What Happens to Northern Ontario's Forests After the Helicopters Spray? David Flood Reveals What Most People Never See

Hey everyone it's Eric here from Love the North and we have David Flood here via Zoom from the Matachuan First Nations which is David you want to explain where it is for the audience? Sure, yeah thanks very much for having me. I'll just introduce myself in my Anishinaabe language.

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Matachuan First Nation is a(...) Treaty 9 community located near the height of land where the Robinson Huron Treaty and the Treaty 9 area meets. Treaty 9 is two-thirds of the physical landmass of Ontario(...) and our traditional territory overlaps the height of land. Okay that's a great introduction. You didn't miss a beat there. So we(...) have a series on Stop the Spray and what the spray is doing to the forest. Before we get anywhere or go into it David can you(...) tell us about your background and have you worked in forestry and land management?(...) Yeah for sure.(...) So myself I took a keen interest in the natural environment at a young age. I was out snaring harvesting using a pellet gun early. He moved on to the 22 and the big guns and started harvesting for my family and I found a very you know a big richness to that whole experience and I was told I was a daydreamer and that maybe I should get a job outside. So off I went to college and university in forestry and forest management. So I went to Nate(...) the technician program, forest technician and then off to university and did science and forest management.(...) Is Nate in Alberta?(...) Yeah University of Alberta College in Edmonton.(...) So you know I(...) basically that's where I would say that's where the advocate was born. I've been at this for over 30 years now and(...) you know understanding you know where my grandmother is, where I was raised for part of my life, moving out west. My dad was following an economy in the coal mine industry(...) and you know I started my family out in British Columbia, came back to Ontario, went back to BC, came back to Ontario. You know I spent some time with the political territorial(...) organization the Snobby Askey Nation(...) but always in that spirit intent of(...) whether it was with industry or other(...) you know it was always for the purpose of advocacy and trying to have sovereignty and jurisdiction acknowledged and having a proper consultation with regards to forestry and land management for communities.(...) We now are in an environment of undrip and epic. So United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. When I graduated that wasn't around free pride and forum consent that wasn't around but those are tools in our hand that government to government our nations are supposed to be talking with provincial and federal government and we're not quite there. So it's been about 30 plus years and the last decade I've been serving as the executive director of Waco Toin Development, it's a social enterprise owned by three communities of Treaty 9, Chappel Cree First Nation, Missinabi Cree First Nation and Brunswick House First Nation(...) and we've gone from in 2016 to today we've had roughly 14 staff hired to take up the mantle of the strategic planets online at WacoToin.com.(...) So you guys are busy that's uh that's just yeah it seems like there's a lot going on. So my next question for you is why are we spraying? Can you take us through what happens after an area of crown forest is harvested in northern Ontario?

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Yeah certainly I mean it's(...) the herbicide is glyphosate the active ingredient

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and it's used as a tool it's a it's used as a tool to take away or remove mitigate competition for the conifer crop tree. So you like your two by fours houses get built from it

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pulp and other byproducts are created from the wood chips and waste.

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At the end of the day the companies are interested in achieving that even flow wood supply through time off the sustainable forest license and they're obligated to reforest and declare free to grow those conifer trees. So if they're spending money on planting them that's an investment and they've got to legally meet the free to grow requirement(...) and so one of what's deemed to be the cheapest tools but it depends how you're doing the math on that. Yes paying a helicopter to spray a chemical that you buy on so much per litre per hectare it's a very effective(...) chemical to kill(...) herbaceous and deciduous competition. Our issue in the boreal forest is you're you should not kill all your deciduous in mixed wood forests and the boreal forest is is predominantly a mixed wood forest in varying degrees of aspen, poplar, birch, cherry(...) and there's nutrient cycling and coexistence with these mixed wood forests and yeah there are jack pine forests you know fire originated forest types but the companies you know(...) it's a money thing it's a it's a cost driver to get these stands deemed free to grow(...) where the conifer is a meter tall and there's no competition within a one meter column around that tree that is more than 1.5 times the height of that conifer tree.

