Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 911: Creating a DIY Wildlife Refuge with Doug Tallamy

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Ep. 911: Creating a DIY Wildlife Refuge with Doug Tallamy · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the whitetail Woods presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. This weekend's show,
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: I am joined by professor ecologist and best selling author
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Doug Ptolemy to discuss the fascinating ways that hunters can
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: turn their properties into DIY wildlife refuges that can help
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: not only the species that we hunt, but also the
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: entire natural world. All right, welcome back to the Wired
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light, and
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: today we are kind of putting a capstone on our
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: spring of habitat conversations. We've had these off and on
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: over the last two or three months talking about how
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: we can improve our properties for better deer hunting or
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: turkey hunting, how we can take maybe a tactical approach,
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: and also how we can take more of a holistic approach.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: I think there's there's kind of two different ways of
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: thinking about the work we do on our hunting properties
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: and our land that we manage. One of those is
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: how do we tactically set up better hunting opportunities? And
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: the other one is how do we simply improve the
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: landscape for wildlife and for animals of all kinds. And
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: that's something that over the years, as you've heard on
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: this podcast, I've grown more and more interested in kind
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: of widening the aperture, zooming out a little bit and
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: looking at, you know, our opportunities on the places that
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: we own or manage, and seeing the really interesting things
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: we can do there when we think beyond just hey,
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: how do I kill more deer, but instead how do
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: I have great hunting but also really healthy habitat and
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: a strong sustainable future for this place. Those are the
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: kinds of things that you know, as someone like you
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: or I, if we own land, or lease land, or manage
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: land in any kind that's a huge privilege, a huge
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: opportunity to have someplace where you can make that kind
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: of difference. And with that in mind, our conversation today
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: is one that I'm very excited to have because our
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: guest is someone who's really helped me frame this kind
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: of thinking and understand the opportunity that we have to
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: make a positive difference to not only kind of make
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: our hunting better or our own personal experience better, but
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: actually make things better for a lot of people and
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: a lot of critters in a much wider scale than
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: maybe we ever imagine. So my guest today is Doug Ptolemy.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: He is a professor at the University of Delaware. He
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: is an entomologist and an ecologist, and he is a
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: best selling author. He's written several books, most popular, maybe
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: is Nature's Best Hope. He also wrote the Nature of Oaks,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: and most recently, his newest book is how can I
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: help Saving nature with your Yard? And this idea of
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: saving nature with your yard is kind of what put
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Doug on the map, I think for a lot of
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: people with that book, Nature's Best Hope, because in that
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: one he talks about this opportunity that we have if
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: we were simply to convert half of the nation's yards
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: into wildlife habitat. There's something like forty four million acres
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: of yard across America, and his idea in his book was, Hey,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: let's take about half of that and turn it into
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: something better. Can you imagine how we could help the
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: many different critters out there that are not doing so
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: well right now? If we change what's right now a
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: weekly mode lawn into some other kind of native, helpful,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: useful plant life that could help birds and bugs and
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: small mammals and all sorts of stuff. Deer in turkey
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: is included. Well, I read that and I thought immediately,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: while that's makes a lot of sense, that's exciting. What
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: if we could scale that up up? Because I know
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: some people that don't just own yards, They own or
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: manage or lease, you know, tens or twenties or hundreds
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: of acres of land for wildlife right our hunting properties.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: What if we could do some of the things that
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: he was talking about on a yard scale and instead
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: ramp that up to a deer hunting property scale. What
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: if we could improve wildlife not for one acre, not
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: on one acre, but on one hundred acres or one
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: thousand acres. I mean, we can make a really huge difference.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: So that's what I want to talk to Doug about.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: How can we take his ideas around this concept he
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: refers to as his homegrown National park concept and scale
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: that up to what I've started referring to as a
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: DIY wildlife refuge concept, where we can improve these properties
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: for wildlife that we can hunt, but also for everything
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: else out there. This is something that we've talked about
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: over the years, and now I think Doug is going
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: to help us really tie a bow on it. So
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: I'm excited about this conversation. I'm excited about what Doug
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: has to say in this chat. We talk through his background,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: We talk about how he kind of came to this
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: philosophy of land management. We discuss how his concepts that
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: were originally created for improving small properties for wildlife can
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: translate to bigger properties like what we have. We talk
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: about some of the I think hotly debated topics in
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: the hunting world around management, which would be like, you know,
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: native versus non native species, is it really that important?
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Should you really be you know, having to get rid
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: of your automotive or your whatever stuff that's in there.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: That's maybe you see animals using and deer using, but
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: technically our non native and maybe aren't so good. We
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: get into the details with Doug. He's someone who really
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: understands this stuff. We talk about responsible ways to use herbicide.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: We talk about, you know, ways to actually think about
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: the plants that you are adding to your property or
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: the trees by using something called the keystone plant idea,
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: you know, really kind of leveraging plants that have an
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: extra high impact on the surrounding natural world. We talk
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: about some different ideas for dealing with invasive species. We
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: talk about why oaks are so important for wildlife, and interestingly,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: it is beyond just the acorns that we think about.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: There's much much more here. Doug's a fascinating individual. If
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: you have any kind of land to your name, whether
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: it be a thousand acres or forty acres or two acres,
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: this is a conversation you're gonna want to listen to.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: It's going to help your hunting. It's going to help
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: you improve the landscape for wildlife of all types. You're
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: gonna enjoy it yourself, You're gonna help other animals and
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: other people around you. And I think that's gonna help
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: our hunting way of life moving forward to because if
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: we as whitetail hunters and land managers and be seen
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: as helping the natural world and being a part of
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: the solution, it's going to help us in many, many
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: ways down the road beyond the obvious. So with that
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: all set, I'm gonna quit beating around the bush. Here
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: we're gonna get to my chat with Doug Tollmy, and
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: I promise you're gonna enjoy this one, all right. Joining
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: me now is Doug Tolemy. Doug, welcome to the show.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: Very happy to be here, Mark.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate you taking the time to do this.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: You are someone who I've who have been reading for
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: a handful of years now, and I've listened to over
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: the years as well, and folks that tune into this
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: podcast have been requesting you for some time because we've
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: talked about a lot of topics that are within your world,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: in your wheelhouse, I've probably danced around a lot of
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: the concepts that you specialize in. So I've had a
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: number of emails and messages over the last couple of
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: years saying, Hey, you got to get Doug on, You've
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: got to get Doug on. He's the He's the og
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: as some people say these days, and the original and
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: that that said, very excited to be able to talk
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: to you about a number of things that relate to
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: both wildlife management and landscape management and wildlife of all
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: types and kind of the intersection between all those things.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: So to kick things off, Doug I want to kind
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: of just jump right off the dock, right into the
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: deep end here. There's no uh, there's no foreplay here.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Many of your books, yea, many of your books, Doug,
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: kind of open by establishing a foundation of where we
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: are right now, and that being setting the stage around
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: this concept that a lot of folks are calling the
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: biodiversity crisis or the sixth mass extinction. Can you share
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: with us your summary of that set of issues. If
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: you were sitting in a you know, in a school
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: classroom with a bunch of college students today and they said, hey,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: you know, why is all this stuff so important? Why
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: are you writing all these books? If you were going
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: to open up that lecture or that discussion by explaining
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: this biodiversity crisis, how would you do that, Doug?
