 So let me introduce Dana. She is co-founder and executive director of the Dogwood Alliance, which has been working to advance climate action and environmental justice, mobilizing diverse voices to protect forests and communities in the Southern US from destructive logging for 25 years. She's been at the forefront of forest protection movement in the US and has led hard-hitting grassroots campaigns, negotiated groundbreaking forest protection commitments from some of the largest companies in the world. She helped to launch an international campaign focusing on halting the burning of trees as renewable energy biomass and been leading edge of elevating forest protection as a national climate justice priority. Then as a leading voice connecting the dots between climate change, forest destruction and social justice. Prior to founding Dogwood, she worked as a campaigner for Greenpeace US and she also has a law degree from Emory University. Welcome, Dana. So nice to have you. Thank you so much. And I just wanna take a minute to honor the land that I'm on since I'm in a different part of the world, the unceded territory of the Cherokee Nation. It's such a pleasure to be with you all today. And I'm gonna spend about 30 minutes just kind of talking about some of the work that we do, the importance of it. And then I'm really hoping to spend most of our time together in discussion, talking a little bit more about how we're going about our work and some of the challenges we have or any other questions that you guys have. So I have a few slides to show here because I find that on Zoom, it's usually helpful to have some visuals because we're seeing talking heads so much all the time when we're on Zoom these days. So yeah, I have a couple of slides. I'm just gonna start them here. I wanted to start off just talking a little bit about myself and my background. I grew up in the world's largest wood producing region. This is a picture of me with my parent walking down a dirt road. This was a pretty typical weekend afternoon for me as a child. And as I said, I grew up in the world's largest wood producing region. And just for the record, that wasn't Brazil or Indonesia. It was a coastal plain of the US South. I grew up in coastal South Carolina. And I was blessed to be able to grow up a place where I had free range access to nature. I was always out in the woods. If I wasn't in a boat, a creek or swimming in the salt water, creeks, I was hiking through the woods and building forts. And when I look back on my life, it's such a something in my life that I really, really appreciate that I had that deep immersion in nature as such a young child. And I had this deep connection that I made to nature as a young child. And the other thing about the time that I grew up was I was born in the middle of the process of South Carolina de-segregating the school system. And being in rural South Carolina, I was very keenly aware of the manner in which white people talked about people of color. I was really keenly aware of the sort of segregation, the message that we don't mix. And as a child, it was a really painful part of my childhood. As I look back on it, it was a really sad part of my childhood because I knew back then that that wasn't right. Even as a child, I knew that that was not right. That didn't feel right. So fast forward to today, and it's just been really amazing for me to be able to put these two things that were so profoundly impactful in my life, the immersion of nature that created such love in my heart and such appreciation. And then this other piece of my history that was so painful and sad. And to realize that the two were really interconnected and that protecting forests is actually a really big part of advancing justice in the southeastern U.S. So we all know that forests are critical. I mean, I know y'all have standing forests for months. So you know, I don't need to tell you this, but just to kind of level set the context here before we get into it in order to achieve the goal of being temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we know what we need to do. We need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And that includes but is not limited to phasing out fossil fuels. And we also need to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere. And the active removal of carbon from the atmosphere is an area that is new. And there's a lot of debate about the best way to go about doing that. And there's a lot of dangerous sort of propositions out there for how we might capture carbon out of the atmosphere. We know all of us on this call that the best technology we have that is tried and true for pulling carbon out of the atmosphere is forest. And we all know that the only way that they can do that to the degree that we need them to and to the scale is to leave as much in the ground as possible to grow. So I was fortunate enough in 2017, I don't know how many of you guys were at the climate march in DC in 2017, but it was a huge march. There were, you know, 50,000, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of people there. I can't remember the exact number. And it was a really, really hot day. And we had gone up there with several of us from Dogwood Alliance, you know, we had our group of maybe like 20 people that had come up. We had our signs with, you know, forests and no creatures on them and like protect forests, save the climate. And we found ourselves in this ocean, literally, of activists that were, you know, anti-fossil fuels, which of course we love and we know that we need to get off of fossil fuels. But as a forest activist at that point, it felt like we were such little fish in this big ocean and it felt like we were having to sort of like fight for our voices to be heard about how important forests were. And then I saw a guy run through the crowd and he was carrying this sign that looked like this. It said 410 PPM, time to re-wild America. And I remember I just wanted to like go and like tackle him, run down and like tackle him and give him a hug and be like, I know what your sign means because so many people probably had no idea what that guy signed meant. But, you know, all of us forest activists, we know that, you know, in 2017, there