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So it's accounting and math it's not biodiversity and ecosystem integrity.

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Okay so(...) like what changes have you personally observed in the areas that have been harvested, replanted and treated with the herbicides? Like I know you you said that the herbicides are there to basically suppress the(...) deciduous trees is that is that so that would be to spur the growth of the evergreens spruce pine? Release(...) them right release them from competition okay stop the light from being blocked by the deciduous trees that might be sheltering the conifer and some conifer do not do not do well in the shade. Okay predominantly(...) jack pine(...) white spruce will grow under successional stages of(...) deciduous growth but it's remember what I said achieve the conifer volume on an even flow in perpetuity so there's the assurance model of if I spray it I know I'm going to get that volume because conifer is predominantly the only thing that's going to grow after I spray so now we're talking about the risk of creating monocultures.

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Yeah and the monoculture. What mixed wood forests.

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And then the monoculture of course the monoforrest is of course(...) the like forests of the jack pines or spruce like the the single type of single type of tree that's growing. Yeah 100% conifer right you're moving from a mixed wood environment you'll never truly end up with a(...) you know there will always be some level of deciduous growing back after you spray but it happens so long after you spray so let's get into what happens yeah but in the first few weeks everything this deciduous goes black and dyes(...) so the crawlers the flyers right the ones that depend on each other and you know the small ones get sprayed with the chemical because they're out in the open environment and what was a forest where you'd hear the birds and the animals and the bugs and the crickets and the and the you know life you sit there two weeks later and you already start to smell and see the decadence of that spray it's a systemic uh(...) uh(...) application through the air through the leaves that goes into the tree and they start to shrivel up and die and then for years after all you're dead black sticks and then green trees in and amongst it which are the conifer trees and it takes minimum three closer to seven years before you get this sort of recovery if you will but here's the big issue in our northern environment we have these fire emulated harvesting patterns so large cutovers that mimic fire(...) heavily eroded(...) sprayed(...) where do the animals go

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if the moose love cutovers why are we spraying them

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why are we spraying their brows if the moose love cutovers and they need it to get through winter areas you know they have late winter moose habitat alongside these cutovers and if you spray right up into that late winter habitat(...) a cow moose will only come out 20 meters from that cover

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so if you spray along there and habitually that's where she would get her winter cover and then go and feed and you sprayed it you're putting strain on that that cow moose to be able to rear the in her belly that next generation of of baby(...) okay david can you just dumb it down for me what is a cutover(...) well the harvest area that the company is taking the wood out of for this mill okay so it's the area where they've actually cut and then let's say this cut and yeah that block cut block

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cut over cut block okay okay got it yeah(...) what what's health canada's position do they maintain registered glyphosate like they maintain registered glyphosate products when used according to their approved directions are not expected to pose the risk of concern to human health or the environment what uh(...) i don't know what would your response be to that

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oh our chiefs have been asking us to take uh you know a technical leadership role in working with health canada to share with them a better understanding of the impacts at the landscape scale you know acutely if you just go in a lab and you say okay what's the lethal dose of this dose of this chemical and that's all they're handed by the chemical company and that's all their scientists look at(...) if they're not looking at the broadcast aerial spray of the cut block and what it means for the impacts on the flyers crawlers swimmers walkers right what the biodiversity impacts are at the landscape scale and let's say they only spray a fraction of the one percent of the full landscape that they harvest do the math on that look at the hundreds of thousands of square kilometer of commercial industrial forest and how many square kilometers get sprayed even if it's a fraction of that harvest area(...) so that the risk is um(...) you know it might not be an overnight thing but what we do know is that you know there's this death by a thousand cut experience that everybody's you know forests are being fractured animal populations are going down right ecosystem integrity and function is going down because of the fragmentation of the forest and the changes biodiversity it's not it's not a natural cycle that forestry is truly mimicking as i mentioned to you they have this fire emulation pattern harvesting at the landscape scale

