Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / Reclaiming Britain’s Wild Heart | The Celtic Rainforest with Robin & Merlin Hanbury-Tenison | Ep 27

Transcript

Reclaiming Britain’s Wild Heart | The Celtic Rainforest with Robin & Merlin Hanbury-Tenison | Ep 27 · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.
• 0:01
  Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of
• 0:06
  The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.
• 0:08
  Before I jump in with today's guest, I want to say a huge thank you to you, our
• 0:13
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  books, and other courses, please go to rupertisakson.
• 0:33
  com.
• 0:34
  So now let's jump in.
• 0:36
  Welcome back to Live Free, ride Free.
• 0:39
  I've got the legend, Robin Handbury Tenon and his son Merlin.
• 0:43
  Today, if you don't know who Robin Handbury Tenon is, you might know
• 0:48
  actually some of the work he's done.
• 0:49
  But he's been a bit of a ance, squeeze a power behind many beneficial
• 0:55
  effects on the planet and on peoples.
• 0:57
  And it's very dear to my heart because those of you who know my story know that
• 1:01
  I worked for a long time with Sun Bushman in the Kalahari, helping them get legal
• 1:07
  title to their ancestral land after they'd been illegally evicted in Botswana.
• 1:12
  And had it not been for the British organization, survival International.
• 1:17
  Who we did all our British work through.
• 1:19
  We did some of it in America, some of it in the uk.
• 1:23
  There would have been nothing.
• 1:25
  And the man behind Survival International who founded it is the
• 1:28
  man sitting here, Robin Bury Tenison.
• 1:30
  So I owe a great debt of gratitude.
• 1:33
  But we all do.
• 1:34
  And the reason is because the sand bushmen actually are common ancestors.
• 1:39
  If they had disappeared off the planet, which they were in grave
• 1:42
  danger of doing back in the early two thousands, that would be like
• 1:46
  us losing touch with ourselves.
• 1:48
  They are the original oldest culture on the planet.
• 1:52
  And it's easy to kind of think roll your eyes at something like that,
• 1:55
  but you don't miss it till it's gone.
• 1:57
  And about every generation there are threats to people like this.
• 2:01
  And a man like Robin.
• 2:03
  You know, steps in and does something about it.
• 2:06
  And so I'm very grateful to Mr.
• 2:09
  Ry Tenon here.
• 2:09
  And I'm very, very glad that his son Merlin is a chip off the old
• 2:13
  block because he's doing something rather amazing for us all as well.
• 2:17
  So that's my preamble.
• 2:19
  Lads, would you tell us who you are, what you do, and why you do it?
• 2:24
  Do you wanna kick off?
• 2:27
  Yeah.
• 2:27
  Age first.
• 2:28
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: I think age first.
• 2:29
  Age first.
• 2:29
  I think, well, the other side of my life, apart from the wonderful introduction
• 2:33
  you gave me on, on background survival International, which I'm hugely proud
• 2:37
  of, and which has done so much work in the field of indigenous people.
• 2:41
  The other big thing I did was to lead the biggest scientific expedition
• 2:44
  Britain ever mount to understand how the rainforests work in Borneo.
• 2:49
  And I lived there for 15 months with a great group of scientists.
• 2:52
  We cracked the rainforest code.
• 2:54
  We worked out why you can have this lush rainforest going on what is effectively a
• 2:58
  desert and why you shouldn't cut it down.
• 3:01
  It didn't help.
• 3:02
  It's cut it down so much over the last 40 years since the expedition.
• 3:06
  And but my life had been much devoted to scientific research into
• 3:11
  tropical rainforests, only to find the back on my little hill farm on
• 3:15
  Bob Monroe, which me now runs, runs.
• 3:18
  We had the last remnant, one of the last remnants of temperate rainforest, which
• 3:23
  is just as rich and incredibly rare.
• 3:26
  And so suddenly my focus, having been on tropical, is now all
• 3:30
  about temperate rainforests, which Merlin will tell you about.
• 3:34
  Rupert Isaacson: You said just now that you cracked the rainforest
• 3:37
  code, I just get to, I get to Merlin a mo, but you can't say something
• 3:41
  like that and not have me jump.
• 3:42
  Okay.
• 3:42
  What does that mean?
• 3:43
  What, how do you crack a rainforest code?
• 3:45
  What, what is the rainforest code?
• 3:46
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: Quite right to pick me up on that.
• 3:48
  For a long time, people couldn't understand how this incredibly
• 3:51
  rich and lush di biodiverse habitat could exist on something which is
• 3:57
  effectively a desert because there's no soil under the reef forest.
• 4:00
  There's no humus like we used to in Northern Europe.
• 4:02
  Okay?
• 4:02
  There's just about an inch of soil.
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  And when you cut the trees down of soil rushes away, and it becomes a desert.
• 4:08
  How can that possibly happen?
• 4:09
  And a lot of people were researching it, and the big thing we cracked was to find
• 4:13
  out how it happens and what the, the story is that the nutrients are reabsorbed
• 4:18
  almost instantly as they hit the ground by all the millis and centipedes.
• 4:22
  And, and they get caught up in the rootlet systems and micro
• 4:26
  are immediately back in the tree.
• 4:28
  So the tree is containing all its nutrients and recycling them in itself.
• 4:33
  And therefore, it's another reason apart from the many other reasons why
• 4:36
  you shouldn't cut tropical rainforest down because you will create a desert.
• 4:40
  I'm doing
• 4:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Wow, this I didn't know because I would've assumed that any.
• 4:45
  Forest that's anywhere in the world that's sat there for some
• 4:49
  generations must be sitting on a massive layer of hummus, right?
• 4:52
  Because leaves are falling, bark is falling, biomass is falling, right?
• 4:56
  I mean, okay, I'm gonna return to this, but the question I'm gonna
• 5:01
  return to, 'cause I don't, you know, we need to find out who Merlin is here.
• 5:04
  But the question I'm gonna pick up is, why doesn't that happen in every forest?
• 5:09
  Why is that specific to tropical rainforest?
• 5:12
  'cause now I want to know, but Merlin, who are you and why are you here?
• 5:17
  And what, what
• 5:18
  do you do?
• 5:20
  I.
• 5:20
  Thank you so much for, for having me here Rupert.
• 5:23
  And it's it's always challenging following my father 'cause he casts along shadow
• 5:27
  and has done such amazing things.
• 5:29
  But but it, but it's a huge pleasure and honor always to do these these
• 5:32
  father son conversations together.
• 5:35
  'cause he, it's wonderful to bounce off each other.
• 5:37
  So I, I grew up here on this, this hill farm or Bob and Moore.
• 5:41
  So I'm, we're both currently sitting on the, on the farm in
• 5:43
  the, in the heart of Cornwall.
• 5:45
  With my father going off on these exciting and in incredible expeditions
• 5:49
  to far-flung tropical regions.
• 5:51
  And when I was 19, I, I left and joined the army and it was at a
• 5:55
  time when the military was, was very busy in the early two thousands.
• 5:58
  And I subsequently went on three tours, three combat tours of
• 6:02
  Afghanistan in quite quick succession.
• 6:04
  And on one of these I was blown up in a, a roadside bomb by the Taliban
• 6:07
  and was very fortunate to come away physically, almost unscathed.
• 6:11
  And, and to continue an enjoyable military career before leaving the army to, to get
• 6:16
  married and going and working in London.
• 6:18
  And it was while working in London that I began to suffer
• 6:21
  from quite poor mental health.
• 6:22
  And, and some of that was experiences in, in the military especially being blown up,
• 6:26
  coming back to haunt me in a form of PTSD.
• 6:28
  But, but much of it was also related to, I think, what's far more recognizable
• 6:33
  to most people, which is just the stresses and the pressure and the, in
• 6:36
  many ways, unpleasantness of working in these fast-paced urban environments.
• 6:40
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:40
  And I was extremely lucky that I had cabilla this.
• 6:44
  Gorgeous valley in the heart of Bob and Moore with this slice of Atlantic
• 6:49
  temperate rainforest, a term that we weren't even that familiar with
• 6:51
  at the time in the heart of it.
• 6:53
  And I was able to retrieve into that space and come and hide down there and
• 6:56
  heal down there and, and, and really fall in love, re fall in love 'cause it
• 7:00
  had been the playground of my childhood.
• 7:01
  But, but really begin to understand how important these habitats are.
• 7:05
  And at the same time my wife Lizzie and I were trying to start a family and she
• 7:09
  was going through problems which are, are all too common and far too little
• 7:12
  understood and, and, and suffering from a, a couple of really traumatic miscarriages.
• 7:17
  And she was using this valley as a place of healing for her.
• 7:20
  And then a couple of years later, and I'm sure we, we may come onto
• 7:23
  this, but my father got very, very severe COVID back in 2020 and was
• 7:27
  sedated for seven weeks in hospital.
• 7:29
  And we were told by the doctors that he was almost certainly gonna die
• 7:32
  and wasn't gonna come back to us.
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  He was already in his mid eighties at that point.
• 7:35
  He is extremely old.
• 7:37
  And and we were told there was no way he was gonna come home and.
• 7:41
  That boy immediately, sir.
• 7:43
  Rupert Isaacson: And,
• 7:43
  and he he, he did come home.
• 7:45
  I mean, he is remarkable for his age though, and he, and he, he
• 7:48
  healed within this forest as well.
• 7:50
  And so we had these three stories of my personal psychological healing,
• 7:54
  my wife Lizzie's, psychological and physical healing, and my father's
• 7:56
  physical healing within this habitat.
• 7:58
  And it set me on an obsessive path to not only bring more people into the
• 8:03
  Atlantic temperate rainforest that we had at Cabilla Veterans with P ts d.
• 8:06
  This is what Lizzie and I were obsessed about, bringing veterans with PTSD women
• 8:10
  on their fertility journeys, nurses from the NHS, suffering from stress
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  and burnout, corporate professionals going through the same challenges
• 8:17
  we've been going through, but also to elevate, highlight, restore,
• 8:21
  and protect this habitat because.
• 8:23
  The point that I really love here is that my father has made this point.
• 8:27
  He just disappeared off screen.
• 8:28
  I hope he is not upset coming down.
• 8:31
  Exactly.
• 8:31
  He's not upset with anything I've said.
• 8:33
  But we, we all know whether you are eight or 80, we all know about how important
• 8:38
  tropical rainforests are and how they are the lungs of the planet, and how
• 8:41
  they are our most important habitats that are being degraded and deforested.
• 8:46
  And the reason we know that is because of many, many expeditions that have been
• 8:49
  run, but my father's ones especially, which have cracked the rainforest
• 8:52
  code and shown us that the tropical rainforest, like the Amazon and Borneo
• 8:57
  are the lungs of the planet and the most important habitat from a biodiversity
• 9:00
  and a climate mitigation, and a a, a general planetary equilibrium perspective.
• 9:05
  And so we all, when we hear the word rainforest, we think
• 9:07
  of places like the Amazon.
• 9:09
  We've forgotten that actually once Britain was a rainforest island, 20%
• 9:14
  of the United Kingdom was a rainforest landscape just a few thousand years ago.
• 9:18
  And my mission, my dream is to help to be a part of reminding everybody
• 9:23
  that Britain is a rainforest island and we are a rainforest people.
• 9:26
  And it should be as important to us as it is to the people of tropical
• 9:30
  countries who have rainforest very much as a part of our culture.
• 9:33
  And that is why we started our business, Camilla Cornwall, and our
• 9:36
  charity of a thousand Year Trust and the work that we're doing now.
• 9:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so I just want this, this podcast goes out
• 9:43
  across the English speaking world.
• 9:44
  So not everyone knows what Cornwall is, and not everybody knows what Bob Moore is.
• 9:48
  And not everybody knows that there are temperate rainforests.
• 9:52
  So just for the listeners, I want you to picture when you think of Lord of the
• 9:57
  Rings and you see elves coming through the Misty Feny, mossy Bouldery, greeny.
• 10:05
  Thing that's a temperate rainforest.
• 10:08
  And the reason why it has that miasma is actually water that 'cause it's a
• 10:14
  very, very high rainfall area where the UK sits juts out into the Atlantic and
• 10:19
  sits in what's called the Gulf Stream because we're actually on a, on a, on a
• 10:23
  latitude with kind of Northern Alaska.
• 10:25
  And if it wasn't for that, we'd be shivering.
• 10:29
  But no, we, we, we have this high rainfall.
• 10:32
  Some people say it's rather gloomy and gray, but it's not dissimilar to the
• 10:36
  Pacific Northwest in the US or British Columbia, coastal British Columbia.
• 10:40
  So, so if you think about that, so if you've watched Vikings or
• 10:43
  if you watch the Lord of the Rings and you, they went to temperate
• 10:47
  rainforests and they filmed there.
• 10:49
  So whether it was in New Zealand, whether it was in Canada for Vikings
• 10:52
  and there are pockets of this still left in the uk and it's something
• 10:55
  I've been aware of for a long time.
• 10:57
  Because I used to, although I was brought up in.
• 11:00
  Partly in London and partly in Leicestershire, which is on the
• 11:03
  eastern side of the uk, which does not get that particular climate.