was 410 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere. And we know from the whole organization that Bill McKibbin started 350.org that scientists have pretty much agreed that 350 is the safe level of carbon in the atmosphere to have a stable climate that's conducive to human life on the planet. So we know we need to reduce that. And we're sitting here today and we're at 418 parts per million. And in order to get carbon to a level that is safe again, we do need to re-wild America. We do need to address the devastating impacts that the forest industry has had on our forests across this country. We all know that forests are just so essential to life on earth and I'm not gonna get into all of that what I do is too often in the climate movement, I think we are looking to technology to solve the climate crisis. And while technology can help in some ways, we're not looking enough to nature and how years and years of abuse of nature have created a condition where our climate is also conditions that are contributing dramatically to climate change. And that redefining our relationship with nature and giving nature a break is a cool part of our ability to get out of climate change. So we also know that our forests play a face many, many different threats, whether it's from wildfires or droughts, insects, urbanization, but the data is pretty clear on this, that the leading cause of tree mortality across North America is none of those things. It's industrial logging. And we also know that the leading driver of forest carbon loss, therefore, from our forests is not insects or climate change, mortality or drought. It's not conversion to urban development. It's not even wildfire. It's industrial logging. And we know that the largest sources of carbon loss in US forests are coming from the Southeast, which is the largest wood producing region. Large-scale clear-cutting across the South is rampant. Studies that have looked at satellite imagery analysis around the world have shown that the rate and scale of forest destruction from logging in the Southeastern US is four times that of South American rainforest. The Southeastern US is our nation's sacrifice zone for our wood production and consumption. And the US is the world's largest consumer and producer of wood products, at least on par with the next largest, which is China. We've seen in the wake of all this clear-cutting over decades and decades the steady replacement of some of the world's most biologically diverse forested ecosystems turned into monoculture tree plantations. There are over 10 million acres of tree plantations across the South. And they have come at the expense of ecosystems to the brink of extinction. For example, the long-leaf pine ecosystem, which used to dominate across the Southeastern US is now one of the world's largest, one of the world's most endangered ecosystem. And we're talking about an entire ecosystem that used to be dominant across the coastal plain, which has now been reduced to about 3% of its original range. These plantations are sprayed routinely with chemical herbicides and fertilizers. And a study done by the US Forest Service years ago found that the US South sprays more chemicals on its forests than the rest of the world combined. So our forests are the most diverse in the Southeastern US for biologically diverse forests in all of North America, but they are also our nation's least protected. So there are very little regulations. Most of the land is privately owned. We have very little relative public lands in the Southeastern US. And what's happening on private lands is largely unregulated. And that's where most of the industrial logging is taking place. So this is somebody's vaccine that you'll see in the coastal plain of the South, just driving down the road, large clearcuts and pine plantations everywhere, logging trucks all over the roads going to mills, paper mills, wood pellet mills, all kinds of wood processing mills. And where all of this is really hits the road and where it's really concentrated is in a region of the South that's known as the Black Belt. The Black Belt of the South is highlighted on this map. It is the highest percentages of African Americans in the country live in the Black Belt. And it's also the area of the country that tends to have the highest rates of poverty and unemployment and other indicators of socioeconomic stress. So in some of these counties, you'll see the population of blacks in the area of anywhere from 65% to 90%. Most of the private land, however, 99% of the private land is owned by white people. There's been a very long history of discriminatory practices that have prevented and restricted ownership of black people. It restricted their ownership of land. And that's very well documented. And of course, all this land used to be Native American land. So it was colonized, one of the first regions to be colonized and deforested in the country. So these same communities are now under increased threat by the expansion of the wood pellet industry. You guys have probably already, y'all are already dealing with biomass up there. In the South, we become ground zero for the production of wood pellets that are being burned overseas in power stations in Europe and increasingly in Asia as a so-called renewable alternative to coal and gas. And y'all probably know, because I think you've had other speakers speak to this, this is not a climate solution. It's worse than coal at the smokestack in terms of CO2 emissions. We're also learning now that the pollution coming from burning biomass is as bad or worse as coal and gas. And these wood pellet mills are adding pollution and forest destruction in communities that are already overburdened with both. A lot of the communities that we work in, where these wood pellet mills are coming in and the black belt of the South, already have paper mills, already have other wood processing mills, already have hog farms and chicken farms. They have coal ash ponds. They have gas pipelines proposed going through. It's just these communities have become a real dumping ground and a sacrifice zone for a lot of the extractive economy that drives our nation at this point. So this is a picture of the Drax pellet mill in Louisiana. It