WEBVTT - How Rewilding Works 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.960 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:13.480 Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:16.680 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:20.560 in our last episode we discussed what Ghosts of Evolution. 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:24.000 We gave you what was probably a very sobering episode 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:26.680 about the state of the world, the state of the 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:31.960 ecosystem and humanity's role in degrading it, and and the 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:35.960 forecast for the future which is not all that great. Yeah, 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:39.000 we talked about picking apart the web of life and 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:42.280 what happens and how it unravels and affects humans and 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:48.000 other species and other flora around the world. So we're 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:51.240 talking about trying to weave that web of life back 0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:56.240 together in this episode, specifically with something called re wilding. 0:00:56.680 --> 0:00:59.480 And the reason why it's so important is because we 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:06.119 have definitely squarely entered into something called the anthroposyne. Yes, UH, 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:08.800 this is of course the age of man UH and 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:11.240 this is when we did a whole episode on this UH, 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:13.480 which you can certainly go back to and find a 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:16.640 link to on the landing page for this podcast episode. 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:20.840 But this is the idea that in the past UH 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:25.240 vast changes in the world have been caused by uh, 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:30.000 you know, changes in the global climate, ecological changes. But 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:34.880 in this age of man, we see the world being 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:39.880 changed by humanity. Yeah, is the first time a species 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:43.400 has become a greater force than the elements of nature. 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:46.680 And just to call back to the episode real quick, um, 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:51.639 we're talking about the Holocene period previous to us ending 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:55.000 about two hundred years ago with the steam engine. And 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:57.919 this is according to Ken Caldera, who is a climate 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:01.400 scientists of the Carnegie Institute of Science and California. Data 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:04.960 retreat from glacial ice cores show the beginning of a 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:08.600 growth in the atmosphere, a concentrations of several greenhouse gases 0:02:08.680 --> 0:02:12.520 in chickul our CEO two and h four, which coincide 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:15.600 with the invention of the steam engine in seventeen eighty four. 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:19.840 We can look at these ice cores and be like, oh, hey, 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:22.240 that's evidence right there that this is when it began. 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:25.920 And there's plenty of other evidence that there's all sorts 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:29.520 of man made strata out there, but this is a 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:34.160 good example of how humans are are shaping the course 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:38.000 of the earth. Yeah. I mean, agriculture is another huge area, right, 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:40.960 you go back twelve thousand years in history, you see 0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:44.440 the rise of agriculture. We stopped being hunter gatherers. We 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:46.600 stopped you know, going out here to get our plants 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:49.520 and going over here to try and catch or hunt 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:51.360 an animal. We said, hey, we can grow the crops 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:53.920 right here. And to do that, we have to change 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:57.160 the environment. We have to to take what was once 0:02:57.320 --> 0:02:59.640 a a field, what was once afar us, which was 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:02.040 once you know, a bunch of shrubs, and turn it 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:06.120 into a one crop environment that is that is tightly 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:08.919 control by the humans that have made it, and then 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:12.440 eventually just pave over that, yeah, right, and build something 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:15.080 on top of it. So the idea here is can 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:20.000 we reverse the course of our actions, and can we 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:23.400 do this through something called rewilding, which we'll get to 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:26.440 in a moment, but before we should talk about human rewilding. 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:29.160 You know, in looking at this topic, uh, and and 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:32.440 the previous one, I keep thinking back to Daniel quinn 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:35.680 book Ishmael, which I know a number of our listeners 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:38.720 have probably read. Uh. The basic cell on the book, 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:41.120 of course, is a man talks to a talking gorilla. 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:45.600 But it's a it's a deep ecological philosophical work about 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:48.880 where where we are and where we're going, and and 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:51.280 and indeed, if we can do anything to stop what 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:53.320 we've done. Just to read a quick quote from it, 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:56.800 um Man's destiny was to conquer and rule the world, 0:03:56.840 --> 0:03:59.240 and this is what he's done. Almost he hasn't quite 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:01.280 made it, and it looked as though this may be 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:04.040 his undoing. The problem is that man's conquest of the 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:06.960 world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:09.840 all the mastery we've obtained, we don't have enough mastery 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:12.880 to stop devastating the world or to repair the devastation 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:16.280 we've already wrought. There's a part in the book where 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:20.680 Ishmael describes human culture and the rise of technology as 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:24.080 this this this pilot in an airplane. It's been pushed off, 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:26.160 you know, like that's sort of like the experimental aircraft 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:27.800 of old. You know, you've all seen the footage they 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:29.440 pushed it off the top of building, off the side 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:32.520 of a cliff, and it ultimately is just plummeting. But 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:35.000 inside the aircraft, the individual is, you know, pumping hard 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:37.640 of the controls, pedaling the petals as fast as they can, 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:41.400 even though it's falling. It's falling, and it's just falling, 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:45.160 you know, faster and faster, And but we keep doing 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:46.960 all the things that we're doing. We keep trying to 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:50.800 pilot this aircraft that simply is not going to fly. 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:54.440 It's not going to to prevent us from crashing into 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:58.880 the ground. So in this podcast, we're we're we're asking 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:01.040 that question, can we stuff the plane from crashing and 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:03.400 crashing the ground? What are some of the things we 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:07.479 can do to avoid devastation? First we have to get 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:10.320 out of the plane. Yes, Yeah, that's clear. They're right, 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:12.080 it's not working for us. And that's really what we're 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:15.600 talking about, like that that some of what we're doing, uh, 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:19.000 particularly from a technological angle, is not working for us. 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:21.400 And how do we get back to a solution that 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:25.320 does work for us? Well, rewilding in nature is certainly 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:27.000 a solution, and we'll talk about that in a moment, 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:28.920 But before we talk about re welding and nature, you've 0:05:28.920 --> 0:05:34.560 got to talk about rewilding humans because that's where it begins. Yes, 0:05:34.680 --> 0:05:37.760 and uh, as with a lot of things, rewilding, the 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:41.520 term already has various definitions, and it can already be 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:45.760 sort of taken to mean one thing or another um 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:49.640 in this In this sense human rewilding though is on 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:54.120 one level, it's about reconnecting with nature. Um, it's about integrating. 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:58.320 It's about combining time and nature with conscious living. It's 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:02.000 about it's not necessarily about just completely abandoning your life. 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:04.120 It's because it easily brings to mind, you know, the 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:08.080 idea of someone quitting their job, throwing their smartphone into 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:10.919 the ocean, and then trekking off into the woods to 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:15.200 eat you know, berries and field mice all day. But 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.000 but but it's about integration. It's about saying, all right, 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:21.000 what are some aspects of my life that I can 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:24.360 that I can bring back to nature. Uh, places in 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:27.039 my life where I can reconnect with nature and reconnect 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:30.400 with with the with the survival skills that that that 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:33.880 I originally had. I've also seen it described in terms 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:37.440 of of modern humans as being domesticated. You know, we're 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:39.480 the we're the were the house cats that have been 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:42.200 in the house so long that if we're suddenly outside 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:44.520 in the backyard, we're going to die within an hour 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:46.919 because we we we we we don't know how to 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:49.479 survive anymore. We've gotten away from our roots. Well, I 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:52.800 mean much of that is true because if you had 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:55.200 to go out and survive on your own in a forest, 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:57.880 it would be very difficult today, right unless someone had 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:01.320 passed down the skills to you or had paid to 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:05.760 get those skills, like through rewild Portland actually, which offers 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:09.920 a six month long rewilding immersion program you for the 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:12.560 for the low cost of five thousand dollars, you could 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:15.520 learn every sort of do it yourself thing, from metal 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:18.680 smith ing to hunting wild game and foraging skills. And 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:21.320 foraging skills I think are hugely important something that we 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:26.600 overlook because for for millennia, ancestors have been foraging for 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:29.320 food and that's how they largely subsisted. We tend to 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:32.760 think about, you know, this sort of paleo diet where 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:35.840 it's you know, a bunch of meat, punks of meat. 