Ideas - Walking Among the Ancients: The Rare Wabanaki-Acadian Old-Growth Forest

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

The World Wildlife Fund lists the Wabanaki-Acadian old-growth forest as endangered — with only one percent remaining. The Wabanaki-Acadian forest stretches from parts of the Maritimes and Southern Quebec down into New England states. IDEAS explores the beauty and complexity of this ancient forest.

Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. In the 1800s, the American clergyman and social reformer Henry Ward Beecher wrote,

Of all man's works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that. It's in an old-growth forest where that majesty is truly found, where trees hundreds of years old soar high into the heavens. It's in an old-growth forest where that majesty is truly found, where trees hundreds of years old soar high into the heavens. Often when old-growth forests are mentioned, they're the ones on the west coast of North America, in part because on the eastern side, old-growth forests have been largely decimated. Take the Wabanaki Acadian Forest.

have been largely decimated. Take the Wabanaki Acadian Forest. It runs over a large swath of land, from parts of the Maritimes and southern Quebec, down through Maine, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, ending in northern Connecticut. Most of it has been logged and cut down several times, with the average tree in the newer growth forests only a few decades old. Today, the Wabanaki Acadian Forest contains 1% of old growth. The World Wildlife Fund lists it as endangered. So Peter, where are we going? Well, we're going just about to the middle of the province. That's Ideas producer Mary Link with naturalist Peter Romke,

driving to an old growth forest stand somewhere in Nova Scotia. It's a little place. I don't, you know, to be honest with you, I don't really want to give an exact location. And I always worry about so many people and you know good intentioned people but people who've never experienced a you know an old gross forest stand and there's so little of it left in nova scotia that giving the exact location away is you know what i mean sort of inviting people to go there and not intentionally doing damage, but maybe just unintentionally harming a forest floor, maybe the trees.

I don't know. So this is kind of a secret. This is an Ideas exclusive. Absolutely. On Ideas, a tribute to the complex beauty and importance of the Wabanaki Acadian Old Growth Forest. Let's return to Mary Link and naturalist Peter Romke on their clandestine mission. There'll be almost no wind where we're going.

It's down in a hollow, protected, and it's got a canopy probably 120 or 140 feet high. So, yeah, it's really quite different than most of the forests that I've been in, and I've been in a lot of forests in Nova Scotia. Where we're going, we're probably looking at trees that are 350 years, maybe even plus. Let's just call it the secret garden. We'll call it the secret garden.

Sounds good to me. Secret forest. We'll call it the secret garden. Sounds good to me. Secret forest. How was this discovered? When you first saw it, what did you think? Well, a friend of mine who was the ecologist for the protected areas in Nova Scotia, Rob Cameron, he spotted it. I think it was aerial photography or it was somebody at at Nova Scotia Power this this land belongs to Nova Scotia Power and so it might just be happenstance that it's still there today intact. Do you think Nova Scotia Power even knows it exists? Oh yeah they know it exists in 1978 I worked in Windsor Nova Scotia as a just a a forestry technician. I was doing a multiple of jobs, parks and crown land management.

I was asked to get my scaler's license. So a scaler's license is a license that you get when you want to measure wood. And when it's sent to the mill, they'll know how much they're buying. Everything is done by weight now, but everything back then was done by diameter, the length of the log, and if there was a curve in the log, it would be deducted. And so they said Nova Scotia Power had permitted somebody to go in and cut a piece of land at, I think it's called Mill Dam, pretty much the middle of southern Nova Scotia. When I went out to scale the wood there, I was stunned when I got there. The hemlock trees

that were cut were over a meter in diameter. And they had to, in some cases, they were pulling all the logs down a hill with a very powerful machine. We call it a skitter, but it's very powerful. And it was pulling these logs down the hill. And they had to cut eight feet off the bottom of some of the logs because they couldn't get them down. I scaled one tree and it had 1,600 board feet in it. And that's an amazing amount of lumber to come out of one tree in Nova Scotia. And I was stunned that it was cut back then. And really not having a lot of knowledge about old growth or how much was left. And I think now in this day and age, Nova Scotia Power would turn it into some sort of park.

But back then, we weren't thinking about these things. So it's tragic, in a sense, to think of that beautiful, old, ancient tree coming down. It was tragic at the time for me. Like I said, I was stunned. Why would we be cutting these trees? Almost all of the hemlock that's cut in Nova Scotia, it doesn't make very good lumber for decks or walls or plywood or anything like that. Almost all of it was used for railway ties.