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and that's supposed to be mimicking like fires are not just all 50 hectare blocks cut blocks you know fires run and they're big and they could be 300 hectares it could be a thousand hectares and they've done some analysis over fire you know uh currents and there's a range of harvest block patterns that can be done and in the end what happened was um you remember there was a moose uh decline(...) on this province yeah well it's like a perfect storm you know they didn't apply the moose enhancement areas in the forest management plans when they first come out with this natural pattern emulation so a full decade of forest management planning and harvesting was going on and they didn't focus on implementing these moose enhancement areas which probably shouldn't have much for herbicide spraying if you're actually using that as a sort out migration of moose habitat but they're actively spraying in moose in hand moose enhancement areas right now in our current plans we've asked them to stop we've said you don't have our consent for that(...) so is anything actually happening like are they actually(...) throttling it back or stopping or are they still doing it(...) well on a case by case block by block basis this is the death by a thousand cuts i talk about with free priority yeah(...) so our goal is to get a you know health canada we realize the landscape level biodiversity impacts and actually label(...) um you know broadcast aerial spray of herbicide is not a good thing and should rarely be used they should be finding alternatives and you know there may be a persistence(...) either backpack or stem application of the of the the herbicide which would be far better than broadcast aerial spraying because now you're being selective and you're not you know(...) i say far better it's better what's better is that we don't utilize it we have other forms of of mitigation

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potty yeah but(...) isn't that what economics is about if it costs you that much to manage that way in a safe manner then your price point of your wood into the market should reflect the cost of doing business and if you want to get rid of glyphosate spray and your cost per hectare goes up you're creating more jobs more boots on the ground we're looking at expanding guardian programs we're looking at increasing the forestry workforce in the north not only in the forestry mills themselves but what about on the land to do biodiversity monitoring and valuing nature and forest carbon projects wetland monitoring(...) collecting medicines yeah there's a whole different approach that could be taken here so health canada we invited them to a herbicide alternative program session that we've had two years in a row now HAP itself has been running for over 20 years and that was Tembeck then Rainier now Greenfirst as a forest company that was working with our communities collaboratively so this is not a new thing this is not just that overnight we're concerned we've been putting up band council resolutions and petitioning for the stoppage of the use herbicide for well over 30 years and we're we're we feel like we're closer but we're not certain what's going to happen because the amendments that were done and changes in the structure of Health Canada's Pest Regulatory Directorate(...) were following up(...) so why is it that Quebec does things a little differently didn't they stop spraying you know just after 2000(...) and they manage their forests differently

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yeah they there was the public outcry right it's a public opinion that that(...) has your politicians reacting right(...) if you google it and do the research on it it wasn't just an indigenous voice it was all the voices stood up and there was a rally of you know and that's why Stop the Spray is is interesting and why we participated with Joel and others and put up the signs and advocate for it is it's going to take everybody and the the municipalities are getting behind it now the the large northern rural municipalities are saying we don't particularly like that within boundaries either(...) and maybe it's time to think about alternatives but let's talk about Quebec a little bit because now they they heavily(...) do manual treatments right brush saws chainsaws predominantly brush saws some people would argue while there's poison being admitted by all the fuel that you're using there's an emission plus you're putting wear and tear on human beings which could lead to other medical conditions versus a helicopter doing what you know 50 people a year will do on one sustainable forest license you can just run it off in an afternoon with a helicopter

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anyway pros and cons but at the end of the day if you look at the ecological impact you know the result of the manual treatment(...) we're arguing that we don't have to do exactly what Quebec has done which is they literally cut down everything to 10 centimeters around the crop tree within the 1.5 meters so like between each planted crop tree you're still impacting biodiversity right you're you're mowing down everything(...) and so they might do that(...) up to three times in a stand is my understanding after a cut after a cut after reforestation after they put the little tree in the water for the future crop(...) okay um(...) so if if we can get to the point where we stop spraying