was just fine, two and a half million dollars this year. I'm sorry, in Mississippi, it was just fine, two and a half million dollars for continuous exceeding of air permit restrictions. And the largest fine levied on a wood pellet mill so far. But we've seen a pattern of this kind of like, they come in under these minor source permits, but they have a really difficult time meeting the permit limits. So we see patterns of violations at these facilities consistently. And you see right in the shadows of this polluting facility, you see this low income black community with children playing. And nobody even bothered to notify the people living next to this mill that this facility was violating its air permits. So you've literally got people living in the shadows of this polluting industry. And then we've done investigations following logging trucks to see where they're getting the wood. And we documented over and over and over again the clearing of wetland forests along the rivers. And this is really critical because these wetland forests are some of the most biological forests that we have left in our region. They're some of the more intact forest natural forests that we have in the coastal plain. And they provide vital natural protection against flooding. And what's happening right now in the southeastern coastal plain, especially in the Black Belt, is they're getting hit really, really hard over recent years by the extreme flooding that's been going on, that's been directly linked to climate change. This particular picture is in Robeson County. We worked with a local community there last year to try to stop a woodpillot mill, another one from being permitted in North Carolina. This community is mostly Native American and Black, representing well more than 67, 70% of the population. The poverty rate here is three times the national average. And one of the things to consider that we like to lift up all the time is that, OK, if the wood products industry were such a good provider of jobs and such a benefit to the rural economy, why do the communities in the Black Belt, where all of this is concentrated, why are they continuously suffering from high poverty rates and unemployment rates and other indicators of socioeconomic stress? There is simply no evidence that the forest industry is a good strategy for developing rural economies. Otherwise, these communities would be looking way different than they currently do. And this is a map of the woodpillot industry is just continuing to expand unabated across the region. We've had some success. We're gaining some traction. But nonetheless, the permit after permit after permit is being issued despite massive public and local opposition. This is a map of the operating woodpillot mills currently in the South. And the red dots are the proposed mills that have yet to be built. So you can see that this is a widespread problem across the South. But communities are really fighting back. And this is, I think, one of the more inspiring moments in the Southern Forest movement is that we are seeing these rural communities, African-American and Native American communities, really pushing back. This is a picture of Belinda Joyner on the left. She lives in Northampton, North Carolina, where Enviva has two big mills in close proximity of her home. There are also three big paper mills within close proximity of her home. And there also happens to be a dominion power biomass burning facility within a short distance from her home. So that's just another example of the cumulative impact of all of the wood processing facilities and how they're combining to create this massive pollution, massive forest destruction. And this is on the right as a reporter from Politico One of the things that we do is we connect reporters to these folks on the front lines to make sure that their voices are heard. For too long, our movement, our forest movement, and I'll say including Dogwood Alliance, has not really engaged with the people who are on the front lines bearing the worst of the impacts of this industry. And it's only been about a decade or so for us that we've really embraced the need to do this because if we don't have people at the local level fighting these facilities and speaking out against what's going on, we're not going to get the kind of political change that we need to have happen in order to protect these forests. And the other thing to remember is that this is their forest. This is their community. And so they're the ones who are going to fight the most for it. And that's been true. That's been absolutely what we've discovered is that they've become some of the best advocates against the biomass industry, against the forest industry and for forest protection that we've had in our 25 years of history of working on these issues. Another example right here is my good friend on the left, Reverend Leah Woodbury, who's a climate justice organizer in South Carolina. And the chief of the Indian tribe also in South Carolina. The PD Watershed is actually named after the PD Indian tribe. And the PD tribe is doing some amazing work right now in terms of the cultural center pretty wetland for us and creating a different model on the ground for landowners to think about how they can create jobs through outdoor recreation and being in good relationship with nature versus tearing down those wetland for us and putting everybody at risk. So it's really inspiring to see even a native community who over 400 years of genocide and oppression still retains this really strong sense of a positive the need for a positive relationship with nature. So it's been inspiring to work with the PD tribe and also with Reverend Leah Woodbury. So obviously with federal and international forest climate policy is just an absolute mess. We have got to work hard and work smart to change the dominant policies that are enabling forest destruction and ongoing industrial logging. So we're in the EU and we're working to change the flawed policies that we've worked for years with Rachel on that that are driving the use of forest as fuel. And we're beginning to see some success in Europe and we can talk about that in the Q&A if people want to talk more. In the US, our forest policies around