So it would have been shipped to Truro and cut into railway ties, these great big beautiful trees. And probably a lot of the rails across Canada were cut from old-growth timber. Well, I never thought about that. Yeah, because they're pretty big and thick when you think about it when you're walking along the railway. You know, I was brought up, educated in commercial forestry, but we always, everybody who practiced forestry that I knew, was always sort of spellbound when they went into a stand of 250-year-old white pine, a solid stand. It was not a single plant on the ground, maybe some fungi and a few mosses. And we were always, it was almost

like a religious experience when we would see that. And when I got to where these logs were being cut, it was, they were on the ground. Some of them were still standing and it was like, I just couldn't even imagine what it would have been like if I had gotten there before anything had been cut. So, the secret forest that we're going to, tell me about the first time you saw it. Well, the first time I saw it, we drove in and we drove past a clear cut. And I looked at my friend Rob and, you know, and kind of, okay, where are we going? And we got into the end of the road. There was an old bridge that had washed out. And you don't really even notice it when you're

driving in. It's just like, oh, there's some big trees on the right. Then he said, let's take a little walk. So we walked down towards a little pond. And as soon as you walked in, it was like, I was stunned. These huge, huge trees. And it's not just the big trees in an old growth forest. It's the ground cover. And when you look at the ground, you can see the trees that fell 300 years ago. They're still there. There's still an image of them on the ground, covered with moss, full of roots from the trees that are growing. And, you know, this stunning high canopy, right? No branches for 100 feet and then a canopy above that, which is, you know, you don't see it very often. You know, it's always an amazement at the size of the trees and how quiet it is and how humid it is on a hot summer day and and then when you look up and the canopy is so high above you and it just

get this feel like you're in a cathedral and and one of the old cities in europe and it's just it's a it's an amazing sort of uh knowledge you know, based and religious-based experience when you walk into an old-growth forest. If I was a tele, you know, I'd love for everybody in Canada to go into one and experience that, and everybody will experience it in a different way. But, you know, I don't think it would be even possible. I don't think there's enough space and time for everybody in Canada to find those little patches of old growth that are left.

Okay, so maybe what we'll do now as we drive along the cement before we go to the old growth is that we'll turn off the tape recorder so I can see this and we can talk about it in person. And thanks for doing this. Yeah, no problem. My pleasure. this and we can talk about it in person. And thanks for doing this. And no problem. My pleasure. Well, the first time I visited an old growth forest near my home, I was struck by the air quality, believe it or not. I was like, oh, this smells so wonderful. What is in this air? And being a scientist, I dove into the research. What is in that forest air is complex, fascinating,

and potentially a cancer treatment. But we'll get to that later. Joe Malouf is an ecologist, academic, acclaimed author, and founder of the Old Growth Forest Network, which works to protect the few remaining stands of old growth forest in the United States. And because she lives in Maryland and grew up nearby, she has a particular affection for the eastern old growth forest. Forests were first formed on Earth close to 400 million years ago, but the Wabanaki Acadian Forest is a relative newcomer coming into being only 10,000 years ago. So in Nova Scotia and the whole Acadian Forest, there were trees there before 10,000 years ago, But our latest glaciation just receded at that point and the forests could come back in and recover.

And many of those tree species that have moved back in, moved back in from the south where the glaciers had not been. So northward from places like Georgia and various states. Yeah, so in the eastern U.S., it's been shown that in Tennessee and North Carolina, there had been some coves that were protected from even the cold. So even though those states weren't covered by glaciers, they were influenced by that ice age, and they were a lot drier and colder, so we would have had a lot more conifer forest down south. But then when the climate changed again and got warmer, the deciduous trees that can last more in the warmth, like the maples and the oaks began to move northward.

So what you have now in the Acadian forest is a mix of those conifers toward the north and more of the broadleaves toward the south, but with some of them moving up into the Acadian forest. What I found really fascinating was that you wrote about how these forests, you know, the latest forest in the Acadian forest or the Wabanaki forest is because they were 10,000 years old only at this point, the latest one, they had scarcely reached their maximum post-glacial extent when farmers or European settlers started clearing them, which tells you a bit about how long a forest needs to become an old-growth forest. Because it's not just the trees that you see above ground level. It's also what's going on in the soil and the nutrients in the soil, which many of them come from the trees that have died over generation.

