.

Janet Sumner (08:51):
Right and to help us walk through and tell the
story of how it came into being.
And the story that it tells isgoing to be Dave Pierce, who
works for Wildlands League.
And Dave, tell us a little bitabout yourself and who you are
and what you do for WildlandsLeague.
And Dave, tell us a little bitabout yourself and who you are
and what you do for WildlandsLeague.

Dave Pearce (09:10):
I'm a senior forest conservation manager.
I've been around WildlandsLeague longer than Janet by
about a month, maybe two over 20years.
And I started as a forestconservation analyst, working
with um weird software calledsvum that analyzes the forest.

(09:31):
Uh is used in forest managementplanning uh.
But I've got a background in amaster's in forest conservation
and an interest in forestry andI've actually done some hands-on
micro logging up in the northof Ottawa, in the Gatineau
Valley of Quebec and yeah.

(09:53):
So I would describe my work asbeing a forestry nag, trying to
keep on top of the forestindustry to obey the rules that
uh the Ontario government has,uh, but also go beyond that to
uh to where there's uh there'sgaps in those rules around

(10:14):
caribou protection especially.
So I work with uh within theforest stewardship council um
framework of forestcertification, um, which is a
voluntary um framework of forestcertification.
Um, which is a voluntary ummeasure that uh forest companies

(10:34):
can comply with and get a stampof approval, or uh to ensure uh
or uh, yeah, ensure that theirproducts are from well-managed
forests.

Janet Sumner (10:43):
Yeah, can you tell us something about the man, the
myth, the legend, like whatelse about Dave Pierce?

Dave Pearce (10:49):
I think I got interested.
So I grew up in the OttawaValley and my, my family ran a
very small kind of touristoperation.
We had a campground and amarina and cottages on a lake
and we had about 40 acres ofland.
Um, and one of the turningpoints in my life was in the,

(11:12):
when I was less than 10 yearsold.
Uh, my dad and his businesspartner were a bit short of
money and they decided to uhsell off logs.
From there was a quite a nicered Oak stand on part of the
property that had been farmedlike a hundred years before.
So red Oak had kind of secondgrowth red Oak, but it was nice

(11:33):
size.
And I remember logging trucks,uh in the wintertime leaving our
property one after another, andit kind of broke my heart
actually, uh, to see thoselogging trucks leaving with this
, these beautiful trees, and tosee what, what was left on the
landscape.
It wasn't, I think they whatwe'd term that high grading.

(11:54):
Now they just went in, took allthe Oak left, what was left,
you know Birch and Poplar andwhatnot, and it became a very
scrubby forest after that.
So it wasn't a sustainableforest management in any uh in
any way.
Uh, and then I went on to studyenvironmental studies at uh
environmental science at Trentuniversity, um, kind of

(12:15):
generally, but um, and I did astint doing international
development abroad and I um kindof a gen X wandering around
kind of existence for a fewyears and I really thought where
my interest in internationaldevelopment and social
development in general andenvironmental concerns kind of

(12:37):
came together was in forestry,because I thought this is an
industry that has the potentialto be the most sustainable
source of of wealth generation.
You know, um, and I say thepotential because we see, uh, a
lot of claims that it'ssustainable, but uh, as we know,
uh from our work in the wildlands league, it doesn't, um

(12:59):
doesn't always measure up, so,uh.
So I thought, ha, aha, this ismy path, and I was in my 30s by
the time I.
I kind of had that aha moment.
Um, it was during lands forlife, and I heard somebody speak
, I think, about logging and and, uh, sustainable logging and
and complementing protectedareas.

(13:20):
So I thought, oh, this is, thisis pretty cool.
So I went off to um as a maturestudent, to the masters of
forest conservation program at uof t, and then soon after I
left that program, I got a jobwith wildlands league and I've
kind of been on that uh, thatpath to uh to um realize the

(13:40):
realized the potential ofsustainable forest management
ever since.

Janet Sumner (13:52):
That's pretty cool .
I've known Dave, as you said.
He's been at Wildlands Leagueabout I'd say it was three
months longer than I had,because I started in December.
I think you started inSeptember, maybe October, I
don't know Anyway, at least acouple of months.
So we've known each other over20 years now.
Yeah, and one of the greatbenefits of my life is Dave's
sense of humor.
Dave is in our officeresponsible for most of the dad

(14:15):
jokes and he keeps us laughing,but he also keeps us alive when
we're out in the bush.
There's many times we've beenout there in nature, where we
often go to ground truth andfigure out what's going on on
the land, and we spend time inthe places that we work on, and
whether it's, you know, campingon the shores of Hudson Bay or

(14:39):
in a provincial park down off ofthe shores of Georgian Bay, or
whether we're in Algonquin, daveis always there, ready to help
navigate and help us understandthe natural world.
So he's actually one of ournatural history folks that can
help us understand what we'relooking at and how we're working

(15:00):
on the land, and he's anenormous asset to Wildlands
League, and so it's been mygreat pleasure to work with him
over these 20 years.

Kaya Adleman (15:07):
So thanks, dave, thanks I remember I was gonna
say I remember, uh, last summer,when you guys went up to go
look at polar bears, um in jamesbay, uh there was, there was
some disagreement over someequipment that was too heavy
that day was trying to bring onthe on the charter flight that
was too heavy to to pack.

(15:27):
So that's one of my firstexperience, my, my first
memories of Dave.

Janet Sumner (15:33):
I think that might've been his, his version
of a wilderness toilet.

Kaya Adleman (15:36):
Yeah.

Janet Sumner (15:37):
So, yeah, Dave's known for making the most
exquisite wilderness toilets,but he had outdone himself this
time and we had to leave behindsome of the equipment that he
had for for his creation.
It was really quite creative.

