In Episode 4, we interviewed Dogwoodâs own Marketing Director, Amanda Rodriguez. Amanda is a published author and the director of the award-winning documentary Stories Happen in Forests. Join us as we explore her creative inspirations, the power of story and forests, and the many moving and inspirational interviews she captured for the documentary.
“My goal was to just interview as many different people as possible with different backgrounds and different connections to the forest to really showcase the diversity and the beauty of these various connections that people have, and also hopefully inspire people who watch them to connect with the forest, to be able to see themselves in that connection and remind them of their own connection.”
Amanda is a queer, first-generation Cuban Sicilian American. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, NC. Her short fiction, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry can be found in Germ Magazine, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Mud Season Review, Thoughtful Dog, Rigorous, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Change Seven, Image Out, Cold Creek Review, The Acentos Review, Label Me Latina/o, Lou Lit Review, Scalawag, Indolent Books, NILVX, PANK Magazine, and The Rumpus (coming soon). She is also the first-time filmmaker of the award-winning short documentary Stories Happen in Forests. Find out more about Stories Happen in Forests by visiting www.storieshappeninforests.com.
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Elizabeth Lashay: I am Elizabeth Lashay with SlaytheMic and I am so excited to be with you all today. And I am joined by my cohost…
Kimala Luna: I’m Kimala Luna, and I’m with Dogwood Alliance. And today we have a very special guest. We are joined by Amanda Rodriguez, who is a queer, first-generation Cuban-Sicilian American and the marketing director for the environmental nonprofit that I also work for, Dogwood Alliance, which is based in Asheville, North Carolina. Amanda holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. Her short fiction, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry can be found in Germ Magazine, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Mud Season Review, Thoughtful Dog, Rigorous, Stone Boat Literary Journal, Change Seven, Image Out, Cold Creek Review and several others. She’s also the first-time filmmaker of the award-winning short documentary, Stories Happen in Forests, which you can find out more about at storieshappeninforests.com. But it’s also going to be a lot of what we’re talking about today. So hi, Amanda. Thank you so much for joining us.
Amanda Rodriguez: Hi, thanks for having me. I’m very excited.
Elizabeth Lashay: What a bio.
Kimala Luna: I know. So Amanda, we’re going to talk a lot about Stories Happen in Forests today. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what that’s about and maybe how it started?
Amanda Rodriguez: Sure. So, Stories Happen in Forests is a short documentary that is right now running the Film Festival Circuit, but it started out about three or four years ago where I started doing these sort of short vignettes where I was going out into the forest and meeting with someone and just capturing their story and their connection to the forest. And my goal was to just interview as many different people as possible with different backgrounds and different connections to the forest to really showcase the diversity and the beauty of these various connections that people have, and also hopefully inspire and people who watch them a connection to the forest, to be able to see themselves in that connection and remind them of their connection. Because I know that, especially as a nonprofit environmental organization, a lot of folks can get tired of hearing stats. That forests are good for the air, forests are good for water. They’re good for carbon sequestration, but they’re also really important to humanity as part of our legacy and our connection to the earth and our stories. And so once I’d done several of these, I decided to go ahead and put them together into a longer form, 30-minute documentary so that people could see them all together instead of just one-off and then submit them to festivals so that they could reach more people. And it’s very exciting to see how well they’ve been received. They’ve been accepted at a lot of the festivals, and they even won an award at one of them. So, I’m very happy that so many people are really feeling that beautiful connection that I feel when I watch them.
Elizabeth Lashay: What age did you really feel the connection to nature, to the forest, to the outside?
Amanda Rodriguez: Well, I am actually, by birth, an ocean baby. So I’m from Florida originally and I was in love with the beach and in love with the ocean, just always wanted to be outside in the sunshine. And it wasn’t until later when I was a little bit older, maybe in, I think it was in fourth grade, I don’t know how old that was, but we moved to West Virginia and it was a much more rural area. Mountains became a thing and it’s sort of awakened my senses to an entirely different ecosystem and an entirely different way of connecting with the natural world.
Kimala Luna: Do you remember your first moment of awe in the forest since you were older?
Amanda Rodriguez: I think so. I have not honestly, I’ve not gone on a lot of camping trips, but I remember we went on one as a family when I was probably around fourth grade, we went camping and it rained and we all got sick, but I do remember just being out in the woods and seeing a deer.
Amanda Rodriguez: And that was the first time I’d seen an animal like that before, like a wild animal that wasn’t a fish or a squirrel. And I was just so captivated by it, to be in this like a magical place where your imagination can run wild because, I guess as a creative young person and a writer, it’s really all about connecting to that imagination and forests are an endless wonderland of imagination.
Elizabeth Lashay: So whenever you are creating now and trying to find inspiration, is there a place where you like to go or draw from?
Amanda Rodriguez: I guess I don’t have a particular place. And it’s also hard to think about in quarantine. I know that I am very connected to my backyard and I feel very lucky and privileged to have a backyard and access to trees and green space and to just sort of be out there and get that sort of renewal. And I don’t know, I don’t know if there’s a particular place, but I am always, I think inspired when I’m out in nature on a hike, say. It sort of opens my senses to make connections in a different way like seeing shapes in the clouds or seeing a rock formation and imagining what it could be, if you took it on a supernatural bench, say. So just sort of those little things out in nature is really kind of what inspires me.
Kimala Luna: I want to jump forward from your initial discovery of nature to the first time that you recognized… because you brought this up when you said the privilege of your backyard and this comes up a lot in our work about access to nature and how that’s a privilege that we take for granted pretty often. So when was the first time that you recognized that divide and then really owned the space of this is something we need to fight for?
Amanda Rodriguez: Well, I guess having grown up in more urban environments as a small child and being introduced to the natural world as a nine or 10-year-old. I probably intuited that there’s definitely a difference between what I and other people had access to in a city or in a suburb than in a more rural setting.
Amanda Rodriguez: Certainly not anything very nuanced, but I guess it probably happened where I fully understood the difference in accessibility to outdoor spaces When I started doing the stories happen in forest. Just based on interviews with folks I’ve definitely had several BIPOC storytellers and several of them have told stories about how their first experience of nature wasn’t until adulthood and that there’s a sense of a state of a stigma around it, or fear, or just literally a lack of access because green spaces are not available to certain communities. I think that’s also a part of the mission of stories happen in forests is to kind of help expose that sort of inequity and I guess, encourage a more equitable access to the forest because it shouldn’t belong to any one of us. And I think you had Dr. Thomas RaShad easily on your episode one who was one of my interviewees. And he says this thing where he’s like, we don’t own this pointing at the forest. It owns us and it’s really true. The forest could exist without us, but we could not exist without the forest.
Elizabeth Lashay: Going off of that, I feel like there is a disconnect that’s within our world, that we do need the forest and what are some things or ways in which we can create awareness really of what is happening and what we can do to connect our experiences with nature?
Amanda Rodriguez: Well, I definitely always recommend getting involved with organizations who are doing the work or whose mission you feel excited by, or that you sort of align with and sort of tapping into the work that they’re already doing. And I especially encourage folks to look at organizations that are BIPOC led that really center BIPOC perspectives, especially in regards to the environment and environmental justice and access. But I guess kind of on a very simple level, I think it’s important to share. Share your story. Nobody has a monopoly on storytelling. Stories don’t belong to anyone. So, I would love if folks were to watch the stories and share it and then be inspired to share their own stories of connection. Because I think that’s really what it is that drives people to make change is when you have a connection to a place versus kind of an abstract forests are important for air.
Kimala Luna: Can you talk about the first time that you were working on this project and you got chills and you were like, this is something really special that I want to continue with?
Amanda Rodriguez: So I interviewed a retired biologist. His name is James Woodley. Maybe he’ll someday be on What’s in Wilds the podcast because he is fantastic. And yeah, so he’s a retired biologist and his story is about how he grew up with polio. And he grew up in an Environmental Justice Area. So his access to nature was diminished, but he found that when he would go into the forest, he would feel strength and beauty and wholeness and part of, I think he says, that his disability I’m quoting did not affect him negatively. It was just part of the complexity of life.
Amanda Rodriguez: And I’m getting chills saying it right now. I can feel it. And every time I watch his story, I have to push back those tears because it’s just so beautiful and so important. Like his strength is such a beacon to others.
James Woodley: Well, I was diagnosed with post-polio and I had to move back to North Carolina to come back to the forest and hopefully recapture some of that spiritual inspiration that I found as a youth that got me through everything that I needed to get through. I began to remember what the forest meant to me and what I can overcome and what I can deal with and how I can deal with it. And I began to pull on those kinds of feelings again, that I can be okay, that I may look different, but I don’t have to give up. I don’t have to give up. That is my message. Find your light and hold onto it with everything you’ve got. So, and this is mine, this is mine.
Elizabeth Lashay: I do think we forget how powerful just being outside and not just seeing it through a window or yeah, just actually being. What are some things that you want to continue to do? I mean, you have been published in so many publications and receiving national and awards and recognition. So what is next?