They're going to add a organic matter and nutrients to the soil that as that forest recovers, the trees can get larger and grow faster. So yeah, it's not just the short-term history, the age of a particular tree, it's the age of a particular piece of ground and how, it's not just the short-term history, the age of a particular tree. It's the age of a particular piece of ground and how long it's been left undisturbed. And that's part of the crisis when we're losing a lot of that organic matter and the structure and the nutrients. And then the next forests that grow are not quite as robust as the former forests and definitely not as biodiverse. What defines an old growth forest in northeastern United States and Canada?

What defines an old growth forest in northeastern United States and Canada? That is a loaded question because there's a lot of discussion about this. And in fact, in the U.S., President Biden came out with an executive order and said, I want you to define old growth and tell how much of it is left in the U.S. And this was an executive order from 2022. And just even that he would ask that meant that we had no one certain definition. And then the Forest Service had to say, well, how are we going to define it? And what they ended up doing was having different definitions for different forest types. So there's, you know, the Doug fir forest has one definition and the Acadian forest would have a different definition. But I like to just keep it simple myself and say that it's either a forest that has not been cleared and cut by humans, or if it has, it was cut so long ago that that forest has been able to

completely recover. But can they, Joan, completely recover if they've been cut? That's an excellent question. And in my book, in fact, Nature's Temples, I showed that we've never proven that the herbaceous layer of a forest can ever completely recover. But our studies have only been going on, you know, for maybe 100 or 200 years at most. And it's possible that maybe it would take 500 years to recover. But we haven't seen full recovery yet. We haven't seen full recovery yet. So we've been driving for about an hour or so, and we're not saying where.

We are somewhere in Nova Scotia, but we're getting close to the secret forest. Peter, how many acres do you think are stands or left of old-growth forest? Well, I don't think anybody really knows for sure. I mean, this is a very small piece, but it's just very representative of what we would have thought old-growth forest would have looked like without any European influences. But there's a large piece by Panook Lake. There's some in Kejimakuji.

And there's probably more in Cape Breton than anywhere, and that would be more of the deciduous old growth forest. And that's just because so much of the hills of Cape Breton were sort of inaccessible for logging. So, you know, but when you get down to these small patches, it's very difficult to estimate. There could be two or three patches like this along the road somewhere that nobody's discovered yet. How big do you think this area, this secret forest that we're going to is? We've measured it, actually, and it's about eight hectares. Which is what, if you were describing it in a size for someone like me,

you can't think in eight hectares. It's about 20 acres, so that would be probably maybe 10 Costco and Costco parking lots in size. Yes, now I can visualize it. What are the chances, Peter, that these 20 acres could be cut down someday? I don't think in this day and age it would ever, you know, it would never be cut down. What would be more of a risk in this forest would be the hemlock adelgid, which is killing hemlock trees across Nova Scotia right now, and it's spreading very fast, and there's not much you can do about it. And or a hurricane. Hurricanes do blow down old growth

forests. And the forest in Panook Lake, Many of the trees there were blown down in a hurricane in the late 1950s. And what's interesting about that is the company that was acquiring hemlock for the railway ties went in in 1980 and they took logs that had blown down in the late 50s and took them and milled them and that's kind of you know i spoke a little earlier about how long these forests these these logs lay on the ground that you can see the image of them hundreds of years after they've fallen but i also know that old growth forest they shouldn't take out logs because that's going to disturb it because the logs themselves are homes for insects and salamanders and do all sorts of things. Yeah, no, the logs on the ground are absolutely essential. And, you know, I can tell you a story.

We were doing a soils course and we had to climb. They were looking for a hardwood, a pure hardwood stand that hadn't been touched. So we went to a top of a hill in northern Nova Scotia and it was all hardwood and it was in the middle of the summer it was very dry and I was stunned because I was digging a soil pit we're doing soils analysis of the stand and we're digging this big soil pit and we were down three feet and it was dusty it was that dry and I was I was stunned I was like where are the trees getting the moisture from so at lunchtime we all sat down on an old rotten log, and I noticed that my ass was getting wet. And so we stood up and we started kicking some of the organic matter

that was on the surface and realized that the roots of these hardwood trees not only went into the soil, but they were completely infiltrated all of the organic material on the surface, including these big old logs that were laying there. So they were like reservoirs of water for the trees when the groundwater subsides in the middle of the summer. It was pretty amazing. That's the key thing about nature and about forests, and even about human bodies, but about forests, how interconnected all these organisms are.

