Save What You Love with Mark Titus

Seth is co-author of A Forest of Your Own: The Pacific Northwest Handbook of Ecological Forestry and Executive Director of  Northwest Natural Resource Group or NNRG. Seth has spent the last 25 years as a practitioner in West Coast forests and watersheds, and as a writer, telling the stories of people’s relationships with the rest of the natural world. His roots are in northern California, where he directed the Wild and Working Lands program for the Mattole Restoration Council, collaborating with private landowners in realms that included light-touch timber harvest, fire hazard reduction, and invasive species control. He came to the Northwest in 2013 in search of steadier precipitation. He holds an A.B. in Energy Studies from Stanford University and an M.S. in Energy and Resources from the University of California at Berkeley. Seth’s favorite thing to do in the forest is to forage for delectable mushrooms.

In this episode, Mark and Seth discuss Seth’s work in sustainable forestry practices here in the PNW and elsewhere. 

For more about NNRG and Seth’s work, check out the links below:

Save What You Love with Mark Titus:⁣
Produced: Emilie Firn
Edited: Patrick Troll⁣
Music: Whiskey Class⁣
Instagram: @savewhatyoulovepodcast
Website: savewhatyoulove.evaswild.com
Support wild salmon at evaswild.com

Creators & Guests

Host
Mark Titus
Mark Titus is the creator of Eva’s Wild and director of the award winning films, The Breach and The Wild. He’s currently working on a third film in his salmon trilogy, The Turn. In early 2021, Mark launched his podcast, Save What You Love, interviewing exceptional people devoting their lives in ways big and small to the protection of things they love. Through his storytelling, Mark Titus carries the message that humanity has an inherent need for wilderness and to fulfill that need we have a calling to protect wild places and wild things.
Guest
Seth Zuckerman
Seth is co-author of A Forest of Your Own: The Pacific Northwest Handbook of Ecological Forestry and Executive Director of Northwest Natural Resource Group for NNRG. Seth has spent the last 25 years as a practitioner in West Coast forests and watersheds, and as a writer, telling the stories of people’s relationships with the rest of the natural world. His roots are in northern California, where he directed the Wild and Working Lands program for the Mattole Restoration Council, collaborating with private landowners in realms that included light-touch timber harvest, fire hazard reduction, and invasive species control. He came to the Northwest in 2013 in search of steadier precipitation. He holds an A.B. in Energy Studies from Stanford University and an M.S. in Energy and Resources from the University of California at Berkeley. Seth’s favorite thing to do in the forest is to forage for delectable mushrooms.

What is Save What You Love with Mark Titus?

Wild salmon give their very lives so that life itself can continue. They are the inspiration for each episode asking change-makers in this world what they are doing to save the things they love most. Join filmmaker, Mark Titus as we connect with extraordinary humans saving what they love through radical compassion and meaningful action. Visit evaswild.com for more information.

00:00:00:04 - 00:00:28:08
Mark Titus
Welcome to the Save What You Love podcast. I'm your host, Mark Titus. Today I welcome Seth Zuckerman. Seth is coauthor of A Forest of Your Own: The Pacific Northwest Handbook of Ecological Forestry, and he's the executive director of Northwest Natural Resource Group, or Kng. Seth has spent the last 25 years as a practitioner in West Coast forests and watersheds, and as a writer, telling the stories of people's relationship with the rest of the natural world.

00:00:28:10 - 00:00:58:07
Mark Titus
His roots are in Northern California, where he directed the Wild and Working Lands program for the Metal Restoration Council, collaborating with private landowners in realms that included light touch, timber harvest, fire hazard reduction and invasive species control. He came to the northwest in 2013, in search of steadier precipitation, which he found, and he holds an AB in Energy Studies from Stanford University and in Mass and Energy and resources from the University of California at Berkeley.

00:00:58:09 - 00:01:24:06
Mark Titus
Seth's favorite thing to do in the forest is to forage for delectable mushrooms. Duh. And we learn this and so much more about this fascinating man and his work, and so much I didn't know about sustainable forestry practices that is revealed all in this wonderful episode. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts and a review.

00:01:24:06 - 00:01:28:20
Mark Titus
It really helps get the word out. Thanks so much and we'll see you down the trail.

00:01:28:22 - 0:02:04:02
Music
How do you save what you love?
When the world is burning down?
How do you save what you love?
When pushes come to shove.
How do you say what you love?
When things are upside down.
How do you say what you love?
When times are getting tough.

00:02:04:04 - 00:02:07:18
Mark Titus
Seth Zuckerman, welcome. Where you come to us from today.

00:02:07:20 - 00:02:10:10
Seth Tuckerman
I'm on Vashon Island in Puget Sound.

00:02:10:12 - 00:02:42:22
Mark Titus
Wonderful. We're neighbors. We're across the across the waters here. And, I go I go over to vacation from time to time. Got wise some time ago about. Instead of waiting in the ferry line, we have a little 18ft runabout boat that we keep at Elliot Bay in the summertime, and I'll go take my hard drives over to my editor, Eric by boat by the, the the Sea Pony Express, as opposed to, you know, wait for all the ferry stuff.

00:02:42:22 - 00:02:45:12
Mark Titus
And I love on. You must love it, too.

00:02:45:14 - 00:02:51:19
Seth Zuckerman
Yeah. It's, really an amazing place. It can be so close to the city and yet have such a rural feel to it.

00:02:51:21 - 00:03:28:00
Mark Titus
It does, it does that it. You get there and you feel like you are a million miles away. And that is. That's a wonderful thing. I am so excited to talk to you today. This is, the work that you do is something that we haven't spent a lot of time on this show talking about. And, we're going to get into a lot of the the nuts and bolts and the, fine details of the work you do, but but before we do, I, I'd love to just give you an opportunity to as long and rambling or as concise as you want.

00:03:28:00 - 00:03:38:07
Mark Titus
It doesn't matter. That's the beauty of long format. Tell us your story. Where did you. Where were you born? Where'd you grow up? How did you get into this, this wonderful work that you do?