Amanda Rodriguez: Well, I definitely want to continue to promote the Stories Happen in Forest documentary and I’m so excited to release it. I’m hoping we’ll be able to release it at some point next year to the public, which is just going to be so fun, but I also really want to fill more of them, maybe a different style, but I’m really thinking how can I grow this project into something more and have it evolve into something different. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, I’m certainly not asking folks to come out into the woods with me and film, but I’m also… I also feel like my writing… I guess I’ve always been from a young age, a bit of a political activist. So I always… It’s very backwards from the way that all the teachers I’ve ever met say where it’s like, the story should drive the message. And that’s not really the way I think about it. I always think that you should be trying to say something, you should be trying to change something when you write. I remember reading this article about, they were saying that the London fog that is so famous. It didn’t really exist in people’s consciousness until Charles Dickens wrote about it and manifested it to their consciousness. And then they started to see the London fog and it became this thing that is associated with the signature of London.
Amanda Rodriguez: And I just think that’s such an important way to think about writing is that you’re trying to uncover things that people aren’t seeing. You’re trying to write into reality or create into reality the future that you want to see, one that is more just, and is more equitable for all people. Not just for some, I’m going to continue to write and I’m actually working on a website right now. So hopefully I’ll be able to catalog some of those things and make it easy for people, should they feel inspired to read them or watch the stories happen at force trailer, or be notified of release dates.
Kimala Luna: Since you mentioned the future too. And I’m cheating a little bit because I’ve seen some of the segments and I have my own personal favorites, but I want you to talk about the youngest Stories Happen in Forest participant and what that experience taught you.
Amanda Rodriguez: So the youngest participant was Lila. She is part of, or she was part of… She’s a fifth-grader at time, the Muddy Seekers Program that’s based out of her Bard, which the goal of that program is so incredible. It’s to get young people into the woods to learn science through experiential learning and connection to nature, which is so cool. When I interviewed her, I mean, it was such a different experience from interviewing all the other adults.
Amanda Rodriguez: It was just like you just never knew what she was going to say next. And just like the wisdom, the wisdom of a fifth-grader, it was like, she would crack me up and then she’d break my heart. It’s just like kids just intuitively know, they just know that forests are important and that the animals in the forest are important. And we can learn things from our forests. Also, she really loved bugs, which I found incredibly endearing. She must’ve mentioned bugs 10 times during the interview. Maybe more.
Elizabeth Lashay: Yeah. I’m not the biggest fan of bugs. That’s what [crosstalk 00:19:04]
Amanda Rodriguez: Me neither. Me neither.
Lila: My name is Lila. I’m in fifth grade. I like to pick up bugs a lot. I like to put ladybugs on my hand. Sometimes help a frog get to where it’s going, probably to the pond. And I like to dig in the dirt a lot. I don’t mind getting dirty.
Amanda Rodriguez: It’s just so cool that this fifth grader loves bugs. She loves spiders. And she taught me things. She taught me about that North Carolina has a state salamander. I had no idea that we had one and she was explaining to me convection and how they learned about convection. I mean, this girl is going places.
Elizabeth Lashay: I’m so happy that you interviewed someone that was being fifth grade at the time. And that’s something that we don’t talk about is the different ages and the generational wisdom that we just need to continue to move towards. And we forget about our identities and we stay locked into just this one area. And so when we talk about nature and the forest and the potential and the wide openness of it, what do you think people are missing out on?
Amanda Rodriguez: By not connecting to nature?
Elizabeth Lashay: Right.
Amanda Rodriguez: I mean, so many things. I know a lot of folks use it for recreation, exercise, solitude, anxiety management. And one of the stories in Stories Happen in Forest that I also found really moving was his name is Noah. And he went through a wilderness therapy program to help him recover from drug and alcohol addiction. So just the idea that connecting with nature and connecting with yourself can heal you in so many different ways. It’s just so incredible. And I also think there’s… There should be a sense of humility about the forest. It’s so big and we’re so small and it’s so complex. And as much as I say, it’s so important to, to think about our human connection to forest. It’s also… It isn’t about us. I mean, the forest has its own really complex ecosystem full of animals and plants that are doing things that we still do not fully understand, from trees communicating with each other to different organisms relationships with fungus.
Amanda Rodriguez: I mean, it’s so incredible, to just be able to experience something like that and be humbled by it. I think is really important. And if folks are either not going into the forest or can’t go into the forest, it’s just really a shame that they’re missing out on that.
Kimala Luna: I guess now I want to ask, and you don’t have to get into specifics. You can speak in just feeling words, but maybe talk about a time where your connection to nature healed you and like what that experience looks like.
Amanda Rodriguez: I think that… I guess I might be one of those people that really benefits from the sort of silence that you can find in nature. Certainly there’s all the sounds of the wind and the birds and the insects. But I think you really find a silence inside yourself that… I struggle with anxiety so it is such a rarity for me to have my mind calmed and silenced and slowed and to actually be able to feel fully present and immersed. And I think being in the forest is really one of the only ways that I experienced that.
Elizabeth Lashay: I’m just trying to think is because you said you moved from Florida to West Virginia, correct?
Amanda Rodriguez: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
Elizabeth Lashay: And that is such a big change and not only the culture and the feeling and people, but again, like you mentioned the atmosphere outdoors. Do you prefer to be at the beach or in the mountains?
Amanda Rodriguez: That is a tough one. I mean, I definitely love to visit the beach now as an adult. I love to spend time there. I guess, because just like the forest, I do feel more of that sort of like calmness settle into me just like being near the waves and being under the sun, but there’s always like a sense absence until I see those mountains on the skyline when I’m heading home. And that’s when I feel like I’m really home.
Kimala Luna: I also want to touch on, we talked about stories happening for us a lot, but you’re a pretty prolific writer and nature plays a predominant theme in a lot of your writing. And so I guess I want to talk about the last meaningful time that nature really hit you and that you did like tap into those supernatural elements that you talked about and were creatively sparked.
Amanda Rodriguez: I wrote a poem about, I think I called it something like the Death of Magic. And I think it is actually published as part of an environmental disasters edition. I’m terrible and cannot remember where it was published. But the connection that I was drawing was this idea that… So this idea of unicorns are magical, mermaids are magical and fairies are magical, and they’re all gone from the earth. And so much of the natural beauty of the earth is that it is magic. Narwhals are magic, glaciers are magic and we are losing that magic. I guess that was a time when I sort of melded the natural world to a sort of supernatural, I guess, lent through a supernatural lens.
Elizabeth Lashay: So this is completely different. If you were to be in a fairy tale, what would be your go-to animal? Because I’ve always seen entangled. There’s, I believe, a lizard. I can’t remember at this point, but princess and the frog, the frog, Pocahontas. So what would be your go-to animal in your fairy tale?
Amanda Rodriguez: In my fairy tale? It’s funny. You should ask that because I actually do write a lot of fairytale retellings. They tend to be dark though. And I’m thinking a little bit more light about this. I guess I keep feeling like it would be a fox.
Kimala Luna: I could see that.
Amanda Rodriguez: Yeah. I mean, they’re just, I love red for one and they’re just so I don’t know. They’re beautiful. They’re elusive. They’re also misunderstood I feel like, yeah.
Elizabeth Lashay: I love that. I love that a lot.
Kimala Luna: If there was one main point that you wish everybody could understand about the connection to nature, what would it be?
Amanda Rodriguez: It’s hard to narrow it down. It really is.
Kimala Luna: You could do points. You could do multiple [crosstalk 00:27:01]
Amanda Rodriguez: Of a multi-point system. Well, certainly do viscerally immediately need our forests. [inaudible 00:27:16] Not Sunday. It’s not far away. It’s now. And we need natural forests. We don’t need pine plantations. We need real genuine forests that can thrive, protect us from storms, house Biodiversity, all those stats I said that I try to avoid. I guess if I had to boil it… I guess if I had to boil it down, it was we need forests now. I guess I would also like to stress that the environmental movement needs to become more broad. I think that it really needs to center BIPOC perspectives and the struggles of environmental justice communities who are… Industries are coming in and they’re taking resources out of those communities and depleting them, making them sick and economically depressed. There’s always a jobs argument, but it’s not true. If you take away a forest and clean air, clean water there, there’s not much left. So I really want to sort of like lift that up. And I just think it’s really important to not forget that. That deforestation isn’t happening somewhere else. It’s happening here. It’s happening now and it’s not new.
Elizabeth Garland: As the Director of Marketing Communications. And like, how does that intertwine with the awareness of nature?
Amanda Rodriguez: I guess I feel like… I also feel like marketers get a bad rep, and I think it’s often deserved, but I don’t work for a for-profit. I work for an organization that I really believe in, which is really trying to do good in the world. And it has had a lot of successes and has managed to grow and evolve over almost 25 years. So I’m really passionate about what we do and how we try to move through the world. So I certainly come at it from… Come at marketing from a place of political and social change. My goal is to, I think even as a marketer, tell a story, tell, share stories, lift stories up, tell stories to inspire of that connecting with nature. Because if you don’t know about it, you can’t do anything about it. Yeah.
Kimala Luna: Well, I think I get the last question. And so what is the call to action? What do you want people to do? And then also, what are some of things that people can check out to get involved, get outside, et cetera?
Amanda Rodriguez: Definitely. I’m going to plug Dogwood Alliance, visit Dogwood alliance.org. Visit our ActNow page. There is such a wealth of information on that site. Your eyes will be open to things you did not know were happening, and hopefully that’ll get you fired up and ready to take action on that ActNow page.