It's just not the tree separate, the small plants. They're all interconnected and feed off each other in some ways and survive together. Absolutely. I mean, we're just cracking the surface of what mycorrhizal and all of the fungi do, and there's just this massive network of all these things that are going on underneath the forest floor.

And, you know, I worry that the way we manage forests now, you know, we're putting those species at risk by just not having that healthy organic layer that would have been here before European settlement. before European settlement. Joan, what would it mean, the 1% we have left of the eastern forest, old-growth forest, what would it mean if that went? That's a really... Yes, it's something I think about a lot. Well, we'd lose a lot of species if they went.

Species that we could lose include the pine marten, the lungless salamander, and various varieties of lichens, mosses, fungi, and the list goes on. We've already lost a lot of species. We're in a biodiversity crisis that would get even worse. But we don't even know how it would change us as a species to not understand what our planet can create, what it's capable of. Life is so amazing, you know, just springing out of this planet. And with these old growth forests, we could see what the planet creates when it's left alone.

But if we had those places no more, we'd never understand that. There's a beautiful concept amongst First Nations people who talk about seven generations, that we have to think ahead to seven generations. Absolutely. I believe that. I wish instead of having two senators for every state here in the U.S., that we'd have three, and one of them would be voting for the future. them would be voting for the future. You know, I said earlier, I don't know if I've ever been in an old growth forest because you don't notice things as much. And then so I asked my brother as well and various people, they don't know if they've ever been in one either and they've grown up in Nova Scotia. Well, I was, you know, practicing commercial forestry. I didn't encounter old growth forests for the longest while.

You know, we spent a lot of my early years were spent in Cape Breton and clear cuts and helping forest companies grow trees faster. And, yeah, so it wasn't until probably the middle of my forestry career that I started to really have an appreciation for walking into a stand and thinking to myself, is this what a lot of Nova Scotia would have been like or a great deal more than we have now? And yeah, it was amazing when you come to that realization, when you actually see it for the first time. Joan, you've written that many people have not even experienced an old-growth forest. So a lot of people have not, especially in the East,

where there's fewer old-growth, have experienced it. And you quote the writer and biologist Robert Michael Pyle, who calls this, quote, the extinction of experience. Mm-hmm. Yes. And this is the reason I started the non-profit organization Old nonprofit organization Old Growth Forest Network. And our mission is that there will be one forest in each county, uncut, open to the public, relatively accessible.

This way, we can guide people to these forests, whether they're in Ohio or whether they're in Vermont, and that experience and be called to speak out and represent these forests. Can you roll down my window? Yeah. So this is a... What is this road? We're not going to say... No, what? Oh, right, so we're going on this property owned by... Yeah, some of this property is owned by Nova Scotia Power.

Yeah, the road's a little rough here, and, you know, I don't mind rough roads, because, you know, if you're on a really rough road, you should get out and walk. And then if you walk, you won't walk as far. So then sometimes places that you don't want a lot of people to be in are left without a lot of people in them. So right now, in this road, this is not an old-growth forest here, right? No, this is a clear cut that was cut, judging by the look of the trees,

This is a clear cut that was cut, judging by the look of the trees, the left-hand side of the road probably 15 years ago, and the right side of the road probably 25 years ago. So most of us not knowing about it would look like it could have been a forest forever. So how do you know when you're in an old-growth forest, if you're not a scientist like you are, how do you know where the telltale signs are? Well, I think that the one common thing that we all kind of know is that the large trees, large diameter trees, are one indication of an old-growth forest.

The others are species, hemlock, yellow birch, American beech, some white pine. There's even old-growth forests in Nova Scotia with red spruce and black spruce in them. So, you know, species would tell you. We're looking at species here on this cut, white birch, young red maples, and balsam fir, which are not typically old growth species. So the other things that I always look for as soon as I come into a forest, I notice the bare stems. Old growth forests grow in a way that most of them, or a lot of them, are all aged where one tree will fall and another one will take its place over time. Another characteristic of old growth forests are

large bare stems, and this comes from the slow growth over a long period of time. All the lower branches self-prune off because of the lack of sunlight. As the crown goes up, the branches are unfunctional to the tree, so they simply, the needles fall off, the branches die, and they fall to the ground. So these big, large, clear stems. How many years would it take for this new growth forest,

say the 25 years on the right-hand side, to become an old growth if it wasn't touched? Well, it won't be in 300 years, that's for sure, because when they harvested the timber in that forest, they took all the large timber out, the large stems, the boles of the trees, and that's an incredibly important characteristic of old growth forests are these large stems that lie on the ground. Without that, that organic layer has to build up. It's a huge problem in forestry,

the forestry that we practice today, is we leave very little organic matter in the forest that's useful. We leave lots of branches and needles, but they break down in the course of 5 or 10 years. All that material is gone. Old-growth forests need to have thick layers of organic material on the surface of the soil that would lie there for hundreds of years.