00:03:38:09 - 00:04:08:22
Seth Zuckerman
Well, I was born in Southern California and as the, as my bio says on the Northwest Natural Resource Groups website, I've been moving north ever since in search of steadier precipitation. And here in Puget Sound I think I found it it, so you know, I spent a good part of my early adulthood in the San Francisco Bay area and then moved north to Humboldt County on the, on California's north coast, where I was working with a watershed restoration group.

00:04:09:00 - 00:04:39:18
Seth Zuckerman
That was part of some of the earliest efforts, led by citizens to, save and restore their, their native salmon runs. And it was there that I really got into working on the topic of forestry. And, then since then, I've moved even farther north now to, to Washington state and, have been working on, forestry issues here now for the last seven years, with our, our group called Ngg.

00:04:39:19 - 00:05:02:19
Mark Titus
Great. And, we're going to, we're going to talk about that and, where it came into being and what it all means. But first, can you give us a snapshot? Look, at where we are right now in 2024, in our human relationship with forests here in the Pacific Northwest.

00:05:02:21 - 00:05:31:22
Seth Zuckerman
I think is a really great question. I think there's been such a trajectory of how that relationship has evolved. You know, even, you know, from indigenous times to, the early settler settlement by your Americans, which really saw the, the forest as first as an impediment to agriculture, and also as just a source of raw materials and, something that you could, you know, seemed at the time, endless.

00:05:31:22 - 00:06:04:19
Seth Zuckerman
And how could you imagine exhausting these huge forests and a tremendous challenge, really? How do you, with oxen and hand saws extract these mammoth trees from the forest, get them to a meal and turn them into something that you can actually use. And you have to, although we have a different set of values today, you have to come to that and to an assessment of of them with, with a great deal of respect for what they were able to accomplish, with, the means at their disposal.

00:06:04:21 - 00:06:49:15
Seth Zuckerman
But over time, you know, we've gotten for, we got better, perhaps too good at extracting, the old growth forests, or the the old growth timber from the forest, to where we started to see some negative consequences to that. And over time, those came to predominate. And in societal considerations, I so first it was I'd say even, you know, people think of the spotted owl, but even before that, I think a lot of the, the early, collateral damage that you saw was to water quality and, early attempts to to get trees out of the forest or timber out of the forest involved splash dams.

00:06:49:15 - 00:07:22:08
Seth Zuckerman
So they would they would dam up, a canyon, get the somehow roll or tumble the logs into the, into the creek, and then back up the water and then open the sluice gates or even dynamite the dam so that whole flush of water would, wash the logs down downstream to where the mill was located. And you can only do that so many times before the the stream banks are denuded of vegetation, and they're not very hospitable to salmon or anything else.

00:07:22:10 - 00:07:50:07
Seth Zuckerman
So but even after the era of the splash dam, building roads was something that people didn't have a great understanding of its impacts. And so those early roads led to muddy a great muddying of the waters and silt and sediment in the streams, which meant for it meant that, there would be more flooding. And of course, that, again, the water was unsuitable for salmon habitat.

00:07:50:09 - 00:08:22:03
Seth Zuckerman
So we started to see these, these implications and these consequences develop over time. And then, through the Endangered Species Act and as, as, through aerial photo interpretation and satellite photos, it became evident that there was a lot less old growth left than people had thought. Or. And so what seemed, what had seemed infinite was now finite and diminishing.

00:08:22:04 - 00:08:49:05
Seth Zuckerman
Rapidly to to the point of extinction. The, there arose a movement to just put the brakes on. And I think you know that. And you can date that back to the, say, the 80s, the 1980s and I think that that sort of displaced the whole idea of, well, what should our relationship to the forest be?

00:08:49:05 - 00:09:32:06
Seth Zuckerman
It was a a kind of reaction. Right? A a swing of the pendulum back to say, hey, we've we've just we have not done right by the forest and we should just take a hands off approach. And I think over time then and, you know, through as it's been, metabolized and digested through the political process, that led to the Northwest Forest plan, which set aside most of the remaining old growth forests on public land as habitat for the spotted owl, which was used as a as a lever to, to halt old growth logging in on public lands.

00:09:32:08 - 00:10:01:21
Seth Zuckerman
And then that has, you know, that's that has really set the tone for the last 30 years of how forests have been managed in the Pacific Northwest. At the same time, there's another development that's happened in parallel on private lands, where most of the land owned by the timber industry used to be owned by vertically integrated companies that own everything, you know, sometimes all the way from the forest to the lumber yard.

00:10:01:23 - 00:10:28:13
Seth Zuckerman
Right. And so, they had although they certainly were don't get me wrong, they were that they were working towards a profit motive, but they had the, incentives to manage those forests for some kind of long term return to make sure that there was for there was timber for their mills, and they had a longer term attachment to the areas where they operated.

00:10:28:15 - 00:10:52:01
Seth Zuckerman
Then they, you know, part of what happened is they became multinationals. But the second part of what happened is that they the tax laws changed and it became more advantageous to sell their timberlands to investment companies. And so now the vast majority of industrial timberlands in the Pacific Northwest are owned by, what are called REIT's real estate investment trusts.

00:10:52:03 - 00:11:15:18
Seth Zuckerman
And, so it's part of the portfolio of a pension fund or an insurance company. And as a result, then, they're just looking at it purely from the standpoint of the bottom line and purely to meet some sort of hurdle rate of what's the minimum rate of return that they hope to realize for their investors and, and, shareholders.

00:11:15:20 - 00:11:45:01
Seth Zuckerman
So that's, that's changed the, the way forests are managed and reduce the length of time that on these private timberlands that, forests are grown for. They're grown now for 35 or 40 years till the first time they can be cut to realize a profit. And I'd say within the last ten years, though, things have started to, to swing.