• 11:07
  So North Sea climate gets scoured by the winds from Siberia, this western
• 11:12
  Celtic side of the planet, which all the Celts got pushed into by the Romans.
• 11:17
  So therefore, it has all the sort of mysterious mythology
• 11:20
  and spirituality as well.
• 11:23
  All kind of combine to this rather magical thing.
• 11:26
  This magical thing is what you all are looking to revive and protect.
• 11:32
  No.
• 11:33
  That's absolutely right and you are, you're quite right.
• 11:35
  Fand Forest is a temperate rainforest, Jeffrey of Monmouth Arthurian Legends,
• 11:39
  the ma ian Lewis Carroll's jab walkie.
• 11:41
  These are all set within temper rainforest.
• 11:43
  These are rainforest myths.
• 11:44
  We just weren't using that term.
• 11:46
  And they are not only our most folkloric and, and allic habitats for that
• 11:50
  reason, but they're also a pinnacle habitat for many scientific reasons.
• 11:53
  So they are our most carbon sequestering habitat that we can restore and
• 11:58
  plant territory to terres in the uk.
• 12:00
  So they suck more CO2 outta the air than anything else at a
• 12:03
  time of high climate challenge.
• 12:05
  That's really important.
• 12:06
  We're also in the uk, the most nature depleted country.
• 12:09
  In Europe and, and temperate rainforest restore that biodiversity abundance,
• 12:13
  which is so important and bring back that layering of life better
• 12:16
  than anything else we can restore.
• 12:18
  But I think most importantly, they are the best habitat that we have in the
• 12:21
  UK for the mental health and wellbeing of humans who spend time amongst them.
• 12:24
  And a lot of our science scientific research that we are doing here
• 12:27
  is focused on that human element.
• 12:29
  I think that's so important.
• 12:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Alright, so you, Robin, let's go back to you.
• 12:34
  You, you, you said that you'd cracked the tropical rainforest code, which
• 12:39
  was that the trees are self-sustaining units that when they drop their
• 12:44
  humus, the humus gets reabsorbed.
• 12:46
  There's a re-uptake immediately.
• 12:47
  So isn't humus layer, but this presumably is not the case in a temperate rainforest.
• 12:54
  What's the difference?
• 12:55
  Why do you have that in a tropical one?
• 12:58
  Why do you not have that one in?
• 13:00
  I'm sitting in Germany right now and I'm looking at it very large.
• 13:04
  Beach forests.
• 13:05
  Okay, so probably beach forests.
• 13:06
  Yeah.
• 13:07
  That I live in.
• 13:08
  There's definitely a big humus layer there.
• 13:10
  So what, what created this rainforest thing that's tropical that does not
• 13:18
  have that humus layer, which, 'cause we know that humus also sequesters carbon.
• 13:23
  No.
• 13:24
  And then why does a temperate rainforest sequester so much carbon?
• 13:29
  Why is it not the same thing just colder?
• 13:32
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: Well, you're not alone in, in, in
• 13:33
  not understanding how it works.
• 13:35
  And I had a wonderful occasion when I had take Margaret Thatcher then prime Minister
• 13:40
  around a, a, a picture of artistic exhibition of paintings in the rainforest.
• 13:46
  And we were looking at these wonderful paintings of rich, lush rainforest
• 13:50
  for all intensity of life within it.
• 13:52
  And she said to me, such a shame.
• 13:55
  We have to cut that, all that down.
• 13:56
  But then we said, we need the agricultural land.
• 13:59
  I had wonderful opportunity of being able to say, rubbish prime minister, and
• 14:02
  actually knowing what I was talking about.
• 14:04
  And she looked a bit shocked and nearly handbagged me and said, what do you mean?
• 14:07
  And I had to explain to her that tropical rainforests exist.
• 14:11
  We now understand through recycling all the nutrients, instantly,
• 14:16
  they never go into the soil.
• 14:17
  Whereas temperate forests and agriculture generally in northern Europe and where
• 14:21
  we have humus growing up, as you've just said, and there is a depth of humus up
• 14:26
  to 4, 5, 6 feet in bends, but usually two or three feet in normal areas, you have
• 14:31
  this humus and this soil from which is sustainable and on which the trees grow.
• 14:36
  And so when you cut them down, you just park more and grow, they grow again.
• 14:40
  It's a completely different cycle, temperate from tropical rainforest.
• 14:44
  And that was what people really didn't understand.
• 14:46
  And one of the reasons why there was such immense destruction of tropical rainforest
• 14:50
  in the search fatigue and timbers.
• 14:53
  Even though in the, in the old days, the bad old days or good days, you see it, the
• 14:58
  colonialism, the, the people responsible used to recognize it in a sort of way.
• 15:03
  And instead of, and you had a conservator of forests whose job
• 15:06
  was to hand out timber concessions for only 1% of the area of time.
• 15:11
  And then to allow it to naturally regrow, which we only had a 1% happen.
• 15:15
  It was sustainable.
• 15:17
  Nowadays it's greed and density of modern commerce in the far east and,
• 15:22
  and South America and Africa, indeed.
• 15:25
  The tropical rainforest is being destroyed all the time, and we are being
• 15:28
  left with a, a dessert an eroded desert behind which is totally economically
• 15:34
  and socially and biologically stupid.
• 15:38
  Yeah.
• 15:38
  But
• 15:38
  there is there, there is a, a, a nice crossover and similarity between
• 15:42
  the tragedy of what's happened in Tropical Rainforest and the tragedy
• 15:45
  of what's happened in temperate rainforest, which is the introduction
• 15:48
  of non-native grazing mammals.
• 15:51
  And so many of, much of the Amazon rainforest has been cut down in
• 15:55
  order to create space for cattle pasture and cattle grazing.
• 15:58
  And, and the cow is a completely non-native creature to South America.
• 16:02
  So these have been imported.
• 16:03
  They don't fit within the trophic system.
• 16:05
  They don't have natural predators, natural competitors and, and the
• 16:10
  things that they forage on don't have a way of responding to them.
• 16:12
  They do very unnatural things to the ground, which has been one of
• 16:14
  the things that's really destroyed these tropical rainforest landscapes.
• 16:18
  In the same way in Western Europe and in the UK in particular, much of our
• 16:22
  temperate rainforest was cut down.
• 16:25
  Longer ago, so two, three, 4,000 years ago.
• 16:28
  Whereas in Brazil, it's been in the last few centuries in order to make space for
• 16:31
  sheep, sheep grazing, which is really all that tends to happen on the uplands
• 16:35
  once the temperate rainforests have gone.
• 16:37
  And the sheep in exactly the same way that the cow is non-native to South America.
• 16:42
  Sheep are entirely non-native to Western Europe.
• 16:44
  They're a Mesopotamia and a a Persian import that was brought along Silk Road
• 16:48
  roots four and a half thousand years ago.
• 16:50
  And they are a very well evolved desert animal, which as a result
• 16:54
  of being a desert animal, have very small hooves, which compact the soil.
• 16:58
  When they step upon it, they're voracious appetites.
• 17:00
  'cause when you live in a desert, you eat everything you can find
• 17:04
  and their manure isn't beneficial to temperate rainforest soil.
• 17:07
  So we've done a very similar thing by taking the trees away and
• 17:11
  putting cattle in South America.
• 17:13
  There's been the same effect in Western Europe by taking the
• 17:15
  trees away and placing sheep in
• 17:17
  Rupert Isaacson: Western Europe.
• 17:18
  That's interesting.
• 17:19
  I'm just, as you were saying, they're not native to Western Europe.
• 17:21
  I'm just sort of going through, 'cause in, in this area of Germany I live in,
• 17:24
  we have some muon, which is English.
• 17:27
  English.
• 17:27
  It's, you know, European wild sheep.
• 17:29
  Up in the low mountain range that we live in here.
• 17:32
  But yes they're sort of widely acknowledged to be a Mediterranean.
• 17:37
  Yeah.
• 17:39
  Wild species that was sort of naturalized here, perhaps by
• 17:42
  the Romans or earlier, you know.
• 17:45
  But, and I'm just trying to think of the cave walls of Lascoe and
• 17:48
  those other Western European paleolithic rock art repositories.
• 17:52
  And I'm just sort of going through in my mind, have I seen sheep on those?
• 17:55
  We see horses, we see cows, we see bison, we see bears, we see wolves, we see lions.
• 18:01
  Do we?
• 18:01
  A few, a few,
• 18:02
  few, few Woolie rhinos and straight tus elephants as well.
• 18:05
  Right?
• 18:05
  Right.
• 18:06
  But, but no sheep.
• 18:07
  But we don't, and, and it comes back and I'd never, I've never
• 18:10
  Rupert Isaacson: stopped to think of that before.
• 18:11
  And on our charity here, the thousand Year Trust, one of the reasons that
• 18:14
  we came up with that name was because when I started talking about this
• 18:17
  subject, people would go, well, hang on.
• 18:19
  Sheep have been here for four and a half thousand years.
• 18:21
  Surely that's long enough for them to be considered native or, or, or,
• 18:24
  you know, part of the evolutionary system within this island.
• 18:27
  But that is not the way evolution or Mother Nature works.
• 18:30
  They, the human timelines that we feel comfortable working within five, 10,
• 18:34
  a hundred years are completely out of.
• 18:37
  Perspective with actually how natural systems function and work.
• 18:41
  And so we have to have the, the, the appetite, the boldness, the objectivity
• 18:46
  to be able to look in island landscapes.
• 18:47
  And I've always entertained by the difference between places like New
• 18:51
  Zealand and Australia and Te del Wago, other island habitats, where
• 18:55
  the people who live there are very comfortable saying, this species evolved.
• 18:58
  Here it is native, this species was introduced by humans, it is
• 19:01
  non-native and therefore it should be either removed or suppressed.
• 19:04
  In New Zealand, they were, they have competitions amongst schoolchildren to
• 19:07
  bring in as many rats that they've killed, and they get a competition for the one
• 19:11
  that's brought in the most in the uk.
• 19:13
  If we did that with gray squirrels at schools you know, the, the tabloids
• 19:16
  would hit the roof and, and everyone would be being fired from their jobs.
• 19:19
  We, we, I think we have a real timidity in the UK about looking at the flora
• 19:24
  and fauna that we have across our islands and saying actually that
• 19:27
  that is non-native and therefore it might be being destructive and sheep.
• 19:30
  A brilliant example of that, just like gray squirrels are and
• 19:33
  things like rhododendron and, and in many places, beach trees.
• 19:36
  Rupert Isaacson: Now of course, we've, we've built the beginnings
• 19:40
  of the British Empire on wool.
• 19:42
  Mm.
• 19:42
  You know, the, the medieval period, as you know, we, we grew wool here in the uk.
• 19:48
  Say, here I'm sitting in Germany, but, you know, sold it
• 19:50
  to Flanders, the low countries.
• 19:52
  It was then processed and went out, and that was the basis of the
• 19:55
  prosperity upon which we built the next thing, which was to cut all the
• 19:59
  ship forests down to make ships, oh, go and be pirates around the world.
• 20:03
  And then they called that the British Empire.
• 20:04
  Now that's gone, but we now have a bank instead, as we know which
• 20:08
  causes people great stress.
• 20:10
  And they go and then get their mental health back in your rainforest in, in
• 20:13
  Cornwall, in the southwest of England.
• 20:15
  But you guys have a large farm.
• 20:17
  You're sitting up there on Bob Min Moore and Boman Moore.
• 20:21
  For those who the listeners, what you need to understand is Cornwall,
• 20:24
  actually, this is what you need to understand about Cornwall.
• 20:26
  If you dunno the UK.
• 20:28
  People and Cornwall talk like, ah, a little bit.
• 20:30
  And Pirates talk like that too.
• 20:32
  Why?
• 20:32
  Because they come from Cornwall.
• 20:34
  So Cornwall is the bit of southwest England that sticks
• 20:37
  out furthest into the Atlantic.
• 20:39
  So if you were going to be on a ship and get down and steal gold from the Spanish
• 20:43
  ships coming back from the Caribbean back in the 16th century, probably
• 20:47
  you came from that southwest corner of the UK around Portsmouth and then west
• 20:52
  into Cornwall and it's smugglers and it's 'cause it's a rocky coastline.
• 20:55
  You can hide things in caves and that's why we have the pirate accent.
• 20:58
  So if you didn't know that, okay, and you'll hear it alive and well in
• 21:01
  any pub in Cornwall, but Boman Moore, where Robin and Merlin are sitting is
• 21:06
  a mountain spine, like a low mountain spine that runs along the center of
• 21:10
  that peninsula and then it goes down basically to the coast on either side.
• 21:15
  You guys are sitting up there.
• 21:16
  Are you honest?
• 21:17
  Are you saying that you are going to take your farm like the whole
• 21:20
  thing just co you know, it's a couple of thousand acres or so.
• 21:24
  Are you going to, are you gonna re rainforest that whole thing?
• 21:27
  Like, you've already done it.
• 21:29
  Is that what you're gonna do?
• 21:30
  Are you doing So it's, it's a lot.
• 21:32
  It's not that big.
• 21:33
  It's a smaller farm.
• 21:34
  It's it, it's, it's become smaller over the years.
• 21:37
  Yeah.
• 21:37
  And, and now it's about 250 acres.
• 21:39
  And, but I find that very,
• 21:40
  Rupert Isaacson: very exciting.
• 21:41
  So you, you, you, the whole lot
• 21:43
  sheep
• 21:44
  Rupert Isaacson: gone.
• 21:45
  Back to the break for us.
• 21:46
  She gone and we've, we've reestablished a hundred thousand trees across the farm.
• 21:49
  So few listeners, an acre is about the size of a football or a soccer pitch, so
• 21:53
  that's 250 football pitches all stitched together and laid over this valley.
• 21:57
  And the average size of a farm in the UK is about 220 acres.
• 22:00
  Yeah.
• 22:00
  So we are 250 acres, but a hundred acres of that, or about 85 acres of that is
• 22:05
  already atlantic temperate rainforest.
• 22:06
  So actually our farmable land is only 160 acres.
• 22:09
  And the important thing about that is that there are many charismatic
• 22:13
  and really exciting and innovative nature restoration Rewilding projects
• 22:17
  in the uk, but they tend to be very, very large areas of land, three, four,
• 22:21
  5,000, 20,000 acres up in the Highlands.
• 22:23
  And they're often owned by people who are doing something quite philanthropic.
• 22:27
  They have the resources and the funds to, to do something
• 22:30
  quite high risk and innovative.
• 22:31
  That doesn't necessarily make money because we have a, an average sized farm
• 22:36
  in a very challenging farming environment.
• 22:38
  What we do has to work.
• 22:41
  EE ecologically and economically for the farmers that do it.
• 22:45
  So what we are creating is a blueprint for a future of upland farming, which
• 22:49
  transitions sheep popped green tarmac, which has very little biodiversity and
• 22:54
  very little health and, and life and vitality, and also is very, very bad
• 22:57
  for flooding and droughts downstream because it doesn't hold water in the
• 23:00
  uplands very bad for soil climate, bad climate change, big rain event.
• 23:03
  Yeah,
• 23:04
  absolutely.
• 23:04
  Very bad for water quality.
• 23:05
  And we've plant, we've reestablished, we've planted 40,000
• 23:08
  trees, we've got 60,000 coming back by natural colonization.
• 23:10
  So it's a hundred thousand tree site.
• 23:12
  We've turned that 165 acres back into a cadet rainforest that is establishing.
• 23:17
  And the way, the reason we're doing that is to be able to show our neighbors and
• 23:20
  other farmers around us that this is actually a better way to manage their
• 23:23
  land, both ecologically and economically.
• 23:26
  And, and that can turn much larger rows of land back into
• 23:29
  temperate rainforest landscapes.
• 23:31
  Rupert Isaacson: But what is the economics?
• 23:33
  How would someone make money?
• 23:34
  So for example, again, for the listeners who might not know farming in the uk
• 23:38
  like farming in Europe and farming in many parts of the world is subsidized.
• 23:41
  So if you come from an upland area, which is traditionally sheep farming,
• 23:45
  as you say, you would get a certain subsidy from the government to,
• 23:49
  you know, keep running your sheep.
• 23:50
  And then in addition to that, you would obviously be selling some for meat and
• 23:54
  some for wool, and blah, blah, blah.
• 23:55
  And that's your livelihood.
• 23:57
  How, how do you make money by turning it back to rainforest?
• 24:01
  Because if it's not making money, people won't do it.
• 24:05
  That's a great question.
• 24:05
  And as my father well knows, having farmed up here for 50 years and tried
• 24:10
  lots and lots of very innovative different types of farming, farming
• 24:12
  in the uplands is not a, a profitable endeavor on, on an average sized farm.
• 24:16
  And when, when I moved down, when my wife and I moved down about 10 years
• 24:19
  ago, we looked at this very, very closely and ran all the numbers and tried to
• 24:23
  understand how we could make a living and raise a family and do something
• 24:26
  that was ecologically beneficial on this small patch of, of Moreland or Upland.
• 24:30
  And we found, I found that the average Upland Hill farmer on Bob and
• 24:34
  Moore and Dartmore currently takes between 85 and 92% of their annual
• 24:38
  income from European subsidies.
• 24:39
  This was when I was looking at this 10 years ago before we left, before Brexit.
• 24:42
  Yeah.
• 24:42
  Before Brexit, now that we've left the European Union, all of those
• 24:46
  subsidies have been taken away.
• 24:47
  They've solely, incrementally gone down until in 2027 they stopped completely.
• 24:51
  And the British system that's replacing them is, is, is a fraction of the
• 24:56
  generosity of what we, of what we were given before by the European Union.
• 25:00
  The average age of a farm around here is in their mid sixties.
• 25:03
  It has the second highest suicide rate of any job type in the uk.
• 25:06
  The younger generation are not taking these farms on.
• 25:09
  It is almost impossible to make a living.
• 25:11
  So before I answer the question about how you make a living from upland
• 25:14
  farming by reforesting, it's important to establish that as a baseline.
• 25:19
  People are not making a living from this kind of farming at the moment.
• 25:22
  So it's not outside.
• 25:22
  Outside of the subsidies, right?
• 25:24
  Yeah, outside of the subsidies.
• 25:24
  So it's not like we're taking, you know, wildly profitable upland hill
• 25:28
  farms and wrecking them into rainforest.
• 25:30
  Actually, what we're doing is transferring them into an agroforestry model.
• 25:34
  So we're still farming this land.
• 25:35
  There'll be a native breed conservation grazing scheme of cattle and horses
• 25:40
  and pigs that move through the rainforest because trees need large
• 25:43
  animals, and large animals need trees.
• 25:45
  And this is a very weird thing that we've done with farming in the UK
• 25:47
  where we consider healthy farmland to be fields with no trees and large
• 25:52
  animals and healthy woodland to be lots of trees with no large animals, when
• 25:55
  actually they all evolved together.
• 25:58
  Trees benefit from having animals rubbing against them and foraging
• 26:00
  amongst, encompassing them.
• 26:02
  And the animals benefit from the shade in the summer, the shelter in the winter,
• 26:05
  and the additional forage that they get.
• 26:07
  So we still have animals passing through it, or we will have there's
• 26:10
  also now a very important financial model for farmers around, around
• 26:15
  carbon sequestration and the carbon markets around biodiversity net gain.
• 26:18
  And also with the work we do at Cabilla Cornel, where we've brought over 3000
• 26:21
  people into the rainforest at Cabilla.
• 26:24
  There are ecotourism opportunities, which I think is really the next moment for
• 26:28
  the farmed landscape because there's such an inequality of access to wild spaces
• 26:33
  for many people who live in the uk.
• 26:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, let's talk about that because you guys both know, I mean,
• 26:37
  you're landowners and not everybody is, and I did 20 years, I had a ranch in Texas
• 26:43
  for 20 years, and one of the big issues there is there's no land access, right?
• 26:48
  You, you either own it or you can't go on it.
• 26:51
  I mean, you might have the odd neighbor who lets you take a walk
• 26:54
  or ride your horse or something, and if you go on it, you get shot.
• 26:57
  You definitely get shot.
• 26:58
  Yeah.
• 26:58
  And in fact, if they paint the top of the fence post purple, it means they'll
• 27:02
  shoot on site and not challenge you.
• 27:05
  So there's a lot of that, you know, and the sound of automatic fire at
• 27:09
  the weekends and that sort of thing.
• 27:10
  The UK actually does have, by comparison, really good access.
• 27:15
  I know there's a, a debate that rages in the UK about, you know, we
• 27:18
  don't have access to the countryside.
• 27:20
  I actually call BS on that.
• 27:21
  Because if, if, if you've ever lived in a place where you don't have that
• 27:23
  kind of access, even Ireland, you don't really have that kind of access.
• 27:26
  Yeah.
• 27:27
  But in the UK there's a big network of footpaths and most of the open
• 27:30
  hill areas you can kind of walk.
• 27:32
  And let's face it, if you do walk on someone's land, you might get yelled
• 27:35
  at, but you certainly won't get shot.
• 27:37
  And if you're not a complete dick and like let your dog chase the sheep or something
• 27:40
  and leave all the gates open, probably people are actually relatively tolerant.
• 27:44
  If you were to, I'm going to throw this one at you Robin.
• 27:47
  So let's say you evangelize Cornwall and Cornwall becomes one big temperate
• 27:53
  rainforest up there on bottom mage.
• 27:54
  I'd love to see because then I'm thinking I'm fantasizing about wolves and bears and
• 27:59
  things like that coming back, which I dig.
• 28:01
  'cause the wolves just came back to our area in Germany and it's
• 28:03
  quite exciting how not all of those farmers can make the same money
• 28:08
  from the same ecotourism outfit.
• 28:09
  There's only so much glamping you can do.
• 28:11
  Right.
• 28:12
  So unless the entire population of London decamps, although I suppose in
• 28:17
  some ways it does to the beaches what's the model for ensuring that there's.
• 28:22
  A sort of a broader economic benefit, not dissimilar to the current subsidies,
• 28:29
  because that, that's the obvious question, is, okay, you guys have put
• 28:32
  in an infrastructure, you're very well connected, you, you know how to do these
• 28:37
  things but your neighbor might not.
• 28:40
  And then they might resent the fact that the business is coming to you.
• 28:43
  How do you Yeah.
• 28:44
  How do you, how do you democratize it so that it takes the, really
• 28:48
  takes the place of the sheep?
• 28:50
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: Well, there actually are subsidies still, the
• 28:51
  subsidy system has changed from being subsidizing land ownership or
• 28:55
  production as it was under Brexit.
• 28:58
  And there's a new thing called elms, environmental Land Management, which
• 29:02
  encourages people who look after.
• 29:07
  So it's, it's rewarding people.
• 29:10
  Looking after nature rather than for exploiting it.
• 29:13
  And are those
• 29:13
  Rupert Isaacson: subsidies just quickly, are they, are they comparable to what
• 29:16
  their people would currently get?
• 29:17
  They, they're
• 29:18
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: not comparable, but they're there.
• 29:19
  They're great.
• 29:20
  Yeah.
• 29:20
  And there are all sorts of other things that people can do.
• 29:23
  I mean, I've been banging on about this for years.
• 29:25
  I used to have a very feisty New Zealand partner who was, was really into
• 29:29
  exploiting every kind of possible D of avenue on the farm, Bo Goats and Red Deer
• 29:36
  and Wild Boa and all sorts of things.
• 29:38
  And he was very into using the, the land to its maximum good
• 29:44
  New Zealand Kiwi philosophy.
• 29:46
  And we used to argue a lot about it.
• 29:48
  And I would say this was 40, 50 years ago, I was saying to him the day
• 29:53
  will come when you will be receiving more benefit from environmental land
• 29:58
  management than you will from production.
• 30:00
  And he would say, that's rubbish love.
• 30:02
  And we had lovely discussions about all that.
• 30:04
  It is happening.
• 30:05
  And there is now so much awareness as Melon has been saying about the
• 30:09
  beneficial attributes of proper landscape, of, of associating with
• 30:14
  nature, both the mental and physical and, and pure enjoyment reasons.
• 30:19
  And indeed a recognition of how over exploited we have been through
• 30:23
  agricultural production of our land and how depleted we are in
• 30:26
  wildlife and plants and insects.
• 30:29
  I mean insects for example.
• 30:31
  I dunno if you can remember it world or not.
• 30:33
  Remember the days when we used to have things called little
• 30:35
  buggers on the front of our cars.
• 30:37
  Yeah.
• 30:37
  Which were a little deflective things which removed huge numbers of insects
• 30:42
  that otherwise built up on the windscreen.
• 30:43
  Don't need those boy hardly ever get insects.
• 30:46
  Insects have been catastrophic decline.
• 30:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:48
  So
• 30:48
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: there are many, many aspects why this whole new vision
• 30:52
  of farming makes very good sense.
• 30:55
  And, and I think you know, to to, to add to that, one of the potential
• 31:00
  negatives of the European subsidy system that we've been in since the
• 31:04
  early seventies in the UK is that it was very focused on food production.
• 31:08
  And, and if you ask any farmer across most of the eu, but certainly in the
• 31:11
  uk, what their job is, they'll say the job of a farmer is to feed the nation.
• 31:14
  It is to produce food.
• 31:16
  And actually, when you start to look at a little bit more closely at, at what
• 31:19
  that looks like across the uk where we have all of these different topographies
• 31:22
  and types of soil quality and and, and weather patterns, we produce 20% of our
• 31:26
  food from 3% of the land in the uk and that's all in East Anglia, Lincolnshire,
• 31:31
  you know, Norfolk, places like that.
• 31:33
  We then use 22% of the uk, which is the Western reaches.
• 31:36
  Or sheep production, which produces less than 1% of our food.
• 31:40
  So we're doing something very strange.
• 31:41
  We then, a third of our food goes into landfill and 40% of our land is exported.
• 31:45
  So we, we we're, we're behaving quite strangely, and I believe that the
• 31:50
  job of a land steward, or a farmer, or a landowner is multifaceted.
• 31:54
  It is drought prevention, flood prevention, clean water, clean air, clean
• 31:58
  soil, food production, timber production, beautiful places for people to spend time.
• 32:02
  The problem is, at the moment, farmers are only paid for one or two
• 32:06
  of those really just for producing food and maybe for producing timber.
• 32:09
  We need to move to a system where actually, if we accept that farming will
• 32:13
  always, or land management will always be subsidized, which it probably always
• 32:15
  will because we have an expectation across the western world for a price of
• 32:19
  food, which doesn't match the price of production or the cost of production.
• 32:23
  So if we accept that farming will always need some form of subsidies, it
• 32:26
  needs to be blended across all of the ecosystem benefits that land managers
• 32:30
  and land stewards need to be providing.
• 32:32
  And a big part of that is open access and public access.
• 32:36
  A, in a managed and controlled way.
• 32:38
  We've all seen places.
• 32:39
  I remember.
• 32:40
  When I was kind of a younger man that filmed the beach came out, and it was
• 32:43
  so beautiful that everybody went to this one beach in Thailand and took
• 32:46
  photographs of it, and it was destroyed.
• 32:48
  And in the same way with the Instagram generation now, there are many beautiful
• 32:51
  spots where when they become famous, everybody goes there to get a selfie,
• 32:55
  and that spot becomes destroyed.
• 32:57
  And we need to avoid that happening where the natural world is degraded
• 33:01
  by completely unfettered open access.
• 33:03
  And we've seen that with Westman's Wood near us on Dartmore, which is a temperate
• 33:05
  rainforest that has been very badly damaged, but in the same way the days of
• 33:09
  landowners rather like the Texan model being able to totally fence off their
• 33:13
  land with purple stripes across the top of the post and keep out anybody.
• 33:18
  I think those, those days are beyond us and, and people who manage land
• 33:21
  need to move with the times and accept that we have an inequality of access.
• 33:24
  From a mental health and a physical health perspective, we're living through a mental
• 33:28
  health pandemic and an obesity pandemic.
• 33:30
  We need to encourage and facilitate people from, especially from
• 33:33
  inner city areas, having easy access to beautiful wild spaces.
• 33:37
  That's gonna be part of the model of the future.
• 33:38
  It has to be,
• 33:40
  Rupert Isaacson: let's bring it down to money though.
• 33:42
  So, I, let's say you, you guys are in a town hall meeting where
• 33:45
  they're in Boman Town Hall and I'm doing one tonight at Jamaican.
• 33:49
  Exactly.
• 33:49
  I'm meeting lots of farmers tonight at Jamaica Inn and I'm gonna sit
• 33:52
  there with my arms folded, right?
• 33:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 33:54
  And and that expression with my mouth down and be like, you soft London bastards,
• 34:01
  you know, coming here and telling us what to do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 34:03
  Even though you've been there forever, you know, nonetheless, you know, we know
• 34:07
  how things are in the countryside often.
• 34:09
  Alright, now you've gotta sell me.
• 34:11
  The two things which I could see selling me if I was a current
• 34:17
  conservative farmer would be.
• 34:20
  Three, well, three things really.
• 34:22
  I think I'd want reassurance that there's money in it.
• 34:27
  Beyond base subsistence, meaning that, and so then, would that be apart from
• 34:35
  the subsidies for land stewardship, would that also be carbon sequestration
• 34:42
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: and biodiversity net gain?
• 34:43
  Rupert Isaacson: As you know, if you followed any of my work, I'm
• 34:46
  an autism dad and we have a whole career before this podcast in helping
• 34:53
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• 35:11
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• 35:12
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• 35:18
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• 35:21
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• 35:22
  And she told me what to do.
• 35:23
  And it's been working so amazingly for the last 20 years.
• 35:28
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• 35:46
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• 35:49
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• 35:59
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• 36:02
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• 36:07
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• 36:15
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• 36:23
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• 36:28
  live their best life, to live free, ride free, see what happens.
• 36:32
  Who would pay me for that?
• 36:35
  So those, now, those are now on very well audited and accredited
• 36:38
  marketplaces that they're creating.
• 36:40
  So the main one in the UK for carbon is the woodland carbon
• 36:43
  code, which is held by the forestry Commission, the government body.
• 36:46
  And so you, you plant trees and you grow trees and you get an
• 36:49
  independent assessment of the amount of carbon that's being sequestered.
• 36:52
  And then those credits can be sold on a marketplace.
• 36:55
  So it can be bought by anybody.
• 36:56
  Rupert Isaacson: Could I, could I make a fairly decent living like that?
• 36:59
  Similar to having say windmills on my land.
• 37:02
  Well, you, I mean, bay going back to that point that you can't make a decent
• 37:05
  living at the moment from sheep, right?
• 37:07
  Anyway, you can make a better living from selling carbon.
• 37:09
  And in the same way that you don't choose who you sell your sheep to, you
• 37:12
  sell it to a supermarket who sell it to members of the public or consumers.
• 37:16
  You sell your carbon, I who set price as well.
• 37:18
  Yeah.
• 37:18
  On a, who sell the price.
• 37:19
  And you sell your carbon on a market, which sets the price,
• 37:21
  and it is purchased by consumers.
• 37:23
  Some of those will be businesses, some might be members of the general public.
• 37:26
  So it's sort of a, it's a similar model and it's a bit nebulous.
• 37:29
  And that's why where the challenge comes.
• 37:30
  'cause many people will look at that and go, well, when you're
• 37:33
  producing wool or lamb or milk, you can see what's being produced.
• 37:38
  You can kind of, you can really, you understand.
• 37:41
  A farmer grows lamb.
• 37:42
  They sell the lamb, someone to lamb, it's a thing, goes to
• 37:44
  a physical market, it's sold.
• 37:45
  Whereas carbon and biodiversity are less tangible, but equally as important.
• 37:51
  Rupert Isaacson: Right?
• 37:51
  So how do I, let's say I'm a, I mean, I am.
• 37:54
  Approaching Seniorness now.
• 37:56
  So let's say I'm a conservatively minded senior farmer.
• 38:00
  I don't know how to navigate those market.
• 38:05
  You know, you, you, you, you, you've come up from the financial District
• 38:08
  of London and you're talking a language I don't understand at
• 38:10
  all, and now I feel threatened.
• 38:12
  How are you gonna help me get it?
• 38:15
  I can really envisage
• 38:16
  Oh, money in my pocket, like, so that, that's exactly what our charity, so our
• 38:20
  charity is a thousand year Trust that I, that I founded a couple of years
• 38:23
  ago, which is Britain's only rainforest charity, the only charity dedicated to
• 38:26
  the protection restoration expansion of Atlantic temperate Rainforest.
• 38:29
  We're working in a number of different areas.
• 38:31
  Our main focus is around scientific research, just like my father's work
• 38:34
  in tropical Rainforest in the past.
• 38:36
  But also a lot of it is around community engagement, stakeholder engagement,
• 38:39
  and helping other farmers to join clusters and schemes, landscape
• 38:43
  recovery schemes, which is a big
• 38:44
  Rupert Isaacson: push British, but you said stakeholder there.
• 38:46
  Right?
• 38:46
  And I'm the, I'm the, I'm sitting there even as myself and I just went
• 38:49
  communities, communities bringing together farmers and landowners
• 38:53
  to say, how are you gonna help me?
• 38:54
  Merlin?
• 38:54
  I own this farm.
• 38:55
  How are you gonna help me get that carbon money?
• 38:58
  You need to hold my hand.
• 38:59
  You need to take me.
• 39:01
  So, so just talk, walk me through the process of how you'd do that.
• 39:03
  I'm, I'm, I'm
• 39:04
  intrigued.
• 39:05
  So, so that's why we've done it here to create a blueprint site.
• 39:08
  So what I can do is say that, come and see our farm.
• 39:09
  Come and see Cabilla, come and have a walk around and see the trees that
• 39:12
  we've planted, see how the landscape is changing, how as a result of introducing
• 39:16
  things like beavers and bringing back some of the biodiversity, we're
• 39:20
  seeing less flooding, less drought.
• 39:21
  We're seeing more biodiversity, more inverses returning.
• 39:24
  And then let's sit down and in a really basic way, using a
• 39:27
  one pager blueprint document.
• 39:30
  Look at who we introduce you to, who can help you.
• 39:32
  Who are the tree planters?
• 39:33
  Who are the government bodies that will provide you with the
• 39:35
  grant funding to plant the trees?
• 39:36
  Who are the people who come and assess you for their carbon credits?
• 39:39
  And in exactly the same way that farmers, farmers are very bright people.
• 39:43
  They have relationships with the buyers of supermarkets.
• 39:45
  They can have relationships with the buyers.
• 39:47
  On the carbon market, it's the same thing.
• 39:49
  Someone,
• 39:50
  Rupert Isaacson: someone's gotta make that.
• 39:52
  No, I mean, no one, no one introduced me.
• 39:54
  So I, I, yeah, I, I had to figure it out and in the, but,
• 39:57
  but now I'm sitting here, I'm
• 39:58
  Rupert Isaacson: used to leading parallel lies in parallel cultures.
• 40:03
  Yeah, you are not, but now
• 40:03
  I'm here to help them.
• 40:04
  So I'm, I'm here my, the charity.
• 40:06
  So are you basically,
• 40:08
  Rupert Isaacson: that's what you do?
• 40:08
  You, you help them?
• 40:10
  Well, we're a charity, so we're not doing it for a fee.
• 40:13
  We are saying, how can we bring together a community and help people to benefit
• 40:16
  in the same way that we're trying to, and as innovators, it's not an easy
• 40:20
  Rupert Isaacson: for us, but you act like a consultant.
• 40:21
  You, you say, we will help you to.
• 40:24
  Navigate this new rather confusing, as you said, ne nebulous market.
• 40:29
  But
• 40:29
  there are other amazing, there are amazing consultancies
• 40:32
  out there doing exactly that.
• 40:33
  And one of the things we would do is say, look, speed it down here.
• 40:36
  You can say, speak to the forest for Cornwall, who are a Cornwall
• 40:38
  council run group who are helping farmers to transition to
• 40:42
  more of an agroforestry model.
• 40:43
  Okay.
• 40:44
  You can say, look, talk to.
• 40:45
  Yeah.
• 40:45
  There are many people out there, natural England, the Forestry Commission,
• 40:48
  the Environment Agency, they're all trying the wildlife, I dunno, people
• 40:51
  trying help farmers these people.
• 40:52
  It's
• 40:53
  Rupert Isaacson: now, it's good that you're telling me, 'cause now I can
• 40:55
  begin to put together a mosaic, you see?
• 40:57
  Yeah.
• 40:57
  Rather than somebody saying, well, you've got to do something different.
• 41:02
  Yes.
• 41:03
  And that's what farmers have had in the past being told you are the enemy,
• 41:05
  you are damaging the environment.
• 41:07
  You need to do something different.
• 41:08
  And farmers sit there in a really challenging environment and no
• 41:11
  one works harder than a farmer.
• 41:12
  You know, I see our neighbors who are still sheep, sheep farming
• 41:16
  in a very serious way out at 3:00 AM every morning, picking up.
• 41:20
  Dead lambs or, you know, helping lambs give birth or a different,
• 41:22
  or shearing throughout the night.
• 41:24
  And it's hard work.
• 41:26
  And then to say to them, now you need to go and learn an entirely
• 41:28
  different financial model to try and keep your family on the land.
• 41:31
  It's not fair.
• 41:32
  And there are more and more organizations setting up to help them, and we hope
• 41:35
  to, we are one of those as well.
• 41:37
  But it is a, it's gonna be a difficult moment of transition, but you've
• 41:40
  gotta come back to that point as well of going of remembering that most
• 41:44
  farmers are in their mid sixties.
• 41:45
  They're looking to find an opportunity or an excuse to hand
• 41:47
  over to the younger generation.
• 41:49
  The younger generation don't want to go into a debt laden poor
• 41:52
  profitability standard up hill farming.
• 41:54
  The younger generation are going, okay, we, we'll take the land Landover,
• 41:57
  but what are we gonna do on it?
• 41:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 41:59
  And we are there to say, here's an alternative and here's how you transition.
• 42:03
  Got it.
• 42:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Robin, I want to this one to you.
• 42:06
  So the other, the other concern I would have as a, as a farmer
• 42:11
  would be lifestyle and culture.
• 42:15
  Sell me on if, if I, if I go over and give a portion, a significant portion of the
• 42:21
  land over to this rainforest idea how do I
• 42:28
  preserve my, the culture that, the way of life that is dear to me?
• 42:35
  Because yes, I work very hard and yes, I'm in debt for this, but I also love it.
• 42:40
  I love the upland.
• 42:41
  I love the sound of the sheep.
• 42:42
  I love the lambing.
• 42:43
  I love it.
• 42:44
  There's an emotional attachment as well, and we all know this, that, you know, I, I
• 42:49
  partly come from a farming family as well.
• 42:50
  It's not entirely a business thing.
• 42:52
  It's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a love thing as well.
• 42:54
  It's an emotional thing.
• 42:55
  And the attachment to the land and the attachment to the land looking a certain
• 42:59
  way because the, there's no question that, that the English countryside,
• 43:03
  even if it's lacking biodiversity, is very, very aesthetically beautiful.
• 43:07
  There's no question about that.
• 43:09
  It's, it's an art.
• 43:10
  Piece, really.
• 43:12
  And I always feel that we, we mess with it at our peril.
• 43:16
  I get very depressed when I see the, the solar panels covering fields or the
• 43:20
  lines and lines of windmills because it's industrializing the landscape.
• 43:24
  Even if it's in a good cause, it, it, my heart goes down.
• 43:28
  It doesn't go up.
• 43:29
  It's just the cold, hard fact.
• 43:31
  So
• 43:34
  sell it to us now, Robin.
• 43:36
  How, how are you gonna preserve the aesthetic, the lifestyle, the, the culture
• 43:43
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: with the forest
• 43:50
  on, on the case of wind turbines, they're a very emotive subject.
• 43:54
  I got into a lot of trouble with them because I was president of the our local
• 43:58
  conservation organization, which started by, I started it 60 years ago, doing all
• 44:04
  sorts of opposing bad planning and so on.
• 44:07
  Then they became obsessed because a lot of 'em were run by people who
• 44:10
  come down from London living corn.
• 44:11
  And, and the obsession about wind turbines became to, and all, all
• 44:16
  the complaints they were making were all against wind turbines.
• 44:19
  And I made the mistake of writing a paper telegraph saying that not all wind
• 44:24
  turbines, I've got one here, we have one.
• 44:27
  Can't really see it the middle very much.
• 44:29
  And it's not a huge one, but it helps generate the deal of electricity.
• 44:33
  And I dare to say that not all wooden turbines were bad.
• 44:37
  And then I made a mistake of carrying on with the letter.
• 44:40
  And so after all in the Middle Ages, every village in Britain had a windmill.
• 44:45
  Objected to.
• 44:52
  And I got sacked.
• 44:53
  He rated,
• 44:54
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm sure, yes.
• 44:55
  That you could, could choose the, the stake on which they impaled you.
• 44:59
  Yeah,
• 44:59
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: yeah.
• 44:59
  Well, they're now all, all, all being very nice to them and say
• 45:02
  We were wrong actually, because recognizing turbine have a part.
• 45:06
  But, and of course, plannings come into it and they must be environmental friendly.
• 45:10
  We also have an array of tape panels, which I put up about 20 years ago.
• 45:16
  And they're invisible everywhere because I've strategically located
• 45:20
  behind the, and see them many and they help to, to make us almost off grid.
• 45:27
  But I do think that there is a dichotomy always, as there always is with planning
• 45:32
  over where and when things should be.
• 45:34
  And, and it upsets me to see whether a cultural lab, other panels there's
• 45:39
  absolutely no reason why land, but underneath them can't be used effectively.
• 45:44
  And I think this is a mistake making.
• 45:48
  Cheap or geese, or wild flowers, or even as the Japanese are doing very effectively
• 45:53
  now growing vegetable crops underneath panels, apparently we get because of
• 45:58
  the reflected sunlight to actually get, generate a better fertility for garden.
• 46:02
  So there are lots of things that could be happening.
• 46:04
  It's, it's one of those balances that has to be made.
• 46:07
  But even at the same time, you have access to good countryside around that.
• 46:11
  Not necess, not necessarily that that woodland people can walk in.
• 46:17
  That's a better balance.
• 46:18
  It's, it's all going to change.
• 46:19
  Countrysides gonna look different.
• 46:21
  I suspect that offshore wind turbines people don't object as much
• 46:25
  because they can't see them so much.
• 46:26
  Yeah.
• 46:27
  And there are other ways of I mean every, it just astonished me for quite a
• 46:31
  long time that, that it is not law that every new building in the country has
• 46:36
  to have its roots made of solar panels.
• 46:39
  Yes.
• 46:40
  Or the, the roads we drive on or not, they look just like slate and tile.
• 46:43
  Yeah.
• 46:43
  They didn't have to look like panels.
• 46:44
  And I, I, I simply don't understand why that has not been made law,
• 46:48
  because if every rooftop was generating power, wouldn't need panels all over.
• 46:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
• 46:53
  And, and we hope that, that, that day will come.
• 46:55
  My neighbor actually just got his roof redone that way.
• 46:58
  If you made it this far into the podcast, then I'm guessing you're somebody
• 47:03
  that, like me, loves to read books about not just how people have achieved
• 47:08
  self actualization, but particularly about the relationship with nature.
• 47:14
  Spirituality, life, the universe, and everything.
• 47:18
  And I'd like to draw your attention to my books.
• 47:21
  If you would like to read the story of how we even arrived here, perhaps
• 47:26
  you'd like to check out the two New York Times bestsellers, The Horseboy
• 47:31
  and The Long Ride Home, and come on an adventure with us and see what engendered,
• 47:36
  what started Live Free Ride Free.
• 47:38
  And before we go back to the podcast, also check out The Healing
• 47:42
  Land, which tells the story of.
• 47:45
  My years spent in the Kalahari with the Sun, Bushmen, hunter gatherer people
• 47:51
  there, and all that they taught me, and mentored me in, and all that I learned.
• 47:55
  Come on that adventure with me.
• 47:56
  But back to I'm a farmer and I want to be sure somehow that Cornwall,
• 48:04
  the Cornwall I know and love won't disappear and my lifestyle is it.
• 48:11
  So is it just as, as, is it something as similar as as simple
• 48:15
  as saying, well, look, yeah.
• 48:16
  Have some sheep just not that many.
• 48:20
  You know, what, what is it?
• 48:23
  Because I'm very I'm a sheep farmer.
• 48:24
  I'm also attached to sheep.
• 48:25
  I love sheep.
• 48:26
  I, you know, I, I race horses, for example.
• 48:28
  You know, I'm attached to them.
• 48:30
  I love them.
• 48:30
  I'm, it's, it's my thing, right?
• 48:32
  So if you, I, I wouldn't want to give them up, but I
• 48:36
  might to doing it differently, you know?
• 48:39
  As we know, you know, sheep are completely ubiquitous across the west of the uk.
• 48:43
  You see a postcard of Wales or of Devon or of the peak district or
• 48:47
  of Cornwall, and it doesn't have sheep in it and something's wrong.
• 48:49
  And, and, and I've been very keen always never to look backwards and never to say,
• 48:53
  oh, well we should be more like it was 4,000 years ago or even 300 years ago.
• 48:57
  We're not aiming for some golden age of, of a bucolic past that didn't
• 49:00
  exist a sort of prolapse area in time.
• 49:03
  It's about looking forward and actually saying how can we have, and
• 49:06
  farmers have always been dynamic.
• 49:07
  Any farmer who wants to freeze time and and keep doing what's
• 49:10
  always been done has, has always been bark out the wrong tree.
• 49:13
  That's not the way farmers be ha have ever behaved.
• 49:16
  They've always wanted to evolve and be dynamic and agile and move with the times.
• 49:20
  Yeah.
• 49:20
  And they have to go with the markets.
• 49:22
  And I, I, I don't think the job of any of us is to try and solve all of
• 49:26
  the problems everywhere, all at once.
• 49:28
  The market is doing that for us and, and we'll continue to.
• 49:32
  Lamb is being less eaten.
• 49:33
  Natural wool are being less worn.
• 49:36
  And when people want to farm sheep in a, in a lower yield number as they used
• 49:40
  to be, where they would be herded from pasture to pasture and they would be
• 49:44
  moved constantly so that biodiversity could bounce back in a rotational system
• 49:48
  I think that will of course continue.
• 49:50
  Probably forever as far as the human perspective is concerned.
• 49:54
  But the intensive type of farming that we do at the moment where large numbers
• 49:57
  of any kind of livestock are pressed into small areas of space and given
• 50:01
  a lot of artificial feed and then end up actually often being kept inside.
• 50:05
  There was a fire a couple years ago in Texas where 18,000 cows
• 50:09
  died in one fire on a farm.
• 50:11
  'cause it's not a farm.
• 50:12
  It's effectively a giant multi-story car park filled with cows that
• 50:16
  are plugged in for the whole of their lives into machines.
• 50:18
  And then when a fire broke out, there was no way to unplug these bovine cyborgs.
• 50:22
  And they, and they all perished.
• 50:24
  And the same thing happens in pig farms and increasingly in sheep farming as well.
• 50:28
  And I just believe that the markets are going to, not just the markets,
• 50:31
  but societal opinion and government policy are going to start shifting
• 50:36
  people to different models of farming.
• 50:37
  And as they do that, there is an opportunity for the resurgence
• 50:40
  of our rainforest landscapes.
• 50:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Sure.
• 50:42
  So, okay, so now I think you actually answered my question there very well,
• 50:45
  which is, some sheep, but not that many.
• 50:48
  Which is, so therefore there's more opportunity to use the, and as we know,
• 50:52
  you know, one of the reasons they put sheep on those marginal areas in the first
• 50:56
  place is you can't really use it for Yeah.
• 50:58
  Else unless it's trees.
• 51:00
  So let's say now that we, we fast forward 30 years and the rainforest, your,
• 51:06
  your rainforest trust is the thousand year trust has kind of done its job
• 51:12
  in at least stage one and stage two.
• 51:15
  And we are seeing a Cornwall that is effectively a, a secondary rainforest.
• 51:21
  And we mentioned ecotourism.
• 51:24
  So every single 250 acre farm is, is each one going to sort of have its own glamping
• 51:32
  site and or are you going to have.
• 51:36
  Is it going to go a little bit like those private game reserves in Africa, where
• 51:40
  they operate almost as collectives and you could safari through, let's say,
• 51:44
  you know, I, I stay at Cabilla because you guys have bison, you know, and
• 51:50
  then I walk or I drive over to the next rainforest farm through a rainforest
• 51:55
  path because they are bringing back all rocks and yeah, wolf, you know, and then
• 52:01
  I get to see those and then I go over to the next one and they have links, you
• 52:06
  know, and so therefore I'm on this sort of safari that you guys ought to some
• 52:11
  degree pull the money from, but that you each have a little small lodge, you
• 52:15
  know, on your land, which could operate at like a camping level or at a luxury
• 52:20
  level depending on the, so I'm familiar with that 'cause my family did safari.
• 52:24
  We actually ran a a quite remote lodge in Zimbabwe for many, many years.
• 52:28
  And we did it on these multi budgett.
• 52:31
  Thing.
• 52:31
  So you'd ne we'd never get turned away.
• 52:33
  If you just showed up with a tent, you could totally camp there really
• 52:37
  cheaply, just come up and eat in the restaurant or eat, you know,
• 52:41
  cook your own food, whatever.
• 52:43
  If you wanted to come and spend a lot of money, great, we
• 52:45
  could accommodate that as well.
• 52:47
  And all of that money just was plowed back into the elephant conservation
• 52:51
  that, that we were doing at the time and, and keeping the lads employed.
• 52:55
  Are you looking at something like that?
• 52:57
  Some sort of ecosystem, some sort of ecotourism, patchwork, which then the, so
• 53:02
  the farms are making money from timber.
• 53:04
  They're making money from carbon sequestration.
• 53:06
  They're making money in this sort of patchwork way that people can move
• 53:11
  through larger areas in eco safari thing.
• 53:14
  And there's reintroduction of sort of megafauna, you know, what you,
• 53:19
  is it looking like that?
• 53:20
  What you've described is, is a, is a very beautiful model for the future.
• 53:24
  And, and, and in all honesty, that's not that, that model that far out is not our
• 53:28
  mission right now because that's I think that's a, that's a, a a wonderful example
• 53:32
  of how it might work one day scare.
• 53:35
  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 53:36
  But, but Cornwall and, and a lot of sort of southwest Wales and the,
• 53:40
  the temperate rainforest zone, a lot of the economy in these areas
• 53:42
  is already hospitality focused.
• 53:45
  Yeah, that's true.
• 53:45
  And tourism focused.
• 53:46
  Cornwall has a big problem where you basically can draw around the
• 53:49
  coast of Cornwall with a Sharpie.
• 53:50
  And that is the economy at the moment because everybody goes to the beaches
• 53:53
  of Cornwall because that's where they think of as being the places you go.
• 53:57
  We're passionate about drawing people a little bit more inland to see some
• 53:59
  of the beautiful inland Cornwall.
• 54:01
  And, and I, and I also think that there's a really beautiful opportunity
• 54:05
  for us to use some of the models that we see in the global south.
• 54:10
  And, and bring them to the global north.
• 54:12
  Yeah.
• 54:12
  We've had this, this knowledge transfer and, and the same in the
• 54:16
  scientific community for the last few hundred years where Western developed
• 54:19
  in inverted commerce countries are telling underdeveloped countries
• 54:23
  not to cut down their trees, not to kill all their megaphone, and
• 54:26
  not to kill our apex predators long after we've already all done it.
• 54:29
  And I think there's a time for humility around both nature conservation,
• 54:32
  about where we sit back and go, actually, how is it done in Zimbabwe?
• 54:36
  Where, when it is being done really well, how is it done in Sumatra?
• 54:39
  How is it being done in Patagonia?
• 54:41
  And learning and listening.
• 54:43
  But I think alongside that, things like ecotourism, we
• 54:45
  could learn from that as well.
• 54:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 54:47
  So, so Robin and I, I want get, I also don't want to get off this podcast
• 54:51
  without talking about the crazy thing that you guys are going to do in, but
• 54:54
  yeah, we haven't, we haven't thought about any that We'll get there.
• 54:56
  We'll get there.
• 54:57
  But Robin Survival International, I.
• 55:00
  Was founded really so that we wouldn't lose indigenous wisdom effectively.
• 55:04
  Right.
• 55:05
  And you know, I learned, I learned so much from my, what did I learn from my
• 55:10
  time with the Satan, with the Bushman?
• 55:12
  It wasn't just about land management.
• 55:13
  I learned lots about land management.
• 55:15
  I learned lots about relationship with species.
• 55:18
  I also learned about relationship with the supernatural.
• 55:21
  I, I learned about healing technologies.
• 55:22
  I learned about spiritual technology.
• 55:24
  I, I learned about human happiness.
• 55:26
  What I really learned about was parenting.
• 55:29
  I observed that these people because they got so much unconditional love,
• 55:35
  like so much in the hunter gatherer context, because they're not being raised
• 55:38
  to be warriors that, so there wasn't this idea that we gotta toughen you up.
• 55:43
  It was the opposite.
• 55:46
  It was, let me just try to fulfill all your needs.
• 55:50
  And then you'd see these people at about 16, they'd just kind of take a spear,
• 55:54
  go into the bush, come back with the wildebeest, and then two years later
• 55:58
  they'd go off down to Johannesburg, like go into the city and learn to
• 56:02
  speak Zulu, English and Aans in like a year, just peer over somebody's shoulder
• 56:08
  while they're messing with a vehicle.
• 56:09
  And within six months they know how to be a diesel mechanic.
• 56:11
  And then come back to the bush and be to, and I, I realize, oh my
• 56:14
  gosh, oh my gosh, that the mental health of these people is so good.
• 56:19
  This is how we're supposed to be.
• 56:21
  And it starts with these things like co-sleeping and wearing your kid
• 56:24
  on your body, because you wouldn't dream of putting your kid on the
• 56:27
  other side of the hut because ness will come into your hut and take
• 56:29
  your kid, and you won't even here.
• 56:31
  So you, and it goes Sub-Zero at night.
• 56:33
  There's no way you, you're gonna do that, you know?
• 56:35
  Just be stupid.
• 56:37
  So the, the practicality led to this.
• 56:40
  Functionality was also a very compassionate community because
• 56:44
  everything's about problem solving because you're not the top predator.
• 56:47
  So rather than creating conflict, you had to always resolve conflict.
• 56:53
  And for that you had a shaman or a healer standing at the center of
• 56:56
  the community so that when the funky monkey shit happens in our funky monkey
• 57:00
  brains there's some way of sort of washing the psychic dirty laundry.
• 57:04
  And I realized, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
• 57:06
  You know, we, we moved so far from this and this is why we're all so messed up.
• 57:12
  Now, we go to the rainforest, our temperate rainforest, the Celtic,
• 57:16
  you know, Sylvan Lu flutes and chased me around the red maple, you know,
• 57:20
  chaps with pointy ears and so on.
• 57:22
  But it still comes outta the warrior culture.
• 57:24
  All of the Celtic myths are about people being committing acts of atrocity to
• 57:28
  each other and basically ripping each other's guts out and do being horrible.
• 57:32
  You know,
• 57:35
  do we have a chance?
• 57:37
  When it comes to the rewilding of the land in this way, Robin, you've
• 57:43
  been, you've been an advocate of you're one of my heroes.
• 57:48
  You know, because we couldn't have done what we did in the Kalahari without you.
• 57:52
  There's no way you provided that structure.
• 57:54
  You now in an interesting position where we could rewild our western warrior
• 58:00
  culture that juts out into, you know, the, the British Empire and the piracy
• 58:05
  and all of that and the colonization, and which came on the back of just
• 58:08
  the Iron Age warrior culture that came on the back of the Bronze Age warrior
• 58:13
  culture that came on the back of the agricultural revolution that caused
• 58:17
  all the shit in the first place.
• 58:18
  And you guys are really at this cusp of reconnecting with our source
• 58:26
  ecologically, but also culturally.
• 58:30
  Dream a little.
• 58:31
  What, what do you see as the, you know, I, I do, we have a chance to become
• 58:38
  pre Celtic Bushman, like cheddar man.
• 58:41
  Being nice to each other rather than shitty to each other.
• 58:44
  And but still keeping our technological goodies somehow while rewilding back
• 58:51
  to what produced us in the first place before it all went wrong.
• 58:55
  Like, what are your thoughts on that?
• 58:58
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: I've always been a great believer in using the best of
• 59:01
  technology as well as the best of natural living to combine together and get the
• 59:05
  best of both worlds as an objective.
• 59:07
  And wouldn't it be wonderful if, if we were able to reforest a proportion
• 59:12
  of Britain, yet Nolan knows all the figure, but I mean, Britain is the
• 59:15
  least forested country in Europe.
• 59:18
  What is it?
• 59:18
  13% and Oh yeah.
• 59:20
  13, 14% in the UK can benefit 33% in in Europe, 8.5%
• 59:25
  in Cornwall.
• 59:26
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: So if we just brought ourselves up to the European
• 59:28
  average of, of doubling or troubling as far as the land of Britain, it
• 59:33
  would begin to change a lot of the stuff you're talking about with because
• 59:37
  there would be access to that lamb, which would give people the freedom to
• 59:41
  start enjoying the sort of lifestyles that we all know are healthier.
• 59:46
  I mean, both you and I have done a lot of long distance riding.
• 59:49
  Will and I have written eight long distance rides, a thousand miles or so
• 59:52
  around different countries in the world.
• 59:54
  And I always say it is the ultimate way to experience the world because
• 59:58
  you are riding on an intelligent animal and riding from wonderful countryside.
• 1:00:02
  And Britain is very depleted on ride paths for various historical regions.
• 1:00:07
  And wouldn't it be wonderful if, if, if one of the ways in which people
• 1:00:11
  began to access the countryside was on a horse and being able to
• 1:00:14
  have the economy as you touched on, of the local farms turning from.
• 1:00:19
  Being purely short, being hospitable as well.
• 1:00:22
  So to do the ride anywhere, in any direction and end up finding someone
• 1:00:26
  where we could put horse up and stay for the night and move on through the woods.
• 1:00:30
  And it, it is a glorious way.
• 1:00:31
  We did it in we, we inaugurated pen I right away, which is right above
• 1:00:36
  it runs now, runs all the way up the pens in the middle of Brooklyn.
• 1:00:40
  Very poor farming lab for farmers.
• 1:00:43
  Very, very little opportunity diversification.
• 1:00:46
  And one of the things way back, this was 20, 25 years ago I was banging on about
• 1:00:50
  then was that there's a huge opportunity for every farm in those remote penan
• 1:00:56
  not so different upland to be able to be ready to facilitate visitors.
• 1:01:03
  And if they, if it became a standard thing, it would be, they'd be putting
• 1:01:06
  up different people every night and charge them a certain amount.
• 1:01:09
  Bombing people effectively.
• 1:01:10
  Yeah.
• 1:01:11
  And local on the Camino route in northern Spain.
• 1:01:14
  Absolutely.
• 1:01:14
  Exactly.
• 1:01:15
  Yeah.
• 1:01:17
  Rupert Isaacson: No, I'm, I'm, I'm with you.
• 1:01:18
  You've actually just described Hessen where I live.
• 1:01:20
  I can ride, I can get on my horse and if I see it, I can ride it.
• 1:01:24
  It's, it's, I've never experienced this anywhere else.
• 1:01:27
  There's this crazy tolerance here.
• 1:01:29
  It's also not a fence landscape.
• 1:01:31
  It's not really a livestock area, so it's either orchards
• 1:01:34
  cropland or hay meadow or forest.
• 1:01:37
  Right.
• 1:01:38
  Go ahead.
• 1:01:39
  Yeah, Melin.
• 1:01:40
  I just, I just, because everything that you just said about your experiences
• 1:01:43
  with the San and I, I say that I have a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old at the moment.
• 1:01:46
  So Lizzie and I are going through that process of, of raising small
• 1:01:49
  children and, and, and trying to figure out the best way to do it.
• 1:01:52
  And we're actually reading an amazing book, which I'm sure you may well
• 1:01:54
  be aware of, called hunt Gather, I think it's called Hunt Gather Parent.
• 1:01:57
  Fantastic.
• 1:01:58
  Which basically looks at people like San and, and other indigenous communities and
• 1:02:02
  how they raise their children and tries to layer that onto a sort of a Western model
• 1:02:05
  because we're, we're trying our hardest to do that because raising children in
• 1:02:09
  a, in the western structure that we've created where both parents work and you
• 1:02:12
  have all of these pressures and stresses and expectations to put them in their
• 1:02:15
  own room as quickly as possible and make them strong and tough and ready for the
• 1:02:18
  world is is really, really challenging.
• 1:02:20
  So everything ize the
• 1:02:21
  Rupert Isaacson: shit out them early and then Yeah, exactly.
• 1:02:23
  And then later on, everything you say, I, I completely sit at your
• 1:02:30
  feet and and, and completely.
• 1:02:33
  Wanna time to talk to you about, because I agree with you and know knowledge on
• 1:02:37
  this subject and something that, that I'm talking about a lot moment around again.
• 1:02:44
  I have no doubt that the world that you describe will be the
• 1:02:47
  world that we live in in 3025.
• 1:02:49
  Because I'm an optimist and I'm positive, and, and, and I believe that we have the
• 1:02:53
  ability as humans to do great things and wonderful things, and we make bad short
• 1:02:56
  term decisions, but over the long term we do incredible things as a species.
• 1:03:00
  In a thousand years, in the year 3025, I believe in the UK that
• 1:03:04
  there will be a lot more rainforest.
• 1:03:06
  There will probably be things like Lynx and wolf and and, and beaver.
• 1:03:09
  And many of the species that we've lost will have come back, eagle, owls
• 1:03:11
  and ospreys, and it'll be amazing.
• 1:03:13
  There will probably be fewer people and those people will
• 1:03:15
  live in much greater harmony.
• 1:03:18
  Like yeah.
• 1:03:18
  As you say, cheddar mount, I never wanna look backwards.
• 1:03:20
  It's always about looking forwards and using technology.
• 1:03:22
  And we've used drones here to plant many of our trees.
• 1:03:25
  Mm.
• 1:03:25
  We use no fence technology on, on some of the capital, which allows
• 1:03:29
  us to have free ranging mob grazing, tightly knit herds without the need
• 1:03:33
  for lots of fencing and barbed wire and horrible things that prevent the
• 1:03:36
  normal migration of many native species.
• 1:03:38
  And, and so I think we can use and leverage technology to create a
• 1:03:41
  really bucolic future where we live in harmony with nature in a non-war and
• 1:03:45
  non-confrontational, more of a hunter gather type way, but using technology and
• 1:03:49
  still having all the benefits of modern medicine and dentistry and the things
• 1:03:51
  we don't want to lose my big buck up.
• 1:03:54
  Yeah.
• 1:03:54
  On that.
• 1:03:54
  Well, my, my, my big, my, the whole point that thing, I think the only.
• 1:03:58
  Question we have as humans.
• 1:04:00
  So we are currently in 2025 where a lot of things seem to be going wrong.
• 1:04:03
  By 30 25, I believe a lot of things will have gone right.
• 1:04:07
  We have two questions about or two options, how we get there.
• 1:04:10
  One looks a lot like a Mad Max movie where we continue down our
• 1:04:13
  path of ecological destruction.
• 1:04:15
  It ends up with war, plague, famine, the four horsemen of the apocalypse,
• 1:04:18
  as my father has written about.
• 1:04:20
  Lots of leather, lots of cannibalism.
• 1:04:22
  It sounds pretty horrible.
• 1:04:23
  That goes on for a few centuries, and then we end up eventually reestablishing
• 1:04:27
  our connection to Mother Nature and to the world as it needs to be connected
• 1:04:31
  and learning from that indigenous wisdom that is the route that we are
• 1:04:34
  currently on, and that is a horrible route that no one should want to be on.
• 1:04:37
  The other option, which is harder, more difficult and and involves more
• 1:04:40
  change from all of us at a personal level right now, is that we march in
• 1:04:43
  step with Mother Nature and with, with the, the rainforest and all the other
• 1:04:47
  pinnacle habitats around the planet.
• 1:04:49
  And we get to that point in 2050 generations time, in a thousand years
• 1:04:53
  time, where we're still at the same end state that we go down that warfare path,
• 1:04:57
  but we've done it without all the trauma, the death, the killing, and all of the,
• 1:05:01
  the things that are looking like they might be quite inevitable at the moment.
• 1:05:04
  And I say that as a soldier who spent time in in the military and knows what it's
• 1:05:08
  like when people go to war and know that there is no upside, there is no benefit.
• 1:05:11
  And everything we're trying to do at our charity is set the
• 1:05:13
  conditions for a wonderful, beautiful future in a thousand years time.
• 1:05:17
  And it will be difficult to get there, but I do believe we can do it.
• 1:05:20
  Rupert Isaacson: I think by putting your, your sights there, honestly, I
• 1:05:22
  think we're gonna get there a lot sooner.
• 1:05:24
  And if, if we look at the world when I was a boy, there was a lot of war.
• 1:05:30
  Like, you know, I grew up mostly in the uk but our, our family was African, so
• 1:05:35
  we were backing and forth and so on.
• 1:05:36
  There was war in just about every country down there when I was a boy
• 1:05:42
  and South Africa we had apartheid.
• 1:05:45
  It's gone and all those countries, there's a few pockets of stuff, but
• 1:05:49
  really the only big we have still going on is the Congo in that area.
• 1:05:55
  Yes, the Sahel with its problems with the Jihads and that something,
• 1:05:59
  but that was always there actually.
• 1:06:00
  That was always there.
• 1:06:01
  It was always a very violent zone and, in general, it seems, you know, it's,
• 1:06:06
  it, it seems flippant to say this with Gaza and with Ukraine, but there's still
• 1:06:11
  less war than there was on balance,
• 1:06:14
  and it's amazing how unimaginative we can be as humans.
• 1:06:17
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:06:17
  And, and I've seen this with, with beavers.
• 1:06:19
  There's a very small case study where in 2018 when we started
• 1:06:23
  our beaver reintroduction program at Cabilla, everybody said we
• 1:06:25
  were mad it wasn't gonna work.
• 1:06:26
  They were maniacs with chainsaws.
• 1:06:28
  It was the worst thing ever.
• 1:06:29
  It was gonna destroy nature and.
• 1:06:32
  Seven, eight years have passed since then.
• 1:06:34
  And now every time beavers are reintroduced anywhere across
• 1:06:36
  the uk everybody sees it as an incredibly positive story.
• 1:06:39
  And it's incredible how reverse shifting baseline syndrome can work.
• 1:06:43
  That we can go from knowing the world, someone's who
• 1:06:45
  Rupert Isaacson: gives it a go, you
• 1:06:46
  know, the innovators and how the world as it is right now
• 1:06:49
  is how it should always be.
• 1:06:50
  And any change is scary and, and, and probably destructive.
• 1:06:54
  And then we make that change and we suddenly look backwards and go, how could
• 1:06:57
  we ever have been so, shortsighted to not see that this would be a good thing?
• 1:07:01
  And I think that will happen on a societal level, on a planetary level,
• 1:07:04
  and, and on an ecosystem level.
• 1:07:06
  Rupert Isaacson: You guys are not just talking about it.
• 1:07:08
  You are putting your money where your mouth is.
• 1:07:11
  So, one things I love about you, Robin, is you like my dad.
• 1:07:15
  So my dad is 91 this year and arguing with my mom about whether
• 1:07:20
  or not she should do her own.
• 1:07:22
  Who's at.
• 1:07:23
  Seven, I think whether she should do her own road trip in South Africa to
• 1:07:27
  meet him in his solo trip in Zimbabwe that he's off to do at 91 or whether
• 1:07:32
  they should go there together.
• 1:07:34
  And they were giving out about this together bickering at the
• 1:07:36
  table in London the other day.
• 1:07:37
  I was there.
• 1:07:38
  I'm like, lads, you do see that this is a win, right?
• 1:07:41
  The fact that you're sitting here having this, having this argument is
• 1:07:46
  a, is a, is is a major achievement, you know, not everyone has that luxury.
• 1:07:50
  And, and Robin, you know, you've, you've put your body on the line.
• 1:07:56
  You've done a lot of physical stuff as well as helping
• 1:08:02
  policy change and, you know.
• 1:08:04
  Helping to protect environments and peoples who live in those environments.
• 1:08:08
  And you're about with your son to do it again.
• 1:08:10
  You're about to do something a bit nuts, which I love.
• 1:08:13
  So would you guys tell me the nuts thing you are gonna do
• 1:08:18
  and how can we help support it?
• 1:08:22
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: Well, I have previous on this one when I was
• 1:08:25
  about to be 80, I thought that was old and stood up with the idea.
• 1:08:28
  So I did eight silly things for Survival International starting with running the
• 1:08:32
  marathon, not actually for a long time.
• 1:08:36
  And anyway, I raised up survival during that.
• 1:08:39
  I then, after I was covid, I raised 50 by climbing Mountain when I was,
• 1:08:46
  and I realized that people will help if you put the right story to.
• 1:08:50
  And what Merlin is doing is so inspiring with the temperate rainforest.
• 1:08:54
  And we've mentioned the research station, which she's building now,
• 1:08:58
  which he needs a lot of money for.
• 1:09:00
  And if you want to study topical rainforest, there were research stations
• 1:09:03
  all over the world in, in Borneo and in Africa and Amazon and Panama and so on.
• 1:09:10
  So anybody can study tropical rainforest.
• 1:09:12
  But now the, the interest in temporary rainforest, which we're looking
• 1:09:15
  realize how important and where they're is, is growing and isn't a single
• 1:09:20
  temporary rainforest research station.
• 1:09:22
  Not only is starting the on the farm, that is what, not in
• 1:09:26
  Canada, not in the Pacific Northwest.
• 1:09:28
  No, no, there are.
• 1:09:29
  Sorry, just a Yeah.
• 1:09:30
  There, there are in, in Tanzania sorry, not Tanzania.
• 1:09:33
  In in Tasmania and in New Zealand there are a couple, and there are
• 1:09:37
  places in Canada, especially in British Columbia with a lot of research done.
• 1:09:40
  And in Japan, in the Pacific temperate rainforest, there, there is not a single
• 1:09:43
  Atlantic temperate rainforest research.
• 1:09:45
  Oh.
• 1:09:45
  So, yes, of course we the Atlantic and.
• 1:09:47
  Anywhere from Southwestern Norway, from from Bergen and Norway down to
• 1:09:51
  Bragger in northern Portugal, which is really that temperate rainforest
• 1:09:53
  range from, from southwestern Norway till northern Portugal.
• 1:09:57
  And where we are in Bobman, sits slap bang in the middle of that range and is
• 1:10:01
  the perfect place if you were to have a nexus, a hub, a home of temperate
• 1:10:05
  rainforest scientific research.
• 1:10:07
  Sorry, I didn't mean to
• 1:10:09
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: I facts.
• 1:10:12
  Yeah.
• 1:10:12
  I was like, really?
• 1:10:13
  Rupert Isaacson: And then you're right, but you nothing in the Atlantic.
• 1:10:16
  We don't think it's there because we cut all down.
• 1:10:18
  And, and, and this is why, as I, as I was mentioning earlier on, that
• 1:10:21
  everybody, both young and old knows about Rainforest and how important
• 1:10:25
  they're, and it's because of things like the Ulu expedition that my father ran.
• 1:10:28
  It's because they've been so well researched until we start actually
• 1:10:32
  investing in that scientific focus on our Atlantic temperate rainforest zone.
• 1:10:36
  Everything from Galicia, which has lots of rainforests, the Fragas Perdidas
• 1:10:40
  the, the Breal Rainforest, the the Irish rainforest, which is stunning
• 1:10:44
  from the, the Highlands of Scotland where they have amazing rainforest
• 1:10:46
  in the Welsh Celtic rainforest.
• 1:10:48
  We need to be investing in understanding the data behind that, climate mitigation,
• 1:10:53
  biodiversity, and mental health benefit, because it's only when we can present
• 1:10:56
  that to the governments of all of these areas that they will then invest in
• 1:11:00
  protecting and restoring these habitats.
• 1:11:01
  It all has to start with science.
• 1:11:03
  Rupert Isaacson: So you're start, you're, you're, you're raising
• 1:11:05
  money to start a research station, the research station, but you're
• 1:11:08
  gonna do something a bit stupid.
• 1:11:10
  Okay.
• 1:11:11
  Which I love.
• 1:11:11
  So tell, tell me the the stupid thing you're gonna do.
• 1:11:13
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: Well, the legs aren't what they were, so I'm not gonna
• 1:11:16
  do any running or climbing any mountains.
• 1:11:19
  So I'm just gonna try and make use of the bit the left.
• 1:11:22
  It still work as I enter my ninth nineties, my ninth decade.
• 1:11:26
  And my arms pretty good then.
• 1:11:28
  So I've been doing lots of training on the rowing machine.
• 1:11:30
  The original purpose was to row across the English channel, which
• 1:11:33
  seemed like that an easy thing to do.
• 1:11:36
  Immigrants are doing it all the time after all, but it's now become very
• 1:11:39
  complicated with legislation and, and, and because, so, it's 22 miles from,
• 1:11:46
  so instead of doing that, I'm Miles, first of all, the river, which divides.
• 1:11:53
  And then the next day and England
• 1:11:55
  divides and England as we like, sorry, sorry, England, like Texas and America.
• 1:11:59
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: Get that.
• 1:11:59
  Right, exactly.
• 1:12:00
  And, and then the next day I'm going 11 miles up and 11 miles down, which is 22,
• 1:12:04
  which is the same as the English channel.
• 1:12:06
  And purpose be to show that you don't give up on very well and if you want
• 1:12:10
  to raise money for a good cause, you used a bit sort of still working.
• 1:12:14
  Rupert Isaacson: So you, you're gonna row 26 miles on the Tamar River.
• 1:12:17
  And again, for the listeners who, who, dunno what that might mean
• 1:12:21
  that's not a leisurely row because the Tamar River comes down quite
• 1:12:26
  quickly from the uplands of Dartmore.
• 1:12:29
  Right.
• 1:12:29
  More or less to, so I could see coasting down it quite happily.
• 1:12:35
  But the idea of rowing up, it makes me want to hide up.
• 1:12:40
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: It's actually titled by then and it's wind, wind.
• 1:12:43
  Okay.
• 1:12:43
  So
• 1:12:43
  it is a hard challenge though.
• 1:12:44
  It'll be yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:45
  I, I'm gonna run with him and I think it'll be hard work for, for me.
• 1:12:48
  It'll be very hard work for a person who's gonna be on their 89th birthday that day.
• 1:12:53
  So what day is it happening?
• 1:12:55
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: May the seventh?
• 1:12:56
  May
• 1:12:57
  Rupert Isaacson: 7th.
• 1:12:57
  So soon
• 1:12:57
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: May the seventh, which is my birthday.
• 1:12:59
  Maybe eighth, which is VE day.
• 1:13:01
  Okay.
• 1:13:02
  Rupert Isaacson: So we are right at the end of April, 2025.
• 1:13:05
  Some of you of course, will be listening to this.
• 1:13:08
  You know, you'll find this on YouTube like five years from now and go, oh,
• 1:13:11
  well, you know, I missed that one.
• 1:13:13
  Well, no you didn't because what will have happened by the time you find this is that
• 1:13:17
  the handbury tenons will have, of course, used that money that they raise, and then
• 1:13:21
  the subsequent stupid shit that they do for the next five years to keep raising
• 1:13:26
  more money to build this research station.
• 1:13:29
  Yeah.
• 1:13:29
  How much money do you need?
• 1:13:30
  What's it gonna take?
• 1:13:31
  What do you think?
• 1:13:33
  So we've launched a crowdfunder for, for this particular challenge which is live at
• 1:13:37
  the moment and has some beautiful videos if anyone's interested to learn a bit
• 1:13:40
  more about it and some really good kind of architects, renderings of what the
• 1:13:43
  research station will look like, which will be right on the edge of the, the
• 1:13:46
  rainforest here in the Cabilla Valley, and Aviva or supporting that pledge as well.
• 1:13:51
  So anything that's given to this pledge will be matched by Aveva.
• 1:13:54
  So we're aiming to raise 50,000 pounds in this first one.
• 1:13:57
  We need about 600,000 pounds to actually build the research station.
• 1:14:00
  So this is just the beginning, but if we can raise 50,000 pounds on
• 1:14:03
  the Crowdfunder that gets matched by Veva, which raise it to a hundred.
• 1:14:07
  And then we've got some philanthropists who've said that if that is successful,
• 1:14:10
  they will then match that money again.
• 1:14:12
  So actually, if people help with that initial 50,000, it unlocks so
• 1:14:16
  much more and it actually gets us to having 200,000, which is a further
• 1:14:19
  way to completing the station.
• 1:14:21
  And our aim is to have it built this year in 2025.
• 1:14:24
  So we've got a lot to do, but we're gonna get it done
• 1:14:27
  Rupert Isaacson: now once you complete the station.
• 1:14:29
  It needs to be manned.
• 1:14:30
  It needs to be staffed.
• 1:14:31
  It needs to be, so what's the plan for that?
• 1:14:33
  What's the sustainability plan for so.
• 1:14:38
  Has a fantastic team already.
• 1:14:40
  We've got two amazing research directors.
• 1:14:42
  We've got a, a, a gaggle of research assistants who come in and help.
• 1:14:45
  We've got formal partnerships with six different universities.
• 1:14:48
  Last year we did six PhDs and 20 MSCs.
• 1:14:51
  This year we're planning to do 40 MSC and 12 PhDs to, to double the amount
• 1:14:55
  of research that's been done here.
• 1:14:57
  So we already have a huge kind of support network and infrastructure.
• 1:15:01
  We just lack the actual physical infrastructure to, to especially have
• 1:15:05
  people in a residential capacity, which is the really important thing.
• 1:15:08
  'cause right now when students come here, they really need to be either
• 1:15:11
  coming from nearby or have their own arrangements for where to stay.
• 1:15:14
  This will facilitate in exactly the same way that if you went to do research in
• 1:15:18
  Costa Rica or sac, there are research stations where you can join these
• 1:15:22
  multi-year multidisciplinary programs, contribute to peer review papers, and
• 1:15:26
  shift government policy on these habitats.
• 1:15:28
  Rupert Isaacson: What, what's the, what's the.
• 1:15:32
  Most pressing research that you guys think needs to be done.
• 1:15:35
  Okay, so the, the center's that it's up and running.
• 1:15:38
  What's like project number one, total priority.
• 1:15:41
  So we, we really break it down into these three areas around climate,
• 1:15:44
  biodiversity, and human health.
• 1:15:46
  And for me, the one I'm most excited about is human health.
• 1:15:48
  So we know from a lot of studies that in places like Japan, British Columbia, and,
• 1:15:52
  and South Korea, that spending 30 minutes in a temperate rainforest environment
• 1:15:56
  and your cortisol levels, your key stress hormone drops to a level that can
• 1:16:00
  still be measured up to two weeks later.
• 1:16:02
  So, and that's because of the, the terpenes and fight inside the volatile
• 1:16:05
  organic compounds that are secreted during the photosynthetic process that we breathe
• 1:16:09
  in, in these temperate rainforest habitat.
• 1:16:11
  So we know they do amazing things.
• 1:16:12
  They increase kidney function, boost immune system response.
• 1:16:15
  They put us from our sympathetic nervous state, our fight or flight, and they help
• 1:16:19
  transport us into our parasympathetic, our homeostasis, rest and digest state.
• 1:16:23
  So we, we know they do this and there's huge anecdotal evidence.
• 1:16:26
  I don't think anybody feels that being in a busy urban environment
• 1:16:29
  is better for their stress than being in a a, a gorgeous, wild,
• 1:16:33
  ancient rainforest environment.
• 1:16:35
  But what we need now is the data that really supports that.
• 1:16:38
  So that we can get it into places like the NHS for green prescribing, right?
• 1:16:41
  And so that we can get it onto, onto minister's agendas.
• 1:16:44
  So for me, the physical and mental health benefits of temperate rainforest
• 1:16:48
  environments is, is goal number one.
• 1:16:50
  Rupert Isaacson: So ideally doctors are prescribing people testing.
• 1:16:53
  Yeah.
• 1:16:53
  And they already are.
• 1:16:54
  There, there are seven NHS areas in the UK where they, where doctors, if you come
• 1:16:57
  in and you are demonstrating anxiety, stress, depression the doctors, rather
• 1:17:01
  than immediately putting you on clinical medication, which is very beneficial and,
• 1:17:05
  and, and should never be discounted can, can also recommend green prescribing.
• 1:17:10
  So going on a gardening course, going and spending time in nature,
• 1:17:13
  and they're finding so much more benefit than they thought they
• 1:17:15
  were from Wait, where are these
• 1:17:16
  Rupert Isaacson: seven NHS districts that are doing this?
• 1:17:19
  I've, I, I looked at the, they, they're dotted all over the uk.
• 1:17:22
  There is one down in the southwest and I think there are a couple up in the
• 1:17:25
  Midlands a few in the Southeast as well.
• 1:17:27
  Why did these
• 1:17:27
  Rupert Isaacson: particular areas decide to do that?
• 1:17:30
  Do, do you happen to know the background?
• 1:17:31
  I mean, I'm, I'm also, I might go on Google and Google it.
• 1:17:34
  There was a, i, I write about why there and not somewhere else.
• 1:17:37
  You know,
• 1:17:38
  I write about it in my book RO Bones, which has just come out.
• 1:17:41
  Okay.
• 1:17:41
  But there was very limited government funding initially, and, and they
• 1:17:45
  spread it across the country from the NHS to try and get a good range.
• 1:17:49
  And I don't actually believe there's a plan to continue the funding at the
• 1:17:52
  moment, which is a huge, huge shame.
• 1:17:54
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm sure.
• 1:17:55
  You know, it's interesting.
• 1:17:56
  I dunno those, those listeners who know what we do, we have these three
• 1:17:59
  main programs for mental health and one of them, which is called Movement
• 1:18:02
  Method, which is a non equine thing.
• 1:18:04
  We actually just ran our first neuroscience conference in a out of a
• 1:18:08
  medical school in the USA last year, which we were asked was a big breakthrough.
• 1:18:13
  Where with doctors now beginning to prescribe movement in nature for
• 1:18:18
  neuroplasticity as well as, as you also say, bringing down cortisol levels, bring
• 1:18:21
  up oxytocin and serotonin and all these things, which, which we now know happen.
• 1:18:26
  It's all really the same work.
• 1:18:30
  And it's just so interesting that we're now just on the cusp of a revolution
• 1:18:36
  in health where we can actually get prescribed to do the things that we all
• 1:18:40
  know, you know, have always known, worked.
• 1:18:44
  If you think about, you know, mental health, asylums, you know, the whole idea,
• 1:18:48
  asylum actually means sanctuary, you know, and that the old idea was that people
• 1:18:52
  could go to a beautiful natural area and just kind of get over their psychosis
• 1:18:57
  before they went back to, and then it became, of course, something horrible
• 1:19:00
  with torture chambers and all of that.
• 1:19:02
  And now we think of an asylum as that.
• 1:19:04
  But it's, it's interesting to me.
• 1:19:08
  That you guys are there at the forefront of this movement.
• 1:19:12
  And as you say, if you have a, if you have a, a research
• 1:19:15
  station, this can change policy.
• 1:19:19
  My little dream, my little optimistic dream of, are we going back to a sort of
• 1:19:25
  hunter-gatherer, bushman way of living?
• 1:19:30
  While at the same time, you know, holding onto the technologies that we've, you
• 1:19:35
  know, developed at some cost to ourselves.
• 1:19:38
  But, and nonetheless beneficial.
• 1:19:40
  And that is of course the perfect world, isn't it?
• 1:19:42
  You know, and a re wilded landscape that everyone can access with benefit for
• 1:19:47
  all that, you know, makes us healthy in the same way that, you know, that
• 1:19:52
  that was one of the other things.
• 1:19:53
  I'm sure this, you know, obviously Robin, you would've noticed this
• 1:19:57
  too, that when you are hanging out with sun, people often.
• 1:20:02
  You're dealing with people who are 90, you know, with bodies
• 1:20:05
  a bit like teenagers, you know?
• 1:20:06
  Oh yes.
• 1:20:07
  And they'd be like, oh, I'm not what I was, I'm a bit, I'm a
• 1:20:10
  bit, you know, I'm a bit stiff.
• 1:20:11
  I'm a bit, and then, you know, they start clapping and doing the healing
• 1:20:14
  dance and they just like leap up, you know, from a squatting position and
• 1:20:18
  Busta bunch of moves and then say, oh, well, you know, I'm not what I was,
• 1:20:21
  I'm not what, you know, and then they go sprinting across the, you know, I
• 1:20:24
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: couldn't agree with you more the, the, the,
• 1:20:26
  the, the human health idea that tribal life was master ish and short.
• 1:20:30
  It's a terrible myth.
• 1:20:30
  I've seen so many really healthy old people.
• 1:20:33
  You just say a couple of years ago I was in quite remote area of Burma up
• 1:20:38
  and going back to what you was talking about just now, and came on with a shack
• 1:20:42
  and it was a small solar panel on it.
• 1:20:44
  And I said, interpreter to the cap sitting underneath what, what's that for?
• 1:20:49
  What's the solar panel for?
• 1:20:50
  He said To charge my mobile phone.
• 1:20:52
  Of course.
• 1:20:53
  And suddenly I realized at that moment, I mean the, the, the world has, has.
• 1:20:58
  Absolutely potentially transformed through proper use of technology and
• 1:21:03
  can, can revolutionize everything.
• 1:21:05
  I mean, this man can be, as far as I knew, taking a degree at Harvard by,
• 1:21:09
  on the internet 'cause of one simple piece of technology, one solar panel,
• 1:21:15
  but linked him up to the whole internet.
• 1:21:17
  And that's gonna be transformational in so many ways.
• 1:21:21
  Rupert Isaacson: I agree with you.
• 1:21:22
  Alright, listen guys, I think what we need to do is, I think we just
• 1:21:25
  barely scratched the surface here.
• 1:21:27
  Would you guys consent to come back on because people will have questions and
• 1:21:32
  I wanna find out how it went after the, after you guys do your row up the river.
• 1:21:36
  And I want to sort of follow the progress.
• 1:21:39
  So just before I let you go, 'cause I got, I know you guys are short
• 1:21:43
  of time, just the plugs quickly.
• 1:21:45
  How do people find the website to support the thousand Year Trust?
• 1:21:49
  How do they find Cabilla?
• 1:21:51
  And tell me about your book.
• 1:21:53
  Sir.
• 1:21:54
  Alright.
• 1:21:54
  So one, two, 3000 year trust.
• 1:21:56
  First
• 1:21:57
  it would be very, it'd be wrong with me to write a book without my father
• 1:22:00
  bringing one out at exactly the same time to cast me back into the eternal shade.
• 1:22:05
  So the thousand Year Trust is, is all online.
• 1:22:07
  If people look at the, the website is www dot thousand year trust org.
• 1:22:11
  And our crowdfunder, there's links to it on the website, but that's also, if you go
• 1:22:15
  on Crowdfunder and, and the usual things, which I always feel so awful saying is
• 1:22:19
  please do follow us on social media.
• 1:22:20
  We're on Instagram and, and are posting lots about the challenge on there.
• 1:22:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, cool.
• 1:22:25
  Okay.
• 1:22:25
  Thousand year trust.
• 1:22:26
  Look for it all over the social media stuff.
• 1:22:28
  Alright Cabilla, how do they find what they come to?
• 1:22:31
  Cabilla.
• 1:22:32
  Cabilla, I would welcome anybody and encourage anybody to please get in
• 1:22:35
  touch about Camon or retreat at cabilla.
• 1:22:37
  So Cabilla Cornwall, that's www do cabilla cornwall do com.
• 1:22:41
  How do you spell spell Cabilla?
• 1:22:42
  Rupert Isaacson: How do you spell Cabilla?
• 1:22:43
  C Like, like Camilla, but with a B.
• 1:22:45
  So C-A-B-I-L-L-A.
• 1:22:47
  Two Ls.
• 1:22:48
  And two Ls.
• 1:22:49
  And that's also all over Instagram.
• 1:22:50
  So please do find our website, find us online.
• 1:22:53
  Drop us a message would be wonderful.
• 1:22:55
  Super.
• 1:22:55
  And the books.
• 1:22:57
  And, and my, my first book R Open Bones, which is the story of much of what
• 1:23:01
  we've been talking about, but so much more as well was Bones our, our Open.
• 1:23:06
  So like Open, oh, love our Open Bones.
• 1:23:10
  And it was published a month ago by Penguin.
• 1:23:12
  It's been doing really well and we've been getting lots of great feedback, but it's
• 1:23:14
  Rupert Isaacson: the story of everything we're doing here in the valley.
• 1:23:17
  Open bones and Robin, because you can't let your son publish
• 1:23:21
  a book without interfering.
• 1:23:22
  Of course.
• 1:23:23
  Make sure all you need character building for him.
• 1:23:25
  Robin Hanbury-Tenison: Yeah.
• 1:23:25
  All you need to do is go into my website, which is very simple.
• 1:23:28
  Robins books, co uk, Robin's books, Robins Books uk.
• 1:23:33
  All 27 books are on there, including my teenagers that
• 1:23:36
  have just won an act this week.
• 1:23:38
  And can all be got through that website, including access to all
• 1:23:42
  the films and podcasts and other broadcasts and things I've done.
• 1:23:46
  It's all on there.
• 1:23:47
  The easiest way is just going and buy some books now.
• 1:23:51
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:23:51
  Robins books.com.
• 1:23:52
  Now also anyone who's interested in the work that Robin has done over the
• 1:23:56
  course of his life too, you should just check out Survival International.
• 1:24:00
  It, it's not they don't present it as a monument to Robin, but just look at the
• 1:24:04
  work that's being done all over the world with indigenous people and just get some
• 1:24:08
  of that down your neck because it's.
• 1:24:11
  It's, it's work that needs to be supported and I'm, I'm so glad that
• 1:24:14
  you've now brought that back to the west.
• 1:24:17
  Okay, my friends, I know you need to run, so I'm not gonna talk to you any further.
• 1:24:21
  So until the next time, thank you.
• 1:24:24
  Be well.
• 1:24:25
  And I will hit the stop recording.
• 1:24:28
  Thank you.
• 1:24:29
  Thank you so much.
• 1:24:29
  Pleasure.
• 1:24:29
  Oh,
• 1:24:30
  Rupert Isaacson: it's so my pleasure.
• 1:24:31
  I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
• 1:24:35
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• 1:24:39
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• 1:24:43
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• 1:24:48
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• 1:24:49
  And if you'd like to find out about our certification courses with.
• 1:24:53
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• 1:24:57
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• 1:24:59
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• 1:25:04
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• 1:25:19
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• 1:25:22
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• 1:25:34
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• 1:25:35
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• 1:25:40
  In the meantime, remember, live free.
• 1:25:44
  Ride free.