The Woods Are Bad

for the future. Speaking of the future, this is a podcast about the ways in which the future is going to be real fucked up and ways in which maybe we could try to make it less sucked up. Um. And today we have on a guest, Mr Calvin Norman, who posted a thread on our sub breddit with the very simple, very unsettling title the woods are bad um and Calvin, you want to enter you yourself, your credentials and what you were trying to get across on that

threat because I found it very affecting. Yeah, thanks for ever. So my name is, like you said, Calvin Norman, I work in forestry. I've worked in forestry for a while now. I used to be an industrial forester in the Great Lakes region, so like Wisconsin, Michigan. Then I worked in the Southeast. I did my masters down there, and now I'm in the mid Atlantic. So I've I've kind of

been around the eastern United States. I haven't gotten that west yet, but and I'm a certified forest or candidate certified forest I got a year left on that, so I been around. I also do wildlife stuff. It's pretty fun. And yeah, your your thread. What I found interesting that I have a good friend who is in forestry or was in't forestry at least and got their degree and that, and we were we were at hunting in the Cascades a little earlier or a little later last year. Um,

and there's this wonderful moment. We've been following a game trail up like this Steve hill side and it was kind of a clearing where we were a clear cut, but there's deep brush all around. And we get to the top of this thing, we look out and we just see, you know, these these rolling mountain of the Cascades, all covered in this the most this lush, beautiful greenery, all these these pine trees and everything. And my friend says to me, it's going to be totally different in

twenty years. Um, it's already a different forest than the one I grew up with. And and that that is, that is kind of the cliffs notes of what what you're You're getting into a lot of detail here, and I'm wondering if you could just kind of like, yeah, start on that, explain kind of what's actually happening in our woods, or at least the woods that that you're comfortable talking about here. It's a big yeah, yeah, this is a big condent. And you have a pretty good

international base. And I can't speak for the Europeans or the Canadians. There's a whole different ball game over there. And tropical stuff is just white, yeah, really cool about wild stuff. So mainly talked about the US, mainly Eastern United States. So if you look at the eastern United States, this is a forest that has never existed before in

the history of the United States. UM previews, you know, prior to like nineteen twenty are forest was like depending on the source of read, between twenty and chestnut with other species mixed in there. And now we have a mainly oak dominated forest and we lost all of our chest into the chestnut blight. Um out Western You've got a couple of other things going on, but fire suppression is just changed the forest there. Uh, same here in the East coast and into the Midwest. You know you

used to see a lot more fires going through. I mean, so that was lightning strikes, but no doubt a lot of it was you know, intentionally set by the first nations and people before the people that we think of as the first nations. And um, you know that has mainly disappeared except for the southeast where fire has never really stopped being at the ground, which is really cool.

But even their species, which is composition, has changed dramatically. Um. A lot of what we're seeing as you know, changes in human management. But there's also a number of invasive species that have changed things. You know, like chestnut blight, emerald ashbour asia, longhorn beetle is coming in. You know, those are just the past the understory. And you know, plants is a whole different ballgame. Um, it's it's it's

all not great. It's all not great. I was talking with some colleagues at an agricultural show before I posted that, and we were talking about how the woods were bad and we very easily laid out a scenario where we lost the most of our remaining dominantory species. It was not at all hard to do. It took about two minutes. So not great. Uh. And then the West coast things

aren't great either. And when you're talking about when you're talking about losing these species and stuff like the chestnut light, where is that coming from? How much of that is sort of as a result of climate change? Like we're having a lot of tree species have trouble here in the West because of how much hotter the summers are

and how much drier things have gotten. So how much how much of what you're saying where you are is because there's been changes to the climate, And how much of it is you know, I guess kind of like globalism, like people bringing in pests and bringing in blights and

stuff from other areas and it spreads like wildfire. Well, I think that we're just starting to see the beginning of climate change, like driving species you know, up the mountain, off the mountain out west and here you know, out of certain regions, you know, as things are getting hotter and drier or is you know, climbates are becoming more extreme.

