Benefit art book for old-growth forests

I have created this art book about old-growth forests. It is a non-profit project to benefit organizations helping our last remaining ancient woodlands. It is printed on 100% recycled paper. The book contains my original paintings and drawings and a series of sequential essays I’ve written concerning the beauty and importance of our last remaining ancient forests. The book describes a journey of going into the old woods, learning about the natural sciences first and then how those facts may pertain to our inner world of thoughts and feelings, that is, our souls. The text and the images follow and reflect each other throughout the book. This work has taken 20 years to complete. During that time, an area roughly half the size of Alaska was deforested globally, many ancient forests went down, and many animals and plants went extinct with them.

Ancient forests are extraordinary these days; most of us haven’t ever seen one, except in pictures. Yet they are a realm of beauty that once encompassed much of the world’s land. Much of our ancestry, our mythology, and much of our well-being overall have come from them. In old-growth forests, we see things like no other place. When trees are left undisturbed, they take upon deep characters. When forests are mainly undisturbed, they live in communities, in many ways, much like us. In ancient forests, we find a community of lifeforms working together to create an intensely beautiful place with an apparent and obvious harmony, which is quite outstanding compared to our modern world. Forests bring and hold moisture in the land; they create and distribute fresh air; they build soils through millennia. They are at the beginnings of streams and rivers and provide the habitat for most of the earth’s biodiversity. All life forms on earth require healthy forests, whether near or far from them; as the world is round, life moves in a circle.

Just in our historical era, the earth has lost 80% of its ancient forests due to human intervention. In North America, in about 500 years, we have deforested roughly 95 % of the original native forests. The approximately 5 % remaining are fragmented and discontinuous in parks and preserves. There are many animals and plants which mainly rely on these few old-growth ecosystems. They are symbolic jewels of what our ancient world was like - the incredible beauty of what we had lived amongst through our long evolution. And I believe they hold the key to our future, they must be preserved and protected, or we may not have one.

Our woodlands are not healthy. Without a healthy forest, we do not have clean flowing streams and rivers; without these, the fish suffer, and the oceans are damaged. Then the climate changes, and it comes back around. It has come full circle. We see and hear about it every day. Forest fires are accelerating in periodicity and intensity, deforestation is happening at an unprecedented scale, the overall climate is getting hotter and drier, many of the world's ecosystems are disrupted, and we are uncertain about our future. We need policy change and individual action, yet it does not seem to be happening fast enough to shift significantly towards halting irreversible climatic disturbance.

 But I believe any problem can be remedied. In a fast-approaching one-world-wide culture, we have the means to come together to re-green and rewild our environment to the degree that we choose together. Indeed, the interest in this is rising. This work aims to contribute towards this collective goal of drawing attention to the plight of the forests and ending logging any more old-growth, and then into what we can do to change the situation into something positive for all. We should do it now before it’s too late. We can model our forests after the old ones and repair the ones that need helped. Most of them need help. Forestry practice can aim for selective logging of single trees while promoting and keeping wild habitats for animals and plants. For by doing so, we help ourselves and our descendants. We need these few remaining wild places for our very humanity. As our modern world grows ever busier and increasingly distant from our wildness, we need them that much more. They are places of refuge and restoration of our spirits. By saving these places, we will be gifting our children. They undoubtedly will thank us.

Due to this situation's rather considerable importance, I will give 96 % of the profits to environmental organizations working to help ancient forests, those helping to save the last of the old stands. Also and equally, those rehabilitating areas that have been damaged due to prior logging practices. I hope to make this a self-generating ongoing project where this piece of art may continue to create funds for those giving aid to rejuvenate and protect the wild places we need and love. Deforestation is an issue of global concern, and purchasing a book will provide a means of directly supporting our forests and receiving something in return, both of which you may have for your life.

Many of the images presented in the book are on my website ...