00:11:45:01 - 00:12:10:08
Seth Zuckerman
The pendulum is started to swing back. And we've come to realize that entirely, that on public lands, taking people entirely out of the equation is a bad idea. That on a lot of the forest land, with the exception, perhaps, of the last few roadless areas, there's, there's room for human, stewardship of these lands there then.

00:12:10:08 - 00:12:34:15
Seth Zuckerman
And, you know, they have been stewarded with care since the first peoples arrived here. And that and the forest is now missing that careful, thoughtful connection. And just saying people get out is not a sufficient answer to the question of how do we manage our forests?

00:12:34:17 - 00:12:59:10
Mark Titus
I hear this, through my friend Oak Rankin with Glacier Peak Institute up in Darrington, frequently. And, this leads us beautifully into, your work and and nji and, can you tell us what what is in our energy? What does it stand for and how did it come into being?

00:12:59:12 - 00:13:30:19
Seth Zuckerman
Well, Northwest Natural Resource Group, and I apologize that our acronym is, is not very pronounceable, but it predates my involvement with the organization. We were founded actually as the Olympic Peninsula Foundation in Port Townsend, as during the time of the Northwest Forest plan to, develop, a jobs in the woods program for loggers who were displaced by the end of the the, cessation of logging.

00:13:30:19 - 00:13:58:21
Seth Zuckerman
It was caused by the spotted owl listing. And but after a few years, the the original impetus for that had kind of run its course among the people who had founded the organization. And there were a couple new people there who thought, you know, we should really start talking about how forests ought to be managed. And so, with the permission of the founders, they took it over and renamed it Northwest Natural Resource Group.

00:13:58:23 - 00:14:44:05
Seth Zuckerman
And, I think that name North, that or that phrase Natural resource was met as a nod to this idea that, you know, we're we may have concerns about the environment, but we still recognize that forests are a resource that provides, important raw materials in our society, more beneficially than if we were mining for steel or, you know, turning limestone into cement and, and building buildings out of concrete with all the, the climate implications that that has because so much carbon dioxide is, is generated in and released into the atmosphere through the production of cement.

00:14:44:07 - 00:15:11:11
Seth Zuckerman
So that was that was the original inspiration. And they said about through the mechanism of what was then the new idea of forest certification to, identify forestry, forests that were being managed in a way that met those stewardship standards and certifying them through, the Forest Stewardship Council. Those were our roots back in the late 1990s.

00:15:11:12 - 00:15:28:20
Seth Zuckerman
We've come a long way since then, recognizing that certification is just one of many tools that, can help, improve the management of private forests, I should say we focus, primarily on non-industrial private forest lands.

00:15:28:20 - 00:15:30:05
Mark Titus
I see, I see.

00:15:30:05 - 00:16:03:01
Seth Zuckerman
So, you know, we work with, family forests, churches, youth camps, municipalities, a couple of Indian tribes, all of whom are managing the forest not just for, an economic return, as some might wish to. So some of those people are really focused on getting that, but also on a lot of other parameters of good stewardship that matter to them because they don't see the the forest purely as a financial asset.

00:16:03:03 - 00:16:14:14
Mark Titus
You use the term ecological forestry. It's it's an intriguing term. And I know there's, there's, a fair amount to that. What what exactly is ecological forestry?

00:16:14:16 - 00:16:43:17
Seth Zuckerman
I'd say that it's forestry that takes a, holistic view of the forest and that sees the forest not just through one, through the lens of a single objective, like making money or like protecting a single species, but rather sees the forest as part of an ecosystem and, tries to manage in a way that will increase the stability, harmony, beauty of that ecosystem.

00:16:43:19 - 00:17:01:10
Mark Titus
That's a great, great answer. So you mentioned FSC for Forest Stewardship Council. What does it mean when a forestry practice is FSC certified, and why would somebody want to get FSC certified?

00:17:01:12 - 00:17:32:15
Seth Zuckerman
I'd say there's also the Forest Stewardship Council was founded in the mid 90s, and it's what's unique about it is it wasn't founded simply by the industry, but rather by a coalition of three different interest groups. The economic chamber. Well, they're organized into three chambers now, but there were people with an economic interest in the forest, who were foresters, mill owners, forest owners and so forth.

00:17:32:15 - 00:18:12:02
Seth Zuckerman
Lumber yards. It was there were environmental activists, and so they're organized in the environmental chamber. And then there is then the third chamber is the social chamber. So, recognizing that in many communities, forest play, really significant role in the well-being of those communities, be it supporting the the long term economic sustainability of that area or also, particularly and for indigenous peoples in supporting the the lifeways that they've practiced for thousands of years.

00:18:12:04 - 00:18:44:11
Seth Zuckerman
So tribes, from, you know, everywhere from the Amazon to high tech y have been involved in, in the, the social chamber, as well as trade unions also, you know, key constituency people who've who are affected by and depend on the forest. You asked why might someone get FSC certified? Exactly. I so I'd say right now there's two reasons.

00:18:44:13 - 00:19:17:15
Seth Zuckerman
Or how do you become FSC certified first? Yeah. So those three chambers and their representatives work together to set, a number of indicators, that are, that lie at the heart of FSC certification. And, those so those principles, ten principles are then reduced to indicators. How do you know if someone is is practicing forestry that is in accordance with these principles?

00:19:17:17 - 00:19:45:00
Seth Zuckerman
And then there are auditors who fanned out, to look at, at the forests that, people would love to, would like to have certified. There are auditors who make sure that, a secondary manufacturer who's selling their wood as certified is, in fact, is selling only the FSC wood that they've made out of FSC logs or FSC two by fours or plywood.

00:19:45:02 - 00:20:22:21
Seth Zuckerman
So there's a whole chain of custody element to it. And, so these standards over time, a certain amount, you know, quite a large administrative structure has accreted around these standards. They've been revised a few times. Each country has its own particular implementation of these standards. And within the United States, there's, you know, ten or so different regions that each have their own regionally adapted indicators that that show whether, say, whether this is FSC or not.