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:38.640 But the truth of the matter is that we subsisted 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:42.000 on vegetation. So we've talked about this before. We've talked 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:46.640 about foraging and even into mafagey eating bugs as ways 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:51.440 to subsist um in ways that actually would have less 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:55.360 of an impact on environments and ecosystems. So the whole 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:59.920 human rewilding thing is hearkening back to a simpler time 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:04.840 and less of a reliance on technology. Yeah, and it's 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:06.600 it's easy to get the to get caught up in 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:08.640 the language of it too, because you know, we're saying 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:11.160 things like reconnect with nature and your past, and just 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:13.680 the mere fact that it sounds like the pitch for 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:17.400 an ongoing skit in the next season in Portlandia. You know, 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:19.640 it's easy to sort of dismiss the missilliness of it, 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:23.200 but but it is at heart about reconnecting with what 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:25.679 it is to be human of sort of relearning how 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:28.920 to be a human organism. Um. And a lot of 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:31.360 this is stuff that we we do feel a craving towards, 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:34.240 like the hunter gatherer thing. Most of us don't do 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:37.640 any kind of hunting and gathering, but I wonder to 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:40.160 what extent we end up scratching that itch when we 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:42.760 say get coupon crazy and we're looking for deals like 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:45.800 we're sort of we're sort of trying to recapture the 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:49.160 hunter gather or certainly I mean I grew up in 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:52.200 a in rural Tennessee and there are plenty of hunters 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:54.600 in that area, and uh, you know, in a large 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:56.600 part I feel A lot of that comes from a 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:59.600 culture of you know, you're reconnecting with with your past. 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:02.520 You know, this part of your heritage hunting for meat, 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:04.720 and even though you're not depending upon that dear meat 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:08.520 to feed your family as much anymore, you're you feel 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:10.480 pulled to the past. You feel like this is a 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:12.480 part of what you are as a as a as 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:15.960 a being, as an organism, and therefore you engage in it, 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:19.439 you know. I was recently in Taos, New Mexico, and 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:23.959 I visited the Taus Pueblo Settlements, which is um one 0:09:24.000 --> 0:09:27.960 of the oldest Native American settlements UM in the United States. 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:30.640 And one of the things that one of the TAUSE 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:35.360 members was talking about is growing up in that village 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:40.920 which still practices the same sort of rituals, um and 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:44.040 day to day operations as they did a thousand years ago. 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:46.880 And there's no running water electricity there. And so she 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:49.679 said that as a child, she would run around, she 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:52.320 would go and get the water, she would bring it home. 0:09:52.480 --> 0:09:54.600 She would be taught by the other children how to 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:59.640 fish with her hands right um. And they also played 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:02.120 up in the mountains. She said that was her backyard, 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:06.199 and they respected nature and they understood how to communicate 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:08.640 with nature. So she said mountain lions weren't a problem. 0:10:08.720 --> 0:10:11.800 They weren't getting eaten by mountain lions because they were 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:14.720 so much more in tuned and had the information passed 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:18.679 down on how to deal with you know, these species 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:22.839 around them, and how to cultivate the flora around them. 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:26.040 And I thought this was it was such an amazing 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:30.640 place to visit, to see that people were still I 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:34.319 suppose you would say human rewilding, although all they were 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:38.800 doing is just following their ancestors way of living. As 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:41.600 with a lot of human endeavors, it's it's one of 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:44.280 those areas where we we end up complicating things several 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:47.760 times over because you see the mix of of ecological 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:52.320 responsibility here the the idea that if we all behave 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:56.240 just a little more in tune with with the environment 0:10:56.760 --> 0:11:00.160 than than our than our individual footprint is less and 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:03.480 their overall environmental footprint is less, and and it can 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:06.760 all roll down to positive change. But then on the 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:08.800 other hand, it's a lot of this is is caught 0:11:08.840 --> 0:11:11.760 up in heritage and culture and and and wanting to 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:14.959 reconnect with our past. Yeah, And the interesting thing about 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:18.240 that is that the flower I believe was her name, 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:22.280 who led the tour, was saying that for seventy years, 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:27.960 tas Pueblow Settlement UH had an ongoing lawsuit with the 0:11:28.040 --> 0:11:31.600 government to reclaim lands, including Blue Lake, which is nearby, 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:35.400 and they were saying that because the government had taken 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:38.920 over national park land and they were giving it to 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:43.439 commercial entities, that a lot of their drinking water began 0:11:43.520 --> 0:11:46.240 to get tainted and as a result, they began to 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:48.600 see their environment change. And that's exactly what we're going 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:52.200 to talk about today, this impact, this this web of life. 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:55.840 UM that you just change one little thing and there's 0:11:55.880 --> 0:11:58.920 a cascade of events that follow. So this, to me 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:02.120 was such a good example of here's this group in place, 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:05.120 and little do we know here in the United States, 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:08.200 but their affecting change for the Clean Water Act right 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:10.959 and the Clean Air Act in the nineteen seventies, UM, 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:14.360 A lot of that was the movement from Native American 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:17.560 tribes saying we need to respect the land and act 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:20.280 with it. YEA, Even even though re wilding is relatively 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:22.280 new term, it is it's already kind of a big tent. 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:25.400 But just bear in mind when thinking about it that 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:28.600 it doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna go live off the 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:31.680 grid in the woods. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna, 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:34.640 you know, build a bunker and prepare for the apocalypse 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:37.520 and for you know, the hunt and gather amid the 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:41.200 shattered ruins of human civilization or anything like that. It 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:45.960 can be as simple as reminding yourself that nature exists, 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:49.199 taking the time too. And again, it's so easy to 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:51.040 fall in the traffic, making it just sound like hippie 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:53.439 feel good to read to some listeners, but just to 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:56.720 reconnect with nature and to realize that you are a 0:12:56.760 --> 0:12:59.760 biological organism, and you are a part of the psychology, 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:02.400 and you do not stand outside of it, no matter 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:06.680 how unnatural the environments are that we've built for ourselves, 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:09.520 and the and and the structures that we depend on, 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:13.440 both the UH informational and physical UH. It can be 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:16.480 just as simple as as thinking about your choice is 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:20.080 a little more and in making those choices a little 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:23.199 more in step with the natural world. Yeah, definitely, it's 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:25.720 all about choices when you really think about it, and 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:28.880 perhaps even installing a Komodo dragon in your backyard. We'll 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:31.000 talk about that idea when we get back from mis 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:40.239 brading all right, we're back. We've been talking about rewild 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:43.079 ng in the human sense, uh and in the idea 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:47.480 of undomesticating ourselves, about reconnecting with nature, uh and and 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:49.959 making better choices in our lives, all the things that 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:53.400 kind of fall under the semi ambiguous term of human 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:55.880 rewild Yeah. And now we're going to talk about re 0:13:56.000 --> 0:14:00.360 wilding nature, which is a huge topic. So we could 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:03.360 talk about all the various projects going on with real wilding, 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:07.720 but we chose to really focus on something that George 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:11.400 Mombiante talked about in his TED talk. And we're talking 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.240 about re wild ing with wolves. But before you can 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:15.920 talk about real wilding with wolves, you have to talk 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:19.480 about how there was a mass extermination effort of wolves 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:22.600 for a very long period of time, at least in 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:24.840 the United States. Yeah. And it's a it's a it's 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:27.600 rather involved and fascinating topic when you get into it, 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:30.040 because there's several different layers to it. I mean, there's 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:33.320 the basic human fear of wolves, which is generally unfounded. 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:37.440 This is not a species that praise on humans. I 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:40.720 feel like we've discussed this in the past. Uh. The 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:43.760 wolf is is it's easy to build a wolf up 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:46.480 in your mind as this thing that it is not, 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:48.360 and so part of it is the fear of the wolf. 