Saturday, September 30, 2-4 PM: “Canopy of Titans: The Life and Times of the Great North American Temperate Rainforest"… Author Event with Jessica Applegate and Paul Koberstein
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Foreword (12/27/2022):
The temperate rain forest of the North Pacific coast is so valuable an ecosystem that it has been dubbed "the Amazon of the North." It holds the world's tallest trees--"carbon-capturing machines." In Canopy of Titans, Paul Koberstein and Jessica Applegate investigate the forest's history and species, issuing a solemn warning about future destruction.
Koberstein and Applegate note that forests store one-quarter of the world's carbon emissions, and say that planting an additional 1 trillion trees could help stabilize the climate. However, logging of old-growth forests still takes place in Oregon, and the impacts of tree removal on wildlife have been severe: the salmon of the North Pacific are declining. As well as diseases, splash dams created for logging still impact their populations by blocking salmon runs, which also limits local orcas. Beavers, a sign of healthy estuaries, are also in need of conservation. And yellow cedars, besieged by hotter soil, may go extinct.
Koberstein and Applegate also cover local challenges to Native Americans, including the shameful Oregon Coast Treaty of 1855, which was followed by genocide and people's forced removal onto reservations. A guest chapter by Native American journalist Terri Hansen underscores the vulnerability of tribal communities.
Koberstein and Applegate embrace a policy of "proforestation"--not just preserving all current forest ecosystems, but choosing to create more. They argue that the Biden administration took a promising change of direction, but that its regulations did not go far enough in a time of multiple "last chances." While it includes many names, dates, and acronyms, they are important to telling the forest's intricate story.
A saga of a magnificent forest and a charm against deforestation that's complemented by eighteen pages of black-and-white photographs, Canopy of Titans is as magisterial as the trees it memorializes.
COPYRIGHT(2022) Foreword Magazine, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Biographical Note:
Paul Koberstein co-founded Cascadia Times in 1995 and has been its editor ever since. Paul, a journalist for 40 years, was a staff writer for The Oregonian and Willamette Week in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1995, Utne Reader named Cascadia Times one of the best new environmental publications in North America. In 2016, Paul won the Bruce Baer Award given annually to an Oregon journalist for excellence in investigative journalism in recognition for his investigation of industrial toxic air pollution. In 2004, he won the John B. Oakes Award for the most distinguished environmental journalism in the United States for a series of articles on wildlife poaching in the North Pacific Ocean. Paul is a native of Oregon and currently resides in Portland.
Jessica Applegate is managing editor and photographer for Cascadia Times. She is a lifelong environmental activist and public servant and works with young children with special needs. Jessica is a founding member of Eastside Portland Air Coalition, a grass roots group that spurred creation of statewide air toxics regulatory overhaul, Cleaner Air Oregon. She was appointed by Governor Brown to the subsequent rules advisory committee resulting in the passage of historic legislation curbing industrial air pollution in Oregon. She is currently an advisory board member for Beyond Toxics in Eugene, Oregon. Jessica holds a master of communication sciences degree from California State, Northridge. During her stint with Cascadia Times she co-wrote award-winning articles exposing fraud in California's carbon offsets program. She also owns a small-scale organic vineyard in Douglas County, Oregon and loves to wander in the woods whenever the stars align. Jessica resides in Portland, Oregon.
Publisher Marketing:
Trees are crucial in preserving a liveable future. Canopy of Titans makes an eloquent plea for saving one of North America's last great forests.
-- Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
"We've understood that the Amazon rainforest is crucial to the planet-but as this very fine book makes clear, no more important than the great temperate forests of the Pacific coast, or indeed any of the other remaining big, intact woodlands of the earth. Big old trees eat up and store carbon at dizzying rates; leaving them standing, and growing more of them, is an essential part of balancing the planet's climate math."
-- Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature