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The Coast Salish people say, "We are one."

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[nə́c̓aʔmat ct]

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For thousands of years they lived it.

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But we didn't pay any attention.

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Most of us have forgotten
that we're connected to each other,

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and to nature,

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that we are one.

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But nature is not some separate thing,
but an intimate part of us.

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And what we do on this Earth
ripples through our ecosystems,

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our web of connections.

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Now, the signs are undeniable:

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climate change,

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species extinctions,

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human suffering.

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We have forgotten.

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But for their faith, the people
are connected through spirit to forests,

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and oceans and rivers
and bears and salmon,

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the Coast Salish people were ignored.

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But truly, it does come down
to a matter of faith,

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to trust and respect the relationships
that make up the complexity of nature.

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But we said that's unscientific.

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Western science
requires exact measurements,

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visible proof,

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statistics.

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But make no mistake,

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the Coast Salish people
were deeply scientific.

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How else could they have lived here
for over 10,000 years in such prosperity?

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In fact, they were more
scientific than we.

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For us to look any deeper,
that would have hampered progress.

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"There are trees in those forests,
and our buildings need wood,

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and our printers need paper.

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We need to cut down the forests
and replant those trees."

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Now, how do I fit into this?

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Well, I come from a family of loggers.

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And while my family
was up on the mountainsides

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cutting down trees, one here, one there,

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I was playing in the forest below,

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in the places that are seen and unseen,

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in the trees and the logs
and the forest floor.

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And I believed that fairies lived there.

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And their job was to live in
and protect the forest, just like my job.

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But the fairies couldn't save that forest,

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and neither could I;
actually, nobody could.

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Because the owner of the patch
had to cut it down to feed his family.

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And that moment changed me forever.

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Actually, it motivated me.

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And I went to school to study forestry.

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I wanted to understand the mystery
of why forests felt so powerful to me.

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I wanted to save forests.

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Ironically though, the first job I got
coming out of forestry school

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was to mark old growth trees
for clearcutting,

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and then to replant those clearcuts
with fast-growing firs and pines,

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and to weed out the unwanted species -
the alders, the birches, the aspens.

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And you know what?

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Well, it's because
we considered them competitors,

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interfering with our profits.

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And I got pretty good at creating
these shiny new monocultures.

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But you know,
the questions kept piling up.

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Why was disease spreading
through these plantations?

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Why was cutting out birch
making the fir so sick?

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And I was also increasingly worried
about the increasing rate of clearcutting.

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You see, I'd learned in school
that about a century ago,

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that in Canada, in British Columbia,
they developed this cutting plan

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to cut down all of the old growth trees
in the working forest.

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I knew about it, I'd learned it in school.

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But it took me a long time to realize
that the cutting was not going to stop.

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Nor the attitude that we could convert
these old growth forests

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into nice marketable, neat plantations.

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It seemed to me that there was more
to the forest than meets the eye.

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So, I returned to graduate school

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and I became fascinated
with the underground,

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I wanted to understand the mystery of why
these old growth forests were so powerful.

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So, I looked at this UK study,

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and they were examining seedlings
growing in the laboratory,

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and colonized them with this fungus,
a mycorrhizal fungus.

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The fungus connected
the seedlings in a web,

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and they transmitted carbon
from one seedling to the other.

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A mycorrhiza is literally a fungus-root.

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In this symbiotic association
the fungus grows through the soil

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picking up nutrients and water,
and bringing them back to the plant,

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and trading them
for photosynthetic carbon.

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It's a symbiotic, mutualistic,
reciprocal relationship.

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And most fascinating to me,

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these fungi could
connect plants below ground.

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So, I wondered, I thought back
to my fir forests, and I wondered,

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could the fungi colonizing birch

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actually connect with fir and protect it?

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So, I did some research,
I wanted to find out.

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My first question
came back to that faith thing again.

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Even though we can't see it,

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could these mycorrhizal fungi
be connecting trees below ground?

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Well, it turns out
that they can in real forests.

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Using DNA microsatellites,
we uncovered this network

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in an old growth Douglas fir forest.

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In this picture, these circles
represent Douglas fir trees.

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And the bigger and darker the circle,
the bigger and older the tree.

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And those small,
light circles in the middle,

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those are the seedlings
growing in the understory.

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And these lines
that are linking the circles,

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those are the interlinking
mycorrhizal fungal highways.

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And you'll notice
that the biggest, darkest circles,

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the biggest, oldest trees,
are the most highly connected.

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So, we call these 'hub trees.'

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and later, more fondly,
we started to call them 'mother trees.'