00:20:22:23 - 00:20:45:05
Seth Zuckerman
The reasons that people become FSC certified right now really fall into two categories. One is, they want to, you know, they're hoping to people who hope to gain market share by doing that, that there are people who want wood that's that comes from from good forest practices, and they want to use that in their projects. And so this is a way that they might be able to access those markets.

00:20:45:07 - 00:21:07:03
Seth Zuckerman
But the second reason is social license. We find that a lot of the people who come to Ndg and want to participate in the group certificate that we have under the the auspices of the FSC certification system, they want the the they want some third party to attest to the fact that, yes, they're doing right by the forest.

00:21:07:05 - 00:21:38:10
Seth Zuckerman
And so whether it's a small forestry family forestry company in, southwest Washington, or it's the city of Seattle, which manages the Cedar River watershed at 90,000 acres of, of land that is, primarily forested and all certified, through our group certificate to the standards of FSC. It helps them achieve this, this third party, verification that they're doing well.

00:21:38:15 - 00:21:55:13
Seth Zuckerman
And, you know, I'd say they also benefit from the regular annual interaction with our forestry staff. That might bring them new perspectives that they might consider helpful as they, chart the management of their land into the future.

00:21:55:15 - 00:22:22:15
Mark Titus
Great. That's great. So it's I imagine it's a fairly high bar to clear and that folks that are doing this are certainly committed, on a generational level. You mentioned a little bit sort of a of the, the archetypes of folks that are involved in getting FSC certified. Can you, can you give me a little bit further on that?

00:22:22:16 - 00:22:41:06
Mark Titus
You know, certainly don't need to name individual clients, but like the type of folks that are, primarily getting FSC certified and is everybody that's working with you in that bucket, as are everybody getting FSC certified or does it kind of run the gamut?

00:22:41:08 - 00:23:09:13
Seth Zuckerman
So not all of us are the people who we work with choose to get FSC certified. And that's okay. You know, for some it might be a question of cost. For others, it might be a question of the burden of annual reporting, which we minimize by the fact that they work through us as a group, but they still have to, there's there's still a certain amount of, of annual paperwork to do, reporting on their, their harvests and showing us their management plans and so forth.

00:23:09:15 - 00:23:47:03
Seth Zuckerman
Yep. And so I'd say the there are some people who, you know, you can go to, you can pass forests, that are owned. And, you know, someone might have the American tree farm, sign. And so a lot of people, you know, want a variety of different attestations. So it's not uncommon for people who are in our system to also be certified through the American tree farm system, which is run by, Forest Foundation.

00:23:47:05 - 00:24:21:06
Seth Zuckerman
And has, is more focused just on the sustainability of, of timber harvest. Because of its international roots, the FSC certification standards include a lot of provisions about the fair treatment of labor, respect for indigenous rights, questions about how you use herbicides and which herbicides you do and do not use in, controlling the vegetation, competing vegetation on your land, that sort of thing.

00:24:21:08 - 00:24:49:14
Seth Zuckerman
I think, you know, as with any system, you know, FSC is not a perfect system, right? And, sure, there there's a variety of different I feel like all the people who are in our group certificate are earnest and sincere participants in the system. But you always run the risk when there's a profit motive.

00:24:49:14 - 00:25:22:17
Seth Zuckerman
And when it it can gain you market share. That, the system, you know, may not everything may, may be the, the highest and best expression of the ten principles of sustainability that FSC adopted and, and is founded upon. So that's, you know, that's, a challenge for any organization as it, as it expands and FSC has, you know, hundreds of millions of acres under certification across the world.

00:25:22:17 - 00:25:34:02
Seth Zuckerman
And that's know you're definitely always going to be able to find, people who don't quite live up to the spirit of FSC. Sure. Among those.

00:25:34:04 - 00:26:03:12
Mark Titus
Sure make sense. Like, like any ethos, there's going to be outliers, of course. On the, the, the profit motive side of things. Speaking of Doe, again, I'm keenly curious, and I'm sure our listeners are as well. On the other side, on the output side of this, where would people find FSC certified lumber, timber and what kind of generally, generally.

00:26:03:12 - 00:26:22:16
Mark Titus
I know this varies all the time. Probably, but what kind of, extra cost is associated with making that decision to purchase ethically from FSC suppliers is, I mean, just a general ballpark, like, give us the sense of the marketplace.

00:26:22:17 - 00:27:00:17
Seth Zuckerman
So at this point, for paper products, a lot of this and a lot of pressure on, early requests by consumers and, and consumer advocate organizations, breakfast certification. And so a lot of, paper products are FSC certified. When it comes to solid wood, it can be a little bit trickier to find that there's specialized suppliers like Sustainable Northwest Wood in Portland, which, you know, they specializes in, in sourcing that kind of wood from people.

00:27:00:19 - 00:27:20:17
Seth Zuckerman
It and there can be a price premium, I don't know, 10%, maybe, 20%. It varies from product to product. In some cases, there might not be any price premium. I know in California there's some, some kinds of lumber. Maybe redwood in Home Depot is only FSC certified.

00:27:20:19 - 00:27:21:17
Mark Titus
Yeah.

00:27:21:19 - 00:28:09:08
Seth Zuckerman
So in effect, there's no price premium at all. I would say to that, you know, people who are interested in sort of drilling down into this FSC maintains a database. If you go to the FSC, U.S. website, you can find a wood sourcing tool that if you put in the kind of wood that you're looking for, you know, the kind of product, be it plywood or to buy for is tropical or domestic, and, and your location, and whether you're, just a retailer, sorry, whether you're a retail customer, a lumber yard or an architectural or construction professional who might be ordering, you know, truckloads, it will can

00:28:09:08 - 00:28:15:20
Seth Zuckerman
it will list off the suppliers who would be able to serve you with that product. FSC certified.

00:28:15:21 - 00:28:39:20
Mark Titus
Got it. Well, this is so helpful. And and it's very, very interesting to me, and I'm sure it is to our listeners. And you have a book, a very beautiful and helpful book. And it's called A Forest of Your Own. And how and why did that book come into being?