Amanda Rodriguez: But I guess in the short term, I guess I just really encourage people to reflect. Reflect on your experiences with nature and what have those been like for you and how can you draw upon those experiences or remember what that was like in order to hopefully inspire you to connect again with nature, if your connection is gone dormant, say. But also to consider if you are somebody who spends a lot of time in nature, what can you do to help increase accessibility? What can you do to sort of share that privilege and share that wealth, which it really is a wealth to be able to experience a natural forest with others.
Kimala Luna: Yes. That’s beautiful.
Elizabeth Lashay: It is. Thank you so much. Thank you for what you’re doing. You are really making a huge impact and it’s a ripple impact that is spreading all over, not just within your writing, but your documentary and tapping into a place that we tend to forget about.
Kimala Luna: Yes. Oh, oh no. I forgot to ask. What was the award that your documentary got? And what do you think about it like stood out beyond the other documentaries?
Amanda Rodriguez: So it won an Award of Merit from the IMPACT DOCS award, which I think… I know when I first started submitting it, I was pretty nervous because it was a two-woman crew. It was just myself and Andrea Desky from Call to Action Creative filming these. It was not high budget, very much a shoestring, very much as traveling across the country, trying to capture these stories. And I guess I was… Since it was my first film, I was intimidated by the sort of like gorgeous cinematography of some of these nature documentaries. And these folks who really have a lot of experience in making films. But I think that what I learned was that it’s not always about that. And that’s not necessarily what people are looking for. It really is about the story. It really is about how it makes you feel. And you can do that without a lot of money. And I would certainly encourage other folks to do the same. You can make a movie on your phone. So if you’re inspired to make a documentary about whatever is important to you, whether it’s nature or something else, I think it’s so important that folks be empowered to tell their own stories.
Kimala Luna: Yes. Well, thank you so much, Amanda. And again, you can find out more about Stories Happen in Forests by visiting storieshappeninforest.com. And we want to thank everybody who tuned in today.
Elizabeth Lashay: Yes. Amanda Rodriguez: And we will thank you so much for having me. I so appreciate you.
Kimala Luna: Yeah, Thank you.
For 6 consecutive weeks in July and August our Stand4Forests Georgia team produced The Georgia Enviro Show, a first of its kind online series featuring news about the key environmental, climate, and justice issues affecting the state. Programs were hosted by Stand4Forests GA, Georgia Forest Watch, Sierra Club Georgia, Center for a Sustainable Coast, Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, and Beyond Coal Georgia.
This series is unique in many ways. As far as we know, it is the first online series completely focused on bringing current state environmental updates to an online audience. Beyond that, while the participating organizations highlighted issues relevant to their own mission on their show, they also all worked together to mutually promote every show.
Why? Because each organization came to the project understanding that, whether we’re working to save forests, rivers, marshes, oceans, or the climate, the work is all connected. The coalition also realized that, even if the entire environmental sector were to pool our financial resources, we would never be able to match the financial power of the deep pocketed, well-connected industries that profit from climate and environment-destroying products and activities.
Despite some bumps and technical issues, all of our partners put together great programs, all with a citizen action opportunity.
From our Stand4Forests Georgia recap of last session’s environmental state legislation, to the impact of coal ash on our water supply and the work to save the Okefenokee Swamp from miners, to the importance of Georgia’s old growth forests in our national forests and the expansion of the creation stewardship movement, we brought over 2500 Georgians and counting the environmental, climate, and justice news they need to know.
Don’t worry if you didn’t catch them all because we’ve compiled the entire series on our Dogwood Alliance YouTube channel! And be sure to let us know what you want to see in another season of The Georgia Enviro Show.
When I was a schoolgirl in Vietnam, wetland forests for me were a negligible part of my adventures to national parks or on the way to beaches with my family. I used to think that wetland forests, hundreds of miles away from where I live, had little to nothing to do with my life. But when starting my career and studying environmental science, I knew that I had failed to realize the role of wetland forests. In fact, wetland forests, wherever I am and whether I appreciate it or not, always and diligently provide their valuable services to my life.
Every drop of clean water I drink can be attributed to wetlands because they have powerful natural water filtering plants. Rainfall usually washes sediments, toxics, residual nutrients, and chemicals from farmland, road surfaces, and sewage systems to water bodies. Wetlands with dense vegetation protect our surface water and groundwater systems by slowing down the water flow, trapping sediments, removing excess nutrients, and detoxifying chemicals before returning cleaner water to the rivers, streams, and aquifers. As much as 90% of the sediments that are present in runoff or in streamflow may be removed if the water passes through wetlands. This regime improves the water quality, not only in rivers and aquifers, but it also creates a safer water supply source. The value from water filtration that wetlands in the US South provide is estimated at about $115 billion.
Wetlands defend us from floods and lessen the damages from flooding. Wetlands are reservoirs to retain stormwater and slow down runoff water.About 330,000 gallons of water can be stored by a one-acre wetland, with one-foot depth. This amount of water will gradually flow back to rivers and streams or penetrate groundwater layers. If wetlands are destroyed, stormwater will flow directly to open water bodies, increasing the risk of flooding.
In the US South, wetlands prevent $150 billion of flood damages. In the period from 1851 to 2004, regions along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts experienced more than three hundred hurricanes. Particularly, in the context of climate change, hurricanes are expected to happen at a higher frequency and intensity. As you may remember, three years in a row from 2016 to 2018, historical hurricanes (Hurricane Mathew in 2016, Harvey and Irma in late 2017, and Florence in 2018) hit the US South, taking thousands of lives and costing hundreds of billions of dollars. Dealing with these natural disasters becomes one of the priorities in sustainable development. Wetlands, therefore, are a viable type of green and low-impact infrastructure to prevent floods and reduce the damages from flooding.
Wetlands work to mitigate and adapt to sea level rise, even though they are also vulnerable and suffer the impacts of this phenomenon. Sea level rise leads to shoreline erosion, inundation and increase in the salinity of wetlands, and damages or malfunctions of coastal infrastructure. Low-lying coastal areas are more prone to frequent floods and storm surge. Wetlands, such as marshes and mangroves, are a practical option to fight against sea level rise and flooding. Wetland plants form a natural barrier, breaking down the waves crashing into the shore. They also bind and lock down the soil with their roots, preventing the soil from being washed away during flooding. With 40% of the national population living in coastal counties, conserving wetlands is critical to protecting our coastal communities.
Wetlands are home to many endemic and rare species of plants and animals. They have rich biodiversity, including fish, birds, and high-value flora and fauna. About 46% of endangered species are found in wetlands or wetlands-related regions. Because of their unique ecosystems, wetlands offer significant economic opportunities from recreational activities such as hunting, fishing, and bird watching. This is an economic value far beyond that of logging. In the US, the value wetlands bring from recreation, tourism, and aesthetics is $126 billion, nearly a hundred fold of that from raw materials such as wood.
It is clear to me now that wetlands in my home country and across the world are a critical piece of natural infrastructure. Despite the great values that wetlands bring to our lives, they are one of the most threatened and degraded ecosystems in the world. Protecting wetland forests is preserving and protecting the quality of our own lives.
Ha Do is an international student from Vietnam who has been actively working to protect water resources and the environment in her home country. Coming to the US to complete her master’s degree in Environmental Management at Duke University, Ha feels connected with the wilderness of the US South and wants to contribute to the communities that she’ll be a part of for the next two years. She has been engaged in various environmental education activities and the arising climate movements in North Carolina. Ha loves travelling and exploring other cultures through their cuisine.
We are writing to urge the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SC DHEC) to deny any expansion of the wood pellet industry in South Carolina and to immediately address the environmental justice implications of this facility. We urge DHEC to address the impacts this facility would have on the climate, on South Carolina forests, on biodiversity, and on the health and well-being of impacted residents. Specifically, we call on leaders and DHEC to:
Similar to other wood pellet production facilities in South Carolina, the Greenwood Enviva plant is located in an environmental justice-designated community. Greenwood County has an estimated population of 31.4% African American, 0.8% Asian, 0.3% Native American, and is already ranked in the 90th percentile for small particulate matter (PM 2.5) pollution.
Within a 2-mile radius around the current Enviva plant, the approximate 2,200 residents are already ranked above the 75th percentile for exposure to PM2.5, ozone, diesel, air toxins cancer risk, respiratory hazards, Superfunds, and hazardous waste. Increasing production at the plant would further heighten the risk of exposure to many of these common pollutants, but most especially the PM2.5 and respiratory hazards risks.
The COVID-19 crisis is affecting predominantly BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities across the South. Greenwood County is currently experiencing a “high” rate of infection according to the county government. With citizens concerned about their health and well-being, they may not be able to engage in a public comment period for such a critical permit. The public hearing must be delayed until after the coronavirus emergency is over, so that community members may be meaningfully involved in DHEC’s decision-making process regarding this permit.
Dogwood Alliance urges this SC DHEC to consider the impacts this facility will have on South Carolina’s forests, the state’s ability to be resilient in the face of increasing storms and hurricanes, and our commitment to reduce carbon emissions. While climate action is a top priority for communities that are facing climate impacts, dirty industries continue to expand, and protections for forests and communities fall short. Wood pellet production is carbon-intensive, leads to higher pollution in production areas, and removes forests that store and sequester carbon.