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Because as it turns out,
those mother trees

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are nurturing the young
seedlings in the understory.

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Now, this map is of only two

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of what we think are
100 fungal species in the forest.

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Could you imagine if we'd been able
to map all 100 species?

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Next I wanted to know, what might be
flowing through this network?

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Well, it turns out, the very things
that plants need to survive and grow.

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Things like carbon,
and nutrients, and water.

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So, we use isotopes, carbon isotopes,
and we label plants,

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and we were able to see the carbon

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transmix back and forth
through this network,

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like messages transmitting
through the internet.

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And when one seedling is under stress,
if it's small, or shaded,

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or nutrient poor, or senescing,
the other plant sends more carbon.

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We figured out that it follows
what's called a source-sink gradient.

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From a robust source plant
like an illuminated birch tree

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to a needful sink plant
like an understory fir tree,

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and all this without
harming the source plants.

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The next thing we wanted to know was,

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so this happens, but what does
it really matter in forests?

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Well, it turns out
if you shade one of the plants,

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if Douglas fir's shaded in the understory,
birch will send ten percent of its carbon,

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and that's a lot of carbon.

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That's enough for Douglas fir
actually to make seeds.

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Now, we haven't figured out
precisely what the amounts mean,

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but we do know that this transfer
increases their survival and growth,

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and health of the seedlings
growing in the understory.

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Now, I published this work
in some pretty good journals.

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This particular article struck a chord.

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Lots of people were enthused.

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In fact, there is a whole bunch
of new research all around the world

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that was inspired by this paper.

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But there were also critics
who tried to discredit my work.

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In fact, there were
a lot of papers written,

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keynote addresses given,

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press releases.

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And back home,

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a professional ethics letter
was actually put on my file.

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And my work was called
"a dog's breakfast."

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Now, I know that you know
that this kind of intimidation

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is actually not that uncommon
with breakthrough science,

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especially if it challenges
the status quo.

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Knowing this, this didn't stop me.

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I knew that my science
was sound and rigorous,

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and I knew that one day it could change
the way we view the environment.

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So, really motivated,
I returned to my original question,

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because I still
hadn't quite answered it yet.

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And I wondered,
could these webs, these networks,

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serve as more than just avenues
of exchange of carbon and nutrients

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and water.

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Could a tree
that's under stress, diseased,

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actually benefit
from the health of its neighbors?

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Could birch be helping fir?

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So, I did some more experiments,
and it turns out, it does.

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When Douglas fir
is under stress or disease,

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it sends warning signals to its neighbors,

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and the neighbors respond by increasing
production of their defense enzymes,

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and they're more resistant to disease.

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And if that neighbor is a birch tree,

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the fir benefits from
the antibiotic-producing bacteria

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that are associated
with this shared network.

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It's like a public immunization system.

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And I wondered, could there be more
than defense signals moving?

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Well, it turns out that trees
can actually recognize,

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transmit messages to their relatives.

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A mother tree can recognize
whether seedlings in her neighborhood

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are her kin or strangers.

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She sends more carbon
to kin seedlings than to strangers.

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And if the mother tree is injured,

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she sends even more carbon
to her kin seedlings.

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It's as though she's passing her energy,
her legacy, to the next generation.

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Now, when I look at all this together,

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it's as though these trees
are sharing their deepest secrets.

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This is breakthrough stuff.

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It's pretty exciting.

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You know, at the time,
there were actually many articles written,

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Popular Science,

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documentary films,

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the word was getting out,
and I was really, really excited.

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But I got cancer.

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And that was really awful.

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But you know,
the beautiful thing about this

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is that it re-connected me with my people.

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My people, my family, looked after me.

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They held me.

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They helped me up the stairs.

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They cooked my meals.

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They looked after my children.

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They saved me.

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And back in the hospital,
I made even more connections,

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strong ones,

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with other women fighting breast cancer.

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And we were really afraid,

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and we cried.

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But we also laughed.

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We still do every day.

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We've become so tight,
we're like this tapestry

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that's knit together in a tight weave.

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When one of us stumbles or bends,
the others are right there to pick her up.

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What I've learned through all this,

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is what my forests
have been trying to tell me all along -

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that these connections
are crucial to our well-being.

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They're not easily seen,

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but they're real.

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And you know what? I'm living proof.

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And I'm really grateful.

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

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Now that I'm strong and healthy again,
I've returned to my science,

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and I'm asking other questions.

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My first, and the most important
question to me is,

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what can our discoveries tell us
about how to deal with our biggest threat?

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Climate change.

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Yeah, climate change is no hoax.

