March 17, 2022 • 46 mins
A big new push toward nature conservation (and saving the planet) is based on a simple premise: remove humans from the equation and let nature take its own course.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Kirk.
There's Chuck Bryant. Whoa, And this is stuff you should have.
(00:22):
You've been working on your Chewbacca friend. No, no, it
did sound like Chewbacca, especially that last bit. Now, I
haven't been working on at all. It's all natural talent.
Never had a lesson, as Ferris Bueler said, do you
remember Ferris Bueler. They came out fifty sixty years ago,
back when we were cool. I was supposed to do
that on the movie Crush, and then my guests couldn't
(00:43):
make it, and so I have like this great document
of notes prepared all about Ferris Spueler's sitting there going
to waste. Oh you should just read them, read through them.
On one of the notes, Yeah, Ferris Bueler sociopath or
cool teenager? Would you come up with? Well? Udgment always
has this sort of rant that, uh, Ferris's associopath. Upon
(01:06):
looking back, M yeah, there's like, come on, man, there
used to be like a whole blog for a little
while about about that. They would like analyze film, like
famous films like Top Gun. They basically pointed out how
Maverick was like this terrible person who got his friend
killed and felt like no, no responsibility for it and everything. People. Yeah, yeah,
(01:28):
it's pretty eye opening. It's paradigm shifting, I guess you
could say, and I think that's appropriate that we're talking
about paradigm shifting blogs because there's a lot of paradigm
shift involved it today's topic, and there's a lot of
blogs too, it turns out about rewilding. Yeah, it's all
over the place. Uh, it is, And we need to
(01:49):
thank our old pal Julia Layton makes an appearance here
for the first time in a while. Yeah, welcome back
Lates helping us with this one. And um, I thought
it was interesting because think you and I both I'm
gonna go ahead and speak for you. I think we
both agree that rewilding the concept of rewilding is pretty awesome.
Pretty awesome, yes, But as evidence from even some of
(02:12):
the stuff that Julia sent us, like there are some
negative examples of like rewilding that didn't go well, but
I would argue, like, that's not even rewilding, and calling
it that is just hurts the cause. And then you
sent me a thing that where a guy said, Hey,
calling things that that aren't rewolding hurts the cause. Yeah. Yeah,
(02:35):
I was like, I need to back chuck up today.
I know he's thinking about something. I'm gonna send him
something that backs it up. And I did. But rewilding,
I guess we should just define so people are not
angry at us for rolling that out twenty minutes in.
But it is a term. When was it coined here?
I've seen all over the place. Somebody claims eighty five.
(02:57):
Another dude claims that he coined in nine two, but
I think the first time it appeared in the scientific
literature was some old hippie said that she coined it
in sixty seven. Mm hmm, yeah, the same hippie that
claimed to have coined will turn it up. Man. Uh.
But here's the deal, and you know, we can get
into the particulars, which we will, but generally, rewild ng
(03:21):
is and its simplest form kind of returning nature back,
turning it back over to nature to take care of itself, because,
as Julia points out very aptly, like nature didn't need
humans to come in and like all the things that
you see human humans do for nature, it's because we
had messed something up with nature. It's not because nature
was like, oh, we need you to step in. Like
(03:43):
if humans had never been around, nature would be just fine. Yeah.
So the point of rewilding is to designate huge swaths
of earth all over the earth, huge tracts of land. Yeah,
to to basically remove ourselves from and just let nature
do its thing, because we just we through everything up,
even when we try not to, we screw everything up.
(04:03):
We can overmanage, we can undermanage, we can mismanage. There
are very few things that we properly manage. And that's
kind of like what's given the idea, the concept of
rewilding like such a like such great cachet, like in
the ecological community, both the scientific part of it and
also like this the popular part of it. It's it's
(04:24):
saying like, well, then let's just get humans out of
the out of the management business and let nature do
its thing. I think it's wonderful idea, it is. And
you know, it can uh, it can encompass you know,
like plant growth and just kind of simple things like that,
like where that things were once mowed down and mulched
(04:44):
and like you know, quote unquote cared for by humans,
letting that kind of run wild again all the way
to the most extreme examples, which is something we touched
on in the National Park episode that Julia brought up
here was like reintroducing a carnivore to the scene that
had long been gone, like the wolves of Yellowstone and
letting them do their thing. And that's actually kind of
(05:06):
a big part of one part of rewilding. Yeah, so
you bring up something that you kind of reference what
I sent you earlier about UM misusing the term like
it does encompass all of those things. But the only
reason rewilding encompasses all of those things because the scientific
community is still trying to figure out exactly what rewilding is.
