Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Kirk.
Speaker 1: There's Chuck Bryant. Whoa, And this is stuff you should have.
Speaker 1: You've been working on your Chewbacca friend. No, no, it
Speaker 1: did sound like Chewbacca, especially that last bit. Now, I
Speaker 1: haven't been working on at all. It's all natural talent.
Speaker 1: Never had a lesson, as Ferris Bueler said, do you
Speaker 1: remember Ferris Bueler. They came out fifty sixty years ago,
Speaker 1: back when we were cool. I was supposed to do
Speaker 1: that on the movie Crush, and then my guests couldn't
Speaker 1: make it, and so I have like this great document
Speaker 1: of notes prepared all about Ferris Spueler's sitting there going
Speaker 1: to waste. Oh you should just read them, read through them.
Speaker 1: On one of the notes, Yeah, Ferris Bueler sociopath or
Speaker 1: cool teenager? Would you come up with? Well? Udgment always
Speaker 1: has this sort of rant that, uh, Ferris's associopath. Upon
Speaker 1: looking back, M yeah, there's like, come on, man, there
Speaker 1: used to be like a whole blog for a little
Speaker 1: while about about that. They would like analyze film, like
Speaker 1: famous films like Top Gun. They basically pointed out how
Speaker 1: Maverick was like this terrible person who got his friend
Speaker 1: killed and felt like no, no responsibility for it and everything. People. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty eye opening. It's paradigm shifting, I guess you
Speaker 1: could say, and I think that's appropriate that we're talking
Speaker 1: about paradigm shifting blogs because there's a lot of paradigm
Speaker 1: shift involved it today's topic, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: blogs too, it turns out about rewilding. Yeah, it's all
Speaker 1: over the place. Uh, it is, And we need to
Speaker 1: thank our old pal Julia Layton makes an appearance here
Speaker 1: for the first time in a while. Yeah, welcome back
Speaker 1: Lates helping us with this one. And um, I thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting because think you and I both I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and speak for you. I think we
Speaker 1: both agree that rewilding the concept of rewilding is pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: Pretty awesome, yes, But as evidence from even some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that Julia sent us, like there are some
Speaker 1: negative examples of like rewilding that didn't go well, but
Speaker 1: I would argue, like, that's not even rewilding, and calling
Speaker 1: it that is just hurts the cause. And then you
Speaker 1: sent me a thing that where a guy said, Hey,
Speaker 1: calling things that that aren't rewolding hurts the cause. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was like, I need to back chuck up today.
Speaker 1: I know he's thinking about something. I'm gonna send him
Speaker 1: something that backs it up. And I did. But rewilding,
Speaker 1: I guess we should just define so people are not
Speaker 1: angry at us for rolling that out twenty minutes in.
Speaker 1: But it is a term. When was it coined here?
Speaker 1: I've seen all over the place. Somebody claims eighty five.
Speaker 1: Another dude claims that he coined in nine two, but
Speaker 1: I think the first time it appeared in the scientific
Speaker 1: literature was some old hippie said that she coined it
Speaker 1: in sixty seven. Mm hmm, yeah, the same hippie that
Speaker 1: claimed to have coined will turn it up. Man. Uh.
Speaker 1: But here's the deal, and you know, we can get
Speaker 1: into the particulars, which we will, but generally, rewild ng
Speaker 1: is and its simplest form kind of returning nature back,
Speaker 1: turning it back over to nature to take care of itself, because,
Speaker 1: as Julia points out very aptly, like nature didn't need
Speaker 1: humans to come in and like all the things that
Speaker 1: you see human humans do for nature, it's because we
Speaker 1: had messed something up with nature. It's not because nature
Speaker 1: was like, oh, we need you to step in. Like
Speaker 1: if humans had never been around, nature would be just fine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the point of rewilding is to designate huge swaths
Speaker 1: of earth all over the earth, huge tracts of land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to to basically remove ourselves from and just let nature
Speaker 1: do its thing, because we just we through everything up,
Speaker 1: even when we try not to, we screw everything up.
Speaker 1: We can overmanage, we can undermanage, we can mismanage. There
Speaker 1: are very few things that we properly manage. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of like what's given the idea, the concept of
Speaker 1: rewilding like such a like such great cachet, like in
Speaker 1: the ecological community, both the scientific part of it and
Speaker 1: also like this the popular part of it. It's it's
Speaker 1: saying like, well, then let's just get humans out of
Speaker 1: the out of the management business and let nature do
Speaker 1: its thing. I think it's wonderful idea, it is. And
Speaker 1: you know, it can uh, it can encompass you know,
Speaker 1: like plant growth and just kind of simple things like that,
Speaker 1: like where that things were once mowed down and mulched
Speaker 1: and like you know, quote unquote cared for by humans,
Speaker 1: letting that kind of run wild again all the way
Speaker 1: to the most extreme examples, which is something we touched
Speaker 1: on in the National Park episode that Julia brought up
Speaker 1: here was like reintroducing a carnivore to the scene that
Speaker 1: had long been gone, like the wolves of Yellowstone and
Speaker 1: letting them do their thing. And that's actually kind of
Speaker 1: a big part of one part of rewilding. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you bring up something that you kind of reference what
Speaker 1: I sent you earlier about UM misusing the term like
Speaker 1: it does encompass all of those things. But the only
Speaker 1: reason rewilding encompasses all of those things because the scientific
Speaker 1: community is still trying to figure out exactly what rewilding is.