00:28:39:22 - 00:29:18:04
Seth Zuckerman
Well, you know, we were we've been thinking, and this is during the pandemic, about how we could reach more people than our staff of ten can reach with the workshops that we can put on during a given year. And, we just we woke up one day with the inspiration that, we could maybe that that a book could maybe carry this idea to a wider array of people, and people that, you know, we could encounter through the medium of bookstores, talks, Amazon, podcasts.

00:29:18:06 - 00:29:47:11
Seth Zuckerman
We're inspired by, an organic gardening book from, I don't know, the 70s or 80s, How to Grow More Vegetables. Which was written by John Jevons, and it was one of the early Bibles of organic gardening. And it it really told people both the why to and how to think of, of organic gardening and inspired people to not just first to think, wow, that would be a really cool thing to do.

00:29:47:13 - 00:30:12:11
Seth Zuckerman
And second, oh, I actually really could do that. So it'd be an empowering book for people. And we sort of my, my colleague Kirk Hansen and I, who's the director of forestry at and in our, we incubated this idea for a little while, and then we brought it to a local publisher, Mountaineers Books, which, was based right here in Seattle.

00:30:12:13 - 00:30:42:15
Seth Zuckerman
And, had the good fortune, you know, the our seed landed in a good, good seed bed, and connected with, their acquisitions editor and Lee white, and we're able to, you know, then develop the, the whole the idea into a fully fleshed out proposal and talk about how it might, how it might land for people out there in the, in, in the reading public.

00:30:42:16 - 00:31:12:14
Seth Zuckerman
So it has a combination of, of both the philosophy of what is ecological forestry, why might you want to practice it instead of some other kind of forestry? If you were inspired to do that, how could you find a little piece of ground of your own where you could do this? And then, you know, what are the on the very practical level, what are the steps that you'd have to go through to make this possible?

00:31:12:16 - 00:31:24:11
Seth Zuckerman
So that we just we hope that it'll be a resource for, for people to inspire them to to go off and try this at home or in their, in their own backyards and, and backwoods.

00:31:24:13 - 00:32:04:20
Mark Titus
Beautiful. As you're speaking, I'm, I'm visualizing folks who are current landowners and forestry, purveyors and, and then I'm thinking about those, those people that are dreaming of that, like you mentioned. Do you have ideas? Or I should say examples of folks that have been implementing these types of practices that you ascribe to and feel like they are thriving because of this, both like as a family or as an organization or as a part of a bigger community.

00:32:04:21 - 00:32:15:23
Mark Titus
What have been some of the the examples that you've seen over time that have allowed you to say, see, this is this is why we do this. This is why this works.

00:32:16:01 - 00:33:01:17
Seth Zuckerman
Well, there's a whole spectrum of people who connect with the forest in this way. We profiled one couple in the book, who were living outside of Salt Lake City and were looking for a place to land and and put down roots and get, you know, live more rurally. And, this is and they, they've gotten their van and toured around the West and, wound up in the Port Angeles area on the Olympic Peninsula and bought themselves five acres of, of forest land, and, that was, that was just, you know, and now they've, you know, it started to establish a little homestead there and, you know, developed

00:33:01:17 - 00:33:27:03
Seth Zuckerman
the land with a little, you know, first a, kind of a mobile home. And, then they have plans to, to build something a little bit more permanent. That mentality, they've gotten their water and their solar panels and and so on, and, and they are now taking classes in woodworking, nearby for towns and looking to create products from their, from the forest on their own land.

00:33:27:05 - 00:33:54:09
Seth Zuckerman
So that's kind of at the very smallest scale where people would would, you know, in effect, make some of their livelihood off of the, off of the, the five acres that they live on. Then I would say there's also people who will come into land, that was left to them by their parents or, that's been in the family for a bit.

00:33:54:09 - 00:34:22:04
Seth Zuckerman
They're trying to figure, you know, find their way. Maybe chart a slightly different direction, than the previous generation, bringing to bear, you know, new perspectives on on what they would want from the land. We've worked with a homeowner's association, which, you know, had had and sort of an older, there's kind of a very standard forestry approach.

00:34:22:06 - 00:35:08:05
Seth Zuckerman
And then, their forester passed away, new people moved into the community. They said, why are we clear cutting these 15 acre strips every few years? And they asked us to help them with a reevaluation of what are the other ways, other approaches we could take, in effect, to help reconcile the, the just business as usual with the no cut, schools of thought, which I think if you think about it, that's kind of where Northwest Natural Resource Group and Ecological Forestry sits is in between those two schools of thought that there's a room for for human stewardship of the forest.

00:35:08:05 - 00:35:31:00
Seth Zuckerman
It can yield products. But you don't put the extraction of products first. I like to say that the, the question that you want to ask isn't, what can I take from the forest with this entry or with this set of activities, but rather, what kind of forest will I leave behind when I'm done with this particular management action?

00:35:31:02 - 00:35:54:14
Seth Zuckerman
And if you. But if you flip it around that way, I think the forest will benefit on the in the long term, and then so will you, because you'll be stewarding an amazing forest and there'll be enough, there for you to, to, make use of and, that will support whatever human needs you have as well.

00:35:54:15 - 00:36:06:20
Seth Zuckerman
That's awesome. We're really lucky here in the Pacific Northwest because the forests are so rich and productive. Really, I'm just about unparalleled anywhere in the world.

00:36:06:22 - 00:36:33:15
Mark Titus
It's, it's sometimes something that we forget, and it's right in front of our. It's right there. It's right here in the wide open. We get to see it. We get to take part in it.

00:36:33:17 - 00:37:02:14
Mark Titus
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00:37:02:16 - 00:37:28:01
Mark Titus
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00:37:28:03 - 00:37:53:12
Mark Titus
Visit Evaswild.com to join our growing community doing good by eating right. That's "save" spelled backwards, wild.com and eat wild to save wild. Now back to the show. What? What are some of the more surprising things landowners learn when they consult with you about what to do with their land and how to do it? What have you observed over over time?