Dave Pearce (15:54):
I was.
I was going to say, Jan, youforgot about one of my key
contributions is doing the foodbut then also digging the
latrine, so I like to think ofit as a full food system through
the full cycle.

Janet Sumner (16:09):
Yeah, Dave is responsible for all of our food
when we're traveling as well, sohe does a great job of that as
well.
Except for the time he tried tofeed us guava paste on the last
day.
That didn't go too well, butother than that, dave is great
to travel with and he's astalwart for the organization.
So that's a little bit aboutDave.
So 1990 was my very first EarthDay.

(16:33):
I was working at PollutionProbe, I was working on issues
around waste management andtoxics in the Great Lakes and
pesticides and all that kind offun stuff.
I hadn't yet graduated toworking on carbon or nature or
thinking about all the greatwork that we do in terms of
protecting areas at WildlandsLake.

(16:56):
But 34 years later, we stillvery, very much need an Earth
Day, because we needenvironmental groups and the
public, and one of the greatthings that I've seen happen in
my 34 years working onenvironmental issues is this
transition where the public iseven more engaged, where we have
a democratization.

(17:16):
That's happened because of theinternet, because of AI, because
of all of these ways in whichwe can now see into the world
and see what's going on, and soI'm more encouraged than ever
that the public and the peopleare paying attention and are
hungry for information, and ifyou're hungry for information,
you want to be listening to thepodcast and you want to be

(17:39):
supporting the podcast.
So anything that you can do onthis Earth Day to help us keep
the podcast going would begreatly appreciated.
Thanks so much for listeningand tell all your friends about
it, thank you.
So we're going to start in on apublication that we put out a
few years ago.
It's called Logging Scars.

(18:01):
It's on the internet.
You can find it.
It's wwwloggingscarsca.

Kaya Adleman (18:08):
Has its own website.

Janet Sumner (18:10):
Yeah, there's lots of information there.
It has its own website becauseit's got a lot of images, et
cetera.
Dave, maybe you can talk alittle bit about why we did this
and maybe the generation ofthat.

Kaya Adleman (18:25):
How did it come to be?

Dave Pearce (18:28):
Yeah, well, we do a lot of flying over northern
Ontario, as Janet kind ofalluded to, and we've been to
the Hudson Bay Coast a few timesand to regularly go to
Indigenous communities above thecut line.
So we see the whole transitionfrom uh actively, you know, you

(18:49):
could say shared landscapebetween forestry, mining,
hydroelectric development, um,you know, settlement, that of
agriculture in in, uh, theindustrial part of the forest
land, and then and then flyingand we see the whole transition
into intact forest.
So the it's quite starkactually, if you've ever have a

(19:09):
chance to do it.
Um, but uh, during theseflights, uh, one of our
colleague, uh colleagues, trevor, trevor, hess, link, um
especially and we'd all noticedthis, but he, he really keyed in
on this is this pattern of theylook like older, cut over areas
, you know, you can see wherethe young trees are growing and
then within that sort of asystem of lines which, would you

(19:34):
know, we're like, oh, there'sthe old logging roads and then
beside the lines or orintersecting the lines, he's got
almost like cross hatches, ofkind of rectangular square areas
.
And Trevor had his daughter wassix years old I think at the
time and very active and gettinginto a lot of minor injuries

(20:00):
and some not so minor, so lotsof stitching, and he said they
look like scars.
It looks like the scars on mydaughter.
They look, you know, and hestarted calling them logging
scars and so he had a lot ofquestions, like we all did how
old are they?
You know, how long do theypersist?
And you know, um, uh, how muchof an area do they cover?

(20:22):
And what?
You know what precise mechanismof logging causes these?
Um, and I have to admit I was abit um, dismissive maybe is a
strong word, but I, I based, andwe had some conversations with
forestry advisors like um, inthe field and uh, and some folks

(20:43):
that were on our board, andthey were like, oh, you know,
they'll grow back.
You know, those, those aretemporary features.
You know, there's probably onlya few years old.
They'll grow back.
You know, they'll all fill in.
Um, and I, I have to admit Ikind of bought into that
rhetoric because I want forestryto be sustainable.
You know it could besustainable, but Trevor, he was

(21:05):
not buying it.
Uh, he was like no, no, I wantto find out.
You know, there's a lot ofassumptions here.
You know, if you take aforestry company and even our
forestry advisors.
Word for it, that's a lot ofassumptions.
So he wanted, he really wantedto dig into it.
And then he started havingconversations with Janet about
you know, I really want to go upthere, uh, uh, and you know

(21:28):
I'll, I'll do the field trip,you know, field work and verify
and we'll do the historicalresearch.
And and uh, he started lookingat satellite imagery and um
forest resource industryinventory imagery, high
resolution digital photos, andstarted mapping out, sketching

(21:52):
out a bit of a plan to go up andverify.
And I think you know, in thepreliminary investigation that
he was doing, he found outthrough logging records that
some of these sites were, youknow, more than 20.
And then it's kind of like,well, what the heck?
You know, uh, they're not thatephemeral, they're, they're, you

(22:14):
know.
So, anyways, that was kind ofthe genesis.
And then, and then I think weall sat around kicking the tires
and what this kind of thisproject might look like and uh,
but he was, he was bound anddetermined to go up there and
and um and find out what really,what was going on.

Janet Sumner (22:33):
Yeah, and it's interesting, I was kind of in
Dave's camp as well, becausewhen you looked at it, it was
like some of these areas, as yousaid, were maybe 20 years old,
so you did have a lot ofregeneration that was successful
.
You could see trees.
It wasn't just a barrenlandscape, I mean, clearly they
had been cut but trees had comeback, trees had come back and so

(22:58):
, but then you saw these linesgoing through the forest and
then these kind of zones whereit looked like there might be
some berries or things, but itwasn't full trees, and so they
looked like bear patches as well.
And and I agree with you, Ihave this scar on my hand and I
can look at it and I can seeit's from a skating, playing
hockey kind of thing, and Icould see, um, that it's got
this long line and then thesehatch marks across it, and

(23:20):
that's what they kind of lookedlike from the air.
And I remember thinking tomyself, well, I don't know, they
don't look that big, it doesn'tlook like that much of a
problem.
And so I thought, okay, well,trevor, if you really, really
and he was he was bound anddetermined to figure out what
this was, and so I was.
Well, I guess we'll let you goand help design a project.

Dave Pearce (23:43):
I remember being fairly skeptical until I think
that first summer he came backand said you know, he's been
looking at 30, 35-year-old cutsand he had the drone footage and
I was convinced.
I feel like, oh my goodness,this is, this is a big problem
yeah, it was very compelling, Ithink, for me.

Janet Sumner (24:05):
He started showing me some of the lancet imagery
that he had, and I rememberlooking at that and thinking
that's not right and and I'm nota trained forester, I haven't,
I haven't gone to school for itbut it didn't look like a forest
, it didn't look like standingtrees, it looked, you know,

(24:26):
disturbing.
And I mean that's one of thereasons I greenlighted the
project and and said, well, youknow, let's try to make it
happen with whatever we have,because I truly wanted to know
it.
And, like you said, there wasthis sort of myth in forestry
school where it's like well, wecut the trees down and they come
back.
And we see that in advertisingall the time, we see it in every

(24:49):
different which way.
It's like well, we cut theforest but we replant it.
And this was a shocking pieceof information and we also
wanted it to be.
I think it was very importantthat whatever we designed was
going to be as bulletproof as wecould make it.
And what I mean by that is that, if people were going to

(25:11):
criticize it, we wanted to haveas many answers to why we made
the choices that we made or whyTrevor made the choices that we
made and why the project wasdesigned this way.
So even some of the areas thatwe might have wanted to include,
we didn't because we wereafraid that the we were
concerned that the informationwasn't there to 100% back it up.

(25:35):
So we made choices that wouldbe as resilient to criticism as
possible and that we tested witha number of people before we
even decided on the design ofthe project.
So it was incredibly wellthought out before it even began
, because we wanted to make thisso sound from its design

(25:59):
perspective.
Kaya, you looked at it as well.
What was your thinking of theproject?
You know?
10 years later kind of thing.

Kaya Adleman (26:13):
My initial view of it was that it was incredibly
well or it was as extensive asyou said.
It was Because I was comingright off the heels of
university applying for jobs andstuff of um, of research coming

(26:45):
out of um, nonprofits or non,in non-specific um university
journals or academic journals.
Um, just because there's theother side, where you have
industry research that is often,you know, has some has an
obvious like bias or um or skewto it.
So I think I was definitely alittle bit skeptical at first
reading it.
But then actually getting intothe details and seeing, wow,

(27:07):
this is a culmination of peoplewho are writing this, who have
backgrounds in academia, butalso this is a product that
could easily be published in anacademic journal.
So I think the detail and theum, the well, the level of

(27:27):
detail and um, the attention todata and then the ground
truthing piece the fact thatsomeone was actually going in
not just using the satellitehigh resolution satellite
imagery but doing the groundtruthing piece, which I actually
got to learn about more fromreading that report, made it

(27:49):
seem a lot more trustworthy as apiece of information and then
also just shocking that this wasgoing on because I wasn't super
familiar with the way thatforest operations worked,
because there is that assumptionthat's really predominant that
the forest grows back after youcut it down.
And to see that it's not thecase and here's the clear

(28:11):
research that we've done to backthat up was very astounding to
me done to back that up was veryastounding to me.

Janet Sumner (28:23):
We just mentioned that the study was chosen over
an area that we had a lot ofexperience with and I would just
say, right around the WildlandsLake table, like Anna had
worked on caribou planning here,I had worked on thinking
through caribou planning.
Dave, you had worked on it.
Maybe you can just tell us alittle bit about your experience
with the Northwest and maybethe history that we brought into
this, because all of us I meanTrevor went out and did the

(28:45):
field work and he did theassessments, et cetera.
But it truly is a WildlandsLeague project in the sense that
everybody contributed andkicked the tires on this and
said, well, no, I think we needto go this direction, not as
hard this way or whatever.
And that's what makes thereport so good is it has a
contribution and advice fromsome pretty incredible people

(29:06):
that work for Wildlands League,but also friends of Wildlands
League who've either been on theboard or have an association
with us, maybe auditors orforesters, et cetera.
So we saw a lot of expertiseand advice on this.
So, Dave, can you just give usa little bit of a rundown of
your experience in the Northwest?

Dave Pearce (29:24):
Yeah, sure.
So Northwestern Ontario is,once you get, roughly parallel
with Lake Nipigon.
Roughly parallel with LakeNipigon, and then further north
is caribou country and has beencaribou country, and it also

(29:47):
overlaps with forest managementunits that are certified under
the FSC Forest StewardshipCouncil certificate and so are
certified under the FSC ForestStewardship Council Certificate,
and so we've been members ofFSC for many years, and the way
FSC works is that there's a setof requirements that forest

(30:10):
companies are supposed to follow.
They get audited yearly ondifferent aspects of how they're
implementing the standard ofFSC, and that audit process is
open to stakeholders as well asIndigenous governments in the
area, indigenous communities.