(05:28):
They're trying to figure out the definition, they're trying to
figure out what is not rewild ing UM. They're trying
to figure out like what the best practices and best
steps forward are for rewilding UM. And because they're still
figuring it out, and because it's such a buzzword, anybody
who's doing anything that has to do with restoration, whether
(05:48):
it's like, you know, reintroducing some voles into a place
where there's already voles um or you know, yeah, like
you were saying, like adding like some kind of g
asid raising the mower height in a park to let
more more of like the groundcover flower. Like Currently that's
(06:10):
technically rewilding, but really that's that's If you give it
five more years, probably those things will not be considered rewilding,
will have a much more coherent definition of it, and
hopefully a lot more data to back up the claims
that rewilding makes. Because the big problem with it is
it's a really great idea that we just need to
know more about. Uh we're jumping in feet first, and
(06:32):
that that can be It could be dangerous, as we'll see,
but I think more often than not it could just
be a failure and it could lose popular support. It'll
it'll make people think it just doesn't work if we
do it the wrong way a bunch of times to
start right, and there are some really bad examples for
free wilding. Well again, I don't even like calling it
rewilding because like one example that well you might as
(06:56):
well talk a little bit about a bad example is
uh South Georgia, not Georgia that we live in, but
Georgia and Europe. There's the reindeer in South Georgia where
there were whalers on this uh. I think it was
on an island, and they're like, well, you know, we
love to eat reindeer, and so we're just gonna put
a bunch of reindeer on this kind of smallish island
(07:17):
so we can hunt them as whalers and have something
to eat. And it went terribly and you know, years later,
I think they had to just go in and like
slaughter five thousand reindeer. That's not rewilding, that's just that's
a dumb idea, which is like bringing in an invasive
species and plunking it down there. That's not rewolding at all.
But it gets thrown in there as like there's a
(07:38):
bad example of rewilding. It's like it's not rewilding, right,
and it wasn't ever intended to be rewilding. It took
place at the turn of the century, and I think
South Georgia island is down by the Falklands if I
remember correctly, like below South America. So they brought it
in as like a like a food source because like
these these Swedes or Norwegians were like, there's nothing down
here that we've ever eaten before we need some reindeer
(07:59):
in this place. And they managed it just fine, Like
they hunted the reindeer and the reindeer apparently we're well
checked or well managed. But then when they stopped hunting
the reindeer and let nature take over, basically what we
would do with rewilding, the reindeer ran wild, and uh,
things just went out of hand really really quickly. So
(08:21):
it was not an example of rewilding by anyone's definition,
but it still serves as a cautionary tale about what
can happen when you do something like just back out
of the picture. That we do need to know more
about what our role is to set up an ecosystem
before we take our hands off of it, you know
what I'm saying. Yeah, And also Julia points out, um
(08:42):
again very aptly, that like when something like this hits
the news, then you're going to have animal activists and
environmentalists when they hear the word rewilding projects say we
can't do that. That led to the death the slaughter
of five thousand reindeer. Uh So it just gives it
all a bad name. So hopefully we'll try and give
it a better name. Yeah, because again I think it's
(09:05):
a really great idea. We just need to know more
about it. We need more science, everybody, So we talk
about bio diversity. Yeah, I think we should, because, um,
that's pretty much the basis of this whole thing, the
whole idea behind rewilding, the whole reason it has so
much supporters because it's become painfully clear that the damage
that we've done to the Earth is altering ecosystems, and
(09:27):
pretty much unfavorable ways. I don't think there's any way
that we've damaged an ecosystem where we're like, oh, that
actually worked out for the better, maybe for humans and conveniences,
but yeah, but even still, now we've reached Yeah, maybe
that was true like thirty forty years ago. Now we've
reached the time where it's it's time to pay the piper.
And now even for us, we're suffering the consequences of
(09:51):
damaging and altering ecosystems so dramatically that they can no
longer function. And the point behind rewilding is to re
established biodiversity in large parts so that humans and other
animals can survive on planet Earth in the next hundred years. Right,
And then you know, when you look into the more
(10:12):
I guess level headed descriptors of what rewilding can be
and sort of the tenants of them, which we can
get too later and full it's not hey, let's let's
dump a bunch of mountain lions into Central Park. It's
it's got to it has to work with humans as well.
But as we'll see, there's there's a lot of places
is where there are not humans and this is mainly
(10:34):
what they're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, and then then in
those places where there are some humans or whatever, it's
like we'll just we'll get them out all the way. Yeah,
but it has to work together. Like unfortunately, you know,
like it or not, humans are part of the ecosystem
now and it has to work for everyone. But right
now humans are just making it work for them in
many cases. Yeah. And then so even beyond also you
(10:57):
raise a good point, even beyond also the the fact
that it's got to work for us, that we can't
just coexist with mountain lions in Central Park. Um. It
it has to to work for us in the sense
that like a lot of the places that are being
like pointed to is like prime areas to be rewilded
(11:18):
if you like, if you look over to the right
a little bit. There's some like sheepherder. They're saying, Um,
this is my land that I use my sheep to
graze on, and sheep herds grazing is pretty much the
antithesis of rewilding, So what are we going to do
with that guy? So there's also one of the one
of the things that they're figuring out with rewilding is
how to evolve from a at least like um and
(11:43):
equally involved the community or the people who are going
to be most affected by this, if not from a
bottom up. Everyone's saying do not do top down, don't
don't figure this out in the city and then come
and tell the sheep farmers what to do. Like, that's
not going to work. I think I saw somebody say,
especially in Scotland, that is not going to work. Yeah,
and I was like, yeah, in a Scotland, I know
(12:04):
that's true. Yeah. Oh boy, I had like this long
string of Scottish obscenities. I was about ready to belt
out and my worst accent earned brew. Um. So, as
far as biodiversity goes, Julia put it away that I
think it really kind of hits it on the nose
it is. It's not just the quantity and variety of
species and individuals. It's really the interactions within the ecosystem
(12:28):
and how they all work together. That's what bio diversity is.
And ecosystems and bio diversity, they're meant to fluctuate like
things happen in nature naturally, and species may dwindle here
and there when resources are a little more scarce, and
sometimes they're not thriving like they should, but they're still
built for that. What they're not built for is human
triggered biodiversity loss. And this is what we've seen humans
(12:53):
do over and over in time and time again, and
that just makes ecosystems kind of crumble under pressure to
deliver and then do their thing. Yeah, and there's just
it's unequivocal that, um that we have are facing terrible
a loss of biodiversity all over Earth. The Living Plant
Index said that between nineteen seventy and two thousand and twelve,
(13:15):
fifty eight percent of the world's fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds,
and mammals all disappeared, like just gone goodbye, all of
those species. Yeah, so um like that when that happens,
like you're saying these these The way that that that
UM ecosystems have like evolved over time is that like
(13:35):
they function as a as a net, as a web,
as like a bunch of interconnected parts that create something
greater as a whole, and then that whole works together
with other similar holes to create something greater, and it
keeps going on to this macro scale until you reach
like planet level. So you're going from like you know,
dormouse to planet level, all following basically the same path.
(13:59):
And when you lose biodiversity, you're bound to lose species
that are performing really important, really valuable functions that affect
UM and support a bunch of other different kinds of species.
So you lose those other species, but then you also
lose what are called the services that that ecosystem provides,
everything from preventing floods and erosion to preventing forest fires wildfires,
(14:24):
um um speeding up the carbon sequestions sequestration, um speeding
up oxygen production, like all these things that that the
planet needs to live. We evolved on planet Earth, so
we need those two and we've also, whether we realize
it or not, built our economy taking those things for granted.
(14:46):
UM and so fortunately the UM Office of Economic Development
UM put together a paper that cited a hundred and
twenty five to hundred and forty trillion dollars worth of
these services are produced by Nature per year. They put
a number on it, which, on its face it sounds
(15:08):
like a lot of money, right. It is the global
gross domestic product all of the money produced by all
the goods and services produced on planet Earth in only
equal eight five trillion. So on the high end, Nature
produces services that are worth nearly twice of global GDP
(15:28):
in a whole year. And so now you're starting to
bring in the conservatives. They're like, okay, I hadn't consider that.
Let's talk about that too. So there's there's basically no
one who wouldn't benefit from a healthier, more bio diverse planet.
And I feel like we've reached the point for a break.
What do you think right after I say one quick
(15:51):
soapboxy thing, it's sort of echoes back to what I
pointed out in the Yellowstone episode. Is this this wonderful
macro long view of the world that you embrace and
I embrace. That's uh, that's the problem because in the
short term, people like sure but what about this one
(16:12):
thing I can do? Now? What about all this crypto
I can mind today? Uh? Nuts getting into all that.