climate are largely focused on tree planting, on wildfire management via logging, which we don't really work out west, but we trust the folks on the ground who do work out west and who have some real problems with the way that the US government is framing up wildfire, claiming that logging is a way of preventing wildfire. And ecologists up in the Pacific Northwest fundamentally disagree with that. And then there's this whole group that is promoting, and this includes Democrats as well and climate champions and some of our own supposed allies in the forest protection movement who are promoting the expansion of wood products as a renewable, as renewable. And as a climate solution versus advocating for the protection of forests from logging. And this is a real problem. This is the dominant narrative right now is that forests are renewable, they grow back, and therefore we just need to make everything out of wood. We need to stop using plastic bags and make paper bags. We need to stop using steel and skyscrapers and make it out of wood. We need to stop using coal and start burning trees instead. You name it. And forest products seem to be the answer to everything. And it couldn't be further from the truth. So we've really got our work cut out for us right now in terms of trying to disrupt that paradigm. And one of the things is that it's absolutely essential that we as activists ensure that forest protection is elevated at the national level as a climate priority. Because the stuff we're dealing with in the South is not unique to the South. I mean, it's happening all over the place. It's just happening at a rate scale. It is perhaps bigger and it's impacting people. The people that it's impacting may be slightly different. So on the solution side, one of the things that we're doing is really linking up with others who are working on climate change in our region and who are working on climate justice and working to align around a vision for the future so that we're not inadvertently advocating, they're not inadvertently advocating to get off fossil fuels and incomes in its place, the burning of wood. And on our end, as forest activists, we're not advocating for fault solutions like carbon markets, that are just gonna, might keep some trees standing, but are just gonna perpetuate ongoing carbon pollution. So together we worked centering the voices of frontline communities to create the Southern communities for a Green New Deal platform. We really put forward a strong vision for the South for how we need to transform the economy away from one that is polluting and extracting is something that is regenerative and just. And so within, we've really centered the voices of communities. And I think this was one of the things on a policy level that needs to change. And even within our own movement that needs to change is that people on the ground need to be really defining the policies here because they know the forest, they know their community, they know what they need. And it's when we get into a situation where policies are being defined overseas that impact some community somewhere else or policies are being developed up in some Washington DC office, they're not really taking into consideration what's needed on the ground. So it's really important for us to start developing policy in a much more democratic way. And that's one of the things that we're really focused on. So with the Southern communities for a Green New Deal, we're calling for no new wood pellets. No, I mean, no biomass, no wood pellets, shouldn't be renewable, no more expansion in environmental justice communities of any type of wood processing polluting facilities or any kind of polluting facilities for that matter. Frontline communities wanna see our wetland forest protected from the law. They do in restoration of ecosystems but not monoculture, tree, land, which is what the trillion trees ID or the billion trees campaign or whatever that is. They also believe that we should be holding forest industry accountable for its carbon emissions. Right now they're getting a complete free pass. The carbon emissions associated with industrial logging are going completely under the radar in our accounting and are not transparent. And we need them to be held accountable for the climate impacts. We wanna see a redirection of subsidies away from the forest industry and toward forest protection and investment in nature-based jobs in frontline communities. We wanna see land reparations for black Americans and indigenous people. And that includes both expanded public lands that are owned by everybody in the community but also an expansion in community-owned forests that are targeted in areas that have been hit hardest by industrial logging. And then finally, we just need to reduce wood product consumption and waste. We've got to start dealing with the fact that we're just consuming way too much. So on the flip side of industrial logging is a regenerative economy. And we just like to lift up outdoor recreation as the equivalent to solar or wind power in terms of energy solutions. Outdoor recreation is an awesome opportunity for building rural economies in a way that leaves for a standing, creates more jobs. Actually, more jobs are created in the southeastern US by outdoor recreation than the forest industry. But these communities where commercial forestry is out of control and concentrated have essentially been shut out of developing outdoor recreation economy because the land is all in private ownership and it's all in commercial production. And nobody wants to hike or camp in a pine plantation or a clear cut, right? So when we think about equity in the big scheme of our country and we think about lack of access to nature and the ability to develop an outdoor recreation economy we have to center what greater protection for forests in the coastal plain of the southeastern US. So I'm gonna leave it there. And our vision is that we collectively stand for forest and in doing so, we also stand for justice and in doing so we heal our planet and we heal our relationships with each other at the same time. So I'm gonna stop and open it up for discussion and questions. Anna Hyde, this is Mark. Thank you for a great presentation and