Save Our Roots website is a repository of information to help ground and connect us to the roots of the ancient and forever relevant wisdom of our elders while actively questioning, exploring and nurturing the off-shoots of curiosity and constantly evolving collection of facts, experience, relationships, and knowledge that we currently call science.
Human-kind is destroying the ROOTS of LIFE across the world, neither knowing or caring what the consequences of these actions will be…
The damage done over the last centuries is so profound that many of Mother Earth’s natural systems are on the verge of total collapse.
Industrial agriculture destroys the biodiversity-rich rain forests and replaces them with single species plantations; trees, corn, soy, cotton, and more for huge profits. The Indigenous Peoples and traditional forest Peoples in the global south face violent evictions and largely untold suffering to satisfy over-consumption in the developed world.
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As scientists with expertise in forest and fire ecology and climate change in California, we feel compelled to expose the many false claims from the biomass industry in your May 19 article (“In California, A Push Grows to Turn Dead Trees into Biomass Energy”). These claims fly in the face of the best available science. Creating effective forest, fire, and climate policy depends on getting the facts right.
Click: False Biomass Energy Industry Claims Demand a Response
“Sacred Promise” Artist BJ McManama – acrylic on canvas
The ROOTS of all life – DNA, the ORIGINAL INSTRUCTIONS of all life is being changed, manipulated, and exploited for control and profit.
WE poison the air, water, land ALL finite, life sustaining resources with abandon to consume and discard with ever increasing speed – never considering the consequences the next Seven Generations will suffer.
How does Monsanto/Bayer, Syrgenta, ADM, Corteva and others control what goes to market?
Regulatory agencies like EPA, USDA, and FDA are, or WERE created to protect against damaging materials and processes from harming human health and our environment that sustains all life…but this isn’t what’s happening! Click here to learn more!
If approved, the GE American chestnut tree would be the first genetically modified organism released with the intention of spreading into the wild. The Indigenous elders and community peoples who we’ve consulted with have expressed concern that this and each successive step taken toward genetically altering the building blocks of life (DNA), by unnaturally combining DNA from totally unrelated organisms, is not the way to right the wrongs that to date humans have caused.
Biomass energy and liquid fuels production are two of the major uses planned for genetically engineered trees.
GE trees pose a very real and significant threat to our natural forests and all Life on Mother Earth. Genetic engineering violates Indigenous peoples’ fundamental rights to live in harmony with nature and to practice our cultural and spiritual beliefs in recognition of the Natural Laws of Creation. The propagation and use of GE trees as a natural resource and commodity for increased pulp and energy production will compromise and destroy the delicate regenerative biodiversity and life-cycles of Mother Earth.
This is NOT a forest! Nothing truly alive can survive here.
The growing of GE trees is a THREAT to: The Rights of Mother Earth; land tenure and subsistence rights of Indigenous Peoples; depletion of precious ground water reserves; increases the use of deadly herbicides and pesticides; continues the release of greenhouse gas emissions and microscopic pollutants; and are a false solution towards mitigating climate change.
Harvesting the wood to burn for energy… NOT sustainable – NOT Green Photo Credit: World Rainforest Movement
Legislation and acts currently written and making their way through the government processes, include language that on the surface, would seem to give tribal governments more control over forest management and energy production on tribal trust lands. In reality, the language is purposely vague and leaves the door open for the continued exploitation of fossil fuel and mineral resources which now, if not stopped, will include growing genetically engineered trees to fuel the new bioenergy and consumer pulp economy.
Our natural world and our ultimate survival is being threatened…
from climate change, deforestation, human encroachment and now from genetic engineering (biotechnology) that is being promoted/marketed as “green” solutions to our energy, food, and quality of life needs. These are all-inclusive false solutions to eliminate the threats/damage from pests, pathogens, and for climate change adaptation. In reality, these are a consolidation of power and ownership/control created to exploit nature in a highly obstructive and disruptive path that may instead accelerate the collapse of earth’s delicate natural balance that sustains all life.
Webinar Who is Behind the Genetically Engineered American Chestnut
Click Image to read the 48-page report written by Anne Petermann (GJEP) and Rachel Smolker (Biofuel Watch) Campaign to Stop GE Trees Steering Committee – Click here to Read the 2-page executive summary.
Genetic Engineering or Biotech is a multi-billion dollar investment vehicle! Corporations, industry lobbyists, and our tax dollars are financing university AND a growing list of private enterprises research and development projects to ensure and secure huge and sustaining monetary control and ownership of the natural world. Genetic engineering is a DIRECT violation of the Rights of Nature! Support for this work also comes from so-called non-profit organizations with ties to industry.