You know, here in the Atlantic we had one of the wettest years on record, I think it was like five or seven, whereas in the Midwest they had droughts. But before that we had two years of drought. So you know, it's it's more extreme, and that's that's just starting to take part. But the extinctions and near extinctions have been mainly due to non native pest um. And that's just most of it right there. Um, just because we haven't really seen the start of climate change, yeah,

impacting diseases. So like out west with the mountain pinebealle you're seeing more generations of mountain pinebele comes through. I was just doing a presentation for some folks in South Dakota and something like a third of their total force was impacted by mountain pine beetle. Jeez, And and what is that like when you actually talk about this, these

beetles coming in. That's the kind of thing that even as we've gotten more comfortable talking about sort of of of the different kind of collapses spawned climate change, I think that they we tend to imagine more spectacular things. These giants, sweeping fires that burned through huge chunks of states and these huge like environmental calamities. What is this, Like, what happens when one of these beetles hits a forest?

One of these beetles species obviously not like a singular beetle, Like, what is actually like how quick is the effect and what kind of comes after that? Like, I I know, there's sort of a shock wave. It's kind of like a bomb going off. I'm interested in kind of tracing the root of that explosion, if that makes sense. Yeah, So it depends species. It species. Chestnut plate was really fast and it just seems to have torn through the

chest instative range. So chest that went from Florida to Maine and out west like Tennessee kind of area there um, and it just you know, in like something like fifteen years, the entire species gone. Emerald ash board has taken a little bit longer. Got here in the eighties, started kind of going off in the mid two thousands, and it's killed a couple of billion trees. So when that hits a small forest, you know, if it's a if it's a pretty you know, beetle kills pretty fast. Like eyl dashboard,

it gets into your trees. It starts with one or two and then within four or five years, it's it's in most of them in the forest. And then with emoral ashboard they're dead and five hemlock William delG it is pretty similar. It'll just show up one day in a stand and then the hemlocks are dead within five

seven years. Uh. And you know, sometimes you know what's going on, you know, because emil lashboard is very clear signs, and other times you don't know what's going on because the tree can't be so tall as all of a sudden, trees are getting thinner and thinner and then they're dead, or you have pests like um oak well and that in that trees are dead, you know, in two months,

and then it spreads out like a circle. You know it kind of exactly when you see like a bacteria like growth medium with the bacteria spreading out, that's oak spreads and it's just like trees are dead, you know, two months and they spread out and out and out

and scary. Sometimes is there anything that can be I mean it sounds like with with most of these cases, like with what's happened with kind of like the chestnuts, and it's it's too late for a lot of that is there anything that can actually be done to stop this, Like I know we have all these structures in place to try to stop the spread of invasive species, but like once they're in there, it kind of seems like

usually we're fucked. Yeah, ye that okay, Yeah. Once you get past there's what's called the invasive species establishment curve, so it's an escar, and once you get like right, like once it starts taking up, it's like, oh, well, we're done here, so let's let's start thinking about the future. And as you lose more species, like what are we doing here? Or if you're like you know, in the case of the case of action, it's like this ash

is going into a swamp. I have nothing else that's going to grow here, so now I just have an open wetland, like I can grow any naive trees here. Were done. So the biggest thing is preventioned like don't don't bring invasive species in or non native species in. I was talking to a lady a couple of weeks ago, and she hasn't rolled or not. She has hemlock William delj in a property, and she brought in a bio control or she assumed was a bio control from Japan.

It's a beatle and yeah, in this case, it was one that had been tested and failed because it doesn't make it through the winter. But you know, stuff like that's like just just don't do that, you know, I cheat the thought there, but don't with some of these species we have, you know, you know, like hem luckily adult, we have pesticides that worked really well and that you apply the order the tree and so it's like, all right, I treated this tree. This tree is good for seven years.

Some of them, like Emerald, last boar, You're done. There's just nothing you can do. So yeah, it's a prevention, prevention, and then then you can quarantine. But then you know, it's like where this county is done, so we're gonna just try to make sure that only this county dies. Jeez, you mentioned a bit earlier like thinking about the future, what does that actually look like when when we hit a situation as we have with a lot of these species, were like, all right, well this ship's we ain't we

ain't stopping this. What is what like, what do people like you do next? Like what is the next kind of step for the forests or is it just sort of a smoke them ale you got them kind of thing. Uh, sometimes it's smoke them while you got them. So like beach park disease is going through just roasting beach in the East Coast, it's going it's going to the Midwest and so there it's kind of like, well, you know, if it's in there and your beach or diet, take

them out and if they're not, don't. There's it's nine percent fatal, but there's one percent that can make it. So you know, like maybe we find that one percent and lash nine fatal. But I've seen, you know, in the past couple of years, I've seen two that made it. So like if we don't cut them all, maybe someone surlive. Theoretically we could then like clone or breed or whatever the trees that live and and a few generations have

more of them. Um, if other ship doesn't happen. Yeah, the chest that product has been going on for the last hundred years, and it looks like I'm taking about forty more. It's that's a controversial opinion. Some people say it's a baschet of forty but you know years Oh the chest that foundation really it's a really neat thing. So there were some chestnuts that were found resistant in some planet outside the range of chestnut blight, and so

the ideas where they slowly started back breeding. So they crossed in Chinese chestnut, which is resistant to the blight, which is native to China and East Asia, and so they crossed them in with the remaining chestnut with the hopes of you know, kind of eventually breeding out the Chinese but just maintaining the American chestnut and just getting that gene in there. And so they started that back in like the thirties and forties when they realized what

was happening. Well, you know, today is two and we are still without American chestnut in the forest. There are some backbread versions that are more resistant, but they will still get infected. I've been to a couple of chestnut nurseries where they're doing experiments and it's it's sad because they'll they'll get up and then they'll die. They'll get up and they'll die, and it's like, oh, there's two. There are two over there in the corner that made it,

and those get you onto the next one. But there is some work out of New York, Suny in New York where they altered a chestnut and they put in um. They just they just changed the genes. So the version of the genus makes chestnut blight resistant is in that and that's getting approved by the E p A, F d A and U S d A. Hopefully that gets approved. If that gets approved, we get real, We get real further along because the resistant trees are not the same

as the American chestnut. The resistant trees are more they're shorter and more shrubby, and they don't fulfill the overstory cannot be rolled in chestnut used to playing um. That's that's best case scenario. Worst case scenarios. You're like um butternut, which was driven to functional ex things at the same time, and we're just nowhere on that produce, working on some stuff,

but it's nowhere. They're not in the woods now. How how much of like because I tend to roll my eyes pretty hard when we're talking in particular climate change and people are like, well, I think that science is going to save our asses from this one. We're gonna we're gonna develop some like miraculous carbon capture method like at the last minute, we'll we'll we'll be able to reverse everything and it'll be fine. I tend to roll

my eyes at that. But this and maybe I'm not obviously I don't understand this that nearly the level you do is this kind of a thing where if there's hope for a lot of these species and a lot of these biomas, it's going to be and stuff like we figure out how to hack these trees to keep them alive, and and like is that really kind of

where we are? I know some very good tree genesis and tree breaders, but I don't think that they have the capabilities of, you know, coming up with trees that are resistant to all of the various fungi and bugs that are out there. And even if they do, it's you know, you have to get them out into the woods. You have to plant million acres of forest. You've got to get them out into the woods. You have to

have the nurseries to get them out. There's you know, even if you were able to create trees that resistance to all these pests, it would be impossible. So no, the only the only answer is, uh, don't don't do climate change. And to the carbon captured perspective, um, the only machine that's going to capture of the amount of carbon we need our trees. I do, I do forest carbon stuff, which is a whole different episode. I want to.

I mean, I'm there. I'm extremely interested in that because obviously, like we've we've been supported by a couple of companies who, like, one of the things they do to try to be nice is they'll they'll plant trees and stuff, which is not useless. But also a lot of people think that that's what rebuilding a forest is, and like, no, forests are a huge part of the problem with why the

West is so flammable. As we chopped down all these trees and we grew back just the trees um to chop them down again, and that turns out to not be resilient at all to anything, because trees do not live on their own ever. Yeah, that's why it's a forest. It's not just exactly right, Yeah, no, it's yeah, that's that's a planting. There's not the infrastructure to plant. Our way of climate change is not the land. It's just impossible.