Speaker 1: They're trying to figure out the definition, they're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what is not rewild ing UM. They're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out like what the best practices and best
Speaker 1: steps forward are for rewilding UM. And because they're still
Speaker 1: figuring it out, and because it's such a buzzword, anybody
Speaker 1: who's doing anything that has to do with restoration, whether
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, reintroducing some voles into a place
Speaker 1: where there's already voles um or you know, yeah, like
Speaker 1: you were saying, like adding like some kind of g
Speaker 1: asid raising the mower height in a park to let
Speaker 1: more more of like the groundcover flower. Like Currently that's
Speaker 1: technically rewilding, but really that's that's If you give it
Speaker 1: five more years, probably those things will not be considered rewilding,
Speaker 1: will have a much more coherent definition of it, and
Speaker 1: hopefully a lot more data to back up the claims
Speaker 1: that rewilding makes. Because the big problem with it is
Speaker 1: it's a really great idea that we just need to
Speaker 1: know more about. Uh we're jumping in feet first, and
Speaker 1: that that can be It could be dangerous, as we'll see,
Speaker 1: but I think more often than not it could just
Speaker 1: be a failure and it could lose popular support. It'll
Speaker 1: it'll make people think it just doesn't work if we
Speaker 1: do it the wrong way a bunch of times to
Speaker 1: start right, and there are some really bad examples for
Speaker 1: free wilding. Well again, I don't even like calling it
Speaker 1: rewilding because like one example that well you might as
Speaker 1: well talk a little bit about a bad example is
Speaker 1: uh South Georgia, not Georgia that we live in, but
Speaker 1: Georgia and Europe. There's the reindeer in South Georgia where
Speaker 1: there were whalers on this uh. I think it was
Speaker 1: on an island, and they're like, well, you know, we
Speaker 1: love to eat reindeer, and so we're just gonna put
Speaker 1: a bunch of reindeer on this kind of smallish island
Speaker 1: so we can hunt them as whalers and have something
Speaker 1: to eat. And it went terribly and you know, years later,
Speaker 1: I think they had to just go in and like
Speaker 1: slaughter five thousand reindeer. That's not rewilding, that's just that's
Speaker 1: a dumb idea, which is like bringing in an invasive
Speaker 1: species and plunking it down there. That's not rewolding at all.
Speaker 1: But it gets thrown in there as like there's a
Speaker 1: bad example of rewilding. It's like it's not rewilding, right,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't ever intended to be rewilding. It took
Speaker 1: place at the turn of the century, and I think
Speaker 1: South Georgia island is down by the Falklands if I
Speaker 1: remember correctly, like below South America. So they brought it
Speaker 1: in as like a like a food source because like
Speaker 1: these these Swedes or Norwegians were like, there's nothing down
Speaker 1: here that we've ever eaten before we need some reindeer
Speaker 1: in this place. And they managed it just fine, Like
Speaker 1: they hunted the reindeer and the reindeer apparently we're well
Speaker 1: checked or well managed. But then when they stopped hunting
Speaker 1: the reindeer and let nature take over, basically what we
Speaker 1: would do with rewilding, the reindeer ran wild, and uh,
Speaker 1: things just went out of hand really really quickly. So
Speaker 1: it was not an example of rewilding by anyone's definition,
Speaker 1: but it still serves as a cautionary tale about what
Speaker 1: can happen when you do something like just back out
Speaker 1: of the picture. That we do need to know more
Speaker 1: about what our role is to set up an ecosystem
Speaker 1: before we take our hands off of it, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, And also Julia points out, um
Speaker 1: again very aptly, that like when something like this hits
Speaker 1: the news, then you're going to have animal activists and
Speaker 1: environmentalists when they hear the word rewilding projects say we
Speaker 1: can't do that. That led to the death the slaughter
Speaker 1: of five thousand reindeer. Uh So it just gives it
Speaker 1: all a bad name. So hopefully we'll try and give
Speaker 1: it a better name. Yeah, because again I think it's
Speaker 1: a really great idea. We just need to know more
Speaker 1: about it. We need more science, everybody, So we talk
Speaker 1: about bio diversity. Yeah, I think we should, because, um,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much the basis of this whole thing, the
Speaker 1: whole idea behind rewilding, the whole reason it has so
Speaker 1: much supporters because it's become painfully clear that the damage
Speaker 1: that we've done to the Earth is altering ecosystems, and
Speaker 1: pretty much unfavorable ways. I don't think there's any way
Speaker 1: that we've damaged an ecosystem where we're like, oh, that
Speaker 1: actually worked out for the better, maybe for humans and conveniences,
Speaker 1: but yeah, but even still, now we've reached Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: that was true like thirty forty years ago. Now we've
Speaker 1: reached the time where it's it's time to pay the piper.
Speaker 1: And now even for us, we're suffering the consequences of
Speaker 1: damaging and altering ecosystems so dramatically that they can no
Speaker 1: longer function. And the point behind rewilding is to re
Speaker 1: established biodiversity in large parts so that humans and other
Speaker 1: animals can survive on planet Earth in the next hundred years. Right,
Speaker 1: And then you know, when you look into the more
Speaker 1: I guess level headed descriptors of what rewilding can be
Speaker 1: and sort of the tenants of them, which we can
Speaker 1: get too later and full it's not hey, let's let's
Speaker 1: dump a bunch of mountain lions into Central Park. It's
Speaker 1: it's got to it has to work with humans as well.
Speaker 1: But as we'll see, there's there's a lot of places
Speaker 1: is where there are not humans and this is mainly
Speaker 1: what they're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, and then then in
Speaker 1: those places where there are some humans or whatever, it's
Speaker 1: like we'll just we'll get them out all the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it has to work together. Like unfortunately, you know,
Speaker 1: like it or not, humans are part of the ecosystem
Speaker 1: now and it has to work for everyone. But right
Speaker 1: now humans are just making it work for them in
Speaker 1: many cases. Yeah. And then so even beyond also you
Speaker 1: raise a good point, even beyond also the the fact
Speaker 1: that it's got to work for us, that we can't
Speaker 1: just coexist with mountain lions in Central Park. Um. It
Speaker 1: it has to to work for us in the sense
Speaker 1: that like a lot of the places that are being
Speaker 1: like pointed to is like prime areas to be rewilded
Speaker 1: if you like, if you look over to the right
Speaker 1: a little bit. There's some like sheepherder. They're saying, Um,
Speaker 1: this is my land that I use my sheep to
Speaker 1: graze on, and sheep herds grazing is pretty much the
Speaker 1: antithesis of rewilding, So what are we going to do
Speaker 1: with that guy? So there's also one of the one
Speaker 1: of the things that they're figuring out with rewilding is
Speaker 1: how to evolve from a at least like um and
Speaker 1: equally involved the community or the people who are going
Speaker 1: to be most affected by this, if not from a
Speaker 1: bottom up. Everyone's saying do not do top down, don't
Speaker 1: don't figure this out in the city and then come
Speaker 1: and tell the sheep farmers what to do. Like, that's
Speaker 1: not going to work. I think I saw somebody say,
Speaker 1: especially in Scotland, that is not going to work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, in a Scotland, I know
Speaker 1: that's true. Yeah. Oh boy, I had like this long
Speaker 1: string of Scottish obscenities. I was about ready to belt
Speaker 1: out and my worst accent earned brew. Um. So, as
Speaker 1: far as biodiversity goes, Julia put it away that I
Speaker 1: think it really kind of hits it on the nose
Speaker 1: it is. It's not just the quantity and variety of
Speaker 1: species and individuals. It's really the interactions within the ecosystem
Speaker 1: and how they all work together. That's what bio diversity is.
Speaker 1: And ecosystems and bio diversity, they're meant to fluctuate like
Speaker 1: things happen in nature naturally, and species may dwindle here
Speaker 1: and there when resources are a little more scarce, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they're not thriving like they should, but they're still
Speaker 1: built for that. What they're not built for is human
Speaker 1: triggered biodiversity loss. And this is what we've seen humans
Speaker 1: do over and over in time and time again, and
Speaker 1: that just makes ecosystems kind of crumble under pressure to
Speaker 1: deliver and then do their thing. Yeah, and there's just
Speaker 1: it's unequivocal that, um that we have are facing terrible
Speaker 1: a loss of biodiversity all over Earth. The Living Plant
Speaker 1: Index said that between nineteen seventy and two thousand and twelve,
Speaker 1: fifty eight percent of the world's fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds,
Speaker 1: and mammals all disappeared, like just gone goodbye, all of
Speaker 1: those species. Yeah, so um like that when that happens,
Speaker 1: like you're saying these these The way that that that
Speaker 1: UM ecosystems have like evolved over time is that like
Speaker 1: they function as a as a net, as a web,
Speaker 1: as like a bunch of interconnected parts that create something
Speaker 1: greater as a whole, and then that whole works together
Speaker 1: with other similar holes to create something greater, and it
Speaker 1: keeps going on to this macro scale until you reach
Speaker 1: like planet level. So you're going from like you know,
Speaker 1: dormouse to planet level, all following basically the same path.
Speaker 1: And when you lose biodiversity, you're bound to lose species
Speaker 1: that are performing really important, really valuable functions that affect
Speaker 1: UM and support a bunch of other different kinds of species.
Speaker 1: So you lose those other species, but then you also
Speaker 1: lose what are called the services that that ecosystem provides,
Speaker 1: everything from preventing floods and erosion to preventing forest fires wildfires,
Speaker 1: um um speeding up the carbon sequestions sequestration, um speeding
Speaker 1: up oxygen production, like all these things that that the
Speaker 1: planet needs to live. We evolved on planet Earth, so
Speaker 1: we need those two and we've also, whether we realize
Speaker 1: it or not, built our economy taking those things for granted.
Speaker 1: UM and so fortunately the UM Office of Economic Development
Speaker 1: UM put together a paper that cited a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five to hundred and forty trillion dollars worth of
Speaker 1: these services are produced by Nature per year. They put
Speaker 1: a number on it, which, on its face it sounds
Speaker 1: like a lot of money, right. It is the global
Speaker 1: gross domestic product all of the money produced by all
Speaker 1: the goods and services produced on planet Earth in only
Speaker 1: equal eight five trillion. So on the high end, Nature
Speaker 1: produces services that are worth nearly twice of global GDP
Speaker 1: in a whole year. And so now you're starting to
Speaker 1: bring in the conservatives. They're like, okay, I hadn't consider that.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that too. So there's there's basically no
Speaker 1: one who wouldn't benefit from a healthier, more bio diverse planet.
Speaker 1: And I feel like we've reached the point for a break.
Speaker 1: What do you think right after I say one quick
Speaker 1: soapboxy thing, it's sort of echoes back to what I
Speaker 1: pointed out in the Yellowstone episode. Is this this wonderful
Speaker 1: macro long view of the world that you embrace and
Speaker 1: I embrace. That's uh, that's the problem because in the
Speaker 1: short term, people like sure but what about this one
Speaker 1: thing I can do? Now? What about all this crypto
Speaker 1: I can mind today? Uh? Nuts getting into all that.
Speaker 1: Good lord, but um, people need to take a longer
Speaker 1: view of things, and I think humans are just unfortunately
Speaker 1: want to look at the the five bucks right in
Speaker 1: front of their face that they can make, you know, chuck.
Speaker 1: It feels a lot like we're waking up, you and me, Yes,
Speaker 1: But I think I think that's a big point. I
Speaker 1: think you and I are very mainstream people, and I
Speaker 1: think we're waking up even more than we had before.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's usually reflective of people in general.
Speaker 1: I think that people are starting to wake up more
Speaker 1: as a group, as a collective, and you just see
Speaker 1: so much less like greenwashing and PRBs, like people don't
Speaker 1: buy it any more. People. I think people are starting
Speaker 1: to understand on the whole it's how important this is.
Speaker 1: I think younger generations continually do that through through time,
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's happening. So that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: And I agree, g Z, we should we should take
Speaker 1: that break. Go gen Z and whatever follows you. I
Speaker 1: don't even know what my daughter is. I don't either.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if they've named that generation yet, because
Speaker 1: right now it's Generation very selfish, but that's very young
Speaker 1: six years old. Yeah, generation temper tantrum. She's not much
Speaker 1: of a tantrumber. But anyway, uh, let's take that break
Speaker 1: and we'll be right back. Okay, Hey, before we get going,
Speaker 1: can I say one quick thing, and this is I
Speaker 1: am always very sad when I see that, like Jogger
Speaker 1: in California, Southern California has attacked in Mall by mountain lion,
Speaker 1: Like that is a tragedy for that family. Um, but
Speaker 1: my favorite thing is when those stories end with and
Speaker 1: that's what happened, and that's too bad, and that's a
Speaker 1: mountain lion doing what a mountain lion does and not
Speaker 1: and they hunted it down and killed it. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, speaking of releasing mountainins into Central Park,
Speaker 1: which I doubt if they were over there anyway, Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's one of the big tenants of
Speaker 1: rewild ng is is like there there's a push that
Speaker 1: of converting. So I was talking about those sheep sheep
Speaker 1: herders in Scotland and what are they gonna do? Well,
Speaker 1: some people say, well, you can actually there's stuff called
Speaker 1: nature based economies, and you can change what you do
Speaker 1: to make money. UM, if you are getting into rewilding
Speaker 1: your land, you could start basically holding safari's and that's UM.
Speaker 1: That's that. That illustrates two things. One, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of money to be made. I've seen, UM, I've seen
Speaker 1: that some farmers have reported making as much, if not
Speaker 1: more than they did farming that they do now that
Speaker 1: they're doing like eco tourism on their old on their
Speaker 1: land that's been rewild And it's interesting sure. But but
Speaker 1: then also it also shows you the role of humans
Speaker 1: in this like we're meant to be like guided on
Speaker 1: a tour in a very like um arranged visit to
Speaker 1: these areas. It's not like this area is wild, just
Speaker 1: do whatever you want in it. It's extremely well managed.
Speaker 1: But what you're managing in this case is the humans,
Speaker 1: not the wildlife, not the floora of the fall on it.
Speaker 1: You're keeping people out, no hunting, no farming, no grazing
Speaker 1: your livestock, no just like going camping there. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure about that part, but I get the impression that
Speaker 1: humans are meant to just be kept out of it
Speaker 1: rather than the animal populations are are managed, it's the
Speaker 1: humans that are Yeah. I think I don't know how
Speaker 1: wilders feel about it, but as a camper, I think
Speaker 1: if you do it right, then you shouldn't be harming
Speaker 1: the ecosystems that you're in. But someone might argue that like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: just setting a tent up like on the ground harms
Speaker 1: the ground. Yeah. I mean I guess if you zoom
Speaker 1: in far enough with a microscope you could probably back
Speaker 1: that up. Yeah. Like I crushed a worm with my
Speaker 1: big body, so then I slept in a hammock. And
Speaker 1: what are you going to give that worms family? Now? Uh?
Speaker 1: A small sum of money there, maybe some dirt. They
Speaker 1: would probably prefer dirt, especially if it was really good dirt,
Speaker 1: soil or soil from my body. Yep. Just take off
Speaker 1: your clothes and roll on the ground and say I'm
Speaker 1: sorry worm. And then they said, well, and he just
Speaker 1: killed two more of us. Uh. Let's humans have to
Speaker 1: remove themselves from the wilderness. Let's move on, please. Uh.
Speaker 1: We should talk about the three CS because this was
Speaker 1: sort of an early descriptor on rewilding, which is cores, corridors,
Speaker 1: and carnivores, and the idea is that. And this has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with like reintroducing wolves the Yellowstone carnivores.
Speaker 1: Having an apex predator in an area is awesome and
Speaker 1: super healthy for that area. Uh. They control and they
Speaker 1: regulate that food chain like a champ. And they need
Speaker 1: a lot of room though, and so uh it's called
Speaker 1: a core reserve like their area. If they're gonna thrive
Speaker 1: a lot, and when that core reserve shrinks, then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden they're isolated. That's gonna harm them. And
Speaker 1: then that's gonna have that trickle down effect that we
Speaker 1: talk a lot about. Uh. Here on planet Earth, now,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of cores that are too small.
Speaker 1: So the ideas, all right, why don't we connect these
Speaker 1: cores with corridors to allow them to keep moving? And
Speaker 1: this can look anything like I sit you that one
Speaker 1: thing I know that we've talked about these before. It's
Speaker 1: the coolest thing when they make like a a land
Speaker 1: bridge for animals to cross a highway without getting killed
Speaker 1: or go under like an overpass or an underpass like
Speaker 1: that could be a corridor at its most sort of
Speaker 1: fundamental or like literally sort of rejoining land that was
Speaker 1: not joined before because of human interaction. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: big there's a big push for that because yeah, there's
Speaker 1: plenty of cores around, but if they're disconnected, then there's
Speaker 1: not going to be enough um to support like a
Speaker 1: healthy ecosystem, and those like apex predators are going to
Speaker 1: get stressed and it's going to stress out the whole ecosystem.
Speaker 1: They don't have anywhere to go. But if you connect
Speaker 1: two small ones through a corridor, all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they can kind of go back and forth and you know,
Speaker 1: the one, this one small place regenerates in their absence,
Speaker 1: and then they go to the other one, and then
Speaker 1: they go back to the first one, and the second
Speaker 1: one regenerates while they're gone like that. That's a really
Speaker 1: great idea because it also kind of shows that spirit
Speaker 1: of like not giving ups, like, oh, the cores are
Speaker 1: so small, what are we gonna do? I guess nothing.
Speaker 1: It's like no, you connect the course and then you
Speaker 1: can also look at it an even bigger scale, like
Speaker 1: a good example of a core. The ideal version of
Speaker 1: a core, or close to it, is an American National park,
Speaker 1: Like you can't do anything in the national park, but
Speaker 1: basically go in camp and and visit and that's about it, right.
Speaker 1: Um the other national parks I was reading about ones
Speaker 1: in in England at least like you can hunt their
Speaker 1: managed for like grouse hunting and deer hunting, and like
Speaker 1: they're not like American national parks. So um, the American
Speaker 1: version is a really great example of kind of what
Speaker 1: we're talking about re wilding. And then imagine if you
Speaker 1: connected Yellowstone to Yosemite with a wildlife corridor, right, is
Speaker 1: that even possible? Well, yeah, they're on the same continent
Speaker 1: so effectively as possible. Yeah, you're gonna have to move
Speaker 1: some some powerful landowners like Ted Turner. He's probably not
Speaker 1: going to give up his land willingly, although I don't
Speaker 1: know maybe he will. Um, there there has to be
Speaker 1: like a shift in how people view the importance of
Speaker 1: wilderness and nature and that's kind of part and parcel
Speaker 1: with the concept every wilding too. Yeah, and a lot
Speaker 1: of this research that we looked at comes from the
Speaker 1: UK and we'll talk about that more later. But um,
Speaker 1: it comes down to like a very smack I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: a micro effort of going and convincing one landowner at
Speaker 1: a time almost to do stuff like this, and they're
Speaker 1: having some successes in the uplands of of the UK
Speaker 1: where that you know, kind of one at a time,
Speaker 1: some landowners are agreeing like all right, this is what
Speaker 1: I can I'll agree to do and for the good
Speaker 1: of everybody. Yeah, it's kind of cool, but it is
Speaker 1: a you know, it's a pretty slow process. Like you're
Speaker 1: not gonna see rewild ing on on the evening news
Speaker 1: every night. It's a pretty I don't know about small movement,
Speaker 1: but it's it's not mainstream, I don't think in the
Speaker 1: in the consciousness no, but in the ecological community it's
Speaker 1: like basically being touted as the future of ecology. So hot,
Speaker 1: so um. The three c's, especially with the carnivores featured,
Speaker 1: that's um, that's basically descriptive of one of the two
Speaker 1: general umbrella categories for rewilding, and that would be trophic rewilding,
Speaker 1: which will talk a little more about. But let's talk
Speaker 1: about passive, real wild and kind of the other end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum. Yeah, I mean this is kind of
Speaker 1: uh taking a good look at where, um, where you
Speaker 1: should do this, Like where to start, like what what's
Speaker 1: a good area to even try this and where you
Speaker 1: can kind of go unchecked and where it will benefit
Speaker 1: people as well as the ecosystems around there. But the
Speaker 1: two main goals of the passive rewilding are too and
Speaker 1: this is something humans do a lot. Like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of wildlife protection going on. So the first part
Speaker 1: of passive rewilding is kind of that is letting wildlife
Speaker 1: rebound and kind of get back, you know, get its
Speaker 1: its land legs back under itself. Uh. And that means
Speaker 1: like no hunting and stuff like that or hunting restrictions. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then letting that land grow back together like you
Speaker 1: talked about. So animals can you know, go where they
Speaker 1: once could go, like just increasing their territories and just
Speaker 1: saying here, nature, uh, do what you will with yourself.
Speaker 1: And that sounds super dirty. We won't look we're walking away.
Speaker 1: We had new idea nature would do that, right, oh god.
Speaker 1: So um with passive rewilding, there's there's they're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what the initial steps are because in a
Speaker 1: lot of these areas we've done a lot, it's just
Speaker 1: kind of visible the city slickers like you and me.
Speaker 1: Um to alter the ecosystem the landscape, so you know,
Speaker 1: we would have to go in and like remove dams
Speaker 1: that we've built there. Um, we would have to fill
Speaker 1: in canals, UM, just anything anyway that we've altered or
Speaker 1: put a human touch on the landscape. Um, we would
Speaker 1: need to basically undo before we left, or else they
Speaker 1: would still be an altered ecosystem that could be really problematic. UM.
Speaker 1: So if we just basically kind of restore it then
Speaker 1: and then we walk away, the idea is that it
Speaker 1: will take care of itself faster. But like you're saying,
Speaker 1: this is not a it's not a fast process. Like
Speaker 1: some of these projects that are being proposed to have
Speaker 1: timelines of a couple of hundred years before they reach
Speaker 1: where they're supposed to be. It's hard. It is, it is,
Speaker 1: But again I think it's getting easier and easier there.
Speaker 1: And part of the PASSI rewilding is what I was
Speaker 1: talking about in the uplands of England. Uh. That's where
Speaker 1: they're kind of going one farmer at a time and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know of England's drinking water comes from these uplands,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think when you start describing uh
Speaker 1: without maybe I think you can go too far and
Speaker 1: scare people in the other direction with the doom and gloom.
Speaker 1: But if you very just sort of calmly lay out
Speaker 1: some facts and figures, I think that can wait people
Speaker 1: at sometimes. Yes, and the UK super into this in
Speaker 1: no small part because of an ecologist Harry and Megan
Speaker 1: named George mombiatt. I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly. He
Speaker 1: wrote a book in two thirteen called Feral that basically
Speaker 1: called for rewilding and he really popularized it over there
Speaker 1: and since then it's really started to kind of take
Speaker 1: off and they have really lofty goals. Um, they have
Speaker 1: a goal of rewilding five of England's land. I believe it.
Speaker 1: It's just coming up quick and five percent. It's a lot.
Speaker 1: It's about out a million acres and they put in
Speaker 1: perspective there like there's a quarter of that is in
Speaker 1: like football fields in England. So really is that that much?
Speaker 1: Like if you're daunted by that idea, um, And but
Speaker 1: that's still in eight years, converting it to to to
Speaker 1: a rewilded state or starting to is pretty ambitious. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think, Um, you sent me that one thing that
Speaker 1: was really cool where they sort of analyze, and this
Speaker 1: is from a UK side, I think, where they analyze
Speaker 1: like someone who might poop poo. This say is do
Speaker 1: we even have the space to do this kind of thing, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, we can't turn our cities over again to
Speaker 1: the to the mountain lions and just let everything grow wild.
Speaker 1: And that's not what they're talking about, but that one website,
Speaker 1: I can't remember which one it was, but talking about
Speaker 1: if you could traverse the entire UK in one day, yeah, England, Scotland,
Speaker 1: Wales and Northern Ireland. That of the land that you
Speaker 1: would find you would not see men, people or buildings.
Speaker 1: You would only spend about an hour and forty five
Speaker 1: minutes of that twenty four hours traversing all of the UK,
Speaker 1: moving through urban spaces. And some of those urban spaces
Speaker 1: even have green spaces, obviously not rewilded, but green space nonetheless.
Speaker 1: And of the population of the UK lives on six
Speaker 1: percent of the land mass, so in other words, there
Speaker 1: is a lot of land out there to be rewilded.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean, you know, throwing wild animals in the
Speaker 1: middle of the city, right, It's the opposite throwing the
Speaker 1: humans out of the wilderness. Exactly. You go over there
Speaker 1: and build your city life where you don't breathe fresh
Speaker 1: air and you don't go outside and things like that. Well,
Speaker 1: some of the more radical proposals for rewild ng is
Speaker 1: like giving over you know, like nine tenths of the
Speaker 1: United States to wilderness and basically just pointing out, like
Speaker 1: how many more people you can pack into the urban
Speaker 1: centers of like the East Coast and the US coast
Speaker 1: and just like leave the middle alone as wilderness. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen that supported by many people. I think probably
Speaker 1: the guy who keeps promoting that, keeps getting told to
Speaker 1: be quiet by the other ecologists, is going to scare
Speaker 1: off the normals. You know, American suburbs are very big
Speaker 1: and important, right, but it does it does really point
Speaker 1: out to like, you know, there's there's people out there,
Speaker 1: and we have there we have to take their interests
Speaker 1: into consideration. And one of the things that I kept
Speaker 1: seeing pointed out in the UK is apparently after Brexit,
Speaker 1: the farm subsidies for farms that that could not support
Speaker 1: themselves through their own production, um like like it is
Speaker 1: in the US, and I'm sure Australia too, they were
Speaker 1: heavily subsidized by the government to make up that that
Speaker 1: that gap, and then after Brexit, apparently those things are
Speaker 1: beginning slash left and right, and so people have been saying, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: if we're not going to be giving them farm subsidies,
Speaker 1: what if we change the purpose of the subsidies from
Speaker 1: you know, farming, to you wilding land instead. If these
Speaker 1: farms aren't producing that well anyway, and we can still
Speaker 1: produce enough food, that's a very important point without these farms,
Speaker 1: and in fact, some of these farms would actually be
Speaker 1: way more valuable as untouched wilderness. Um, then maybe it
Speaker 1: would make sense to take that money and converted into
Speaker 1: that instead. And then you also have you've also taken
Speaker 1: care of the person problem because they're still being supported
Speaker 1: like they need to be. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: they also don't have to move. They just can't graze
Speaker 1: their sheep anymore. Just don't graze sheep anymore, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna make the same amount of money. And you can
Speaker 1: take tourists on wilderness safari's as a side gig. And
Speaker 1: I just pictured groundskeeper Willie staring us down from yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and then getting on this tractor that pulls us along
Speaker 1: and point out the red deer just hopping all over
Speaker 1: the place on his rewilded land. Or he could just
Speaker 1: give us the one of the great groundskeeper Willie lines
Speaker 1: of all time from one of the uh Halloween episodes
Speaker 1: when he was Freddy Krueger. Do you remember that one? Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, and I'm done with you. They're gonna need
Speaker 1: to come postmortem. So great, that's a good one, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite lines. Um. So, a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: we were just talking about falls under the pass of rewilding. Uh,
Speaker 1: we've hit on trophic rewilding. But within that, they're like,
Speaker 1: it kind of depends on how hardcore of an environmentalist
Speaker 1: you're talking to. There's something called plist to scene rewilding
Speaker 1: where they're like, hey, human disturbance started at the last
Speaker 1: ice age, and that should be our goal is to
Speaker 1: kind of like introduce if not uh wooly mammoth's like
Speaker 1: maybe a descendant of the wooly mammoth because they're not
Speaker 1: around anymore. And so you get some sort of other people.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know about how he did the
Speaker 1: arguments get but other people are like, pliest, the scene
Speaker 1: is really too uh we should really kind of move
Speaker 1: from that, like forward from there and think more along
Speaker 1: lines of the Wolves of Yellowstone than these huge megafauna. Right,
Speaker 1: So some people say, no, the mega faun are are important. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the people who are proponents of places scene rewilding
Speaker 1: um say that it's um. The reason that they've they've
Speaker 1: chosen that point is because they're they're suggesting that, like,
Speaker 1: if we go that far back, we could probably defend
Speaker 1: ourselves in the planet against climate change that much more
Speaker 1: quickly or more robustly, I guess is a better way
Speaker 1: to say. It's not like they're just doing it out
Speaker 1: of sentimentality, Like there's a there's an intellectual bent to it,
Speaker 1: like and that is that we basically need to go
Speaker 1: that far back to counteract the damage we've done in
Speaker 1: the last like two years senti mentality. You know. So
Speaker 1: there's a problem with palist to scene rewilding the chuck
Speaker 1: and that is a lot of those animals are extinct, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the William emmoth. Yeah. Okay, so what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do if you want to recreate the place to
Speaker 1: see on the American Midwest. Let's say every state in
Speaker 1: the Midwest agrees to move eastward or westward, and they're
Speaker 1: giving up all of their land over to rewilding, and
Speaker 1: we've all agreed it was placed to see rewilding. Lord,
Speaker 1: are we going to rewild it with if there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as a woolly mammoth? Maybe, but elephants have
Speaker 1: evolved in the last ten and twelve thousand years to
Speaker 1: um to to live around equatorial Africa, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: So are they going to do well in Kansas? And
Speaker 1: then the same thing for the saber tooth tiger or actually,
Speaker 1: I don't think they call him anymore. I think it's
Speaker 1: a sabre tooth cat. Maybe. Um all of their families
Speaker 1: totally extinct. There's no descendants of the saber tooth cats
Speaker 1: that are alive today. So what are we gonna do?
Speaker 1: Put mountain lions out there. We're gonna put actual tigers
Speaker 1: out there, are regular like African lions, and are we're
Speaker 1: gonna move them over to Kansas? And then the larger problem, Chuck,
Speaker 1: The larger problem is this, those animals, as big and
Speaker 1: scary and ferocious as they are, are kind of pew
Speaker 1: compared to the actual Pleistocene megafauna, like a sabretooth cat,
Speaker 1: And it's not clear that they would be up to
Speaker 1: the task of managing enormous ecosystems like that, just because
Speaker 1: of their smaller size. Yeah. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: problems with pleistocene wilding and bring back the megaladon for
Speaker 1: the oceans. Yeah. Uh no, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: problems with that. Uh. And you're sort of talking about
Speaker 1: you mentioned the top down control, uh, and that is
Speaker 1: that theory that these you know, if you bring in
Speaker 1: an apex predator, it can really uh, it can be
Speaker 1: a really good thing. That the cascade of interactions that
Speaker 1: it can trigger is can be vast. But you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's trophic rewilding. It worked out pretty well for
Speaker 1: the wolves and Yellowstone, uh, and the beavers that followed,
Speaker 1: and the birds and the fish that followed because of
Speaker 1: the beaver. So it's a it's it's always a sternling
Speaker 1: example that people bring up. Yeah, So just to button
Speaker 1: that up, you've got passive rewilding, which is basically like
Speaker 1: just trying to get rid of your damns and bridges
Speaker 1: and stuff and then leave. And then the trophic rewilding
Speaker 1: is where you're selectively putting back animals that used to
Speaker 1: play a role in that ecosystem or are related to
Speaker 1: ones that used to play a role, right and then um,
Speaker 1: with a focus on those apex predators because they have
Speaker 1: so much control over the ecosystems that they live in,
Speaker 1: and that that one is way more involved and needs
Speaker 1: way more thought before we start doing that. Yeah, should
Speaker 1: we take a break. Yeah, alright, we're gonna will gonna jeez,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take our final break, and um, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about some of the issues with rewilding and some of
Speaker 1: the examples and some of the tenants. How about that.
Speaker 1: That sounds great? So earlier on we talked about one
Speaker 1: bad example of what I don't even think is rewilding
Speaker 1: with those reindeer uh in South Georgia. Uh. There are
Speaker 1: other examples. There was one. UM. Because you know, people
Speaker 1: will point to stats people to say this isn't a
Speaker 1: good idea. We'll say that, hey, the failure rate for
Speaker 1: introductions and reintroduction introductions and nature is higher than se
Speaker 1: and we don't even really have a lot of data
Speaker 1: if this works out anyway, and sent pretty high. And
Speaker 1: look at the um look about what Look at what
Speaker 1: happened in Argentina in the nineteen forties when they brought
Speaker 1: these Canadian beavers in and they ran wild and destroyed
Speaker 1: the forest. People who know what they're talking about was say,
Speaker 1: that's an invasive species, and when the beaver and yellowstone
Speaker 1: eat the willow tree, the willow tree grows back. When
Speaker 1: they eat these beech trees here in Argentina, they don't
Speaker 1: grow back, So you just have a wasteland. It's not
Speaker 1: dropping invasive species down into another place where they were
Speaker 1: never supposed to be to begin with. Yeah, it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be a little more thought out than that. That, Like,
Speaker 1: like I was saying before the break, like these are
Speaker 1: carefully selected and carefully thought out, or they're meant to
Speaker 1: be um animals that are that fil specific niches in
Speaker 1: the ecosystem that you're trying to restore. That's right, not
Speaker 1: dropping beavers in South America, Canadian beavers no less. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing that really spoke to me was in that
Speaker 1: additional material that you sent over. I think it was
Speaker 1: the four Tenants Rewilding Britain. I think was the website. Uh,
Speaker 1: and therefore tenants um are pretty self explanatory, but one
Speaker 1: part of part two really spoke to me. The first
Speaker 1: one is support people in nature together. The second one
Speaker 1: is let nature lead. And the line that really got
Speaker 1: me was it is not geared to reach any human
Speaker 1: defined optimal point or in state, it goes where nature
Speaker 1: takes it, and then that ties in with number four.
Speaker 1: Number three is creazy create resilient local economies. It's a
Speaker 1: big part of it. But number four is, uh, work
Speaker 1: at nature scale. Like I think humans are so obsessed
Speaker 1: with scale in business and they're basically saying, you gotta
Speaker 1: do what nature. Let nature do it. Nature does at
Speaker 1: its own pace and at its own scale. That's nature scale,
Speaker 1: and just let it do it. Don't put don't put
Speaker 1: your hang ups on nature, man on what you want
Speaker 1: it to be. And that's kind of true though, Yeah, no, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think I think though that that kind of reveals,
Speaker 1: like that the lack of consensus in the field of rewilding,
Speaker 1: because what did you say that was rewilding Britain's four points? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were actually five. The fifth one was secure and
Speaker 1: it fits for the long term, okay, yeah, five, And
Speaker 1: then I saw the union of the conservation of nature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's it. I think, uh, they they have
Speaker 1: ten ten points, so you've got five, you got ten
Speaker 1: depending on who you ask, but they all generally agree
Speaker 1: that before we really start doing this stuff in earnest,
Speaker 1: like we need more data. Like most of the people
Speaker 1: who are like, yeah, we just you know, release some
Speaker 1: voles into the into the woods. There's some rewilding project
Speaker 1: right there. Like, these are the people who aren't necessarily
Speaker 1: even thinking it through. If you're a conservation ecologist, if
Speaker 1: you're a biologist, if you're a botanist, if you're a
Speaker 1: scientist who's like actually looking at rewilding, pretty much everyone
Speaker 1: agrees like we need way more data than we have
Speaker 1: right now. That it's a great idea. We just need
Speaker 1: way more data if the science just isn't even there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, one of the tenants that they both
Speaker 1: it seems like everyone is talking about is talk to
Speaker 1: the local people. They call them stakeholders. Talk to the
Speaker 1: local stakeholders, because you can't just come in there, uh
Speaker 1: with your you know, with your science under your arm
Speaker 1: and your folder and just say this is how it's
Speaker 1: gonna go. Like, it's got to work for the people
Speaker 1: and you have to get them involved and on boarders
Speaker 1: just not gonna work. Don't even try that. In Scotland, everybody,
Speaker 1: oh man, don't mess with their sheet. You got anything else?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else? Uh? Well, maybe this last little
Speaker 1: bit from that stuff you sent. Seventy seven percent in
Speaker 1: increasing of the human population lives in urban areas and
Speaker 1: they spend of their time indoors. Seventy seven percent of
Speaker 1: humans spend nine of their time indoors. And just the
Speaker 1: health effects and the and the role the trickle down
Speaker 1: effects from that, We've talked about a lot, but people
Speaker 1: need to be out in nature. Mental and physical illness, depression,
Speaker 1: heart disease, anxiety, fatigue, obesity, a d h D like
Speaker 1: you name it, like a lot can be not wholly
Speaker 1: attributed to this, but certainly has an impact on people
Speaker 1: that And I'm a city guy, you are too, Like
Speaker 1: I love my urban areas, but uh, people need to
Speaker 1: get out doors more. And this is a good way
Speaker 1: to do what I think. Yeah, but that's a fine
Speaker 1: line you've got to walk because we're giving this stuff
Speaker 1: over to nature. So we have to ask ourselves, what,
Speaker 1: what role, what place do we have in these wildernesses
Speaker 1: that we're creating. And I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that that that that rewilding ecologists are excited about,
Speaker 1: is that would cause us to to rethink that that
Speaker 1: would be like, wait, amount I want to be indoors
Speaker 1: all time? Well, wait a minute, I'm already indoors all
Speaker 1: the time. I need to get out there, and now
Speaker 1: there's a place for them to go. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's an they're big question mark that we'd have
Speaker 1: to figure out too. That's right. Um, well, that's it
Speaker 1: for rewilding for now. Given another five years, maybe we'll
Speaker 1: come back to it. Everybody. And since I said that,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this of
Speaker 1: what the author called it, lesbians in the Military. Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: really enjoyed your podcast about the term friend of Dorothy
Speaker 1: and wanted to add something to your discussion about gay
Speaker 1: men in the military. Uh. And this is probably on
Speaker 1: us for just sort of saying gay men in the military,
Speaker 1: But there were many lesbians in the military during World
Speaker 1: War Two, as well as people who would we would
Speaker 1: now describe as bisexual women, transmasculine people, and others. The
Speaker 1: military was a safe place for queer women and a
Speaker 1: fab assigned female at birth people since it was somewhat
Speaker 1: of an escape for mainstream society that expected women to
Speaker 1: dress and present femininely and marry men never consider this.
Speaker 1: It's pretty great. This article is a great summary of
Speaker 1: the history. I thought you might find it interesting. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the name of the article I just click the
Speaker 1: link is called this is from out history dot org
Speaker 1: lesbians Comma not colin World War two and beyond. And
Speaker 1: this is from Rebecca, a friend of Dorothy. Nice. Thanks
Speaker 1: a lot, Rebecca. We're a friend of Rebecca who's a
Speaker 1: friend of Dorothy. That's right. It's hard to keep track,
Speaker 1: but let's just all be friends. That's pretty great. Um,
Speaker 1: thank you for that email, Rebecca. And if you want
Speaker 1: to be like us and point out something we hadn't
Speaker 1: considered before. We love that kind of stuff. You can
Speaker 1: wrap it up and send it in an email to
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