Event
Proforestation: Letting Forests Grow Old
Simsbury Public Library will host the Fall Old Forest Film Series in celebration of America’s 250th. The series explores the beauty and importance of New England’s old-growth forests and is presented in partnership with New England Forests, Real Art Ways, Simsbury Grange, Avon, Canton, Granby, Simsbury and Traprock Ridge Land Trusts, and other community partners.
Films will be shown one Thursday each month. Each evening begins with a reception at 6:00 p.m., followed by a one-hour film at 6:30 and a brief Q&A with Ray and Susan after the screening.
Register here to attend.
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The hurried, hectic life many of us lead today tends to make us take for granted the physical world we live in. Do we think about what made Earth a planet that fosters life, unlike the barren planets around us? Somehow, water appeared in great quantity here, which certainly is the basis of life. But just the presence of water alone was not enough to fully support the complex life forms that eventually arose. In short, it was the evolution of forests, over millions of years, that produced the environmental conditions that give us a place to thrive: an atmosphere with oxygen; fresh water; food; shelter; a moderate climate; fuel; etc. Had forests not come about, we wouldn’t exist either.
Forests give us life. But not just any forest is good enough. To keep Earth as a place where we can continue to live in relative comfort requires vast regions of Nature-managed, old forests across the globe. Only old forests, where natural biological, evolutionary processes play out unhampered, are up to the task; they are what created livable terrestrial conditions in the first place, and are the only thing that can maintain those conditions.
A new term has been coined to describe the simple concept of allowing forests to grow old (and thereby provide us with their benefits)… “proforestation.”
And now, a new film explores this topic, titled “Proforestation: Letting Forests Grow Old.” It features some of New England’s remaining old-growth forests. Three scientists speak on the subject: an ecologist and two co-authors of the term “proforestation.”