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you know would that work here because that would also create some jobs in forestry for those you know never mind the wear and tear on the human it it helps with the the economy that you know more jobs are being created in forestry management you can i mean this is a paradigm shift again right we moved everybody away from the land to technology and put more mechanization into the forest we used to have more people per hectare per cubic meter working in forestry and now we're feeling the pinch on that because we're missing the introductory uh opportunities entrepreneurism positions you know for setting up these contractors who might move from a brushing team to operating machinery or going back to school to become tech forest technicians and other other vocations in the forest sector there's nothing wrong with having a workforce and some business development or entrepreneurism in the north that is tied to seasonal work in civil culture(...) meaning tree planting right brushing(...) and cone collection and i mentioned biodiversity and ecosystem service monitoring there's new economies like carbon sequestration that's emerging that helps diversify things away from just the focus on the cubic meter harvested by the companies(...) okay um if we shift over the mooseberries fish and traditional foods um what kind of evidence do we have that or what what have you seen uh because of the use of uh herbicide have you seen what kind of changes well you're asking eric you're asking the right question(...) you're asking what science exists what proof exists what's the measure what's the measure to push back on mon santo or whatever the new name of the company is uh whoever whatever they(...) are yeah they're i think go and sit now and and to push back on on that lab-based science versus natural environment landscape science right experience a thousand years 10 000 years of lived experience that communities are saying this is not healthy and this is not helpful bottom line is over the last five years there are definitely uh when we've compiled it we've made this available we've even got a herbicide alternative program videos on what cotwin's youtube channel to to investigate some of this work but if you're asking the right questions and you're using the right measurement tool you'll find it you'll find that it exists in the flesh of the berries two years after the fact you'll find certain uh trees and shrubs carried in their buds and in their stem in the flesh of the the bark and the buds and the active ingredient is present(...) and this is where we've been petitioning health canada to say which reports are you listening to and at the end of the day when you ask your scientists have you gone out to see the landscape level biodiversity impacts as well as(...) the um you know the very specific persistence(...) of the active ingredient because we're told it does not persist(...) it does not persist and the fact that we're finding it

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tells us a lot(...) it means you've been lied to(...) so is there a way if you're looking at a blueberry that has been sprayed is there something that's that you can see with your eye or how can you tell yeah it no you have to go to a lab(...) yeah yeah or have the local knowledge that the area has been from an indigenous worldview you know it's sterilizing the forest on us it's taking away our foods(...) right okay we're experiencing um what we think is effects on moose and where we're seeing it we feel we're seeing it is moose livers and we're gonna embark on a liver sampling

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exercise this year because everyone talks about it but nobody's made a pathway to take that liver and say why is it doing that what's the cause because we don't eat the livers when they see the spots on them and they're whitish and pale and spotty with the cysts yeah and um it seems to be more associated with where there would have been spray or may have been spray(...) so my point is when you're eating vegetation berries that have got something that's taken their nutrient value deteriorated it(...) because you can go into some of these spray areas where there's been partial spray on a tree well the tree will still grow but like a berry i've not seen it a tree i can see it you can see that it's partially shriveled up and i've witnessed the browsing on those partially sprayed trees where they eat the buds they don't you know moose isn't going to discern necessarily

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you know top of the tree there's the bud and you know(...) i've seen them i've seen the browse so there's evidence that the animals are ingesting something that has less food value whether it's a persistence of glyphosate within the flesh or the stem of the bud but there's a deterioration in the nutrient value okay what about the water uh you know stuff stuff goes down at the waterways

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you don't even have to be in the forest to know that it persists in the natural environment because they've done enough tests in towns and cities to know that it's in the water system it's just in there(...) it's in the water system yeah and you know there's buffers on streams and rivers that are meant to be followed so drift you know aerial spray and drift they try to mitigate that but it's not necessarily going to happen 100 of the time