Good lord, but um, people need to take a longer
view of things, and I think humans are just unfortunately
want to look at the the five bucks right in
front of their face that they can make, you know, chuck.
It feels a lot like we're waking up, you and me, Yes,
(16:37):
But I think I think that's a big point. I
think you and I are very mainstream people, and I
think we're waking up even more than we had before.
And I think that that's usually reflective of people in general.
I think that people are starting to wake up more
as a group, as a collective, and you just see
so much less like greenwashing and PRBs, like people don't
(16:59):
buy it any more. People. I think people are starting
to understand on the whole it's how important this is.
I think younger generations continually do that through through time,
and it's uh, it's happening. So that's a good thing.
And I agree, g Z, we should we should take
that break. Go gen Z and whatever follows you. I
(17:20):
don't even know what my daughter is. I don't either.
I'm not sure if they've named that generation yet, because
right now it's Generation very selfish, but that's very young
six years old. Yeah, generation temper tantrum. She's not much
of a tantrumber. But anyway, uh, let's take that break
(17:40):
and we'll be right back. Okay, Hey, before we get going,
(18:05):
can I say one quick thing, and this is I
am always very sad when I see that, like Jogger
in California, Southern California has attacked in Mall by mountain lion,
Like that is a tragedy for that family. Um, but
my favorite thing is when those stories end with and
that's what happened, and that's too bad, and that's a
(18:26):
mountain lion doing what a mountain lion does and not
and they hunted it down and killed it. Yeah yeah,
you know. Yeah, speaking of releasing mountainins into Central Park,
which I doubt if they were over there anyway, Well,
I think that's that's one of the big tenants of
rewild ng is is like there there's a push that
of converting. So I was talking about those sheep sheep
(18:48):
herders in Scotland and what are they gonna do? Well,
some people say, well, you can actually there's stuff called
nature based economies, and you can change what you do
to make money. UM, if you are getting into rewilding
your land, you could start basically holding safari's and that's UM.
That's that. That illustrates two things. One, there's a lot
of money to be made. I've seen, UM, I've seen
(19:10):
that some farmers have reported making as much, if not
more than they did farming that they do now that
they're doing like eco tourism on their old on their
land that's been rewild And it's interesting sure. But but
then also it also shows you the role of humans
in this like we're meant to be like guided on
a tour in a very like um arranged visit to
(19:37):
these areas. It's not like this area is wild, just
do whatever you want in it. It's extremely well managed.
But what you're managing in this case is the humans,
not the wildlife, not the floora of the fall on it.
You're keeping people out, no hunting, no farming, no grazing
your livestock, no just like going camping there. I'm not
(19:59):
sure about that part, but I get the impression that
humans are meant to just be kept out of it
rather than the animal populations are are managed, it's the
humans that are Yeah. I think I don't know how
wilders feel about it, but as a camper, I think
if you do it right, then you shouldn't be harming
the ecosystems that you're in. But someone might argue that like, hey, man,
(20:21):
just setting a tent up like on the ground harms
the ground. Yeah. I mean I guess if you zoom
in far enough with a microscope you could probably back
that up. Yeah. Like I crushed a worm with my
big body, so then I slept in a hammock. And
what are you going to give that worms family? Now? Uh?
(20:44):
A small sum of money there, maybe some dirt. They
would probably prefer dirt, especially if it was really good dirt,
soil or soil from my body. Yep. Just take off
your clothes and roll on the ground and say I'm
sorry worm. And then they said, well, and he just
killed two more of us. Uh. Let's humans have to
(21:06):
remove themselves from the wilderness. Let's move on, please. Uh.
We should talk about the three CS because this was
sort of an early descriptor on rewilding, which is cores, corridors,
and carnivores, and the idea is that. And this has
a lot to do with like reintroducing wolves the Yellowstone carnivores.
(21:29):
Having an apex predator in an area is awesome and
super healthy for that area. Uh. They control and they
regulate that food chain like a champ. And they need
a lot of room though, and so uh it's called
a core reserve like their area. If they're gonna thrive
a lot, and when that core reserve shrinks, then all
(21:50):
of a sudden they're isolated. That's gonna harm them. And
then that's gonna have that trickle down effect that we
talk a lot about. Uh. Here on planet Earth, now,
there are a lot of cores that are too small.