You're listening to Walking Among the Ancients, the Wabanaki Acadian Old Growth Forest. Old Growth Forest on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America on US Public Radio and Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. You can also hear ideas on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayed. Hey there, I'm David Common Ayyad. Whether you listen on a run through your neighborhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto wherever you get your podcasts. We return to Walking Among the Ancients, the Wabanaki Acadian Old Growth Forest. Here's Ideas producer Mary Link. Here's Ideas producer Mary Link. And so Peter Romke and I arrive at the secret old-growth forest,

and initially I don't even turn on my tape recorder, I'm just stunned. I'm speechless. I've never seen a forest floor to begin with like that. Usually it's fairly uneven, but it's flat. And this is rolling mounds and hollows and thick green. And of course, then there were the trees. So let's just... I'll see you in a minute. Oh my goodness, you should see the trunk laying down over there.

Oh, these trees are incredible. Wow, this is huge. I think we have to measure this guy. This is a hemlock and it is huge. 101 centimeters in diameter. So over three feet in diameter. Look at the log, the fallen log, the fallen trunk there. How long that is. My goodness gracious.

Yeah, there's one going in that direction. You know, when they all fall, when you see a stand that has all fallen in the same direction, it was all from one windstorm. When you see it like this, they're scattered in all directions. You know that it's been windstorms over the centuries that have knocked them down. Maybe from the north, maybe from the east, maybe from the south. I never knew that trees grew so big in Nova Scotia till now. I mean, I guess I read about it, but I've never seen it. I've never witnessed it.

It's stunning that this is still here, remained here, and escaped cutting or destruction by some other reason. It's so soft to walk on. I know. When you're in here and it's wet, you hardly make a sound because all the branches are in some form of decay and the moss is wet. And so when you walk through it, you can just walk through here silently.

It's quite spectacular, actually. It's so different. It's like otherworldly, an old forest, because I guess the key thing is the undulation, you know, that it's rolling in here, soft rolling mounds and hollows. It is. It feels like sort of Lord of the Rings kind of thing. Yeah, you know, hey, I said it before, and, you know, it didn't matter who you were in forestry. When you came to places like this, it was almost like a religious experience. It was like you were looking, we're looking into the past is what we're looking into here.

And this wasn't all over Nova Scotia. This was, you know, this was limited to areas that were protected and had good soils and had the right species and evaded fire and all those things. But it would have been just a lot more of this, a lot more, when Europeans first settled here. Let's go down, and I see another spruce tree I want to measure. I'm curious, because I come back here regularly, so I'm looking for a meter diameter black spruce two and a half feet in diameter and if you look up it's straight as a die and probably the diameter doesn't change for the first 30 feet which is amazing i mean these trees were the trees that were shipped to europe when we first settled uh Shipments of people and materials would come over, and they took lumber back. And part of the reason why we don't have very much old-growth forest

was we were pretty much cut over by the time they started in British Columbia. There was so much of the trade happened between Nova Scotia and New England, and every ship that went back went back laden with wood destined for Europe. Oh, I think you can hear. That, my friends, the black flies. Oh, look at that. That's a viburnum. It just looks like a rhododendron, but it's viburnum leaves.

It's just so, it's like being in a shade house at a nursery, or somebody's shade house that they, you know, pamper the plants in. It's just, yeah, it's gorgeous. You really feel humbled in this forest, I think that's what I'm going to say. You know, and something so untouched by us. It's so nice to be in a place that is essentially untouched by humans. Yeah, untouched by humans and just the species that can grow for three to four hundred years. That's really, it is remarkable. It's also, you realize how much we've changed the world

and what it's supposed to look like and what it's also you realize how much we've changed the world and what it's supposed to look like and what it's supposed to it's much more sensual and and interconnected you can feel this place being interconnected do you feel because i kind of feel even despite the flies i feel much more relaxed and calmer i mean there's something like a physiological change in me. Yeah, you know, when you walk in on a hot summer day, when you walk into that forest, that little tiny forest, when you walk in on a hot day and the wind is blowing, it's quiet, it's cool, probably by 5 to 10 degrees cooler.