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and further however the water it gets in the water there's evidence that it does end up in a if you take the water watershed and you take the confluence and you take samples further down in the system(...) there's some sampling that we found out of one of the universities we collaborate with they've set up a machine that actually does the algae and benthic sampling and and sure enough they found it in in the vegetation growth(...) okay in in the forested environment(...) so David for the skeptic that's watching this um for the people that would say you know i've lived in northern Ontario my entire life forestry spray spraying's been happening for years and i don't believe there's a problem what would what would you say to them(...) because there's skeptics everywhere

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everyone's allowed to have their opinion eric oh i know i'm not i'm not i'm not i'm not in the mind that i've got to change everyone's minds yeah but when we're thinking about our north and the health and well-being of the people of the north if you're a northerner you shouldn't think that way

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if you want to be in the north and live in the north and benefit from the north then you want to clean north you want a healthy north you don't want a north that's being you know um on this downward slide you know of animal populations you know whether you want to you know have a species at risk list or not here in Ontario the bottom line is we've seen a constant erosion and animals animal habitat and this is not adding value if you again take the time to go for a ride in a herbicide spray block(...) it's hard to measure the cost of that(...) to all of the animals that use the system right right(...) down to the little aphids you know and the ants that eat the liquid off the aphids and now the aphids don't have trees to suck on you know to get their it's just it's just a dynamic system and the more you think about it on how many hectares are sprayed and how many hectares go quiet dead black sticks(...) um i'll share a couple of images with you that i've taken along the way that are for me you know probably the strongest evidence that says maybe this isn't the way to do it maybe we need to go into modified brushing techniques mechanical brushing techniques plus(...) take a full responsibility for the harvest that you're doing(...) meaning plant quicker(...) okay(...) get that forest

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yes as soon as you get better for conifer put in the ground quicker you have a real opportunity to actually out compete the vegetation they want to grow too(...) and again we're trying to do our part as indigenous people trying to say well how can we help right one way we're helping is we're investing in a micro isle technology company that exists up in timmons it's been around for over 25 years micro is a naturally occurs in the soil it actually co-associates with the roots of conifer and deciduous there's different kinds of micro is a there's an isolated version of the boreal micro is a that we now apply on seedlings and we we work with the original owner of the technology at micro tech at timmons(...) and markeen and ourselves have put out a report that says yes there's an increased survival you know on a biomass per hectare you put the inoculation on the seedlings it allows for the tree to take up more water and nutrients because of that association with the micro is on the root it's applied in the nursery and then it goes out when the trees are planted the next spring(...) and you get better survival so let's be responsible let's take those opportunities put that good technology to work and maybe you'll actually spray less hectors and maybe get away with modified brushing treatment instead of doing the kamak model where everything goes down that's over 10 centimeters tall(...) might even be 15 centimeters but regardless you know it's it's a it's a grooming it's a cropping type thing you're still promoting the conifer as your primer you know(...) and um there's lots of science that says you need a certain amount of deciduous per hectare to create proper nutrient cycling your your forest and ecosystems healthier for it all kinds of canadian institute of forestry research papers i'm a forester by training so i'm in a very unique position to talk from the science side the practical side the indigenous side and i'm still learning my indigenous heritage and pathway and ways of knowing but intuitively when you go out there and spend enough time and look at it you go cheaper but there's got to be a better way(...) there's always got to be a better way but um(...) yeah any um(...) any last words before we wrap up

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no i think we've got to have grace with each other and understand that you know whether again you're you support the idea or understand or believe the idea that the world is changing the global environment is changing and that climate change is a factor where weather patterns are going to(...) we need to be adaptive(...) you spray the land you're killing biodiversity you're not allowing your forest to be adaptive so what are we leaving for our children's children's children(...) yeah i think that's the that's a good way to put it what are you leaving for your kids in the next generation definitely because they're the ones you're going to have to pick up the pieces from wherever we leave off no(...) david you know and maybe there will come a day where the two by four isn't the only type of species that we build with maybe we have different ways of utilizing different forest and different species types into our wood building businesses as a form of diversifying so that conifer isn't the only species right right okay good points david flood thanks for joining us today and um we'll keep the conversation going(...) good luck thanks eric