discussion. We are really honored to have you come and talk to us about the work that you've done with Dogwood Alliance. The chat is now being opened up and if folks have questions, put it into the chat and myself and Lindsay will be reviewing them and pose those to Dana. Dana, I'd like to start off. I have a question. Before we started, you mentioned that this is the 25th year for Dogwood Alliance which is quite an accomplishment but in Standing Trees Vermont we're a brand new organization. We're literally in our infancy. So could you share with us a little bit about how you started some of the challenges you had at the beginning, how you stayed focused and really became activists the way you are. So there's probably four questions in my one question there. So pick the ones you'd like to talk to us about but just help us understand your beginning and maybe from that some suggestions for us. Yeah. Well, we started because there was in 1996 a major expansion underway in the paper industry. And so it, that threat that we were seeing to the forest that really sparked a fire. If you will, across the region of people who saw a lot more logging trucks, a lot more clear cutting going on and really started to notice the loss of natural forest to plantations. And so that really sparked the, that was the spark. And it seems like you guys have a similar spark, that you feel that your forests are under threat, that they're really important, that there are some efforts underway to expand the destruction of the forests in the Northeast like there are in other places. And I think that spark of feeling inspired to wanna defend and protect forests is the essential thing that really lit the fuse for Dogwood. And it's the thing that continues to motivate us over time. So we started out as literally an alliance of lots of different organizations across the South, everywhere from literally like garden clubs in Chattanooga, Tennessee to Earth First chapters. And, you know, in, you know, Louisiana. And I think some of our challenges were around navigating, you know, who was Dogwood gonna be in terms of, you know, an organization, you know, were we gonna be, you know, a place for everybody? Were we going to, you know, were we gonna lean in on the activist side of things? And I think just naturally we ended up just leaning in on the activist side of things because that's where the momentum and the heart and the passion of the organization really fell. And I would say that, you know, at the beginning, the reason why we were able to maintain garden clubs even while we had, you know, Earth First groups was because we were addressing an issue that I think a lot of people were seeing and recognizing was a problem in the South, you know? Up to this point, there hadn't really been any conversation about the rate and scale of logging going on in our region. And so I think that it opened up a conversation that people really wanted to have and were ready for. Somebody had asked about direct action, is that? Yeah, there was a question in a chat. Has Dogwood Alliance done on violent direct action? If so, what has worked and any tips you have on that? Yes, you know, we have, we've run campaigns for years and, you know, we haven't as an organization felt the need to put our brand on a direct action, but we have supported activists who were compelled to do direct action on our campaigns. And I think direct action is a lost art in the movement right now. And I do think that there is a place and time for it if it's strategically, you know, timed and it fits into a bigger arc of a campaign. So I will say that. And then the other thing about our beginnings, I would say, and this is still true with Dogwood, is that our plans and our programs and how we approach things has been a democratic process. You know, it's been like engaging people in the planning of what we wanna do and what we wanna focus on. It hasn't been just a couple of people in a room defining, you know, the direction of the organization. It's a democratic process that involves lots of people and includes partners and folks who are impacted on the ground and activists. So, and I think that's been a key part of our success because when people are a part of developing something and they feel like it's theirs, that it's also theirs. It's not just some organization over here who has all the answers, but I actually have something to contribute to this. So I think that's also been a really critical part of our success over the years has been just grassroots organizing and a strong commitment to a democratic process. Lindsay, I've got a couple of questions. I see it here. I'm gonna combine together. And also I see some folks have their hands up. What we're doing folks is if you have a question, put it into the chat and we'll try to get to everyone we can. So Dana, one is, are you aware of any federal legislators or members of the current administration that really understand the issues that we're talking about as far as protecting forests, you know, letting forestry wild, et cetera. And then along with that, do you see any opportunities under the new administration or do you foresee more problems? You mentioned earlier, we see the same thing that, you know, comments coming out of Washington and other areas that, you know, logging is good for forests, the whole issue of wood products, storing carbon, et cetera. So I guess, are you aware of anybody in the current administration that gets it, right? That we could lean on to help and do you see any opportunities in the new administration? So I'm combining two questions there. Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of gets it at the bigger picture of the importance of forests and the importance of leaving trees standing and transforming the forest industry, I would say no. I think there are a few folks in Congress now who are on side with the fact that burning trees is not, you know, renewable energy. My understanding is that Senators Markey and Warren have come out against biomass in Massachusetts, for example. And that that was helpful in a victory that happened there recently on biomass. But in terms of the bigger picture of the bigger, you know, context for us on logging, right now, there isn't. But I, and let me just say, Biden's choices in a lot of other areas have been hopeful. Biden's choices in USDA are really disturbing and concerning. So Secretary Bilsack and under him, the deputy of climate change within the US department, Rob Bonney are both very aligned with industry. And we saw that come out recently in the USDA comment period that they had, right? Now that president Biden has got us back on the climate agreement and has signed a bunch of executive orders on climate change, one of which includes protecting 30% of US forests by 2030 and one of which includes environmental justice in which they have demanded that all agencies take into consideration environmental justice and developing their plans pursuant to the administration's executive orders on climate change. And that executive order on environmental justice, I think gives us some incredible new leverage that we've never had before in the forest movement at a national level because now all of a sudden Bilsack and Bonney have to hear from communities that are directly impacted by the wood products industry. They have to take that into consideration. And this is not a space that they know how to play in, right? So I think we have a really unique opportunity here to really kind of shape things up in a way that we haven't had in the past where we've had to kind of argue about their science and our science and like trees growing back and whether or not the carbon sinks are growing or shrinking or, and there's all these ways that they manipulate the data and the science and do deflection and gaslighting, around the truth in order to protect the forest industry. But when we're talking about environmental justice issues and people coming into the USDA saying this industry is causing harm, it's disarming for them. So, and we do have some real allies now in the administration on environmental justice. Some of the folks that we work with in the South are really long time friends with some of the people who are in the highest positions in the Biden administration working on environmental justice right now. So there is, I think, a really unique opportunity right now if we can seize it. It's great to hear. Somebody's asking if you can name the environmental groups that are promoting wood pellet industry as environmentally friendly. Yeah, you know, I don't know that they are actively promoting it publicly as environmentally friendly. But what we do see are organizations like the Nature Conservancy and Environmental Defense Fund who have partnered up with this thing called the Forest Climate Working Group, which consists of companies including in Viva, who's the world's biggest wood pellet manufacturer. And they're coming up with these sort of agreements about forestry practices for helping climate change. And in that communication, they're listing every threat to forests, pests, conversion, wildfire, except for industrial logging. And we do see like the Nature Conservancy announcing partnerships, for example, with like Bain and Company saying that we need to, you know, we're going to invest in expanding the demand for wood products by 1% a year and the establishment of plantations as a climate solution, right? Like so, the Nature Conservancy, I think, is one of the biggest that we see that are out there providing cover for this destructive industry at a time when we really need to be dialing back on the logging. There's a question out here, Dana, about ways of researching ownership and control of pellet manufacturing and distribution when it's hidden in private equity companies and the like. So a question is, how can you research and learn about these companies? Yeah, we usually contract out some of that research. So there's an entity that we've used barely consistently. I think they're an arm of stand now. They used to be called the Borealis, Borealis. But anyway, they do a lot of supply chain tracking and that kind of financial tracking. And I don't know, Rachel, you may have some more intel on that, but in terms of really diving in and looking at the investors of these things, we usually contract that workout. It's not something we do on our own. Though some of it you can find on your own just through Googling, just through your own ability to research. Thank you. This is a bit of a longer question. This person is a member of the Wendell State Forest Alliance in Western Massachusetts. They operate on many levels from direct action to legal and legislative activities. Do you have guidance on strategy development? One of the biggest challenges in waking up legislators is showing them that keeping forests as forests and as working lands is not good enough. We have the science, but could use help with the argument. Do you have resources or suggestions for our education campaign on forest density? Yeah, actually, I should point you to our website. We have a fact sheet on this about markets keeping forests healthy. So www.dogwoodalliance, if you go to about us and go to reports, it's in the front sort of line. But we get the same thing down here. It's like, oh, if we don't have markets for wood, we won't have any forests because we'll have like a bunch of shopping malls and ag big, big ranches with cows on them. And the reality is that we're not talking about, first of all, there's not really data that supports that in the Southeastern U.S. I don't know if the same is true of where you are, but in these rural communities where they're doing all this logging, there's not a lot of development pressure. I mean, these are rural areas and they're not gonna slap a super Walmart down in these communities. Like that's just, it's just not happening. The other thing we see is that, even like where I grew up on the coast, on the mainland side of Hilton Head Island, massive paper mill right across the Vanna River about 30 minutes away, lots of pine plantations, plenty of market wood down there. And we've seen development go right into pine plantations. Like when the cost of the land just becomes more valuable for development, the price of wood is not going to be able to compete with that. And it's gonna go out of forests and be turned into development. So the idea that somehow wood markets are helping to keep forests from being