And so even even if even if there were the infrastructure in the lane, that we don't have the time, because you know, trees take time to grow, they work at a different time scale than humans do, even your your shortest lived trees sixty eight years. Yeah, and it is one of those things where I mean, we we

have this is what we taught. We kind of started this new season which is forever with which is that like there's no there's nothing we can do that will stop us from continuing to face worse and worse because because like consequences of climate change, because the carbon is already been admitted, right, you can't just pull it out warming as even if we were to like make very revolutionary changes tomorrow, there's still some degree to which it's

going to get worse. Um. But when it comes to like within your field, what like carbon capture using trees and stuff, can you talk to us about like what that actually looks like as opposed to sort of the will plant a tree for every dollar you spend kind of thing. Um? So yeah, I actually I actually can. It's I do a lot of my work about forest

carbon stuff. So yeah, Basically the idea is to make sure you have the best way to get carbon c equestration of the force is to have a healthy, functioning forest. And that's you know, kind of where these pests and climate change are interfering with that. And so you know, to maintain a healthy functioning force on the East Coast. You know, some of these you need to have fire, some of them not. Some of them are too wet to burn. Uh. And then you know, harvesting needs to

take place in some of these. Some of these don't need to be harvested. Again, we're talking, you know, millions of acres of forest here, so we're gonna be incredibly broad and we've got to keep invasives out. You need to keep force pest to a minimum, and then make sure that you're managing the forest, you know, as best as it can be managed. And I say managed, this

is not something new. Humans have been on the East Coast since you know, it depends on the artifacts you want to look at and what archaeologists you want to trust. But like twenty five to twenty thousand years ago, and the last glaciers left the East Coast eighteen thousand years ago, so we had people here before the glaciers were gone. So these forests have never not had humans hands on

them and never not been touched to manage by humans. Um, And you know, we gotta make sure we're doing the best we can you know some of that means that we're managing force with what's best for the you know, that means managing force for what's best with the force in mind, not with best what's best for the end

of the quarter, what's best for your bank account. That's hard to do because force are getting more and more expensive to manage and to you know, manage to say able here in the East Coast, we gotta do a lot of fencing. We gotta keep deer out of force because their populations are so high, it's just ridiculously high, and they've never got to come back down. You know, we have to spray invasive species, we have to pull

invasive species. You gotta go through and you've gotta make sure, you know, you're you're preventing all those kinds of stuff. And so we can take you know, you can if you do a good shelter, would you can like make four dollars out of it and then you could put all that money back into growing your next generation of force. So forces is really going from a profit making venture on a lot of cases to like you're barely making money or you're you're like breaking even or losing money.

It's it's no longer you know, if you really want to do it, great, You're not always making money, which is hard for people to get their head around. Yeah. I mean it's the kind of thing that in a reasonable world, huge amounts of money would be diverted to from other things. Like I don't know, Um, I feel like you guys could do a lot with one f thirty five worth of cash. I feel like that would

solve almost all of our problems. Yeah, because the problems that you see in force, we don't cost a lot to fix, but it it costs a lot for a forced owner, be that you know, an agency or person,

it costs a lot. Yeah. It's like all of the issues around climate change kind of all circle around, like growth based economics and a lot of the like nothing has a shared cause, but they all have this similar aspect to them where yeah, every every part of them gets worse by the extreme focus on economic growth at all costs and that suffers that that that makes everything

and everyone suffer. So, you know, it would be nice if since we have a government, it would be nice if they do, you know, give more funding towards uh, stuff like this type of fourth management, which I know they do some, but you know, a fraction of it compared to what they give to like the Pentagon or you know, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I mean even big you know, forestries technically agriculture, but even like you know, like corn and like grow agriculture, it's a lot. Yeah, they have

they corners massive subsidies compared to compared to everything else. Yeah, like the NRCS, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, they do a lot with you know, farm agriculture, and you know, they it's very difficult for forest ollers to get that kind of money into forests. If we could get you know, that money, it would be a game changer. But we're not there. Uh, there is some change being made in the administration. But yeah, that's like stuff and that doesn't help,