(30:31):
But as stakeholders we'veweighed in on many, many audits
in Northwestern Ontario.
Holders, we've weighed in onmany, many audits in
northwestern Ontario and so, atleast from a computer point of
view, knew the land quite well.
We've also traveled up in thatarea to go as jump off points
for more northerly expeditions,canoeing on the Albany and the

(30:55):
Ottawa Piscat expeditions,canoeing on the Albany and the
Ottawa Piscat.
So I've driven from Thunder Bayto Pickle Lake many, many times
and I've done sort of sideexcursions to see what the
logging operations look like,and it's an area that's been
using full tree harvesting for along time.

(31:16):
That's another reason Trevorchose it and we can talk a bit
about the mechanisms of fulltree harvesting and why that
contributes to logging scars.
But just for now we'll say thatthat particular amount that
have taken trees off thelandscape does so.
We know the land from workingfrom FSC.

(31:38):
We've engaged on force onprovincial forest management
plans, which every um everyforest is required to write a
new plan every 10 years.
We've engaged on those all inan effort to try to keep logging
out of Caribou country, causewe knew.
We knew logging was bad forCaribou and we knew some of the
mechanisms why that was.
But logging scars just kind ofcemented a little bit the

(32:04):
long-term in our thinking, thelong-term impacts of forestry,
because one of the arguments isthat the forest will grow back
and eventually the caribou willreturn and we can talk a little
bit about puncture the hole.

Janet Sumner (32:20):
But anyway, so a lot, of, a lot of experience in
that area, um, uh, by the wholeteam yeah, we actually worked on
caribou plans with companies,uh, prior to logging scars, and
we had done some designs of this, working on the various spatial

(32:41):
models that they have thatforestry companies use.
And, dave, you did a what wasit?
The very first study.
When I just arrived atWildlands, you were just
finishing off a study aroundharvesting and I think that
you're able to sort of like youcan understand what I call the

(33:01):
black box, which is what isactually the forest management
modeling tool they use.
That was woodstock or sfm.
What can you remind me what?
What that is the uh, actualblack box that they use right.

Dave Pearce (33:13):
so um, at least at that time, and they've um,
they've been switching over, Ithink gradually, to more
sophisticated models, but theyused a model called um, sfum,
which was a strategic forestmanagement model I believe was
the acronym, and that that um,that model, was what they used

(33:35):
to determine harvest levels onthe forest and to assign a
certain amount of harvest, andour hypothesis for a long time
was that companies wereover-harvesting, because this
model didn't include things likethe impacts to wildlife.

Janet Sumner (33:56):
Anyway, so I'll just go back to where we were.
So, suffice to say, dave doinghis harvest level analysis, the
SWAM model, understanding theforest and the forestry.
We went into this project witha lot of information and a lot
of understanding and I find thatinteresting that you were
skeptical.
I don't know where anna waspositioned on this, but trevor,

(34:18):
it was just bugging him.
It was one of those things thatit just annoyed him.

Kaya Adleman (34:23):
He could see this pattern and he couldn't figure
it out so, once you greenlighted the report, do you guys
know what trevor actually did?
Like he like?
How did he go about umassembling the project together,
like what was the hypothesis,what was the methodology?

Janet Sumner (34:48):
dave, do you want to talk about that?
I mean, I know he started withlike like wildlands league
started with lancet imageryright so trevor got access to
the Landsat imagery.
He was also teaching at U of Tat the time and so they have a
relationship with the province.
He used provincial data.
That was actually really animportant decision point.
I remember he and I talkingabout this and we wanted to make

(35:10):
sure that we absolutely,because this was going to be
such a shift, such a shift inthe conventional thinking that
forests didn't grow back 100% oreven 97% or 96%, but more like
86%, and even that, I think, isa conservative estimate and I'll
explain a little bit more why.
But we started from thispremise that whatever project

(35:34):
was undertaken, it absolutelyhad to be a strong case.
That was undeniable, because wedidn't want to get into the oh
well, it doesn't work like that,it works like this.
We didn't want to have any ofthe data be assailable.
So that's why we started withthe premise of using the
provincial data and Landsatimagery to look at the sites.

(35:58):
And then there was a selectionof what was it?
291 or something like that,Dave, Do you recall?

Dave Pearce (36:06):
Yeah, I mean it expanded as the project went on.
I can't remember how many.
You looked at the first yearremotely.

Janet Sumner (36:16):
Yeah.
So, Dave, maybe you can tell usa little bit about what was it
we looked at.
I mean, I've got my perception,but I want you to walk us
through.
When Trevor decided to do theselogging scars, what was the
essential process?
Like how many sites?
What did he put?
What was in, what was out?
You know how did he thinkthrough this challenge?

Dave Pearce (36:36):
Yeah, so he chose um, it wasn't totally random so
he chose, chose a, a patch ofterritory that he looked at.
Uh, he was familiar enough bykind of doing the the casual uh
remote sensing um scan ofontario and he said, well,
there's a, there's a number ofthese sites in this area.

(36:58):
So it was.
It was target, rich environment, lots of these potential
logging scars to check out.
There was a pretty goodaccessibility.
The area is a North Northwestof of Thunder Bay by a few
hundred kilometers but several,you know all-weather highways

(37:21):
running up and then loggingroads going into the sites.
So he needed accessibility.
He also was familiar with thearea because we'd done a number
of trips up there.
One of the highways goes toPickle Lake and that's a jump
off point that we've used in anumber of trips in the far north
.
So we've been up the highwayand done, had done some scouting

(37:43):
of of uh cutovers there and hehe'd also done some old, some of
his own um sort of field tripsup there to get, you know, more
familiar with what happens inthe boreal when when uh forestry
occurs.
You know more familiar withwhat happens in the boreal when
when uh forestry occurs.
So we knew it both from um uh,from the 30,000 feet foot level,

(38:04):
but also on the ground.
He'd been on the ground beforeUm and also it um, it uh covered
, I think the area that helooked at uh is covered or it's
partly covered by by three orportions of three caribou ranges
.
So it was in caribou range uh,and so one of the impacts of

(38:26):
forestry uh that we've beenlooking at is its forestry
impacts on caribou.
So he wanted to cover all thoseoff um and then he started
selecting sites based on again,can I get in um, can I you know,
by?
You know?
Is there a reasonable access,road access that will enable me

(38:47):
to get, at least get close umand you know um?
Are they representative of whatI've seen out on the landscape?
You know, know, doing sort ofcursory, cursory work?
So that's kind of the selectionprocess.

