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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to

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Speaker 1: the whitetail Woods presented by First Light, creating proven versatile

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Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light

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Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. This weekend's show,

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Speaker 2: I am joined by professor ecologist and best selling author

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Speaker 2: Doug Ptolemy to discuss the fascinating ways that hunters can

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Speaker 2: turn their properties into DIY wildlife refuges that can help

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Speaker 2: not only the species that we hunt, but also the

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Speaker 2: entire natural world. All right, welcome back to the Wired

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Speaker 2: to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light, and

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Speaker 2: today we are kind of putting a capstone on our

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Speaker 2: spring of habitat conversations. We've had these off and on

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Speaker 2: over the last two or three months talking about how

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Speaker 2: we can improve our properties for better deer hunting or

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Speaker 2: turkey hunting, how we can take maybe a tactical approach,

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Speaker 2: and also how we can take more of a holistic approach.

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Speaker 2: I think there's there's kind of two different ways of

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Speaker 2: thinking about the work we do on our hunting properties

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Speaker 2: and our land that we manage. One of those is

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Speaker 2: how do we tactically set up better hunting opportunities? And

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Speaker 2: the other one is how do we simply improve the

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Speaker 2: landscape for wildlife and for animals of all kinds. And

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Speaker 2: that's something that over the years, as you've heard on

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Speaker 2: this podcast, I've grown more and more interested in kind

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Speaker 2: of widening the aperture, zooming out a little bit and

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Speaker 2: looking at, you know, our opportunities on the places that

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Speaker 2: we own or manage, and seeing the really interesting things

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Speaker 2: we can do there when we think beyond just hey,

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Speaker 2: how do I kill more deer, but instead how do

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Speaker 2: I have great hunting but also really healthy habitat and

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Speaker 2: a strong sustainable future for this place. Those are the

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Speaker 2: kinds of things that you know, as someone like you

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Speaker 2: or I, if we own land, or lease land, or manage

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Speaker 2: land in any kind that's a huge privilege, a huge

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Speaker 2: opportunity to have someplace where you can make that kind

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Speaker 2: of difference. And with that in mind, our conversation today

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Speaker 2: is one that I'm very excited to have because our

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Speaker 2: guest is someone who's really helped me frame this kind

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Speaker 2: of thinking and understand the opportunity that we have to

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Speaker 2: make a positive difference to not only kind of make

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Speaker 2: our hunting better or our own personal experience better, but

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Speaker 2: actually make things better for a lot of people and

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Speaker 2: a lot of critters in a much wider scale than

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Speaker 2: maybe we ever imagine. So my guest today is Doug Ptolemy.

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Speaker 2: He is a professor at the University of Delaware. He

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Speaker 2: is an entomologist and an ecologist, and he is a

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Speaker 2: best selling author. He's written several books, most popular, maybe

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Speaker 2: is Nature's Best Hope. He also wrote the Nature of Oaks,

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Speaker 2: and most recently, his newest book is how can I

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Speaker 2: help Saving nature with your Yard? And this idea of

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Speaker 2: saving nature with your yard is kind of what put

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Speaker 2: Doug on the map, I think for a lot of

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Speaker 2: people with that book, Nature's Best Hope, because in that

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Speaker 2: one he talks about this opportunity that we have if

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Speaker 2: we were simply to convert half of the nation's yards

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Speaker 2: into wildlife habitat. There's something like forty four million acres

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Speaker 2: of yard across America, and his idea in his book was, Hey,

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Speaker 2: let's take about half of that and turn it into

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Speaker 2: something better. Can you imagine how we could help the

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Speaker 2: many different critters out there that are not doing so

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Speaker 2: well right now? If we change what's right now a

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Speaker 2: weekly mode lawn into some other kind of native, helpful,

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Speaker 2: useful plant life that could help birds and bugs and

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Speaker 2: small mammals and all sorts of stuff. Deer in turkey

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Speaker 2: is included. Well, I read that and I thought immediately,

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Speaker 2: while that's makes a lot of sense, that's exciting. What

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Speaker 2: if we could scale that up up? Because I know

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Speaker 2: some people that don't just own yards, They own or

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Speaker 2: manage or lease, you know, tens or twenties or hundreds

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Speaker 2: of acres of land for wildlife right our hunting properties.

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Speaker 2: What if we could do some of the things that

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Speaker 2: he was talking about on a yard scale and instead

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Speaker 2: ramp that up to a deer hunting property scale. What

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Speaker 2: if we could improve wildlife not for one acre, not

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Speaker 2: on one acre, but on one hundred acres or one

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Speaker 2: thousand acres. I mean, we can make a really huge difference.

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Speaker 2: So that's what I want to talk to Doug about.

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Speaker 2: How can we take his ideas around this concept he

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Speaker 2: refers to as his homegrown National park concept and scale

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Speaker 2: that up to what I've started referring to as a

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Speaker 2: DIY wildlife refuge concept, where we can improve these properties

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Speaker 2: for wildlife that we can hunt, but also for everything

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Speaker 2: else out there. This is something that we've talked about

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Speaker 2: over the years, and now I think Doug is going

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Speaker 2: to help us really tie a bow on it. So

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Speaker 2: I'm excited about this conversation. I'm excited about what Doug

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Speaker 2: has to say in this chat. We talk through his background,

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Speaker 2: We talk about how he kind of came to this

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Speaker 2: philosophy of land management. We discuss how his concepts that

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Speaker 2: were originally created for improving small properties for wildlife can

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Speaker 2: translate to bigger properties like what we have. We talk

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Speaker 2: about some of the I think hotly debated topics in

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Speaker 2: the hunting world around management, which would be like, you know,

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Speaker 2: native versus non native species, is it really that important?

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Speaker 2: Should you really be you know, having to get rid

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Speaker 2: of your automotive or your whatever stuff that's in there.

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Speaker 2: That's maybe you see animals using and deer using, but

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Speaker 2: technically our non native and maybe aren't so good. We

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Speaker 2: get into the details with Doug. He's someone who really

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Speaker 2: understands this stuff. We talk about responsible ways to use herbicide.

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Speaker 2: We talk about, you know, ways to actually think about

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Speaker 2: the plants that you are adding to your property or

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Speaker 2: the trees by using something called the keystone plant idea,

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Speaker 2: you know, really kind of leveraging plants that have an

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Speaker 2: extra high impact on the surrounding natural world. We talk

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Speaker 2: about some different ideas for dealing with invasive species. We

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Speaker 2: talk about why oaks are so important for wildlife, and interestingly,

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Speaker 2: it is beyond just the acorns that we think about.

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Speaker 2: There's much much more here. Doug's a fascinating individual. If

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Speaker 2: you have any kind of land to your name, whether

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Speaker 2: it be a thousand acres or forty acres or two acres,

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Speaker 2: this is a conversation you're gonna want to listen to.

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Speaker 2: It's going to help your hunting. It's going to help

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Speaker 2: you improve the landscape for wildlife of all types. You're

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Speaker 2: gonna enjoy it yourself, You're gonna help other animals and

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Speaker 2: other people around you. And I think that's gonna help

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Speaker 2: our hunting way of life moving forward to because if

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Speaker 2: we as whitetail hunters and land managers and be seen

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Speaker 2: as helping the natural world and being a part of

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Speaker 2: the solution, it's going to help us in many, many

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Speaker 2: ways down the road beyond the obvious. So with that

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Speaker 2: all set, I'm gonna quit beating around the bush. Here

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Speaker 2: we're gonna get to my chat with Doug Tollmy, and

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Speaker 2: I promise you're gonna enjoy this one, all right. Joining

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Speaker 2: me now is Doug Tolemy. Doug, welcome to the show.

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Speaker 3: Very happy to be here, Mark.

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Speaker 2: I really appreciate you taking the time to do this.

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Speaker 2: You are someone who I've who have been reading for

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Speaker 2: a handful of years now, and I've listened to over

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Speaker 2: the years as well, and folks that tune into this

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Speaker 2: podcast have been requesting you for some time because we've

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Speaker 2: talked about a lot of topics that are within your world,

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Speaker 2: in your wheelhouse, I've probably danced around a lot of

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Speaker 2: the concepts that you specialize in. So I've had a

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Speaker 2: number of emails and messages over the last couple of

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Speaker 2: years saying, Hey, you got to get Doug on, You've

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Speaker 2: got to get Doug on. He's the He's the og

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Speaker 2: as some people say these days, and the original and

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Speaker 2: that that said, very excited to be able to talk

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Speaker 2: to you about a number of things that relate to

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Speaker 2: both wildlife management and landscape management and wildlife of all

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Speaker 2: types and kind of the intersection between all those things.

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Speaker 2: So to kick things off, Doug I want to kind

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Speaker 2: of just jump right off the dock, right into the

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Speaker 2: deep end here. There's no uh, there's no foreplay here.

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Speaker 2: Many of your books, yea, many of your books, Doug,

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Speaker 2: kind of open by establishing a foundation of where we

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Speaker 2: are right now, and that being setting the stage around

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Speaker 2: this concept that a lot of folks are calling the

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Speaker 2: biodiversity crisis or the sixth mass extinction. Can you share

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Speaker 2: with us your summary of that set of issues. If

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Speaker 2: you were sitting in a you know, in a school

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Speaker 2: classroom with a bunch of college students today and they said, hey,

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Speaker 2: you know, why is all this stuff so important? Why

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Speaker 2: are you writing all these books? If you were going

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Speaker 2: to open up that lecture or that discussion by explaining

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Speaker 2: this biodiversity crisis, how would you do that, Doug?

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Speaker 3: Well, if I were talking to a bunch of college kids,

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Speaker 3: I would try not to depress them. But it is

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Speaker 3: it is a sad state of affairs. We the Earth

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Speaker 3: is in the sixth grade extinction event it has ever experienced.

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Speaker 3: But this is the first one to because by a

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Speaker 3: living being, and that of course is us. We've lost

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Speaker 3: two thirds of Earth's wildlife. You know, three billion breeding

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Speaker 3: birds gone from North America. In the last fifty years,

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Speaker 3: we've got global insect decline. Paper came out about three

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Speaker 3: weeks ago. Is just since the year two thousand, we've

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Speaker 3: lost twenty two percent of our butterflies. So you know,

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Speaker 3: there's a lot of bad statistics out there. That's the issue.

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Speaker 3: And the connection is that those are the species that

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Speaker 3: run the ecosystems that provide the life support that keep

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Speaker 3: humans alive. So we can look at this totally selfishly.

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Speaker 3: We will not exist on the planet without nature, yet

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Speaker 3: we're wiping nature off the planet. So since we know

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Speaker 3: what the problem is, it also makes it's something we

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Speaker 3: can fix. We can stop doing that. And that's what

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Speaker 3: I've been talking about for the last I don't know

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Speaker 3: twenty years now. How do we learn to live with nature?

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Speaker 3: The old idea the humans in nature can't live together,

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Speaker 3: that we're separated, that it's happy someplace else, not happy

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Speaker 3: someplace else. There are very few someplace elses these days,

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Speaker 3: and most of them are degraded by one thing or another.

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Speaker 3: So what we have to do is give up that

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Speaker 3: old notion and learn how to get nature to thrive

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Speaker 3: and human dominated landscapes, because that's just about everywhere, So

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Speaker 3: that's what I talk about all the time.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, as I understand it, a lot of this

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Speaker 2: kind of hit home for you on your own property

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Speaker 2: that you and your wife have been working on. Can

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Speaker 2: you share just a little bit about how your experience

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Speaker 2: is there? Open your eyes maybe to this, because there's

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Speaker 2: one side of this that's facts and figures on the page,

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Speaker 2: which are stark and compelling, but sometimes they can make

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Speaker 2: our eyes our eyes glaze over.

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Speaker 1: A little bit.

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Speaker 2: But when you see some of this, you know, on

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Speaker 2: the ground yourself, and you start to see what maybe

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Speaker 2: a healthy landscape versus an unhealthy landscape might look like,

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Speaker 2: that can be a little bit more eye opening, for

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Speaker 2: lack of a better term. What have you seen there

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Speaker 2: on your own piece of ground when you guys first

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Speaker 2: started that has led to where you are now.

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Speaker 3: Well, we bought a section of a farm in Oxford,

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Speaker 3: Pennsylvania in the year two thousand. There's ten acres, so

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Speaker 3: I don't know what one hundred sum acre farm. It

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Speaker 3: was broken up into ten acre lots, very old farm

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Speaker 3: and farmed almost three hundred years and the last thing

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Speaker 3: they did was mow it for hay. So you know,

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Speaker 3: so I always exhausted that the crops were going, the

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Speaker 3: cattle were gone. They just mowed it for hay. And

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Speaker 3: when you mow for hay in this part of the country,

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Speaker 3: you're really mowing the rootstocks of all the invasive plants

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Speaker 3: from Asia. So you're mowing multi flour rows and our

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Speaker 3: elem bittersweet and Japanese honeysuckle and bush honeysuckle and autumnolive

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Speaker 3: and all of that. And they call it hey because

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Speaker 3: they're not really using it as hey. They're selling it

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Speaker 3: to the mushroom industry and they don't care what it is.

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Speaker 3: But when you stop mowing, so mowing does not kill

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Speaker 3: the rootstocks. So when you stop mowing, all those things

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Speaker 3: come back with a bench in vengeance. And we it

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Speaker 3: was out of mowing three years before we actually moved in,

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Speaker 3: So we moved into ten acres of just solid invasive

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Speaker 3: plants from Asia. We had to cut trails just to

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Speaker 3: be able to walk around. So that was an eye

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Speaker 3: opener for me. I mean, I'd heard of invasive species,

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Speaker 3: but I lived in suburbia before that, and even though

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Speaker 3: we actually had them on our property, I wasn't tuned

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Speaker 3: into that. But then I was tuned in and said, well, look,

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Speaker 3: you know this is this is this would be a

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Speaker 3: great ecosystem in Beijing, but not here. Now. I'm also

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Speaker 3: an entomologist, and we learned about host plant specialization in

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Speaker 3: graduate school back in the seventies that you know, perfect

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Speaker 3: example of that is the monarch butterfly. It is a

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Speaker 3: specialist on milkweed. You take milkweed away and you lose

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Speaker 3: the monarch butterfly can't eat anything else. Well, ninety percent

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Speaker 3: of the insects that eat plants are host plant specialists.

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Speaker 3: So right away I say, okay, we've just replaced our

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Speaker 3: native plants with plants from Asia. Our insects aren't going

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Speaker 3: to be able to eat eat that. So that actually

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Speaker 3: stimulated a new direction of research for me. I wrote

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Speaker 3: a couple of grants. They got funded, which is a surprise,

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Speaker 3: always a surprised when you get funded. But it told

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Speaker 3: me my peers weren't thinking about this either. Nobody else

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Speaker 3: was working on this, and that really set the stage. Okay,

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Speaker 3: we've got we've got to measure what the impact of

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Speaker 3: invasive plants are. What's it doing to the insect populations

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Speaker 3: that actually run our ecosystems. And I'm talking largely about.

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Speaker 3: Caterpillars are the meat and potatoes of terrestrial food webs.

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Speaker 3: If you don't have them, you're not They're transferring more

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Speaker 3: energy from plants to other animals than any other type

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Speaker 3: of plant eater. So you take them away, you lose

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Speaker 3: your birds, you lose all kinds of things. What's happening

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Speaker 3: to those ecosystems? Where are these plants come from? So

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Speaker 3: I found out, well, they're actually they're escapes from our gardens.

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Speaker 3: Just all the ones I mentioned are brought in by

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Speaker 3: the horticulture trade, and they're now in our natural areas,

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Speaker 3: actually millions of acres of our natural areas. So are

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Speaker 3: we just degrading the food web in our natural areas?

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Speaker 3: Yes we are, but nobody measured that, so we wanted

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Speaker 3: to get real numbers on it. We talk about caterpillars.

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Speaker 3: How many catapillarsts does it take to make one nest

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Speaker 3: of chickties six thousand and nine thousand caterpillars? To get

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Speaker 3: one nest of chicktys to the point where they leave

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Speaker 3: the nest. Where those caterpillars are going to come from,

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Speaker 3: not from automolive, not from crete myrtle, not from ginko,

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Speaker 3: not from all the things we have in our suburban landscapes.

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Speaker 3: So even if the plants are not in what we what,

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Speaker 3: we decorate our human dominated landscapes with our plants that

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Speaker 3: don't support the food with and that's what we wanted.

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Speaker 3: We want to get measurements on all of that stuff.

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Speaker 3: The next thing is how do we change that? But

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Speaker 3: you know, then I learned, gee, we've got a lot

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Speaker 3: of lawn out there. We got forty four million acres

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Speaker 3: of law. We've got one hundred and thirty five million

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Speaker 3: acres of residential landscape. That's where our invasive plants are

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Speaker 3: coming from. You know, that's an area bigger than all

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Speaker 3: of New England combined, dedicated to decoration. It's an ecological

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Speaker 3: dead scape. Does it have to be that way? Absolutely not.

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Speaker 3: We can turn that around. So that's the other thing

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Speaker 3: my property showed us. We got rid of the invasive plants,

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Speaker 3: and by we I largely meet my wife, and then

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Speaker 3: we put in the natives. And we have counted sixty

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Speaker 3: two species of birds that have bred on our property

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Speaker 3: since then. I am counting the number of caterpillar species

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Speaker 3: that I find just moths so far, and I'm up

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Speaker 3: to one three hundred and forty seven species that I

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Speaker 3: have pictures of because we put the plants that they

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Speaker 3: need back. So what that tells me this works. Nature

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Speaker 3: is really resilient. It will rebound if we use the

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Speaker 3: right plants, and that is that is the solution to

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Speaker 3: the whole thing. Using the right plants. Putting the right

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Speaker 3: plants back. Plants are capturing energy from the sun and

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Speaker 3: turning it into the food that supports just about all

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Speaker 3: the animals out there, certainly all the terrestrial animals. So

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Speaker 3: plant choice matters. If we choose their plants widely, we

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Speaker 3: can rebuild ecosystems. And I do get emails all the

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Speaker 3: time from people who are doing this. Hey, this really works?

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Speaker 3: Does it works? So that's what keeps me going. It works.

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Speaker 2: So there is a common I guess retort to what

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Speaker 2: you're just describing there. I've heard it myself. There's debate

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Speaker 2: around it within the wildlife management and hunting community. I

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Speaker 2: know you written about it in your books. That being well,

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Speaker 2: the whole native plant thing is kind of like it's

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Speaker 2: dust in the way, and it's it's pointless. Nowadays, the

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Speaker 2: non native invasive plants have become naturalized they're part of

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Speaker 2: the landscape. Now, who says what's native and what's not? When?

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Speaker 2: What's the timescale you're looking at? We might see, you know,

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Speaker 2: back in the farm behind my house, there's all sorts

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Speaker 2: of automotive and I see all sorts of wildlife using

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Speaker 2: that stuff. I see deer bedding in there. I see

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Speaker 2: you know, birds feeding on the berries. I see critters

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Speaker 2: moving in. And you know what's so bad with that?

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Speaker 2: Why would we want to get rid of that? These

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Speaker 2: are all the kinds of things that start coming up

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Speaker 2: when we talk about this native versus non native how

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Speaker 2: And I know you talked about some of this already,

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Speaker 2: but could you expand just a little bit more on

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Speaker 2: that and and how the value of those native plants

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Speaker 2: is so much greater, especially you talked about the insects

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Speaker 2: and and kind of you know, selective partnerships, but between

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Speaker 2: insects and plants and whatnot. I've loved your writing on this.

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Speaker 2: Would love to hear just a little bit more on

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Speaker 2: that front.

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Speaker 3: Well, you brought up about ten points with that. You know,

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Speaker 3: if things were in good shape, the monarch would be

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Speaker 3: in good shape. We've lost ninety six percent of them.

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Speaker 3: We wouldn't have lost three billion breeding birds in the

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Speaker 3: last fifty years, we wouldn't have biodiversity decline everywhere. So

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Speaker 3: you might see a few deer in your automolive back there,

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Speaker 3: which they're not eating. By the way, the interaction between

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Speaker 3: deer and our basis is a really important one. The

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Speaker 3: deer don't eat them, but they do eat all the natives.

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Speaker 3: So what do you have left. We think they're superplants,

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Speaker 3: but they're not. It's just that the deer and the insects,

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Speaker 3: all the things that usually keep things in check over

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Speaker 3: here don't use them at all. Do birds eat the

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Speaker 3: berries from multi floor rows and autumn alive, Yes, they

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Speaker 3: do for two reasons. It's the only thing there, and

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Speaker 3: they need nutrition, particularly in the fall when they're migrating.

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Speaker 3: But when there's a choice, it's been shown they will

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Speaker 3: choose the native berries over the non native ones every time.

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Speaker 3: Why because the native berries things like like dogwood and

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Speaker 3: Virginia creeper and a native by burnhams, they're very high

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Speaker 3: in fat, and that's what the birds need, particularly when

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Speaker 3: they're migrating, and it's what the birds need to overwinter.

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Speaker 3: They need fat to get them through the rough times.

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Speaker 3: The berries from automaalive and bush honeysuckle and multi flower rows,

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Speaker 3: all of those guys, they're high in sugar. So yes,

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Speaker 3: the birds eat them, but it doesn't give them what

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Speaker 3: they need. So yeah, I mean, I do hear this

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Speaker 3: all the time too. I see, Oh, there's lots of

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Speaker 3: bees on these flowers. Well, they're mostly honey bees, which

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Speaker 3: is an introduced bee itself. We've got thirty six hundred

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Speaker 3: to four thousand species of native bees, and anytime anybody's

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Speaker 3: measured them, they're all in decline, just like the honey

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Speaker 3: bee is in trouble. So yeah, I mean it's you've

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Speaker 3: got to have a baseline. You got to say what

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Speaker 3: was there before for these things invaded, Know what was there,

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Speaker 3: and then compared to what's there now before you can say, hey,

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Speaker 3: it looks great. This is something called shifting baseline. We

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Speaker 3: think that the way things were when we were kids,

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Speaker 3: when we were growing up, is the way they've always been,

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Speaker 3: in the way they always should be. So if you're

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Speaker 3: born into a world that has suffered defination, like you know,

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Speaker 3: you don't have the American chestnut anymore, you don't miss

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Speaker 3: it as it's been gone. You don't miss the passenger

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Speaker 3: pigeon because it was gone before any of us were born. Well,

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Speaker 3: when you're born into that world, do you think that's normal?

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Speaker 3: So there's no issue. That's the way it was when

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Speaker 3: I was born. Well, it's highly degraded compared to what

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Speaker 3: it used to be. Why does that matter. We've got

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Speaker 3: to get back to ecosystem function. Way back in nineteen

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Speaker 3: fifty five, I guess it was Robert MacArthur was a

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Speaker 3: theoretical ecologist who said, you know, ecosystems depend on the

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Speaker 3: number of species in them. The more species that are

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Speaker 3: in an ecosystem, the more stable it is and the

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Speaker 3: moreductive it is. And by productive, we're talking about those

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Speaker 3: life support ecosystem services that we live off of every day.

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Speaker 3: So when you start taking species away from an ecosystem,

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Speaker 3: it becomes less productive and less stable, and that's why

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Speaker 3: the loss of these numbers. And you can talk about

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Speaker 3: you know, ecosystems function locally too. So you look at

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Speaker 3: the number of species that are in your yard now

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Speaker 3: compared to what it was before it was your yard.

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Speaker 3: It's a tiny fraction of it. You say, well, yeah,

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Speaker 3: but it's happy someplace else. We're adding eight hundred thousand

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Speaker 3: acres of new residential landscapes to the US every year,

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Speaker 3: So we could say it's not a problem, but that

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Speaker 3: doesn't make it not a problem.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So something you just said there sparked another common

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Speaker 2: question within my world. For many worlds, I suppose, I

393
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Speaker 2: think there's a lot of folks out there who have,

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Speaker 2: like a favorite species in the hunting world, might be

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Speaker 2: the favorite species to hunt and managed for in you know,

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Speaker 2: in the non hunting world, Hey, I love bluebirds, I

397
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Speaker 2: want more bluebirds around. Or hey, I really love seeing

398
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Speaker 2: elk in my neck of the woods in Colorado. I

399
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Speaker 2: want to make my ranch better for elk or whatever

400
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Speaker 2: it might be. Or in our case, you know, there's

401
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Speaker 2: folks who love white tail deer, so they want to

402
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Speaker 2: make their landscape better for white tail deer. When speaking

403
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Speaker 2: to these people, it's sometimes hard to expand the aperture

404
00:22:27,680 --> 00:22:30,360
Speaker 2: beyond just that favorite species. We're thinking, well, if I'm

405
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Speaker 2: going to invest time and money in doing something better

406
00:22:32,680 --> 00:22:36,720
Speaker 2: for my yard or my one hundred acres or whatever

407
00:22:36,760 --> 00:22:38,960
Speaker 2: it might be, why wouldn't I just direct all my

408
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Speaker 2: efforts towards the very single best thing for this one thing,

409
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Speaker 2: The best thing for my bluebirds, or the best thing

410
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Speaker 2: for the white tail deer, the best thing for the

411
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Speaker 2: bob white quail. But something you spoke to right there

412
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Speaker 2: is a pretty powerful concept that I'd love you to

413
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Speaker 2: expand on, which is just the necessity of diversity and

414
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Speaker 2: productivity within an ecosystem. Can you just speak a little

415
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Speaker 2: bit more about this sometimes fluffy idea of how everything's connected.

416
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Speaker 2: We always hear like, oh, everything's connected, there's this web

417
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Speaker 2: of life, and what happens to the bugs will impact

418
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Speaker 2: your deer. That's like a nice concept in theory, it's

419
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Speaker 2: harder to understand and practice. Can you build that out

420
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Speaker 2: a little bit more for us?

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Speaker 3: Well, you've said it pretty well. Nothing exists in isolation.

422
00:23:24,720 --> 00:23:28,480
Speaker 3: You can't have healthy deer population without having the resources

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Speaker 3: to support those deer, and unfortunately that includes the predators

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Speaker 3: to keep the deer population in check. I live in

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Speaker 3: Chester County, Pennsylvania, where the deer are about fourteen times

426
00:23:39,400 --> 00:23:43,160
Speaker 3: over the carrying capacity of the environment. There's no understory left,

427
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Speaker 3: there's no ground nesting birds or anymore. There's no recruitment

428
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Speaker 3: into our forest because there's so many deer. I could

429
00:23:50,359 --> 00:23:52,359
Speaker 3: get up and look out my window right now, and

430
00:23:52,359 --> 00:23:55,080
Speaker 3: there'll be four or five deer standing right there because

431
00:23:55,080 --> 00:23:58,480
Speaker 3: they live here all the time and they're eating everything.

432
00:23:58,760 --> 00:24:01,360
Speaker 3: I have no golden rodunless I have a cage around it,

433
00:24:02,960 --> 00:24:06,639
Speaker 3: you know, even violets, evening primrose, all the things that

434
00:24:06,760 --> 00:24:11,760
Speaker 3: actually create a healthy meadow system are are gone. What

435
00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:15,720
Speaker 3: I do have is Japanese stilt grass and porcelain berry

436
00:24:16,520 --> 00:24:19,720
Speaker 3: and all those little automotives and multiple rows keep trying

437
00:24:19,720 --> 00:24:23,320
Speaker 3: to come back that the deer don't touch. So the

438
00:24:23,400 --> 00:24:26,679
Speaker 3: overpopulation of deer is an issue. It is not the

439
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:29,159
Speaker 3: deer's fault. It's the fact that we have We have

440
00:24:29,359 --> 00:24:33,200
Speaker 3: given them perfect edge habitat they love that taken away

441
00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:36,840
Speaker 3: their predators. So of course there's nothing, nothing checking their

442
00:24:36,840 --> 00:24:39,280
Speaker 3: population until you get to the point where where you know,

443
00:24:39,320 --> 00:24:42,000
Speaker 3: you get disease outbreaks and starvation. That's not the way

444
00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:45,080
Speaker 3: we want to manage our deer populations. You want to

445
00:24:45,119 --> 00:24:49,080
Speaker 3: have bluebirds. They're just like the chickadees. They they're rearing

446
00:24:49,160 --> 00:24:53,240
Speaker 3: their young on caterpillars and grasshoppers and crickets and and

447
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:55,720
Speaker 3: if you don't have those, you don't have bluebirds. We

448
00:24:55,840 --> 00:24:59,520
Speaker 3: have a nest of tree swallows in our bird house

449
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:03,280
Speaker 3: Now why are they there, Because there's a healthy meadow

450
00:25:03,320 --> 00:25:07,680
Speaker 3: that's actually producing that flying insects that they need. Where

451
00:25:07,720 --> 00:25:10,080
Speaker 3: do those insects come from. They come from the plants

452
00:25:10,359 --> 00:25:12,879
Speaker 3: that are in that meadow. They're not coming from the

453
00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:16,240
Speaker 3: stilt grass that has invaded that meadow. So this is

454
00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:20,600
Speaker 3: the connection. And the same thing gets always gets back

455
00:25:20,600 --> 00:25:22,840
Speaker 3: to the quality of the plants. And one of the

456
00:25:22,880 --> 00:25:25,480
Speaker 3: things I didn't talk about before is that it's not

457
00:25:25,600 --> 00:25:29,960
Speaker 3: just native plants versus non native plants. It's productive native

458
00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:43,919
Speaker 3: plants versus not productive plants. So this is where the

459
00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 3: concept of keystone plants comes in. If you're trying to

460
00:25:48,800 --> 00:25:51,359
Speaker 3: pass food on up the food web so that you

461
00:25:51,440 --> 00:25:54,480
Speaker 3: have lots of other types of animals, you have to

462
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:56,680
Speaker 3: have the plants that are willing to do that. That's

463
00:25:56,720 --> 00:26:00,640
Speaker 3: why the non native plants are, you know, a problem

464
00:26:00,720 --> 00:26:03,800
Speaker 3: here because nothing eats them, so they don't pass on

465
00:26:04,040 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 3: their food. The ones that pass on the food the

466
00:26:06,720 --> 00:26:09,760
Speaker 3: very best in North America, at least in eighty four

467
00:26:09,840 --> 00:26:12,800
Speaker 3: percent of the counties in North America are oaks. They're

468
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 3: passing on more energy to food webs than any other

469
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 3: plant genus. But we got a lot of high productives

470
00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:27,159
Speaker 3: native native prunus, willows, hickories, even black walnuts. They're all

471
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:32,920
Speaker 3: very highly, highly ranked. But there are native plants like yellowwood,

472
00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:37,600
Speaker 3: even spice bush, you know, supports a spice bush swallowtail,

473
00:26:37,640 --> 00:26:40,120
Speaker 3: but not a whole lot more than that. I could

474
00:26:40,200 --> 00:26:45,320
Speaker 3: design a native landscape that produces very little because there's

475
00:26:45,359 --> 00:26:49,040
Speaker 3: such differences in the productivity of plants. So we want

476
00:26:49,080 --> 00:26:50,920
Speaker 3: to focus on We want to at least make sure

477
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:53,919
Speaker 3: that our landscapes all have keystone plants in them. They

478
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:55,879
Speaker 3: can have a diversity of other things as well, but

479
00:26:56,840 --> 00:26:59,159
Speaker 3: if you have landscapes without the keystone plants, you have

480
00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:02,720
Speaker 3: a failed food and then everything collapses.

481
00:27:04,840 --> 00:27:09,320
Speaker 2: So we have this high level problem across the nation,

482
00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:14,240
Speaker 2: across the world. We have this invasion of non native plants.

483
00:27:14,320 --> 00:27:18,440
Speaker 2: We have this invasion of human development and our footprint

484
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:22,199
Speaker 2: in so many other ways, degrading landscapes and you know,

485
00:27:22,359 --> 00:27:26,600
Speaker 2: sending wildlife populations of all types into decline. You wrote

486
00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:29,800
Speaker 2: in your book Nature's Best Hope that you thought the

487
00:27:29,840 --> 00:27:33,920
Speaker 2: elderly Leopold had it figured out pretty well. You wrote

488
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:37,520
Speaker 2: that his solution was to teach farmers and ranchers techniques

489
00:27:37,560 --> 00:27:41,159
Speaker 2: to restore and conserve natural resources on their own lands

490
00:27:41,600 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 2: with incredible foresight. Leopold suggested, quote rewarding the private landowner

491
00:27:46,800 --> 00:27:51,280
Speaker 2: who conserves the public interest. Can you expand on that

492
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:53,800
Speaker 2: a little bit further and how that kind of led

493
00:27:53,840 --> 00:27:56,160
Speaker 2: you to your homegrown national park concept.

494
00:27:57,640 --> 00:28:00,159
Speaker 3: Well, think about the people that live in cities with

495
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:05,080
Speaker 3: the people in Manhattan. Manhattan is not generating any ecosystem

496
00:28:05,119 --> 00:28:08,560
Speaker 3: services to support those eight million people. It's all coming

497
00:28:08,600 --> 00:28:11,879
Speaker 3: from lands elsewhere. And that's what I was talking about.

498
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:15,560
Speaker 3: It's the farmers. It's the natural areas that we have

499
00:28:15,640 --> 00:28:19,800
Speaker 3: preserved that are creating the life support to keep everybody alive.

500
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:23,320
Speaker 3: So that's why they should be rewarded for that. The

501
00:28:23,359 --> 00:28:27,560
Speaker 3: farmer who adds a pollinators strip to its soybeans or

502
00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:31,359
Speaker 3: his corn ought to be compensated for that. And actually

503
00:28:31,359 --> 00:28:33,960
Speaker 3: we have a CRP program where they are compensated for that.

504
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:37,800
Speaker 3: Not only are they helping the pollinators, they're intercepting top

505
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:39,960
Speaker 3: soil before it gets into the watershed and all the

506
00:28:40,040 --> 00:28:43,200
Speaker 3: nutrients that create a dead zone in the Gulf. I mean,

507
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:45,720
Speaker 3: it's a win win for everybody, but it shouldn't be

508
00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:48,960
Speaker 3: on the farmer's back to do that. Everybody needs these

509
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:51,800
Speaker 3: ecosystem services, so everybody ought to be paying for them.

510
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:55,360
Speaker 3: We have this idea that the earth is free, you know,

511
00:28:55,480 --> 00:28:58,440
Speaker 3: water is free, air is free, and we can and

512
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:02,000
Speaker 3: it'll be there forever. Well, the Earth's not growing at all.

513
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 3: Our population is growing, but the earth isn't growing the resources.

514
00:29:05,280 --> 00:29:08,480
Speaker 3: We're using resources faster than the Earth is replacing them.

515
00:29:09,080 --> 00:29:12,040
Speaker 3: Do we have to know? But we are, and we

516
00:29:12,080 --> 00:29:15,560
Speaker 3: need to address that issue. So I talk about a

517
00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:19,960
Speaker 3: pay per use fee. We won't call it a tax,

518
00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:22,560
Speaker 3: We'll call it a fee. Just like you're watching netfix,

519
00:29:22,600 --> 00:29:26,520
Speaker 3: you're willing to pay for that. Well, if everybody paid

520
00:29:26,520 --> 00:29:31,200
Speaker 3: ten dollars per year and a pay per per earth fee,

521
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:35,160
Speaker 3: I'm just talking about the US, that would generate three

522
00:29:35,160 --> 00:29:37,720
Speaker 3: point two billion dollars a year that we could put

523
00:29:37,800 --> 00:29:41,240
Speaker 3: terms of environmental issues and in terms of the individual

524
00:29:41,280 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 3: it's one trip to Starbucks. You know, you wouldn't even

525
00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 3: notice it. It just but it emphasizes that these resources

526
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:51,320
Speaker 3: are not free. They have to be managed. And the

527
00:29:51,400 --> 00:29:53,720
Speaker 3: sooner we start doing that, the better effort going to be.

528
00:29:54,880 --> 00:30:00,000
Speaker 2: So with individual homeowners and landowners. You then talked about how,

529
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:03,360
Speaker 2: hey there's forty four you know some million acres of lawn.

530
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 2: There's one hundred and thirty some million acres of residential landscape.

531
00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:11,800
Speaker 2: What if we also started finding ways for those people

532
00:30:11,840 --> 00:30:13,960
Speaker 2: to have influence of some kind, whether it be a

533
00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:17,240
Speaker 2: quarter acre or one acre or five hundred square feet.

534
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:19,040
Speaker 2: What if they could also start doing some of those

535
00:30:19,040 --> 00:30:21,440
Speaker 2: things that you just mentioned, you know, farmers are doing

536
00:30:21,440 --> 00:30:24,080
Speaker 2: on a larger scale with their pollinator strips or whatever

537
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:26,840
Speaker 2: might be. What if they started taking little positive actions

538
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:30,120
Speaker 2: on their own postage stamp of whatever size that might be.

539
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:34,760
Speaker 2: That's that's what led to your homegrown national park idea

540
00:30:34,800 --> 00:30:36,880
Speaker 2: that I know you've written a lot about. Could you

541
00:30:36,920 --> 00:30:38,680
Speaker 2: could you talk a little bit more about what that

542
00:30:38,840 --> 00:30:39,320
Speaker 2: looks like.

543
00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:44,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I got that idea when I saw the

544
00:30:44,880 --> 00:30:49,200
Speaker 3: forty million acre lawn figure that was way back, you know,

545
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:52,520
Speaker 3: early two thousands. I said, well, what if we cut

546
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:55,120
Speaker 3: that area in half? So cut everybody cut the area

547
00:30:55,160 --> 00:30:57,239
Speaker 3: of lawn they have in half. That would give us

548
00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:00,360
Speaker 3: twenty million acres we could restore right at home. Then

549
00:31:00,360 --> 00:31:02,120
Speaker 3: I said, how big is twenty million acres? And I

550
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:04,560
Speaker 3: started adding up the acreage of all of our major

551
00:31:04,680 --> 00:31:08,640
Speaker 3: national parks, and you add them all up, it's still

552
00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:10,920
Speaker 3: less than twenty million acres, So I said, gee, we

553
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:13,080
Speaker 3: can create a new national park. We'll call it Homegrown

554
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:15,200
Speaker 3: National Park as we're doing it at home, and it'll

555
00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:18,080
Speaker 3: be the biggest park in the country. So it's kind

556
00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:21,480
Speaker 3: of disconnected. But the object here is we've got these

557
00:31:21,600 --> 00:31:24,920
Speaker 3: viable habitats. Those are our parks and our preserves, but

558
00:31:25,120 --> 00:31:28,840
Speaker 3: in between it's no man's land, which means the population

559
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:32,840
Speaker 3: in those parks and preserves of everything is small and

560
00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:36,000
Speaker 3: small popular. All populations fluctuate, you know, good times they

561
00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:39,760
Speaker 3: go up and bad times they go down. Small populations

562
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:42,080
Speaker 3: go in their bad times, they blink out of their

563
00:31:42,080 --> 00:31:44,560
Speaker 3: little habitat and then they're gone, and you've lost that

564
00:31:44,640 --> 00:31:48,680
Speaker 3: population from that habitat. Unless they recolonize it, it's permanently gone.

565
00:31:48,680 --> 00:31:51,360
Speaker 3: And that's happening all over the place. So with our

566
00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:54,600
Speaker 3: isolated little parks and preserves, they're bleeding species on a

567
00:31:54,640 --> 00:31:57,960
Speaker 3: regular basis. How do we stop that? Not only do

568
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:01,720
Speaker 3: we connect them with what people cook biological carters where

569
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:04,040
Speaker 3: plants and animals are moving back and forth. There's no

570
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:09,720
Speaker 3: inbreeding depression in those sites. That helps, but the populations

571
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:12,080
Speaker 3: are still small. So what we need to do is

572
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:15,160
Speaker 3: restore the land in between those and where is that.

573
00:32:15,160 --> 00:32:17,880
Speaker 3: That's our that's our properties, that's where we live, where

574
00:32:17,920 --> 00:32:20,240
Speaker 3: we work. I won't even touch the farming. Just where

575
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:23,479
Speaker 3: we live, where to work, where we pray, play, our

576
00:32:23,520 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 3: little parks, at our little preserves. We've got to make

577
00:32:26,080 --> 00:32:28,720
Speaker 3: them viable habitat against so that when you move outside

578
00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:31,760
Speaker 3: of a real park, it's not no man's land. That

579
00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 3: we can have viable populations right there with humans. And

580
00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 3: so Homegrown National Park and lists all of the property

581
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:43,920
Speaker 3: owners out there, and there are millions and millions and

582
00:32:43,960 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 3: millions of them. They become the future of conservation. And

583
00:32:48,160 --> 00:32:50,400
Speaker 3: the only downside there is that they don't know that yet.

584
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:53,680
Speaker 3: So that's that's what National Bard is all about, is

585
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 3: to get that message out that the amount of law

586
00:32:57,360 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 3: on you have and the plants you choose for your property,

587
00:33:00,200 --> 00:33:02,920
Speaker 3: they're going to determine how much life can exist where

588
00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:07,200
Speaker 3: you live. And if everybody did that, you know, seventy

589
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 3: eight percent of the entire country is privately owned. Eighty

590
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:13,520
Speaker 3: five percent east of the Mississippi is privately owned. So

591
00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:16,840
Speaker 3: if we did this on private property, and actually we

592
00:33:16,920 --> 00:33:19,000
Speaker 3: have to do it on private property because if we don't,

593
00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:24,040
Speaker 3: you've eliminated most of the country. Then it can succeed,

594
00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:26,200
Speaker 3: and if we don't do it, we're going to fail.

595
00:33:26,240 --> 00:33:28,640
Speaker 3: And failure is not an option because we cannot live

596
00:33:28,680 --> 00:33:34,160
Speaker 3: without nature. So what it does, what Homego National Park

597
00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:37,600
Speaker 3: does is empower the individual. We don't have to go

598
00:33:37,680 --> 00:33:40,320
Speaker 3: through the government, and that's a good thing because that

599
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:42,280
Speaker 3: not only does it take forever and often goes in

600
00:33:42,320 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 3: the wrong direction. You get to decide whether you're going

601
00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:48,360
Speaker 3: to fix the earth. You've claimed you can own piece

602
00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:51,000
Speaker 3: of the earth. So along with that comes the responsibility

603
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:54,000
Speaker 3: of taking care of it. And Homegong National Park is

604
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:55,760
Speaker 3: simply about getting that message out.

605
00:33:57,160 --> 00:34:01,320
Speaker 2: I love it. I think it's empowering and exciting to

606
00:34:01,400 --> 00:34:05,200
Speaker 2: give that sense of agency back to the individual. You know,

607
00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:09,200
Speaker 2: and my family. We've been trying to follow some of

608
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:14,760
Speaker 2: your precepts. We've shrunked the size of our lawn. We've

609
00:34:14,800 --> 00:34:18,520
Speaker 2: added now two different kind of native plant gardens that

610
00:34:18,560 --> 00:34:22,120
Speaker 2: we're trying to kind of steward and showing our kids,

611
00:34:22,120 --> 00:34:24,399
Speaker 2: and the kids are planting things and watching stuff grow

612
00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:26,399
Speaker 2: and seeing how all the little critters are using it more.

613
00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:28,600
Speaker 2: And that's been a lot of fun and I also

614
00:34:28,640 --> 00:34:31,840
Speaker 2: had a very funny thing just happened. We also participate

615
00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:35,200
Speaker 2: in no mo May and so we've been doing that

616
00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:37,760
Speaker 2: for the last four weeks. And I got a text

617
00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:41,279
Speaker 2: message from a neighbor just yesterday and he texted me

618
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:43,160
Speaker 2: he said, are you out of town? It looks like

619
00:34:43,200 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 2: you need to bawl your yard And I had to

620
00:34:47,239 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 2: tell them you, no, we are not out of town.

621
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:53,399
Speaker 2: Just a lifestyle choice here. But this is a long

622
00:34:53,440 --> 00:34:56,280
Speaker 2: winded way of me saying for people who are interested

623
00:34:56,320 --> 00:34:59,880
Speaker 2: in the homegrown national concept idea and want to practice it.

624
00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:04,759
Speaker 2: You mentioned, you know, prioritizing native plants, but can you

625
00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:07,040
Speaker 2: can you speak to any of the other precepts of

626
00:35:07,680 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 2: this kind of change with how we manage our yards

627
00:35:11,080 --> 00:35:14,000
Speaker 2: other than prioritizing native plants or in addition to what

628
00:35:14,040 --> 00:35:16,719
Speaker 2: else would you add to that or what pillars are there?

629
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:20,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's lots of things we can do that will help.

630
00:35:20,360 --> 00:35:23,600
Speaker 3: A major one in terms of insect decline, and remember

631
00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:26,840
Speaker 3: insects are the little things that run the world. Is

632
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:30,360
Speaker 3: light pollution. We have lights on all night long. We

633
00:35:30,400 --> 00:35:33,000
Speaker 3: don't need them, so you could turn them off, but

634
00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:35,680
Speaker 3: oh no, the bad man will come. You could put

635
00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:37,640
Speaker 3: a motion sensor on it, so it only turns on

636
00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:41,000
Speaker 3: when the bad man does come. But the real solution

637
00:35:41,320 --> 00:35:42,839
Speaker 3: is to if you're not going to turn them off,

638
00:35:42,920 --> 00:35:44,879
Speaker 3: is to take the white ball out of those those

639
00:35:44,920 --> 00:35:47,920
Speaker 3: security lights and put in a yellow bulb, yellow incandescent

640
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:51,360
Speaker 3: or yellow LED because yellow wave links do not attract

641
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:54,640
Speaker 3: nocturnal insects. Most of the insects that are attracted are

642
00:35:55,360 --> 00:35:58,760
Speaker 3: the moths that are laying the caterpillars producing the caterpillars

643
00:35:58,800 --> 00:36:02,040
Speaker 3: that run the food web. So it's a very you know,

644
00:36:02,080 --> 00:36:04,960
Speaker 3: one trip to the hardware store solution to a really

645
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:09,359
Speaker 3: really serious environmental issue. That's that's one thing you can do.

646
00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:13,839
Speaker 3: You know, when as they reduce the lawn, people say

647
00:36:13,880 --> 00:36:16,120
Speaker 3: why you do that. I to just plant a tree,

648
00:36:16,160 --> 00:36:19,080
Speaker 3: plant one tree a year. In ten years, you've got

649
00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 3: ten trees going in there. When we moved in, you

650
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:25,320
Speaker 3: know mode for Hay, I planted egcorns. They were all free.

651
00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:30,000
Speaker 3: Today those trees are over sixty feet tall, so you know,

652
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 3: it was pretty easy and they are definitely running the

653
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:38,799
Speaker 3: ecosystem on our property. Be mindful about when you do mow,

654
00:36:39,560 --> 00:36:41,600
Speaker 3: set the mower high enough so if you go over

655
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:43,720
Speaker 3: the box turtle or if you go over the toad,

656
00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:46,560
Speaker 3: you know it's not mince meat. Don't mow at dusk

657
00:36:46,600 --> 00:36:52,400
Speaker 3: when those things are out walking around. Put plastic covers

658
00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:55,120
Speaker 3: over your window wells they all, you know, these creatures

659
00:36:55,200 --> 00:36:56,719
Speaker 3: fall in there and they can't get out and then

660
00:36:56,760 --> 00:36:59,440
Speaker 3: they starve to death. These are little things that do

661
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:02,759
Speaker 3: make a diffference in that suburban setting. When you when

662
00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:05,279
Speaker 3: you see something crossing road, don't run over it with

663
00:37:05,440 --> 00:37:08,560
Speaker 3: your car. You know, see that every single day, Stop

664
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:11,000
Speaker 3: and move it. Things like that.

665
00:37:11,480 --> 00:37:17,520
Speaker 2: Yeah. So so one quick specific question on the nomo

666
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:21,000
Speaker 2: may thing. Uh, what do you think about nomo may

667
00:37:21,719 --> 00:37:25,040
Speaker 2: is it? Is it all hype or is it actually helping?

668
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:28,960
Speaker 3: You know? The concept, I'm all for it. The concept

669
00:37:29,040 --> 00:37:31,799
Speaker 3: is take that unproductive law you have and make it,

670
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 3: make it useful. But if you have a really nice lawn,

671
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:40,120
Speaker 3: there aren't any blooming plants in there. Part of the

672
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:43,000
Speaker 3: fertilizer you put on there actually has a broad leaf

673
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:45,840
Speaker 3: herbicide in it, and all you have is grass. So

674
00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:47,640
Speaker 3: if you don't mow it, then you have tall grass.

675
00:37:48,080 --> 00:37:50,399
Speaker 3: Grass isn't going to support any of those pollinators, whether

676
00:37:50,440 --> 00:37:53,839
Speaker 3: it's mode or not. I think a much better well,

677
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:55,839
Speaker 3: the other thing is if you if you don't mow

678
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,320
Speaker 3: it in May, let's say you're supporting a bunch of pollinators,

679
00:37:58,320 --> 00:38:00,600
Speaker 3: but then you start mowing it in June July, you've

680
00:38:00,600 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 3: pulled the rug out from underneath all those pollinators that

681
00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:06,360
Speaker 3: you're supporting. So it's much better to have less lawn

682
00:38:06,400 --> 00:38:09,160
Speaker 3: and have no mow. Areas that you never mow, and

683
00:38:09,160 --> 00:38:11,480
Speaker 3: we call them pollinator gardens. They're not going to be

684
00:38:11,520 --> 00:38:14,160
Speaker 3: based on grass. They're going to have the blooming plants

685
00:38:14,160 --> 00:38:17,080
Speaker 3: that are blooming from April all the way through the

686
00:38:17,200 --> 00:38:21,239
Speaker 3: end of October. That's what our pollinators really need. The

687
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 3: lawn you keep and this will make your neighbor happy.

688
00:38:25,120 --> 00:38:27,400
Speaker 3: You're going to mow that. You know it's going to

689
00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:29,680
Speaker 3: be swaths of lawn that go through your property. We

690
00:38:29,840 --> 00:38:32,759
Speaker 3: call that a queue for care because it shows you

691
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:36,880
Speaker 3: haven't moved out, that this is intentional. You are managing

692
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:40,000
Speaker 3: your yard. You do understand what the status symbol is,

693
00:38:40,239 --> 00:38:42,960
Speaker 3: and lawn is a status symbol. You're just going to

694
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:44,880
Speaker 3: have less of it. But if you take care of

695
00:38:44,960 --> 00:38:47,840
Speaker 3: it in the standardized way, and that doesn't mean you

696
00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:50,880
Speaker 3: need fertilizer and herbicides and just keep it mode and

697
00:38:50,920 --> 00:38:54,960
Speaker 3: nobody knows that, then nobody has a problem with it.

698
00:38:55,080 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 3: It's totally acceptable. You'll have more plants on your property,

699
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:00,520
Speaker 3: but people don't notice that either. As long as you

700
00:39:00,560 --> 00:39:03,320
Speaker 3: got that lawn mode, then you're in good shape.

701
00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:07,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. So I want to take us to

702
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:11,000
Speaker 2: kind of the the crux of this whole conversation, Doug,

703
00:39:11,160 --> 00:39:13,920
Speaker 2: and the reason that I really wanted to get you

704
00:39:13,960 --> 00:39:17,040
Speaker 2: on here, which was this kind of epiphany I had

705
00:39:17,600 --> 00:39:19,360
Speaker 2: over the last i don't know, over the last decade,

706
00:39:19,400 --> 00:39:22,719
Speaker 2: since I first started reading some of your work and

707
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:24,759
Speaker 2: following some of what you have to say while also

708
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 2: doing some of these types of projects myself. You know,

709
00:39:28,160 --> 00:39:31,600
Speaker 2: I read about this homegrown National park concept and how

710
00:39:31,600 --> 00:39:34,640
Speaker 2: you're you know, proposed, and we apply this to the

711
00:39:34,680 --> 00:39:37,480
Speaker 2: twenty some million acres of yards out there. Well. At

712
00:39:37,520 --> 00:39:40,680
Speaker 2: the same time, I've been reading and looking at studies

713
00:39:40,719 --> 00:39:45,080
Speaker 2: and work around this scale of recreational land across the nation,

714
00:39:45,360 --> 00:39:47,719
Speaker 2: And a study came out from UC Berkeley a number

715
00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:52,160
Speaker 2: of years ago that put a number of three hundred

716
00:39:52,200 --> 00:39:56,200
Speaker 2: and fifty six million acres across the nation that are

717
00:39:56,560 --> 00:40:01,200
Speaker 2: either owned or leased primarily for hunting. And so when

718
00:40:01,239 --> 00:40:08,000
Speaker 2: that quantification of the kind of scale of influence that

719
00:40:08,040 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 2: the hunting community has. When I saw that it was

720
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:13,880
Speaker 2: it was a huge eye opener for me. I realized, oh, wow,

721
00:40:14,239 --> 00:40:15,960
Speaker 2: we're not just a bunch of people out there that

722
00:40:16,040 --> 00:40:18,680
Speaker 2: have this pursuit that we enjoy so much, but we

723
00:40:18,719 --> 00:40:22,480
Speaker 2: also influence a tremendous swath of the American landscape. As

724
00:40:22,520 --> 00:40:24,680
Speaker 2: you mentioned, that's more than the National Park System.

725
00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:29,399
Speaker 3: That's really a times more than what the National Park

726
00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:30,360
Speaker 3: System is managing.

727
00:40:30,440 --> 00:40:33,080
Speaker 2: It's a huge area, it's a huge number, and the

728
00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:35,959
Speaker 2: total amount of federal public lands of all types US

729
00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:39,200
Speaker 2: for service wilderness areas BLM National Park that's six hundred

730
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:41,879
Speaker 2: and forty million acres. So we're we're, you know, more

731
00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:44,840
Speaker 2: than halfway to the entire public land the state of

732
00:40:44,880 --> 00:40:49,319
Speaker 2: the nation that's managed by people who hunt and have

733
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:51,520
Speaker 2: that kind of relationship with the natural world. So I

734
00:40:51,560 --> 00:40:53,520
Speaker 2: know that community. I know there's a lot of people

735
00:40:53,560 --> 00:40:57,080
Speaker 2: within that community who want to improve their land for wildlife,

736
00:40:57,080 --> 00:41:00,600
Speaker 2: who want to have maybe originally came into this wanting

737
00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:04,359
Speaker 2: just better hunting, but oftentimes when you start down that path,

738
00:41:04,400 --> 00:41:07,360
Speaker 2: it becomes like a gateway drug into wanting to do more.

739
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 2: That's certainly what I've experienced personally, and so I got

740
00:41:10,680 --> 00:41:14,759
Speaker 2: to thinking, what if we took Doug's homegrown national park

741
00:41:14,840 --> 00:41:19,160
Speaker 2: concepts that should help us address the biodiversity issue on

742
00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:22,319
Speaker 2: our lawns to twenty to forty million acres. What if

743
00:41:22,360 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 2: we took similar concepts and apply that to three hundred

744
00:41:25,480 --> 00:41:29,360
Speaker 2: and fifty six millions acres managed by hunters who also

745
00:41:29,400 --> 00:41:33,200
Speaker 2: want to see wildlife thrive. That seemed like a massive

746
00:41:33,239 --> 00:41:38,160
Speaker 2: opportunity for me. That seemed like this this huge important

747
00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:42,840
Speaker 2: role that the outdoor community could play, And I started thinking, like,

748
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 2: if the landscapes for of our yards are a homegrown

749
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:50,759
Speaker 2: national park where you know national parks you can't hunt, well,

750
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:52,759
Speaker 2: then what would the hunting version of that be. Well,

751
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:55,279
Speaker 2: it'd be like the national Wildlife Refuge system which we

752
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:58,160
Speaker 2: have as public land, which is where landscapes are managed

753
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:01,720
Speaker 2: to help wildlife populations, but there is still hunting allowed

754
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:05,520
Speaker 2: and engagement in that kind of consumptive way too sustainably carefully,

755
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:11,120
Speaker 2: what if we made diy wildlife refuges by applying your

756
00:42:11,200 --> 00:42:14,120
Speaker 2: ideas to this larger scale. So this is this idea

757
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:17,080
Speaker 2: that I've been riffing on in my own head and

758
00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:19,360
Speaker 2: writing for the last year or two, and I'm just

759
00:42:19,440 --> 00:42:21,360
Speaker 2: curious what are your thoughts on that?

760
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 3: Right at the gate, it's a wonderful idea, and there's

761
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:28,239
Speaker 3: also examples of how well that works when you talk

762
00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 3: about managing waterfowl and that those funds come from ducks unlimited.

763
00:42:35,120 --> 00:42:37,040
Speaker 3: You know, I mentioned that we have lost three billion

764
00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:40,000
Speaker 3: breeding birds in the last fifty years. Every bird group

765
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:44,920
Speaker 3: except one declined and the one that increased were waterfowl,

766
00:42:45,840 --> 00:42:49,799
Speaker 3: and they increased because we started to actively manage the

767
00:42:49,880 --> 00:42:53,720
Speaker 3: resources those waterfowl need, which shows we can turn it around.

768
00:42:54,040 --> 00:42:57,120
Speaker 3: And it came from management. It wasn't an accident, and

769
00:42:57,160 --> 00:43:00,279
Speaker 3: it came from hunters. So can we do that? Yes,

770
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:04,880
Speaker 3: we can. Now, managing waterfowl is easier than managing you know,

771
00:43:04,920 --> 00:43:08,640
Speaker 3: six hundred million acres of landscape. The problem with that

772
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 3: is those invasive plants. They're covering millions and millions area

773
00:43:13,280 --> 00:43:15,160
Speaker 3: and getting rid of them or managing them is a

774
00:43:15,200 --> 00:43:19,920
Speaker 3: no trivial thing. They are not increasing the productivity of

775
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:22,320
Speaker 3: the landscape and no matter what it looks like behind

776
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 3: your barn, So how do we do that. One thing

777
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:30,440
Speaker 3: we can do is to reduce the seed rain, and

778
00:43:30,560 --> 00:43:32,520
Speaker 3: as I said, if you lift you look at the

779
00:43:32,600 --> 00:43:35,759
Speaker 3: invasive plants that are out there. I think I actually

780
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:37,799
Speaker 3: got to figure it's like eighty five percent have come

781
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:42,000
Speaker 3: from our gardens and they're still there. As a matter

782
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:44,640
Speaker 3: of fact, they're still being sold in nurseries across the country.

783
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:48,320
Speaker 3: Not everywhere they're starting to ban them. But so privet,

784
00:43:48,400 --> 00:43:51,120
Speaker 3: for example, that favorite hedge we have, they're actually nine

785
00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:54,680
Speaker 3: species of privet in the US. They're all highly invasive.

786
00:43:54,840 --> 00:43:59,520
Speaker 3: There's a million acres of privet in Alabama alone, so

787
00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:04,919
Speaker 3: very serious, serious issue. How do we manage that. One

788
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:07,799
Speaker 3: thing we can do is reduce the seed rain that

789
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:10,920
Speaker 3: comes from our property. So I talk about people removing

790
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:15,759
Speaker 3: the invasive plants just on their property. That's manageable, you know,

791
00:44:16,040 --> 00:44:19,040
Speaker 3: you you really most people don't have enough property that

792
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:22,640
Speaker 3: wouldn't take them more than an afternoon. But one, one

793
00:44:22,719 --> 00:44:25,960
Speaker 3: burning bush, you know, produces I don't know what, two

794
00:44:26,000 --> 00:44:29,759
Speaker 3: hundred thousand seeds or something that every fall. Get rid

795
00:44:29,800 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 3: of that burning bush over the over time, that will

796
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:36,680
Speaker 3: limit that will reduce the seed rain that allows these

797
00:44:36,719 --> 00:44:41,040
Speaker 3: things to keep expanding and keep keep coming up. I

798
00:44:41,080 --> 00:44:43,480
Speaker 3: don't have a great solution for how we manage them.

799
00:44:43,560 --> 00:44:46,759
Speaker 3: In the millions of acres of natural lands that we have.

800
00:44:47,040 --> 00:44:50,359
Speaker 3: I really don't. It's a it's a problem that was

801
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:54,520
Speaker 3: created by us, created largely by the horticultural trade. I'd

802
00:44:54,520 --> 00:44:56,480
Speaker 3: love to give them the bill and say, hey, you

803
00:44:56,560 --> 00:45:01,160
Speaker 3: got to clean it up now. But but that's if

804
00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:03,680
Speaker 3: you want to increase the productivity of those lands that

805
00:45:03,719 --> 00:45:06,839
Speaker 3: will support the wildlife that we're talking about. I mean,

806
00:45:07,520 --> 00:45:10,719
Speaker 3: you talked about bob white quail, you talked about I

807
00:45:10,719 --> 00:45:13,520
Speaker 3: don't know if you mentioned woodcock. These are these are

808
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:16,800
Speaker 3: animals we hunt. We don't have them anymore. They're gone,

809
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:20,240
Speaker 3: you know, And and they're gone largely because of habitat

810
00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 3: degradation as opposed to over hunting. So how do we

811
00:45:24,200 --> 00:45:27,680
Speaker 3: improve that those habitats. We have to understand what what

812
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 3: those creatures eat. They eat insects, you know, you got

813
00:45:33,160 --> 00:45:36,720
Speaker 3: to put the insects back. And some of the programs

814
00:45:36,719 --> 00:45:39,600
Speaker 3: are starting to recognize that. I have a former grad

815
00:45:39,640 --> 00:45:44,560
Speaker 3: student who is working on reclaimed oil pads in the

816
00:45:44,560 --> 00:45:47,960
Speaker 3: West after they play out, uh, And what he's doing

817
00:45:48,040 --> 00:45:50,400
Speaker 3: is putting all the native plants back, and and that

818
00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:53,439
Speaker 3: you know, the sage grass are returning. It's a huge

819
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:57,279
Speaker 3: success simply by saying these are the important plants that

820
00:45:57,360 --> 00:46:01,240
Speaker 3: have to be here. So were I think we could,

821
00:46:01,280 --> 00:46:02,480
Speaker 3: but it's not gonna be easy.

822
00:46:02,800 --> 00:46:07,359
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, if I were a landowner, and let's say

823
00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:11,840
Speaker 2: I own one hundred acres that I use recreationally. My

824
00:46:11,960 --> 00:46:15,440
Speaker 2: family and I hike on it, We look for mushrooms

825
00:46:15,480 --> 00:46:17,640
Speaker 2: on it, we hunt on it, and we do all

826
00:46:17,680 --> 00:46:22,960
Speaker 2: these things. And I want to apply the framework that

827
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:26,879
Speaker 2: you've that you've generally proposed for lawns if I want

828
00:46:26,920 --> 00:46:29,680
Speaker 2: to try to translate that to my one hundred acres

829
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:32,920
Speaker 2: of which I'm trying to improve in the ways we've discussed,

830
00:46:33,400 --> 00:46:36,400
Speaker 2: what would be the preceps that you would recommend, like

831
00:46:36,520 --> 00:46:39,760
Speaker 2: translate if you could take, you know, what you've written

832
00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:42,640
Speaker 2: about on the lawn scale and now zoom it out

833
00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:45,040
Speaker 2: to one hundred acres or two hundred acres. What would

834
00:46:45,040 --> 00:46:48,000
Speaker 2: be your pillars or like your four steps or four

835
00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:51,120
Speaker 2: rules that you must follow if I'm trying to manage

836
00:46:51,160 --> 00:46:54,799
Speaker 2: my one hundred acres for biodiversity in this more holistic way,

837
00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:58,480
Speaker 2: what would those those rules or best practices be well?

838
00:46:58,480 --> 00:47:01,120
Speaker 3: Step one would be find out what what is already there?

839
00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 3: What do those hundred acres look like? Right now. If

840
00:47:04,120 --> 00:47:06,640
Speaker 3: you started out with one hundred acres of corn and

841
00:47:06,800 --> 00:47:08,840
Speaker 3: you're trying to re establish that, you're starting with a

842
00:47:08,840 --> 00:47:11,720
Speaker 3: bare slate, and that's a very different story from starting

843
00:47:11,760 --> 00:47:16,799
Speaker 3: with a patchwork of forest and probably invaded meadow. I

844
00:47:16,880 --> 00:47:19,680
Speaker 3: bet you do not have one hundred acres of invasive species.

845
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:24,160
Speaker 3: You might have twenty all edge habitat or something. So

846
00:47:24,520 --> 00:47:27,640
Speaker 3: I would come up with some kind of an inventory

847
00:47:28,040 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 3: of what you have managing for maximum diversity. And that's

848
00:47:35,719 --> 00:47:41,000
Speaker 3: what you mentioned means sunlight. So the most diverse ecosystem

849
00:47:41,080 --> 00:47:46,480
Speaker 3: terrestrial ecosystems in North America are much closer to savannahs

850
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:50,440
Speaker 3: oak savannahs that include a lot of prairie plants, big trees,

851
00:47:50,880 --> 00:47:54,319
Speaker 3: but not closed canopy, so a lot of sunlight gets

852
00:47:54,320 --> 00:47:57,920
Speaker 3: in there. Those are extremely productive and diverse ecosystems. The

853
00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:02,000
Speaker 3: really dense closed forests is probably an artifact of us

854
00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:04,520
Speaker 3: killing off the large place to see mammals ten thousand

855
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:07,120
Speaker 3: years ago. They didn't used to be get closed in

856
00:48:07,200 --> 00:48:09,839
Speaker 3: like that. There were a lot of big creatures eating

857
00:48:09,880 --> 00:48:11,680
Speaker 3: a lot of plants, and it was much more open.

858
00:48:12,239 --> 00:48:14,880
Speaker 3: So you might think about opening up if you do

859
00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:18,320
Speaker 3: have a dense patch of woods, opening up the canopy

860
00:48:18,320 --> 00:48:25,160
Speaker 3: a little bit. There are groups that talk about sustainable forestry,

861
00:48:25,360 --> 00:48:28,800
Speaker 3: and by sustainable they really mean it. You're not taking

862
00:48:28,840 --> 00:48:31,480
Speaker 3: the best trees and a clear cut once. You're taking

863
00:48:31,760 --> 00:48:34,800
Speaker 3: the leaners and the sick trees and the small ones

864
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:39,520
Speaker 3: more frequently, but you leave the very best trees. There's

865
00:48:39,520 --> 00:48:43,480
Speaker 3: a group in northern Minnesota, Indigenous groups been managing a

866
00:48:43,520 --> 00:48:46,640
Speaker 3: forest for over one hundred years. They have more wood

867
00:48:46,680 --> 00:48:49,360
Speaker 3: there now than when they started, and they take it

868
00:48:49,400 --> 00:48:52,800
Speaker 3: out every single year. So sustainable harvesting really can happen,

869
00:48:53,600 --> 00:48:58,759
Speaker 3: and that produces a healthier landscape for the wildlife that

870
00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:03,560
Speaker 3: we're trying to So you have an inventory, you might

871
00:49:03,760 --> 00:49:05,680
Speaker 3: then you then you could say, well, how many of

872
00:49:05,719 --> 00:49:08,759
Speaker 3: those keystone plants do I have here? Can I add some?

873
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:10,520
Speaker 2: Uh?

874
00:49:10,560 --> 00:49:12,719
Speaker 3: If you have an overabundance of deer, you probably have

875
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:15,680
Speaker 3: to cage the little ones for a while. But that's okay.

876
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:18,200
Speaker 3: That's what we did here and we still do it.

877
00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:20,680
Speaker 3: I still move cages around, but we get the plants

878
00:49:20,719 --> 00:49:24,960
Speaker 3: back anyway. Then you're going to have your heavily invaded areas,

879
00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:27,200
Speaker 3: probably your edges and things that stuff loaded with the

880
00:49:27,760 --> 00:49:30,440
Speaker 3: buck thorn and the bush honeysuckle and the autumn alli

881
00:49:30,520 --> 00:49:33,640
Speaker 3: and all that stuff. You have to take them out.

882
00:49:33,880 --> 00:49:37,839
Speaker 3: And you know, people say that's impossible. You know ten

883
00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:41,000
Speaker 3: acres here. My wife cleared it, and she did it

884
00:49:41,040 --> 00:49:44,600
Speaker 3: over time, and she did it because she enjoyed doing it.

885
00:49:45,719 --> 00:49:50,359
Speaker 3: But what it showed me is that it's possible. Yes,

886
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:53,600
Speaker 3: it's a lot of work, but it is possible.

887
00:49:54,480 --> 00:49:54,719
Speaker 1: Uh.

888
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:56,399
Speaker 3: And if you have to do it really fast, then

889
00:49:56,800 --> 00:49:59,040
Speaker 3: then you got to invest a little bit, get it.

890
00:49:59,080 --> 00:50:01,360
Speaker 3: Get a high school crew there. They love to kill things.

891
00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:06,960
Speaker 3: But you know, if they're ecological tumors, if you leave them,

892
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:09,720
Speaker 3: it just keeps spreading, It keeps getting bigger and bigger

893
00:50:09,719 --> 00:50:11,880
Speaker 3: and bigger. So you got to get that under control,

894
00:50:12,800 --> 00:50:14,920
Speaker 3: then you would have a really productive underdating.

895
00:50:26,360 --> 00:50:30,920
Speaker 2: You mentioned keystone plants and earlier you specified oaks. But

896
00:50:31,040 --> 00:50:34,000
Speaker 2: can you speak a little bit more just on that

897
00:50:34,080 --> 00:50:37,400
Speaker 2: keystone plant concept, because I think a lot of folks

898
00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:44,000
Speaker 2: within the wildlife habitat management world, the idea of diversity

899
00:50:44,040 --> 00:50:46,400
Speaker 2: is really getting out there. The idea of managing for

900
00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 2: sunlight is really getting out there. The idea of yeah,

901
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:52,399
Speaker 2: there's some invasives that we really do need to start

902
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:56,120
Speaker 2: getting rid of. That's getting out there. But then you know,

903
00:50:56,760 --> 00:50:59,279
Speaker 2: what's the next thing you want to manage for. Maybe

904
00:50:59,280 --> 00:51:01,440
Speaker 2: there's some more questions around that, and this idea of

905
00:51:01,520 --> 00:51:04,400
Speaker 2: keystone plants is a little bit unique in my world.

906
00:51:04,560 --> 00:51:06,239
Speaker 2: Could you talk a little bit more about that and

907
00:51:06,280 --> 00:51:08,600
Speaker 2: then also maybe mention some specific examples.

908
00:51:09,880 --> 00:51:14,320
Speaker 3: All right, well, let's start with oaks again. They're keystone

909
00:51:14,320 --> 00:51:18,720
Speaker 3: plant and a number of respects. But there's four things

910
00:51:19,200 --> 00:51:22,880
Speaker 3: that your one hundred acres my yard, everybody's landscape needs

911
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:26,480
Speaker 3: to for ecological goals. They all want to support pollinators,

912
00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:28,719
Speaker 3: they all want to have a viable food web, They

913
00:51:28,719 --> 00:51:31,360
Speaker 3: want to manage the watershed in which they lie, and

914
00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:35,200
Speaker 3: they want to sequester carbon, which plants are best at

915
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:38,560
Speaker 3: doing that. Well, oaks are you know, they're long lived,

916
00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:43,279
Speaker 3: dense tissues. They sequester more carbon than almost all the

917
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:46,839
Speaker 3: other trees out there, so it's great for carbon sequestration.

918
00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:49,839
Speaker 3: The big oaks, and most of them are big, have

919
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:52,680
Speaker 3: huge root systems, so they're really good at managing the watershed.

920
00:51:53,960 --> 00:51:57,759
Speaker 3: They're the best in terms of producing that insect life

921
00:51:57,760 --> 00:52:02,480
Speaker 3: that keeps the food web going. Oaks nationwide support over

922
00:52:02,560 --> 00:52:06,640
Speaker 3: nine hundred and fifty species of caterpillars. Tulip trees. You know,

923
00:52:06,640 --> 00:52:11,279
Speaker 3: it's a big, fast growing, you know, important tree. In

924
00:52:11,320 --> 00:52:14,759
Speaker 3: our eastern forest they only support twenty one. So we're

925
00:52:14,760 --> 00:52:18,320
Speaker 3: talking about huge differences here in the productivity of these plants.

926
00:52:18,560 --> 00:52:20,800
Speaker 3: Do I want a forest with no tulip trees?

927
00:52:21,080 --> 00:52:21,279
Speaker 1: No?

928
00:52:21,719 --> 00:52:25,160
Speaker 3: Do I want a tulip tree monoculture No. So that's

929
00:52:25,239 --> 00:52:28,920
Speaker 3: that kind of knowledge. It makes the difference. Yellow wood

930
00:52:28,920 --> 00:52:32,919
Speaker 3: it's a nice yellow, nice native tree, and it's good

931
00:52:32,960 --> 00:52:35,319
Speaker 3: for pollinators when it's in bloom, which is about one

932
00:52:35,320 --> 00:52:38,839
Speaker 3: week a year. Otherwise it supports no caterpillars, you know,

933
00:52:38,960 --> 00:52:42,200
Speaker 3: so a few yellowoods here and there. Okay, but that's

934
00:52:42,239 --> 00:52:47,720
Speaker 3: the concept of keystone plants. Black cherry supports four hundred

935
00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 3: and fifty six species of caterpillars in the mid Atlantic

936
00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:54,799
Speaker 3: States alone. It's a really important plant. Willows, particularly as

937
00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:58,480
Speaker 3: you go farther and farther north oaks drop out, willows

938
00:52:58,520 --> 00:53:01,040
Speaker 3: take over in terms of being the number one tree

939
00:53:01,160 --> 00:53:05,040
Speaker 3: out west cottonwoods. People don't like the cottonwos because they

940
00:53:05,080 --> 00:53:08,200
Speaker 3: make the little white, fluffy thing, but they are essential

941
00:53:08,239 --> 00:53:12,319
Speaker 3: along our riparian carters and supporting wildlife. So those are

942
00:53:12,600 --> 00:53:14,239
Speaker 3: that's the little bit of knowledge that can help you

943
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:18,120
Speaker 3: make a really important landscape. Now I talk about keystone

944
00:53:18,120 --> 00:53:20,760
Speaker 3: plants in terms of making caterpillars, but there's keystone plants

945
00:53:20,800 --> 00:53:23,919
Speaker 3: in terms of pollinators as well. Those are the ones

946
00:53:23,960 --> 00:53:27,560
Speaker 3: that are going to support the most specialist pollinators. Just

947
00:53:27,680 --> 00:53:30,160
Speaker 3: like the caterpillars that can only eat a few plants,

948
00:53:31,120 --> 00:53:34,799
Speaker 3: thirty percent of our native bees can only reproduce on

949
00:53:34,840 --> 00:53:38,160
Speaker 3: the pollen of particular plants. So if you don't have

950
00:53:38,160 --> 00:53:40,680
Speaker 3: those plants, you've lost those bees. And the very best

951
00:53:40,719 --> 00:53:46,200
Speaker 3: plants for supporting specialist pollinators are golden rods perennial sunflowers.

952
00:53:46,840 --> 00:53:50,120
Speaker 3: In California alone, there's sixty species of bees that won't

953
00:53:50,120 --> 00:53:55,320
Speaker 3: be there if you don't have perennial sunflowers. Native asters

954
00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:58,560
Speaker 3: really important for specialist bees. Now, all the other plants

955
00:53:58,600 --> 00:54:02,080
Speaker 3: have specialist bees too, but instead of supporting thirty or forty,

956
00:54:01,920 --> 00:54:04,960
Speaker 3: they drop down to one or two. So focusing on

957
00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:07,080
Speaker 3: the most productive ones is what can really help.

958
00:54:08,880 --> 00:54:12,880
Speaker 2: Back to oaks, that one is something that I think

959
00:54:14,200 --> 00:54:16,759
Speaker 2: a lot of folks understand the importance of. For I

960
00:54:16,760 --> 00:54:19,400
Speaker 2: think the caterpillar side will be a surprise to a

961
00:54:19,440 --> 00:54:22,160
Speaker 2: lot of folks. A lot of hunters when they think

962
00:54:22,160 --> 00:54:24,400
Speaker 2: of oaks, they think of acorns and a very direct

963
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:27,880
Speaker 2: connection from that hard mast to know deer and other

964
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:31,560
Speaker 2: wildlife utilizing those acorns. So there's strong interest in my

965
00:54:31,640 --> 00:54:36,480
Speaker 2: world to try to manage for healthy oak healthy excuse me,

966
00:54:36,520 --> 00:54:41,640
Speaker 2: healthy oak populations. What would your recommendations be, being someone

967
00:54:41,640 --> 00:54:44,759
Speaker 2: who has written an entire book about oaks, for helping

968
00:54:44,880 --> 00:54:48,560
Speaker 2: us steward those tree species. What can we do to

969
00:54:48,600 --> 00:54:52,040
Speaker 2: make sure our oaks are healthy, are thriving, are present

970
00:54:52,160 --> 00:54:53,920
Speaker 2: on the landscape.

971
00:54:54,080 --> 00:54:56,360
Speaker 3: We have ninety one species of oaks in this country.

972
00:54:57,200 --> 00:55:01,400
Speaker 3: Now they don't belong everywhere than rockies and the driest

973
00:55:01,440 --> 00:55:04,799
Speaker 3: deserts we don't have oaks, but everyplace else we do.

974
00:55:04,920 --> 00:55:08,160
Speaker 3: The center of distribution for oaks is the southeast, but

975
00:55:08,239 --> 00:55:11,080
Speaker 3: I think California has I don't know, twenty eight species

976
00:55:11,080 --> 00:55:14,200
Speaker 3: of oaks or something. So so if you were in

977
00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:18,840
Speaker 3: an area that where oaks thrive, then you've got to

978
00:55:18,840 --> 00:55:22,440
Speaker 3: figure out which species belong where you are. There are

979
00:55:22,480 --> 00:55:24,680
Speaker 3: oaks that like acid soil, there are oaks that like

980
00:55:24,760 --> 00:55:27,719
Speaker 3: basic soil. There are oaks that like rocky outcrops. There

981
00:55:27,719 --> 00:55:30,880
Speaker 3: are oaks that like bottom land, so putting the right

982
00:55:30,960 --> 00:55:35,480
Speaker 3: oak in the right place is important. The biggest challenge

983
00:55:35,560 --> 00:55:38,719
Speaker 3: for oaks today are the diseases we've brought in. We've

984
00:55:38,719 --> 00:55:42,400
Speaker 3: got sudden oak death syndrome in the West, which threatens

985
00:55:42,400 --> 00:55:45,680
Speaker 3: to come east all the time. We've got oak leaf

986
00:55:45,760 --> 00:55:48,520
Speaker 3: scorch bacteria leaf scorch hitting the red oak group in

987
00:55:48,560 --> 00:55:51,520
Speaker 3: the east. We've got oak wilt hitting the white oak

988
00:55:51,520 --> 00:55:55,439
Speaker 3: group in the Midwest. The good news there Now, it's

989
00:55:55,480 --> 00:55:57,880
Speaker 3: bad news because they're killing a lot of oaks, But

990
00:55:57,920 --> 00:56:01,440
Speaker 3: the good news is in all of the populations that

991
00:56:01,520 --> 00:56:05,200
Speaker 3: have been studied, it is most of them there is resistance.

992
00:56:05,719 --> 00:56:08,319
Speaker 3: There are oaks out there that are resistant to these diseases.

993
00:56:08,760 --> 00:56:13,120
Speaker 3: They are the future of our oak forests. So you

994
00:56:13,160 --> 00:56:16,160
Speaker 3: can hire the arborus to try to save the sick

995
00:56:16,200 --> 00:56:20,759
Speaker 3: oak on your property. He's going to fail. I mean,

996
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:23,719
Speaker 3: he can extend the life for a few years. But

997
00:56:23,880 --> 00:56:25,920
Speaker 3: people have big oaks and they're sick and they want

998
00:56:25,960 --> 00:56:28,280
Speaker 3: to save it, and I get that, but it's probably

999
00:56:28,320 --> 00:56:31,360
Speaker 3: not going to work. The best thing to do is

1000
00:56:31,400 --> 00:56:33,480
Speaker 3: to favor the oaks that don't die, the ones that

1001
00:56:33,520 --> 00:56:36,960
Speaker 3: have resistance in it. Those are the eggcorns that the

1002
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:39,640
Speaker 3: blue jays are going to disperse over time. You know,

1003
00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:41,600
Speaker 3: blue jay will pick up an agcorn and weigh it

1004
00:56:42,160 --> 00:56:44,960
Speaker 3: if it's light, if it's small, they reject it and

1005
00:56:44,960 --> 00:56:49,000
Speaker 3: they take the big one. And they only remember where

1006
00:56:49,040 --> 00:56:51,400
Speaker 3: one out of every four eggcorns they bury for the

1007
00:56:51,440 --> 00:56:55,040
Speaker 3: winter are. So they're planning our oaks all over the place.

1008
00:56:56,480 --> 00:56:59,280
Speaker 3: So that's the good news. You know, it's better news

1009
00:56:59,360 --> 00:57:03,480
Speaker 3: than with the ashes. With the mer lash boarder. There

1010
00:57:03,520 --> 00:57:06,840
Speaker 3: is some resistance there, but it's really small, really, you know,

1011
00:57:06,880 --> 00:57:11,640
Speaker 3: most of the ashes are already dead. But oaks better news.

1012
00:57:11,760 --> 00:57:14,160
Speaker 3: They're going to the resistant varieties are going to spread,

1013
00:57:14,160 --> 00:57:15,919
Speaker 3: and we have to let them do that. So again,

1014
00:57:15,960 --> 00:57:18,439
Speaker 3: when the arborus says don't plan any more oaks, they're

1015
00:57:18,480 --> 00:57:20,800
Speaker 3: just going to get sick, that's when you ignore him

1016
00:57:20,840 --> 00:57:23,800
Speaker 3: and plant more oaks than ever. And some will get sick,

1017
00:57:23,800 --> 00:57:25,760
Speaker 3: that's right, but you're going to discover the ones that

1018
00:57:25,800 --> 00:57:28,000
Speaker 3: don't get sick and they're the future.

1019
00:57:28,520 --> 00:57:34,760
Speaker 2: Okay, a little bit of a hard pivot, but herbicide use.

1020
00:57:35,440 --> 00:57:37,640
Speaker 2: If I'm thinking about all the various ways we can

1021
00:57:37,680 --> 00:57:42,200
Speaker 2: be managing vegetation on a landscape on our kind of

1022
00:57:42,280 --> 00:57:45,440
Speaker 2: hypothetical one hundred acres, when I start talking about our

1023
00:57:45,520 --> 00:57:48,880
Speaker 2: thinking about removing invasive species. If I'm trying to help oaks,

1024
00:57:49,560 --> 00:57:51,680
Speaker 2: one thing I could use as the chainsaw cutting down

1025
00:57:52,120 --> 00:57:54,640
Speaker 2: other trees around it. But herbicide might be another way

1026
00:57:54,640 --> 00:57:58,360
Speaker 2: to utilize or to manage these things. But there's a

1027
00:57:58,360 --> 00:58:01,400
Speaker 2: lot of questions and concern around herbicide to use. Two,

1028
00:58:01,920 --> 00:58:08,720
Speaker 2: where do you fall on using herbicides to manage undesirable species?

1029
00:58:08,960 --> 00:58:11,920
Speaker 2: And if we do use it, how do you, if

1030
00:58:11,960 --> 00:58:13,360
Speaker 2: at all, recommend best using it.

1031
00:58:14,840 --> 00:58:19,960
Speaker 3: I think of herbicides like chemotherapy, particularly in terms of

1032
00:58:20,040 --> 00:58:23,760
Speaker 3: invasive plants. They really are like ecological tumors. I had

1033
00:58:23,760 --> 00:58:25,680
Speaker 3: a guy send me an email not long ago, and

1034
00:58:25,720 --> 00:58:28,480
Speaker 3: he said, well, can I leave just a few? I said, well,

1035
00:58:28,520 --> 00:58:30,360
Speaker 3: how many tumors do you want to leave in your body?

1036
00:58:30,480 --> 00:58:32,640
Speaker 3: You know you don't want to leave any because they

1037
00:58:32,720 --> 00:58:36,600
Speaker 3: just keep spreading, So you have to have something that

1038
00:58:36,720 --> 00:58:39,760
Speaker 3: kills them. Herbicides. You've got to kill the roots or

1039
00:58:39,840 --> 00:58:42,880
Speaker 3: it just keeps coming back, so you can you can

1040
00:58:42,920 --> 00:58:45,920
Speaker 3: cut it, but unless you cut it once every two weeks,

1041
00:58:45,920 --> 00:58:47,920
Speaker 3: every time it puts a little green above the ground,

1042
00:58:48,080 --> 00:58:50,000
Speaker 3: you are not going to exhaust that root system and

1043
00:58:50,040 --> 00:58:53,000
Speaker 3: you'll be doing it the rest of your life. So

1044
00:58:53,200 --> 00:58:56,600
Speaker 3: that's where herbicides come in. And like chemotherapy, they have

1045
00:58:56,720 --> 00:58:59,920
Speaker 3: to be used properly. You can you can overuse them,

1046
00:59:00,040 --> 00:59:04,080
Speaker 3: you can misuse them. I don't like spraying because I

1047
00:59:04,120 --> 00:59:07,200
Speaker 3: always hit on targets. Underneath that multi floor a rose

1048
00:59:07,280 --> 00:59:09,520
Speaker 3: is probably a baby yoak that the deer couldn't get to.

1049
00:59:09,800 --> 00:59:12,320
Speaker 3: I want to save that. Well, if I spray, I'm not.

1050
00:59:12,440 --> 00:59:14,200
Speaker 3: I'm not going to say it. So I what I

1051
00:59:14,280 --> 00:59:19,000
Speaker 3: do when I use herbicides is cut the stump and

1052
00:59:19,200 --> 00:59:22,560
Speaker 3: paint it. So I use this very little material and

1053
00:59:22,600 --> 00:59:25,640
Speaker 3: it kills the roots, and you know that's the goal.

1054
00:59:28,120 --> 00:59:31,720
Speaker 3: It's a really important tool in our management toolbox, particularly

1055
00:59:31,760 --> 00:59:33,600
Speaker 3: if you're talking about one hundred acres. You know, one

1056
00:59:33,640 --> 00:59:36,400
Speaker 3: hundred acres without herbicides be very very tough.

1057
00:59:37,160 --> 00:59:41,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, the scale changes things for sure. So one last

1058
00:59:41,800 --> 00:59:45,960
Speaker 2: question then, on this scale, we talked earlier about when

1059
00:59:46,000 --> 00:59:50,080
Speaker 2: it comes to yards, you know, changing your landscaping, prioritizing

1060
00:59:50,600 --> 00:59:54,120
Speaker 2: native plants, especially that might benefit pollinators. You mentioned the

1061
00:59:54,120 --> 00:59:57,880
Speaker 2: importance of pollinators from the you know, the ecosystem services

1062
00:59:57,920 --> 01:00:00,840
Speaker 2: they provide for so much. But when we've got this

1063
01:00:00,960 --> 01:00:03,400
Speaker 2: larger scale, when we have one hundred acres, we might

1064
01:00:03,440 --> 01:00:07,440
Speaker 2: have entire fields or meadows that we could maybe manage

1065
01:00:07,440 --> 01:00:11,560
Speaker 2: differently to benefit pollinators. Is there anything you would you

1066
01:00:11,600 --> 01:00:14,520
Speaker 2: would share with somebody who does have a fallow old

1067
01:00:14,600 --> 01:00:17,240
Speaker 2: farm field or something like that that they could start

1068
01:00:17,240 --> 01:00:19,880
Speaker 2: doing something with. Now, what would you recommend for them

1069
01:00:20,000 --> 01:00:23,080
Speaker 2: or have them think about when considering the importance of

1070
01:00:23,120 --> 01:00:24,800
Speaker 2: pollinators and what they might do to.

1071
01:00:24,760 --> 01:00:30,120
Speaker 3: Help well timing of you know, most people are managing

1072
01:00:30,160 --> 01:00:33,200
Speaker 3: their meadows with mowing, and the timing of that mowing

1073
01:00:33,240 --> 01:00:35,920
Speaker 3: becomes really important not just for the pollinators, but for

1074
01:00:35,960 --> 01:00:39,640
Speaker 3: the other resources those plants produce. So mowing at the

1075
01:00:39,720 --> 01:00:42,240
Speaker 3: end of the summer takes out all of the seed

1076
01:00:42,280 --> 01:00:45,120
Speaker 3: production that are sparrows and other things will use all

1077
01:00:45,160 --> 01:00:49,280
Speaker 3: winter long. So if you're going to do your mowing,

1078
01:00:49,320 --> 01:00:51,120
Speaker 3: you want to do that at the beginning of the year,

1079
01:00:51,200 --> 01:00:54,120
Speaker 3: and that would be typically before things start to grow,

1080
01:00:54,280 --> 01:00:56,920
Speaker 3: after the seeds have been used all winter long. So

1081
01:00:57,040 --> 01:00:59,560
Speaker 3: depending on where you are we're usually talking about march

1082
01:01:01,960 --> 01:01:05,480
Speaker 3: burning is a really valuable tool. If you're in an

1083
01:01:05,520 --> 01:01:08,400
Speaker 3: area where people let you do that, and if you

1084
01:01:08,480 --> 01:01:11,720
Speaker 3: have the expertise to do that, it's better than mowing.

1085
01:01:11,760 --> 01:01:16,320
Speaker 3: Because it returns nutrients to the soil very quickly. It's

1086
01:01:16,440 --> 01:01:20,240
Speaker 3: not a management tool for invasive plants. For the most part.

1087
01:01:20,280 --> 01:01:23,480
Speaker 3: It's just like just like mowing. It doesn't kill the rootstocks,

1088
01:01:23,880 --> 01:01:27,920
Speaker 3: but it does. You know, our our prairies and meadows

1089
01:01:28,080 --> 01:01:34,720
Speaker 3: were managed by fire with for the indigenous people around

1090
01:01:34,760 --> 01:01:37,920
Speaker 3: the country for thousands of years. Uh and before that,

1091
01:01:38,160 --> 01:01:41,320
Speaker 3: just simple thunderstorms in the in the summertime would would

1092
01:01:41,400 --> 01:01:43,400
Speaker 3: start it, and it would it would reset the clock.

1093
01:01:43,880 --> 01:01:47,120
Speaker 3: In the east, we get enough rainfall that if you

1094
01:01:47,240 --> 01:01:51,640
Speaker 3: don't mow or burn, they don't stay. They don't stay

1095
01:01:51,640 --> 01:01:55,040
Speaker 3: meadow or prairie anymore. The woodies come in and take

1096
01:01:55,120 --> 01:01:57,400
Speaker 3: take them over. So you want to actively manage for that.

1097
01:01:58,360 --> 01:02:01,600
Speaker 3: You can mow heavily in the spring. So let's say

1098
01:02:01,600 --> 01:02:04,760
Speaker 3: you're starting with largely cool season European grasses and you

1099
01:02:04,800 --> 01:02:08,480
Speaker 3: want to push that to native bunch grasses and fords.

1100
01:02:08,800 --> 01:02:11,200
Speaker 3: You mow heavily in the spring and keep those cool

1101
01:02:11,240 --> 01:02:13,439
Speaker 3: season grasses down and then you don't mow the rest

1102
01:02:13,480 --> 01:02:15,880
Speaker 3: of the year. You do that for two or three years,

1103
01:02:15,920 --> 01:02:20,720
Speaker 3: and the native warm season bunch grasses will start to

1104
01:02:20,760 --> 01:02:24,920
Speaker 3: take over. You know, enterpogon and other things will come in.

1105
01:02:26,160 --> 01:02:30,360
Speaker 3: So without using any herbicide or any management tool other

1106
01:02:30,440 --> 01:02:36,000
Speaker 3: than mowing, you get to shift the species composition of

1107
01:02:36,040 --> 01:02:39,880
Speaker 3: the plants in your field. You probably are going to

1108
01:02:39,920 --> 01:02:42,600
Speaker 3: have to spot treat those woodies that come in because

1109
01:02:42,640 --> 01:02:45,160
Speaker 3: they do. They come in all the time, and some

1110
01:02:45,200 --> 01:02:47,200
Speaker 3: of them will be native, and if you're trying to

1111
01:02:47,240 --> 01:02:52,560
Speaker 3: return your field to a forest, you leave them. Otherwise

1112
01:02:52,560 --> 01:02:54,600
Speaker 3: you got to treat them too. If you don't want

1113
01:02:54,600 --> 01:02:58,800
Speaker 3: to use insecticide. Mattic works great, particularly when they're small.

1114
01:03:00,160 --> 01:03:02,240
Speaker 3: Like a pickaxe with a broad end. You just go whack,

1115
01:03:02,280 --> 01:03:05,160
Speaker 3: whack and out it comes, and you can do a

1116
01:03:05,240 --> 01:03:10,000
Speaker 3: large area in an afternoon walking around. But some kind

1117
01:03:10,040 --> 01:03:11,960
Speaker 3: of management is required to keep it in a meadow

1118
01:03:12,000 --> 01:03:13,640
Speaker 3: state in the east.

1119
01:03:14,480 --> 01:03:20,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, So three hundred and fifty six million acres is

1120
01:03:20,080 --> 01:03:23,440
Speaker 2: that number that is believed to be under the influence

1121
01:03:23,480 --> 01:03:26,480
Speaker 2: of hunters. Let's say I don't know, I have no

1122
01:03:26,560 --> 01:03:29,520
Speaker 2: idea how many individual landowners that is. But let's just

1123
01:03:29,600 --> 01:03:33,520
Speaker 2: say for simple, easy numbers, let's say there's a million

1124
01:03:34,320 --> 01:03:37,720
Speaker 2: folks who own that three hundred and fifty six million

1125
01:03:37,800 --> 01:03:41,160
Speaker 2: acres they own or release it, and let's hypothetically say

1126
01:03:41,160 --> 01:03:44,040
Speaker 2: that we had an auditorium that was large enough to

1127
01:03:44,120 --> 01:03:47,920
Speaker 2: house all one million of those hunters, and you were

1128
01:03:47,960 --> 01:03:50,160
Speaker 2: standing on a stage in the middle of that auditorium

1129
01:03:50,200 --> 01:03:52,960
Speaker 2: speaking to every one of those hunters who has influence

1130
01:03:53,040 --> 01:03:57,080
Speaker 2: over that three hundred and fifty six million acres. If

1131
01:03:57,120 --> 01:04:03,080
Speaker 2: you could get across just two very important, most important

1132
01:04:03,280 --> 01:04:07,440
Speaker 2: points or principles, they would walk out of that stadium

1133
01:04:07,440 --> 01:04:11,080
Speaker 2: with and then put into action on their three hundred

1134
01:04:11,080 --> 01:04:13,680
Speaker 2: and fifty six million acres of land. What would those

1135
01:04:13,680 --> 01:04:17,680
Speaker 2: two very most important lasting ideas be.

1136
01:04:19,240 --> 01:04:24,440
Speaker 3: You asked tough questions. It's my job, Doug, you know,

1137
01:04:24,520 --> 01:04:26,560
Speaker 3: I would like to back it up and rather than

1138
01:04:26,600 --> 01:04:29,320
Speaker 3: talk about the hunters that want to use that the

1139
01:04:29,440 --> 01:04:32,640
Speaker 3: hunters are there actively using it. But everybody in the

1140
01:04:32,680 --> 01:04:36,480
Speaker 3: country is using that acreage. Those are the acres producing

1141
01:04:36,480 --> 01:04:40,600
Speaker 3: the ecosystem services that are keeping us alive. Everybody needs

1142
01:04:40,640 --> 01:04:44,040
Speaker 3: to be paying for the maintenance of those properties. Everybody

1143
01:04:44,080 --> 01:04:48,080
Speaker 3: needs to be keeping the the expansion of the you know,

1144
01:04:48,560 --> 01:04:54,040
Speaker 3: sprawl out of there, improving the connectivity, buying the sections

1145
01:04:54,080 --> 01:04:58,600
Speaker 3: in between parks and preserves that. That's a responsibility that

1146
01:04:58,600 --> 01:05:02,000
Speaker 3: goes to everybody can use that to their advantage too.

1147
01:05:02,000 --> 01:05:05,680
Speaker 3: But It's not just for them, it's for everybody. So

1148
01:05:05,800 --> 01:05:07,960
Speaker 3: that's a message I would love to get across to

1149
01:05:08,160 --> 01:05:15,280
Speaker 3: the entire voting public. These lands are essential for the future. Second,

1150
01:05:15,320 --> 01:05:17,880
Speaker 3: I guess I keep coming back to, you know, managing

1151
01:05:17,920 --> 01:05:21,120
Speaker 3: the plants that are there to to you know, if

1152
01:05:21,120 --> 01:05:24,960
Speaker 3: you've if you have a million acres in Alabama, but

1153
01:05:25,000 --> 01:05:28,600
Speaker 3: it's all privet, you know, you've got to fix that.

1154
01:05:28,840 --> 01:05:31,520
Speaker 3: So and you got millions more acres that are kadzu

1155
01:05:32,040 --> 01:05:36,000
Speaker 3: uh and millions more acres that are are hodgepodge of

1156
01:05:36,040 --> 01:05:40,360
Speaker 3: everything else. So huge management issue. We want to break

1157
01:05:40,400 --> 01:05:45,200
Speaker 3: it down into into manageable sections. But you know, if

1158
01:05:45,200 --> 01:05:47,160
Speaker 3: you do have a hunting lodge and it's one hundred

1159
01:05:47,160 --> 01:05:50,440
Speaker 3: acres there that is manageable, you get you get fifty

1160
01:05:50,520 --> 01:05:53,439
Speaker 3: hundreds there, and you spend a weekend in the fall,

1161
01:05:53,560 --> 01:05:56,400
Speaker 3: you could do a lot. It really could, uh, and

1162
01:05:56,520 --> 01:05:59,400
Speaker 3: you make it an annual event. I would think about

1163
01:06:00,280 --> 01:06:02,560
Speaker 3: like that. I just don't I don't want to make

1164
01:06:02,600 --> 01:06:07,080
Speaker 3: it all the hunter's responsibility to managing the resources that

1165
01:06:07,160 --> 01:06:12,919
Speaker 3: everybody needs. Everybody in Philadelphia and Saint Louis and San Francisco,

1166
01:06:12,960 --> 01:06:15,320
Speaker 3: they all need those ecosystem services.

1167
01:06:18,920 --> 01:06:23,040
Speaker 2: When we think of it at that kind of scale, though,

1168
01:06:24,240 --> 01:06:28,760
Speaker 2: and you look at the many different pressures on wildlife

1169
01:06:28,760 --> 01:06:32,760
Speaker 2: of all types, and then also recognize how divorced so

1170
01:06:32,880 --> 01:06:37,680
Speaker 2: much of the public is from those species. And when

1171
01:06:37,680 --> 01:06:39,240
Speaker 2: you look at the state of the world today, Doug,

1172
01:06:42,360 --> 01:06:47,560
Speaker 2: how do you handle the reality of that challenge? Like

1173
01:06:47,600 --> 01:06:49,600
Speaker 2: I like, you know, there's that I bring us up

1174
01:06:49,600 --> 01:06:52,000
Speaker 2: all the time. But there's this wonderful line from Leopold.

1175
01:06:52,040 --> 01:06:55,320
Speaker 2: He talks about the curse of an ecological education, being

1176
01:06:55,800 --> 01:06:58,240
Speaker 2: kind of realizing that you live in a world of wounds.

1177
01:06:58,400 --> 01:07:00,200
Speaker 2: And I feel this like every day the more I

1178
01:07:00,280 --> 01:07:03,240
Speaker 2: learn both, You've got two things. Both you learn how

1179
01:07:03,280 --> 01:07:06,600
Speaker 2: wonderful the wild world is that we still have, while

1180
01:07:06,600 --> 01:07:11,040
Speaker 2: also understanding how damaged it is and how dire the

1181
01:07:11,080 --> 01:07:14,040
Speaker 2: state of affairs can be. Sometimes. How do you live

1182
01:07:14,120 --> 01:07:18,760
Speaker 2: with that yourself? And how do you make decisions about

1183
01:07:18,760 --> 01:07:20,480
Speaker 2: what you do and how we can somehow try to

1184
01:07:20,560 --> 01:07:22,560
Speaker 2: change things for the better given them.

1185
01:07:23,400 --> 01:07:25,960
Speaker 3: You know, the great gift that Leopold gave us was

1186
01:07:26,000 --> 01:07:28,160
Speaker 3: to point out that we have wounds, that all is

1187
01:07:28,200 --> 01:07:30,880
Speaker 3: not well, because back in the thirties and forties when

1188
01:07:30,920 --> 01:07:35,640
Speaker 3: he was writing, we were oblivious, I mean everything we

1189
01:07:35,680 --> 01:07:40,800
Speaker 3: did was counterproductive ecologically. We cannot fix it until we

1190
01:07:40,840 --> 01:07:44,320
Speaker 3: recognize that the wounds are there. What do I do?

1191
01:07:46,080 --> 01:07:48,720
Speaker 3: I talk to you, I write books, I give talks

1192
01:07:48,720 --> 01:07:53,000
Speaker 3: all the time. It comes down to educating that individual

1193
01:07:53,320 --> 01:07:56,600
Speaker 3: who's living on this planet, to get them to recognize

1194
01:07:56,640 --> 01:08:00,400
Speaker 3: that everybody has a responsibility to good or stewardship. Cause

1195
01:08:00,560 --> 01:08:03,960
Speaker 3: everybody needs it. Everybody. The little old lady on the

1196
01:08:03,960 --> 01:08:07,480
Speaker 3: eleventh floor in an apartment in Manhattan needs it as

1197
01:08:07,560 --> 01:08:11,800
Speaker 3: much as everybody else. I got asked the other day,

1198
01:08:13,360 --> 01:08:17,360
Speaker 3: very unpopular question, but I answered it anyway. I said,

1199
01:08:17,400 --> 01:08:20,439
Speaker 3: what is one thing everybody can do? So everybody can vote?

1200
01:08:20,760 --> 01:08:23,679
Speaker 3: Because how we vote makes a tremendous amount of difference.

1201
01:08:23,680 --> 01:08:26,960
Speaker 3: And what happens to our public lands. I mean, you know,

1202
01:08:27,040 --> 01:08:28,720
Speaker 3: now there's the proposal we're going to sell off our

1203
01:08:28,720 --> 01:08:32,639
Speaker 3: public lands and expand housing on it. Well, that affects everything.

1204
01:08:32,720 --> 01:08:36,880
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, So these are really important issues.

1205
01:08:36,920 --> 01:08:38,839
Speaker 3: And that's where that little old lady in the eleventh

1206
01:08:38,880 --> 01:08:42,760
Speaker 3: floor comes in. She still has a vote. So you're right,

1207
01:08:42,800 --> 01:08:45,400
Speaker 3: we are totally divorced from the natural world that supports

1208
01:08:45,479 --> 01:08:49,400
Speaker 3: us very dangerous place to be because it still supports

1209
01:08:49,400 --> 01:08:51,880
Speaker 3: it's just because we don't recognize it isn't going to

1210
01:08:52,000 --> 01:08:54,920
Speaker 3: change that. So what do I do is I just

1211
01:08:55,000 --> 01:08:57,800
Speaker 3: try to turn that around to educate people. And the

1212
01:08:58,200 --> 01:09:01,120
Speaker 3: interesting thing is I have been talking about this, particularly

1213
01:09:01,200 --> 01:09:04,759
Speaker 3: the native plant connection and people's personal role, for twenty

1214
01:09:04,840 --> 01:09:07,720
Speaker 3: years now, and I do see it catching on. I

1215
01:09:07,720 --> 01:09:10,479
Speaker 3: do see you know the need of moving. Look, you

1216
01:09:10,520 --> 01:09:13,439
Speaker 3: asked me to talk here. That wouldn't happen twenty years ago.

1217
01:09:13,479 --> 01:09:17,680
Speaker 3: We wouldn't have even recognized this as a problem. So

1218
01:09:17,720 --> 01:09:21,200
Speaker 3: that you know, that's that's good. That keeps me going.

1219
01:09:21,479 --> 01:09:25,400
Speaker 3: And it is much more. The UN is meeting about

1220
01:09:25,400 --> 01:09:28,519
Speaker 3: the biodiversity crisis pretty much on an annual basis. Now

1221
01:09:29,680 --> 01:09:32,200
Speaker 3: they talk about it, they make resolutions, we ignore them,

1222
01:09:32,280 --> 01:09:36,760
Speaker 3: but at least it's part of the public, the global discussion. Now,

1223
01:09:39,160 --> 01:09:42,280
Speaker 3: you know, our parks and our preserves were established because

1224
01:09:42,320 --> 01:09:46,120
Speaker 3: they were beautiful places, and as Teddy Roosevelt said, you know,

1225
01:09:46,200 --> 01:09:50,400
Speaker 3: they were wonderful places for us to recreate and it

1226
01:09:50,439 --> 01:09:53,960
Speaker 3: created good citizenship and all that. They were not created

1227
01:09:53,960 --> 01:09:58,960
Speaker 3: with the idea of conservation and mind. So the goal

1228
01:09:59,200 --> 01:10:02,920
Speaker 3: was to preserve the places because because so the future

1229
01:10:02,960 --> 01:10:06,679
Speaker 3: generations could enjoy them. They're not there for our enjoyment.

1230
01:10:06,760 --> 01:10:09,840
Speaker 3: We can enjoy them, they're they're tremendously entertaining, but we

1231
01:10:09,920 --> 01:10:12,160
Speaker 3: need to preserve them so that we have future generations,

1232
01:10:12,200 --> 01:10:15,120
Speaker 3: which is a much more important goal, I think, And

1233
01:10:15,160 --> 01:10:19,559
Speaker 3: if we can get that into the public's mindset, then

1234
01:10:19,680 --> 01:10:22,080
Speaker 3: then we'll be in good shape. And that's that's what

1235
01:10:22,120 --> 01:10:22,960
Speaker 3: we're trying to do here.

1236
01:10:23,800 --> 01:10:27,040
Speaker 2: Well, I certainly appreciate all of your efforts to do that.

1237
01:10:27,080 --> 01:10:30,600
Speaker 2: You've you've been leading the charge with your speaking and

1238
01:10:30,640 --> 01:10:33,280
Speaker 2: your written works, of course. So I want folks who

1239
01:10:33,320 --> 01:10:36,080
Speaker 2: are listening to this and are intrigued to to go

1240
01:10:36,120 --> 01:10:39,120
Speaker 2: to your books to learn more, because they're they're great resources.

1241
01:10:39,600 --> 01:10:43,240
Speaker 2: Your newest is, uh, how can I help, which I

1242
01:10:43,320 --> 01:10:46,240
Speaker 2: have found is full of the questions that my wife

1243
01:10:46,280 --> 01:10:48,439
Speaker 2: and I have been asking and many great answers. So

1244
01:10:48,479 --> 01:10:52,280
Speaker 2: I appreciate that personally, And like I mentioned earlier, I

1245
01:10:52,360 --> 01:10:55,240
Speaker 2: really loved Nature's Best Hope that was that was pretty

1246
01:10:55,280 --> 01:10:57,880
Speaker 2: formative for me in many ways. So can you quickly

1247
01:10:57,920 --> 01:11:01,360
Speaker 2: plug the new book anything about that you want people

1248
01:11:01,400 --> 01:11:04,240
Speaker 2: to know about, or any other projects in ways people

1249
01:11:04,280 --> 01:11:07,080
Speaker 2: can connect with you or your your work.

1250
01:11:08,360 --> 01:11:10,679
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I wrote the new book because people send

1251
01:11:10,680 --> 01:11:13,240
Speaker 3: me questions on email every day. They still do that,

1252
01:11:14,080 --> 01:11:16,840
Speaker 3: and they're good questions. These are people that have heard

1253
01:11:16,840 --> 01:11:18,680
Speaker 3: my talks and they have read my other books, and

1254
01:11:18,720 --> 01:11:20,760
Speaker 3: they still have really good questions about things that I

1255
01:11:20,800 --> 01:11:25,559
Speaker 3: haven't talked about. So I answered them for several years

1256
01:11:25,600 --> 01:11:27,080
Speaker 3: and said, you know, I had to save these answers

1257
01:11:27,120 --> 01:11:29,040
Speaker 3: and put them in a book. And that's that's what.

1258
01:11:29,080 --> 01:11:30,760
Speaker 3: How can I help? Is this four hundred and ninety

1259
01:11:30,840 --> 01:11:33,519
Speaker 3: nine questions? People say, why didn't you do five hundred?

1260
01:11:35,080 --> 01:11:37,000
Speaker 3: Because we did the whole thing and they edited it

1261
01:11:37,080 --> 01:11:39,360
Speaker 3: and they took some out and then we finded it up.

1262
01:11:39,400 --> 01:11:44,720
Speaker 3: You know, it wasn't a conscious goal. But that's what

1263
01:11:44,760 --> 01:11:50,720
Speaker 3: that book's all about. It's people. A lot of people

1264
01:11:50,800 --> 01:11:53,080
Speaker 3: have accepted the responsibility that I talk about, but they

1265
01:11:53,120 --> 01:11:55,519
Speaker 3: need more information to act on it, and that's what

1266
01:11:55,520 --> 01:11:56,599
Speaker 3: we're trying to address there.

1267
01:11:57,400 --> 01:12:01,000
Speaker 2: That's great. And where do you want folks to buy that?

1268
01:12:01,040 --> 01:12:04,040
Speaker 2: Do you have a preferred bookstore? Do you have a

1269
01:12:04,080 --> 01:12:06,040
Speaker 2: website you want people to go to anything like that?

1270
01:12:07,240 --> 01:12:09,519
Speaker 3: Well, just for general information, you want to go to

1271
01:12:09,560 --> 01:12:15,720
Speaker 3: our Homegrown National Park dot org website. Everything's there, But

1272
01:12:16,439 --> 01:12:20,280
Speaker 3: you know, books are sold all over the place. Timber Press.

1273
01:12:20,320 --> 01:12:23,959
Speaker 3: That's the publisher. They don't have one one outlet. Amazon

1274
01:12:24,040 --> 01:12:27,400
Speaker 3: carries that many of the private bookstores but not all

1275
01:12:27,720 --> 01:12:29,960
Speaker 3: will carry it. But if you know a lot of

1276
01:12:29,960 --> 01:12:31,760
Speaker 3: people don't want to support Amazon, they want to help

1277
01:12:31,760 --> 01:12:34,360
Speaker 3: their local books, then ask them to get it and

1278
01:12:36,320 --> 01:12:38,559
Speaker 3: that will help in that regard. But no, we're not

1279
01:12:38,600 --> 01:12:39,559
Speaker 3: selling them otherwise.

1280
01:12:40,280 --> 01:12:43,960
Speaker 2: Terfect, all right, Doug. Well, as I mentioned, thank you

1281
01:12:44,000 --> 01:12:46,639
Speaker 2: for your work and thank you so much for taking

1282
01:12:46,640 --> 01:12:48,439
Speaker 2: the time to chat about this with me here today.

1283
01:12:48,760 --> 01:12:51,800
Speaker 3: Well, I appreciate the opportunity, I really do. Good luck

1284
01:12:51,800 --> 01:12:52,240
Speaker 3: to you, Mark.

1285
01:12:52,680 --> 01:12:57,760
Speaker 2: Thank you all right, and that's going to wrap it

1286
01:12:57,840 --> 01:13:00,320
Speaker 2: up for us today. Thank you for joining me. I

1287
01:13:00,360 --> 01:13:03,559
Speaker 2: appreciate you being here for this conversation, and until next time,

1288
01:13:03,840 --> 01:13:06,160
Speaker 2: stay wired to Hunt.