00:37:53:14 - 00:38:33:18
Seth Zuckerman
Well, I'll speak to something that was really surprising to me in the course of researching this book. And I, my coauthor, Kirk and I, we each wrote different chapters, and I wrote the chapter on wildfire. And to me, it it had to recapitulate some of what I had learned as, writer and had to unlearn when I moved here from California, because in California, the there's a long dry season, the ability of a forest fire to spread, depends a lot on the availability of fuel.

00:38:33:20 - 00:39:01:06
Seth Zuckerman
And so if you can, reduce the amount of fuel and, still then it could be possible for a fire to come through on a sort of, damaging kind of basis. This is what this is a what fire ecologists call a low severity, high frequency fire regime. So the fire can happen often. But if the,

00:39:01:08 - 00:39:28:13
Seth Zuckerman
But if conditions are right, it will burn with low severity. Got it. And this is true not just in California. It's true in southwest Oregon. It's true in eastern Washington. Anywhere where, the the fire is fuel can be fuel limited. Right. And, out here in western Washington, we're in the opposite situation. I mean, you couldn't try to reduce the amount of fuel because it would just grow back so fast.

00:39:28:13 - 00:39:58:11
Seth Zuckerman
It would be a fool's errand to try to reduce the amount of biomass, because between the the branches that the trees are dropping in the soil all and salmonberry. This growing up, there would be no shortage of fuel for fire. Instead, what's what's in limited supply is the is the conditions when a forest fire can ignite. And so understanding what the and so out here in western Washington, we live in a high intensity low frequency fire regime.

00:39:58:12 - 00:39:59:11
Seth Zuckerman
The opposite.

00:39:59:13 - 00:39:59:20
Mark Titus
Yes.

00:40:00:00 - 00:40:27:23
Seth Zuckerman
These drier areas. And so we it is natural in, say on the western slopes of the Cascades for big fires to come through and for them to burn, you know, tens, even hundreds of thousands of acres. But that doesn't happen very often. And, it would, and, you know, if you're, if you live in and among the forest, you don't want it to happen this year.

00:40:28:01 - 00:40:57:02
Seth Zuckerman
So, where there you can say we had policy of fire suppression that was bad, and that that, messed up the fire ecology here. It's it's not such a, an unsound choice, especially given the fact that, we've reduced the amount of older forests, so much so over we now are in a, in a circumstance where there's so much less older forest than there traditionally has been.

00:40:57:02 - 00:41:13:05
Seth Zuckerman
If we want to restore more of that, you know, increase that fraction of older forest, we don't want a fire coming through and setting us back to zero to the ceiling stage. We want to allow the forest to grow back. That, this is all making sense.

00:41:13:05 - 00:41:23:12
Mark Titus
Oh, man. Totally. I'm just hanging on your every word. It makes perfect sense. And so we're talking about fire suppression on the west side. What? What does that look like?

00:41:23:14 - 00:41:45:19
Seth Zuckerman
Well, I'd say you want to really think of right around buildings. Right around roads. It can make sense, to, you know, you want to be able to have a fire engine to be able to get in safely. If a fire starts, you want to be able to put it out relatively soon. So you need that kind of fire access.

00:41:45:21 - 00:41:57:02
Seth Zuckerman
And, what allows a fire to get really big here on the, on the west side is specific weather conditions where there's hot, dry winds coming out of the east.

00:41:57:02 - 00:41:58:16
Mark Titus
Right.

00:41:58:18 - 00:42:23:11
Seth Zuckerman
Now, fire can start when those conditions aren't present. But those conditions could, but conditions could change, right. And so 5 or 10 days later, you could be in that sort of situation. So you in order to minimize the chance of a fire like that getting out, you want to be able to get on top of it and suppress the fire, contain it, by, you know, creating a line around it.

00:42:23:11 - 00:42:33:10
Seth Zuckerman
And, keeping it from, from reaching new fuel, so that when the big when, if the, if the weather does change, it doesn't blow up.

00:42:33:12 - 00:42:36:10
Mark Titus
Yes. Perfect sense.

00:42:36:12 - 00:43:01:22
Seth Zuckerman
The other thing I'd say. Yeah. Just to stray from the concept of fire, I'd say one of the other things that that people take away from, from working with us is this idea, this idea of looking at the forest in a long arc of its development. Right. If you imagine an old, older forest that you you hike through and everyone has an older forest that they, that they like, and that's special to them.

00:43:02:03 - 00:43:34:17
Seth Zuckerman
Those trees are pretty far apart, right? They're 20, 30, 40ft apart. Maybe there's, 50 trees to the acre, 80 trees to the acre. When a forest is is young and just getting started, there's a whole carpet of seedlings, right. The seedlings might be five, six. And those ten feet apart, there's hundreds of trees break. So somewhere along the way, in that trajectory from, of, of their development, there get to be fewer and fewer trees.

00:43:34:19 - 00:44:00:17
Seth Zuckerman
And so it's that, mortality that that natural mortality of trees that we're capturing in effect through the intermediate harvests of ecological forestry. And you can think of those intermediate harvests as making room for bigger trees. If you go walking through forest and you look up in the canopy and that's really, you know, people just mostly look right at eye level, right?

00:44:00:17 - 00:44:21:23
Seth Zuckerman
And you see the trunks. But, foresters look more at the soil and the understory and up at the canopy and the crowns of the trees. And if you see that, you know of a of a tree, trees, entire height, but just a tiny bit at the top is is all that's green. That's a sign that the trees have gotten too crowded.

00:44:22:01 - 00:44:47:04
Seth Zuckerman
Right. And that there's not enough light for the trees to, to continue to thrive at that density. And so that that's a sign that it might be time as that, as that what's called the live crown percentage of the tree diminishes, that you can take out a few trees to make room to grow larger trees. For the rest of the trees to grow larger.

00:44:47:06 - 00:45:04:14
Mark Titus
Great. That's a great example. Super. I'm curious what what is your approach? In energy, to working with the original stewards of this land, with the indigenous folks who have been here since time immemorial?

