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How Rewilding Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Kirk.
0:16
Speaker 1: There's Chuck Bryant. Whoa, And this is stuff you should have.
0:22
Speaker 1: You've been working on your Chewbacca friend. No, no, it
0:25
Speaker 1: did sound like Chewbacca, especially that last bit. Now, I
0:28
Speaker 1: haven't been working on at all. It's all natural talent.
0:30
Speaker 1: Never had a lesson, as Ferris Bueler said, do you
0:34
Speaker 1: remember Ferris Bueler. They came out fifty sixty years ago,
0:38
Speaker 1: back when we were cool. I was supposed to do
0:40
Speaker 1: that on the movie Crush, and then my guests couldn't
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Speaker 1: make it, and so I have like this great document
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Speaker 1: of notes prepared all about Ferris Spueler's sitting there going
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Speaker 1: to waste. Oh you should just read them, read through them.
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Speaker 1: On one of the notes, Yeah, Ferris Bueler sociopath or
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Speaker 1: cool teenager? Would you come up with? Well? Udgment always
1:00
Speaker 1: has this sort of rant that, uh, Ferris's associopath. Upon
1:06
Speaker 1: looking back, M yeah, there's like, come on, man, there
1:10
Speaker 1: used to be like a whole blog for a little
1:12
Speaker 1: while about about that. They would like analyze film, like
1:16
Speaker 1: famous films like Top Gun. They basically pointed out how
1:19
Speaker 1: Maverick was like this terrible person who got his friend
1:22
Speaker 1: killed and felt like no, no responsibility for it and everything. People. Yeah, yeah,
1:28
Speaker 1: it's pretty eye opening. It's paradigm shifting, I guess you
1:31
Speaker 1: could say, and I think that's appropriate that we're talking
1:34
Speaker 1: about paradigm shifting blogs because there's a lot of paradigm
1:38
Speaker 1: shift involved it today's topic, and there's a lot of
1:42
Speaker 1: blogs too, it turns out about rewilding. Yeah, it's all
1:46
Speaker 1: over the place. Uh, it is, And we need to
1:49
Speaker 1: thank our old pal Julia Layton makes an appearance here
1:52
Speaker 1: for the first time in a while. Yeah, welcome back
1:54
Speaker 1: Lates helping us with this one. And um, I thought
1:58
Speaker 1: it was interesting because think you and I both I'm
2:02
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and speak for you. I think we
2:03
Speaker 1: both agree that rewilding the concept of rewilding is pretty awesome.
2:07
Speaker 1: Pretty awesome, yes, But as evidence from even some of
2:12
Speaker 1: the stuff that Julia sent us, like there are some
2:16
Speaker 1: negative examples of like rewilding that didn't go well, but
2:20
Speaker 1: I would argue, like, that's not even rewilding, and calling
2:24
Speaker 1: it that is just hurts the cause. And then you
2:28
Speaker 1: sent me a thing that where a guy said, Hey,
2:31
Speaker 1: calling things that that aren't rewolding hurts the cause. Yeah. Yeah,
2:35
Speaker 1: I was like, I need to back chuck up today.
2:37
Speaker 1: I know he's thinking about something. I'm gonna send him
2:39
Speaker 1: something that backs it up. And I did. But rewilding,
2:43
Speaker 1: I guess we should just define so people are not
2:46
Speaker 1: angry at us for rolling that out twenty minutes in.
2:49
Speaker 1: But it is a term. When was it coined here?
2:54
Speaker 1: I've seen all over the place. Somebody claims eighty five.
2:57
Speaker 1: Another dude claims that he coined in nine two, but
3:00
Speaker 1: I think the first time it appeared in the scientific
3:03
Speaker 1: literature was some old hippie said that she coined it
3:07
Speaker 1: in sixty seven. Mm hmm, yeah, the same hippie that
3:11
Speaker 1: claimed to have coined will turn it up. Man. Uh.
3:15
Speaker 1: But here's the deal, and you know, we can get
3:17
Speaker 1: into the particulars, which we will, but generally, rewild ng
3:21
Speaker 1: is and its simplest form kind of returning nature back,
3:25
Speaker 1: turning it back over to nature to take care of itself, because,
3:29
Speaker 1: as Julia points out very aptly, like nature didn't need
3:33
Speaker 1: humans to come in and like all the things that
3:35
Speaker 1: you see human humans do for nature, it's because we
3:38
Speaker 1: had messed something up with nature. It's not because nature
3:41
Speaker 1: was like, oh, we need you to step in. Like
3:43
Speaker 1: if humans had never been around, nature would be just fine. Yeah.
3:46
Speaker 1: So the point of rewilding is to designate huge swaths
3:50
Speaker 1: of earth all over the earth, huge tracts of land. Yeah,
3:53
Speaker 1: to to basically remove ourselves from and just let nature
3:57
Speaker 1: do its thing, because we just we through everything up,
4:00
Speaker 1: even when we try not to, we screw everything up.
4:03
Speaker 1: We can overmanage, we can undermanage, we can mismanage. There
4:07
Speaker 1: are very few things that we properly manage. And that's
4:11
Speaker 1: kind of like what's given the idea, the concept of
4:13
Speaker 1: rewilding like such a like such great cachet, like in
4:17
Speaker 1: the ecological community, both the scientific part of it and
4:21
Speaker 1: also like this the popular part of it. It's it's
4:24
Speaker 1: saying like, well, then let's just get humans out of
4:26
Speaker 1: the out of the management business and let nature do
4:29
Speaker 1: its thing. I think it's wonderful idea, it is. And
4:32
Speaker 1: you know, it can uh, it can encompass you know,
4:38
Speaker 1: like plant growth and just kind of simple things like that,
4:41
Speaker 1: like where that things were once mowed down and mulched
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Speaker 1: and like you know, quote unquote cared for by humans,
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Speaker 1: letting that kind of run wild again all the way
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Speaker 1: to the most extreme examples, which is something we touched
4:54
Speaker 1: on in the National Park episode that Julia brought up
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Speaker 1: here was like reintroducing a carnivore to the scene that
5:00
Speaker 1: had long been gone, like the wolves of Yellowstone and
5:03
Speaker 1: letting them do their thing. And that's actually kind of
5:06
Speaker 1: a big part of one part of rewilding. Yeah, so
5:10
Speaker 1: you bring up something that you kind of reference what
5:13
Speaker 1: I sent you earlier about UM misusing the term like
5:17
Speaker 1: it does encompass all of those things. But the only
5:20
Speaker 1: reason rewilding encompasses all of those things because the scientific
5:23
Speaker 1: community is still trying to figure out exactly what rewilding is.