Janet Sumner (39:03):
And, and we started down that, that route.
So so we got the Landsatimagery and, as you say, Trevor
didn't do all the sites at once,but he had a good over 200, I
think that he started.

Kaya Adleman (39:16):
So the sites those were like known harvest areas
that dated back 30 years.

Janet Sumner (39:23):
Well, they varied right.

Kaya Adleman (39:24):
Yeah, yeah, or that dated back to up to 30
years, because that was theavailable data that they had
available.

Dave Pearce (39:31):
Yeah, I think 35 was the oldest.

Janet Sumner (39:34):
I was going to say , like he actually did the paper
, exercise the math on onlandsat imagery and, uh, drawing
, that is like that's.
That's what I recall.

Kaya Adleman (39:47):
I recall there being over 200 sites that way so
, like the landsat imagery, hewould say, okay, like here's
this harvest area and then over.
I think he did it by.
He was telling me that he didthis all by hand too, which is
like crazy tedious to me.
But he would take the imageryand lay the area of the harvest
block over it and then trace, Ithink by hand, to where, like,

(40:11):
things had not grown back, andthen calculated that as an area.

Dave Pearce (40:16):
Yeah, I mean, eventually there was close to
300, right, close to 300 sitesand it was a bit of an iterative
process because he did spendtwo summers and so I think I
think he started.
He started looking at the sitesremotely and trying to do a bit
of an assessment and digitizingthe area that he felt was
covered by roads and landingsand turnarounds, what can be

(40:40):
called logging scars, um, anddigitizing them.

Kaya Adleman (40:43):
And then, uh, so we did a number of those and
then he would go visit thosesites physically, in person,
with drone footage or droneimagery and take those like
super high resolution to justverify the data yeah, so he did.

Dave Pearce (41:03):
He did that on on about 10 of the sites, like
eventually it was 10, so he was.
He was able to visit 27 sites,I think, in total, uh, but they
had the remote imagery for 300.
So, yeah, and he took a dronewith them so it wasn't just on
the ground, so he also got theintermediate sort of imagery.

(41:23):
It wasn't remote sensing, itwas kind of you know, a few
hundred feet up, uh, with adrone, and then he could um
alter his uh hand, um uhcalculations or the calculations
that came from digitizing byhand hand calculations or the
calculations that came fromdigitizing by hand the areas.
You can alter that based on theinformation he got from the site

(41:46):
.
In some cases it contracted it,in other cases it's like no,
actually these boundaries aretoo small.

Janet Sumner (41:57):
He was looking at it with drone imagery as well,
like because it wasn't, some ofit wasn't passable, it was, you
know, piles of logs that youcouldn't wade through.
So we'd use the drones to getout there.
And some of it was because thelancet imagery didn't have the
full extent of the road, likemaybe it had been drawn and it
wasn't.
Um, yeah, it wasn't as long asa there were a number of these

(42:19):
that I remember him, you know,because he would come in later
in the day and he and I wouldsit and pour over these images
and we would look at them andhe'd say, see, boss, this is
where the image doesn't go allthe way out here and it they've
cut it off here and it actuallycomes around this way.
So we did a lot of um lookingat the images.
And then it became sorevelatory when doing the field

(42:41):
work because the Landsat imagerylooked at.
You know that stuff getsinputted, it gets corrected, and
I was discussing this withsomebody else just the other day
that those corrections areoften done by interns who are
working for the ministry andthey're kind of.
You know they have differentvariations of of um, shall we

(43:02):
say, precision as to how theyget entered, and so when he
started to do the groundwork, itwas really, I think, a little
bit um of a revelation on justhow much you know, the variation
there was, and so he reallywanted to get out there and do
it it was tough and also wantedto get a representative sample

(43:26):
that he was looking at theground truthing.
Yeah, it was very interesting.

Kaya Adleman (43:34):
Yeah, Maybe we could define what ground
truthing is for the record.
Yeah, Maybe we could definewhat ground truthing is for for
the record.
That's it's going.
It's when, if you do a digitalexercise like determining the
like, looking at a logging scaryou know what's the word.

(43:58):
If you're looking, if you'redoing that, if you're trying to
identify logging scars digitally, ground truthing is actually
going out into the field andmaking sure that what you're
looking at is correct yeah, yeah.

Janet Sumner (44:12):
so, dave, maybe you could explain a little bit
about that, because becauseground truthing is it sounds
like it's something, but it'sbasically getting out on that
roadway and how it was like Iwould characterize it as planes,
trains and automobiles Almostlike what was he doing out there
, like you and I both know thislike he looked.
He looked like we've beenthrough the worst when he came

(44:34):
back from those trips to ground.
Truth, yeah.