converted, there's not a lot of actual data that supports that that's the case. And the thing that we like to say is even if that were true, right? Even if the wood markets were kind of helping to keep forests and forests, we've reached a point right now where we know that the help and integrity of the forest matters. So it's not just a matter of keeping a forest and forest, it's a matter of maximizing the ecological value of that forest versus maximizing the monetary value of that forest. And so when we're talking about markets, if we wanna talk about markets that actually keep trees standing and not markets that just keep forests in a degraded state, we should be talking about things like outdoor recreation, which create way more jobs, contribute way more to the tax base, don't pollute communities and create a more diversified economy that isn't hinging on these large corporations that are getting hinging on huge government subsidies. So... Diana, there's a question speaking of markets, stating how the price of softwood lumber has gone up a lot and it's impacting if people wanna do home improvement projects or the cost of building new houses, et cetera. So the question is related to if we were successful in reducing industrial logging, and in the Northeast, we're trying to work on reducing it on public lands, you don't have any public lands down there, but how might that impact this cost of lumber? Don't know if you have a thought on that or not, but just it was a question in the chat, so I wanted to fill it out there. Well, right now it's just like gasoline, right? The cost doesn't really reflect it's true ecological costs. And so, yeah, the cost of lumber probably should be higher than it is right now anyway. And we should be really, really thoughtful about when we're using it and what we're using it for. And I would say the more important thing that we need to focus on right now is eliminating unnecessary uses of wood. If we're talking about prioritization and ways that we can take some of the pressure off for us and allow them to grow older, we need to stop producing wasteful materials and so that's like one time use paper products, we don't need biomass, we don't need wood pellets, right? There's some things right off the bat that we could just like eliminate in order to leave more trees in the ground. And that's the first step that we need to take is to focus on that, where that waste is. And this is related to the commercial logging on public lands. So this person didn't see a mention of ending commercial logging on public lands in your chart. They've been trying in vain to get the concept of proforestation into the Green New Deal. Will Dogwood and others help do that? Yeah, absolutely. And we do actually support ending commercial logging on federal lands at a federal level. We absolutely do. The Southern communities for a Green New Deal platform was really driven by communities in the coastal plain of the US South where there's not a lot of public lands at all. There's almost no federal lands. So that's why it didn't end up on their top list of things. But absolutely, we stand in the soft total solidarity around ending commercial logging on public lands. We wanna make sure, however, that we were just sort of faced with this dilemma where a few groups had put a letter together to John Kerry in the Biden administration, put forward a proposal around what the US should do in its national contribution to climate change under the Paris Agreement, now that we're back in the Paris Agreement. And the ask was to protect old growth on public federal lands in the US. And we were asked to sign on to that letter and we did not sign on to it because we didn't feel like it was broad enough. We didn't feel that it was impactful enough at the end of the day. And we felt that, yes, if we support protecting old growth on public lands, but if that's all we do, we know from past that that demand for that wood is just gonna shift somewhere. And it's more than likely gonna shift in the Southeastern US. And an ask that only centers, you know, the old growth in the public lands is completely missing the equity piece of this, which is that we need more protected land in places like the Southeastern US where there's hardly any federal lands at all. And so from an equity standpoint, you know, while we supported that concept, we felt that the ask wasn't big enough to the administration at this point and perpetuated inequity. So when at a federal level, I think we've got to have a bigger agenda than just public lands, but I can understand where you guys are in the Northeast that public land seems to be, you know, like the place that y'all wanna focus. But I would hope at a national level that we would all be in solidarity with the pro-forestation agenda that wasn't just focused on public lands, but was also created some equity and some protection for forests on private lands in the Southeastern US. We're definitely with you there, Deanna. Yeah. We just, as they said, we're new and we're kind of trying to pick where we're gonna, what we're gonna work on and where we're gonna work. It's so important. I mean, what, you know, you can't do everything all at once. I think one of the things that, you know, we've come to realize too is that we need to articulate the big bold vision and we need to align and have solidarity around the big bold vision because when we're afraid to say what really needs to happen because we're worried that it's not politically feasible or politically palatable at the moment, then we get into a situation where we might have a win and then everybody thinks, you know, like problem solved. And we've certainly had that experience at Dogwood in the past. So keep the big bold vision in the forefront and don't be afraid to say what needs to happen. And don't, but that doesn't mean you can't have a strategic short-term focus, you know, for your campaigns. But the bigger vision and being able to articulate the problem in a way that helps the people to understand that this is one important step in a bigger process of transformation in the way that we relate to forests that needs to happen. You know, that's just vitally important from my perspective. We've got a couple of people