If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/16/murder-offsets/#pulped-and-papered

2/ 

 @b92dcc07 I have had a physically crushing response to this thread. How awful to have this legacy.  Sigh. 

 @b92dcc07 
☝️
"Black spruces are made to burn, filled with flammable sap and equipped with resin-filled cones that rely on fire, only opening and dropping seeds when they're heated. They're so flammable that firefighters call them "gas on a stick."

Planting neat rows of black spruces was great for the logging industry: the even spacing guaranteed that when the trees matured, they could be easily reaped, with ample space between each near-identical tree for massive shears to operate."  1/2 

 @b92dcc07 Something interesting about that — in 1989 I was in Earth First! in Ottawa and we complained a lot, to no avail, about the risks of tree-planting. We were trying to protect old-growth forest in part because the replacements were so obviously not the same. 

It's sad that it took another 34 years for this message to make it even to this level of public awareness. 

 @b92dcc07 I always enjoy Cory's writing, but I don't think the way he's written about black spruce is entirely accurate.

I'm a restoration ecologist with no first hand experience in this particular ecosystem, but here's a bit of what I've read matched with experience in other forest restoration projects.

"Black spruce dominates most spruce-fir ecosystems of boreal North America."

Basically, it's exactly what you should be planting in these areas after logging. 

https://www.fs.usda.gov/database/feis/plants/tree/picmar/all.html

https://cdn.masto.host/ecoevosocial/media_attachments/files/111/079/159/378/096/124/original/40b8c05a3be5bc6e.jpg