00:45:04:16 - 00:45:53:08
Seth Zuckerman
Well, we certainly we want to, and try to, whenever possible, to learn from the traditional ecological knowledge or indigenous knowledge, as it's sometimes called, which is a blend of the traditional and the science based learnings that, that have, that people have derived. We have the honor of working with one tribe at the south end of Hood Canal, the Skokomish Tribe, as their forest managers, and helping them realize their objectives on the 2000 or slightly over 2000 acres of forest land that they have, and, you know, we definitely have a lot of and have had, you know, have had conversations with other indigenous forest owners.

00:45:53:10 - 00:46:24:03
Seth Zuckerman
We work with the, the Squali Community Forest, which right now is a, it's that's on the west side of, of Mount Rainier. And that's a collaboration between the Nisqually Indian Tribe and the Miskelly Land Trust, a nonprofit organization. And between them, they own about 5000 acres of land that they've bought from industrial forest owners and which they are in the process of, of restoring.

00:46:24:05 - 00:46:35:17
Seth Zuckerman
And so they're two we're, we're working with them and trying to, to realize their objectives. That's great. Yeah.

00:46:35:19 - 00:47:01:08
Mark Titus
That's fantastic. And, I it feels like a trend. That is a positive trend. Indigenous land back and certainly creating partnerships and more frictionless ways to optimize those, those relationships seems like a net win for everybody.

00:47:01:10 - 00:47:26:06
Seth Zuckerman
Yeah. Yeah. I think that, you know, being place based is a, a great place to start approaching ecological and forestry for anyone. And there's no, there are no entities that are more place based. Exactly. Indigenous peoples. Exactly.

00:47:26:08 - 00:47:55:02
Mark Titus
You've had boots on the ground in California as, as, a salmon restoration advocate. And now in here in the Pacific Northwest in, in forestry, those two things are directly connected, as we know. I just love to hear you riff on it. What do you know about that special connection between salmon and trees? It's one of my favorite things to talk about.

00:47:55:04 - 00:48:40:15
Seth Zuckerman
Well, I sort of came into my relationship with the, with California's north coast through this lens of watershed restoration, in order to benefit the salmon, runs runs of Chinook and coho salmon as well as steelhead trout, that frequented the this the atoll river, on the edge of the Lost Coast. And, you know, it was a time in the, you know, late 80s, 90s and aughts when, what was really kind of or, friend of mine were the impacts of the post-World War Two logging boom.

00:48:40:17 - 00:49:21:14
Seth Zuckerman
And unlike this area in western Washington, where logging has been a big factor for one and a half centuries, probably, in that area, it had been so remote. And the steeps, the slopes have been so steep that it wasn't until the bulldozer arrived, after World War Two, that logging became feasible, but in very short order, in order to satisfy the housing boom, of the postwar era, those forests were just decimated to the point where, you know, 40 years later, there was 90% of them were gone.

00:49:21:16 - 00:49:23:03
Mark Titus
Wow.

00:49:23:05 - 00:49:44:18
Seth Zuckerman
And the consequences to the fish runs, as I was talking about earlier, were terrible, right? I mean, the the roads were a lot of roads were poorly built. Stream crossings were put in, you know, so if road crosses a stream, you have to make a flat spot across this, this V-shaped area where this where the stream channel is.

00:49:44:20 - 00:50:06:19
Seth Zuckerman
But if you just walk away after that, the culvert might plug or, you know, the dirt you've pushed in there, to cross on will just blow out. A bulldozer driver I talked to was describing. Oh, yeah. I remember logging this area here. This stream was only about two cat blades wide. I mean, you know, that's it.

00:50:06:19 - 00:50:31:19
Seth Zuckerman
We're driving up and down the stream channel to haul logs. And that's how, you know, and so that was yikes. Was it was bad for flooding in the, the, the valley bottom. And it was also terrible for the salmon runs, which declined from and had been a major source of protein for people locally. Right. Until that, until the salmon started to, to disappear.

00:50:31:21 - 00:50:58:01
Seth Zuckerman
And so really early on, I was thinking a lot about, you know, all the things, all the ways in which forests are good for fish, right? And, you know, and so protecting a riparian buffer. Right. A, strip of trees alongside the stream that provides shade, it protects their habitat. It keeps the banks more stable. Stuff drops off the trees, insects, leaves and so on.

00:50:58:01 - 00:51:34:03
Seth Zuckerman
That feeds the food chain that the the salmon depend on. And I was asking myself at one point, well, okay, we know what. And this is a, this is maybe a little bit teleological that I asked myself, okay, we know what what forests do for fish, what a fish do for forests. Yeah. And, it turns out, and researchers up in Alaska have confirmed this through the study of different isotopes of nitrogen, in that when the fish leaves the stream, they're tiny, right.

00:51:34:05 - 00:52:20:10
Seth Zuckerman
And they swim out into the ocean, they fatten up. Over the course of several years, they come back and they die, but they don't just vaporize at that point. They get eaten by, you know, more than 100 different, creatures, species of creature that, that then, distribute those nutrients all over the forest. Right. And so researchers are able to pinpoint and track, through the isotopes of nitrogen, that are different in marine than from terrestrial sources, that in the flesh, in the wood of the trees that grow near the streams that salmon swim up, that there's a substantial amount of marine derived nutrients have made it into those trees, thanks to the

00:52:20:10 - 00:52:24:01
Seth Zuckerman

00:52:24:03 - 00:52:25:16
Mark Titus
It's just beautiful.

00:52:25:22 - 00:52:37:19
Seth Zuckerman
And so to me, it was an illustration of that interconnectedness, that it isn't just the forest doing something for the fish, but the fish also do something for the forest.

00:52:37:21 - 00:53:06:05
Mark Titus
Again, one of my favorite things to geek out on. It just it never gets old. And it it just reinforces that what we were just talking about moments ago, people who have had such a deep, established sense of place and the reciprocity of everything in that place, it's all got to function. Everything in the place has a function, and that's one of the that's one of the special ones, the trees in the salmon and the connectivity between the two forests.

