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Jen Sanger: View from the big tree canopy
75 Plays8 months ago
Forest ecologist Jen Sanger spends more time in big trees than most. In our conversation, she takes us into another world of canopy of Australia’s tallest trees and into Tasmania’s aptly named Grove of Giants. She shares the story of the evolution of the distinctive Tasmanian flora, the ecology of these special forests and the summer she helped get 500 community members nearly 100m up into the canopy.
Bio:
Dr Jennifer Sanger is the co-founder for The Tree Projects, a Tasmanian based an environmental outreach organisation which educates people about the worlds most notable trees. She is a passionate forest ecologist and has spent over a decade studying forests and the charismatic plants that inhabit them. She is both an expert tree climber and communicator and passionate advocate for Tasmanian forests.
This conversation is produced by Catherine Polcz with music by Carl Didur.
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Transcript
Introduction to Plant Kingdom Series
00:00:08
Speaker
I'm Catherine Poults and this is Plant Kingdom. I'm recording in beautiful Sydney on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and pay respect to their elders past, present, and future. Plant Kingdom is a conversation series about plants, nature, and environment featuring scientists, artists, researchers, writers, and healers. We release two conversations each month and hear from people who have an intimacy with plants and nature.
Exploring Canopy Ecology with Dr. Jennifer Sanger
00:00:34
Speaker
We discuss their work, stories, and reflections from the field.
00:00:38
Speaker
Today's conversation is with Dr. Jennifer Sanger. She'll take us into another world of the canopy of Australia's tallest trees and into Tasmania's aptly named Grove of Giants. We spoke about the evolution of the distinctive Tasmanian flora, the ecology of these special forests, and the summer she hoped to get 500 community members nearly 100 meters up into the canopy. I'll now introduce Jen.
00:01:05
Speaker
Dr. Jennifer Sanger is the co-founder of The Tree Projects, a Tasmanian-based environmental outreach organization which educates people about the world's most notable trees. She is a forest ecologist and has spent over a decade studying forests, epiphytes, forest carbon, and biodiversity. She is both an expert tree climber and communicator and passionate advocate for Tasmanian forests. Here's our conversation.
00:01:38
Speaker
First question, Jen, I wanted to ask you, you've spent definitely a lot of time in trees more than most of us, for sure. How long have you been working with forest and trees and in the canopy? And is it something that you always kind of had an affinity for or knew that you'd end up doing this kind of work?
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I've loved trees for as long as I can remember, actually. I remember growing up on a farm, we had some beautiful big gum trees that used to line our driveway. And yeah, I always just remember looking up into the canopy of these trees with such fascination and, you know, some of the really old big hollows in them and, you know, seeing some parrots fly in there and just thought that they were absolutely wonderful.
00:02:22
Speaker
And then for my PhD, I decided to look into canopy ecology. Now, canopy ecology is looking at the realm of the canopy, particularly in rainforests, because when you're in a rainforest, it's often very dark at the forest floor. And that's the kind of realm where humans exist in, really, in terms of where all the photosynthesis and all the production and everything's happening.
00:02:45
Speaker
It's up in the canopy. And so I decided to study a PhD looking at a group of plants called epiphytes. And so epiphytes were basically ferns and orchids and a whole bunch of other plants that actually grow on other trees. Yeah. And so often in tropical rainforest, you actually have these gardens of all these epiphytes growing up in the canopy. And it's just absolutely fascinating.
00:03:11
Speaker
So amazing. Yeah, we only really get to experience trees from their trunks really, right? And there's everything unfolding and happening in the canopy and then the same in the soil that's just really inaccessible to a lot of us. And you were doing this work in rainforest. Where were you doing this field research? Did you do some traveling? Was this in Australia? Where did you get to go?
00:03:34
Speaker
Yeah, so I had a very good life for my PhD. I was doing it through University of Tasmania. So I was there during the summertime. And then I travel up to Northern New South Wales or Far North Queensland during the winters to do my research. So I got to spend three months out at the border ranges in Northern New South Wales, and then another three months up in Mount Lewis National Park up in Far North Queensland.
00:04:00
Speaker
So it was very lovely getting to spend a couple of months at a time immersed in the rainforest. It's a beautiful way to get to know a place. And is that time when you began climbing?
Tree Climbing Adventures and Research
00:04:13
Speaker
Yeah, so in order to study epiphytes, you need to kind of be able to reach them really. And so I'd been volunteering during my undergraduate with the canopy research field work that was happening in various places around Australia. And so I'd seen people climbing and always thought, wow, that looks
00:04:32
Speaker
like it'd be a lot of fun. And so yeah, my husband and I both learned to climb trees when we were actually over in the US before I started my PhD. And then yeah, once I started my field work, we ended up climbing over about 150 trees during my PhD. So we got quite proficient at climbing at the end, but it was
00:04:53
Speaker
Yeah, it was a very interesting experience, learning and then being out in the wild forest by yourself and trying to implement that knowledge. Yeah, it was a learning curve, that's for sure. Yeah, it hooked you, didn't it? And just another question just about epiphytes. Plants, it's just interesting how weird plants are, how many ways, how many environments they've adapted to and what are some of the conditions that epiphytes have to deal with?
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah, they're really incredible because epiphytes, most often you do find them in the tropical rainforest where it's quite humid and there's a lot of moisture because they don't have that direct connection to the ground.
00:05:35
Speaker
They usually rely on rainfall or mist for their water source. And so often they're actually really quite drought adapted and they can actually survive really, really long periods without water. But they do lots of really fascinating things. Like if you get a very dense patch of epiphytes, they'll actually start developing a soil underneath it.
00:05:56
Speaker
So all the organic matter that's slowly dying around that, that will create like a soil that they're actually growing. And so that can facilitate the growth of other plants as well too in those little, what we call canopy soils. And remarkably, what we actually saw in the border ranges is
00:06:15
Speaker
where a whole patch of epiphytes had fallen off the tree, you could actually see the tree had actually started to grow root from its branch into these canopy soils to access that nutrient. So yeah, it was really fascinating. Wow. Amazing, had they?
00:06:32
Speaker
creating their own environment and conditions up in the branches too. Yeah, wow.
Conservation Education through The Tree Projects
00:06:40
Speaker
When did the tree projects come about? Can you tell me about the tree projects and its origin?
00:06:47
Speaker
The Tree Projects is an organization I run with my husband and we do a whole bunch of education and science outreach around trees and forests and why it's important to protect them. This actually started because we spent a lot of time in the forest and during my PhD climbing all these trees and you get a really different sense of what a rainforest is.
00:07:10
Speaker
you know most humans are kind of land-based mammals and so we only really have this access to the rainforest by the ground and when you're on the ground it's often very dark, it's shady, it's often moist but when you climb up into the canopy it's this completely different environment. It's sunny, there's lots of light, there's a whole bunch of different plants and animals up there that you don't really get to see and it's kind of like the opposite. It's like kind of visiting the beach but then
00:07:38
Speaker
investing in a snorkel and then suddenly being able to see everything that's under the water. There's like a whole different world. And that's kind of what's like in the canopy. And so we're all really interested in kind of how do you capture that and how do you convey that message. And so my husband's a really talented photographer. So we started doing a whole bunch of photos and videos about the canopy environment and educating people through that way.
00:08:04
Speaker
Yeah, amazing. So you can kind of, I guess, broaden the impact that you can have and engage more people than through science alone. And when you came to Tasmania, do you remember when you saw your first big tree or that encounter?
00:08:19
Speaker
Yes, I absolutely do. I went out to an area called the Styx Valley, which is one of the more famous areas in Tasmania for giant trees. I went with the Wilderness Society, actually. They were hosting somewhat of an open day out there. We went out there and visited an area that's got a beautiful big tree called Randolph's Staff in it. I remember seeing these
00:08:45
Speaker
massive big trees and these forests and just being overwhelmed. Like, you know, I'm a lover of trees, but I've never ever seen anything that big before. And I remember taking a photo of me standing at the base of one of these trees. And I kind of like reflecting back onto that photo and, you know, because I never would have imagined at that stage of my life that my I would be so heavily involved in big trees, especially big trees here in Tassie as well, too. So yeah.
00:09:14
Speaker
commitment to those trees, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I wanted to just talk a little bit about where the trees, is this kind of a specific region or what's the kind of forest that you can you can find them in? Yeah, so it's interesting. They often talk about the big Euclid trees as in the terms of Goldilocks theory. So they like it. They like it wet, but not too wet.
The Ecology of Eucalyptus Trees
00:09:41
Speaker
They like it mild, but not too mild.
00:09:44
Speaker
And they like a little bit of fire but not too much fire, so there's all these things that are interacting. But essentially, you find big trees around the globe in these certain climatic zones.
00:09:56
Speaker
where the temperature is kind of mild. So you make it in extreme heat or freezing cold. And also to the rainfalls, usually around, oh, this is a challenge, maybe about like a meter of rainfall, maybe a little bit more. They kind of grow in that area, but they also kind of need to have like fairly consistent rainfall as well too. So Tasmania meets that criteria. Also just south of Western Australia, you have the big carry trees that are growing over there.
00:10:25
Speaker
And then also to the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, where you find big redwoods and the Douglas firs and the citrus spruces and all the big giant trees over there as well. It's having that right weather conditions to make it just perfect for them. The other thing about the eucalypts too is fire. So with a lot of the big trees down here, they're eucalyptus regnans. So mountain gnat, sure we call them swamp gums in Tasmania.
00:10:52
Speaker
They regenerate after fire. So when a fire comes through, it will kill them and they will regenerate from seed after a fire and they'll grow really quickly and rapidly after fire. So because fire kills these trees, they kind of ideally need fire intervals that are around, you know, 200 to 500 years.
00:11:14
Speaker
where they're able to grow up really big and then a fire will come through and then it'll replace it with younger trees. So yeah, they do need fire to keep persisting these big eucalypts, but they need it at fairly large gaps. And that's historically what we've seen here in Tasmania. You know, there'd be a big catastrophic fire that might happen every 500 years or something like that. So a very rare event.
00:11:37
Speaker
Eucalyptus regnans, in Latin, the regnans means raining or ruling tree about its height, very tall trees. How tall are these trees? The tallest one in Tasmania and the tallest Eucalyptus regnans in the world is a tree called Centurion.
00:11:55
Speaker
And that's 100.5 meters tall. That's it. So yeah, just over 100 meters, which is absolutely huge. And in terms of size two, that can actually grow quite wide. So there's often some at the base that might be up to six meters in diameter, which is absolutely huge. That would probably, I don't know, be maybe about like being also adults.
00:12:19
Speaker
you know, surrounding hand in hand for something that big. It's absolutely huge. So yeah, and in terms of their age as well, too, they probably probably around 500 to 600 years, we think is is how long they live. There are trees in the world that do live long, a lot longer than that, because they have this kind of fire intervals, they kind of generally tend to mature a bit quicker than than other species around the world.
00:12:47
Speaker
So with its life cycle, does it need fire to germinate or just creates kind of the spaces in the canopy and the opportunity for growth?
00:12:57
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't need it necessarily to germinate, but it just, it enhances the, you know, so it creates an ash bed. So there's a release of nutrients that happens after a fire goes through a forest. And leaflets have gotten really good at capitalizing on that nutrient boost and then growing as quickly as possible after that. But they don't necessarily need fire, but it helps a lot. So.
00:13:22
Speaker
interesting and challenging to think about 500 years because it might spend a lot of that time kind of in the understory as a small tree or a mid-sized tree waiting to grow up. Is that kind of the case? Yeah.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah, they actually shoot up quite quickly. A lot of them can grow quite rapidly and that's their strategy. They'll just start growing really, really quickly. In Victoria, for instance, where eucalyptus regnans also exist, there's some trees that are 90 years old that are already over a 90 meters tall.
00:13:57
Speaker
a meter a year that they're growing which is pretty impressive so the maximum light you know maybe a hundred to two hundred years old and then as they age they just get better and better like they call it senescing so I'm gonna start kind of the.
00:14:15
Speaker
the branches at the top will start dying off and it'll slowly start losing height. But some of these really big old trees, you'll often see that it's kind of, they've got dead tops on it. And it just gets, it's just because it gets harder for them to keep pulling up water from that, at that height for too long. So, yeah.
00:14:34
Speaker
So it's a little bit of the size and that they're aging? Yeah. I often kind of compare them to humans. It's like once they start getting older, they start getting lighter and then start going gray on top. Yeah. Never thought of a tree as aging. Yeah.