5:28
Speaker 1: They're trying to figure out the definition, they're trying to
5:30
Speaker 1: figure out what is not rewild ing UM. They're trying
5:34
Speaker 1: to figure out like what the best practices and best
5:37
Speaker 1: steps forward are for rewilding UM. And because they're still
5:41
Speaker 1: figuring it out, and because it's such a buzzword, anybody
5:44
Speaker 1: who's doing anything that has to do with restoration, whether
5:48
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, reintroducing some voles into a place
5:53
Speaker 1: where there's already voles um or you know, yeah, like
5:56
Speaker 1: you were saying, like adding like some kind of g
6:00
Speaker 1: asid raising the mower height in a park to let
6:03
Speaker 1: more more of like the groundcover flower. Like Currently that's
6:10
Speaker 1: technically rewilding, but really that's that's If you give it
6:14
Speaker 1: five more years, probably those things will not be considered rewilding,
6:17
Speaker 1: will have a much more coherent definition of it, and
6:20
Speaker 1: hopefully a lot more data to back up the claims
6:23
Speaker 1: that rewilding makes. Because the big problem with it is
6:26
Speaker 1: it's a really great idea that we just need to
6:29
Speaker 1: know more about. Uh we're jumping in feet first, and
6:32
Speaker 1: that that can be It could be dangerous, as we'll see,
6:36
Speaker 1: but I think more often than not it could just
6:38
Speaker 1: be a failure and it could lose popular support. It'll
6:41
Speaker 1: it'll make people think it just doesn't work if we
6:43
Speaker 1: do it the wrong way a bunch of times to
6:45
Speaker 1: start right, and there are some really bad examples for
6:49
Speaker 1: free wilding. Well again, I don't even like calling it
6:52
Speaker 1: rewilding because like one example that well you might as
6:56
Speaker 1: well talk a little bit about a bad example is
6:59
Speaker 1: uh South Georgia, not Georgia that we live in, but
7:02
Speaker 1: Georgia and Europe. There's the reindeer in South Georgia where
7:05
Speaker 1: there were whalers on this uh. I think it was
7:09
Speaker 1: on an island, and they're like, well, you know, we
7:11
Speaker 1: love to eat reindeer, and so we're just gonna put
7:14
Speaker 1: a bunch of reindeer on this kind of smallish island
7:17
Speaker 1: so we can hunt them as whalers and have something
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Speaker 1: to eat. And it went terribly and you know, years later,
7:23
Speaker 1: I think they had to just go in and like
7:24
Speaker 1: slaughter five thousand reindeer. That's not rewilding, that's just that's
7:28
Speaker 1: a dumb idea, which is like bringing in an invasive
7:31
Speaker 1: species and plunking it down there. That's not rewolding at all.
7:35
Speaker 1: But it gets thrown in there as like there's a
7:38
Speaker 1: bad example of rewilding. It's like it's not rewilding, right,
7:41
Speaker 1: and it wasn't ever intended to be rewilding. It took
7:43
Speaker 1: place at the turn of the century, and I think
7:45
Speaker 1: South Georgia island is down by the Falklands if I
7:48
Speaker 1: remember correctly, like below South America. So they brought it
7:51
Speaker 1: in as like a like a food source because like
7:53
Speaker 1: these these Swedes or Norwegians were like, there's nothing down
7:57
Speaker 1: here that we've ever eaten before we need some reindeer
7:59
Speaker 1: in this place. And they managed it just fine, Like
8:02
Speaker 1: they hunted the reindeer and the reindeer apparently we're well
8:07
Speaker 1: checked or well managed. But then when they stopped hunting
8:10
Speaker 1: the reindeer and let nature take over, basically what we
8:14
Speaker 1: would do with rewilding, the reindeer ran wild, and uh,
8:19
Speaker 1: things just went out of hand really really quickly. So
8:21
Speaker 1: it was not an example of rewilding by anyone's definition,
8:25
Speaker 1: but it still serves as a cautionary tale about what
8:27
Speaker 1: can happen when you do something like just back out
8:30
Speaker 1: of the picture. That we do need to know more
8:33
Speaker 1: about what our role is to set up an ecosystem
8:36
Speaker 1: before we take our hands off of it, you know
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Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, And also Julia points out, um
8:42
Speaker 1: again very aptly, that like when something like this hits
8:46
Speaker 1: the news, then you're going to have animal activists and
8:49
Speaker 1: environmentalists when they hear the word rewilding projects say we
8:53
Speaker 1: can't do that. That led to the death the slaughter
8:55
Speaker 1: of five thousand reindeer. Uh So it just gives it
8:58
Speaker 1: all a bad name. So hopefully we'll try and give
9:02
Speaker 1: it a better name. Yeah, because again I think it's
9:05
Speaker 1: a really great idea. We just need to know more
9:07
Speaker 1: about it. We need more science, everybody, So we talk
9:09
Speaker 1: about bio diversity. Yeah, I think we should, because, um,
9:14
Speaker 1: that's pretty much the basis of this whole thing, the
9:16
Speaker 1: whole idea behind rewilding, the whole reason it has so
9:19
Speaker 1: much supporters because it's become painfully clear that the damage
9:24
Speaker 1: that we've done to the Earth is altering ecosystems, and
9:27
Speaker 1: pretty much unfavorable ways. I don't think there's any way
9:32
Speaker 1: that we've damaged an ecosystem where we're like, oh, that
9:34
Speaker 1: actually worked out for the better, maybe for humans and conveniences,
9:38
Speaker 1: but yeah, but even still, now we've reached Yeah, maybe
9:42
Speaker 1: that was true like thirty forty years ago. Now we've
9:45
Speaker 1: reached the time where it's it's time to pay the piper.
9:47
Speaker 1: And now even for us, we're suffering the consequences of
9:51
Speaker 1: damaging and altering ecosystems so dramatically that they can no
9:55
Speaker 1: longer function. And the point behind rewilding is to re
10:00
Speaker 1: established biodiversity in large parts so that humans and other
10:04
Speaker 1: animals can survive on planet Earth in the next hundred years. Right,
10:08
Speaker 1: And then you know, when you look into the more
10:12
Speaker 1: I guess level headed descriptors of what rewilding can be
10:15
Speaker 1: and sort of the tenants of them, which we can
10:18
Speaker 1: get too later and full it's not hey, let's let's
10:21
Speaker 1: dump a bunch of mountain lions into Central Park. It's
10:25
Speaker 1: it's got to it has to work with humans as well.