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:51.080 Part of it it also has to do with uh, 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:53.480 with the ways that we were already changing the world 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:56.320 and altering the environment and therefore altering the behavior of 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:58.640 the wolves. You know, suddenly we're trying to keep a 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:03.200 whole bunch of gray animals out here unmolested from you know, 0:15:03.240 --> 0:15:06.440 basically trying to set the sheep or whatever apart from 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:08.080 the rest of the natural world. And then you get 0:15:08.160 --> 0:15:11.120 upset when the wolves come to eat the sheep. Right, So, 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:13.720 I mean the right. There's part of this is agriculture. 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:15.720 Part of this is folk tale um. In fact, we 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:17.400 even talked about I think it was in New Mexico 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:20.600 there was a bus stop that was a caged bus 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:25.040 stop for children because the ridiculous fear that the wolves 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:27.920 were just out there ready to eat American children. Yeah, 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:31.000 there was a group that installed these because they were 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:35.240 against um, the protection of these subspecies of the gray wolf. 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:37.160 I believe so if you look at the fact that 0:15:37.200 --> 0:15:40.640 before Europeans settled in the United States, there were two 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:43.480 hundred and fifty thousand wolves roaming in the country. And 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:44.800 then you look at the fact that by the new 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:47.680 conceemnities only a few hundred wolves remained in the lower 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:52.640 forty States. You get that um that wolves had been 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:56.400 hunted and exterminated to to quite a degree. Yeah, I mean, 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:59.240 we're talking about putting up poison traps for them, putting 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:02.120 out of physical traps. Often they would put out two 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:04.920 physical traps so that they wouldn't just catch them with 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:08.360 one pot, catch them with two. Therefore, in trying to 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.600 ensure that this animal would be captured and killed rather 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:15.520 than just escaping injured. Now, the effected that can be 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:18.960 in something called the tropic cascade, which is an ecological 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:21.440 process which starts at the top of the food chain 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:25.000 and tumbles all the way down to the bottom. And 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:29.320 nothing illustrates this better than wolves, as told by George 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:33.200 Mombiat during his TED talk on rewilding, because he says 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:37.960 that after seventy years of wolves being absent in Yellowstone, 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:45.760 when they were reintroduced, there was a huge effect, Okay. 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:48.040 And the reason that they were reintroduced is that the 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:52.480 numbers of deer had just escalated and went crazy, and 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:55.640 because there was nothing to hunt them, Uh, they had 0:16:55.640 --> 0:16:58.960 reduced the vegetation to mil They were just grazing all 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:00.880 over the place. So they thought, let's bring in a 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:03.240 couple of wolves, knocked down the population of deer, and 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:06.840 that'll that will help things, right, But really, it was 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:10.840 this whole wilderness that seemed to have sprung from the 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:14.800 reintroduction of these wolves. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty impressive, 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:18.680 because again, you you expected the wolves to kill the deer. 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:20.600 You it was just in a situation. Oh well, the 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:22.359 bath water is a little too hot. Let's add a 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:24.320 little cold water and that will balance it out. But 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:27.840 as we've as we've made clear in our previous episode, 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:30.680 nature is more complicated than that. They're they're far there's 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:32.880 far much more going on. It's not just hot water 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:36.760 and cold water. Uh so, uh, what else happened? We 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:39.199 You see the deer starting to avoid the valleys and 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:42.240 gorges where they could be easily killed by the wolves. 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:45.080 So suddenly these areas are deer free. And so since 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:47.320 the deer are no longer there to munch everything down 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:50.560 to the ground, stuff starts growing up again. And so 0:17:50.720 --> 0:17:53.639 very quickly you see these uh what had previously been 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:58.040 you know, bear valleys are growing up into the forests again. Yeah, 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:01.639 Momba says that the high of trees quintippled in just 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:05.879 six years, and then you had forests of aspen and 0:18:06.119 --> 0:18:08.879 willow and cottonwood. And then as soon as that happened, 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:10.359 all of a sudden, there was a whole neighborhood of 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:14.200 birds that moved in. And then the number of beavers 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:17.640 started to increase, because beavers like to eat trees, right, 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:21.280 and beavers, like wolves, are ecosystem engineers. We talked about 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:25.119 that in our last episode, about these keystone species affecting 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:30.240 oversized changed in their environment. Yes, so they're they're building 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:33.199 the rivers, they're providing habitats for otters and muskrats and 0:18:33.280 --> 0:18:36.040 ducks and fish and reptiles and amphibians, and they're moving it. 