Líderes nativos denuncian fumigación récord con glifosato en bosques nacionales de EE. UU.

As Stephen Young stepped into the woods about an hour’s drive from Lassen Peak volcano in northeast California, the forest began communicating to him in an unspoken language learned from his years collecting plants. The tree-shaded March air felt cool against his cheek, and he could sense the moisture of the forest’s understory hanging in the air. He inhaled the rich scent of pine needle duff wafting up from the ground. “I said to myself, there is bracken fern in this area,” he recalls. “I walked maybe 50 yards, and there it was, a whole field of bracken ferns.”

Young, 26, is a traditional Maidu basket weaver who collects the roots of the fern and other native plants for material. Over the years, he’s learned to avoid the toxic chemicals sprayed by the US Forest Service in California’s woodlands. He scanned the area, looking for signs that the Forest Service might have sprayed herbicides nearby. Nothing. The site was clean — or at least that was his best guess.

“We need the natural environment to practice our religion and spirituality.”

Earlier this year, our Mother Jones investigation found that record amounts of glyphosate — the key ingredient in the herbicide Roundup — have been sprayed in California’s forests in recent years. It also exposed how key scientific studies that the Forest Service and others relied upon to say glyphosate was safe were ghost written by manufacturer Monsanto.

The Forest Service uses glyphosate and other herbicides in the wake of forest fires or logging operations to kill native plants that the agency says compete with replanted saplings for sunlight, water, and soil nutrients. By eliminating the native plants, freshly planted timber trees will grow back faster and in greater density for future logging. …