Enviva is applying for an expansion permit on the Greenwood pellet plant in Greenwood, SC. Currently the plant is limited to 550,000 tons per year, but Enviva now proposes to expand the plant to 660,000 tons per year. If Enviva is permitted and their intended expansion goes through, this facility will increase logging to 15,840 acres per year or 43 acres per day and emit 1,422,057 tons per year of CO2e, the equivalent of over 273,900 extra cars on the road.
Many forms of biomass—especially from forests—produce higher carbon emissions compared to fossil fuels. In particular, a growing body of peer-reviewed, scientific studies shows that burning wood from whole trees in power plants to produce electricity can increase carbon emissions relative to fossil fuels for many decades—anywhere from 35 to 100 years. This time period is significant: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made it clear that the coming decade is crucial and requires dramatic short-term reductions in greenhouse gases. The emissions from biomass will persist in the atmosphere well past the time when significant reductions are needed.
Global demand for wood pellets is devastating forest ecosystems in the Southeast United States. Biomass facilities acknowledge that they harvest from wetlands, highly diverse habitats with many threatened mammal, reptile, amphibian, and bird species. Despite the claims of the wood pellet industry, independent reporting shows a disturbing pattern: wood pellets often are sourced from wood that is harvested from native hardwood forests in an area designated as a global biodiversity hotspot.
Demand for softwood and pine plantations is also having a negative impact on forests, the climate, and biodiversity. Since 1953, the government has used various programs to pay landowners to plant pine instead of allowing natural forests to grow. As a result, we’ve lost over 35 million acres of natural forest and gained over 40 million acres of pine plantation instead. In addition, industrial tree plantations pose a serious threat to South Carolina’s climate change resiliency because they make the effects of floods, droughts, heat waves, storms, and disease more severe.
If Enviva is granted the extension, it will have impacts on the health of local residents, the ability of natural ecosystems to support greater resiliency to storms and hurricanes, and contribute to global carbon emissions at a time when community health and safety rely on cutting those emissions. Affected residents deserve an opportunity to be informed about the consequences of expansion.
We reiterate our ask for SC DHEC to postpone all permitting procedures, including public comment, until the COVID-19 emergency declaration has been lifted, and until a full Environmental Justice Report has been completed. Ultimately, we urge SC DHEC to deny Enviva’s air quality permit to expand production in Greenwood, South Carolina.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this permit.
The first time many of the residents of Lumberton, Robeson County, North Carolina, heard about plans of a company to build a polluting wood pellet facility in their neighborhood was when the NC Division of Air Quality (NC DAQ) issued an air quality permit. With just 30 days before the initially scheduled public hearing, and with news breaking of a global pandemic, residents scrambled to learn all they could about this new and untested industry that threatened to increase pollution for this already overburdened community.
This decision disregards local community recommendations, glaring environmental injustices, and climate science that requires us to protect forests, not cut them down for fuel. NC DAQ has allowed Robeson County to be a testing ground for this unpredictable technology.
The permitting of this facility is especially troubling against the backdrop of the current global pandemic that makes populations, such as the majority BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities of Robeson County, particularly vulnerable. This Administration and NC DAQ continue to fall short on their commitments to environmental justice and climate change, while rolling out the red carpet for polluting and carbon emitting industries.
On June 22nd, despite calls from local residents and elected officials to delay the hearing until after the COVID-19 emergency declaration, NC DEQ held a digital public hearing to receive public comments on the proposed AERP pellet mill. According to the hearing officer’s report, more than 125 people joined the virtual public hearing, and 44 people spoke with 39 opposed and 5 in favor of DAQ issuing the air permit. More than 1250 written comments were sent to NC DAQ. Of the written and oral comments received, more than 90% opposed DAQ granting the air permit. In response to requests from the local NAACP and other residents, NC DEQ issued an environmental justice report. In this report, they found the following:
While noting these glaring inequalities and instances of environmental and racial injustice, NC DAQ does not attempt to address them beyond providing opportunities for public input.
Robeson County is one of the most frequently flooded counties in North Carolina. In 2018, largely in response to the hurricanes that devastated areas like Robeson County, Governor Cooper announced E080 – an executive order on climate change which set emission reduction goals for the state of North Carolina. Yet the Administration continues to permit the wood pellet industry despite evidence that industrial logging is the third largest emitter of carbon in the state (just behind electricity and transportation).
In permitting this facility, officials look solely to forest industry representatives – those who stand to gain the most from industrial logging – to define the qualities of a healthy forest. The Hearing Officer’s report replies to the many concerns about impacts on forests by stating that “The North Carolina Forest Service (NCFS)’s primary purpose is to ensure adequate and quality forest resources for the state… [and around Lumberton,] indicated that the timberland area is stable.” However, analyses like these fail to acknowledge the real and devastating impacts that continual pressure on forests exude.
Forests subjected to logging store significantly less carbon dioxide, and offer significantly less protection from floods and severe weather events than natural forests left standing. Standing forests are exceptionally important in low-lying, flood prone areas like Lumberton, which are hit repeatedly by hurricane and flooding events.
Though the facility should’ve been denied on Environmental Justice concerns alone, it is telling that NC DEQ looks yet again to logging professionals to tell them that biomass facilities are appropriate use of forests.
North Carolina cannot meet the goals laid out in Executive Order 80, and in the resulting NC Climate Action Plan, without halting the expansion of bioenergy production in the state. Residents in eastern North Carolina, already plagued with high COVID-19 infection rates and large concentrations of polluting industries, will pay the price.
As Coronavirus cases continue to flare, and as communities like those in Robeson County gear up for hurricane season, our public officials should be doing everything possible to ensure the safety of NC residents. Instead, the Cooper Administration and NC DAQ are paving the way for continued inequity and degradation of our forests.
Stay tuned for more ways you can take action in the near future.
While all of the United States is focusing attention and resources to handle and recover the economy from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Atlantic hurricane season is returning to the US South. The season this year is forecasted to be more active than a normal year, so floods are also expected.
Among the ten states most likely to flood in the next 100 years, five are in the US South. Every year in the US South, flooding costs lives and billions of dollars. It devastates livelihoods and forces thousands of people to flee their homes. In June 2019, the Arkansas River flooded, which caused damages to homes, agriculture, roads, bridges, and levees focused across Eastern Oklahoma and Western Arkansas and cost more than $3 billion. Five lives were lost. Tropical Storm Imelda in September 2019, which came with 3 feet of rainfall over a three-day period, caused a severe flood in Southeast Texas, costing more than $5 billion in damages and five lost lives.
Flooding in New Orleans, Louisiana
The global pandemic will make dealing with hurricanes and flooding more difficult this year. Moreover, existing challenges from climate change lead to floods with higher intensity and frequency. Our traditional approach to flood prevention, which relies heavily on manmade “gray infrastructure”, also known as constructed infrastructure, such as dams, levees and spillways, is no longer sufficient to deal with the flood risks in the future. Nature-based measures, such as living shorelines, restored wetlands, reforestation projects, rain gardens, and green (vegetative) roofs, therefore, have become a more effective approach to flood risk management.
Traditionally, flood management relies mainly on gray infrastructure. However, according to a recent study, these works “have straightened, steepened, and narrowed the river, and [our] research has shown that these changes cause floodwaters to flow higher and faster.” In addition, most of these structures are designed to cope with floods in the “a mid-20th century climate.” They are no longer suitable under existing and changing conditions. However, expanding or upgrading gray infrastructure is an expensive and inefficient option.
In contrast, nature-based solutions are an effective complement or substitute to gray infrastructure because they help reduce flood risks through three main mechanisms. First, restoring ponds and wetlands and connecting floodplains increases flood water storage capacity, preventing or slowing down runoff during heavy rains. Second, other measures, including rain gardens, changing agricultural practices, and increasing soil permeability will help increase the amount of water absorbed into the soil or increase evaporation into the air, thereby reducing runoff water. Third, planting trees and hedgerows, salt marshes, coral and oyster reefs, and restoring meandering rivers are all actions that can slow water flows, thereby mitigating damages caused by fast-flowing floodwaters. These measures, when implemented together, can help prevent flooding in flood-prone areas of the US South.
Not only is it effective in reducing flood risks, nature-based solutions have other advantages.
In one study, wetland restoration brought about more than $8 in benefits from flood reduction for every $1 of investment. Similarly, protection of oyster reefs can generate $7 for every $3 of investment. This is far more cost-effective compared to the ratio of gray infrastructure, such as levee construction (a $1 benefit for every $1 invested ratio). Moreover, conserving nature can be about 30 times more cost-effective than building seawalls. Another study indicates that across the US, the annual savings in terms of flood losses avoided would range from $63 to $136 million (2011 dollars, which if adjusted for inflation would be even greater) if more nature-based measures are implemented.
When there is sufficient space, natural solutions, such as shorelines and natural floodplains, can adapt to different levels of river and seawater, while ensuring ecosystem values. Well-designed natural measures will increase adaptiveness and resilience for areas, especially under climate change conditions.
These benefits include, but are not limited to, biodiversity conservation, improved water quality, food production, recreation, and carbon storage. Therefore, nature-based measures are thought to be a win-win solution for both conservation and flood prevention.