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:38.639 And then also you see that the wolves are not 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:42.080 only eating the deer, right, they're also preying on coyotes. 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:45.040 And then because of that, the number of rabbits and 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:47.040 mice they begin to rise because we're not being killed 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:50.320 off by coyotes, which meant more hawks, more weasels, more foxes, 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:54.040 more badges, ravens, and bald eagles came down to feed 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:57.760 on the carrion that the wolves had left behind. Then bears, 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:00.240 they're like they got in on the game too, in 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:02.680 a large part because there's more shrubs growing, more berries. 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:05.800 I mean, they're they're, they're they want to hunt and gather, 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:07.760 and now there's more to hunt and gather from. But 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:10.320 now this is the thing that's not even the craziest 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:12.880 of changes, the fact that all these animals sprung up 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:17.280 once the wolf was reintroduced. The crazy thing is that 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:23.280 the behavior of the rivers, the actual landscape begins to change. Indeed, 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:27.240 because suddenly you're seeing it means changing the traffic alongside 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:29.879 the river. You know, what's walking around there is changing, 0:19:29.880 --> 0:19:33.120 what's growing around the river, and is the vegetation changes. 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:39.040 It's it's affecting the stability of the waterways. Uh, there's 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:44.040 less erosion, less erosion, Yeah, it's it's actually changing the earth. Yeah, 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:47.880 and it's regenerating force which are stabilizing the banks that 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:50.919 the banks don't collapse as often as well, and then 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:55.320 they become more fixed, they meander less. And so really 0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:58.640 what you have is this this more stabilized even kind 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:01.840 of moving in. Yeah. Now, of course it's worth noting 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:04.359 that there still is a golf course in Yellowstone Park. 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:07.119 I don't I don't want anyone to forget that when 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:11.480 when thinking about the nature reclaiming this, Uh, this is beautiful, 0:20:11.480 --> 0:20:13.320 but and it is a beautiful park. I've been there 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:16.040 and it's it's fabulous, but there's still very much a 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:19.800 human footprint there. But but this really does uh, just 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:22.760 how the the the reintroduction of this one species. It's 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:26.040 like we we we we as humans have this tendency 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:28.480 we don't we don't realize the value of things until 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:30.760 they're gone, and this is kind of an example of that. 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:34.040 And by by putting something back, we begin to see 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:36.560 just how important it was to begin with. And I 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:39.080 love how this, like this should be a children's story 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:41.439 because it has that kind of role to it. You 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:43.760 put one thing back and then there this comes back, 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:46.000 and this comes back. It's it's kind of like a 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:48.600 more positive version of fig the big hearted nukes with 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:51.240 all of these, with the with the cascading effect. Well yeah, 0:20:51.240 --> 0:20:53.679 I mean it's the reversal of the domino effect, and 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:56.879 it's amazing to see it unfold like this now. Mombott 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:02.200 also brings up an example of whales not necessarily rewilding them, 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:07.199 but understanding that whales provide an entire ecosystem unto themselves 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:10.480 as well and are a good example again of what 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:15.919 happens when you disrupt a species. And the Japanese government, 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:19.200 he says, had rationalized killing whales for a long time 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:22.320 because they thought, hey, the number of krill and fish 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:25.720 will rise if you remove the main predator, right, which 0:21:25.720 --> 0:21:29.400 is again very hot water cold water understanding of how 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:32.840 nature works. It's far more complicated. It's far more complicated, 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:37.560 and it's really reliant poop. It turns out, specifically whale 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:42.280 poop in the oceans, because, as Mambiat says, they produce 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:48.000 what biologists politely call large fecal plumes when they come 0:21:48.000 --> 0:21:51.120 to the surface. These are huge explosions of poop right 0:21:51.160 --> 0:21:54.440 across the surface up in the photo zone where there's 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:57.960 enough light to allow photosynthesis to take place. And then 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:02.000 those big plumes of poop are basically fertilizing or stimulating 0:22:02.040 --> 0:22:06.520