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In fact, we can't kid ourselves,

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there is no fancy engineering
that's going to get us out of this mess.

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What my discoveries have shown me,
is that the answer, the solution,

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lies in our relationship with nature.

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And in doing this research,
I went to the Aboriginal people.

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I'm doing my research
with Aboriginal people

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who are, as you know,
dependent on the salmon,

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have a long relationship
of stewardship of the salmon

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which then helps with their livelihood,
it is crucial to their livelihood.

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So, in the fall, when the salmon
are spawning in the rivers,

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the bears come down to the river,

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and the wolves, and they feed
on the salmon in the spawning rivers,

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and they carry the salmon
up into the forest.

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And underneath the big, old mother trees,

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under the sheltering crowns
of the mother trees,

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they feed on the salmon.

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And in the fall, the leftovers decay
and seep into the ground.

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And we think

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that the big mycorrhizal networks
of those mother trees

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soak up that nitrogen.

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And scientists have discovered
traces of salmon nitrogen

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in the tree rings,
stored there for centuries.

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And what we're going to do this summer
is go back to these forests,

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and we're going to trace whether nitrogen
- and we think this is happening -

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moves from mother trees
to their neighbors,

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from tree to tree to tree,
deep into the forest.

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And we think this is tied
to the health of the forest,

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which of course is tied
to the health of the rivers,

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which of course is linked to the salmon,
and the health of the salmon populations,

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which of course, feeds back to the oceans,
and comes back to us, the people.

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Now, this circle of life,

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what our Aboriginal ancestors
have called 'reciprocity,'

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is the trading of mutual respect.

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And this is a really good example
of what scientists are calling

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'complex adaptive systems.'

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Now look, forests
are built on relationships.

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In a healthy forest, everything
is connected, and communicating.

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Here, these nodes represent the species.

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And they're constantly
relating to each other.

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And it's out of their interactions
that emerges what scientists are calling

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'complex adaptive behaviors,'

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or higher system level properties.

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Things like resilience and health,

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the cycling of clean air and clean water.

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But you know, in modern society,
we view ourselves separate from this,

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somehow entitled, or superior,

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or at the minimum, we take it for granted.

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But the thing is,
when we take out key parts,

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like the grizzly bears,

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and we trash the salmon populations,

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these systems rapidly degrade

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into what we're calling
'wicked stable states.'

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Now, this is not somewhere we want to go.

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Wicked stable states are unpredictable,

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they're contradictory.

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When you try to fix one problem,
another problem shows up over here.

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And the way things are going, right now,

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with our forests
dying from climate change,

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which feeds back to more climate change,

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this is happening really fast.

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But here's the beautiful thing:

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It's precisely because
they're complex adaptive systems

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poised for change,

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that we can change this trajectory
from negative to positive.

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Here's how we do this.

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First, we've got to re-imagine ourselves
as part of this network.

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Imagine yourself listening
to all the other creatures.

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We can tap into that below-ground network
and become part of the conversation.

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If we'd done this, we would never
have cut birch out of those forests,

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the Douglas fir forests,

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because we would have known it undermines
the resilience of the forest.

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But we're still doing that.

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But I'm still very hopeful,

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because I know that once we tap into
this complex adaptive system,

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into our role in it,

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we can change our thinking,
we can change our behavior.

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We can become part of this great system.

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Remember when birch
was sending nutrients to fir,

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and fir was sending them
back to birch, remember that?

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Well, this just proves
that in ecosystems, there is no bigotry,

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there's only reciprocity,

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only mutual respect.

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Just like in my cancer support network.

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That's what we practice.

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So finally, thirdly,

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I know that once we understand

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that we are deeply part of nature,

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really part of nature,

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not separate,

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that we can become
part of the great strengthening,

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that positive trajectory.

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We have to stop treating nature
as our shopping mall,

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and once we do that,
we can change the arc of the future.

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Once, I thought that fairies
connected and protected the forest,

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and now with my science,
I know I wasn't that far off.

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(Laughter)

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Using science, I've shown that precisely,
these unseen connections exist,

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just like the Coast Salish
have been telling us all along.

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They've shown, the science has shown,
that everything is connected

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and communicating,

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with respect and reciprocity.

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And out of this comes balance
in our communities and our ecosystems.

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And it's based on principles like kinship,

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respect of elders,

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and this gives rise
to complexity and adaptability.

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And out of this, of course,
we have resilience.

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Resilience to deal with things
like climate change.

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So, I want to leave you
with one final, hopeful message.

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I know, based on my experience,
and in my science,

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that you, too, can own this,

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that we are one.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)