Look in the "Forest Primeval" album.

https://www.nathanhutchinson.com

Thank you

Below are just a few of the non-profit organizations that funds will be donated to:

Those working in the Northwest region

The Trees Foundation. Trees Foundation was created in 1991 with the mission to restore the ecological integrity of California’s North Coast by empowering and assisting regional community-based conservation and restoration projects. www.treesfoundation.org

North Coast environmental Center. The mission of the North Coast Environmental Center is to promote understanding of the relations between people and the biosphere and to conserve, protect, and celebrate terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems of northern California and southern Oregon. www.yournec.org

EPIC. Environmental Protection Information Center. The Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) is a community based, non-profit organization that advocates for science-based protection and restoration of Northwest California’s Forests. EPIC was founded in 1977 when local residents came together to successfully end aerial applications of herbicides by industrial logging companies in Humboldt County. www.wildcalifornia.org

Klamath-Siskiyou Wild-Lands Center. KS Wild's mission is to protect and restore wild nature in the Klamath-Siskiyou region of southwest Oregon and northwest California. We promote science-based land and water conservation through policy and community action. We envision a Klamath-Siskiyou region where local communities enjoy healthy wildlands, where clean rivers are teeming with native salmon, and where connected plant and wildlife populations are prepared for climate change. www.kswild.org

Mattole Restoration Council The Mattole Restoration Council is one of North America’s oldest community-led watershed restoration organizations. Established in 1983, the Council’s primary mission is to understand, restore and conserve the ecosystems of the Mattole River watershed, with attention to threatened Coho and Chinook salmon and steelhead. www.mattole.org

Sanctuary Forest, Inc. Sanctuary Forest is a land and water trust whose mission is to conserve the Mattole River watershed and surrounding areas for wildlife habitat and aesthetic, spiritual and intrinsic values, in cooperation with our diverse community. Sanctuary Forest.org.

Helping the Redwood ecology specifically.

Save the Redwoods League. A nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect and restore coast redwood and giant sequoia trees through the preemptive purchase of development rights to notable areas with such forests. www.savetheredwoods.org

Sempervirens Fund. Their mission is to protect and permanently preserve redwood (Sequoia Sempervirens) forests, wildlife habitat, watersheds, and other important natural and scenic features of California’s Santa Cruz Mountains, and to encourage public appreciation and enjoyment of this environment. www.sempervirens.org

A few more of those working in on protection, preservation, conservation, restoration and education:

Archangel Ancient Tree Archive is locating, archiving, and propagating the best trees to help solve the world's environmental problems. www.ancienttreearchive.org

Ancient Forest Alliance is a registered non-profit organization working to protect BC’s endangered old-growth forests and to ensure a sustainable, value-added, second-growth forest industry.

Center for Biological Diversity is a nonprofit membership organization known for its work protecting endangered species through legal action, scientific petitions, creative media and grassroots activism.

Environmental Defense Fund is a United States-based nonprofit environmental advocacy group, known for its work on issues including global warming, ecosystem restoration, oceans, and human health, and advocates using sound science, economics and law to find environmental solutions that work.

Earth island Institute supports activism around environmental issues through fiscal sponsorship that provides the administrative and organizational infrastructure for individual projects.

Friends of the Earth seeks to change the perception of the public, media, and policymakers — and effect policy change — with hard-hitting, well-reasoned policy analysis and advocacy campaigns that describe what needs to be done, rather than what is seen as politically feasible or politically correct.

Native Forest Council is dedicated to the preservation and protection of all publicly owned natural resources from destructive practices, sales, and all resource extraction.

Old-Growth Forest Network is the only national organization focused solely on protecting and restoring old-growth forests. It does this by identifying old forests, verifying their protection from logging and development and public accessibility, and then formally recognizing them as part of the Network. Details about the forests are then shared on the organization's website.

Rainforest Action Network preserves forests, protects the climate and upholds human rights by challenging corporate power and systemic injustice through frontline partnerships and strategic campaigns.

The Wilderness Society unites people to protect America’s wild places to make a future where people and wild nature flourish together, meeting the challenges of a rapidly changing planet.

The Sea Shepard Conservation Society is to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world’s oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species, u use innovative direct-action tactics to investigate, document, and take action when necessary to expose and confront illegal activities on the high seas. By safeguarding the biodiversity of our delicately balanced ocean ecosystems, Sea Shepherd works to ensure their survival for future generations.