STOP THE SPRAY: What’s Happening to Our Moose, Fish & Northern Forests?

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welcome to Love the North. Here we are with another episode of the glycophate and spring of the herbicide in the Northern Ontario forests. And we've got Joel Terrio from the Timmins area on with us via Zoom. And we're going to touch just basically on a couple of things. We're going to try and keep this one short. What we want to talk about is, well, what about the moose meat? I know that that's one of the topics that we had touched on last time, the moose meat. What kind of effects does the spray have on it?

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Well, it's a bit of a loaded question, but I think that maybe the bigger, broader question should be,

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you know, how does herbicide spraying and forestry impact anglers and hunters? And specifically, why should people who gather berries and basically go to the wilderness for meat and for fish, why should those folks get involved? So your trappers, your fishermen, your hunters, your berry pickers, your foragers. So what's happening in context is after the cutting takes place in the renewal stage, the forestry companies are using chemical herbicides to basically wipe out all of the deciduous vegetation. And that would include raspberries, blueberries, alders, birch, poplar, everything that doesn't have a pine needle. And what's happening in Quebec since 2001, they made it illegal to use these chemicals as they replant right away with bigger, more mature seedlings. And then they hire locals with brush jaws to knock down some birch and poplar if the deciduous vegetation starts to outcompete the conifers for sunlight. And most of these big, massive corporations have their head office in Quebec. They operate in Quebec. They know exactly how to do it like Quebec. They're just too lazy and cheap. And the forestry industry here in Ontario basically gets the green light from the Ontario government to do whatever they want. And they say, well, you know, we make an extra million dollars bonus for each of our executives. If we just poison you people in Northern Ontario, so you're going to get sprayed this year. And the people who are in Quebec, well, lucky them, you know, I guess we're not going to make quite as much money, but we're still going to make enough because we're still going to keep cutting the timber. Some of the factors that are impacting the moose, I mean, this is kind of a broader topic. One of them is going to be food availability. So moose don't eat pine trees. They eat deciduous vegetation. And so if you're spraying the deciduous vegetation intentionally trying to kill it all, then there's less deciduous vegetation. And in some areas, they've done studies out in B.C. where if they really hammer the glyphosate and herb and other herbicides long enough in some of these forestry areas, eventually the moose start to starve out because there's just not enough food for them.

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Some other issues that are impacting moose are ticks. And we talk about winter ticks. You see them especially in the springtime. And one of the correlations here with herbicides and forestry and clear cuts is that basically when the forest floor dries out and heats up, it makes like the perfect breeding ground for ticks. And so the moose are going through these breeding grounds for ticks. They're picking up more ticks. And then in the wintertime, the ticks are basically depleting their resources, their blood, and the moose are losing their hair, freezing, dying, and the moose are being killed off that way. Another impact that it's having on moose is in the reproductive cycle. And there's a guide that was published out of the states from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And in the states, they have forestry areas where they also lease the areas to cattle for livestock grazing. And so they'll have mixed composition, mixed use forest, and they'll allow ranchers to send cows through these forests to graze on the deciduous vegetation. And the U.S. government published studies that basically said, hey, if you're going to go through and you're going to spray some of the deciduous vegetation with different types of herbicides, and they were listed in the study. I'm going to find this study before the interview is over and reference it so you can go find it as well.

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There were mandatory wading intervals. For glyphosate, it was pretty low. It was like three, four days. For 2,4-D, it was like two weeks. But mandatory wading intervals between spraying these chemicals and allowing livestock to go in graze. And the concerns listed by the U.S. government was that glyphosate is very commonly known to cause reproductive issues with mammals, especially if the exposure happens during the first trimester of pregnancy. So back to the moose. The areas that are being sprayed are three to five-year-old clear-cut areas that are absolutely full of deciduous vegetation that is the absolute best food source for the moose. And the spraying is happening from about the middle of August until the end of September. Well, bingo, that exactly lines up with the moose breeding season. It's like an exact lineup with the moose breeding season. So it's not really a far stretch to say you're spraying glyphosate on the moose's best food source at a time when they're breeding. And the chemicals that you're using are known to cause miscarriages to mammals and horses if exposure happens during that first trimester of pregnancy. And then the government says, "Well, it's the hunter's fault that there's not enough moose the next year." We're going to completely overlook the 65,000 hectares or 130,000 acres of prime feed that we're spraying with toxic herbicides known to cause miscarriage. We're not even going to consider that as an impact. It's got to be the poaching. It's got to be the hunters. Maybe it's the wolves or the bears. But these chemicals that we know cause miscarriages, they can't possibly be a factor that we're even going to consider or look at or talk about. But I mean, from a scientific perspective, it makes a lot of sense.

