Katarina Nolte (posts 500-999)

A Silent Forest (1 of 5)

“The Greatest Threat to Forests Since the Chain Saw.

That’s the phrase used in the documentary “Silent Forest”, and it refers to the ongoing field testing of GM trees for monoculture (cultivating only one type) industrial tree plantations.

As the antithesis of nature’s natural biodiversity, even non-GMO monoculture crops and tree plantations endanger future generations while ruining the soil.”

“In reality, the risk associated with GE tree farms is not a risk at all; it’s a certainty.

A GE tree plantation is, in essence, a silent forest, one which doesn’t support chipmunks or snakes at ground level, holds no birdsong in its branches and supports no raptors soaring above.

And should these genes escape, the same fate awaits the world’s remaining forests.

Monsanto’s Glyphosate is the primary herbicide for which resistance is engineered in plants.

Glyphosate, being water soluble, has been linked to health problems in humans and fish.

The EPA has found that exposure to Glyphosate may cause short term impacts of lung congestion, and long term impacts of kidney and reproductive damage.

In addition, the introduction of pollen from the modified trees spreading to native forests could destabilize fragile ecosystems and pose a new threat to insects in the forests that rely on the trees as a source of food.

And pollen spreads: according to the Native Forest Network, pollen from a pine tree in northwest India was found as far as 600 kilometers from the closest pines, which means that each genetically engineered pine tree has the potential to spread its altered pollen over more than 1,130,400 square kilometers.

If industries are able to produce completely sterile trees, tree plantations will be further hostile to wildlife: devoid of nuts, pollen, flowers, or fruit, these “naked” trees will take away a large source of sustenance from the organisms that depend on flowering trees to survive.

In 1995, a report by the World Resources Institute and the U.S. EPA found that plantations and tree farms in tropical forests at their best are able to store only about one-fourth the amount of carbon as native forests.

Since most tree farms and plantations are grown on land that used to be forest, tree plantations increase the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.”

Rainforest Action Network

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