doesn't help today. It doesn't still unpassed today. Yeah, you can't unkill trees. Yeah, I guess is there anything that you're optimistic about within your field right now? If you I think that would be handy both in terms of like is there any sort of is there a light at the end of the tunnel um, Because I'll admit, like, when I think about not having the forests that's pretty much the most black pilling thing I can imagine, like for myself, Like, that's the that's the thing that I

have trouble coping with emotionally more than anything else. There's lots of horrible things about what's coming, but that's the one that like really scares me the most. Yeah, I don't think we're gonna lose forests as a thing. They're just where to become. You know, if without things we've done, then become less, they're gonna be fewer of them, and they're gonna become much less diversive functioning. You know for a lot of these you know, invasive species, be they plants,

you know, especially invasive plants. We have a lot of we don't they control them. I was just writing a thing about controlling wavy basket wavy leaf basket grass. It's a new invasive species to my area. It's highly controllable and we know how to do it. It's just again a question of people, you know, getting out there and money to do it. You know, if we have the

people of the money, we can solve that problem. Oh also we stop you know bringing that in their bat even better, we you know, actually took you know I PM right now, IPM. But quarantine and pest management seriously, and you know, people like stopped throwing you know they look like plant out of the park just because like I don't want to kill it, Like let's let it be free. Don't do that. Goldfish, don't don't throw them in the lake. That's why you have huge gold fish

coming out of like Florida. Don't. Don't just cut pets loose and stuff like that. And if we can get a lot of that under control, would be in a lot better place. Again, I don't think they're forced to disappearing in the future unmanaged. I think they just become fewer and less diverse and less funky, and then you lose spaces species based on them, like birds, you know, wildlife,

all that kind of stuff. And also I mean one of the things that also they have to become less accessible, both because there will be less of the man um as things get more fragile, Like how else do you keep some of these invasive species out but keeping people out, which is I think a bad move for a lot of reasons. But I don't know. I also don't know, like is it possible to have a global society where there is not just trade but the movement of people on a wide scale and not have this kind of

ship crossing. Right. Like, that's when I think about as as someone who's more or less an anarchist. When I think about the only things that a border should exist to do, it's it's keep stuff like that out. But I just I don't know how possible that is, Like a lot of this stuff is I mean, is this the kind of thing that's just spread by carelessness because it kind of seems like it can be spread to by people who think they're taking care Yeah, and both

is the answer. There's some very good research out there about the relatedness between global trade and you know, invasive species. But that also you look at like colonialism and colonial societies. There were these things called introductory societies who loung get the name wrong, but basically they are clubs. It's like, all right, I would like clubs of people like I would like to see this new place that I live

in like the old place. Like the European starling was introduced in New York because you know, one guy wanted to see all of the birds of Shakespeare in America. Christ Oh, I get even better for one for you. The moth formerly known as gypsy moth as se as, I'm gonna say that word um is now found in America because of this one guy. I'll put the name in the chat for you so you can say it, because I know how much you love saying French names of the most. Here comes the wave of comb it's

a better anti French racism. Oh no, no, yeah, oh, I don't know. It doesn't matter. We still get Okay, well this nobody does about my Italian accent. It's just the French. It's once again the Italians deserve it as well. They tell us about at end. Yeah. So so this guy, he was a French scientist who he left France. He came to the US for a little while. He had got Massachusetts. He was also also an amateur entomologist, and he was like, oh, you know what I think American

needs is I think they need a silk industry. Now they have a negative silk moth. It doesn't produce good silk, it doesn't breed fast. So he brought in the matric. I gotta do the scientific name because we changed the name on it because the common name is a slur. So we're not doing so la matria disparo. So he brought this this moth in from Europe. Uh, and he started trying to breathe these two moths, which are not

related at all. It didn't work, obviously, and then he just kind of, you know, he went he went off to be an astronomer, and he just let these moths go in his backyard and he didn't tell anyone they were there. And then all of a sudden these things escape and now they're killing trees, you know, across the eastern United States, and they're in Washington, Oregon. I think they're in DC a little bit too great. So, yeah, that's that's that's that's such a good parable, like a

parallel to the invasive species that is French people. That really does just tie up all all aspects of that amazing. It makes me think a lot everything you're saying about kut Zoo, which which is in the I've heard some people say they're getting a handle on it. I don't know how to evaluate that at the moment, but when I was last living down there, it was just like devouring the entire southeast. Yeah, you can handle it again

if you want to spray it. You can. You can get what's called chew groove, so a bunch of goats you can get a handle on it. But again that's money and effort. So it's just a question. So you do get delicious, delicious goat made? Oh my gosh, I tell you what. The people who do go invasive management they haven't made. Would they dont goats out to people? They get paid for the goats and they also get

their goats fence, or would they slaughter them? They even pay that, you know, that's a good business model as someone with a couple of goats. That does sound like the dream. Um yeah, God, they don't work on all the invasive species I do as they probably don't eat those beetles huh No. No, they also like plants with thorns on them either, and it's very few goats can handle an entire French person either. So yeah, we can't. We can't trust the goats to solve all these problems

for us. It is nice that they're helping. Um, I

don't know, so I I try to. Are there things either in terms of like it acts people can take or probably more more realistically, organizations people could support that you think are actually helping try to stop as much of the woods from going bad as fast or reverse the some of the stuff we've been talking about today, like how can we try to have some some room for people to do something if if there is anything people can do other than check your fucking shoes for

beetles when you come back from wherever, burn all of your clothing anytime you leave the state. Okay, that's that's a good start. That's a really good start. Not even to say sometimes it's the county stop. When you go on a road trip, you stop your car at the county line and you roll it off of a cliff with tanner righte and just let it burn. But don't don't push out of the woods. We've seen that. Not into the woods. No, into the ocean where everything's fine. Yeah,

they say, that's what they say about the ocean. Great. I tell I tell people I work between the farm field and the stream. I don't do stream or water stuff because there's chemistry in there, so I don't know what happens over there. That's fine. I assume everything is great there. It does seem to be going fine. Um. I think the best thing that you could do is in individuals is don't cut random stuff loose. Learn the plants of your area. Yeah, learn what's around you and

what should be there. And like when you see something that shouldn't be there and you know it's in invasive, remove it. We're legally possible, obviously, don't go like someone's like arboretum and it's like like pulled plants out. That'd be real bad, burned down small farms wherever you find. Yeah, oh man, the egg people will not be happy about that. But yeah, I mean I'm not gonna say anything. Um So I think you know, learned plants trees is neat um.

And then if you um, you know, think of if you're thinking about like, you know, how can you help manage force? You know, if you lots of people either own forests or people who owned forest and you know, encourage them to get a force management plan or land management plan and get that. And then also if you got a lawn, rip your lawn out again where possible and use native plants. I do. I do some you know, some lawn change stuff. And it's just frustrating the amount

of lawns out there. It's like, you know, one of these people, one of these reasons we're losing so many you know, birds, and we have fewer birds and bird species because like they can't eat grass. These things eat fruits and insects and seeds which you don't get in grass. So you know, if you don't own a forest, that's fine,

and I'm i I'm a huge advocate of that. I try to be on the show and people, again, we always get this thing where there are people who will critique when we talk about some of these small scale solutions. Is like, oh, you know, turning your turning your lawn into a a permac culture garden with local species isn't going to like produce enough food to feed your families. Like, no,

it's not about that. If you could get a couple of thousand people to do it, and they convince another couple and like so on and so on and so on, then suddenly, if you're increasing significantly the amount of carbon sequestered by that lawn and you're also making a better habitat for birds and whatnot, that that scales. It is a thing that scales. If we got a significant number of people with lawns to replace them with something like we're talking about kill kill, that grass that almost certainly

isn't fucking native to your area. Plant stuff that is, and and and try to reintegrate at least your lawn back into the local ecology. If you got a million Americans to do a version of that, you that's not an insignificant thing. Um. Yeah, And it is something that you can do in a lot of states. There's programs to support it. In my state, there's a program specifically for like changing lawns over and that program is backed up. They are out of money until they spent it all already.