into, oh, go ahead, Mark. Well, we may be saying the same thing. So go ahead, Lindsay. Okay, so there's one that a couple of people are interested in about the environmental costs of using steel and concrete in building as opposed to wood. Do you have any research or numbers on that? Yeah, I don't have any specific research that I do, but there has been a lot of research in this space. And it's not as clear as people, you know, think it is. Yes, steel and concrete do have their carbon footprint, their climate impacts, their pollution impacts. But so does wood. And the analyses that I've seen that really miss the mark that make it seem like, you know, wood is a good substitute because it's renewable, you know, fail to really fully embrace the need for forest to pull carbon and maximum amount of carbon out of the atmosphere, you know, in the shortest amount of time. So they're only looking at the trade-off of the carbon footprint and they're not really addressing the need for pro-forestation. And so I think, you know, everywhere we're turning right now, we're realizing the human impact of our consumption and our overbuilding and our overgrowth mentality. And whether it's concrete or steel or wood, you know, we're running into the same issues around the impacts that it's having on climate change and on communities. So we've got to really dial it significantly back and we've got to have some real different types of thinking going on right now, thinking way out of the box and substituting wood for steel is just more of the same old single. So substituting wood for coal, it's just more of the same old industrial logging. It's more of the same old extractive polluting economy. It's not green. It's not renewable, you know, and the forest industry has been one of the most successful greenwashing industries. I think probably the single most successful greenwashing industry on the planet because they have this narrative about how they take care of trees, you know, how they need trees and how trees grow back. Lindsey, to follow up on those two questions, and there's another question that someone put out there early on about understanding the pollution that results from biomass and from the mills that create the pellets. I would direct people, we had two other events. One was the showing of an abbreviated version of burned where you can learn a whole lot more about what's happening in the Southeast but more specifically about the pollution impacts of the mills and the biomass plants in Europe. And then also in the event we had about proforestation, Dr. Moomow spoke to the issue of the environmental impacts of lumber products versus carbon and steel. And also on our standingtrees.org website we've got some links to information to help people understand that. So I'll just throw that out there that there is research out there, we can help you find that. But it does to Dana's point when you take in the total impact of lumber, right? Including reducing its ability to absorb carbon, it's not as environmentally friendly as it's being posed as opposed to concrete or steel. I think somebody had asked or said they didn't really understand are not signing on to the letter to John Kerry. Again, we support the protection of old growth forests on public lands. That is not an issue for us. At a federal level, we need to have solidarity on our ass to the federal government. And we felt that that ass fell short of what we should be demanding of the federal government at this point. And that if we got everything that we wanted around protecting old growth, we would still not be addressing the inequity that exists in forest protection lack thereof in places that are communities that are being really harmed right now by this industry. And so we've just made an organizational priority commitment that anything that we sign on to has to have equity and justice at its center and has to include protection at a federal level has to include when you're talking about that level of ask at the government has to include something that is inclusive of the impacts that are happening in our region. Well, we're at, we're a little over an hour. So there are some questions we didn't get to. We are capturing all of this. We will attempt to do everything we can to provide some answers to folks and follow-up emails. Dana, thank you so much for being with us tonight and sharing your story and sharing with us what's happening in the Southeast. Thank you for the work of Dogwood Alliance. And I hope that everybody found this event to be educational and a motivating event to become an activist to protect our forests. I'm gonna close with just talking a little bit about Standing Trees Vermont. For those of us, those of you on the Zoom meeting that don't know, it's a relatively new coalition of individuals and organizations that want to protect, preserve and restore forests on Vermont's federal and state lands. And what we've been doing a lot of work to do so far is education. We've had three Zoom events, one, as I said, about biomass and what's happening in the Southeast burned. Another one about pro-forestation and now we've had Dana today help us. We wanna raise people's awareness about what's happening to the forests on our public lands and specifically the Green Mount National Forest. There's plans out there right now where there's gonna be over 40,000 acres logged heavily. In many cases, it's gonna be clear-cut. They don't call it clear-cut, but if you look at pictures like the one behind me, that's what they're doing. 40,000 acres may not sound a lot by Southeast standards and by Western standards, but it's about 10% of the Green Mount National Forest and there's more plans coming down the pike. So if you go to our website, StandingTreesVermont.org or watch our Facebook page, there's lots of information there to help you learn more about what's happening, to help you understand more about the benefits of pro-forestation or the detriment of logging. And you can watch our Facebook page to learn more about upcoming events. So again, Dana, thank you for your time tonight. Thank you for your work and your commitment. We appreciate it greatly. And I'd like to close by saying take care to everybody, stay healthy and enjoy our forests.