You can feel the humidity. And there's just this sense of, you know, this is where I should be on this day, not standing in the middle of a clear cut with the sun beating down on the wind-blowing bayou. How much is left then of the Wabanaki Acadian Forest? In this type of forest, this, you know, this type of forest, I don't think there would be many more than a few thousand acres of this in Nova Scotia. That would be pristine, this type of forest. For a hemlock, yellow birch, red spruce, old growth forest.

Not a lot of land. You're right, that's very little land. I mean, we're a province of a million acres. A few thousand acres is not very much. And especially not much when it's scattered in pockets like this like you know what i mean you know 20 23 acres here it's it's not very much and it's not very as you said earlier it's it's it's at risk for a whole bunch of things people will look at this and say well look at all these logs down here that makes it more dangerous joan if she would

argue scientifically that it doesn't that that an old growth is safer than a middle growth or a new. Well, absolutely. I mean, the crowns here, I mean, you could have a, well, you wouldn't have a ground fire because the crown is high and the soil remains moist. In the morning, the dew condensates on the tops of the trees and drips to the ground. That's where I think the logs were being wet when I talked about the hardwood stand that had the wet logs laying on the surface of bone dry ground. And so, you know, there's very little chance of a ground fire starting in here. And then the canopy is so high, you'd have to have a roaring bomb fire to even get close to the canopy of these trees. That's not to say that it wouldn't burn, but no, she's absolutely

right. This is a much more sustainable than a forest that has trees that are 50 feet high and have branches three quarters of the way to the ground. And you have to remember, too, we plant all conifers here we're having major fires here in Nova Scotia, being devastated now. What forests are burning in Nova Scotia? Are they the young forests? Well, some of them would have been young forests. Some of them would have been barren. Once a fire starts, it can create a lot of heat. And the winds that we had for those fires in both Barrington and in Tantallon, the winds are just, it's hard to defeat. It could burn through anything.

It burned through deciduous patches, patches of deciduous forest. And it's just a massive amount of heat. But, you know, a lot of it is because all we ever did was encourage. You know, they'll say that they're encouraging all-species forests. And everybody who thins a forest now used to be only, you took out all the hardwoods and just left the softwoods, because that was the only thing you could make any money at. Nowadays, they certainly encourage, and all the big forest companies and the big forest harvesters are,

when they thin a forest, they thin it and they leave multiple species, but it'll always be more softwoods than hardwoods. And that creates a, well, we've changed the composition of the forest in Nova Scotia from primarily mixed wood with patches of boreal here and there and patches of white, you know, other forest types, but we've primarily changed the forest composition from a mixed wood to a predominantly softwood forest. And softwood forests are flammable, unfortunately.

How come? The needles are full of, I mean, did you ever hear of turpentine? Yeah, turpentine, very flammable, comes from trees. That would be softwood trees, the kind most commonly planted after clear cutting. I want to get back, Joan, a bit to that whole idea. I think it's called shinrin-yoku. Is that how you pronounce it? The Japanese term for wood air bathing. Shinrin-yoku.

Shinrin-yoku. And, you know, people have said there's been benefits for reduced ADHD and better eyesight and reduced aggression. But tell me about the researchers in California and their study of chemical compounds in the mountain forest air. And they found, I think, 120 chemical compounds in the mountain's forest air, but could only identify only 70 of them. So are we literally reading things we don't understand? So are we literally breathing things we don't understand?

Yes, the research has just started on this. Because although that we know the forests have a positive health reaction for our bodies, also lowering our blood pressure, lowering our blood sugar, improving immunity, we don't know exactly how they do that. It's likely in the air, but it could even be something coming through our eyes or our ears. But as far as the air, where is that coming from? Well, some of those compounds are coming from the cells in the tree leaves, but some of those compounds could be coming from the fungi in the soil or decomposition happening or even the nectar in flowers. Very, very complex.