There's definitely interest there. Let you sell it to whoever, whoever. Anyone gets it if they want it, it just goes up on Craigslist, all right, Yeah, put it on Craigslist, give it to the highest bidder. Um. The other thing you can do is go outside, like support your local land management agency. Most of these, like forest Service and park Service, they depend on money spent by users to

go spend money at the forest. The only thing people can do your fucking boots first though, Oh yeah, definitely that. And don't don't bring shit in. Don't don't bring your like weird thing in, like your weird plan, because you don't want to kill it your entirely seed based diet. Yeah, if you don't, If you hunt, great, that supports conservation. If you don't want to hunt, you can still buy duck stamps and these other things. That's support wildlife management.

In the US, wildlife is funded by the users, So those people who buy guns and AMMO, buy arch your equipment, and who buy hunting licenses. So if you want to support wildlife, the best thing you can do is buy a hunting license, even if you don't hunt. That's it's kind of counterintuitive, but it's the core of the North

American mode of wildlife. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good point, and it is one of the It's also one of those areas when we talk about ways in which theoretically there's room to build in roads between left and right in this country, conservation and hunting should be one right, and there are hunters on the right who are actually talking a pretty good, like reasonably about conservation, Like it

is an area of shared interest. Everybody likes wild places, so just quote unquote wild We just talked about how none of them are actually wild. They've all existed with human beings for forever. But like, yeah, we like we like the outdoors, Yes, the outdoors. Yeah. Well and what you know, people ask me like, so I hunt? I have Micross clothes right over there. Who sweet crossbow? Yeah yeah, you don't have to get a gun. I have been wanted to get a crossbow pilled for a while now.

Oh yeah, I wouldn't mind getting crossbow killed myself. Yeah, shoulder holster for a crossbow. There we go. Oh yeah that's great. Yeah. No, this is not a super expensive one, but it's pretty much a rifle. Yeah, I mean ballistically at the ranges who use them, there's not any meaningful difference really. Yeah. And if you're a person who you know doesn't like guns, it doesn't trust yourself around him. Uh, they're very safe. So yeah, get get you one of

those if you want. It's a fun time cross I also like it a lot more than my uh my guns because it doesn't yet coil. But that's enough about that. Well that's great. Um, is there anything else you wanted to get into Calvin before we kind of roll out today? Uh? You touched on forest carbon stuff that's a whole man. Yeah, a bunch of stuff on that that's a whole other world. I am interested in talking more about that, but perhaps we should do have a dedicated entire thing. I mean,

we should definitely dedicate an entire thing that. It's an incredibly important subject UM and I think there's a lot to say about how different um indigenous groups have been. Like up in the Northwest in particular, we have a lot of um kind of tribal efforts at stuff like not just with the with the forest, but also with like the coastline and whatnot in rebuilding certain populations along

the coast in the Midwest. When i'mer does a great job with forest management, I'm actually doing a webinar thing about one of our forest pesting we're having then come talk about their management. Well, we invited them. I'm not actually sure if they're going to do it yet, but the practice we use is based on what they use it there. So yeah, it's it's really cool what various first nations do. Yeah, I just want to plug trees. Yeah, my favorite type of tree probably the redwood. Used to

live in Arcade to go running in them every day. Um, I know that's kind of a cliche answer, what's your what's your favorite tree? This is one behind me here, No one can see my background. It's white oak. You can't make white oaks. So yeah, yeah, that is an important tree. Forest products are like one of the only things that supports supports forest management. So it supports forest so you don't be afraid to use, you know, sustainably managed wood and wood products. Find capitalism and drink a

shipload of bourbon. Always a good call. Really, Um? Alright, well, Calvin Norman, any any less pluggable to plug um plants? If you want to learn plants, that's great. You want to learn about what's going on your native you know your areas around you. There's lots of groups that do that. Your local extension service helps you out with a lot that most of their stuff is free. So plug that. Yeah, go outside and plug that. I don't do twitter good. Yeah, alright,

well go outside, hugg a tree. Calvin Norman, thank you again so much for coming on. Um. If you want to see Calvin's original thread, just type in the woods are bad, uh and it could happen here, read it, or just go to the it could happen here, read it and scroll down a bit you'll find it. Um. That's gonna do it for us today until tomorrow. Go out into the woods. Who go out into the woods, but wash your fucking boots first. It could Happen Here

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