Considering the technical and cost effectiveness as well as specific natural conditions, such as long coastlines, wetlands, and rich forests in the US South, adopting nature-based solutions is an appropriate and sustainable choice to cope with flood risks and should be strongly promoted in the region.
Ha Do is an international student from Vietnam who has been actively working to protect water resources and the environment in her home country. Coming to the US to complete her master’s degree in Environmental Management at Duke University, Ha feels connected with the wilderness of the US South and wants to contribute to the communities that she’ll be a part of for the next two years. She has been engaged in various environmental education activities and the arising climate movements in North Carolina. Ha loves travelling and exploring other cultures through their cuisine.
This week, our hosts Kimala Luna from Dogwood Alliance and Elizabeth Garland from SlayTheMic are joined by a very special guest, Daniel White aka The Blackalachian.
The Blackalachian got his start in the outdoor world in 2017 when he hiked the Appalachian Trail, which is 2,200 miles from Georgia to Maine. Daniel said,
“That was my very first time camping or hiking or anything of the sort. So I was just new on the scene. And since then, I’ve been chasing adventure ever since.”
In this episode of the podcast Daniel talks about how he started hiking, where he is now, the things he’s learned along the way, encountering microaggressions on the trail, songs that inspire him, moments he finds most magical in nature, and upcoming projects he’s excited about.
You can follow The Blackalachian on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Want to listen to more?
The full transcript of the podcast can be found below.
Elizabeth Garland: All right, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Woods and Wilds. I’m Elizabeth Lashay with Slay the Mic and I am joined by my wonderful co-host…
Kimala Luna: Dogwood Alliance: I’m Kimala Luna with Dogwood Alliance, and we are here with…
Daniel White: Daniel White, aka The Blackalachian. Thank you guys for having me so much.
Elizabeth Garland: No, thank you.
Kimala Luna: Good to have you.
Elizabeth Garland: I am so excited-
Kimala Luna: Yes, I’m so excited.
Elizabeth Garland: … to sit down and talk with you. So let’s talk about a little bit about who you are because you’ve done a lot of walking for sure.
Daniel White: Yeah, for sure. Well, a lot of people know me as The Blackalachian. I got my start in the outdoor world, hiking, and everything in 2017 when I hiked the Appalachian Trail, 2,200 miles from Georgia to Maine. That was my first time camping or hiking or anything of the sort. So I was just new on the scene. And since then, man, I’ve just been chasing adventure ever since, I guess, that first foot on the trail.
Kimala Luna: Dogwood Alliance: Wow. What’s the most recent adventure that you’ve been on?
Daniel White: My most recent hike, I would say long distance would be the El Camino de Santiago, which is a pilgrimage route in Spain. There are eight or nine different ways that you can go. I took the northern route, which is around 530 miles across the northern coast of Spain all the way to Santiago de Compostela, where there’s like a huge church and there’s a bunch of people that crying. Yeah, it’s really an intense trip. So that was the last one. And I think a month before I took on that trip, I went and hiked Coast-to-Coast across Scotland. So I was able to get a couple of trips across the pond. They’re pretty close to each other and pretty cool experience, for sure.
Elizabeth Garland: Wow.
Kimala Luna: Wow. That’s incredible. How did you hear about the El Camino de Santiago?
Daniel White: From hiking the Appalachian Trail. A lot of people talking about it. They said it was on their bucket list and everything, and I didn’t really actually look it up until I was in… I think I was in… I wasn’t in Scotland because after I finished up my Scotland trip, I went over to Amsterdam for a little bit. So I was in Amsterdam and I was just looking up trails that I could do and try to just continue my adventure, and I found the Camino. I was like, “Oh yeah, I forgot about this one.” So I looked it up. I reached out to the company Moosejaw. Shout out to Moosejaw. They got behind me and sponsored and I was back over there in Spain a month later.
Elizabeth Garland: Wow. How many miles do you think you have hiked starting your journey with hiking?
Daniel White: I would say-
Kimala Luna: That’s a good question.
Daniel White: Oh, man. Well, we got the 2,200 Appalachian. We got the 530 for Camino, a little bit over 200 in Scotland, a couple of shorter trips here and there mountains to sea sections and stuff, so I would say at least 3,000 on foot. And then I also have another around 2,000 by bike from riding the Underground Railroad trail by bike. So yeah, about 5,000 on just legs, just legs experience, leg power for sure.
Kimala Luna: Holy moly.
Elizabeth Garland: That is amazing. I have a question in terms of when you started this adventure in finding out your passion and love for nature. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Daniel White: Just really first time ever feeling freedom, peace. Being a Black man in America, man, you just don’t get that up quite often. I don’t have to answer to anybody. I just got to worry about where I need to go for the day, freshwater, whether I got food and things like that. It was just like really simple. And then you start [being] in touch with nature, like you start smelling things different. You can smell the rain coming in, like the southern folks always tell you. You can kind of watch the weather, you know what’s happening. You can hear things better. Your senses get a little bit sharper being out there the more time you spend out there.
Daniel White: So just that freedom of just connecting back with the land, that was something different for me, that I, coming from the inner city, not even… It wasn’t the middle of New York City where there wasn’t a woods around. I grew up in Asheville where I was an hour away from the Appalachian Trail, but just stuck in that inner-city lifestyle as far as just trying to survive and make it. The hills and woods was the last thing on my mind before when I was a teenager and beyond. So definitely life-changing for sure.
Kimala Luna: Yeah. Can you talk about some of those changes? Because they talk about with the woods all the time and there’s that forest bathing thing in Japan where people just go out into the woods and their mood and outlook changes. Can you just talk about what happens for you emotionally in the woods?
Daniel White: Like I said, it’s just the solitude and peace. I craved that. The world is just so loud at all times, especially in America, this thing is 24/7. We never slow down. We never take a break. So it is like being able to slow down and stop and actually get real clear authority. When you climb up to the top of the mountain, you feel a little bit stronger. When you get up there, you’re stronger. Every day that I was on the Appalachian Trail or any trail for that matter, you just feel stronger as the days go on like you’re just building yourself up.
Daniel White: So I don’t know. The benefits to me were kind of instant. I can tell like, “Yeah. Okay, this is a change.” You know what I mean? So even in your mental state, as far as what you can and cannot do, how you think, what you think you can accomplish. I saw people with little small children out there and I’m like, “Man, they’re really setting them up for the interesting life because then kids going to know that they can pretty much accomplish anything once they hike this trail.” So just that type of bonus that you get from being out there and having to depend more on yourself because you’re all you got out there some days.
Elizabeth Garland: That is beautiful.
Kimala Luna: Yes.
Elizabeth Garland: Has there been a person during your time out in the woods that really made an impact on you, that you ran in [inaudible 00:06:49]?
Daniel White: Hundreds, I would say, because I YouTubed so I would have people kind of run upon me, like middle-aged white guys in the middle of the woods, “Hey, Blackalachian.” So that type of thing. People that follow me, that would come drive a couple of hours away just to come meet me, bring snacks for me and all the people that I was hiking with. Just that type of thing. So all along the way. All along the way, I met people with just about every place that I stopped.
Daniel White: Even on the bike trip where there’s not a lot of infrastructure of people giving back to the trail and they call them trail angels, like when people leave food and stuff at the trail heads. There’s not a lot of that on the Underground Railroad, but I still met just as many people because I’m coming through a small town of about 300 people and you making their day. They ain’t seen it like this and they’re like, “Where are you going?” “Oh, I’m going here to Canada.” “What?” “[inaudible 00:07:43] much.” So you make these folks’ day.
Daniel White: I mean, every trip I’ve been on, that’s mainly one of the highlights. Just the people that I’m able to meet and connect with. I met a guy in Congo when I was in Spain telling me he got a couple of gold bars. I’m like, “I never met anybody in my life with gold bars.” I’m like, “Oh, well.” We exchanged and gold prices and emails and this, that, and the third. So it just kind of makes your world smaller and gives you more opportunities and options. I probably got 50 or 2,000 couches I can go sleep on around the world just from people that I’ve met and connections. So that’s very important to me.
Kimala Luna: Oh, that’s awesome. Where did this time when you went through your first obstacle, you got over your first hurdle and were like, “I could do anything.”
Daniel White: Oh man, the first couple of days, just getting past the first couple of days on trail, just knowing that, “Oh, I can hike. I actually can hike with a full pack on. I can hike 15, 20 miles a day. I can actually do this. I can actually camp.” After the first couple of days, I was ready to go. Yeah, I never really looked back after that. It’s like I got a sense of – crazy sense of belief in myself about it. You kind of got to have a really wild sense a belief in yourself to do something like that, I guess. So, yeah.
Kimala Luna: Awesome.
Elizabeth Garland: That is amazing to me because I’m just thinking of all the animal sounds I would hear at night and I would absolutely lose it.
Daniel White: Well, yeah, I did though and I’m still scared at the same time, but I got to face my fears. Being a Black man, I faced all kinds of stuff just walking out the door. It’s like I can really not make it back home from walking through the store right down the street so I live it to the fullest. I mean, I’ll take my chances with the bear, to be honest. I think I’d be okay.
Elizabeth Garland: That’s really important. And I want to go back to what you were saying about being in the inner city and living in Asheville and the survival of it, but then it’s also you’re out in the woods and there’s a survival. And I also know that you were formerly in music, in the music industry. So how does all of that intertwine and what are some of the similarities that you see?