00:53:06:07 - 00:53:19:01
Mark Titus
What do you love to do in forests more than anything else? What's your favorite thing to do when you've got a little time when you're not writing books and and executive directing, an entire organization?

00:53:19:03 - 00:53:44:04
Seth Zuckerman
I, I love to hunt for mushrooms. I have a, you know, a at first you can be a little bit, have to be a little bit wary. Right. But, yeah, because there's so many hundreds, even thousands of species of fungi out there, but I really just focus on two kinds. The kind that will kill you and the kinds that are delicious and won't.

00:53:44:06 - 00:53:47:07
Seth Zuckerman
And so if you stay away from the.

00:53:47:07 - 00:53:48:08
Mark Titus
First anything.

00:53:48:10 - 00:54:09:14
Seth Zuckerman
And, you know, I have a handful of species that that, I love to eat, chanterelles, oyster mushrooms and not to dark. And the drier parts of the region, beliefs, cooking beliefs. And so I, I just, love poking around the forest and seeing what turns up.

00:54:09:16 - 00:54:31:04
Mark Titus
And what, one of these years. I'm just so behind on the curve, and I know it's it's just rare and cherished information that you don't get from people on, their favorite hunts for finding those things. But it's just, I know several friends who are just obsessed with it, and I. I can't wait to join your ranks here.

00:54:31:06 - 00:54:51:14
Mark Titus
One of these, one of these items, well, Seth Zuckerman, coauthor of A Forest of Your Own The Pacific Northwest Handbook of Ecological Forestry and executive director of an Archie. Where can folks find out what you all are doing and how to get the book?

00:54:51:16 - 00:55:22:09
Seth Zuckerman
Well, we do, I probably the easiest thing is to come to our website, and nrg.org, we have a page there, all kinds of resources there for forest owners, prospective forest owners, people who are interested in learning to become loggers. We're running a program, over the next few years to help, people who are interested in, in checking out that profession, see what it's like, how to be an ecological logger.

00:55:22:11 - 00:55:42:16
Seth Zuckerman
And if you're specifically interested in the book and in our Gorgon book will take you to, a variety of reviews, excerpts, offered, you know, different links where you can purchase, the book at the retailer of your choice. And, you know, leave us a comment. Sort of.

00:55:42:16 - 00:56:04:13
Mark Titus
It couldn't be easier. Your site is great, by the way. Super easy to navigate. All the things are there. And before we part ways today, nobody escapes without the bonus round in the bonus round here is. It's a very simple thought exercise on, you know, kind of the current state of being that we're in with climate change.

00:56:04:15 - 00:56:27:02
Mark Titus
We're just imagining here it's not a knocking on wood here. It's not going to happen. But let's just say you, we are experiencing one of those rare occurrences of a West Side fire, and you've only got a few minutes to get everything out of the house. Obviously, you get your loved ones and your critters out first, but if there's only one thing, physical thing you could take with you, what would that thing be?

00:56:27:04 - 00:56:41:12
Seth Zuckerman
Oh, gosh, that's that's a hard one. Probably the.

00:56:41:14 - 00:56:43:20
Seth Zuckerman
Only one thing.

00:56:43:22 - 00:56:45:04
Mark Titus
I know it's brutal.

00:56:45:06 - 00:56:49:06
Seth Zuckerman
It is is.

00:56:49:07 - 00:56:52:18
Seth Zuckerman
Probably a collection of probably our photo albums, you know. Yeah.

00:56:52:20 - 00:57:16:00
Mark Titus
Yeah, yeah, I have, tub of journals that, since I was writing and since I was 16, I think that's the that's the thing I would probably schlep out. But it's a tough one. I mean, you and you and I mean, our friends in North Carolina just experienced experiences. It's it's not it's not out of the realm of reality.

00:57:16:02 - 00:57:33:14
Mark Titus
One variation on this, though, more of a, metaphysical sort of thing. Same thought exercise, but if there's only one trade that you could take that makes, said Seth, what would that one trait you take be?

00:57:33:16 - 00:58:00:00
Seth Zuckerman
Well, I'd have to say curiosity. And, you know, before I was in the forest, I was a journalist. In fact, it's being a journalist and covering the aftermath of forest fires in the Sierra Nevada is what got me originally interested in forests. Cool. And, I just love finding out about stuff, asking people their perspectives, opinions, expertise, and, that that continues to this day.

00:58:00:02 - 00:58:09:03
Mark Titus
Well, Seth Zuckerman, thank you for doing your good, good work for, continuing the theme of this show, Saving what you love. And, we'll see you down the trail.

00:58:09:05 - 00:58:11:08
Seth Zuckerman
That sounds good. Thanks so much for having me. Look.

00:58:11:10 - 00:58:13:07
Mark Titus
You're welcome.

00:58:13:09 - 00:58:44:15
Music
How do you say what you love?
How do you say what you love?
How do you say what you love?
How do you say what you love?

00:58:44:17 - 00:59:08:17
Mark Titus
Thank you for listening to Save What You Love. If you like what you're hearing, you can help keep these conversations coming your way by giving us a rating on whatever platform you're listening from and leaving a comment on Apple Podcasts. It really helps get the word out. Check out photos on our Instagram feed. We're at Save What You Love podcast, and you can get links from today's featured guest in the show notes of this episode.

00:59:08:19 - 00:59:37:15
Mark Titus
Join our growing community by subscribing to our newsletter at evaswild.com, and then clicking on connect in the upper corner. You'll get exclusive offers on wild salmon shipped to your door, and notifications about upcoming guests and more great content on the way. That said, Evaswild.com the word save spelled backwards, wild.com. This episode was produced by Emilie Firn and edited by Patrick Troll.

00:59:37:17 - 00:59:43:13
Mark Titus
Original music was created by Whiskey Class. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you all down the trail.