Dave Pearce (44:37):
Yeah, so he flew to Thunder Bay with his gear and
his partner, victoria, and thenrented a pickup truck,
four-wheel drive vehicle, andthen he located, geo-located
these remotely, and so he hadthe coordinates, the GPS
coordinates and maps andeverything, so he knew how to

(44:59):
get there.
But some of the logging roads,again, have been been shut down
or hadn't been used by, at leastby big, big trucks, uh, maybe
ATVs and stuff, uh, but theyhaven't been used, byverts and

(45:22):
going through, um, not trees onthe roadways but brush and long
grass.
And and then the first yearthey hiked.
So they would hike, they'd getas far as they could with the
truck, and then we're like, okay, we can't go any further.
We got the truck stuck andthere's, you know, we're a
hundred kilometers off thehighway, you know, uh, so we're

(45:42):
not going to risk too much, sowe're going to hike in.
So then they would hike tens ofkilometers.
Right, I think the furthest one, he maybe, you know, hike 20
kilometers in a day to get intohis site.
And he had a drone.
So he had a drone in hisbackpack, um, that he would send
up and fly.
So they, they did measurementson the ground.
Uh, he, he and and uh, victoria, with tape.

(46:05):
So they had, you know, they hadbeen, you know, um field
measuring tapes out.
And then, uh, so they're on theground and recording what type
of vegetation was there, whetherthere are any trees, whether it
was grass, whether it's shrubs,raspberries, fireweed, whatever
, um, and then taking, takingphotographs and then getting
aerial images with the drone.
So that was, that was groundtruthing.

(46:27):
And the second year they got alittle bit smarter, uh, and took
mountain bikes with them sothey could cover more ground.
Once they they had to leave thetruck and they camped out in
the bush Like they didn't goback to a motel.
Uh, at night they just campedin the bush Like they didn't go
back to a motel.
At night they just camped inthe bush and in the.
You know, I think it was August.

(46:47):
So the bugs were pretty bad,the heat was pretty bad
sometimes, but they actually hada good time, yeah, and they got
some great images.

Janet Sumner (46:57):
I mean, there's a fantastic image on that website
of Victoria standing next to adebris pile and it is clearly
almost twice her height, right,like 10 feet high.
It's really not that she's fivefoot, but you know it's
probably 10 feet or higherimages and it's yeah, it's just
really worthwhile if people wantto go.

(47:24):
Take a look at this and you canreally see firsthand what does
it look like when you get outinto a logging road or a road
where they've been hauling treesfrom, and what does that look
like 10, 20, 30 years on andwhat's the reality of it.
Not just what do the modelstell you or what does models
tell you or what does governmenttell you, but actually somebody

(47:44):
who went out and traversed somany kilometers of logging roads
.
So we have basically on thesite you have this big
repository of looking at almost300 sites.
You've got the evidence of uhusing the satellite imagery, you
can see the scars into theforest.

(48:07):
You you definitely see umregeneration and robust
regeneration on the majority ofthe site, but there are these
logging scars that exist onthere and he tried to, he wanted
to examine, we all did.
We wanted to know what was thatas a percentage like what
didn't come back after 30, 35years.

(48:30):
And then what he.
The other stage that he did washe he looked at the ground,
truthing to make sure, like,okay, we can do a, a, um, a
desktop exercise where we lookat what is the calculation of
that logging scar, but let's getout there and actually make
sure that we're accurate, usinga representative sample and

(48:52):
figuring out what those loggingscars really look like from the
ground.
And so he did that.
That was his two-year studythat he took care of, and and we
have a great body of work onthat logging scars report.
And and also he he recorded hismethodology of how he did all
of that.
So you can you can actually seethat.

(49:13):
And that's quite impressive too, because trevor is, if nothing
else, very, very detailed verydetailed.

Dave Pearce (49:18):
Um, the other thing he measured not only the
logging scars, the the extent ofthe clear cut, because because
that was also something that youcan kind of estimate from
remote imagery, and he wasdigitizing that, but he needed
that as the denominator.
So what percentage of the clearcut was covered by the logging

(49:38):
scars?
So he wanted to get a goodsense of where exactly that edge
of the clear cut was.
So he'd have that to comparethe size of the logging scar to
the size of the clear cut or theharvest block in forestry terms
.
So we actually did that withthe drone because the clear cuts
are massive.

Kaya Adleman (50:00):
So you might have included, clued in that Earth
Day is upon us by the influx ofgreen messaging likely flooding
your social media feeds, andsome of this messaging may be
mentioning Canada's forests,which has, as we know, become an
increasingly popular flashpointin the greater environmental
discourse.
The language surroundingCanadian forests can be

(50:22):
confusing, though, like whatdoes sustainable mean in the
context of our forests?
What is the difference betweendeforestation and forest
degradation?
That's why, on the Clear Cut,we're committed to weeding
through the words and connectingwith experts to unpack the
issues facing Canada's forests.

(50:42):
As listeners, you've becomeinstrumental in bringing us
these important conversations,like what does a transition of
the fiber economy look like, andshould we really be considering
biomass fuels a climatesolution?
There's a lot more beyond thetree line, with warnings that an
even worse wildfire season iscoming this summer and Canada's

(51:09):
slow progress towards meetingits 2050 climate and nature
goals.
Your support keeps us bringingthese critical issues to life.
You can show your love for thepodcast by giving us a donation,
linked in the episodedescription below, leaving us a
review or sharing the podcastwith your friends.
From all of us at WildlandsLeague, thank you.

Dave Pearce (51:26):
Well, what Logging Scars found was that over the
last and I'll probably get my,the stats won't be exactly right
, because I'm just doing thisoff the top of my head Over the
last 35 years plus, since we'vebeen doing full tree harvesting
in Ontario, the impacts havebeen profound, and so Trevor in

(51:53):
our office, found that 14% ofeach cut block an average of 14%
after 30, 35 years was notcoming back in a forested
condition, and the resultingcumulative footprint over that
time is over 650,000 hectares offorest in Ontario that hasn't

(52:19):
come back.
That's an area larger thanQuatico Mitchell Park, 10 times
the size of the city of Toronto.
It's huge, and it hasimplications for carbon and
endangered wildlife like caribou.