And we are just starting to be able to understand the chemical ecology of the forests. Yeah, there's one of the most abundant compounds you write about given off by trees are monoterpenes. Is that how you pronounce it? And what are those and how do they relate to cancer, cancer prevention, cancer treatment? Many of the chemicals in a tree leaves are created by the plants. You know, they have a genetic program. They have genes to create these compounds to actually ward off the insects that would eat them because the insects are like an enemy to the trees and the trees can't run away.

They can't brush off these insects or swat at them like we can. So instead, they have to produce these chemical compounds that would discourage the insects. Well, those same chemical compounds are what often give us the wonderful flavors in our food. Like I'm thinking of rosemary right now and that smell, and that would be that sort of compound produced by that plant. So the health benefits to humans from breathing in those compounds have been shown, but is this some great master plan of the universe that plants create health benefits for humans, or has it just happened that way? You know, life is so miraculous. Anything could be happening there. But are we studying it enough about what these, what forests

can do for the human health? I would say no. And one of the reasons we're not studying it enough is that it doesn't seem to have a lot of financial return, these studies. So it doesn't get studied enough. Would it be a reach, potentially, that breathing in these monoterpenes that are so abundant in the forest area, is there a possibility? Would it be a stretch to say? I mean, obviously, we'd have to study it scientifically that walking in the woods could help prevent cancer or treat cancer. Is that too outrageous a statement? That's not too outrageous a statement at all. You know, in science,

we start with these questions, and then we design experiments that will show if there's any effect or not. So I think this should be studied more. And what the Japanese have done, instead of waiting until all the evidence is in that these forests are healthy and could possibly reduce cancer, they've instead said, well, let's create a network of these healing forests across the country that can be used while we're doing the research. So they have created 100 healing forests across Japan for these benefits. And wouldn't it be lovely if we could do that and near every hospital there could be a forest that people could walk in or near every community. Do you feel a change that comes over you even physiologically when you go into an old growth

forest? Oh absolutely. I'm sure if I'm sure if I had one of those watches that tells all the levels, heartbeats, I'm sure you'd just get into a much calmer state. And yeah, when you go into a forest like that and you sit down and you close your eyes and you feel this patchy sun sort of falling across your face, and I know that my heart rate slows, I feel calmer.

I'm not thinking about all the things that I have to do when I leave. And yeah, it's a moving experience. Joan, well, you've posed the question, could there be some part of our psyche that goes toxic when we are denied nature's most beautiful experiences. I mean,

there's talk that walking in the woods can reduce aggression. Do you think that's part of our problem that we're so removed from nature that in some ways we've become more aggressive because of it? There is a field called eco-psychology. And what they're finding is that people that feel kind of uncomfortable, out of whack, maybe aggressive, that they don't really understand their connections to the earth so well. And when they're tied back into how their emotions connect to the earth, that they can heal themselves in new ways. So I don't know where research is going with that, but I do know that we need to have these places so that if they are important for both our physical bodies and our mental bodies, our psyches, that we have places to go for healing. I think we instinctively know deep down that we're all connected to all these other organisms. And so when we're surrounded by just concrete and buildings and asphalt,

buildings and asphalt, there's a part of our mental and physical being that shrinks or is thwarted. So we need to keep the life alive and stay connected to it. Hello, Ursula. Hello, Mary. Selfie here. A selfie with a few bugs. This is Ursula Johnson,

the internationally renowned artist, winner of the 2017 Sobe Art Award. Ursula also works for Parks Canada as a Mi'kmaq Relations Advisor for the mainland Nova Scotia field unit. Ursula has been really busy lately, but a few days before this air date, we found some time to walk in another rare old-growth forest. This time at Kijimakujik National Park in the southwestern part of the province. It's somewhat different from the old-growth forest Peter Romke took me to, but still spectacular. For you, what happens to you when you enter an old-growth? Well, there's many things that happen. One is I always think about the memory

of the forest and think about how much it has seen and experienced and witnessed and been a part of. Experienced and witnessed and been a part of. And I always remember there was one, it was like an explorer's account, where they arrived in the 1600s to the mouth of the Mersey in Liverpool. Liverpool, Nova Scotia. In Liverpool, Nova Scotia. And as they begin to make their way up the river, which we call Ohomkigioch, the Mersey River, particularly that sandy spot in Liverpool, Nova Scotia,

they recorded that when they entered into the forest midday, that when they entered into the forest midday, the forest's canopy was so high that it was as if they entered into the dark of night. Wow. It's incredible. What have we done, Ursula? What have we done? So to think of those early accounts of people who first, you know, made that European contact with this land, and to think of how huge these trees would have been. Because in Nova Scotia

we have, you know, what's referred to as a secondary growth forest. It's hard to find old growth here. This is the thing, is that the Mi'kmaq do have, you know, a profound relationship with the forest. Many First Nations do. But us settlers really have lost that. And when we've lost that, what have we lost when we're not connected to the forest and the old growth forest and the interconnectedness i think what we lose when we don't have the

connection to the ecological world is we lose a little bit of ourselves and i find and I've been finding recently, that there's an increased interest of trying to reconnect. And what does it mean to reconnect? So I find that when we go into the forest, there has to be a way that you approach this ecosystem. approach this ecosystem. You have to really be aware of your body and the impacts that your body makes into this ecosystem. And I find that's where something like the concept of Edwaptamunk, for instance, which is two-eyed seeing, it was a principle that was developed and, you worlds, not just academia, but in the world of resource conservation, in biology. And at the end of the day, the lesson of Edwapdmumk, or two-eyed seeing, is that you have one perspective that you view the world in, which is from a Western lens. And we think about science, biology, ecology.

And then the other eye then contributes to the perspective of the Indigenous knowledge lens, which is seeing the environment and how things are ultimately connected to each other, seeing rare plants in the forest bed, like this lady slipper that we have here, looking at all of the different medicines. So when we stop, like just at this very spot, which is just before entering the old growth forest, I can point out about 16 different plants that, from a Mi'kmaq perspective, all have healing properties. They have different medicines that ail different treatments,

or they're materials that are used in some type of crafting or arts-based work. And so by developing that two-eyed seeing, which is for everybody, so just because it says it's an Indigenous perspective, it doesn't mean you have to be Indigenous, because it goes both ways. If Indigenous people can learn a Western perspective of looking at the forest, then people from Western worlds can also develop an Indigenous perspective of looking at the forest, which then ultimately changes your ideas around what is conservation, ideas around what is relationship and relationality to everything altogether in the forest. I always think about, there was an elder from this district,

Gisbogwit, which is the last flow in the south shore of Nova Scotia, Mr. Charles Labrador. And he said, if you go into the forest and you peel up that skin that's on the forest floor, you'll see that all of these trees are holding hands and they're interconnected because they have a relationship with each other in communicating the health or needs of what's needed to contribute to the health. The plants move towards each other.

If somebody is lacking in a certain, I guess, like mineral or composting component, they'll send signals out, and those plants will migrate to them to doctor that tree. And this has been proven now scientifically, but this was knowledge that came without that kind of science study. Yes, this is that Indigenous traditional knowledge, or often referred to as ITK. Because ITK has an understanding of all of that, because throughout thousands of years,

the information of, do you see this plant? Do you see what it's for? Do you see what it does? It's so beautiful, but we don't touch it because it takes two generations for that plant to reappear. And if we take it away now, then that's going to be two generations of our people that are coming to this area that won't be able to recognizeear. And if we take it away now, then that's going to be two generations of our people that are coming to this area that won't be able to recognize it. Also, we know that that plant

is highly toxic and very poisonous. And if someone were like, oh, I learned about traditional medicines and I want to make a tea, they made a tea out of that, they could end up in a coma or even worse. So you really have to understand the toxicity of the plants, the relationships they have with each other, what is edible, what isn't edible, what is medicinal, what is leisure. When it comes to any type of relationship that we have with humans in this entire landscape, there's a responsibility. And that's the thing that's often missed, because the Western world is so focused at seeing the forest or ecology from a scientific perspective, that they forget the fundamental thing that all humans have with nature is responsibility.

And that's where something like Edwapdemunk, for instance, teaches that we as humans and everything we do in this landscape, we are responsible for. You know, like you said, what have we done? You were listening to Walking Among the Ancients, the Wabanaki Acadian Old Growth Forest, a documentary by Ideas producer Mary Lenk. We're getting close to the end of the trail. I would invite you to unplug

and just experience the rest of this journey for yourself. Help you in kind of grounding your own chijamage and taking in the deep breath and the nice breeze from the lake. It's a gift. I'm going to turn off the tape recorder. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

You can go to our website, cbc.ca slash ideas, to see additional material and photos for this documentary. Technical production, Danielle Duval and Pat Martin. Web producer, Lisa Ayuso. Our acting senior producer, Lisa Godfrey. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas. And I'm Nala Ayyad.