10:29
Speaker 1: But as we'll see, there's there's a lot of places
10:31
Speaker 1: is where there are not humans and this is mainly
10:34
Speaker 1: what they're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, and then then in
10:36
Speaker 1: those places where there are some humans or whatever, it's
10:38
Speaker 1: like we'll just we'll get them out all the way. Yeah,
10:42
Speaker 1: but it has to work together. Like unfortunately, you know,
10:45
Speaker 1: like it or not, humans are part of the ecosystem
10:48
Speaker 1: now and it has to work for everyone. But right
10:52
Speaker 1: now humans are just making it work for them in
10:54
Speaker 1: many cases. Yeah. And then so even beyond also you
10:57
Speaker 1: raise a good point, even beyond also the the fact
11:00
Speaker 1: that it's got to work for us, that we can't
11:02
Speaker 1: just coexist with mountain lions in Central Park. Um. It
11:07
Speaker 1: it has to to work for us in the sense
11:09
Speaker 1: that like a lot of the places that are being
11:12
Speaker 1: like pointed to is like prime areas to be rewilded
11:18
Speaker 1: if you like, if you look over to the right
11:21
Speaker 1: a little bit. There's some like sheepherder. They're saying, Um,
11:24
Speaker 1: this is my land that I use my sheep to
11:26
Speaker 1: graze on, and sheep herds grazing is pretty much the
11:30
Speaker 1: antithesis of rewilding, So what are we going to do
11:33
Speaker 1: with that guy? So there's also one of the one
11:35
Speaker 1: of the things that they're figuring out with rewilding is
11:38
Speaker 1: how to evolve from a at least like um and
11:43
Speaker 1: equally involved the community or the people who are going
11:45
Speaker 1: to be most affected by this, if not from a
11:48
Speaker 1: bottom up. Everyone's saying do not do top down, don't
11:51
Speaker 1: don't figure this out in the city and then come
11:54
Speaker 1: and tell the sheep farmers what to do. Like, that's
11:56
Speaker 1: not going to work. I think I saw somebody say,
11:59
Speaker 1: especially in Scotland, that is not going to work. Yeah,
12:02
Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, in a Scotland, I know
12:04
Speaker 1: that's true. Yeah. Oh boy, I had like this long
12:07
Speaker 1: string of Scottish obscenities. I was about ready to belt
12:10
Speaker 1: out and my worst accent earned brew. Um. So, as
12:15
Speaker 1: far as biodiversity goes, Julia put it away that I
12:18
Speaker 1: think it really kind of hits it on the nose
12:20
Speaker 1: it is. It's not just the quantity and variety of
12:23
Speaker 1: species and individuals. It's really the interactions within the ecosystem
12:28
Speaker 1: and how they all work together. That's what bio diversity is.
12:31
Speaker 1: And ecosystems and bio diversity, they're meant to fluctuate like
12:36
Speaker 1: things happen in nature naturally, and species may dwindle here
12:40
Speaker 1: and there when resources are a little more scarce, and
12:43
Speaker 1: sometimes they're not thriving like they should, but they're still
12:45
Speaker 1: built for that. What they're not built for is human
12:48
Speaker 1: triggered biodiversity loss. And this is what we've seen humans
12:53
Speaker 1: do over and over in time and time again, and
12:55
Speaker 1: that just makes ecosystems kind of crumble under pressure to
12:59
Speaker 1: deliver and then do their thing. Yeah, and there's just
13:03
Speaker 1: it's unequivocal that, um that we have are facing terrible
13:08
Speaker 1: a loss of biodiversity all over Earth. The Living Plant
13:12
Speaker 1: Index said that between nineteen seventy and two thousand and twelve,
13:15
Speaker 1: fifty eight percent of the world's fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds,
13:19
Speaker 1: and mammals all disappeared, like just gone goodbye, all of
13:22
Speaker 1: those species. Yeah, so um like that when that happens,
13:29
Speaker 1: like you're saying these these The way that that that
13:32
Speaker 1: UM ecosystems have like evolved over time is that like
13:35
Speaker 1: they function as a as a net, as a web,
13:38
Speaker 1: as like a bunch of interconnected parts that create something
13:42
Speaker 1: greater as a whole, and then that whole works together
13:47
Speaker 1: with other similar holes to create something greater, and it
13:49
Speaker 1: keeps going on to this macro scale until you reach
13:51
Speaker 1: like planet level. So you're going from like you know,
13:55
Speaker 1: dormouse to planet level, all following basically the same path.
13:59
Speaker 1: And when you lose biodiversity, you're bound to lose species
14:03
Speaker 1: that are performing really important, really valuable functions that affect
14:09
Speaker 1: UM and support a bunch of other different kinds of species.
14:12
Speaker 1: So you lose those other species, but then you also
14:14
Speaker 1: lose what are called the services that that ecosystem provides,
14:18
Speaker 1: everything from preventing floods and erosion to preventing forest fires wildfires,
14:24
Speaker 1: um um speeding up the carbon sequestions sequestration, um speeding
14:30
Speaker 1: up oxygen production, like all these things that that the
14:34
Speaker 1: planet needs to live. We evolved on planet Earth, so
14:38
Speaker 1: we need those two and we've also, whether we realize
14:40
Speaker 1: it or not, built our economy taking those things for granted.
14:46
Speaker 1: UM and so fortunately the UM Office of Economic Development
14:51
Speaker 1: UM put together a paper that cited a hundred and
14:57
Speaker 1: twenty five to hundred and forty trillion dollars worth of
15:02
Speaker 1: these services are produced by Nature per year. They put
15:05
Speaker 1: a number on it, which, on its face it sounds
15:08
Speaker 1: like a lot of money, right. It is the global
15:13
Speaker 1: gross domestic product all of the money produced by all
15:16
Speaker 1: the goods and services produced on planet Earth in only
15:21
Speaker 1: equal eight five trillion. So on the high end, Nature
15:24
Speaker 1: produces services that are worth nearly twice of global GDP
15:28
Speaker 1: in a whole year. And so now you're starting to
15:32
Speaker 1: bring in the conservatives. They're like, okay, I hadn't consider that.
15:36
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that too. So there's there's basically no
15:39
Speaker 1: one who wouldn't benefit from a healthier, more bio diverse planet.
15:44
Speaker 1: And I feel like we've reached the point for a break.
15:48
Speaker 1: What do you think right after I say one quick
15:51
Speaker 1: soapboxy thing, it's sort of echoes back to what I
15:54
Speaker 1: pointed out in the Yellowstone episode. Is this this wonderful
15:57
Speaker 1: macro long view of the world that you embrace and
16:03
Speaker 1: I embrace. That's uh, that's the problem because in the
16:08
Speaker 1: short term, people like sure but what about this one
16:12
Speaker 1: thing I can do? Now? What about all this crypto
16:15
Speaker 1: I can mind today? Uh? Nuts getting into all that.
16:19
Speaker 1: Good lord, but um, people need to take a longer
16:24
Speaker 1: view of things, and I think humans are just unfortunately
16:27
Speaker 1: want to look at the the five bucks right in
16:29
Speaker 1: front of their face that they can make, you know, chuck.
16:32
Speaker 1: It feels a lot like we're waking up, you and me, Yes,
16:37
Speaker 1: But I think I think that's a big point. I
16:39
Speaker 1: think you and I are very mainstream people, and I
16:41
Speaker 1: think we're waking up even more than we had before.
16:45
Speaker 1: And I think that that's usually reflective of people in general.
16:48
Speaker 1: I think that people are starting to wake up more
16:51
Speaker 1: as a group, as a collective, and you just see
16:55
Speaker 1: so much less like greenwashing and PRBs, like people don't
16:59
Speaker 1: buy it any more. People. I think people are starting
17:02
Speaker 1: to understand on the whole it's how important this is.
17:05
Speaker 1: I think younger generations continually do that through through time,
17:10
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's happening. So that's a good thing.
17:13
Speaker 1: And I agree, g Z, we should we should take
17:17
Speaker 1: that break. Go gen Z and whatever follows you. I
17:20
Speaker 1: don't even know what my daughter is. I don't either.
17:23
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if they've named that generation yet, because
17:25
Speaker 1: right now it's Generation very selfish, but that's very young
17:30
Speaker 1: six years old. Yeah, generation temper tantrum. She's not much
17:36
Speaker 1: of a tantrumber. But anyway, uh, let's take that break
17:40
Speaker 1: and we'll be right back. Okay, Hey, before we get going,
18:05
Speaker 1: can I say one quick thing, and this is I
18:08
Speaker 1: am always very sad when I see that, like Jogger
18:12
Speaker 1: in California, Southern California has attacked in Mall by mountain lion,
18:16
Speaker 1: Like that is a tragedy for that family. Um, but
18:19
Speaker 1: my favorite thing is when those stories end with and
18:23
Speaker 1: that's what happened, and that's too bad, and that's a
18:26
Speaker 1: mountain lion doing what a mountain lion does and not
18:30
Speaker 1: and they hunted it down and killed it. Yeah yeah,
18:34
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, speaking of releasing mountainins into Central Park,
18:37
Speaker 1: which I doubt if they were over there anyway, Well,
18:40
Speaker 1: I think that's that's one of the big tenants of
18:42
Speaker 1: rewild ng is is like there there's a push that
18:45
Speaker 1: of converting. So I was talking about those sheep sheep
18:48
Speaker 1: herders in Scotland and what are they gonna do? Well,
18:51
Speaker 1: some people say, well, you can actually there's stuff called
18:54
Speaker 1: nature based economies, and you can change what you do
18:56
Speaker 1: to make money. UM, if you are getting into rewilding
19:00
Speaker 1: your land, you could start basically holding safari's and that's UM.
19:05
Speaker 1: That's that. That illustrates two things. One, there's a lot
19:08
Speaker 1: of money to be made. I've seen, UM, I've seen
19:10
Speaker 1: that some farmers have reported making as much, if not
19:14
Speaker 1: more than they did farming that they do now that
19:16
Speaker 1: they're doing like eco tourism on their old on their
19:19
Speaker 1: land that's been rewild And it's interesting sure. But but
19:23
Speaker 1: then also it also shows you the role of humans
19:27
Speaker 1: in this like we're meant to be like guided on
19:30
Speaker 1: a tour in a very like um arranged visit to
19:37
Speaker 1: these areas. It's not like this area is wild, just
19:40
Speaker 1: do whatever you want in it. It's extremely well managed.
19:45
Speaker 1: But what you're managing in this case is the humans,
19:48
Speaker 1: not the wildlife, not the floora of the fall on it.
19:51
Speaker 1: You're keeping people out, no hunting, no farming, no grazing
19:55
Speaker 1: your livestock, no just like going camping there. I'm not
19:59
Speaker 1: sure about that part, but I get the impression that
20:02
Speaker 1: humans are meant to just be kept out of it
20:04
Speaker 1: rather than the animal populations are are managed, it's the
20:08
Speaker 1: humans that are Yeah. I think I don't know how
20:11
Speaker 1: wilders feel about it, but as a camper, I think
20:13
Speaker 1: if you do it right, then you shouldn't be harming
20:17
Speaker 1: the ecosystems that you're in. But someone might argue that like, hey, man,
20:21
Speaker 1: just setting a tent up like on the ground harms
20:26
Speaker 1: the ground. Yeah. I mean I guess if you zoom
20:30
Speaker 1: in far enough with a microscope you could probably back
20:33
Speaker 1: that up. Yeah. Like I crushed a worm with my
20:36
Speaker 1: big body, so then I slept in a hammock. And
20:40
Speaker 1: what are you going to give that worms family? Now? Uh?
20:44
Speaker 1: A small sum of money there, maybe some dirt. They
20:48
Speaker 1: would probably prefer dirt, especially if it was really good dirt,
20:51
Speaker 1: soil or soil from my body. Yep. Just take off
20:56
Speaker 1: your clothes and roll on the ground and say I'm
20:58
Speaker 1: sorry worm. And then they said, well, and he just
21:01
Speaker 1: killed two more of us. Uh. Let's humans have to
21:06
Speaker 1: remove themselves from the wilderness. Let's move on, please. Uh.
21:12
Speaker 1: We should talk about the three CS because this was
21:15
Speaker 1: sort of an early descriptor on rewilding, which is cores, corridors,
21:20
Speaker 1: and carnivores, and the idea is that. And this has
21:25
Speaker 1: a lot to do with like reintroducing wolves the Yellowstone carnivores.
21:29
Speaker 1: Having an apex predator in an area is awesome and
21:33
Speaker 1: super healthy for that area. Uh. They control and they
21:37
Speaker 1: regulate that food chain like a champ. And they need
21:41
Speaker 1: a lot of room though, and so uh it's called
21:44
Speaker 1: a core reserve like their area. If they're gonna thrive
21:47
Speaker 1: a lot, and when that core reserve shrinks, then all
21:50
Speaker 1: of a sudden they're isolated. That's gonna harm them. And
21:53
Speaker 1: then that's gonna have that trickle down effect that we
21:55
Speaker 1: talk a lot about. Uh. Here on planet Earth, now,
21:58
Speaker 1: there are a lot of cores that are too small.
22:01
Speaker 1: So the ideas, all right, why don't we connect these
22:04
Speaker 1: cores with corridors to allow them to keep moving? And
22:09
Speaker 1: this can look anything like I sit you that one
22:12
Speaker 1: thing I know that we've talked about these before. It's
22:14
Speaker 1: the coolest thing when they make like a a land
22:17
Speaker 1: bridge for animals to cross a highway without getting killed
22:23
Speaker 1: or go under like an overpass or an underpass like
22:26
Speaker 1: that could be a corridor at its most sort of
22:28
Speaker 1: fundamental or like literally sort of rejoining land that was
22:33
Speaker 1: not joined before because of human interaction. Yeah, there's a
22:37
Speaker 1: big there's a big push for that because yeah, there's
22:39
Speaker 1: plenty of cores around, but if they're disconnected, then there's
22:43
Speaker 1: not going to be enough um to support like a
22:46
Speaker 1: healthy ecosystem, and those like apex predators are going to
22:50
Speaker 1: get stressed and it's going to stress out the whole ecosystem.
22:52
Speaker 1: They don't have anywhere to go. But if you connect
22:55
Speaker 1: two small ones through a corridor, all of a sudden
22:57
Speaker 1: they can kind of go back and forth and you know,
23:00
Speaker 1: the one, this one small place regenerates in their absence,
23:03
Speaker 1: and then they go to the other one, and then
23:05
Speaker 1: they go back to the first one, and the second
23:07
Speaker 1: one regenerates while they're gone like that. That's a really
23:10
Speaker 1: great idea because it also kind of shows that spirit
23:13
Speaker 1: of like not giving ups, like, oh, the cores are
23:15
Speaker 1: so small, what are we gonna do? I guess nothing.
23:18
Speaker 1: It's like no, you connect the course and then you
23:20
Speaker 1: can also look at it an even bigger scale, like
23:22
Speaker 1: a good example of a core. The ideal version of
23:25
Speaker 1: a core, or close to it, is an American National park,
23:30
Speaker 1: Like you can't do anything in the national park, but
23:32
Speaker 1: basically go in camp and and visit and that's about it, right.
23:37
Speaker 1: Um the other national parks I was reading about ones
23:39
Speaker 1: in in England at least like you can hunt their
23:43
Speaker 1: managed for like grouse hunting and deer hunting, and like
23:46
Speaker 1: they're not like American national parks. So um, the American
23:51
Speaker 1: version is a really great example of kind of what
23:54
Speaker 1: we're talking about re wilding. And then imagine if you
23:56
Speaker 1: connected Yellowstone to Yosemite with a wildlife corridor, right, is
24:02
Speaker 1: that even possible? Well, yeah, they're on the same continent
24:06
Speaker 1: so effectively as possible. Yeah, you're gonna have to move
24:12
Speaker 1: some some powerful landowners like Ted Turner. He's probably not
24:15
Speaker 1: going to give up his land willingly, although I don't
24:17
Speaker 1: know maybe he will. Um, there there has to be
24:20
Speaker 1: like a shift in how people view the importance of
24:23
Speaker 1: wilderness and nature and that's kind of part and parcel
24:27
Speaker 1: with the concept every wilding too. Yeah, and a lot
24:31
Speaker 1: of this research that we looked at comes from the
24:33
Speaker 1: UK and we'll talk about that more later. But um,
24:37
Speaker 1: it comes down to like a very smack I'm sorry,
24:40
Speaker 1: a micro effort of going and convincing one landowner at
24:45
Speaker 1: a time almost to do stuff like this, and they're
24:48
Speaker 1: having some successes in the uplands of of the UK
24:51
Speaker 1: where that you know, kind of one at a time,
24:53
Speaker 1: some landowners are agreeing like all right, this is what
24:56
Speaker 1: I can I'll agree to do and for the good
24:58
Speaker 1: of everybody. Yeah, it's kind of cool, but it is
25:01
Speaker 1: a you know, it's a pretty slow process. Like you're
25:04
Speaker 1: not gonna see rewild ing on on the evening news
25:10
Speaker 1: every night. It's a pretty I don't know about small movement,
25:13
Speaker 1: but it's it's not mainstream, I don't think in the
25:16
Speaker 1: in the consciousness no, but in the ecological community it's
25:20
Speaker 1: like basically being touted as the future of ecology. So hot,
25:24
Speaker 1: so um. The three c's, especially with the carnivores featured,
25:30
Speaker 1: that's um, that's basically descriptive of one of the two
25:35
Speaker 1: general umbrella categories for rewilding, and that would be trophic rewilding,
25:41
Speaker 1: which will talk a little more about. But let's talk
25:43
Speaker 1: about passive, real wild and kind of the other end
25:45
Speaker 1: of the spectrum. Yeah, I mean this is kind of
25:48
Speaker 1: uh taking a good look at where, um, where you
25:53
Speaker 1: should do this, Like where to start, like what what's
25:56
Speaker 1: a good area to even try this and where you
25:58
Speaker 1: can kind of go unchecked and where it will benefit
26:02
Speaker 1: people as well as the ecosystems around there. But the
26:06
Speaker 1: two main goals of the passive rewilding are too and
26:10
Speaker 1: this is something humans do a lot. Like there's a
26:11
Speaker 1: lot of wildlife protection going on. So the first part
26:14
Speaker 1: of passive rewilding is kind of that is letting wildlife
26:17
Speaker 1: rebound and kind of get back, you know, get its
26:21
Speaker 1: its land legs back under itself. Uh. And that means
26:24
Speaker 1: like no hunting and stuff like that or hunting restrictions. Uh,
26:27
Speaker 1: and then letting that land grow back together like you
26:30
Speaker 1: talked about. So animals can you know, go where they
26:33
Speaker 1: once could go, like just increasing their territories and just
26:36
Speaker 1: saying here, nature, uh, do what you will with yourself.
26:40
Speaker 1: And that sounds super dirty. We won't look we're walking away.
26:45
Speaker 1: We had new idea nature would do that, right, oh god.
26:49
Speaker 1: So um with passive rewilding, there's there's they're trying to
26:52
Speaker 1: figure out what the initial steps are because in a
26:55
Speaker 1: lot of these areas we've done a lot, it's just
26:59
Speaker 1: kind of visible the city slickers like you and me.
27:02
Speaker 1: Um to alter the ecosystem the landscape, so you know,
27:06
Speaker 1: we would have to go in and like remove dams
27:08
Speaker 1: that we've built there. Um, we would have to fill
27:11
Speaker 1: in canals, UM, just anything anyway that we've altered or
27:16
Speaker 1: put a human touch on the landscape. Um, we would
27:19
Speaker 1: need to basically undo before we left, or else they
27:23
Speaker 1: would still be an altered ecosystem that could be really problematic. UM.
27:28
Speaker 1: So if we just basically kind of restore it then
27:32
Speaker 1: and then we walk away, the idea is that it
27:36
Speaker 1: will take care of itself faster. But like you're saying,
27:39
Speaker 1: this is not a it's not a fast process. Like
27:42
Speaker 1: some of these projects that are being proposed to have
27:44
Speaker 1: timelines of a couple of hundred years before they reach
27:47
Speaker 1: where they're supposed to be. It's hard. It is, it is,
27:50
Speaker 1: But again I think it's getting easier and easier there.
27:55
Speaker 1: And part of the PASSI rewilding is what I was
27:56
Speaker 1: talking about in the uplands of England. Uh. That's where
28:00
Speaker 1: they're kind of going one farmer at a time and saying, hey,
28:05
Speaker 1: you know of England's drinking water comes from these uplands,
28:09
Speaker 1: and you know, I think when you start describing uh
28:13
Speaker 1: without maybe I think you can go too far and
28:15
Speaker 1: scare people in the other direction with the doom and gloom.
28:19
Speaker 1: But if you very just sort of calmly lay out
28:21
Speaker 1: some facts and figures, I think that can wait people
28:24
Speaker 1: at sometimes. Yes, and the UK super into this in
28:28
Speaker 1: no small part because of an ecologist Harry and Megan
28:33
Speaker 1: named George mombiatt. I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly. He
28:38
Speaker 1: wrote a book in two thirteen called Feral that basically
28:41
Speaker 1: called for rewilding and he really popularized it over there
28:44
Speaker 1: and since then it's really started to kind of take
28:46
Speaker 1: off and they have really lofty goals. Um, they have
28:49
Speaker 1: a goal of rewilding five of England's land. I believe it.
28:56
Speaker 1: It's just coming up quick and five percent. It's a lot.
28:59
Speaker 1: It's about out a million acres and they put in
29:01
Speaker 1: perspective there like there's a quarter of that is in
29:05
Speaker 1: like football fields in England. So really is that that much?
29:09
Speaker 1: Like if you're daunted by that idea, um, And but
29:12
Speaker 1: that's still in eight years, converting it to to to
29:16
Speaker 1: a rewilded state or starting to is pretty ambitious. Yeah.
29:21
Speaker 1: I think, Um, you sent me that one thing that
29:23
Speaker 1: was really cool where they sort of analyze, and this
29:27
Speaker 1: is from a UK side, I think, where they analyze
29:30
Speaker 1: like someone who might poop poo. This say is do
29:32
Speaker 1: we even have the space to do this kind of thing, Like,
29:35
Speaker 1: you know, we can't turn our cities over again to
29:38
Speaker 1: the to the mountain lions and just let everything grow wild.
29:41
Speaker 1: And that's not what they're talking about, but that one website,
29:45
Speaker 1: I can't remember which one it was, but talking about
29:47
Speaker 1: if you could traverse the entire UK in one day, yeah, England, Scotland,
29:51
Speaker 1: Wales and Northern Ireland. That of the land that you
29:57
Speaker 1: would find you would not see men, people or buildings.
30:01
Speaker 1: You would only spend about an hour and forty five
30:04
Speaker 1: minutes of that twenty four hours traversing all of the UK,
30:08
Speaker 1: moving through urban spaces. And some of those urban spaces
30:11
Speaker 1: even have green spaces, obviously not rewilded, but green space nonetheless.
30:16
Speaker 1: And of the population of the UK lives on six
30:20
Speaker 1: percent of the land mass, so in other words, there
30:24
Speaker 1: is a lot of land out there to be rewilded.
30:27
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean, you know, throwing wild animals in the
30:30
Speaker 1: middle of the city, right, It's the opposite throwing the
30:34
Speaker 1: humans out of the wilderness. Exactly. You go over there
30:38
Speaker 1: and build your city life where you don't breathe fresh
30:40
Speaker 1: air and you don't go outside and things like that. Well,
30:43
Speaker 1: some of the more radical proposals for rewild ng is
30:46
Speaker 1: like giving over you know, like nine tenths of the
30:51
Speaker 1: United States to wilderness and basically just pointing out, like
30:55
Speaker 1: how many more people you can pack into the urban
30:58
Speaker 1: centers of like the East Coast and the US coast
31:00
Speaker 1: and just like leave the middle alone as wilderness. I
31:03
Speaker 1: haven't seen that supported by many people. I think probably
31:06
Speaker 1: the guy who keeps promoting that, keeps getting told to
31:09
Speaker 1: be quiet by the other ecologists, is going to scare
31:12
Speaker 1: off the normals. You know, American suburbs are very big
31:15
Speaker 1: and important, right, but it does it does really point
31:19
Speaker 1: out to like, you know, there's there's people out there,
31:22
Speaker 1: and we have there we have to take their interests
31:24
Speaker 1: into consideration. And one of the things that I kept
31:27
Speaker 1: seeing pointed out in the UK is apparently after Brexit,
31:30
Speaker 1: the farm subsidies for farms that that could not support
31:34
Speaker 1: themselves through their own production, um like like it is
31:39
Speaker 1: in the US, and I'm sure Australia too, they were
31:41
Speaker 1: heavily subsidized by the government to make up that that
31:44
Speaker 1: that gap, and then after Brexit, apparently those things are
31:48
Speaker 1: beginning slash left and right, and so people have been saying, Okay, well,
31:52
Speaker 1: if we're not going to be giving them farm subsidies,
31:54
Speaker 1: what if we change the purpose of the subsidies from
31:57
Speaker 1: you know, farming, to you wilding land instead. If these
32:02
Speaker 1: farms aren't producing that well anyway, and we can still
32:05
Speaker 1: produce enough food, that's a very important point without these farms,
32:10
Speaker 1: and in fact, some of these farms would actually be
32:13
Speaker 1: way more valuable as untouched wilderness. Um, then maybe it
32:18
Speaker 1: would make sense to take that money and converted into
32:21
Speaker 1: that instead. And then you also have you've also taken
32:24
Speaker 1: care of the person problem because they're still being supported
32:28
Speaker 1: like they need to be. But at the same time,
32:30
Speaker 1: they also don't have to move. They just can't graze
32:32
Speaker 1: their sheep anymore. Just don't graze sheep anymore, and you're
32:35
Speaker 1: gonna make the same amount of money. And you can
32:37
Speaker 1: take tourists on wilderness safari's as a side gig. And
32:41
Speaker 1: I just pictured groundskeeper Willie staring us down from yeah yeah,
32:47
Speaker 1: and then getting on this tractor that pulls us along
32:50
Speaker 1: and point out the red deer just hopping all over
32:52
Speaker 1: the place on his rewilded land. Or he could just
32:55
Speaker 1: give us the one of the great groundskeeper Willie lines
32:58
Speaker 1: of all time from one of the uh Halloween episodes
33:02
Speaker 1: when he was Freddy Krueger. Do you remember that one? Yeah,
33:05
Speaker 1: of course, and I'm done with you. They're gonna need
33:08
Speaker 1: to come postmortem. So great, that's a good one, one
33:12
Speaker 1: of my favorite lines. Um. So, a lot of stuff
33:14
Speaker 1: we were just talking about falls under the pass of rewilding. Uh,
33:18
Speaker 1: we've hit on trophic rewilding. But within that, they're like,
33:22
Speaker 1: it kind of depends on how hardcore of an environmentalist
33:25
Speaker 1: you're talking to. There's something called plist to scene rewilding
33:29
Speaker 1: where they're like, hey, human disturbance started at the last
33:33
Speaker 1: ice age, and that should be our goal is to
33:36
Speaker 1: kind of like introduce if not uh wooly mammoth's like
33:41
Speaker 1: maybe a descendant of the wooly mammoth because they're not
33:44
Speaker 1: around anymore. And so you get some sort of other people.
33:49
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know about how he did the
33:51
Speaker 1: arguments get but other people are like, pliest, the scene
33:54
Speaker 1: is really too uh we should really kind of move
33:57
Speaker 1: from that, like forward from there and think more along
34:00
Speaker 1: lines of the Wolves of Yellowstone than these huge megafauna. Right,
34:06
Speaker 1: So some people say, no, the mega faun are are important. Yeah,
34:09
Speaker 1: And the people who are proponents of places scene rewilding
34:12
Speaker 1: um say that it's um. The reason that they've they've
34:16
Speaker 1: chosen that point is because they're they're suggesting that, like,
34:19
Speaker 1: if we go that far back, we could probably defend
34:24
Speaker 1: ourselves in the planet against climate change that much more
34:28
Speaker 1: quickly or more robustly, I guess is a better way
34:31
Speaker 1: to say. It's not like they're just doing it out
34:33
Speaker 1: of sentimentality, Like there's a there's an intellectual bent to it,
34:37
Speaker 1: like and that is that we basically need to go
34:40
Speaker 1: that far back to counteract the damage we've done in
34:42
Speaker 1: the last like two years senti mentality. You know. So
34:47
Speaker 1: there's a problem with palist to scene rewilding the chuck
34:49
Speaker 1: and that is a lot of those animals are extinct, Yeah,
34:53
Speaker 1: like the William emmoth. Yeah. Okay, so what are you
34:56
Speaker 1: gonna do if you want to recreate the place to
34:59
Speaker 1: see on the American Midwest. Let's say every state in
35:03
Speaker 1: the Midwest agrees to move eastward or westward, and they're
35:06
Speaker 1: giving up all of their land over to rewilding, and
35:10
Speaker 1: we've all agreed it was placed to see rewilding. Lord,
35:13
Speaker 1: are we going to rewild it with if there's no
35:15
Speaker 1: such thing as a woolly mammoth? Maybe, but elephants have
35:20
Speaker 1: evolved in the last ten and twelve thousand years to
35:23
Speaker 1: um to to live around equatorial Africa, if I'm not mistaken,
35:27
Speaker 1: So are they going to do well in Kansas? And
35:30
Speaker 1: then the same thing for the saber tooth tiger or actually,
35:33
Speaker 1: I don't think they call him anymore. I think it's
35:35
Speaker 1: a sabre tooth cat. Maybe. Um all of their families
35:39
Speaker 1: totally extinct. There's no descendants of the saber tooth cats
35:42
Speaker 1: that are alive today. So what are we gonna do?
35:44
Speaker 1: Put mountain lions out there. We're gonna put actual tigers
35:47
Speaker 1: out there, are regular like African lions, and are we're
35:50
Speaker 1: gonna move them over to Kansas? And then the larger problem, Chuck,
35:54
Speaker 1: The larger problem is this, those animals, as big and
35:57
Speaker 1: scary and ferocious as they are, are kind of pew
36:00
Speaker 1: compared to the actual Pleistocene megafauna, like a sabretooth cat,
36:06
Speaker 1: And it's not clear that they would be up to
36:08
Speaker 1: the task of managing enormous ecosystems like that, just because
36:12
Speaker 1: of their smaller size. Yeah. So there's a lot of
36:16
Speaker 1: problems with pleistocene wilding and bring back the megaladon for
36:20
Speaker 1: the oceans. Yeah. Uh no, there are a lot of
36:24
Speaker 1: problems with that. Uh. And you're sort of talking about
36:27
Speaker 1: you mentioned the top down control, uh, and that is
36:31
Speaker 1: that theory that these you know, if you bring in
36:34
Speaker 1: an apex predator, it can really uh, it can be
36:38
Speaker 1: a really good thing. That the cascade of interactions that
36:42
Speaker 1: it can trigger is can be vast. But you know,
36:46
Speaker 1: that's that's trophic rewilding. It worked out pretty well for
36:48
Speaker 1: the wolves and Yellowstone, uh, and the beavers that followed,
36:53
Speaker 1: and the birds and the fish that followed because of
36:56
Speaker 1: the beaver. So it's a it's it's always a sternling
36:59
Speaker 1: example that people bring up. Yeah, So just to button
37:01
Speaker 1: that up, you've got passive rewilding, which is basically like
37:04
Speaker 1: just trying to get rid of your damns and bridges
37:07
Speaker 1: and stuff and then leave. And then the trophic rewilding
37:10
Speaker 1: is where you're selectively putting back animals that used to
37:14
Speaker 1: play a role in that ecosystem or are related to
37:17
Speaker 1: ones that used to play a role, right and then um,
37:21
Speaker 1: with a focus on those apex predators because they have
37:24
Speaker 1: so much control over the ecosystems that they live in,
37:28
Speaker 1: and that that one is way more involved and needs
37:31
Speaker 1: way more thought before we start doing that. Yeah, should
37:34
Speaker 1: we take a break. Yeah, alright, we're gonna will gonna jeez,
37:39
Speaker 1: we're gonna take our final break, and um, we'll talk
37:44
Speaker 1: about some of the issues with rewilding and some of
37:48
Speaker 1: the examples and some of the tenants. How about that.
37:51
Speaker 1: That sounds great? So earlier on we talked about one
38:18
Speaker 1: bad example of what I don't even think is rewilding
38:21
Speaker 1: with those reindeer uh in South Georgia. Uh. There are
38:25
Speaker 1: other examples. There was one. UM. Because you know, people
38:29
Speaker 1: will point to stats people to say this isn't a
38:31
Speaker 1: good idea. We'll say that, hey, the failure rate for
38:34
Speaker 1: introductions and reintroduction introductions and nature is higher than se
38:39
Speaker 1: and we don't even really have a lot of data
38:41
Speaker 1: if this works out anyway, and sent pretty high. And
38:45
Speaker 1: look at the um look about what Look at what
38:47
Speaker 1: happened in Argentina in the nineteen forties when they brought
38:51
Speaker 1: these Canadian beavers in and they ran wild and destroyed
38:55
Speaker 1: the forest. People who know what they're talking about was say,
39:00
Speaker 1: that's an invasive species, and when the beaver and yellowstone
39:03
Speaker 1: eat the willow tree, the willow tree grows back. When
39:06
Speaker 1: they eat these beech trees here in Argentina, they don't
39:09
Speaker 1: grow back, So you just have a wasteland. It's not
39:12
Speaker 1: dropping invasive species down into another place where they were
39:16
Speaker 1: never supposed to be to begin with. Yeah, it's supposed
39:18
Speaker 1: to be a little more thought out than that. That, Like,
39:20
Speaker 1: like I was saying before the break, like these are
39:23
Speaker 1: carefully selected and carefully thought out, or they're meant to
39:26
Speaker 1: be um animals that are that fil specific niches in
39:30
Speaker 1: the ecosystem that you're trying to restore. That's right, not
39:34
Speaker 1: dropping beavers in South America, Canadian beavers no less. Yeah.
39:38
Speaker 1: One thing that really spoke to me was in that
39:42
Speaker 1: additional material that you sent over. I think it was
39:45
Speaker 1: the four Tenants Rewilding Britain. I think was the website. Uh,
39:51
Speaker 1: and therefore tenants um are pretty self explanatory, but one
39:54
Speaker 1: part of part two really spoke to me. The first
39:56
Speaker 1: one is support people in nature together. The second one
40:00
Speaker 1: is let nature lead. And the line that really got
40:04
Speaker 1: me was it is not geared to reach any human
40:06
Speaker 1: defined optimal point or in state, it goes where nature
40:10
Speaker 1: takes it, and then that ties in with number four.
40:14
Speaker 1: Number three is creazy create resilient local economies. It's a
40:17
Speaker 1: big part of it. But number four is, uh, work
40:20
Speaker 1: at nature scale. Like I think humans are so obsessed
40:23
Speaker 1: with scale in business and they're basically saying, you gotta
40:29
Speaker 1: do what nature. Let nature do it. Nature does at
40:32
Speaker 1: its own pace and at its own scale. That's nature scale,
40:36
Speaker 1: and just let it do it. Don't put don't put
40:38
Speaker 1: your hang ups on nature, man on what you want
40:41
Speaker 1: it to be. And that's kind of true though, Yeah, no, absolutely,
40:46
Speaker 1: I think I think though that that kind of reveals,
40:49
Speaker 1: like that the lack of consensus in the field of rewilding,
40:53
Speaker 1: because what did you say that was rewilding Britain's four points? Yeah,
40:58
Speaker 1: there were actually five. The fifth one was secure and
41:00
Speaker 1: it fits for the long term, okay, yeah, five, And
41:02
Speaker 1: then I saw the union of the conservation of nature. Yeah,
41:08
Speaker 1: I think that's it. I think, uh, they they have
41:13
Speaker 1: ten ten points, so you've got five, you got ten
41:16
Speaker 1: depending on who you ask, but they all generally agree
41:19
Speaker 1: that before we really start doing this stuff in earnest,
41:23
Speaker 1: like we need more data. Like most of the people
41:25
Speaker 1: who are like, yeah, we just you know, release some
41:28
Speaker 1: voles into the into the woods. There's some rewilding project
41:31
Speaker 1: right there. Like, these are the people who aren't necessarily
41:35
Speaker 1: even thinking it through. If you're a conservation ecologist, if
41:39
Speaker 1: you're a biologist, if you're a botanist, if you're a
41:41
Speaker 1: scientist who's like actually looking at rewilding, pretty much everyone
41:46
Speaker 1: agrees like we need way more data than we have
41:49
Speaker 1: right now. That it's a great idea. We just need
41:51
Speaker 1: way more data if the science just isn't even there. Yeah,
41:55
Speaker 1: but you know, one of the tenants that they both
41:57
Speaker 1: it seems like everyone is talking about is talk to
42:02
Speaker 1: the local people. They call them stakeholders. Talk to the
42:05
Speaker 1: local stakeholders, because you can't just come in there, uh
42:11
Speaker 1: with your you know, with your science under your arm
42:14
Speaker 1: and your folder and just say this is how it's
42:16
Speaker 1: gonna go. Like, it's got to work for the people
42:19
Speaker 1: and you have to get them involved and on boarders
42:22
Speaker 1: just not gonna work. Don't even try that. In Scotland, everybody,
42:26
Speaker 1: oh man, don't mess with their sheet. You got anything else?
42:31
Speaker 1: I got nothing else? Uh? Well, maybe this last little
42:33
Speaker 1: bit from that stuff you sent. Seventy seven percent in
42:37
Speaker 1: increasing of the human population lives in urban areas and
42:43
Speaker 1: they spend of their time indoors. Seventy seven percent of
42:51
Speaker 1: humans spend nine of their time indoors. And just the
42:55
Speaker 1: health effects and the and the role the trickle down
42:58
Speaker 1: effects from that, We've talked about a lot, but people
43:01
Speaker 1: need to be out in nature. Mental and physical illness, depression,
43:05
Speaker 1: heart disease, anxiety, fatigue, obesity, a d h D like
43:11
Speaker 1: you name it, like a lot can be not wholly
43:14
Speaker 1: attributed to this, but certainly has an impact on people
43:18
Speaker 1: that And I'm a city guy, you are too, Like
43:20
Speaker 1: I love my urban areas, but uh, people need to
43:25
Speaker 1: get out doors more. And this is a good way
43:27
Speaker 1: to do what I think. Yeah, but that's a fine
43:29
Speaker 1: line you've got to walk because we're giving this stuff
43:32
Speaker 1: over to nature. So we have to ask ourselves, what,
43:34
Speaker 1: what role, what place do we have in these wildernesses
43:38
Speaker 1: that we're creating. And I think that's one of the
43:41
Speaker 1: things that that that that rewilding ecologists are excited about,
43:46
Speaker 1: is that would cause us to to rethink that that
43:50
Speaker 1: would be like, wait, amount I want to be indoors
43:52
Speaker 1: all time? Well, wait a minute, I'm already indoors all
43:55
Speaker 1: the time. I need to get out there, and now
43:56
Speaker 1: there's a place for them to go. So yeah, I
43:59
Speaker 1: think that's an they're big question mark that we'd have
44:01
Speaker 1: to figure out too. That's right. Um, well, that's it
44:05
Speaker 1: for rewilding for now. Given another five years, maybe we'll
44:08
Speaker 1: come back to it. Everybody. And since I said that,
44:10
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this of
44:16
Speaker 1: what the author called it, lesbians in the Military. Hi, guys,
44:20
Speaker 1: really enjoyed your podcast about the term friend of Dorothy
44:23
Speaker 1: and wanted to add something to your discussion about gay
44:25
Speaker 1: men in the military. Uh. And this is probably on
44:28
Speaker 1: us for just sort of saying gay men in the military,
44:31
Speaker 1: But there were many lesbians in the military during World
44:33
Speaker 1: War Two, as well as people who would we would
44:36
Speaker 1: now describe as bisexual women, transmasculine people, and others. The
44:41
Speaker 1: military was a safe place for queer women and a
44:45
Speaker 1: fab assigned female at birth people since it was somewhat
44:49
Speaker 1: of an escape for mainstream society that expected women to
44:52
Speaker 1: dress and present femininely and marry men never consider this.
44:55
Speaker 1: It's pretty great. This article is a great summary of
44:58
Speaker 1: the history. I thought you might find it interesting. Uh.
45:01
Speaker 1: And the name of the article I just click the
45:04
Speaker 1: link is called this is from out history dot org
45:08
Speaker 1: lesbians Comma not colin World War two and beyond. And
45:14
Speaker 1: this is from Rebecca, a friend of Dorothy. Nice. Thanks
45:19
Speaker 1: a lot, Rebecca. We're a friend of Rebecca who's a
45:22
Speaker 1: friend of Dorothy. That's right. It's hard to keep track,
45:25
Speaker 1: but let's just all be friends. That's pretty great. Um,
45:28
Speaker 1: thank you for that email, Rebecca. And if you want
45:30
Speaker 1: to be like us and point out something we hadn't
45:32
Speaker 1: considered before. We love that kind of stuff. You can
45:35
Speaker 1: wrap it up and send it in an email to
45:38
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45:44
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