Kaya Adleman (52:37):
What does that mean?
A forested condition?

Dave Pearce (52:41):
So what Trevor found was that these footprints
on the forest which are visiblefrom aircraft they're actually
visible from satellite basicallyhave no trees growing on them.
They have fireweed, they've gotraspberries, they've got

(53:03):
grasses and rushes, some cases,a bit of alder, but they should
be mostly in conifer or virginpoplar.

Janet Sumner (53:16):
Should be trees.

Kaya Adleman (53:18):
Forest, you might say.

Dave Pearce (53:20):
You might say forest, yeah, um, and what
instead was there?
And in in some cases, yeah,there's some vegetation, grass,
as I said, berries, uh, othervegetation, but a lot of cases
it's just slash, which is thewaste product of trees piled up,
sometimes meters deep maybe wecould um dive into what creates

(53:45):
the logging scars.

Kaya Adleman (53:46):
What is the what, what is the?
Um mechanism that creates,creates those uh features on the
landscape?

Dave Pearce (53:58):
I can take a stab, um.
So what you see is is, we'dkind of described it as a line
with rectangular, you know,roughly rectangular patches
parallel, or, you know, in aline parallel with the line, the
line is the road.
So one of the main features oflogics card is the road that's

(54:20):
used to access the cut block forthe heavy equipment that's used
for cutting and processing andalso for the trucks that log,
that haul the logs out.
So they need a fairlysubstantial road, even the, you
know the the lowest grade roadsare, you know, big enough for a
transport truck basically to goin and be able to turn around Um

(54:47):
, uh.
So that's the linear feature.
And then the, the kind of thepatches along the road are
created, um, by uh landingswhere they haul the woody
material out of the bush andpilot and process it to be put
on the truck.
And the main, uh, at least atthe time of this study and and

(55:09):
for the 20 years prior, the mainmechanism for getting trees out
of the bush was called, or it'scalled, full tree harvesting,
where the tree is cut at thestump by a feather buncher, uh,
a big machine, um, with a bladeon the bottom and it.
It will cut five, six, seventrees and hold them all together

(55:35):
and then take them and put themdown, boom like a, like a bunch
of matches, and it's the wholetree above the stump.
Um, so the branches, the, thetops and everything, and then a
grapple skitter will come andthen take again five, six, eight
, 10 trees at a hall, grab, graball that have been laid down by

(55:56):
the buncher and haul them outto the roadside on a skid trail
and then they are processedthere by a de-limber which, as
the name suggests it, takes thelimbs off.
And these are mostly, you know,boreal conifer trees, so jack

(56:16):
pine, black spruce, with a bitof deciduous or hardwoods thrown
in.
So if anybody's familiar withthe boreal forest, the trees are
fairly skinny, fairly straight,and they don't have big limbs,
not like an oak or a maple tree.
The limbs are fairly small, sothey anyways de-limb them, cut

(56:36):
off the tops that areunmerchable if they're too small
to go through a sawmill.
Or at the butt of the tree ifthere's any rot, they would cut
that off, and then so they'dstack the merchantable wood and
sometimes that wood stays therefor months on the site before
you have enough of it or youhave room at the mill, um for it

(56:58):
to be hauled away.
And we've driven in loggingroads that had wood stock at the
, at the roadside that went forkilometers it was it's.
You just drive and drive anddrive and there's just wood 10
feet high stacked all alongthere.
So that's the commercial wood,and then that some of most of
that gets hauled away.
But sometimes there's quite abit of commercial wood that gets

(57:20):
left too because, for whateverreason, the market at the time
or whatever, it's notmerchantable.
So it's just left at theroadside along with all the tops
and branches and whatnot and,um, and all the the soil
underneath has been run over byheavy machinery that's processed
all this wood and then the wooditself is stacked on it.

(57:42):
So you have a few things thatare creating these areas that
don't regenerate, because theground underneath is packed like
concrete and then it'ssmothered with all kinds of wood
debris over top.
So trees just can't grow there.
It's just it's almost like aparking lot when they're done,

(58:06):
um, in terms of the, the abilityof a tree to actually grow on
those those areas.
So those are the mechanisms andthey have a couple other things
that, uh, you have ditching oneither either side of the road
to direct the runoff, so theroad doesn't get flooded out.
So those are often, often getplugged and filled with water,

(58:26):
Um, so they're not growing backeither.
Um, if they're, if they dry out,sometimes you will get
regeneration in the ditches.
So you get kind of a weird.
You've got the the road loggingscar and then if you have a few
trees on either side of theroad and then on either one side
or both sides, uh, of the road,you've got these compacted
areas, um, and they're quitegray because it's wood that's,

(58:51):
and the wood waste is is thething you see mostly, and it's
uh bleached by the sun and it'suh kind of a uh, you know, a
gray uh like the side of anunpainted barn.
So you can actually see thatfrom the air quite vividly.

Janet Sumner (59:11):
Yeah, if you scroll in on some of those
images or zoom in on them, youcan actually see the wood just
piled on the side of the roadand Dave's right it's sort of
that very gray of an unpaintedbarn.
The side of the road and dave'sright it's sort of that very
gray of an unpainted barn.
Um it.
You do sometimes see that thoseareas kind of look green, like
they can do, but when, again,when you zoom in, what I found

(59:32):
interesting is they're likeberry bushes.
You know there's some berrybushes peeking up through there,
but uh, and this is, you know,20, 30 years later you've got
berry bushes.
So the bears are in love withit, but the uh.
I think trevor had an almostbear incident when he was out
camping, as well, yeah, at leastone, yeah, yeah, you're right.