Daniel White: Oh, between music and outdoors you say?
Elizabeth Garland: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Daniel White: I don’t know. The creativity of it, I would say. That kind of has affected. I can create music. I also can go create a rap. I can go hiking where I want to. I can make it my own. I can do anything I want to do. So it’s like your canvas. So it’s like that, that creative part of it, I would say. So yeah, the music and then it prepared me for this, I guess because now with me being a public, I guess, figure in the outdoor world, I guess you could call it, it prepared me for this. When I do the photo shoots and stuff, people look at me like, “Oh yeah, I’ll make you a natural light.” Man, I’ve been doing photoshoots for like 10 years before this because I rap. Yeah, I’m used to being in front of a camera. I’m used to interacting with people like it’s a natural thing and the more you practice, the more you put in those hours, like I said, 10,000 hours, I think it just kind of goes hand in hand. But yeah, music, I don’t know. Then I love just music in general on trail, just being out there and being able to just, like I said, disconnect and just consume things in your own time, your own way. I used to download shows and everything when I was out on tour. I didn’t miss a thing. I used to watch Power and everything. I might watch it from the top of a mountain, but it’s always like, yeah, you got to have… It’s a balance. Everything is connected and it’s always a balance that you got to constantly try to keep
Kimala Luna: I love this and I like the concept of creativity and doing things your own way, starting with something that’s pretty tangible like an art form, like music and then moving that into every category of your life because it’s interconnected. When did you decide that you were like, or when did that click first for you where you were like, “Ah, I can just do it all my own way.”
Daniel White: Oh, I want to say the Appalachian Trail, I try to just stick to it by the numbers because that was the conventional thing to do. But once I got on the bike trail and the route they were taking me through was pretty dangerous. I think on the third day, I got sideswiped by a truck. So I flew all off of my bike and everything. So I was like, “No, I don’t think I’m going to take this route anymore. I got to figure out my own way.” So I started pulling up the maps and started kind of designing my own way up to America, just to say I need to stay off of these highways. We’re going through a lot of highways with a lot of logging trucks and stuff like that where I just wasn’t comfortable. So that right there got me into it.
Daniel White: Then when I went to Scotland, the guys that invited me over there, we didn’t mesh very well. It was kind of like a couple of racist things in my eyes that happened there. And then also I didn’t feel like we were hiking as a group. Personally, I just felt like the token Black guy, just to be honest. So I split up with those guys and went and did the rest of my trip and kind of just met the townspeople because they had us hiking through all these back country, just bogs in the middle of nowhere of Scotland. I think they enjoyed that. I’m like, “Bro, I didn’t sign up for this.” So that right there. And then I had an even better time. I met a girl. We went on a date and everything. I had an amazing time. So that right there, I was like, “You know what, I moved that all my own and I moved better at my own pace and just kind of doing my own thing.”
Elizabeth Garland: SlaytheMic: Nice. Well, I want to know in terms of the next step and leaving your legacy. So because you have created a name for yourself, you were already just your personality and just knowing you, but the legacy that you want to leave on this world, what would that be?
Daniel White: Man, independence, equity, taking your own destiny back in your hand. One of my dreams or what I’m really trying to accomplish within the next few years and starting some type of a home state and some property, buying some property and getting some youth, some people my age, people older than me. I would love to get them. And I call it like a reverse gentrification type thing, like we’re going back out. Y’all had the city, do whatever you want to do. We’re going back out here. We’re going to buy this land. We’re going to get back to the land and farm and bee-keep and everything and teach these people the skills.
Daniel White: I’m an electrician by trade, so I can show you how to wire up a house. I can bring people there and give them skills. So that way, you don’t have to stay there forever, but you can leave and be equipped with some skills, whether it be farming or anything like that, that you don’t know and hopefully bring people out there like plumbers and everything. Get people skilled up as far as like trades, skill trades and things like that. That’s what my plan is. And just do that in a few different spots, not one spot, just a few different spots, and try to create a few sustainable communities. That’s my dream for sure.
Kimala Luna: Wow. That’s beautiful.
Daniel White: Thank you.
Kimala Luna: When did you start thinking about that dream?
Daniel White: I’ve been wanting to do that for quite a while. My father, rest in peace, he had a huge community garden over there in Pisgah View. We started that, over in the baseball field. And I always had some conversations with him about stuff like that, starting a home state, just a place where all the family could go just in case somebody loses a job or fall on hard times, “Okay. Well, come on up here to the property. You got a place up here. It might not be this luxury that you are accustomed to and you’re going to have to put in some work to stay here and all that, but it’s free.” You see what I’m saying? So I just want to be able to provide that for people that I love and people that I don’t know that need help.
Elizabeth Garland: That is amazing. Thank you. I mean, just because what you’re doing is creating seeds that will continue to flourish and grow and become something more. So it’s very selfless part of your dream and legacy.
Daniel White: Definitely. Thank you.
Elizabeth Garland: It’s hard to… Since I can’t see Kimala, I’ll jump in.
Kimala Luna: Jump on in!
Elizabeth Garland: Okay. Do you have a particular story that you would like to share with us and the listeners in terms of finding yourself and being out in nature and the woods and appreciating the surrounding environment?
Daniel White: Oh man, I guess I would say on just every end of every trip, just when you start getting to that end, how you start, you start moving a little bit slower. You’re like, “Man, I got a couple of days left.” You want to walk slower. You want to slow it down because you’re really trying to just soak up every single moment at that point. And I’ve been getting that on all these trips, man. I’m like, “Man, I don’t want to go home.” And I think that’s why I’m steady chasing the adventure because I don’t want to go home. I want to stay on the next one.
Daniel White: I don’t know. You’re constantly learning, finding things out about yourself, figuring yourself out because you got a lot of time and they might come while you’re eating oatmeal in the morning. It might come at you at one of those good views. It might come when you had two or three days where for all day rain, sick and ready to get off the trail and go home. So they just come. I mean, it’s just like day after day, you got just epiphanies. You’re in the moment. It’s a different… It’s hard to explain. It’s really hard to explain unless you kind of experience it.
Kimala Luna: I want to go back to, you mentioned in Ireland that you were hanging out with a group and they were racist. And I wondered if it had come up in the Appalachian Trail, and I think you have mentioned before that it has. I just want to maybe touch on the times when racism shows up on the trail and what you wished would have happened instead.
Daniel White: It’s just the microaggressions. You’re going to get them just like you get out in society, just those. It’s this like the off-putting little questions, “Why don’t Black people hike?” I became basically the unofficial ambassador for Black people even though I was just trying to hike. I’m like, “Man, I’m just trying to eat oodles of noodles at night and you are asking me all these things about Black people. I’m not the ambassador. I’m not your teacher.” So you’re going to have that.
Daniel White: You’re going to have sometimes you pull up to a hostel, like this hostel in Virginia, Four Pines, and the girl I was hiking with didn’t tell me this until days later. It was me and it was another Black guy who happened to be there at the same time. So the owner made a comment like, “Oh, I got two of them today.” It’s like-
Kimala Luna: Oh, gosh.
Daniel White:… “Oh, we had Black people,” type of thing because it’s so rare you see us out here, but it’s like okay…whatever, that. I had to pack of racists run up on me about a mile away from the Mason-Dixon line ironically. So they come surround the pavilion that me and my friend we’re going to camp at night, riding bikes with big headlights on and go up the street. They’re howling like wolves, come back down with two big dogs, huge dogs and surrounding us again. So I’m telling her like, “Look, let’s pack up.” So that type of thing. Going into just stay in a hostel and you got a big sign and say, “Build that wall.” I don’t think I want to stay at that hostel. I couldn’t imagine how that would make a Hispanic person feel pulling up and seeing that. I don’t care if they’re legal or illegal.
Daniel White: Just that type of culture, that broke culture, that misogynistic culture, it’s all there. It’s all out there. I mean, people try to [paint] the trail as just this socially acceptable place, “Oh, there’s no trouble on the trail.” I mean, yeah, that sounds good and everything. For certain people, I’m pretty sure that’s true, but it’s not true for everybody. So definitely, you will be hearing from me. As long as I got a voice, you’ll be hearing from me about it until something changes for sure.
Elizabeth Garland: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, I have to say for me and what you represent and sometimes it’s fortunate and unfortunate that this responsibility or how it comes on to someone’s shoulders, but whenever I see you, I see, “Oh, well, I can get out there and I can hike.” And I know for so many young individuals who are Black see you and see that you represent, “Well, I can go out there and I can do this.” I think what we lack is the access or the mentality of like, “I can just get out there and do it.” And so since you did that, representation really matters. Have you seen more hikers of color and not just Black hikers, just hikers of colors?
Daniel White: For sure. People hit me up a lot. I got to take a couple of my friends out. I got to take my mom out for a hike for probably the first time last year, I think. So yeah, a lot of people. Yeah, they hit me up a lot, “Hey, man, what should I do? I want to take my kid out. I want to do this. What should I buy? Should I go about it?” So I know it’s working. I could see the change. I can see the shift happening. I can see people just, even in the way they talk to me, they treat me a lot different now, so I know there’s a shift happening. So definitely, I just want to keep that going. I had plans before COVID-19 to get some kids out. I’ve been getting donations. So I was almost ready to get some kids out there. We had it somewhere this month actually, but with everything going on, I had to postpone it. But definitely next year, we will get them out there for sure.
Elizabeth Garland: Nice.
Kimala Luna: How was your hike with your mom? How was her first hike?
Daniel White: Oh, it was amazing, man. It was pretty cool. We went up to Craggy Gardens and we had it like a group hike. So her and my aunt came actually. So they all hike with me and took a few pictures, had a nice little time, little picnic and stuff at the top. So it was nice. Yeah.
Elizabeth Garland: Oh.
Daniel White: Actually, she said she would go camping with me. So I had talked to her, and she’s like, “Yeah, let’s go camping. I want to do something by a lake though. I want to do some fishing.” So I’m like, “Okay, I’ll be on the lookout for something soon.”
Elizabeth Garland: Okay. Well, we’re going to have to hold her to it as well. I’m trying to think, did your hiking and camping skills just come naturally, specifically camping, so like finding food? Yes. Did that come natural to you?
Daniel White: Well, no. I mean, I just realized I had a tent for a year and a half and then I had to get one of my friends to actually show me how to properly set it up. I have been setting it up wrong for a year and a half. So I’m just be winging it, man. I’m winging the hell out of life. I bought all the wrong gear. Though some of it [inaudible 00:24:26], you leave. Some of them are in some boxes somewhere. So it’s definitely a learning curve. I’m constantly learning about myself, about the trail, about gear, about how to hike better. It’s a 24/7 experience, 24/7. You got to stay sharp out there for sure. Even if you in the city, even the Spain or Camino, it’s walking through a bunch of coastal towns, but you still got to be on lookout and watch out and make sure you’re alert.
Kimala Luna: What are some words of encouragement you would say to maybe like somebody who is younger, who is interested in getting on the trail, but feels scared to get started?
Daniel White: Oh man, I mean, get out and do it. You got a better chance of walking outside your house and getting hit by a car than eat by bear. I mean, it’s just the numbers of it. And I got four or 5,000 miles on me, I haven’t been eaten yet. If you feel safe, just take your precautious, look up what you should do when you encounter wild animals and just kind of addressing that. But you cannot be scared to live. If you’re living in fear, then you’re already dead, in my eyes anyway. So I don’t know. That’s hard for me to put myself in that because I don’t think like that. It’s hard to think like that. That’s a dangerous way to think. Because once you start thinking like that, you trap yourself off and you limit your whole life. Go for it, that’s what I would say.
Elizabeth Garland: What’s the wildest animal you’ve encountered on the trail.
Daniel White: Oh, it had to be probably moose, porcupine, hedgehog, rattlesnake, oh man, bear, whatever you can think of. If we got it on the East Coast, I saw it. If we got it, whatever they had in Spain, I saw it. The only thing I didn’t see you in Spain, I think was a couple of the little rare animals, like wolves and stuff they got. But yeah, if you look it up, if it’s on the East Coast, I saw it on the Appalachian, for sure, numerous times.
Kimala Luna: What was the bear encounter like?
Daniel White: Oh, which one? I had 30 of them, at least.
Kimala Luna: Oh, wow.
Daniel White: I remember one time, one of the first ones, they were telling me, “Oh, you got to stand up and make yourself look big and scream and get loud and all this.” So I did that and the bear has gotten like stood up on me and just kind of looked at me. So I’m like, “Ah, this ain’t it.” Then it kind of walked off and I got around the corner. I took off running. When I got on my friends, when I got in the camp at night, I said, “Y’all told me to do this and it didn’t work. I’m not listening to you no more like. No.” [inaudible 00:27:04]. It was that, or you might run across a cub. And that’s what was probably what scared me the most, running across a cub. When I would do that, I just kind of back up, look around because I know the mother is not too far away and that’s when you’re going to really have some trouble with some type of bears or anything like that. So yeah, plenty bear encounters.
Elizabeth Garland:Â Wow.
Kimala Luna: Wow.
Daniel White: Oh yeah, I had one walk up on my tent one night. Don’t do this at home. I was eating like a burrito and I like Doritos stuff in it. And I was sitting in my tent at night eating, then I heard one walking all the way down through the woods. I can hear it like crashing everything, just coming on down to the woods right up to my tent, and I’m still in there, crunching away, and then I just thought like screaming. Everybody woke up and he walked on up. But yeah, don’t eat in your tent. Yeah, don’t be like me.
Elizabeth Garland: With the Doritos. With the Doritos.
Kimala Luna: Yeah.
Elizabeth Garland: Where have you not gone yet but you want to go?
Daniel White: Definitely New Zealand. I want to go to New Zealand. They got the Te Araroa Trail. It’s like 2,200 mile, somewhere around there, 2000 miles, and probably Patagonia down in South America. I would love to hike that trail. That’s like an 1,800 mile trail they got. Japan. I don’t know. I want to go everywhere, and definitely want to go to Africa at some point. I want to walk across Africa. I followed a guy named Mario Rigby that walked across Africa. He is dope. So I think that’s pretty cool. He walked from South Africa up to, I want to say, Egypt.
Daniel White: Yeah, I’m going to walk to where as long as these legs keep working, man, I’m walking everywhere. I’m walking around Vancouver and Portland right now. I’ve just been walking everywhere. It’s cool. It’s a good way to get out and actually get in touch with the city and the people that way, more so than a car. You’re just riding high speed and you’re missing a lot. I don’t know. I just be trying to get peace out there. I try to disconnect when I’m on trail, right? Even right now, when I’m at now, I’m just trying to disconnect. I’ve been knew this was stated over. People just now realizing how bad racism really was, and I’m like, “Man, I’ve been saying this for years and years. No, that’s why I’m taking a month vacation. Let me take a break. Good, y’all fight the fight that I’ve been fighting for years now. I’ll be back, but I need a break.”
Elizabeth Garland: Right.
Daniel White: Okay.
Elizabeth Garland: I wanted to ask about music. And is there a song that really inspires you or just one particular song that you listen to a lot while you’re out hiking?
Daniel White:Yeah, definitely. Natty Dreadlock, Bob Marley, for sure. That’s one that always gets me. Natty Dreadlock, One Thousand Miles Away from Home. Yeah, that’s one that always that pick my spirit up. Either that or my rap go-to is 5th Ward Weebie, it’s called Let Me Find Out. It’s ratchet. It’s really ratchet. It’s good, always good. I love it. It pick me right on up. Yeah.
Elizabeth Garland: That’s amazing. I love it.
Kimala Luna: That’s awesome. And then I just had a question about just the magic of the woods. When do you feel that the woods are the most magical, what about them and what is that feeling like for you?
Daniel White:Oh, I would say the early morning or the evening when it’s just silent. I like that. I like that silence where you can just walk through. That’s magical to me. That silence right before it gets dark, I like that. That’s cool. Then you might run across, like in the Appalachian, I ran across coming through at dusk, man, it’s a huge population of lightning bugs. So that was cool to see, so like the forest is glowing. So you run into stuff like that, I mean, it’s cool. Or you might run into little fairies and stuff where people would put, it was like a big porcelain Dalmatian, fake porcelain Dalmatian up on the mountain. I’m like, “Who carried that everything in there?” It’s like that. Especially on the Appalachian Trail, you got that community, stuff like that. So it’s always a little bit of little folklore and little magic and stuff going on with it.
Elizabeth Garland: That is amazing. Well, we sincerely thank you for what you continue to do.
Daniel White: No problem. No problem.
Elizabeth Garland: Yeah. So we are excited to continue to watch your journey.
Kimala Luna: Yes.
Elizabeth Garland: Where can we find you? Where can people find more information about The Blackalachian?
Daniel White: Everything is at The Blackalachian Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. I pretty much film most of all my hikes. I still got a little bit of footage left to put up from a few of the trips. But yeah, everything at The Blackalachian or Blackalachian, depending on where you sit at on the Mason-Dixon line, depending on how your accent rolls off, for sure.
Kimala Luna: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show with us today.
Daniel White: No, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate this for sure. I don’t know. I was thinking it was July 23rd. I was all lost. I was off. I just got to look on my calendar today, I was like, “Oh, that’s tonight. Okay. Let’s do it.” Yeah.
Elizabeth Garland: Thank you.
Daniel White: No problem. No problem.
Dogwood Alliance is aligned with the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL). As a forest protection organization, we know that how we treat our forests is a reflection of how we treat each other. Our mission to protect Southern US forests from industrial logging requires strong partnership with BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities of the South who have always borne the brunt of the effects of pollution, flooding, and all of the other damage inflicted by extractive industries. While we have sought environmental justice, it is just as vital that our nation grapples with racial justice and equity.
The mission of M4BL is:
The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), formed in December of 2014, was created as a space for Black organizations across the country to debate and discuss the current political conditions, develop shared assessments of what political interventions were necessary in order to achieve key policy, cultural and political wins, convene organizational leadership in order to debate and co-create a shared movement wide strategy. Under the fundamental idea that we can achieve more together than we can separately.
To maintain a system of constant economic growth and consumerism requires constant degradation of forests, land, air, water, and communities – specifically BIPOC communities. 71% of Black Americans are living in counties that are in violation of clean air standards, and environmental justice communities are 50% more likely to have a wood pellet facility in their county.
