Canada has some of the world’s lushest forests, accounting for over 9% of the world’s forest areas. About 38% of Canadian land is composed of forest cover. The forests in Canada also have the distinction of being ‘stable’, i.e. less than half a per cent of the forest area has faced deforestation since 1990.

While Governments enact laws to conserve and protect the natural forest cover, it is down to individuals to adopt simple lifestyle changes to save forests in this beautiful country. Consider some changes one can make towards this goal:

#1 Practice ‘conscious Earth-friendly’ behaviour.
An environmentally friendly person is one who is conscious of the impact of their lifestyle on the planet. As a Canadian citizen, you can make simple changes in your daily life to reduce your carbon footprint – power the house with solar panels instead of using fossil fuel-generated electricity, recycle water, install LED bulbs, and use detergents and cleaning materials made from pure plant actives rather than harmful chemicals like bleach. Living with a greater awareness of the resources one uses in daily life, how and where they are produced, how you choose to heat up the house, your use of water and other non-renewable resources, and even the manufacturing processes for the products you use, can ultimately save forests, keep marine ecologies healthier and significantly reduce your home’s carbon footprint.

#2 Recycle, reuse, conserve.
Adopt ‘Recycle and reuse’ as your daily mantra – if something can be put to use multiple times instead of being trashed after one use, or recycled, then the practice must certainly be followed. It is not just about using the nearest recycling station, but of using it properly and often. Ditch the use of single-use plastic and substitute plastic food containers, bottles, straws and other items with glass or metal ones. Meanwhile, conserving resources can be both simple and complex. It could be as basic as switching off the power when not needed, or choosing building materials that do not deplete the forests in Canada (such as wood).

#3 Plant trees around your home.
Keeping your home shaded from the sunlight helps reduce the use of electricity in the summer season. A simple change to make in this regard, is to plant trees around your home and care for them till they become stable. Not only do trees provide shade, they become nesting spots for birds, clear the air by providing oxygen, provide fruits and flowers, and so on. If you cannot plant trees, then aim to cultivate an organic kitchen garden. Growing your own produce is healthy for your home, and reduces the burden on commercial agriculture. Besides this, try reducing your dependence on meat every week and substitute it with vegetables, cereals and grains to lower emissions and save forest wildlife.

#4 Cook only as much as required.
Most households unintentionally discard uneaten food every day – this ends up in landfills and generates greenhouse gases like methane. The forests in Canada bear the brunt of rising greenhouse emissions. Meanwhile, food waste ends up wasting the resources that helped create that food in the first place, right from raw produce to fuel. Do ensure that you cook only as much as the household needs, and donate the uneaten portions to homeless persons instead of junking it. If you have kitchen waste, compost it rather than throwing it away.

Simple changes to everyday life can have a tremendous impact on the forests in Canada. Try and use biodegradable products wherever possible, shop locally instead of having products shipped from other cities or countries, and so on.

The post 4 Changes You Can Make in Everyday Life to Save Forests in Canada appeared first on The Sacred Groves.

The natural grasslands in the US were once grazed by large herds of buffalo. These hefty bovines stomped vegetation and activated the seeds within the soil while depositing manure, urine, and saliva, providing organic matter and nutrients for both plants and soils. The buffalo are long gone, hunted to extinction by Buffalo Bill and his ilk for their horns and hides. However their process of natural, cyclical soil restoration that the buffaloes produce has inspired a new generation of cattle farmers: the soil carbon cowboys.

These sustainable cattle farmers fence their livestock into small paddocks, allowing the stock to graze intensely. By moving them quickly through multiple paddocks, they keep the grasses growing by grazing then give the forage time to rest and regrow. The growing plants and expanding root systems take carbon from the air and place it in soil,  building soil and capturing carbon.

Peter Byck, filmmaker and professor of practice at Arizona State University, calls this adaptive multi-paddock grazing (AMP). He has directed a series of ten documentaries, filmed across the U.S. and Canada, that highlight the practice of regenerative grazing, which helps ranchers to raise healthy livestock while also providing one solution to climate change.

The first documentary, in a series of ten, “Soil Carbon Cowboys,” profiles three ranchers that changed from traditional ranching using significant amounts of high-cost synthetic products to manage weeds and insects and fertilizers to grow forages to a managed grazing system that improves their land and the health of their animals while decreasing their feed and input costs, helping them become economically sustainable.