So the ideas, all right, why don't we connect these
cores with corridors to allow them to keep moving? And
this can look anything like I sit you that one
(22:12):
thing I know that we've talked about these before. It's
the coolest thing when they make like a a land
bridge for animals to cross a highway without getting killed
or go under like an overpass or an underpass like
that could be a corridor at its most sort of
fundamental or like literally sort of rejoining land that was
(22:33):
not joined before because of human interaction. Yeah, there's a
big there's a big push for that because yeah, there's
plenty of cores around, but if they're disconnected, then there's
not going to be enough um to support like a
healthy ecosystem, and those like apex predators are going to
get stressed and it's going to stress out the whole ecosystem.
They don't have anywhere to go. But if you connect
(22:55):
two small ones through a corridor, all of a sudden
they can kind of go back and forth and you know,
the one, this one small place regenerates in their absence,
and then they go to the other one, and then
they go back to the first one, and the second
one regenerates while they're gone like that. That's a really
great idea because it also kind of shows that spirit
of like not giving ups, like, oh, the cores are
(23:15):
so small, what are we gonna do? I guess nothing.
It's like no, you connect the course and then you
can also look at it an even bigger scale, like
a good example of a core. The ideal version of
a core, or close to it, is an American National park,
Like you can't do anything in the national park, but
basically go in camp and and visit and that's about it, right.
(23:37):
Um the other national parks I was reading about ones
in in England at least like you can hunt their
managed for like grouse hunting and deer hunting, and like
they're not like American national parks. So um, the American
version is a really great example of kind of what
we're talking about re wilding. And then imagine if you
connected Yellowstone to Yosemite with a wildlife corridor, right, is
(24:02):
that even possible? Well, yeah, they're on the same continent
so effectively as possible. Yeah, you're gonna have to move
some some powerful landowners like Ted Turner. He's probably not
going to give up his land willingly, although I don't
know maybe he will. Um, there there has to be
like a shift in how people view the importance of
(24:23):
wilderness and nature and that's kind of part and parcel
with the concept every wilding too. Yeah, and a lot
of this research that we looked at comes from the
UK and we'll talk about that more later. But um,
it comes down to like a very smack I'm sorry,
a micro effort of going and convincing one landowner at
(24:45):
a time almost to do stuff like this, and they're
having some successes in the uplands of of the UK
where that you know, kind of one at a time,
some landowners are agreeing like all right, this is what
I can I'll agree to do and for the good
of everybody. Yeah, it's kind of cool, but it is
a you know, it's a pretty slow process. Like you're
not gonna see rewild ing on on the evening news
(25:10):
every night. It's a pretty I don't know about small movement,
but it's it's not mainstream, I don't think in the
in the consciousness no, but in the ecological community it's
like basically being touted as the future of ecology. So hot,
so um. The three c's, especially with the carnivores featured,
(25:30):
that's um, that's basically descriptive of one of the two
general umbrella categories for rewilding, and that would be trophic rewilding,
which will talk a little more about. But let's talk
about passive, real wild and kind of the other end
of the spectrum. Yeah, I mean this is kind of
uh taking a good look at where, um, where you
(25:53):
should do this, Like where to start, like what what's
a good area to even try this and where you
can kind of go unchecked and where it will benefit
people as well as the ecosystems around there. But the
two main goals of the passive rewilding are too and
this is something humans do a lot. Like there's a
lot of wildlife protection going on. So the first part
(26:14):
of passive rewilding is kind of that is letting wildlife
rebound and kind of get back, you know, get its
its land legs back under itself. Uh. And that means
like no hunting and stuff like that or hunting restrictions. Uh,
and then letting that land grow back together like you
talked about. So animals can you know, go where they
once could go, like just increasing their territories and just
(26:36):
saying here, nature, uh, do what you will with yourself.
And that sounds super dirty. We won't look we're walking away.
We had new idea nature would do that, right, oh god.
So um with passive rewilding, there's there's they're trying to
figure out what the initial steps are because in a
lot of these areas we've done a lot, it's just
(26:59):
kind of visible the city slickers like you and me.
Um to alter the ecosystem the landscape, so you know,
we would have to go in and like remove dams
that we've built there. Um, we would have to fill
in canals, UM, just anything anyway that we've altered or
put a human touch on the landscape. Um, we would
need to basically undo before we left, or else they
(27:23):
would still be an altered ecosystem that could be really problematic. UM.
So if we just basically kind of restore it then
and then we walk away, the idea is that it
will take care of itself faster. But like you're saying,
this is not a it's not a fast process. Like
some of these projects that are being proposed to have
(27:44):
timelines of a couple of hundred years before they reach
where they're supposed to be. It's hard. It is, it is,
But again I think it's getting easier and easier there.
And part of the PASSI rewilding is what I was
talking about in the uplands of England. Uh. That's where
they're kind of going one farmer at a time and saying, hey,
(28:05):
you know of England's drinking water comes from these uplands,
and you know, I think when you start describing uh
without maybe I think you can go too far and
scare people in the other direction with the doom and gloom.
But if you very just sort of calmly lay out
some facts and figures, I think that can wait people
at sometimes. Yes, and the UK super into this in
(28:28):
no small part because of an ecologist Harry and Megan
named George mombiatt. I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly. He
wrote a book in two thirteen called Feral that basically
called for rewilding and he really popularized it over there
and since then it's really started to kind of take
off and they have really lofty goals. Um, they have
(28:49):
a goal of rewilding five of England's land. I believe it.
It's just coming up quick and five percent. It's a lot.
It's about out a million acres and they put in
perspective there like there's a quarter of that is in
like football fields in England. So really is that that much?
Like if you're daunted by that idea, um, And but
(29:12):
that's still in eight years, converting it to to to
a rewilded state or starting to is pretty ambitious. Yeah.
I think, Um, you sent me that one thing that
was really cool where they sort of analyze, and this
is from a UK side, I think, where they analyze
like someone who might poop poo. This say is do
we even have the space to do this kind of thing, Like,
(29:35):
you know, we can't turn our cities over again to
the to the mountain lions and just let everything grow wild.
And that's not what they're talking about, but that one website,
I can't remember which one it was, but talking about
if you could traverse the entire UK in one day, yeah, England, Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland. That of the land that you
(29:57):
would find you would not see men, people or buildings.
You would only spend about an hour and forty five
minutes of that twenty four hours traversing all of the UK,
moving through urban spaces. And some of those urban spaces
even have green spaces, obviously not rewilded, but green space nonetheless.
And of the population of the UK lives on six
(30:20):
percent of the land mass, so in other words, there
is a lot of land out there to be rewilded.
That doesn't mean, you know, throwing wild animals in the
middle of the city, right, It's the opposite throwing the
humans out of the wilderness. Exactly. You go over there
and build your city life where you don't breathe fresh
(30:40):
air and you don't go outside and things like that. Well,
some of the more radical proposals for rewild ng is
like giving over you know, like nine tenths of the
United States to wilderness and basically just pointing out, like
how many more people you can pack into the urban
centers of like the East Coast and the US coast
(31:00):
and just like leave the middle alone as wilderness. I
haven't seen that supported by many people. I think probably
the guy who keeps promoting that, keeps getting told to
be quiet by the other ecologists, is going to scare
off the normals. You know, American suburbs are very big
and important, right, but it does it does really point
out to like, you know, there's there's people out there,
(31:22):
and we have there we have to take their interests
into consideration. And one of the things that I kept
seeing pointed out in the UK is apparently after Brexit,
the farm subsidies for farms that that could not support
themselves through their own production, um like like it is
in the US, and I'm sure Australia too, they were
heavily subsidized by the government to make up that that
(31:44):
that gap, and then after Brexit, apparently those things are
beginning slash left and right, and so people have been saying, Okay, well,
if we're not going to be giving them farm subsidies,
what if we change the purpose of the subsidies from
you know, farming, to you wilding land instead. If these
farms aren't producing that well anyway, and we can still
(32:05):
produce enough food, that's a very important point without these farms,
and in fact, some of these farms would actually be
way more valuable as untouched wilderness. Um, then maybe it
would make sense to take that money and converted into
that instead. And then you also have you've also taken
care of the person problem because they're still being supported
(32:28):
like they need to be. But at the same time,
they also don't have to move. They just can't graze
their sheep anymore. Just don't graze sheep anymore, and you're
gonna make the same amount of money. And you can
take tourists on wilderness safari's as a side gig. And
I just pictured groundskeeper Willie staring us down from yeah yeah,
and then getting on this tractor that pulls us along
(32:50):
and point out the red deer just hopping all over
the place on his rewilded land. Or he could just
give us the one of the great groundskeeper Willie lines
of all time from one of the uh Halloween episodes
when he was Freddy Krueger. Do you remember that one? Yeah,
of course, and I'm done with you. They're gonna need
to come postmortem. So great, that's a good one, one
(33:12):
of my favorite lines. Um. So, a lot of stuff
we were just talking about falls under the pass of rewilding. Uh,
we've hit on trophic rewilding. But within that, they're like,
it kind of depends on how hardcore of an environmentalist
you're talking to. There's something called plist to scene rewilding
where they're like, hey, human disturbance started at the last
(33:33):
ice age, and that should be our goal is to
kind of like introduce if not uh wooly mammoth's like
maybe a descendant of the wooly mammoth because they're not
around anymore. And so you get some sort of other people.
I mean, I don't know about how he did the
arguments get but other people are like, pliest, the scene
(33:54):
is really too uh we should really kind of move
from that, like forward from there and think more along
lines of the Wolves of Yellowstone than these huge megafauna. Right,
So some people say, no, the mega faun are are important. Yeah,
And the people who are proponents of places scene rewilding
um say that it's um. The reason that they've they've
(34:16):
chosen that point is because they're they're suggesting that, like,
if we go that far back, we could probably defend
ourselves in the planet against climate change that much more
quickly or more robustly, I guess is a better way
to say. It's not like they're just doing it out
of sentimentality, Like there's a there's an intellectual bent to it,
(34:37):
like and that is that we basically need to go
that far back to counteract the damage we've done in
the last like two years senti mentality. You know. So
there's a problem with palist to scene rewilding the chuck
and that is a lot of those animals are extinct, Yeah,
like the William emmoth. Yeah. Okay, so what are you
gonna do if you want to recreate the place to
(34:59):
see on the American Midwest. Let's say every state in
the Midwest agrees to move eastward or westward, and they're
giving up all of their land over to rewilding, and
we've all agreed it was placed to see rewilding. Lord,
are we going to rewild it with if there's no
such thing as a woolly mammoth? Maybe, but elephants have
(35:20):
evolved in the last ten and twelve thousand years to
um to to live around equatorial Africa, if I'm not mistaken,
So are they going to do well in Kansas? And
then the same thing for the saber tooth tiger or actually,
I don't think they call him anymore. I think it's
a sabre tooth cat. Maybe. Um all of their families
totally extinct. There's no descendants of the saber tooth cats
(35:42):
that are alive today. So what are we gonna do?
Put mountain lions out there. We're gonna put actual tigers
out there, are regular like African lions, and are we're
gonna move them over to Kansas? And then the larger problem, Chuck,
The larger problem is this, those animals, as big and
scary and ferocious as they are, are kind of pew
compared to the actual Pleistocene megafauna, like a sabretooth cat,
(36:06):
And it's not clear that they would be up to
the task of managing enormous ecosystems like that, just because
of their smaller size. Yeah. So there's a lot of
problems with pleistocene wilding and bring back the megaladon for
the oceans. Yeah. Uh no, there are a lot of
problems with that. Uh. And you're sort of talking about
(36:27):
you mentioned the top down control, uh, and that is
that theory that these you know, if you bring in
an apex predator, it can really uh, it can be
a really good thing. That the cascade of interactions that
it can trigger is can be vast. But you know,
that's that's trophic rewilding. It worked out pretty well for
(36:48):
the wolves and Yellowstone, uh, and the beavers that followed,
and the birds and the fish that followed because of
the beaver. So it's a it's it's always a sternling
example that people bring up. Yeah, So just to button
that up, you've got passive rewilding, which is basically like
just trying to get rid of your damns and bridges
and stuff and then leave. And then the trophic rewilding
(37:10):
is where you're selectively putting back animals that used to
play a role in that ecosystem or are related to
ones that used to play a role, right and then um,
with a focus on those apex predators because they have
so much control over the ecosystems that they live in,
and that that one is way more involved and needs
(37:31):
way more thought before we start doing that. Yeah, should
we take a break. Yeah, alright, we're gonna will gonna jeez,
we're gonna take our final break, and um, we'll talk
about some of the issues with rewilding and some of
the examples and some of the tenants. How about that.
(37:51):
That sounds great? So earlier on we talked about one
(38:18):
bad example of what I don't even think is rewilding
with those reindeer uh in South Georgia. Uh. There are
other examples. There was one. UM. Because you know, people
will point to stats people to say this isn't a
good idea. We'll say that, hey, the failure rate for
introductions and reintroduction introductions and nature is higher than se
(38:39):
and we don't even really have a lot of data
if this works out anyway, and sent pretty high. And
look at the um look about what Look at what
happened in Argentina in the nineteen forties when they brought
these Canadian beavers in and they ran wild and destroyed
the forest. People who know what they're talking about was say,
(39:00):
that's an invasive species, and when the beaver and yellowstone
eat the willow tree, the willow tree grows back. When
they eat these beech trees here in Argentina, they don't
grow back, So you just have a wasteland. It's not
dropping invasive species down into another place where they were
never supposed to be to begin with. Yeah, it's supposed
to be a little more thought out than that. That, Like,
(39:20):
like I was saying before the break, like these are
carefully selected and carefully thought out, or they're meant to
be um animals that are that fil specific niches in
the ecosystem that you're trying to restore. That's right, not
dropping beavers in South America, Canadian beavers no less. Yeah.
One thing that really spoke to me was in that
(39:42):
additional material that you sent over. I think it was
the four Tenants Rewilding Britain. I think was the website. Uh,
and therefore tenants um are pretty self explanatory, but one
part of part two really spoke to me. The first
one is support people in nature together. The second one
is let nature lead. And the line that really got
(40:04):
me was it is not geared to reach any human
defined optimal point or in state, it goes where nature
takes it, and then that ties in with number four.
Number three is creazy create resilient local economies. It's a
big part of it. But number four is, uh, work
at nature scale. Like I think humans are so obsessed
with scale in business and they're basically saying, you gotta
(40:29):
do what nature. Let nature do it. Nature does at
its own pace and at its own scale. That's nature scale,
and just let it do it. Don't put don't put
your hang ups on nature, man on what you want
it to be. And that's kind of true though, Yeah, no, absolutely,
I think I think though that that kind of reveals,
like that the lack of consensus in the field of rewilding,
(40:53):
because what did you say that was rewilding Britain's four points? Yeah,
there were actually five. The fifth one was secure and
it fits for the long term, okay, yeah, five, And
then I saw the union of the conservation of nature. Yeah,
I think that's it. I think, uh, they they have
ten ten points, so you've got five, you got ten
(41:16):
depending on who you ask, but they all generally agree
that before we really start doing this stuff in earnest,
like we need more data. Like most of the people
who are like, yeah, we just you know, release some
voles into the into the woods. There's some rewilding project
right there. Like, these are the people who aren't necessarily
even thinking it through. If you're a conservation ecologist, if
(41:39):
you're a biologist, if you're a botanist, if you're a
scientist who's like actually looking at rewilding, pretty much everyone
agrees like we need way more data than we have
right now. That it's a great idea. We just need
way more data if the science just isn't even there. Yeah,
but you know, one of the tenants that they both
it seems like everyone is talking about is talk to
(42:02):
the local people. They call them stakeholders. Talk to the
local stakeholders, because you can't just come in there, uh
with your you know, with your science under your arm
and your folder and just say this is how it's
gonna go. Like, it's got to work for the people
and you have to get them involved and on boarders
(42:22):
just not gonna work. Don't even try that. In Scotland, everybody,
oh man, don't mess with their sheet. You got anything else?
I got nothing else? Uh? Well, maybe this last little
bit from that stuff you sent. Seventy seven percent in
increasing of the human population lives in urban areas and
(42:43):
they spend of their time indoors. Seventy seven percent of
humans spend nine of their time indoors. And just the
health effects and the and the role the trickle down
effects from that, We've talked about a lot, but people
need to be out in nature. Mental and physical illness, depression,
(43:05):
heart disease, anxiety, fatigue, obesity, a d h D like
you name it, like a lot can be not wholly
attributed to this, but certainly has an impact on people
that And I'm a city guy, you are too, Like
I love my urban areas, but uh, people need to
get out doors more. And this is a good way
(43:27):
to do what I think. Yeah, but that's a fine
line you've got to walk because we're giving this stuff
over to nature. So we have to ask ourselves, what,
what role, what place do we have in these wildernesses
that we're creating. And I think that's one of the
things that that that that rewilding ecologists are excited about,
is that would cause us to to rethink that that
(43:50):
would be like, wait, amount I want to be indoors
all time? Well, wait a minute, I'm already indoors all
the time. I need to get out there, and now
there's a place for them to go. So yeah, I
think that's an they're big question mark that we'd have
to figure out too. That's right. Um, well, that's it
for rewilding for now. