Latest / Back From the Brink, from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom / How Coffee Is Bringing Songbirds Back with Kirstin Hill

Transcript

How Coffee Is Bringing Songbirds Back with Kirstin Hill · Back From the Brink, from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom

0:00
(gentle music)
0:02
- In the warm waters off the Florida coast,
0:05
a green sea turtle propels herself through the ocean
0:09
with her large paddle-like flippers.
0:12
At 300 pounds
0:14
and with a carapace that's almost four-feet long,
0:17
she's remarkably graceful.
0:20
And today, she started an immense journey.
0:24
(water waves loudly) (gentle music)
0:27
She's leaving her feeding grounds to travel hundreds,
0:31
maybe thousands of miles back to where she herself
0:35
was hatched, where she'll mate
0:37
and lay hundreds of eggs this season.
0:40
(gentle music)
0:43
It's a process that is filled with obstacles already,
0:46
but for the past 60 years, nesting
0:49
and survival into adulthood
0:52
has been a minefield for the species.
0:55
Decades of habitat loss, egg harvesting
0:58
and overpoaching by humans has dealt a catastrophic blow
1:02
to green sea turtle populations.
1:05
By the 1970s, their global numbers
1:08
had declined by up to 67%.
1:11
But today, the picture is very different.
1:14
This is the story of that extraordinary rebound
1:17
and the international effort to make sure it happened.
1:21
(gentle music) (loud sound of water waves)
1:23
- When we lose a species,
1:26
we lose a little piece of ourselves.
1:28
We lose a piece of our humanity, our dignity.
1:32
When we can learn from our mistakes
1:35
and see this creature that has been here
1:38
long before humankind has been by tens of millions of years
1:43
and give it a chance to do it as it has done
1:47
as a species, we are the better for it.
1:50
- [Peter] Today, we'll hear this remarkable story
1:54
from Jeff Corwin.
1:55
- You likely know Jeff as the host
1:57
of Emmy winning shows like "Wildlife Nation"
2:00
and "Ocean Treks."
2:01
He's a wildlife biologist, a television presenter,
2:03
an author, and a passionate conservationist.
2:07
Jeff has worked closely with sea turtles across the Americas
2:11
and in the Caribbean.
2:12
(intense music)
2:15
Welcome to "Back from the Brink"
2:17
from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.
2:19
I'm Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant.
2:21
- And I'm Peter Gros, wildlife expert.
2:24
- And in each episode, we're looking at some
2:26
of the most incredible comeback stories in nature
2:29
and the people who made it happen.
2:32
- Jeff Corwin has spent over 30 years working
2:34
with sea turtles around the world.
2:37
And in that time, he's watched something amazing happen.
2:40
A species that was critically endangered
2:43
when he started his career is now thriving.
2:47
But before we get to the compact, we need
2:49
to understand more about this fascinating animal.
2:54
- Welcome, Jeff Corwin.
2:56
This is so exciting for me.
2:57
- Thank you, Rae. I appreciate that.
2:58
- [Dr. Rae] Welcome to "Back from the Brink."
2:59
- Yeah. - And you know,
3:01
we could talk about pretty much any species
3:04
of animal with you.
3:05
I mean, you've seen almost all...
3:09
But I actually am very glad that you're going to talk
3:12
to us about green sea turtles
3:15
and the trajectory they've had over time.
3:17
- Sure.
3:18
- And one of the reasons I'm so stoked is
3:20
because just last December, I had my first experience
3:24
with a green sea turtle.
3:25
I was in Costa Rica with Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
3:28
protecting the wild.
3:30
We were doing all kinds of stories,
3:31
but we were also looking at the different species
3:33
of sea turtles- - [Jeff] Right.
3:34
- in that area.
3:35
And so I got to actually see some up close
3:38
for the first time, which was really excellent.
3:41
So I wanna know,
3:42
why is this the species we're talking about?
3:45
Like what is it about them that gets you so excited?
3:48
- Well, I love sea turtles
3:50
and as a kid growing up in New England,
3:52
we didn't see a lot of sea turtles.
3:54
- Yeah, sure. - And when I was a little boy,
3:56
my dad was a Boston police officer
3:58
and he would drop me off at the New England Aquarium.
4:01
And they were like, "Who's this little seven-year-old,
4:04
eight-year-old kid here every weekend?"
4:07
And I like could...
4:08
I knew all the names of the creatures.
4:10
And before you know it, I was helping them do assessments,
4:13
health assessments on their only sea turtle,
4:16
which is Myrtle the Turtle.
4:17
And she is still there today.
4:19
- Is she? - She's one
4:20
of the oldest giant well-fed Reuben-esque sea turtles
4:25
you'll ever see
4:25
and she's thriving there at the New England Aquarium.
4:27
But since then, I've had a chance to work with sea turtles
4:31
all around the world and I've worked
4:34
with almost all the sea turtles.
4:36
- So, okay.
4:37
For many people out there who are not like you
4:40
and me and kind of in it with wildlife all the time,
4:42
a sea turtle is a sea turtle is a sea turtle.
4:45
So can you talk to me about
4:46
what a green sea turtle looks like?
4:48
Is it kind of like how a brown bear is actually brown?
4:52
Or is it more like how a blue whale is like kind of blue
4:56
but a little bit more gray and dark?
4:59
Like what does this green sea turtle really look like?
5:02
- Well, they don't look green. - Yeah.
5:04
- At all.
5:05
- Thank you.
5:05
- So do you know why they're called green sea turtles?
5:07
- I don't. - Because of their meat.
5:11
Because when you would eat the flesh, the muscle tissue
5:14
and fat tissue is green because of all the foraging.
5:19
They forge in a lot of alginous type material
5:23
and they're absorbing that chromatophore type,
5:28
the pigments. They're absorbing that.
5:30
- The fact that green sea turtles are named for the color
5:33
of their meat explains why some of their population crashed.
5:37
Over the course of Jeff's career, he's been a witness
5:41
to the sea turtle's journey
5:43
and the many factors leading to the crash and the comeback.
5:47
- In my career, I've seen the arc of sea turtles.
5:51
So I'm going on over 30 years in my career.
5:54
And when I began my career,
5:56
sea turtles were very critically-endangered.
5:59
And now I can see sea turtles when I'm out fishing
6:03
in the summer off Massachusetts.
6:05
We have sea turtles.
6:06
- No.
6:07
I didn't know it was that good.
6:09
- Yes.
6:09
So green turtles were critically-endangered,
6:12
loggerheads critically-endangered, leatherbacks,
6:15
all the sea turtles were critically-endangered.
6:19
Some now are endangered.
6:21
But like loggerheads are,
6:24
have drifted their way into threatened status.
6:27
And green turtles are probably,
6:29
many scientists would say are no longer threatened.
6:31
They're very abundant.
6:33
And a lot of that came down to was eliminating the hunting
6:37
of sea turtles because they were a food
6:41
and they still are a food for many people around the world,
6:43
including Costa Rica.
6:45
And having this global mission to make people
6:50
wanna protect them, have them sort
6:52
of be ambassador species that we can love
6:55
and then protecting and restoring habitat
6:59
and protecting the oceans where they foraged
7:02
is what allowed us to bring them back.
7:06
And if you were to go to Boca Raton, for example,
7:10
40 years ago, they had a dearth of sea turtles.
7:14
Just a couple would come up and nest.
7:17
But now Boca Raton, Florida is probably
7:20
the most important nesting site for sea turtles,
7:24
especially loggerhead sea turtles.
7:26
But green turtles have made an extraordinary recovery.
7:31
So in the short-term, in the midterm,
7:34
sea turtles are doing incredibly well.
7:37
The long-term, we don't know
7:40
because they're facing other challenges.
7:43
But where I live in New England,
7:45
because our waters have gotten so warm and also
7:50
because they are cleaner than they have been
7:52
in 100 years, Boston Harbor
7:55
was the dirtiest modern urban waterway in the world.
8:00
- I believe it.
8:01
- It's now the cleanest modern waterway.
8:04
- Way to go, Boston.
8:05
- Brought back the right whales.
8:06
It brought back. - [Dr. Rae] Uh-huh.
8:07
- It brought back turtles
8:08
that would now could migrate up because it doesn't get cold.
8:12
- [Dr. Rae] Uh-huh.
8:13
- But eventually, it does get cold
8:15
and they get cold-stunned. - [Dr. Rae] Oh.
8:16
- So we have a whole sea turtle hospital in New England now
8:20
that back in the day would get five patients a year
8:24
and now they get thousands of patients a year.
8:26
And the other challenge with sea turtles is
8:29
because the sand is warmer, nests
8:34
with many species, including green sea turtles,
8:37
are hatching out about 90% female.
8:41
- Oh interesting because the temperature of it's like kind
8:44
of the incubation temperature
8:46
helps determine the sex of the animal.
8:48
- Hotter means girls.
8:50
And colder means guys.
8:54
And then it's reversed with crocodilians.
8:59
- Because why not? - [Jeff] And why not?
9:00
Yeah.
9:01
- Because that's just how nature is.
9:02
- So I don't know how you fix that problem.
9:03
So on the short-term, they're trying
9:05
to do things like regulate the nest temperature,
9:08
but truly recovered species are when we can sort
9:12
of step back and say like wild turkeys,
9:15
you're doing it on your own now.
9:16
You're doing good.
9:17
Or coyotes or other species, American alligators.
9:22
- [Dr. Rae] Yeah.
9:23
- Bald eagles, species that were once
9:26
almost extinct,
9:28
but now have recovered to the point
9:30
where they are doing it on their own.
9:32
- The Endangered Species Act gave the sea turtles
9:35
legal protection, but law alone doesn't save a species.
9:39
What happened in Costa Rica showed
9:41
what protection actually looks like on the ground
9:45
and who has to be a part of it?
9:48
- The animal plant, we'd go to a market
9:49
and buy these sea turtles and release them
9:51
and go out with this guy to buy sea turtles.
9:53
And Costa Rica, their nesting green turtles
9:57
and their loggerheads in the leatherbacks
9:59
had largely crashed
10:01
because people were both eating the turtles
10:03
and eating the eggs. - Wow.
10:05
- And once they protected those beaches, they now have
10:08
so many sea turtles that they will say
10:10
to the local population, "Please don't eat the sea turtles,
10:14
but we have managed these nests so well,
10:17
you can have some of the eggs.
10:18
You get to have 20% of the eggs."
10:21
- That really speaks to some great recovery
10:24
because allowing people to use these natural resources
10:28
in their traditional way is fair
10:31
and also speaks to how resilient some
10:34
of these species really can be
10:36
if they have the right intervention.
10:37
- Right.
10:38
And with sea turtle eggs, there's a lot
10:41
of cultural importance, especially in Latin America.
10:45
They would just go and dig up all the eggs.
10:48
They just didn't have a chance.
10:49
And once those nests stabilized, they were like, "It's okay.
10:53
We can share this resource
10:55
because we're already beating the odds."
10:57
Because it already is a game of numbers for sea turtles.
11:00
Like one, if you're lucky, one in 10,000
11:03
- Survives. - will come back as an adult.
11:06
- Walk me through that life cycle
11:07
from where it's born. - Yeah.
11:08
So when the sea turtle, when the mom, she comes out
11:11
and she excavates that nest out to deposit her eggs
11:14
and she may, during that season, she'll do multiple nests
11:18
and she'll do like a decoy nest to kind of do kind of sloppy
11:22
that kind of fool the animals.
11:24
- Clever.
11:25
- The idea is you do multiple nests so
11:28
your entire clutch isn't lost.
11:30
And then, you know, she's laying between 30 and 70 eggs.
11:34
- [Dr. Rae] Okay.
11:35
- Little bigger than a ping pong ball.
11:37
And then she goes back to sea.
11:41
When she comes out to nest, she is nesting on the very beach
11:45
where she was born.
11:47
- Amazing. - Where her life began.
11:50
And she is the only time a sea turtle
11:53
for the most part with few places like Hawaii
11:57
will have this phenomenon of sea turtles
11:59
that actually will sleep in the beach.
12:00
Most sea turtles become pelagic.
12:04
A sea turtle born
12:05
that hatches out on Florida may find its way.
12:09
We've tracked them to the coast of Africa.
12:12
- [Dr. Rae] Oh my gosh.
12:13
- [Jeff] Sea turtles from Africa
12:14
have shown up beating in the horn
12:17
of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
12:18
- [Dr. Rae] Incredible.
12:19
- So they are incredibly adaptive of using
12:22
the ocean's currents to go from A to B
12:25
or go from the new world to the old world.
12:27
- And we can find them in all
12:29
of the oceans essentially, right?
12:31
- We can now, we even have some sea turtles
12:32
that go into the Arctic.
12:34
- What?
12:35
- You know, we think of sea turtles as being cold-blooded
12:38
and not being warm-blooded, being endothermic.
12:40
But they are the only turtle that is megathermic
12:44
because they are so big they are like their own uni,
12:48
they're a closed loop energy system.
12:51
So the nest is laid there and she will go back to sea
12:55
and only the females will come out.
12:58
Males will spend their whole lives in the ocean.
13:00
- At sea, isn't that something?
13:01
- And when they hatch out, you know,
13:04
if they're lucky enough, if they're that one in 10,000
13:08
that survive the flood, that survived that high-tide,
13:14
that survived the coyotes, of the raccoons,
13:17
that survived the ghost crabs
13:19
and all the fish that will eat them,
13:21
then they'll come back 20 years later.
13:23
It will take two decades for that mom to come to the beach,
13:28
excavate that nest out and bring that next generation in.
13:32
So that's kind of how the cycle works.
13:35
- The recovery of the green sea turtle
13:37
didn't happen by accident.
13:39
It happened because people decided it would.
13:42
But the threats that nearly wiped them out
13:44
haven't disappeared and some new ones have arrived.
13:48
- So green sea turtles
13:50
were listed on the endangered species list.
13:53
And that made a big difference, at least in the US
13:57
and in North America in their protection.
14:00
And you know,
14:02
and I think it also made a difference worldwide.
14:05
- It did because they were protected internationally.
14:09
The IUCN and other groups.
14:13
And there was a tremendous...
14:15
There's still places where people eat green turtles
14:19
and other sea turtles.
14:20
The green turtle is the one that's actually eaten the most.
14:24
People don't eat leatherbacks.
14:26
- And they're eating this green meat.
14:28
- Yeah. (laughs loudly)
14:29
- I can't get over that.
14:29
- It's like that's what they say is I've been to places
14:33
where I've seen it being cooked in the streets of Indonesia
14:36
and other places.
14:38
But that was the most hunted sea turtle.
14:42
They would hunt them for their eggs.
14:44
And sometimes, they would just literally get them all
14:46
on board, cut them open, remove the eggs.
14:48
And you can look at those old National Geographic photos
14:51
and you don't really see that anymore.
14:53
But they still face future challenges.
14:57
One is a warming world.
14:59
- Yeah. - And how do we combat that?
15:02
And the other are plastics.
15:04
- Okay.
15:05
Talk to me about plastics in the ocean.
15:06
- Yeah.
15:07
We dump 10 billion pounds of plastics
15:12
every year into our oceans.
15:15
And you can see that as blue
15:18
as a beautiful bluebird morning in New England.
15:21
I've been to the Trash Pacific Gyre and I've seen that
15:26
and where you see something that looks like an island
15:29
that is hundreds of miles in size of this gyro of trash
15:35
that has all come together.
15:37
And there are places where beautiful Bali,
15:39
for example, you go there and they have to every day they,
15:42
because people have spent all this money to be a tourist
15:45
and beautiful Bali.
15:47
They have to come in with excavators
15:48
and front-end loaders every morning
15:50
just to clean the trash off the beach.
15:52
And that is a preventable thing.
15:57
It is something we could mitigate.
15:59
So that's the good news.
16:00
If we decided, we could limit almost all
16:05
of the plastic trash that goes into our oceans,
16:09
there's a way we could manage that.
16:11
But it's been documented that one
16:15
like big landscape plastic bag, you know, those plastic bags
16:19
that's really tough.
16:21
- Yeah. Yeah.
16:22
- Can kill five individual sea turtles
16:25
- [Dr. Rae] Just one.
16:26
- Before it's broken up enough into little pieces
16:28
that it could pass through.
16:30
And I have been to so many sea turtle hospitals
16:33
where that is it.
16:34
So you have them eating plastics.
16:37
And then off Florida boat strikes, big problem.
16:42
And then they have diseases that may be the result
16:45
of climate change, may be the result of pollution.
16:49
They have a, it's a papilloma-type virus
16:52
where they get these tumors and they'll often get them in
16:57
and they'll remove the tumors and stuff.
16:58
So they have challenges.
17:00
But overall, I don't like to look at things
17:02
as good news or success.
17:04
I would say it's a promising story.
17:07
- Okay. - It's a hopeful story.
17:09
We are at a place of uncertainty
17:12
and hope with green sea turtles
17:14
and all the other sea turtles that we have out there.
17:17
What I would argue, we are there
17:19
where we have this out of sight, out of mind.
17:22
Oh, we fixed it.
17:23
- Sure. - We live in a world now
17:25
where whether you like it or not, in the last century,
17:30
humankind has consumed
17:33
70 to 80% of all our planet's nature.
17:36
We, whether we like it or not,
17:38
have been given this responsibility
17:40
to be our planet stewards.
17:42
- [Dr. Rae] Yeah. - And that is something
17:44
that will always require vigilancy.
17:48
- The way I'm interpreting what you're saying is that
17:50
if you are committed to protecting sea turtles
17:53
or wildlife, you know, nature at all,
17:56
it's not a single decision.
17:58
So it's not just choosing a paper straw
18:01
over a plastic straw.
18:02
It's not the right thing to get your paper straw
18:05
and then the next car you buy is a huge gas guzzler, right?
18:09
It is a lifetime kind of readjustment
18:11
and commitment to these better environmental practices.
18:16
It is the way you vote.
18:17
It is the community that you live in.
18:19
It is, you know, bringing the-
18:21
- The businesses you support.
18:22
- The businesses you support. - [Jeff] Farmers.
18:23
- It's bringing that reusable bag
18:25
and eliminating single use plastics.
18:28
It's talking to your friends
18:31
and family who might not be politically-activated to,
18:33
you know, research their candidates.
18:35
It's the way you travel.
18:37
It is this commitment.
18:39
And it's not too hard.
18:40
That's not to say like it's overwhelming and it's too hard.
18:44
It actually can become- - Well, if it is too hard,
18:46
you can't do it.
18:47
It's not, it's not sustainable.
18:49
So it has to be something
18:51
that you can achieve reasonably in your life.
18:54
It's like the 5% rule.
18:56
It's 5% of everything in your life to give, to take,
19:01
to manage time, talent, treasure.
19:05
It's that 5%.
19:06
If everyone did that, that makes a big difference.
19:11
- Conservation classifications tell us
19:13
where a species stands.
19:14
They don't tell us how it got there.
19:18
Jeff has been on the ground for three decades
19:20
and his stories say more than status reports ever could.
19:25
- You know, I've always believed in these classifications
19:28
that we have, endangered, - [Jeff] Right.
19:30
- You know, critically-endangered,
19:31
vulnerable, least concerned,
19:33
threatened, least concerned, et cetera.
19:35
I think it really helps us to triage conservation work.
19:40
And at the same time, I think you've made this point.
19:42
It doesn't necessarily point us to the future.
19:44
So when we have an animal that is of least concern,
19:48
they are abundant, maybe they've gone through a lot,
19:51
but they've arrived at this place
19:52
where they're doing pretty well.
19:54
It doesn't actually secure them for a future of abundance.
19:59
And so I appreciate people like you
20:01
who have this articulation for the work isn't done yet.
20:05
- And what you have to remember is that creatures
20:09
that are critically-endangered today
20:11
or extinct were once abundant.
20:15
- Abundant. There you go.
20:16
- Passenger pigeons were abundant.
20:19
The heathen was very abundant.
20:22
And that's what created conservation,
20:24
when we wiped out wild turkey.
20:28
So again, a sign of success like green,
20:31
where green turtles are today.
20:33
If you went to New England 100 years ago,
20:35
there were no wild turkeys.
20:37
They were eaten up.
20:38
There were no white, very few white-tailed deer.
20:40
And now these are very abundant species,
20:43
very abundant resources.
20:44
And there are places now where turkeys
20:47
are now worth-thriving, but then they're in trouble again
20:51
because of bird flu and other things.
20:54
So, you're right.
20:54
We're never really out of the woods
20:57
where humankind envelops everything
21:00
with such a completeness.
21:04
We constantly have to be vigilant.
21:06
But yes, we have gotten to a point where species
21:12
like green sea turtles, which were on the brink
21:16
of disappearing, have recovered swimmingly.
21:19
And that is something I have experienced in my own life.
21:24
- You know, you have been on TV speaking about the power
21:28
of nature and wildlife conservation for decades
21:31
and you've changed so much.
21:32
You've been hugely influential.
21:34
Is there a particular sea turtle story that you'd like
21:37
to share with me that just stands out either from filming
21:40
or something that happened off camera?
21:42
- There have been so many sea turtle stories.
21:45
Some mishaps.
21:47
- Oh.
21:48
- So we had this sea turtle, this big Ridley sea turtle,
21:53
probably weighed about 100 pounds,
21:55
and it had lost all four of its flippers.
21:58
- Poor thing. - So we were,
22:01
had drained its enclosure to clean it
22:05
and I was gonna go grab the turtle.
22:09
I was leaning, talking to my cameraman.
22:11
I was leaning on the edge of this thing.
22:15
It's about chest high and the sea turtle, the water is gone.
22:18
And this is about half the size of this room.
22:20
And without any flippers, that sea turtle
22:24
managed to come over and bite-off the tip of my toe.
22:28
- Oh my God. (laughs hilariously)
22:30
- And I wielded in pain.
22:32
- I shouldn't laugh. I shouldn't laugh.
22:33
- And I was like, "Oh my gosh."
22:35
And I turned around and there's blood everywhere
22:37
and this sea turtle trying to eat my foot.
22:40
(laughs happily) And so-
22:42
- And it's, I mean, I can't even imagine
22:43
how it's moving towards you.
22:44
- Like one toe that's the longest.
22:46
It was like whatever toe and it like cut-off the tip of it.
22:48
And so that I was like, "Man, you're one determined turtle."
22:52
And then, so that was one story.
22:55
And then the other story was I was in Borneo
22:59
and I'd waited all night for this,
23:04
this nest to hatch out.
23:06
We were gonna film it hatch out.
23:09
And lo and behold, it starts to happen
23:12
and you see them coming out.
23:13
And it was sunrise coming up and they're going in.
23:18
It was so beautiful.
23:18
We're filming it up.
23:19
And there was like, and then they're all gone.
23:24
And then I look at the nest
23:26
and there's this one straggler
23:28
and its flippers, not deformed, but it's just not right.
23:32
It's just the straggler.
23:35
And you just know it's probably not gonna make it.
23:38
And it was really very emotional for me to, just to
23:41
watch this thing kind of trying
23:44
to keep up with the other guys.
23:46
And that was like emotional for me to see that.
23:49
- [Dr. Rae] Sure. Yeah.
23:50
- And so that was one incredible moment.
23:52
Or dealing with these cold-stunned sea turtles
23:57
that have come to New England to eat
24:00
the bounty of plenty in the oceans.
24:03
And then winter does come, comes later, but it does come
24:07
and they get cold-stapped.
24:08
And all of these people, little old ladies coming up
24:12
and we found this sea turtle and it was dead
24:16
and we brought it back to the center
24:18
and we had it there.
24:21
And it had no, it was completely cold.
24:24
It was as cold as the ice.
24:26
It had no heartbeat.
24:27
It wasn't breathing.
24:29
And the scientist said "You know, I like to wait."
24:34
But we went back the next day and it had a heartbeat.
24:37
(shocks loudly) It was that determined.
24:39
And we released that turtle back
24:41
to the wild many months later.
24:43
So that's the resiliency of nature.
24:46
- The comeback is real, but ask Jeff Corwin why it matters
24:51
and the answer has nothing to do with data.
24:54
- I just months ago, again in Costa Rica, was looking at,
24:58
well, I was waiting on this beach with my co-host
25:00
and we were waiting for Jaguars, waiting for jaguars.
25:02
And lo and behold, a wave sweeps up
25:04
and there's a green sea turtle female obviously
25:07
coming onto the sand to lay eggs for her nest.
25:11
You know, I had been snorkeling with sea turtles before.
25:14
And so I have seen them just be fast, you know,
25:17
just super fast in the water and agile
25:20
and just amazing, like hard to keep up with.
25:22
And she comes in on this wave, riding the wave pretty fast
25:27
and then kind of splat on the sand.
25:30
And then suddenly, I see this massive body just,
25:32
(reenact a water animal amazingly)
25:34
you know, using both of her flippers.
25:35
And to me, this is a bit of, you know, anthropomorphizing.
25:39
- [Jeff] I know where you're going with this.
25:40
- The animal, it seemed like she was exhausted
25:43
and just kind of, you know, I'm a mother myself,
25:46
just mom to mom.
25:47
I was thinking to myself, she's so tired
25:50
and she's just, "Ugh", trying
25:51
to get from the shore into the brush where she can,
25:55
you know, lay these eggs.
25:56
And it just took her like 10 minutes, you know,
25:59
to get somewhere where if she was swimming,
26:01
would've been seconds. - Right.
26:03
- And I just had this compassion and empathy
26:07
for the sea turtle in that moment thinking to myself,
26:10
you know, what a labor of love
26:12
because there are predators on this beach, you know?
26:15
There are humans on this beach.
26:17
There are seagulls
26:18
and, you know, all kinds of things
26:20
to eat her babies or to bother her.
26:22
And yet she has to make her way with her heavy body
26:27
to lay the eggs and then make her way back.
26:30
And I was just, I, you know, I just felt like
26:32
so much compassion for that experience
26:35
and for the fact
26:36
that sea turtles have been perpetuating their species
26:40
for millennia, you know, in the same way,
26:43
but with the extreme effort.
26:45
- For hundreds of millions of years.
26:47
- Hundreds of-
26:47
- That sea turtle in when she comes up,
26:52
this is a creature that's designed to have buoyancy
26:58
where all the heaviness
27:00
of being a 200 pound animal- - Disappears in the water.
27:02
- Disappears in the water.
27:04
- Yeah. - But then it's like
27:05
landing on a planet of all that gravity.
27:07
It has to come out without, you know, with
27:10
that heavy gravity and fight with the sand
27:13
and the bugs. And then-
27:16
- And they don't have feet yet.
27:17
- The dryness of the eyes.
27:18
And then she has to excavate a hole
27:21
that takes some hours to create this pit
27:25
that's three feet deep and then give birth literally.
27:30
You can hear them, you know, they sigh and they heave.
27:37
And then she has to go back to the sea.
27:40
And she's coming to the very place where her mother
27:44
brought her into, "Dad, he's gone."
27:47
But she does all that work.
27:49
But then she is done and they are on their own.
27:53
It's a game of numbers.
27:55
- [Dr. Rae] Yeah. - She doesn't need 70
27:58
to survive.
27:59
She needs just one to survive.
28:02
And that wonder survive maybe in her, you know, two
28:07
or three times in her entire life when you think about it.
28:09
- Right. - [Jeff] That's how it works.
28:12
- It's really difficult, I think, to be in the presence
28:14
of a sea turtle and not feel impacted by it somehow.
28:18
And now that we have so many more sea turtles
28:21
because conservation has been working,
28:22
the public has gotten on board,
28:25
policies have been put in place, we can keep this species
28:29
or all of these species alive around and around forever.
28:32
- It's the reward of investing our time and our energy
28:37
and our resources to bring this species back.
28:41
Because when we lose a species,
28:43
we lose a little piece of ourselves.
28:46
- [Dr. Rae] Yeah.
28:47
- We lose a piece of our humanity, our dignity.
28:50
We have allowed under our watch to lose something
28:53
that we've been charged to protect as a steward.
28:57
When we can learn from our mistakes
29:00
and see this creature that has been here
29:03
long before humankind has been by tens of millions of years
29:07
and give it a chance to do it as it has done as a species.
29:13
We are the better for it.
29:17
So yeah, it's pretty incredible to see that.
29:22
And sea turtles are a big part of us.
29:25
And the other thing that I have come to learn, I think
29:31
back in the old days, we kind of science
29:35
and I think it just made it easier to harvest things.
29:39
We took away emotion from them, complexity.
29:45
We took away any idea of thinking
29:48
and we just say they're hardwired to be.
29:50
It's all driven by instinct.
29:52
Well, we now know that especially turtles
29:56
are far more complex behaviorally.
30:00
There's stories of sea turtles
30:02
that have had bonds to people.
30:04
I have been with sea turtles that I'm like,
30:07
"This creature has taken a shining to me."
30:09
And I'm not being anthropomorphic.
30:11
The more you study them,
30:12
the more we don't know what's going on inside of them.
30:16
- Sure.
30:17
That is such a perfect way to end
30:19
because it offers us so much interest in what happens next.
30:23
There's so much more to discover and to know about them.
30:27
Thus, we can't wait to see how good it can get
30:32
with sea turtles around the world.
30:33
- Yeah.
30:34
In a world where there's not a lot of good news,
30:37
this is a good news story.
30:38
It's also a gateway animal.
30:41
It's a creature that can be a part of your life
30:43
in a meaningful way, that can be your gateway to developing
30:49
a connection and a relationship with our natural world.
30:53
- Jeff Corwin, I have to thank you
30:56
for coming onto "Back from the Brink"
30:59
and talking to us about
31:00
how sea turtles have come back from the brink
31:02
and how we are responsible for their future moving forward.
31:07
- Yeah. - And it has been
31:08
an amazing conversation and I have to thank you so much.
31:10
- Thank you. It was fun.
31:11
(gentle music)
31:12
- From the edge of extinction to beaches full of nests,
31:16
from boats loaded with harvested turtles,
31:19
to Boca Raton becoming one
31:21
of the most important nesting sites on earth.
31:25
The sea turtle didn't just survive.
31:27
It became proof that when people choose
31:30
to protect something, nature will do the rest.
31:33
Green sea turtles have been making this journey for hundreds
31:36
of millions of years, long
31:39
before humans arrived on these shores.
31:42
They're still here because of laws passed, beaches protected
31:47
and communities that decided this animal
31:49
was worth fighting for.
31:51
The work isn't done,
31:53
but out there, the turtle is still swimming free
31:57
in the wild oceans once again.
32:01
This is "Back from the Brink"
32:03
from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.
32:05
(gentle music) (soft wave of water)
32:10
(intense music)
32:11
- If you loved this episode
32:13
and it sparked something in you, please follow
32:15
or subscribe, leave a review
32:17
and send this episode to the turtle lover in your life.
32:20
I'm Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant and I'll see you next time.
32:23
(intense music)
32:26
(gentle music)