Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
The controversial biofuel threatening British Columbia’s forests
FERN and The Walrus
In 2021, a peer-reviewed study, co-authored by ecologist Michelle Connolly, found that “BC’s inland rainforest — which once totaled over 1.3 million hectares — is endangered … and could experience ecological collapse within a decade if current logging rates continue,” as Brian Barth writes. “Historically, lumber and pulp mills processed most of the wood harvested in BC, but Connolly is battling with a newer, rapidly growing global industry: wood pellets. Roughly the size and shape of cigarette filters, wood pellets — also referred to as biomass — have long been a niche fuel for wood-burning stoves, furnaces, and boilers. But demand from overseas electricity plants, which can switch from burning coal to burning pellets with relative ease, has driven a dramatic expansion.” Check out FERN’s previous coverage of the wood-pellet problem.
How we lost our sensory connection to food—and how to restore it
The Guardian
“One of the most striking things about eating in the modern world is that we do so much of it as if we were sense-blind. We still have the same basic physiognomy as our hunter-gatherer ancestors, yet much of the time, we switch off our senses when choosing what to eat,” writes Bee Wilson. “Our noses can distinguish fresh milk from sour milk, and yet we prefer to look at the use-by date rather than sniffing. Senses, wrote the late anthropologist Jack Goody, are ‘our windows on the world’ — the main tools through which humans acquire information about our environments. Senses are instruments of survival as well as pleasure. But today, we have relinquished many of the functions of our own senses to the modern food industry – which suits that industry just fine. It suits us less well, judging by the current epidemic of diet-related ill health.”
A global boom in fencing, another threat to biodiversity
Yale Environment 360
“From the U.S. West to Mongolia, fences are going up rapidly as border barriers and livestock farming increase,” writes Jim Robbins. “Now, a growing number of studies are showing that the impact of these fences, from impeding wildlife migrations to increasing the genetic isolation of threatened species. Until recently, the study of fences and their role in conservation biology has been scattershot … But that is changing. Recent research shows that these impacts extend far beyond blocking animal migration routes and include furthering disease transmission by concentration, altering the hunting practices of predators, and impeding access to key areas of water and forage.”
‘I do not eat’: The consequences of refusal.
Granta
“I loathed the sour sting and slimy texture of her Gormeh Sabzi, courtesy of the dried limes she was always heavy-handed in using. I would not eat, and my mother forbade me from leaving the table until I did. Battle lines were drawn. As the food dried into clumps it acquired a sickly sheen. Time took on a jellied stillness, and darkness began shading over the garden I’d been staring out at,” writes Marina Benjamin. “My mother sighed heavily as she paced between the kitchen and breakfast room, wrestling with her own impatience. I remember feeling rather pleased with myself. My refusal, it seemed, was king … I didn’t see the next move coming. On impulse … my mother strode towards the table, grabbed the plate of food and proceeded to grind cold meat and sticky rice into my face. I believe she enjoyed doing this. Or enjoyed the release it offered, since we were both of us actors in a stultifying script.”
Looking for the Tesla of trees
Wired
“Of all the potential fixes for the climate crisis, none has captured hearts and minds quite like tree planting,” writes Matt Reynolds. “But no climate fix is ever that simple. Multiple studies have found that tree-planting campaigns don’t always deliver the benefits they promise…Other scientists point to a different problem with mass tree-planting efforts: the trees themselves. What if existing trees just aren’t good enough at storing carbon? If scientists could find a way to increase trees’ carbon-sucking potential, we’d be unlocking more cost-effective carbon capture with every tree planted. A better tree could be what we’ve been waiting for. We just have to make it.”