00:14:54
Speaker
Yeah, so there's so many multiple generations of trees existing in the same forest, and that's, I guess, if you're lucky to have the old growth forest, right, you have those big trees. Yeah, often what you see, because there's often this catastrophic fire that's gone through, often in not really old growth forests, you'll find a lot of really old eucalypts, and often there's not a lot of young ones because there hasn't been that fire for them to regrow.
00:15:21
Speaker
And what you often find is there's a rainforest understory that'll slowly start growing underneath it. And then you get these beautiful forests, these giant emerging eucalypts and all these really beautiful rainforests that's grown in the understory. Beautiful. I wanted to ask you also about the Grove of Giants, kind of another area where these trees grow. Can you tell me about the Grove of Giants?
00:15:46
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Grover Giant is a beautiful patch of forest in Tasmania. Unfortunately, in Tasmania, we're still logging a lot of our forests and a lot of our sewer forests and older forests as well. We keep an eye on what's going around and we noticed that there was this one spot where they just recently logged and there was this massive tree that was about four and a half meters in diameter.
00:16:12
Speaker
that they cut down and it was too big for them to take away, so they just left it there. And we were looking at that and we were thinking, oh, you know, this is such a waste. And then we kind of looked at the forest behind it and then we were just thinking, wow, you know, there's a lot of big trees behind there. And we kind of had a look into the forest and we found that there was all these massive big trees.
00:16:34
Speaker
throughout this area. And when we got home, we looked and found that that was actually a proposed logging coop and it was actually logged in 2023. So I think this was about a couple of years ago when we first went in there. And so we decided to kind of have a proper look at it. And we have a whole bunch of friends who love going out and finding big trees, quite a good community.
00:16:56
Speaker
And a couple of friends who've actually found a tree within that area called Latin escape. And it just so happened to be the biggest blue gum ever, ever known. So blue gum is a Euclid dysglobulus and it has his national, sorry, it has his state floral emblem, actually. And they have really beautiful big trees. And so we decided to do a whole survey of the area. And we've actually found that there was 150 trees over four meters diameter in this forest.
00:17:26
Speaker
And so we thought, wow, this is special. This is a really special spot. So we decided to kind of start a bit of a campaign about it and we named it the Grove of Giants. And so we started doing open days and getting people out on site and people would come out to the forest and we'd take them to a walk out to Lathamus Keep.
00:17:47
Speaker
We'd also taken tree climbing as well. We learned the system of being able to take people who have no climbing experience up into the trees using a hauling system when we're over in the US. It was an absolute amazing success.
Community Engagement and Forest Protection
00:18:02
Speaker
People would take them up these 60 meters up a tree and they'd spend a couple of minutes up the top and then we'd take them back down. These people would come down from the tree and they'd just be so excited.
00:18:14
Speaker
so there was a few people that were in tears because it was such a beautiful experience and yeah it was just such a wonderful way to provide outreach because people you know you can show someone a forest but if you can actually give them a meaningful experience then it's something that they they really it stays with them and we were really lucky we were able to get that area taken off the logging schedule after a lot of hard work and campaigning and but most of that was due to the fact that we take these people out there and they
00:18:43
Speaker
moved by the experience that as soon as they got home they'd be calling their members of parliament or writing to their minister talking about how special this area was and well is and how they wanted the protectors and it's such a
00:18:58
Speaker
descriptive but also really gorgeous name grove of giants like what is and a lot of the trees have individual names too right i wanted to ask what is the significance of naming these areas and naming the trees it really helps in raising awareness.
00:19:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think it really just helps give the trees character, I think. A lot of, so for instance, Lathamis Keep, it's a blue gum and Lathamis is the name, is the scientific name of the quiff parrot who is a, was an incredibly endangered bird that actually relies on the blue gum for its food source. Lathamis Keep was a fantastic name for that. And it just all comes down to whoever discovers the tree basically has naming rights.
00:19:44
Speaker
And I don't know how long this would take to describe, but how do you even climb a tree like that? How long does it take to get up the tree? How do you do it? Yeah, so climbing big trees is really interesting. It can take
00:20:05
Speaker
a short amount of time or it can take a very long amount of time. It all depends a lot on luck and the complexity of the tree. One of the hardest things with big tree climbing is actually getting a line up there in the first place. The process usually is that you have a throw ball with a really light line.
00:20:24
Speaker
and you've got to get that up a higher branch as possible. And then from that, use that line to fill up your climbing line. Now in big trees, getting some of these branches are 40, 50 meters off the ground. And so there's many different devices that we use. We have a thing called a big shot, which is essentially just a giant slingshot, which we use. And we can get that pretty high up a tree. Also too, some people use pneumatic cannons. So basically,
00:20:53
Speaker
It's like a giant potato gun, essentially. So you have to pump up this tube and then you can shoot a throw ball from then. But then, yeah, you've got to pull up the climbing line and then hopefully that's over something that's a good shot. And it's testing it to make sure everything's secure. And then you've usually got to get a fairly experienced climber to go up first.
00:21:15
Speaker
then what they refer to is advance the line up the tree. So they'll climb to the tallest at the highest spot that they can, but then often they'll have to throw ropes over branches above them and move that climbing line up so you can get to the top of the tree. So sometimes we can get pre-rigged in a couple of hours if we're lucky. Sometimes it might take all day. It just depends. Yeah.
00:21:40
Speaker
And you're involved with measuring a lot of these trees too. Can you tell me about the big tree register?
00:21:48
Speaker
Yeah, so we specifically like measuring trees because here in Tasmania, as I mentioned before, we're still logging a lot of our big trees. And one of the few ways we can actually get trees protected is to classify them as what's referred to as giant. So any tree over 85 meters tall will be protected. And then anything over 280 cubic meters will be protected as well. Now, the tall trees, the 85 meter trees,
00:22:15
Speaker
are actually quite easy to identify now thanks to LIDAR. So that's kind of aerial laser imagery that's taken across the forest and that can identify the big trees, the tall trees very easily. But it's not so good as identifying the volumetric giants, so the flat ones actually. And so that's what we do with the tree climbing is we go out and we measure these big fat trees to see if they classify as volumetric giants.
00:22:44
Speaker
So it's a bit of a process, but it's a way for us to actually protect big trees. And then we've got the, as you mentioned before, we've got the giant tree register. That kind of is a record of all the big trees that exist across Tassie. It's a very powerful and effective way of just direct conservation, isn't it? Yeah.
00:23:06
Speaker
And the Tasmanian flora, we were talking about this a little bit the last time, just the uniqueness of it. It's a little bit, you know, has some similarities with mainland Australia, but it's also really unique. What's the kind of story and evolution of the flora in this region?
00:23:24
Speaker
We have a lot of what they're called gondwanan relic here in Tasmania. So we have a whole bunch of really interesting pine trees, which some people might be familiar with. So cumin pine, and billy pine, pencil pines, things like that. We've got a beautiful species, a couple of beautiful species of myrtle beach, so notifagus. There's an incredibly old lineage of trees.
00:23:46
Speaker
But essentially what happened is that when Australia was part of Gondwanan continent, everything was very wet and mild and rainforesty. And as the Gondwanan continent started breaking up and Australia started moving north, it started to dry out a lot. And a lot of Gondwanan plants kind of got restricted to cooler parts like Tasmania or mountain tops as well too. So you cannot find a lot of Gondwanan relics around
00:24:16
Speaker
the great dividing range in some of those higher mountains in the rainforest areas. So yeah, we've kind of got this relic of these ancient plant lineages and they're just delightful plants and trees. Yeah, very special place.
Carbon Measurement and Environmental Impact
00:24:31
Speaker
And in the forest too, you've been also doing a lot of work measuring the carbon storage capacity or how much carbon is in the forest. Can you tell me about that and why that is important to understand?
00:24:46
Speaker
Yeah, so we were really interested to look at this more because I've been doing a bit of research looking at the emissions from native forest logging here in Tasmania. Because often people say that the wet eucalypt forests of Australia are some of the most carbon dense forests in the world. And so that got me thinking, you know, well, if we're cutting down the most carbon dense forests in the world, then the emissions are going to be pretty huge, right?
