Tag Archives: Finding the Mother Tree

Dr Teresa Ryan: How the Forest Protects us and why we should preserve it

Dr Teresa Ryan is a Tsimshian woman who combines the ancestral knowledge of her people with the cutting edge research coming out of the Mother Tree Project. Her association with Dr Suzanne Simard began when she applied for a postdoctoral fellowship in what is now UBC’s faculty of Forestry and Environmental Stewardship. Simard was one of her four instructors and suggested, “We have to talk. I read your dissertation.” 

Ryan responded, “You did what?”

Reflecting back on that today, she added, “Who would do that? It’s 435 pages, but what she found was that I demonstrated how our Indigenous social institutions are connected to our heterogeneous mosaic landscapes.” 

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Earth Day 2023: Wild Cortes Displays (P 1 – the Mother Tree)

Wild Cortes celebrated Earth Day, on Saturday April 22, with the opening of the new Mother Tree Exhibit. One of the advantages of being among the first to arrive, is that the facility was not too crowded. There were only half a dozen people when Wild Cortes opened at noon. Local biologist Sabina Leader-Mense agreed to give Cortes Currents a walk through.

She was making some last minute touches to the exhibit when I asked some of the first viewers, ‘What’s your impression of the exhibit?’  

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A taste of the upcoming Season at Wild Cortes

Wild Cortes will be giving a peak of the theme for the upcoming season  this Monday, between 1:00 and 3:00. 

Curator Donna Collins explained, “It’s a bit of a preview that’s going to be a family day activity. We will be taking the families out into the forest, measuring trees to find a mother tree. Then we’ll also be digging to pull up some of the mychorrhizal networks and looking at them here underneath the stereoscopes. After that, participants will be actually creating their own mitochondrial network that will link to their own tree root.  They will be building this themselves. Finally, we will be mimicking the connections that all of these mychorrhizal networks and trees make, by making the connections with string and connecting people.”

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The State of Cortes Forest w/Suzanne Simard on FolkU @89.5 

Dr. Suzanne Simard, author of Finding the Mother Tree, forest ecologist, and professor shares her reflections from her time on Cortes Island and her work on understanding forest ecosystems.

Dr. Robin Hood of the Mother Tree Network interviewed Dr Simard.

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