Thread by @SteB777

Please support this action and the complete protection of all old growth natural forest. See the thread below for an explanation.

https://twitter.com/lifewithsommer/status/1409927556783038468

1) Most old growth natural forest in the world has already been destroyed through clear felling. I want to explain why replanting does not replace these incredible ecosystems, but just creates a deceiving facsimile of what was there previously.

2) Old growth forests are unique habitats. An incredible interlinked habitat develops over many thousands of years. Their soils are unique, as is the incredible fungal networks which lie in the soils of these old growth forests.

3) Most people just think of fungi as the mushrooms they see on the forest floor. They mistakenly think of them like individual organisms such as plants. But mushrooms are just essentially the fruit of a giant underground network of the real fungi.

4) Most of the fungi is actually a mass of fine threadlike structures, the hyphae, known collectively as the mycelium.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypha

5) The soil in a forest is one vast web of many species of fungi, connected to each other, and connected to all the trees in the forest - nicknamed the woodwide web. See the video in 3).
sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/w…

6) Associated with the fungi are different bacteria, in what are known mycorrhizae. This mutualistic symbiosis with fungi and bacteria, gives them almost magical abilities to fix and utilize nutrients with trees, which none could do alone.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza

7) Fungi are central to nutrient recycling in woodlands and especially rainforest. Most people mistakenly think the incredible biodiversity of rainforests is because they are on rich soils. In fact their soils are old and exhausted.

8) Rainforests especially, but also forests at high latitudes rely on incredible nutrient recycling by this woodwide web of fungi and bacteria to support all the life they do.
rainforests.mongabay.com/0502.htm

9) In addition to this is a massive community of invertebrates, all of which interact and are interconnected with all the fungi, bacteria and trees in a gigantically complex ecosystem. Where each species relies on the other.

10) These ecosystems and their soils take thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, even millions of years with tropical rainforests to develop. They don't just emerge in a few hundred years, even if you replant the trees.

11) This is why destroying old growth natural woods is massive ecological vandalism. Sure trees will grow back in decades, hundreds of years. But it would take ten thousand years or longer for the ecosystem which previously existed, to re-assemble.

12) Therefore to the ecologically uneducated, a planted woodland doesn't look that different to the old growth forest which previously existed. Just the trees are a bit younger. But it is not at all like the old growth forest.

13) Sure an ecosystem of sorts will develop, but it will be a poor depauperate version of the rich woodland ecosystem which previously existed on this site.

14) It really does take thousands of years for these rich ecosystems and their soils to regenerate. Many species of old growth woods disperse very slowly and need a continuous woodland cover to spread over long periods of time.

15) The forestry industry, and it really is an industry, prefer the even age of planted woodland with the most profitable timber species, because they can maximise yield and maximise profit. They try to fool the public into believing their planted woodland is the same.

16) Old growth forest and its rich biological tapestry and heritage is a finite resource, and we have lost the vast majority of it. It is absolutely unbelievable in the time of the climate and ecological emergency, that we are destroying what little we have left.

17) Forests are not just carbon sinks, they are important reservoirs of biodiversity.

"We cannot solve the threats of human-induced climate change and loss of biodiversity in isolation. We either solve both or we solve neither."
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

18) Preserving and conserving old growth forest is a means of both sequestering carbon, and halting biodiversity loss.

19) This is why I argue that all old growth natural forest should be protected and we must halt all further exploitation and destruction of this valuable and finite resource. We have very little of it left.

@GretaThunberg @GeorgeMonbiot @RobGMacfarlane @thetreehunter

@threadreaderapp please unroll?