The M4BL is not separate from the work we do at Dogwood. Rather, the M4BL are our partner organizations, our staff, our strategic advisors. We cannot work in a silo. The People’s Climate Movement, the movement to Stand4Forests – all of these movements are most successful when we unite together in solidarity.
As an environmental organization with anti-racism incorporated into our work as a core strategy, we are proud to align ourselves with and under the leadership of M4BL.
We encourage you to learn more about the Movement for Black Lives.
The BREATHE Act is a bill that advocates defunding problematic criminal justice solutions and funding community-based solutions and environmental justice.
If you haven’t noticed, I have a penchant for loving the weird little critters, and that includes fungi! Fungi are organisms that have a wide range of shapes and sizes, from the one-cell noble yeast all the way up to the Humongous Fungus – clocking in at over four square miles. Today, we’ll be diving into the fungi that you can find in your backyard. We’ll also take a brief look at some fungi imposters called slime molds.
Special note for this blog: Please do not eat wild fungi unless you are 200% sure that they are edible. I am a scientist, I have a PhD, and I still do not put wild fungi in my mouth. Fungi produce many toxic compounds that can make you very sick or even kill you.
The first mold we’re going to talk about is one that you can’t really see: yeast. Yes, yeast, the fungi that makes our bread and our beer, and sends us to the doctor when things get out of whack. Yeasts are everywhere, and this is reflected in our history of alcohol and bread development. Different styles of bread and alcohol are found all over the world, and if you reach back far enough, you’ll find that before humans even knew about microorganisms, we were able to capture yeasts and use them to our advantage.
Yeast are single cell organisms; this microscopic picture shows two yeast cells budding.
Yeast are a pretty typical fungus, in that they can reproduce either asexually through a process called “budding” or sexually by combining DNA with another yeast cell and then splitting.
With the resurgence of homesteading, and grocery shortages in this time of pandemic, there have been myriad articles describing how to make your own yeast; folks have been perfecting the art of sourdough; and interest in homebrewing has never been higher. What’s not to love about yeast?
I moved to western North Carolina in late winter; by early spring, I was noticing something very unusual on my neighbor’s cedar trees. Softwood trees like cedar? They’re not supposed to have flowers! But here I was, looking at these things that looked very much like flowers. I turned to the search engines and found my answer immediately: it was a fungus called the cedar apple rust!
This fungus has a wild lifecycle. It spends half of its time on each type of plant: apple trees or cedar trees. On apple trees, like the crab apple trees that I have all over my yard, it appears as a rust fungus: a discoloration on the leaves. When it produces spores, they travel by wind over to my neighbor’s cedar trees. Then, inside the cedar trees, they end up creating these elaborate fruiting structures (pictured), which then release spores that travel back to the apple trees.
The bright orange structures on green trees are sure to catch your eye.
This fungus is a pretty bad pest on apple trees, and the recommended treatment is to interrupt the disease cycle by removing all of the cedar trees within a one mile radius of an apple orchard. But that’s not very practical. So, most farmers rely on a combination of fungi-resistant apple species and targeted fungicide application. Here in the rural mountains north of Asheville, my neighborhood doesn’t have apple orchards to protect, so we just let the fungus go wild and live its happy, weird little life.
I would never write an article about fungi without talking about the most popular and common fungi out there. These two species are well-known and well-loved by hikers, children, and everyone in between.
Turkey tail fungi look like… turkey tails! They occur most frequently on decaying trunks of trees, and have a staggered cup-shape appearance. They’re fun to touch, but please don’t eat them! They’re not edible, but they are being used in drug trials for cancer patients.
The other popular woodsy fungi is the treasured morel. Morels are in high demand all across the United States for cooking. They have a spider-web appearance to their fruiting bodies, and there’s a ton of folklore about how to find morels. They may or may not occur near certain tree species, they occur overnight, they need a certain soil temperature; the list goes on and on. Have you seen morels before?
Slime molds are these creatures that look like fungi and were even classified as fungi until recently, but they actually fit into the broader “Protista” kingdom, which houses other creatures like amoebas and algae. They spend most of their lives as single-celled wandering organisms, but when food gets scarce, they congregate and form elaborate fruiting bodies where they make spores.
The most common slime mold you’ll see is the “dog vomit” slime mold. Ew, right? But they’re so cool! They create these medium-sized bright yellow and orange structures on the soil. I see them in the spring on my neighbor’s mulch.
Did you enjoy learning about these awesome little fungi? If so, why not show us? Show us your favorite fungi and tag us on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter!
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On June 22nd, Dogwood Alliance joined forces with Biofuelwatch, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), and the Southern Environmental Law Center to launch Cut Carbon Not Forests, a hard-hitting campaign to expose the UK’s wasteful subsidies for companies that burn trees for electricity and put pressure on policymakers to support reform. To learn more about the campaign, visit cutcarbonnotforests.org. This Press Release is an update on British opinion regarding biomass usage in relation to true clean energy sources. As the COVID-19 lockdown is eased in the UK, the British public believes the UK’s recovery phase must prioritize true clean energy sources, such as wind and solar power.LONDON – 22 July 2020– A new online YouGov poll has found fewer than one in four Britons (23%) think electricity generated by burning wood from forests should be classified as “renewable energy.” Additionally, 55% also disagreed with the Government’s continued subsidies for this dirty source of energy as part of the UK’s renewable energy strategy. Currently, the government gives more than £2 million per day in subsidies to power stations that burn biomass.
Instead, 82% of respondents agree that the UK should aim to preserve recent improvements in air quality by switching to clean energy sources with no associated air pollution emissions. While the public overwhelmingly backs support for wind (80%) and solar energy (82%), only 3% say the Government should help companies that burn wood sourced from forests overseas, the poll found. Nearly all UK biomass is imported.
The YouGov poll was jointly commissioned in July 2020 by Biofuelwatch, Dogwood Alliance, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) and the Southern Environmental Law Center. [To request the full data tables, please email Richard Scarlett or Emma Briggs at [email protected]]
“The views of the public are clear: Burning wood for electricity is both unpopular and destructive,” said Sasha Stashwick, a senior advocate with NRDC. “It’s time for the government to end the wasteful subsidies for this polluting industry – especially when people don’t even consider it to be renewable energy. In this respect, our data shows a striking disconnect between government policy and public opinion.”
Burning biomass releases more carbon pollution than coal at the plant smokestack and emits dangerous air pollution. The UK is currently the largest user of biomass electricity in Europe, and much of the wood in question is cut down and shipped in from sensitive forests overseas, destroying habitats and wildlife. The data shows support for the protection of these natural forests and the wildlife that depends on them, with 85% worried about the impact on wildlife if trees in forests are being cut down to generate electricity.
Biomass industry proponents claim that burning forest wood as fuel in power stations is ‘renewable’ because the carbon dioxide (CO2) it emits is reabsorbed by new trees. However this process takes decades, if the new trees grow back at all. When asked how many years it should take for a low or zero carbon energy source to reabsorb the same amount of CO2 it emits into the atmosphere, 58% said within ten years and just 18% think it should take longer. For this reason, 57% respondents do not believe electricity generated in this way should be classed as ‘renewable energy.’
Other key findings include:
“No technology that pumps more carbon into the atmosphere or destroys forests should ever be receiving billpayer funds,” said Almuth Ernsting of Biofuelwatch. “With household budgets already under pressure, the UK cannot continue to waste precious subsidies on a fake climate solution that increases electricity costs. This is especially true given our abundance of affordable, clean and truly renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.”
Last month, the same coalition of environmental advocacy groups launched Cut Carbon Not Forests, a campaign to remove subsidies from companies that burn trees for electricity and shift the savings to genuinely clean and renewable energy solutions.
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MEDIA CONTACTS: Richard Scarlett or Emma Briggs Finn Partners [email protected]
All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2283 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 9th-10th July 2020. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+).
ABOUT BIOFUELWATCH
Biofuelwatch is a UK/US non-profit organisation which undertakes research, campaigning and advocacy regarding the impacts of large-scale bioenergy. Biofuelwatch is working for a reform of energy policies to ensure that all support goes towards the lowest-carbon and cleanest forms of renewable energy as well as energy efficiency and conservation. See www.biofuelwatch.org.uk and follow us on Twitter @biofuelwatch.
ABOUT DOGWOOD ALLIANCE
Dogwood Alliance is a nonprofit environmental organisation based in the Southern United States that mobilises diverse voices to protect Southern forests and communities from destructive industrial logging. The group’s Our Forests Aren’t Fuel campaign is part of an international coalition opposing industrial-scale forest biomass energy. Learn more at www.dogwoodalliance.org and follow us on Twitter @DogwoodAlliance.
ABOUT NRDC
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world’s natural resources, public health, and the environment. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Bozeman, MT, and Beijing. Visit us at www.nrdc.org and follow us on Twitter @NRDC.
ABOUT SOUTHERN ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CENTER
For more than 30 years, the Southern Environmental Law Center has used the power of the law to champion the environment of the Southeast U.S. With more than 80 attorneys and nine offices across the region, SELC is widely recognized as the Southeast’s foremost environmental organization and regional leader. SELC works on a full range of environmental issues to protect our natural resources and the health and well-being of all the people in our region. www.SouthernEnvironment.org
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