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: Well, if I were talking to a bunch of college kids,
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: I would try not to depress them. But it is
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: it is a sad state of affairs. We the Earth
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: is in the sixth grade extinction event it has ever experienced.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: But this is the first one to because by a
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: living being, and that of course is us. We've lost
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: two thirds of Earth's wildlife. You know, three billion breeding
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: birds gone from North America. In the last fifty years,
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: we've got global insect decline. Paper came out about three
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: weeks ago. Is just since the year two thousand, we've
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: lost twenty two percent of our butterflies. So you know,
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of bad statistics out there. That's the issue.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: And the connection is that those are the species that
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: run the ecosystems that provide the life support that keep
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: humans alive. So we can look at this totally selfishly.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: We will not exist on the planet without nature, yet
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: we're wiping nature off the planet. So since we know
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: what the problem is, it also makes it's something we
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: can fix. We can stop doing that. And that's what
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: I've been talking about for the last I don't know
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: twenty years now. How do we learn to live with nature?
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: The old idea the humans in nature can't live together,
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: that we're separated, that it's happy someplace else, not happy
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: someplace else. There are very few someplace elses these days,
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: and most of them are degraded by one thing or another.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: So what we have to do is give up that
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: old notion and learn how to get nature to thrive
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: and human dominated landscapes, because that's just about everywhere, So
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: that's what I talk about all the time.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, as I understand it, a lot of this
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: kind of hit home for you on your own property
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: that you and your wife have been working on. Can
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: you share just a little bit about how your experience
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: is there? Open your eyes maybe to this, because there's
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: one side of this that's facts and figures on the page,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: which are stark and compelling, but sometimes they can make
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: our eyes our eyes glaze over.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: A little bit.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: But when you see some of this, you know, on
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: the ground yourself, and you start to see what maybe
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: a healthy landscape versus an unhealthy landscape might look like,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: that can be a little bit more eye opening, for
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: lack of a better term. What have you seen there
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: on your own piece of ground when you guys first
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: started that has led to where you are now.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Well, we bought a section of a farm in Oxford,
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: Pennsylvania in the year two thousand. There's ten acres, so
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: I don't know what one hundred sum acre farm. It
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: was broken up into ten acre lots, very old farm
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: and farmed almost three hundred years and the last thing
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: they did was mow it for hay. So you know,
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: so I always exhausted that the crops were going, the
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: cattle were gone. They just mowed it for hay. And
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: when you mow for hay in this part of the country,
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: you're really mowing the rootstocks of all the invasive plants
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: from Asia. So you're mowing multi flour rows and our
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: elem bittersweet and Japanese honeysuckle and bush honeysuckle and autumnolive
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: and all of that. And they call it hey because
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: they're not really using it as hey. They're selling it
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: to the mushroom industry and they don't care what it is.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: But when you stop mowing, so mowing does not kill
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: the rootstocks. So when you stop mowing, all those things
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: come back with a bench in vengeance. And we it
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: was out of mowing three years before we actually moved in,
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: So we moved into ten acres of just solid invasive
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: plants from Asia. We had to cut trails just to
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: be able to walk around. So that was an eye
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: opener for me. I mean, I'd heard of invasive species,
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: but I lived in suburbia before that, and even though
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: we actually had them on our property, I wasn't tuned
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: into that. But then I was tuned in and said, well, look,
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: you know this is this is this would be a
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: great ecosystem in Beijing, but not here. Now. I'm also
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: an entomologist, and we learned about host plant specialization in
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: graduate school back in the seventies that you know, perfect
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: example of that is the monarch butterfly. It is a
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: specialist on milkweed. You take milkweed away and you lose
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: the monarch butterfly can't eat anything else. Well, ninety percent
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: of the insects that eat plants are host plant specialists.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: So right away I say, okay, we've just replaced our
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: native plants with plants from Asia. Our insects aren't going
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: to be able to eat eat that. So that actually
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: stimulated a new direction of research for me. I wrote
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: a couple of grants. They got funded, which is a surprise,
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: always a surprised when you get funded. But it told
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: me my peers weren't thinking about this either. Nobody else
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: was working on this, and that really set the stage. Okay,
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: we've got we've got to measure what the impact of
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: invasive plants are. What's it doing to the insect populations
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: that actually run our ecosystems. And I'm talking largely about.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Caterpillars are the meat and potatoes of terrestrial food webs.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: If you don't have them, you're not They're transferring more
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: energy from plants to other animals than any other type
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: of plant eater. So you take them away, you lose
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: your birds, you lose all kinds of things. What's happening
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: to those ecosystems? Where are these plants come from? So
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: I found out, well, they're actually they're escapes from our gardens.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: Just all the ones I mentioned are brought in by
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: the horticulture trade, and they're now in our natural areas,
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: actually millions of acres of our natural areas. So are
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: we just degrading the food web in our natural areas?
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: Yes we are, but nobody measured that, so we wanted
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: to get real numbers on it. We talk about caterpillars.
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: How many catapillarsts does it take to make one nest
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: of chickties six thousand and nine thousand caterpillars? To get
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: one nest of chicktys to the point where they leave
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: the nest. Where those caterpillars are going to come from,
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: not from automolive, not from crete myrtle, not from ginko,
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: not from all the things we have in our suburban landscapes.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: So even if the plants are not in what we what,
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: we decorate our human dominated landscapes with our plants that
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: don't support the food with and that's what we wanted.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: We want to get measurements on all of that stuff.
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: The next thing is how do we change that? But
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: you know, then I learned, gee, we've got a lot
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: of lawn out there. We got forty four million acres
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: of law. We've got one hundred and thirty five million
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: acres of residential landscape. That's where our invasive plants are
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: coming from. You know, that's an area bigger than all
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: of New England combined, dedicated to decoration. It's an ecological
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: dead scape. Does it have to be that way? Absolutely not.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: We can turn that around. So that's the other thing
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: my property showed us. We got rid of the invasive plants,
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: and by we I largely meet my wife, and then
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: we put in the natives. And we have counted sixty
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: two species of birds that have bred on our property
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: since then. I am counting the number of caterpillar species
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: that I find just moths so far, and I'm up
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: to one three hundred and forty seven species that I
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: have pictures of because we put the plants that they
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: need back. So what that tells me this works. Nature
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: is really resilient. It will rebound if we use the
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: right plants, and that is that is the solution to
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: the whole thing. Using the right plants. Putting the right
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: plants back. Plants are capturing energy from the sun and
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: turning it into the food that supports just about all
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: the animals out there, certainly all the terrestrial animals. So
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: plant choice matters. If we choose their plants widely, we
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: can rebuild ecosystems. And I do get emails all the
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: time from people who are doing this. Hey, this really works?
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: Does it works? So that's what keeps me going. It works.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: So there is a common I guess retort to what
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: you're just describing there. I've heard it myself. There's debate
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: around it within the wildlife management and hunting community. I
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: know you written about it in your books. That being well,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: the whole native plant thing is kind of like it's
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: dust in the way, and it's it's pointless. Nowadays, the
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: non native invasive plants have become naturalized they're part of
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: the landscape. Now, who says what's native and what's not? When?
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: What's the timescale you're looking at? We might see, you know,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: back in the farm behind my house, there's all sorts
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: of automotive and I see all sorts of wildlife using
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: that stuff. I see deer bedding in there. I see
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: you know, birds feeding on the berries. I see critters
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: moving in. And you know what's so bad with that?
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Why would we want to get rid of that? These
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: are all the kinds of things that start coming up
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: when we talk about this native versus non native how
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: And I know you talked about some of this already,
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: but could you expand just a little bit more on
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: that and and how the value of those native plants
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: is so much greater, especially you talked about the insects
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: and and kind of you know, selective partnerships, but between
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: insects and plants and whatnot. I've loved your writing on this.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Would love to hear just a little bit more on
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: that front.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: Well, you brought up about ten points with that. You know,
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: if things were in good shape, the monarch would be
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: in good shape. We've lost ninety six percent of them.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: We wouldn't have lost three billion breeding birds in the
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: last fifty years, we wouldn't have biodiversity decline everywhere. So
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: you might see a few deer in your automolive back there,
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: which they're not eating. By the way, the interaction between
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: deer and our basis is a really important one. The
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: deer don't eat them, but they do eat all the natives.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: So what do you have left. We think they're superplants,
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: but they're not. It's just that the deer and the insects,
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: all the things that usually keep things in check over
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: here don't use them at all. Do birds eat the
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: berries from multi floor rows and autumn alive, Yes, they
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: do for two reasons. It's the only thing there, and
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: they need nutrition, particularly in the fall when they're migrating.
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: But when there's a choice, it's been shown they will
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: choose the native berries over the non native ones every time.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: Why because the native berries things like like dogwood and
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: Virginia creeper and a native by burnhams, they're very high
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: in fat, and that's what the birds need, particularly when
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: they're migrating, and it's what the birds need to overwinter.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: They need fat to get them through the rough times.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: The berries from automaalive and bush honeysuckle and multi flower rows,
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: all of those guys, they're high in sugar. So yes,
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: the birds eat them, but it doesn't give them what
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: they need. So yeah, I mean, I do hear this
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: all the time too. I see, Oh, there's lots of
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: bees on these flowers. Well, they're mostly honey bees, which
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: is an introduced bee itself. We've got thirty six hundred
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: to four thousand species of native bees, and anytime anybody's
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: measured them, they're all in decline, just like the honey
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: bee is in trouble. So yeah, I mean it's you've
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: got to have a baseline. You got to say what
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: was there before for these things invaded, Know what was there,
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: and then compared to what's there now before you can say, hey,
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: it looks great. This is something called shifting baseline. We
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: think that the way things were when we were kids,
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: when we were growing up, is the way they've always been,
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: in the way they always should be. So if you're
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: born into a world that has suffered defination, like you know,
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: you don't have the American chestnut anymore, you don't miss
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: it as it's been gone. You don't miss the passenger
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: pigeon because it was gone before any of us were born. Well,
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: when you're born into that world, do you think that's normal?
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: So there's no issue. That's the way it was when
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: I was born. Well, it's highly degraded compared to what
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: it used to be. Why does that matter. We've got
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: to get back to ecosystem function. Way back in nineteen
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: fifty five, I guess it was Robert MacArthur was a
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: theoretical ecologist who said, you know, ecosystems depend on the
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: number of species in them. The more species that are
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: in an ecosystem, the more stable it is and the
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: moreductive it is. And by productive, we're talking about those
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: life support ecosystem services that we live off of every day.
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: So when you start taking species away from an ecosystem,
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: it becomes less productive and less stable, and that's why
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: the loss of these numbers. And you can talk about
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: you know, ecosystems function locally too. So you look at
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: the number of species that are in your yard now
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: compared to what it was before it was your yard.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: It's a tiny fraction of it. You say, well, yeah,
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: but it's happy someplace else. We're adding eight hundred thousand
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: acres of new residential landscapes to the US every year,
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: So we could say it's not a problem, but that
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: doesn't make it not a problem.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So something you just said there sparked another common
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: question within my world. For many worlds, I suppose, I
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: think there's a lot of folks out there who have,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: like a favorite species in the hunting world, might be
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: the favorite species to hunt and managed for in you know,
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: in the non hunting world, Hey, I love bluebirds, I
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: want more bluebirds around. Or hey, I really love seeing
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: elk in my neck of the woods in Colorado. I
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: want to make my ranch better for elk or whatever
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: it might be. Or in our case, you know, there's
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: folks who love white tail deer, so they want to
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: make their landscape better for white tail deer. When speaking
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: to these people, it's sometimes hard to expand the aperture
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: beyond just that favorite species. We're thinking, well, if I'm
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: going to invest time and money in doing something better
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: for my yard or my one hundred acres or whatever
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: it might be, why wouldn't I just direct all my
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: efforts towards the very single best thing for this one thing,
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: The best thing for my bluebirds, or the best thing
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: for the white tail deer, the best thing for the
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: bob white quail. But something you spoke to right there
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: is a pretty powerful concept that I'd love you to
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: expand on, which is just the necessity of diversity and
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: productivity within an ecosystem. Can you just speak a little
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: bit more about this sometimes fluffy idea of how everything's connected.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: We always hear like, oh, everything's connected, there's this web
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: of life, and what happens to the bugs will impact
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: your deer. That's like a nice concept in theory, it's
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: harder to understand and practice. Can you build that out
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: a little bit more for us?
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: Well, you've said it pretty well. Nothing exists in isolation.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: You can't have healthy deer population without having the resources
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: to support those deer, and unfortunately that includes the predators
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: to keep the deer population in check. I live in
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: Chester County, Pennsylvania, where the deer are about fourteen times
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: over the carrying capacity of the environment. There's no understory left,
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: there's no ground nesting birds or anymore. There's no recruitment
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: into our forest because there's so many deer. I could
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: get up and look out my window right now, and
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: there'll be four or five deer standing right there because
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: they live here all the time and they're eating everything.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: I have no golden rodunless I have a cage around it,
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: you know, even violets, evening primrose, all the things that
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: actually create a healthy meadow system are are gone. What
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: I do have is Japanese stilt grass and porcelain berry
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: and all those little automotives and multiple rows keep trying
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: to come back that the deer don't touch. So the
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: overpopulation of deer is an issue. It is not the
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: deer's fault. It's the fact that we have We have
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: given them perfect edge habitat they love that taken away
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: their predators. So of course there's nothing, nothing checking their
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: population until you get to the point where where you know,
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: you get disease outbreaks and starvation. That's not the way
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: we want to manage our deer populations. You want to
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: have bluebirds. They're just like the chickadees. They they're rearing
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: their young on caterpillars and grasshoppers and crickets and and
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: if you don't have those, you don't have bluebirds. We
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: have a nest of tree swallows in our bird house
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: Now why are they there, Because there's a healthy meadow
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: that's actually producing that flying insects that they need. Where
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: do those insects come from. They come from the plants
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: that are in that meadow. They're not coming from the
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: stilt grass that has invaded that meadow. So this is
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: the connection. And the same thing gets always gets back
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: to the quality of the plants. And one of the
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: things I didn't talk about before is that it's not
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: just native plants versus non native plants. It's productive native
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: plants versus not productive plants. So this is where the
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: concept of keystone plants comes in. If you're trying to
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: pass food on up the food web so that you
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: have lots of other types of animals, you have to
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: have the plants that are willing to do that. That's
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: why the non native plants are, you know, a problem
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: here because nothing eats them, so they don't pass on
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: their food. The ones that pass on the food the
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: very best in North America, at least in eighty four
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: percent of the counties in North America are oaks. They're
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: passing on more energy to food webs than any other
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: plant genus. But we got a lot of high productives
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: native native prunus, willows, hickories, even black walnuts. They're all
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: very highly, highly ranked. But there are native plants like yellowwood,
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: even spice bush, you know, supports a spice bush swallowtail,
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: but not a whole lot more than that. I could
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: design a native landscape that produces very little because there's
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: such differences in the productivity of plants. So we want
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: to focus on We want to at least make sure
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: that our landscapes all have keystone plants in them. They
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: can have a diversity of other things as well, but
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: if you have landscapes without the keystone plants, you have
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: a failed food and then everything collapses.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: So we have this high level problem across the nation,
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: across the world. We have this invasion of non native plants.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: We have this invasion of human development and our footprint
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: in so many other ways, degrading landscapes and you know,
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: sending wildlife populations of all types into decline. You wrote
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: in your book Nature's Best Hope that you thought the
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: elderly Leopold had it figured out pretty well. You wrote
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: that his solution was to teach farmers and ranchers techniques
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: to restore and conserve natural resources on their own lands
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: with incredible foresight. Leopold suggested, quote rewarding the private landowner
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: who conserves the public interest. Can you expand on that
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: a little bit further and how that kind of led
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: you to your homegrown national park concept.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: Well, think about the people that live in cities with
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: the people in Manhattan. Manhattan is not generating any ecosystem
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: services to support those eight million people. It's all coming
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: from lands elsewhere. And that's what I was talking about.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: It's the farmers. It's the natural areas that we have
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: preserved that are creating the life support to keep everybody alive.
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: So that's why they should be rewarded for that. The
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: farmer who adds a pollinators strip to its soybeans or
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: his corn ought to be compensated for that. And actually
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: we have a CRP program where they are compensated for that.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: Not only are they helping the pollinators, they're intercepting top
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: soil before it gets into the watershed and all the
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: nutrients that create a dead zone in the Gulf. I mean,
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: it's a win win for everybody, but it shouldn't be
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: on the farmer's back to do that. Everybody needs these
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: ecosystem services, so everybody ought to be paying for them.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: We have this idea that the earth is free, you know,
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: water is free, air is free, and we can and
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: it'll be there forever. Well, the Earth's not growing at all.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: Our population is growing, but the earth isn't growing the resources.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: We're using resources faster than the Earth is replacing them.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: Do we have to know? But we are, and we
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: need to address that issue. So I talk about a
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: pay per use fee. We won't call it a tax,
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: We'll call it a fee. Just like you're watching netfix,
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: you're willing to pay for that. Well, if everybody paid
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: ten dollars per year and a pay per per earth fee,
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: I'm just talking about the US, that would generate three
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: point two billion dollars a year that we could put
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: terms of environmental issues and in terms of the individual
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: it's one trip to Starbucks. You know, you wouldn't even
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: notice it. It just but it emphasizes that these resources
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: are not free. They have to be managed. And the
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: sooner we start doing that, the better effort going to be.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: So with individual homeowners and landowners. You then talked about how,
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: hey there's forty four you know some million acres of lawn.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: There's one hundred and thirty some million acres of residential landscape.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: What if we also started finding ways for those people
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: to have influence of some kind, whether it be a
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: quarter acre or one acre or five hundred square feet.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: What if they could also start doing some of those
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: things that you just mentioned, you know, farmers are doing
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: on a larger scale with their pollinator strips or whatever
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: might be. What if they started taking little positive actions
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: on their own postage stamp of whatever size that might be.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: That's that's what led to your homegrown national park idea
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: that I know you've written a lot about. Could you
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: could you talk a little bit more about what that
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: looks like.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I got that idea when I saw the
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: forty million acre lawn figure that was way back, you know,
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: early two thousands. I said, well, what if we cut
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: that area in half? So cut everybody cut the area
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: of lawn they have in half. That would give us
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: twenty million acres we could restore right at home. Then
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: I said, how big is twenty million acres? And I
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: started adding up the acreage of all of our major
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: national parks, and you add them all up, it's still
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: less than twenty million acres, So I said, gee, we
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: can create a new national park. We'll call it Homegrown
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: National Park as we're doing it at home, and it'll
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: be the biggest park in the country. So it's kind
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: of disconnected. But the object here is we've got these
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: viable habitats. Those are our parks and our preserves, but
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: in between it's no man's land, which means the population
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: in those parks and preserves of everything is small and
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: small popular. All populations fluctuate, you know, good times they
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: go up and bad times they go down. Small populations
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: go in their bad times, they blink out of their
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: little habitat and then they're gone, and you've lost that
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: population from that habitat. Unless they recolonize it, it's permanently gone.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: And that's happening all over the place. So with our
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: isolated little parks and preserves, they're bleeding species on a
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: regular basis. How do we stop that? Not only do
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: we connect them with what people cook biological carters where
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: plants and animals are moving back and forth. There's no
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: inbreeding depression in those sites. That helps, but the populations
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: are still small. So what we need to do is
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: restore the land in between those and where is that.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: That's our that's our properties, that's where we live, where
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: we work. I won't even touch the farming. Just where
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: we live, where to work, where we pray, play, our
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: little parks, at our little preserves. We've got to make
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: them viable habitat against so that when you move outside
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: of a real park, it's not no man's land. That
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: we can have viable populations right there with humans. And
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: so Homegrown National Park and lists all of the property
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: owners out there, and there are millions and millions and
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: millions of them. They become the future of conservation. And
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: the only downside there is that they don't know that yet.
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: So that's that's what National Bard is all about, is
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: to get that message out that the amount of law
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: on you have and the plants you choose for your property,
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: they're going to determine how much life can exist where
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: you live. And if everybody did that, you know, seventy
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: eight percent of the entire country is privately owned. Eighty
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: five percent east of the Mississippi is privately owned. So
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: if we did this on private property, and actually we
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: have to do it on private property because if we don't,
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: you've eliminated most of the country. Then it can succeed,
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: and if we don't do it, we're going to fail.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: And failure is not an option because we cannot live
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: without nature. So what it does, what Homego National Park
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: does is empower the individual. We don't have to go
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: through the government, and that's a good thing because that
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: not only does it take forever and often goes in
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: the wrong direction. You get to decide whether you're going
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: to fix the earth. You've claimed you can own piece
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: of the earth. So along with that comes the responsibility
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: of taking care of it. And Homegong National Park is
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: simply about getting that message out.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: I love it. I think it's empowering and exciting to
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: give that sense of agency back to the individual. You know,
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: and my family. We've been trying to follow some of
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: your precepts. We've shrunked the size of our lawn. We've
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: added now two different kind of native plant gardens that
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: we're trying to kind of steward and showing our kids,
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: and the kids are planting things and watching stuff grow
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: and seeing how all the little critters are using it more.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: And that's been a lot of fun and I also
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: had a very funny thing just happened. We also participate
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: in no mo May and so we've been doing that
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: for the last four weeks. And I got a text
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: message from a neighbor just yesterday and he texted me
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: he said, are you out of town? It looks like
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: you need to bawl your yard And I had to
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: tell them you, no, we are not out of town.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: Just a lifestyle choice here. But this is a long
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: winded way of me saying for people who are interested
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: in the homegrown national concept idea and want to practice it.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: You mentioned, you know, prioritizing native plants, but can you
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: can you speak to any of the other precepts of
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: this kind of change with how we manage our yards
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: other than prioritizing native plants or in addition to what
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: else would you add to that or what pillars are there?
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's lots of things we can do that will help.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: A major one in terms of insect decline, and remember
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: insects are the little things that run the world. Is
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: light pollution. We have lights on all night long. We
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: don't need them, so you could turn them off, but
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: oh no, the bad man will come. You could put
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: a motion sensor on it, so it only turns on
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: when the bad man does come. But the real solution
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: is to if you're not going to turn them off,
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: is to take the white ball out of those those
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: security lights and put in a yellow bulb, yellow incandescent
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: or yellow LED because yellow wave links do not attract
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: nocturnal insects. Most of the insects that are attracted are
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: the moths that are laying the caterpillars producing the caterpillars
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: that run the food web. So it's a very you know,
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: one trip to the hardware store solution to a really
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: really serious environmental issue. That's that's one thing you can do.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: You know, when as they reduce the lawn, people say
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: why you do that. I to just plant a tree,
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: plant one tree a year. In ten years, you've got
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: ten trees going in there. When we moved in, you
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: know mode for Hay, I planted egcorns. They were all free.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: Today those trees are over sixty feet tall, so you know,
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: it was pretty easy and they are definitely running the
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: ecosystem on our property. Be mindful about when you do mow,
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: set the mower high enough so if you go over
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: the box turtle or if you go over the toad,
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: you know it's not mince meat. Don't mow at dusk
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: when those things are out walking around. Put plastic covers
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: over your window wells they all, you know, these creatures
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: fall in there and they can't get out and then
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: they starve to death. These are little things that do
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: make a diffference in that suburban setting. When you when
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: you see something crossing road, don't run over it with
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: your car. You know, see that every single day, Stop
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: and move it. Things like that.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So so one quick specific question on the nomo
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: may thing. Uh, what do you think about nomo may
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: is it? Is it all hype or is it actually helping?
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: You know? The concept, I'm all for it. The concept
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: is take that unproductive law you have and make it,
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: make it useful. But if you have a really nice lawn,
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: there aren't any blooming plants in there. Part of the
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: fertilizer you put on there actually has a broad leaf
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: herbicide in it, and all you have is grass. So
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: if you don't mow it, then you have tall grass.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: Grass isn't going to support any of those pollinators, whether
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: it's mode or not. I think a much better well,
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: the other thing is if you if you don't mow
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: it in May, let's say you're supporting a bunch of pollinators,
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: but then you start mowing it in June July, you've
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: pulled the rug out from underneath all those pollinators that
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: you're supporting. So it's much better to have less lawn
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: and have no mow. Areas that you never mow, and
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: we call them pollinator gardens. They're not going to be
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: based on grass. They're going to have the blooming plants
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: that are blooming from April all the way through the
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: end of October. That's what our pollinators really need. The
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: lawn you keep and this will make your neighbor happy.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: You're going to mow that. You know it's going to
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: be swaths of lawn that go through your property. We
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: call that a queue for care because it shows you
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: haven't moved out, that this is intentional. You are managing
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: your yard. You do understand what the status symbol is,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: and lawn is a status symbol. You're just going to
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: have less of it. But if you take care of
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: it in the standardized way, and that doesn't mean you
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: need fertilizer and herbicides and just keep it mode and
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: nobody knows that, then nobody has a problem with it.
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: It's totally acceptable. You'll have more plants on your property,
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: but people don't notice that either. As long as you
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: got that lawn mode, then you're in good shape.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. So I want to take us to
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: kind of the the crux of this whole conversation, Doug,
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: and the reason that I really wanted to get you
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: on here, which was this kind of epiphany I had
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: over the last i don't know, over the last decade,
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: since I first started reading some of your work and
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: following some of what you have to say while also
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: doing some of these types of projects myself. You know,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: I read about this homegrown National park concept and how
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: you're you know, proposed, and we apply this to the
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: twenty some million acres of yards out there. Well. At
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: the same time, I've been reading and looking at studies
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: and work around this scale of recreational land across the nation,
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: And a study came out from UC Berkeley a number
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: of years ago that put a number of three hundred
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: and fifty six million acres across the nation that are
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: either owned or leased primarily for hunting. And so when
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: that quantification of the kind of scale of influence that
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: the hunting community has. When I saw that it was
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: it was a huge eye opener for me. I realized, oh, wow,
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: we're not just a bunch of people out there that
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: have this pursuit that we enjoy so much, but we
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: also influence a tremendous swath of the American landscape. As
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: you mentioned, that's more than the National Park System.
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: That's really a times more than what the National Park
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: System is managing.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: It's a huge area, it's a huge number, and the
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: total amount of federal public lands of all types US
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: for service wilderness areas BLM National Park that's six hundred
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: and forty million acres. So we're we're, you know, more
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: than halfway to the entire public land the state of
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: the nation that's managed by people who hunt and have
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: that kind of relationship with the natural world. So I
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: know that community. I know there's a lot of people
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: within that community who want to improve their land for wildlife,
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: who want to have maybe originally came into this wanting
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: just better hunting, but oftentimes when you start down that path,
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: it becomes like a gateway drug into wanting to do more.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: That's certainly what I've experienced personally, and so I got
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: to thinking, what if we took Doug's homegrown national park
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: concepts that should help us address the biodiversity issue on
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: our lawns to twenty to forty million acres. What if
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: we took similar concepts and apply that to three hundred
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: and fifty six millions acres managed by hunters who also
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: want to see wildlife thrive. That seemed like a massive
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: opportunity for me. That seemed like this this huge important
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: role that the outdoor community could play, And I started thinking, like,
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: if the landscapes for of our yards are a homegrown
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: national park where you know national parks you can't hunt, well,
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: then what would the hunting version of that be. Well,
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: it'd be like the national Wildlife Refuge system which we
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: have as public land, which is where landscapes are managed
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: to help wildlife populations, but there is still hunting allowed
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: and engagement in that kind of consumptive way too sustainably carefully,
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: what if we made diy wildlife refuges by applying your
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: ideas to this larger scale. So this is this idea
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: that I've been riffing on in my own head and
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: writing for the last year or two, and I'm just
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: curious what are your thoughts on that?
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: Right at the gate, it's a wonderful idea, and there's
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: also examples of how well that works when you talk
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: about managing waterfowl and that those funds come from ducks unlimited.
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: You know, I mentioned that we have lost three billion
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: breeding birds in the last fifty years. Every bird group
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: except one declined and the one that increased were waterfowl,
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: and they increased because we started to actively manage the
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: resources those waterfowl need, which shows we can turn it around.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: And it came from management. It wasn't an accident, and
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: it came from hunters. So can we do that? Yes,
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: we can. Now, managing waterfowl is easier than managing you know,
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: six hundred million acres of landscape. The problem with that
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: is those invasive plants. They're covering millions and millions area
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: and getting rid of them or managing them is a
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: no trivial thing. They are not increasing the productivity of
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: the landscape and no matter what it looks like behind
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: your barn, So how do we do that. One thing
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: we can do is to reduce the seed rain, and
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: as I said, if you lift you look at the
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: invasive plants that are out there. I think I actually
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: got to figure it's like eighty five percent have come
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: from our gardens and they're still there. As a matter
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: of fact, they're still being sold in nurseries across the country.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: Not everywhere they're starting to ban them. But so privet,
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: for example, that favorite hedge we have, they're actually nine
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: species of privet in the US. They're all highly invasive.
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: There's a million acres of privet in Alabama alone, so
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: very serious, serious issue. How do we manage that. One
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: thing we can do is reduce the seed rain that
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: comes from our property. So I talk about people removing
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: the invasive plants just on their property. That's manageable, you know,
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: you you really most people don't have enough property that
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: wouldn't take them more than an afternoon. But one, one
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: burning bush, you know, produces I don't know what, two
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: hundred thousand seeds or something that every fall. Get rid
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: of that burning bush over the over time, that will
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: limit that will reduce the seed rain that allows these
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: things to keep expanding and keep keep coming up. I
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: don't have a great solution for how we manage them.
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: In the millions of acres of natural lands that we have.
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: I really don't. It's a it's a problem that was
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: created by us, created largely by the horticultural trade. I'd
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: love to give them the bill and say, hey, you
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: got to clean it up now. But but that's if
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: you want to increase the productivity of those lands that
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: will support the wildlife that we're talking about. I mean,
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: you talked about bob white quail, you talked about I
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: don't know if you mentioned woodcock. These are these are
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: animals we hunt. We don't have them anymore. They're gone,
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: you know, And and they're gone largely because of habitat
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: degradation as opposed to over hunting. So how do we
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: improve that those habitats. We have to understand what what
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: those creatures eat. They eat insects, you know, you got
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: to put the insects back. And some of the programs
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: are starting to recognize that. I have a former grad
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: student who is working on reclaimed oil pads in the
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: West after they play out, uh, And what he's doing
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: is putting all the native plants back, and and that
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: you know, the sage grass are returning. It's a huge
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: success simply by saying these are the important plants that
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: have to be here. So were I think we could,
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: but it's not gonna be easy.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, if I were a landowner, and let's say
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: I own one hundred acres that I use recreationally. My
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: family and I hike on it, We look for mushrooms
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: on it, we hunt on it, and we do all
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: these things. And I want to apply the framework that
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: you've that you've generally proposed for lawns if I want
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: to try to translate that to my one hundred acres
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: of which I'm trying to improve in the ways we've discussed,
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: what would be the preceps that you would recommend, like
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: translate if you could take, you know, what you've written
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: about on the lawn scale and now zoom it out
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: to one hundred acres or two hundred acres. What would
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: be your pillars or like your four steps or four
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: rules that you must follow if I'm trying to manage
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: my one hundred acres for biodiversity in this more holistic way,
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: what would those those rules or best practices be well?
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: Step one would be find out what what is already there?
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: What do those hundred acres look like? Right now. If
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: you started out with one hundred acres of corn and
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: you're trying to re establish that, you're starting with a
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: bare slate, and that's a very different story from starting
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: with a patchwork of forest and probably invaded meadow. I
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: bet you do not have one hundred acres of invasive species.
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: You might have twenty all edge habitat or something. So
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: I would come up with some kind of an inventory
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: of what you have managing for maximum diversity. And that's
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: what you mentioned means sunlight. So the most diverse ecosystem
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: terrestrial ecosystems in North America are much closer to savannahs
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: oak savannahs that include a lot of prairie plants, big trees,
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: but not closed canopy, so a lot of sunlight gets
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: in there. Those are extremely productive and diverse ecosystems. The
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: really dense closed forests is probably an artifact of us
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: killing off the large place to see mammals ten thousand
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: years ago. They didn't used to be get closed in
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: like that. There were a lot of big creatures eating
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: a lot of plants, and it was much more open.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: So you might think about opening up if you do
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: have a dense patch of woods, opening up the canopy
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: a little bit. There are groups that talk about sustainable forestry,
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: and by sustainable they really mean it. You're not taking
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: the best trees and a clear cut once. You're taking
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: the leaners and the sick trees and the small ones
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: more frequently, but you leave the very best trees. There's
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: a group in northern Minnesota, Indigenous groups been managing a
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: forest for over one hundred years. They have more wood
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: there now than when they started, and they take it
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: out every single year. So sustainable harvesting really can happen,
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: and that produces a healthier landscape for the wildlife that
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: we're trying to So you have an inventory, you might
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: then you then you could say, well, how many of
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: those keystone plants do I have here? Can I add some?
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: If you have an overabundance of deer, you probably have
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: to cage the little ones for a while. But that's okay.
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: That's what we did here and we still do it.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: I still move cages around, but we get the plants
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: back anyway. Then you're going to have your heavily invaded areas,
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: probably your edges and things that stuff loaded with the
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: buck thorn and the bush honeysuckle and the autumn alli
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: and all that stuff. You have to take them out.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: And you know, people say that's impossible. You know ten
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: acres here. My wife cleared it, and she did it
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: over time, and she did it because she enjoyed doing it.
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: But what it showed me is that it's possible. Yes,
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: it's a lot of work, but it is possible.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: And if you have to do it really fast, then
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: then you got to invest a little bit, get it.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: Get a high school crew there. They love to kill things.
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: But you know, if they're ecological tumors, if you leave them,
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: it just keeps spreading, It keeps getting bigger and bigger
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: and bigger. So you got to get that under control,
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: then you would have a really productive underdating.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: You mentioned keystone plants and earlier you specified oaks. But
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: can you speak a little bit more just on that
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: keystone plant concept, because I think a lot of folks
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: within the wildlife habitat management world, the idea of diversity
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: is really getting out there. The idea of managing for
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: sunlight is really getting out there. The idea of yeah,
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: there's some invasives that we really do need to start
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: getting rid of. That's getting out there. But then you know,
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: what's the next thing you want to manage for. Maybe
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: there's some more questions around that, and this idea of
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: keystone plants is a little bit unique in my world.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Could you talk a little bit more about that and
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: then also maybe mention some specific examples.
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: All right, well, let's start with oaks again. They're keystone
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: plant and a number of respects. But there's four things
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: that your one hundred acres my yard, everybody's landscape needs
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: to for ecological goals. They all want to support pollinators,
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: they all want to have a viable food web, They
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: want to manage the watershed in which they lie, and
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: they want to sequester carbon, which plants are best at
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: doing that. Well, oaks are you know, they're long lived,
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: dense tissues. They sequester more carbon than almost all the
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: other trees out there, so it's great for carbon sequestration.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: The big oaks, and most of them are big, have
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: huge root systems, so they're really good at managing the watershed.
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: They're the best in terms of producing that insect life
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: that keeps the food web going. Oaks nationwide support over
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: nine hundred and fifty species of caterpillars. Tulip trees. You know,
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: it's a big, fast growing, you know, important tree. In
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: our eastern forest they only support twenty one. So we're
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: talking about huge differences here in the productivity of these plants.
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: Do I want a forest with no tulip trees?
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: No?
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: Do I want a tulip tree monoculture No. So that's
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: that kind of knowledge. It makes the difference. Yellow wood
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: it's a nice yellow, nice native tree, and it's good
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: for pollinators when it's in bloom, which is about one
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: week a year. Otherwise it supports no caterpillars, you know,
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: so a few yellowoods here and there. Okay, but that's
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: the concept of keystone plants. Black cherry supports four hundred
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: and fifty six species of caterpillars in the mid Atlantic
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: States alone. It's a really important plant. Willows, particularly as
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: you go farther and farther north oaks drop out, willows
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: take over in terms of being the number one tree
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: out west cottonwoods. People don't like the cottonwos because they
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: make the little white, fluffy thing, but they are essential
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: along our riparian carters and supporting wildlife. So those are
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: that's the little bit of knowledge that can help you
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: make a really important landscape. Now I talk about keystone
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: plants in terms of making caterpillars, but there's keystone plants
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: in terms of pollinators as well. Those are the ones
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: that are going to support the most specialist pollinators. Just
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: like the caterpillars that can only eat a few plants,
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: thirty percent of our native bees can only reproduce on
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: the pollen of particular plants. So if you don't have
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: those plants, you've lost those bees. And the very best
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: plants for supporting specialist pollinators are golden rods perennial sunflowers.
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: In California alone, there's sixty species of bees that won't
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: be there if you don't have perennial sunflowers. Native asters
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: really important for specialist bees. Now, all the other plants
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: have specialist bees too, but instead of supporting thirty or forty,
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: they drop down to one or two. So focusing on
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: the most productive ones is what can really help.
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: Back to oaks, that one is something that I think
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: a lot of folks understand the importance of. For I
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: think the caterpillar side will be a surprise to a
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: lot of folks. A lot of hunters when they think
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: of oaks, they think of acorns and a very direct
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: connection from that hard mast to know deer and other
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: wildlife utilizing those acorns. So there's strong interest in my
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: world to try to manage for healthy oak healthy excuse me,
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: healthy oak populations. What would your recommendations be, being someone
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: who has written an entire book about oaks, for helping
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: us steward those tree species. What can we do to
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: make sure our oaks are healthy, are thriving, are present
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: on the landscape.
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: We have ninety one species of oaks in this country.
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: Now they don't belong everywhere than rockies and the driest
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: deserts we don't have oaks, but everyplace else we do.
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: The center of distribution for oaks is the southeast, but
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: I think California has I don't know, twenty eight species
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: of oaks or something. So so if you were in
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: an area that where oaks thrive, then you've got to
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: figure out which species belong where you are. There are
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: oaks that like acid soil, there are oaks that like
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: basic soil. There are oaks that like rocky outcrops. There
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: are oaks that like bottom land, so putting the right
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: oak in the right place is important. The biggest challenge
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: for oaks today are the diseases we've brought in. We've
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: got sudden oak death syndrome in the West, which threatens
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: to come east all the time. We've got oak leaf
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: scorch bacteria leaf scorch hitting the red oak group in
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: the east. We've got oak wilt hitting the white oak
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: group in the Midwest. The good news there Now, it's
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: bad news because they're killing a lot of oaks, But
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: the good news is in all of the populations that
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: have been studied, it is most of them there is resistance.
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: There are oaks out there that are resistant to these diseases.
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: They are the future of our oak forests. So you
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: can hire the arborus to try to save the sick
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: oak on your property. He's going to fail. I mean,
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: he can extend the life for a few years. But
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: people have big oaks and they're sick and they want
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: to save it, and I get that, but it's probably
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: not going to work. The best thing to do is
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: to favor the oaks that don't die, the ones that
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: have resistance in it. Those are the eggcorns that the
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: blue jays are going to disperse over time. You know,
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: blue jay will pick up an agcorn and weigh it
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: if it's light, if it's small, they reject it and
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: they take the big one. And they only remember where
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: one out of every four eggcorns they bury for the
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: winter are. So they're planning our oaks all over the place.
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: So that's the good news. You know, it's better news
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: than with the ashes. With the mer lash boarder. There
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: is some resistance there, but it's really small, really, you know,
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: most of the ashes are already dead. But oaks better news.
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: They're going to the resistant varieties are going to spread,
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: and we have to let them do that. So again,
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: when the arborus says don't plan any more oaks, they're
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: just going to get sick, that's when you ignore him
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: and plant more oaks than ever. And some will get sick,
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: that's right, but you're going to discover the ones that
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: don't get sick and they're the future.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, a little bit of a hard pivot, but herbicide use.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: If I'm thinking about all the various ways we can
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: be managing vegetation on a landscape on our kind of
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: hypothetical one hundred acres, when I start talking about our
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: thinking about removing invasive species. If I'm trying to help oaks,
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: one thing I could use as the chainsaw cutting down
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: other trees around it. But herbicide might be another way
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: to utilize or to manage these things. But there's a
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: lot of questions and concern around herbicide to use. Two,
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: where do you fall on using herbicides to manage undesirable species?
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: And if we do use it, how do you, if
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: at all, recommend best using it.
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: I think of herbicides like chemotherapy, particularly in terms of
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: invasive plants. They really are like ecological tumors. I had
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: a guy send me an email not long ago, and
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: he said, well, can I leave just a few? I said, well,
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: how many tumors do you want to leave in your body?
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: You know you don't want to leave any because they
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: just keep spreading, So you have to have something that
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: kills them. Herbicides. You've got to kill the roots or
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: it just keeps coming back, so you can you can
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: cut it, but unless you cut it once every two weeks,
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: every time it puts a little green above the ground,
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: you are not going to exhaust that root system and
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: you'll be doing it the rest of your life. So
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: that's where herbicides come in. And like chemotherapy, they have
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: to be used properly. You can you can overuse them,
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: you can misuse them. I don't like spraying because I
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: always hit on targets. Underneath that multi floor a rose
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: is probably a baby yoak that the deer couldn't get to.
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: I want to save that. Well, if I spray, I'm not.
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to say it. So I what I
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: do when I use herbicides is cut the stump and
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: paint it. So I use this very little material and
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: it kills the roots, and you know that's the goal.
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: It's a really important tool in our management toolbox, particularly
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: if you're talking about one hundred acres. You know, one
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: hundred acres without herbicides be very very tough.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the scale changes things for sure. So one last
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: question then, on this scale, we talked earlier about when
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: it comes to yards, you know, changing your landscaping, prioritizing
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: native plants, especially that might benefit pollinators. You mentioned the
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: importance of pollinators from the you know, the ecosystem services
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: they provide for so much. But when we've got this
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: larger scale, when we have one hundred acres, we might
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: have entire fields or meadows that we could maybe manage
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: differently to benefit pollinators. Is there anything you would you
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: would share with somebody who does have a fallow old
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: farm field or something like that that they could start
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: doing something with. Now, what would you recommend for them
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: or have them think about when considering the importance of
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: pollinators and what they might do to.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: Help well timing of you know, most people are managing
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: their meadows with mowing, and the timing of that mowing
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: becomes really important not just for the pollinators, but for
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: the other resources those plants produce. So mowing at the
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: end of the summer takes out all of the seed
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: production that are sparrows and other things will use all
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: winter long. So if you're going to do your mowing,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: you want to do that at the beginning of the year,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: and that would be typically before things start to grow,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: after the seeds have been used all winter long. So
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: depending on where you are we're usually talking about march
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: burning is a really valuable tool. If you're in an
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: area where people let you do that, and if you
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: have the expertise to do that, it's better than mowing.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: Because it returns nutrients to the soil very quickly. It's
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: not a management tool for invasive plants. For the most part.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: It's just like just like mowing. It doesn't kill the rootstocks,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: but it does. You know, our our prairies and meadows
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: were managed by fire with for the indigenous people around
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: the country for thousands of years. Uh and before that,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: just simple thunderstorms in the in the summertime would would
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: start it, and it would it would reset the clock.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: In the east, we get enough rainfall that if you
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: don't mow or burn, they don't stay. They don't stay
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: meadow or prairie anymore. The woodies come in and take
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: take them over. So you want to actively manage for that.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: You can mow heavily in the spring. So let's say
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: you're starting with largely cool season European grasses and you
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: want to push that to native bunch grasses and fords.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: You mow heavily in the spring and keep those cool
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: season grasses down and then you don't mow the rest
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: of the year. You do that for two or three years,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: and the native warm season bunch grasses will start to
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: take over. You know, enterpogon and other things will come in.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: So without using any herbicide or any management tool other
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: than mowing, you get to shift the species composition of
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: the plants in your field. You probably are going to
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: have to spot treat those woodies that come in because
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: they do. They come in all the time, and some
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: of them will be native, and if you're trying to
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: return your field to a forest, you leave them. Otherwise
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: you got to treat them too. If you don't want
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: to use insecticide. Mattic works great, particularly when they're small.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: Like a pickaxe with a broad end. You just go whack,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: whack and out it comes, and you can do a
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: large area in an afternoon walking around. But some kind
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: of management is required to keep it in a meadow
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: state in the east.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So three hundred and fifty six million acres is
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: that number that is believed to be under the influence
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: of hunters. Let's say I don't know, I have no
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: idea how many individual landowners that is. But let's just
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: say for simple, easy numbers, let's say there's a million
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: folks who own that three hundred and fifty six million
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: acres they own or release it, and let's hypothetically say
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: that we had an auditorium that was large enough to
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: house all one million of those hunters, and you were
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: standing on a stage in the middle of that auditorium
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: speaking to every one of those hunters who has influence
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: over that three hundred and fifty six million acres. If
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: you could get across just two very important, most important
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: points or principles, they would walk out of that stadium
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: with and then put into action on their three hundred
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: and fifty six million acres of land. What would those
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: two very most important lasting ideas be.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: You asked tough questions. It's my job, Doug, you know,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: I would like to back it up and rather than
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: talk about the hunters that want to use that the
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: hunters are there actively using it. But everybody in the
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: country is using that acreage. Those are the acres producing
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: the ecosystem services that are keeping us alive. Everybody needs
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: to be paying for the maintenance of those properties. Everybody
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: needs to be keeping the the expansion of the you know,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: sprawl out of there, improving the connectivity, buying the sections
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: in between parks and preserves that. That's a responsibility that
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: goes to everybody can use that to their advantage too.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: But It's not just for them, it's for everybody. So
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: that's a message I would love to get across to
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: the entire voting public. These lands are essential for the future. Second,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: I guess I keep coming back to, you know, managing
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: the plants that are there to to you know, if
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: you've if you have a million acres in Alabama, but
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: it's all privet, you know, you've got to fix that.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: So and you got millions more acres that are kadzu
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: uh and millions more acres that are are hodgepodge of
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: everything else. So huge management issue. We want to break
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: it down into into manageable sections. But you know, if
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: you do have a hunting lodge and it's one hundred
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: acres there that is manageable, you get you get fifty
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: hundreds there, and you spend a weekend in the fall,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: you could do a lot. It really could, uh, and
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: you make it an annual event. I would think about
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: like that. I just don't I don't want to make
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: it all the hunter's responsibility to managing the resources that
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: everybody needs. Everybody in Philadelphia and Saint Louis and San Francisco,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: they all need those ecosystem services.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: When we think of it at that kind of scale, though,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: and you look at the many different pressures on wildlife
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: of all types, and then also recognize how divorced so
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: much of the public is from those species. And when
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: you look at the state of the world today, Doug,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: how do you handle the reality of that challenge? Like
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: I like, you know, there's that I bring us up
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: all the time. But there's this wonderful line from Leopold.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: He talks about the curse of an ecological education, being
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: kind of realizing that you live in a world of wounds.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: And I feel this like every day the more I
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: learn both, You've got two things. Both you learn how
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: wonderful the wild world is that we still have, while
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: also understanding how damaged it is and how dire the
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: state of affairs can be. Sometimes. How do you live
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: with that yourself? And how do you make decisions about
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: what you do and how we can somehow try to
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: change things for the better given them.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: You know, the great gift that Leopold gave us was
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: to point out that we have wounds, that all is
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: not well, because back in the thirties and forties when
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: he was writing, we were oblivious, I mean everything we
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: did was counterproductive ecologically. We cannot fix it until we
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: recognize that the wounds are there. What do I do?
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: I talk to you, I write books, I give talks
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: all the time. It comes down to educating that individual
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: who's living on this planet, to get them to recognize
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: that everybody has a responsibility to good or stewardship. Cause
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: everybody needs it. Everybody. The little old lady on the
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: eleventh floor in an apartment in Manhattan needs it as
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: much as everybody else. I got asked the other day,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: very unpopular question, but I answered it anyway. I said,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: what is one thing everybody can do? So everybody can vote?
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: Because how we vote makes a tremendous amount of difference.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: And what happens to our public lands. I mean, you know,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: now there's the proposal we're going to sell off our
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: public lands and expand housing on it. Well, that affects everything.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, So these are really important issues.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: And that's where that little old lady in the eleventh
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: floor comes in. She still has a vote. So you're right,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: we are totally divorced from the natural world that supports
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: us very dangerous place to be because it still supports
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: it's just because we don't recognize it isn't going to
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: change that. So what do I do is I just
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: try to turn that around to educate people. And the
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: interesting thing is I have been talking about this, particularly
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: the native plant connection and people's personal role, for twenty
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: years now, and I do see it catching on. I
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: do see you know the need of moving. Look, you
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: asked me to talk here. That wouldn't happen twenty years ago.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: We wouldn't have even recognized this as a problem. So
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: that you know, that's that's good. That keeps me going.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: And it is much more. The UN is meeting about
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: the biodiversity crisis pretty much on an annual basis. Now
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: they talk about it, they make resolutions, we ignore them,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: but at least it's part of the public, the global discussion. Now,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: you know, our parks and our preserves were established because
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: they were beautiful places, and as Teddy Roosevelt said, you know,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: they were wonderful places for us to recreate and it
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: created good citizenship and all that. They were not created
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: with the idea of conservation and mind. So the goal
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: was to preserve the places because because so the future
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: generations could enjoy them. They're not there for our enjoyment.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: We can enjoy them, they're they're tremendously entertaining, but we
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: need to preserve them so that we have future generations,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: which is a much more important goal, I think, And
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: if we can get that into the public's mindset, then
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: then we'll be in good shape. And that's that's what
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: we're trying to do here.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: Well, I certainly appreciate all of your efforts to do that.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: You've you've been leading the charge with your speaking and
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: your written works, of course. So I want folks who
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: are listening to this and are intrigued to to go
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: to your books to learn more, because they're they're great resources.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: Your newest is, uh, how can I help, which I
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: have found is full of the questions that my wife
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: and I have been asking and many great answers. So
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: I appreciate that personally, And like I mentioned earlier, I
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: really loved Nature's Best Hope that was that was pretty
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: formative for me in many ways. So can you quickly
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: plug the new book anything about that you want people
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: to know about, or any other projects in ways people
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: can connect with you or your your work.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I wrote the new book because people send
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: me questions on email every day. They still do that,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: and they're good questions. These are people that have heard
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: my talks and they have read my other books, and
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: they still have really good questions about things that I
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 3: haven't talked about. So I answered them for several years
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: and said, you know, I had to save these answers
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: and put them in a book. And that's that's what.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: How can I help? Is this four hundred and ninety
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: nine questions? People say, why didn't you do five hundred?
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: Because we did the whole thing and they edited it
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: and they took some out and then we finded it up.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: You know, it wasn't a conscious goal. But that's what
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: that book's all about. It's people. A lot of people
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: have accepted the responsibility that I talk about, but they
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: need more information to act on it, and that's what
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: we're trying to address there.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: That's great. And where do you want folks to buy that?
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: Do you have a preferred bookstore? Do you have a
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: website you want people to go to anything like that?
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: Well, just for general information, you want to go to
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: our Homegrown National Park dot org website. Everything's there, But
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: you know, books are sold all over the place. Timber Press.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: That's the publisher. They don't have one one outlet. Amazon
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: carries that many of the private bookstores but not all
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: will carry it. But if you know a lot of
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: people don't want to support Amazon, they want to help
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: their local books, then ask them to get it and
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: that will help in that regard. But no, we're not
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: selling them otherwise.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: Terfect, all right, Doug. Well, as I mentioned, thank you
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: for your work and thank you so much for taking
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: the time to chat about this with me here today.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: Well, I appreciate the opportunity, I really do. Good luck
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: to you, Mark.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: Thank you all right, and that's going to wrap it
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: up for us today. Thank you for joining me. I
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: appreciate you being here for this conversation, and until next time,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: stay wired to Hunt.