Dave Pearce (59:53):
So raspberries, um fireweed, um alder, um those
early successional you know.
Basically, grasses and berriesare, you know, if there is
vegetation, that's what'sgrowing there, not trees.

Janet Sumner (01:00:10):
Yeah, so that's what ground truthing gets you
and it lets you see that realityand those are the ways that
logging scars are created, orhave been created over the last
little while.
So that's dependent on fulltree harvesting, the kind of
machinery that's used.

Kaya Adleman (01:00:29):
Yeah, All right, janet, I'm glad that we had the
chance to talk to Dave about youknow the background of the
report.
I think you guys have some verycool and interesting stories
about the genesis of WildlandsLeague's Logging Scars report.

(01:00:49):
So I really enjoyed having thisconversation, being able to
kind of sit with you guys as youreminisced and learned a lot
about the report and its methods.
You know, I think logging scarswas kind of my first
introduction to Wildlands League, which I think just speaks to
the strength and the robustnessof the work that Trevor did and

(01:01:15):
that everyone on the team did,and so, yeah, I really
appreciate it.
I think it's important that weask the question what happens in
the forest after full treeharvesting goes through?
And we've talked about on thepodcast in the past the need to
do more monitoring of theselandscapes after they're
industrialized so that we cantruly get a better understanding

(01:01:38):
of those impacts, and I thinkthis work is an important piece
into helping build the puzzle ofwhat that is.
So I'm looking forward to thenext part of this conversation,
because we talked about thereport and we talked about its
findings, but in the nextiteration we're going to get
into what this all means in thegreater context of Canada's

(01:02:00):
forest, which is also animportant discussion.
So I'm excited for next week'sepisode as well.

Janet Sumner (01:02:07):
Yeah, and for me, one of the things about this
report and I remember this verydistinctly is being with Trevor
in the office watching theimages come up and as Dave and I
talk about, we started outbeing skeptics.
But as Trevor brought all theseimages up and as we referenced
in the discussion, I was oftenin the office late in the day

(01:02:29):
and with him and he was lookingat images and we had all these
decision points that we weremaking Okay, let's not include
this area because it looks likeit has partial regrowth.
And, based on my recollectionsof all these things, this is
definitely an underestimate.
And if Canada was to truly goout or figure out where do we

(01:02:50):
have successful regeneration, Ithink we would have a very
different picture of what'shappening out in our forests.
And I'm not suggesting that wedon't have successful
regeneration because we do, andthere are places in Canada where
it works really marvelouslywell.
But there are many places andmany forests where the
assumption goes to oh, we'vereplant the trees, we put as

(01:03:11):
many trees in the ground as wetake out.
Therefore they all come back.
But even that that's regrowingtrees.
It's not necessarily regrowinga forest and that is an
important distinction becauseit's a thriving, robust
ecosystem with a lot ofinteractions.
We talk about this actually inour last couple of episodes with

(01:03:31):
Michelle Connelly fromConservation North and she talks
about the complexity of theforest.
So even if you can say youreplanted as many trees as you
cut, or even more, whether ornot you've actually successfully
regrown that forest and whetheror not you know whether you've
done that is a big, importantpiece.
And we don't have, we aren'ttesting that, certainly not in

(01:03:52):
ontario and many other regionsacross the country.
We have a free to grow standardand you know, and that's done
at maybe 10 or 15 years and wedon't look beyond that.
And yeah, it's, it's, it's achallenging problem.
So what we're going to hear inthe next episode, which is
really interesting, is theimplications of this.

(01:04:12):
What does it mean?
What does it mean in terms ofcarbon, what does it mean in
terms of endangered species?
What does it mean in terms ofeven fiber supply for companies
that are going to come back anddo a second pass or a second
harvest?
So I think all of this is ourimplications and these 290 or
almost 300 sites.

(01:04:32):
You can still go to the mapsthat we have and you can see
these areas of using Google Maps.
You can see that they'relargely barren still, and you
can see these areas of usingGoogle Maps.
You can see that they'relargely barren still.

Kaya Adleman (01:04:43):
Or if you want to check out more about the logging
scars work, you can go tologingscarsca.
The report has its own website.
You can see all of those higherresolution images there.

Janet Sumner (01:04:59):
Yeah, go check it out and stay tuned for the next
episode.
Thanks, Faya.
Thank you, if you likelistening to the Clear Cut and
want to keep the content coming,support the show.
It would mean a lot to Kaya andI.
The link to do so will be inthe episode description below.

Kaya Adleman (01:05:25):
You can also become a supporter by going to
our website atwwwwildlandsleagueorg.
Slash the clear cut and alsomake sure to leave us a review
on your favorite podcaststreaming platform.
It would really help thepodcast and stay tuned for new
episodes by following us onsocial media.

Janet Sumner (01:05:36):
That's at Wildlands League on Instagram,
twitter and Facebook or LinkedIn, of course.

Kaya Adleman (01:05:42):
See you next time.

Janet Sumner (01:05:45):
I just realized when you were talking there that
I've had more Earth Days thanyou've been alive.
Really, I've done 34 Earth Days, right.

Kaya Adleman (01:05:56):
That's so true.
Well, it started in the 70s.
Right Earth Day became a thing.

Janet Sumner (01:06:02):
Oh yeah, so that would have been.
Oh, I know, but I've personallydone 34 okay but yeah, that's,
that's quite because I didthat's 1990 and then now it's 24
, so that's 24 plus 10.
That's right.
My math's right on that right.
That's 34.
You are not 34 years old.

Kaya Adleman (01:06:24):
No, no, I'm not 34 years old.
Wow, that's crazy.