00:25:11
Speaker
So I had to look into it and what I actually found was that the emissions from the native forest level here in Tassie is quite huge. It's about 4.65 million tons of carbon per year. And to put that into perspective, it's actually makes it the highest emitting sector in all of Tasmania. Tasmania being quite low population and we have a lot of our energy needs met from hydropower, so a lot of renewables already. And so that it was, yeah, so the emissions from forestry was
00:25:40
Speaker
by far the most price emitting sector in the state. Did those emissions come from just the change in the landscape or burning the landscape or decomposition? Where did those emissions come from? Yeah, so I think there's a common misconception that people think that when a forest is logged, all of that timber's turned into long lasting wood products.
00:26:02
Speaker
But what actually happens is only about 1% of the forest biomass get burned into thorn timber, which is used for building and furniture. A vast majority of the biomass ends up as waste, so about 60% is actually left on site and that's burned.
00:26:19
Speaker
And then, yeah, 60%. So that's all the roots, the branches, the leaves. And then a lot of the stuff that does get taken away is actually just used in short term products like paper. And so that only really has a lifespan of an average about two years before that carbon's released back into the atmosphere.
00:26:38
Speaker
We've actually also been going out to the forest and actually measuring specific forests as well. So we were really interested to know the carbon density of the growth of giants. Since it is a growing giant, we thought that the carbon must be pretty huge there. So we measured trees in Apache forests there. We had a big science week where we got a whole bunch of tree climbers to come from New Zealand and
00:27:01
Speaker
Australia to come down and did a big measurement of the trees and put soil scientists in to do measurement of the carbon of the soil. And yeah, we found that the Grover Giants had the highest measurement of carbon out of any forest in Tasmania. So that was kind of cool to have that result. Wow. Yeah, it's interesting to consider in the balance of
00:27:23
Speaker
Tasmania likes to say that it's carbon neutral or carbon positive in terms of its energy, right? But yeah, there's such a race to count carbon everywhere. And what does it mean? Because then even wood in products or wood in building, they say it's carbon storage, but it's all come from somewhere and it's complex, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yep.
00:27:43
Speaker
Has that research had much of a response or impact or started a kind of conversation about the value of the forest in a new way for governments? Yeah. So my report was the first one that actually looked at the emissions specifically because the way that things are reported under the current reporting guidelines, it's not very transparent. You can't actually see how much is actually coming from logging. So mine was the kind of first report that kind of highlighted that.
00:28:12
Speaker
So yeah, it's definitely getting traction. And I just really came to kind of highlight as much as I can just how important it is to protect more forests in terms of climate action, because, you know, it's hands down protecting our forests is the best thing that Tasmania can do for climate action. Yeah, and you need to put it into the language of
00:28:33
Speaker
the industry too, don't you, in terms of carbon? I wanted to talk to you again about the community climbs
Community Tree Climbs for Conservation Awareness
00:28:43
Speaker
and really building that community and opening pathways for people to have that connection and form that relationship with those forests and with those trees. You told me that over a summer you got something like 500 people up into a tree. How did you do that?
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah, so that was the open days that we were having at the Grove Giant. And yeah, over those collective open days, had over 500 people come out and visit. So that was fantastic, being able to share that with so many people. Doing really good. And who's coming to those climbs? Is it kind of a cross-section of society, or who did the trees draw in?
00:29:25
Speaker
Yeah, it was really amazing. We didn't even really advertise it much after a while because people would just, they would have such a great time and then go and tell all their friends. And so we were just getting swamped with requests. And whenever we put published a new, a new event, it basically still out within 12 hours. There was such demand of it, but we were getting such a great cross stitch in a society.
00:29:46
Speaker
Lots of families will come out, lots of retirees as well. And it was just wonderful. It was just such a great way to kind of share forests with the wider community. And a lot of people who'd kind of, I think a lot of the, because there's been such a history in Tasmania of, yeah, like forest protesting and there's been a lot of conflict in the forests. And I think a lot of people kind of are a bit wary of that. And so I think that for a lot of these people, it was,
00:30:14
Speaker
A lot of people really cared about forests, but maybe it was the first time they'd ever come out to an event like this because we were providing something that was a lot more engaging and a lot safer environment and just giving people a bit of a different experience, I guess, as well, too. It's been a lot of fun.
00:30:34
Speaker
And it's a really transformative experience for a lot of people. It kind of created this sense of stewardship you were speaking to a bit earlier. Yeah, it was great. A lot of people just really took ownership of it because they kind of got this wonderful experience of how beautiful these forests are. And it was probably something that they'll kind of stay with, an experience that they'll treasure for quite a long time. It makes me think.
00:31:03
Speaker
It's so rare that you get to see something from a totally different perspective and we hear about the overview effect when people or billionaires or tourists get to go to space and see earth from the distance and looking vulnerable and is it kind of similar? Yeah, I think so. I think it is.
00:31:25
Speaker
I saw this New York Times article yesterday just through my feed that was talking about psychologists doing sessions in nature, like going for hikes and bushwalks with their patients. And I thought that was just so appealing and so obvious, that kind of healing aspect of
00:31:46
Speaker
being out in nature. Yeah, I think we can all benefit by spending a lot more time in nature. I think it's very good for our mental health.
00:31:56
Speaker
It just kind of put words or put science to what you already know, right? That it's beneficial to be outdoors and to experience awe and that kind of nature connection work that you're doing is kind of rebuilding those connections people have and letting them or giving them tools or pathways to have those experiences on their own.
00:32:20
Speaker
Um, do you have a favorite tree? Like are there trees? I know when I was doing field work, you'd have certain plants or certain trees that you really liked and had a relationship with. Do you have a favorite tree? Oh, that is such a hard question. Um, are there some that you visit? Like do you return to the same trees often or what? Yeah.
00:32:43
Speaker
I do. And you know what, like I really want to say, you know, one of the big trees is my favorite. Or, you know, I think there is one way that I do return to actually, because we've got lucky enough to have some forest over the road. And I like to go for walks there in the afternoon. And there's, it's, you know, the forest itself is just kind of like your average woodland. And it's, and it's not by any means anything special. But there's just this one big old tree.
00:33:12
Speaker
that's in the middle of the path that I walk in and it's just so much older than everything else around it and I just, it has these beautiful branches that just kind of sweep up and then down to the ground and it's got so much character and I love it and it just makes me wonder kind of how did you survive all younger forests growing up around you and like
00:33:36
Speaker
you know, how old are you and what have you seen and you know, what animals are living in you and it's just such a beautiful tree. And yeah, I think there's, I get to see it so often I've become good friends over the time, I think. Totally. Yeah, it's really interesting being in the presence of those old trees and they just
00:33:58
Speaker
they experience time so differently, and then you can kind of tap into that in a way. I'm from, yeah, kind of the Niagara Escarpment region of Southern Ontario, and there's these, so it's kind of limestone, glacial cliffs all over, but there's 2,000-year-old cedar tree, old growth forests all there, but all the cedar trees are, like, they're not big, they're small and they're growing.
00:34:24
Speaker
right out of the cliff face. Just such a mystery of how much they've seen change and we don't get a lot of that access. Maybe one more question. I love knowing too from people if there's been any works or writings or mentors or
00:34:45
Speaker
people who really have helped or inspired you or open up your way of thinking on kind of this journey. But are there any special works that have really resonated with you?
Inspiration from Pioneers in Canopy Research
00:34:58
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm very fortunate to know a wonderful woman called Meg Lauman, and she's an American woman who was one of the pioneers in canopy research. And so she developed pretty much canopy climbing in the 70s, so she could study rainforest insects up in the canopy.
00:35:18
Speaker
And she has just been such a wonderful mentor and she's written some really fabulous books about her experience and everything from being a woman trying to work in science in the 70s through being a pioneer in her research field. And she's just got such an absolute zest for life and just loves nature like no one I've ever met before. I'll look her up.
00:35:42
Speaker
But yeah, she's been a strong advocate for tree climbing and getting people out in nature and environmental education. And it's such a rewarding area too, isn't it? Because there's just endless things to keep learning about.
00:35:59
Speaker
Absolutely. Our understanding of the natural world is so minuscule. We're just discovering so much fantastic things every day about the world. Yeah, it's wonderful. Yeah, and plants too. You'll never say, yeah, know all of them. I got it. Exactly.
00:36:30
Speaker
That was my conversation earlier this year with Dr. Jennifer Sanger. Thank you for listening and a huge thank you to Jen for sharing her work. Plant Kingdom is hosted and produced by me, Katherine Poults, and our music is by Carl Dider. Listen to us wherever you get your podcasts and check out our website at plantkingdom.earth.
00:37:12
Speaker
you