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- Convenors:
-
Seumas Bates
(Bangor University)
Norman Dandy (Bangor University)
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Short Abstract:
Woodlands are under increasing pressure from climate change, deforestation, pests and diseases, and other threats. This panel shall critically engage with individuals and communities working to preserve and protect these woodlands, and how this interlinks with forest and human health and wellbeing.
Long Abstract:
Globally woodlands have both never been under greater threat and yet never been as central to global environmental consciousness. From the vast Amazon to the Forest of Dean woodlands are being buffeted by the impacts of climate change, deforestation, and pests and diseases. Yet these threats have been, and are being met by equally fierce movements to protect and preserve these forests. What's more, the critical interlinks between the health and wellbeing of forests and the health and wellbeing of humans are increasingly being recognised as central to this dynamic of threat and community response.
This panel shall engage with these threats to the world's woodlands, and those communities working to protect them for future generations. In particular, it hopes to foreground the connections been forest health and human health, and hopes to ask whether 'nature based solutions' focused on human wellbeing can simultaneously heal 'unwell' forests.
We invite papers from all landscapes, and which engage with any individuals or communities who are working to preserve and/or 'manage' woodlands and forests, especially where there is connection to woodland or human health and wellbeing. We additionally encourage papers which have a temporal, and longitudinal dimension to them, however this is secondary to our main focus of the conflict between threats to woodlands, their preservation, and what this might mean for the health of all.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 14 April, 2023, -Liz O'Brien (Forest Research) Stephen McConnachie (Forest Research) Vadim Saraev (Forest Research) Alison Dyke (University of York) Clare Hall Jack Forster (Forest Research)
Paper short abstract:
Understanding the social and cultural values of treescapes is critical as greater inclusion of these values in policy making could lead to them being more highly valued, better protected and managed resulting in greater human well-being and potentially improved conservation of treescapes.
Paper long abstract:
There is potential to better conserve treescapes through an improved understanding of Social and Cultural Values (S&CV). There is recognition by many decision makers of the need to take on a broader definition of S&CV as they relate to tree health, and to explore ways to improve the representation of these values in tree health policy, operational decision-making and delivery. This has emerged in response to tree health problems which has highlighted the strength of S&CVs associated with particular species e.g. ash (ash dieback). This research has developed a scale of S&CV which are linked to human wellbeing; it explores how the S&CV people hold might be impacted by a pest or disease, highlighting treescapes under stress, and exploring how these values can be considered in decision making. Through an evidence review, stakeholder workshops, and interviews, we developed the S&CV scale, which we then used in a representative survey of 5,000 people in England to explore S&CV at the local and national level. People value treescapes highly. Respondents felt that pests and diseases threaten the S&CV they hold for treescapes and that the greatest impacts would be the large-scale loss of trees and the gradual slow decline of trees in woods. There was less concern for loss of a small number of selected trees that are then replaced by different species. With greater inclusion of S&CVs in policy making treescapes could be valued more highly, better protected and managed, resulting in greater human well-being and potentially improved conservation of treescapes.
James Weldon (Cardiff University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the goals of tree disease related conservation efforts by questioning what makes their results 'culturally authentic'. In doing so, it outlines possible impacts of different ideas about cultural wellbeing on attempts to protect single species of tree and wider forest health.
Paper long abstract:
Dutch Elm Disease transformed elm from being a ubiquitous part of the UK landscape, to being largely absent. This landscape scale impact is something that is, to a certain extent, being replicated with ash trees due to Ash Dieback. There are ongoing projects responding to both diseases, three of which are the focus of my research:
• The loosely connected network of people breeding, trialing and selling disease-resistant elm
• Saving Devon's Treescapes - Wildlife Trust project planting other species in response to Ash Dieback
• Acts of memorialisation relating to both diseases
This paper is concerned with the goals of these conservation efforts, specifically - what is considered an appropriate proxy for absent tree species by the communities involved in these projects? My research is pre-data collection, so rather than presenting any data this paper will introduce the case studies at the center of my research and outline how different ideas about a tree's 'belonging' appear in each of them. Thinking about human wellbeing beyond physical health, I will focus on the cultural wellbeing of those who live and work with ash and elm trees and how it interplays with the health of that species and conceptions of a species' belonging. Following O'Gorman's call to see more-than-human belonging as 'never simply a question of biology or culture in isolation, but a terrain of contested biocultural meanings' (2014:285), I suggest that responses these diseases lie at the intersection of ideas about heritage, nostalgia, and ecological imperatives.
Seumas Bates (Bangor University) Norman Dandy (Bangor University)
Paper short abstract:
Focusing on an under-researched yet critical cohort within British forestry we shall explore the relationship between woodland management, health, and the microbiome; and the insights this offers into the linkages between complex ecosystems, arboreal pest & disease management, and human wellbeing.
Paper long abstract:
Managers of private woodland less than five hectares in size – often much less – are a significant and increasing cohort within the British forestry landscape. These managers are often viewed as a homogenous social group within the sector – often grouped as 'hobby' owners – yet in reality are diverse and disunited, sharing few universal commonalities in terms of demographics or woodland practices; except crucially, as increasingly major actors in the preservation of the UK’s forests. This paper shall engage with recent research conducted amongst this group focused on acute oak decline, which engages with the critical relationship between manager, woodland, and the microbiome.
Given how central the microbiome is to the health of all complex lifeforms, improved knowledge of how it is understood and (possibly) managed, and how it interlinks with larger ecosystems, could provide a significant advancement in the management of pests and diseases. Furthermore, we ask whether by learning about the microbiome and its connection with being well and unwell, managers and others could simultaneously improve BOTH their human and forest health? These issues are under-researched despite their significance, yet provide intriguing opportunities to reflect on how microbial health and management is considered amongst humans, woodlands, and beyond.
Marie-Louise Wohrle (University of Edinburgh)
Paper short abstract:
Woodland managers and researchers in the UK are keenly aware of the global interconnections that inevitably shape their local woodlands. Do microbial trade arrivals and local adaptations shape a more-than-local conservation approach suited to the Anthropocene?
Paper long abstract:
Woodland managers and researchers in the UK are keenly aware of the global interconnections that inevitably shape their local woodlands. As British ideas and ideals around the local ancient woodland landscapes shape conservation goals and rewilding efforts (Lorimer et al. 2015), the non-native or imported status of particular woodland pests is thus often emphasized as buffer zones are set up and eradication efforts are underway. Microbial arrivals of the international trade cannot always be eradicated, forcing Anthropocene conservation to constantly seek to adapt to global microbial networks. Examining the impact of two microbial pests on woodland conservation gives some insight on how local and global interspecies interactions shape woodlands. Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, the fungus responsible for ash dieback, is a traveller of the anthropocene, arriving in the UK through the seedling nurseries if the international plant trade (FAO 2014) carrying the tree plantation into the woodland (Tsing 2017). Phytophthora ramorum, an oomycete causing blight in different trees, evolved to infect larches in south-west England. Both are considered impossible to eradicate their impacts have become increasingly visible (treecouncil.org 2022, Scottish Forestry 2023). Their "encroaching unlivability" (Tsing 2017) is encountered by woodland managers regularly.
Interviews with woodland estate managers and tree health experts as well as archival research with tree conservation groups and Scottish and English government agencies explore the multispecies networks surrounding ash dieback and ramorum disease and question the (non-)locality of woodland microbes.