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A couple of the sort of interesting parts of this for moose hunters is that if you go into the guidelines from a couple of years ago for the moose hunting regulations, there was a note in there and it said basically, "Don't eat the moose liver." And do you remember why? Just kind of offhand?

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I won't have that answer for you, but I know it's probably... I'm trying to remember why right now, too. I was hoping that you'd have the answer. There's a specific word. I'm going to find it in a second.

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Is it the toxin levels are just way too high? It was. It was the toxin levels in the moose liver and it was cadmium. Cadmium, they use that in batteries in the olden days. Yeah. So basically, cadmium is a naturally occurring element and it occurs everywhere in the world in small quantities. And I spoke to a scientist, like a glyphosate focused scientist, and I asked her about cadmium in the moose meat a couple of years ago. And what she told me was that it makes a lot of sense that the livers would be super contaminated with cadmium because when you spray glyphosate on the deciduous vegetation, in that rapid decomposition of the vegetation, it releases cadmium at a super high elevated rate. So the moose are being poisoned with cadmium from the chemical herbicide spraying. And the government is basically saying, "Don't eat the liver. That's super toxic. But the rest of the moose, well, let's hope for the best." And one of the things that I never really understood, and I think it's kind of like we don't want to find out, is why there's no testing available by the Ontario government for chemical residues in wild game. And I ran into this issue about 20 years ago, is kind of when I first really got looking at this. I harvested a bear. I'm a big game hunting guide, and I've been guiding fishermen and hunters for my whole life. And so by that point, I had already, you know, guided, harvested meat processed, you know, hundreds of big game animals, bears and moose and deer. I knew how to do it. And so when I was eating this particular bear, I would get dry itchy eyes, itchy throat, vomiting, diarrhea, nausea.

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I thought I was insane. So I started feeding it to friends and family, and it was like the same results over and over again. And so I typed in the symptoms online and I said, "Well, why would I be feeling this way? And why would other people be feeling this way?" And on Google, it basically popped up as an overexposure to glyphosate. And, you know, I mean, people talk about how they're gluten intolerant, but maybe they're actually glyphosate intolerant because they're spraying glyphosate on the grains in the process of drying them out and killing them. And, you know, it's like, "Oh, we're going to spray a bunch of glyphosate on your food and then feed it to you two weeks later, and we're going to call it gluten intolerance, but maybe it's just you're being poisoned." And the same thing is happening with a lot of the wild game. And so at that point, I went to the Ministry of Natural Resources and also the Ontario Department of Agriculture and basically said like, "I've got this bear. I harvested it. I know what I'm doing. These are the symptoms that I'm having. I'm looking for testing. I want to know if why I'm feeling this way and why I'm getting sick." And there was no testing available. They wouldn't touch it. No one in any government agency would touch it. And the answer was, "If you don't like your bear, just go throw it away and then get another one next year." Which is pretty interesting because in other jurisdictions like out West, for example, where they have concerns about chronic wasting disease with meat, you know, potentially making hunters sick. It's like chronic wasting disease testing is available for all animals out there. And it's encouraged. And the government basically doesn't want you to eat the meat if it might potentially make you sick. And here in Ontario, it's like, we're not going to test for that because we don't want to know if you don't think it's good. Just throw it away. And there's no testing program available. Now, what about the fish? Do you remember I used to fish a lot in my, when I was a teenager and there used to be a guide, a book that would show you how much fish you could consume from each of the lakes in Ontario. And I think the main thing in there was mercury. That fishing book, I don't know if it's still out. It was published. I think it was published by the Ministry. But, you know, how is this affecting the fish? Yeah. So there's a couple of different parts and pieces of this. So one of the byproducts of rapid soil degeneration. So the soil is alive. It's not, you know, maybe you can take a cup of sand and say, okay, that sand is pretty dead. But like the black soil in the forest is alive. It's got thousands and thousands of little organisms living in it. And when you spray it with glyphosate, the top soil rapidly shrinks and dies. And one of the things that's released is mercury, which goes down river and goes into the water.

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But is glyphosate, hang on, is mercury a byproduct of glyphosate? No, I wouldn't say I wouldn't say mercury is a byproduct of glyphosate. I think it's like cadmium. I think mercury is naturally occurring in the environment. And it's everywhere. And it's just a matter of when vegetation is super rapidly decomposed, mercury is released at an elevated rate. Cadmium is released at a super elevated rate as well.