The world beneath our feet is incredibly complex, containing more life than above ground. This underground life, the soil microbes, repackages nutrients utilized by plants, builds organic matter, stores unused nutrients, and maintains the porous structure of soil.  

To maintain healthy soils rich in organic matter, store large quantities of carbon, hold lots of water to combat both drought and storms, and stay in place without erosion, thriving diverse plants that cover and cool the soil are needed as is the addition of natural nutrients. The grazing action of livestock trims plants and deposits manure before they move on and livestock recycle plants they graze into organic material providing the energy for both plants and soil microbes to produce healthy soils that store more carbon. 

In a sense, these carbon farmers and ranchers are focused more on building healthy soils than raising crops and livestock, says Byck. “Using the natural interactions between cattle, plants, and soil, we can revolutionize the agriculture industry,” says Byck. “This can provide more nutritious food and provide a comfortable income for farming and ranching families while offering one significant solution to climate change, storing carbon in the soil.”

Byck’s films are also spreading a message: educating and inspiring agriculture producers to follow the AMP grazing method on their farms as the project supports research into the benefits of AMP grazing and soil carbon sequestration.

The research is providing data that supports what the ranchers are seeing: grazing livestock in the AMP method builds soil health and provides a sustainable process to store large amounts of carbon in the soil, improving the health of the livestock, us, and the planet. For more information – www.carboncowboys.org

Author: Denice Rackley, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Denice Rackley

The post Meet the Soil Carbon Cowboys! appeared first on The Sacred Groves.

With its lofty pines and vast, glassy lakes, its rare roaming wood bison and endangered whooping cranes, Fort Chipewyan seems like one of the world’s last true wildernesses. Yet even in this remote spot, with its rich natural resources, the effects of the climate crisis are an ever-more pressing daily reality.

This community of 1,000 souls, many of whom are descended from the Chipewyan, Misikew Cree and Métis First Nations tribes, have for decades had their heat and cooking power supplied by a diesel power station owned by Canadian energy group ATCO, which trucks in its heavy black liquid fuel via barge down the northern Alberta’s waterways, or via the ice roads that form across its lakes and tributaries during the freezing autumn and winter months. The trouble with this arrangement, however, was climate change. With Canada’s north warming nearly three times faster than the global average, both the river barge and ice road seasons are becoming increasingly unpredictable.

In 2018, a group of First Nations leaders in Fort Chipewyan decided that enough was enough. In a joint venture of the Mikisew Cree First Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Fort Chipewyan Métis Association, Three Nations Energy (3NE) they decided to bring an ambitious renewable energy project to their remote community.

“We worked together and we made it happen,” Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation said at an event celebrating the completion of the project’s second and final phase.

Replacing 800,000 litres of diesel a year, or 2,500 tonnes of carbon emissions, the Three Nations Energy Solar farm project is Canada’s largest remote off-grid solar farm in Canada, with 5,760 solar panels supplying Fort Chipewyan with 25 percent of its energy needs (in the first phase). The solar farm’s energy will be bought under a long-purchase agreement by ATCO and supplied back to the local grid.

Blue Eyes Simpson, Vice President of the Fort Chipewyan Métis Association and one of the founding directors of First Nations Energy, has lived in Fort Chipewyan all of her life. Simpson is area manager for Parks Canada as well as an advocate for sharing the stories of First Nations elders with younger generations, in a bid to reawaken an imperative for protecting the national environment.

“Our people have a proud tradition of making our livelihood from the sustainable use of local renewable resources,”she says. “We are committed to being good stewards of the land for future generations.”

In a picture in which Canadian native ancestral lands are often denuded and polluted by oil speculation, including neighbouring Fort McKay (where emissions from a controversial oil pipeline project have poisoned plants and fish), Fort Chipewyan is a brighter picture. The Three Nations Energy Solar farm was launched November 17, 2020 with a ceremony at the solar farm in Fort Chipewyan featuring indigenous drummers and prayers as well as tearful thanks from the directors of 3NE.

The group now plans to set up hydroponics food production and support other indigenous green energy initiatives across Canada. This model of use of renewable energy goes to prove, Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation says, what can be done if indigenous communities have a 100 percent stake in their natural resources, as well as their future.

“We work with the sun, we work with the wind, we work with mother nature and we work with the water for the children of the future to give them a better life, a cleaner life,” he adds.

Author: Sally Howard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: 3NE

The post Indigenous Canadians Take Action to Combat Climate Change appeared first on The Sacred Groves.