Stories for a Wiser Forestry by Cathy Fitzgerald Ireland 26 March 2023, Edinburgh Botanic Gardens

A talk prepared by Dr Cathy Fitzgerald for Creative Carbon Scotland's Green Tease Event at Edinburgh's Botanic Gardens Mon 27 March 2023 responding to the theme: The Right Tree in the Right Place.

Introduction by Cathy Fitzgerald:

The phrase ‘the right tree in the right place’ commonly repeated by politicians internationally in regards to the value of appropriate tree-planting, offers Ireland-based New Zealand artist and ecoliteracy educator Cathy Fitzgerald an opportunity to think more deeply about wiser ecological permanent forestry. With the recent 2023 IPCC report again confirming that business-as-usual is threatening the life support systems of Earth, wiser ecological forestry is urgently needed-at-scale, as an alternative to ecocidal clear-fell monoculture forestry, to foster enduring personal, collective, planetary and intergenerational well-being.

The presentation gives a sense of Fitzgerald’s creative story-telling for wiser forestry through her blogging at Hollywood Forest Story.com. Since 2008, she has through online writing, photography and video reflected on, shared and developed an audience interested in her firsthand experiences of learning how to transform a tiny 2-acre conifer plantation in rural Ireland, into a more resilient mixed-species forest (through selective tree-thinning that encourages regeneration of mixed tree species) with new-to-Ireland continuous cover forestry practices that are more developed across some areas of Europe. Fitzgerald’s ongoing Hollywood Forest Story is recognized and summarized as an innovative case study in Creative Carbon Scotland’s Library of Creative Sustainability.

The diary form of Fitzgerald’s blog (now with an archive of her creative activities) has helped her reflect over several years on the emergent story of more ecological permanent forestry worldwide. She frames this work as a shift to a more life-promoting Symbiocene era, where ecosystems flourishing are prioritized, rather than clear-fell monoculture plantation forestry that is emblematic of the entrenched life-limiting mono-extractive mindset of the Anthropocene, also aptly described by Harroway and other scholars as the Plantationocene. Through her other work to provide ecological learning -ecoliteracy- to creative professionals (at Haumea Ecoversity.ie), she also connects ecological art practices to the fore of the global cultural shift to sustainability education (ESD) and broader integrated intrinsic values needed (best expressed in the peoples and twice UNESCO-endorsed Earth Charter 2000), to guide people think and act holistically for a more just, equitable and sustainable world.

Fitzgerald’s Hollywood Forest Story, follows other pioneering ecological artists’ work, like the late Helen and Newton Harrison’s important early 1990s 'Serpentine Lattice' work, that on a larger scale, looked at the devastation of monoculture clearfell forestry in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. Fitzgerald similarly promotes creative storytelling to foster a shift in conversations for new permanent forestry practices for other landowners, and ideas for a more ecologically-sustainable national forestry policy.

This presentation also allowed New Zealand-born Fitzgerald to process the recent heartache - the solastalgia - of how climate-fuelled extreme weather from Cyclone Gabrielle (February 2023) caused monoculture clear-fell forest site waste to devastate regions and communities in NZ. In doing so, she underlines why her and others’ efforts working in NGOs are important to foster wiser forest policy and government programmes. In other words, the soliphilia -the positivity, interconnectedness and empowerment needed to advance permanent, continuous cover, more beautiful bird-song-filled forests in Ireland and elsewhere.

'Hollywood Forest Story' in Creative Carbon Scotland's Library of Creative Sustainability https://www.creativecarbonscotland.com/library/the-hollywood-forest-story/

See blog

Cathy's ecoliteracy courses 

EarthSayer Dr Cathy Fitzgerald

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