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Some of the things that I've seen, like as far as fish goes, when you when you spray these chemicals next to shallow rivers or shallow streams where there's not a whole lot of water flow, you end up with like big, long black algae that is basically like six, eight inches long. And that's, you know, from basically the rivers dying. And then basically when that algae dies, then the fish die inside of the river. I've talked to old timers who basically said, you know, that they sprayed the hillsides of the lake, the herbicides ran down into the water. And then for the next 15 years, there was no cabbage weeds in the lake. So cabbage weeds are aquatic vegetation, right? So these chemicals are designed to kill vegetation. They're not selective.

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You know, the forestry companies really like them because when they spray them in that middle of August to late September timeframe, the conifers don't pick it up. But all the other vegetation does, whether it's above ground or in the water, the vegetation picks it up and it dies.

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And a lot of times you can see the the trail of herbicides going through the wetlands, like from the hills, through the wetlands and into the and into the lakes. You can see it by airplane or by drone as well. So it definitely is having an impact on the weeds. It's definitely causing black algae.

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There is, you know, it's not a vitamin for the fish. That's for sure. The guide you're talking about is like it's called the I think it's called the guide to eating Ontario sport fish. It still exists. It talks about contaminant levels, basically how many fish per per week or per month you should be eating from different water bodies depending on how contaminated depending on how contaminated they are. And yeah, glyphosate is pretty well known as pretty harmful to aquatic life. Salamanders, frogs, minnows, fish. It's not a it's not a vitamin.

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So how can we get more how can we raise the bar for awareness? And because I think a lot of the anglers and hunters might think it's, you know, along the lines of a conspiracy. Whereas it could, you know, if it's where where it's OK, so glyphosate is really being sprayed. But really at the end of the day, what effect is it having on their sport? Yeah. Well, I think if you talk to any moose hunter or any trapper or anyone who actually goes into the bush and spends time in the bush, partridge hunters, even they'll be able to immediately tell you that they go into these areas and they're dead zones. And so you'll you'll go to an area one year and it is just full of life and then they'll spray it. And then basically for the next couple of years, it's just dead. There's no there's no animals left in those in those areas. Some of the really old moose hunters, you know, have told me about basically in the fifties before they started spraying herbicides versus now. You know, now more and more guys are talking about white cysts on the livers of moose, whereas that was never happening in the fifties. I mean, white cysts on the liver. I mean, that's the blood filtering organ. That's toxins. That's extreme levels of toxins. It's not because of vitamins. It's, you know, what about cancer in the chemicals are spraying and the moose getting sick.

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What about cancer in fish? Is that a thing? I'm not sure. I'm not really sure about that. But as far as, you know, getting more fishermen and hunters, especially involved, I would say, you know, what is the benefit as a as a fisherman or as a hunter or a berry picker or someone who's a forager for mushrooms? Like, what is the benefit to you for the multinational forestry company to spray toxic chemical herbicides all over the forest, which are banned on your front lawn and have been for more than a decade through the Ontario cosmetic pesticides ban, because they're known to cause cancer in kids and dogs. So what is the advantage to you as a fisherman and hunter? And at the end of the day, I can't find one single advantage. You know, the only people or the only group who's benefiting from these chemicals to be sprayed is is a very select few guys on the top of the pyramid for a couple of multinational corporations. And those people don't even live in this country. So, you know, it's an easy decision for them. They're sitting in some other country. And at the end of the year, this year, they're going to have a vote and they're going to say, OK, the Ontario government says that we can do whatever we want. To those guys in northern Ontario. And if we spray them with Monsanto's chemicals, we make one percent profit margin more. And that means each one of us gets about a million dollar bonus or we do it how our branch in Quebec does it where they replant right away with bigger seedlings than they hire locals with brush to knock down some virgin poplar. But then we don't make that one percent. So either we give ourselves the million dollar bonus or we don't. And if we do give ourselves a million dollar bonus, those people get cancer. But, you know, we're never going to meet them anyways. So really, what difference does it make? You know, and that is the problem. And basically, the politicians in Ontario are just too weak to stand up for the citizens who they really should be protecting.

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And I'm not sure why. I don't know if it's basically campaign contributions. I don't know what else it could be.

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Something fishy. There's groups out there like the OFAH that I would really love to see get involved. And I think that if you're part of this group, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, they say they represent 100000 fishermen and hunters.

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Go to your local chapters. Push this agenda up. If you're moose hunting in northern Ontario, there is no bigger issue for you.

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There's no bigger concern for you than these chemical herbicides that are being sprayed all over the moose as best food source. It's getting into the meat. It's causing miscarriages. It's killing off the food source. It's a no brainer. And again, even if you said, well, let's go on to the precautionary theory or the precautionary approach, what could possibly be the benefit? And there just isn't one.

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So, Ontario, thanks for joining us tonight. And we will have to follow up on this and keep the awareness going and trying to drill down to see what can actually be done about it. Again, thanks for joining us. You're welcome. Thank you for your time. Bye for