Below are partial lists of corporations and academic institutions involved in a wide range of research projects for tree biotech but there are hundreds more focused on manipulating every element of the natural world of plants and animals.
We have also included some of the organizations we partner with to educate and actively oppose these newest threats to our collective future.
Government Funded Research
- US Departments of Energy
- US Department of Defense
- US Dept. of Interior
- US Dept. of Agriculture
- US Dept. of Transportation
- US Dept. of Energy, Joint Genome Institute
- USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative
- US Forest Service
Resistance Organizations
- Global Justice Ecology Project
- Dogwood Alliance
- Sierra Club
- World Rainforest Movement
- EcoNexis
- Canadian Biotechnology Action Network
- Union of Concerned Scientists
- Center for Food Safety
- BiofuelWatch
- Indigenous Environmental Network
- Everglades Earth First!
- Center for Biological Diversity
- Northwest Resistance Against Genetic Engineering
*Partial list
Corporate Funded GE Research
USA:
- Arborgen
- Duke Energy
- Edenspace Systems Corporation
- FuturaGene
- International Paper Company
- MeadWestVaco
- Monsanto/Bayer Fund
- Okanagan Specialty Fruits
- Rubicon Ltd.
- Southern Garden Citrus
- U.S. Sugar Corporation
- Weyerhauser
GE Trees in Development
- Poplars (Populus sp.)
- Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus sp.) (commercial application pending)
- American Chestnut (Castanea dentata)
- Pine (Pinus sp.)
- English Walnut (Juglans regia)
- Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua)
- American Elm (Ulmus americana)
- Loblolly Pine – Approved for commercial planting – January 2015
NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
The following industry and trade groups support genetically engineered trees:
The American Chestnut Foundation
Biofuels Center of North Carolina
Fagaceae Genomics Web
Forest Health Initiative
Institute of Forest Biotechnology
National Hardwood Lumber Association
Northern Nut Growers Association
US Endowment for Forestry and Communities
Wild Turkey Federation
Academic GE Research
- Carnegie Institution for Science – Stanford
- University of California – Berkeley
- University of California – Davis
- University of California – Riverside
- University of California – Los Angeles
- University of Wisconsin – Madison
- University of British Columbia – Vancouver
- Texas A&M University
- Illinois State University
- Michigan State University – East Lansing
- University of Toledo
- University of New Hampshire – Durham
- Cornell University – Ithaca
- Dartmouth College – Hanover, New Hampshire
- West Virginia University – Morgantown
- University of Tennessee – Knoxville
- North Carolina State University – Raleigh
- Georgia Institue of Technology – Atlanta
- University of Georgia – Athens
- University of North Texas
- Clemson – South Carolina
- Mississippi State
- Oregon State
- Pennsylvania State
- Purdue
- Washington State
- State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
- Virginia Tech
- Hawaii Manoa
*Partial list
Trials & Permits
- The US has almost 900 acres (360 hectares) of genetically engineered tree field trials across 20 states, mainly in the U.S. South, Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest. The vast majority of these are in three species: 355 acres of field trials are in GE eucalyptus and 322 acres are in GE poplars. GE Lobolly pines are planted in more than 150 acres. (For an overview see: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/brs/status/BRS_public_data_file.xlsx)
- In July 2009, ArborGen received approval from the U.S. government (USDA) to plant some 260,000 GE eucalyptus trees in 29 field trials covering over 330 acres in seven US states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas). These GE eucalyptus, a hybrid of Eucalyptus grandis X Eucalyptus urophylla, are engineered to tolerate colder temperatures, produce less lignin, and digest some of their own RNA in the hope of reducing fertility (a Terminator-type genetic technology). (1)
- On December 31, 2011 ArborGen submitted a petition to the US government (USDA APHIS) requesting permission – the first in the USA – to commercially release freeze tolerant GE eucalyptus. This application has been heavily opposed by several groups, arguing that Eucalyptus trees are not native to the US and are a documented invasive species; they are also highly flammable and known to deplete ground water. In 2014 APHIS announced that it is voluntarily preparing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). This EIS indicates at least that the agency is aware of both the potentially severe environmental impacts these GE trees will have and the overwhelming public opposition to them. In the agency’s history, however, APHIS has never rejected an industry request to deregulate a GE plant.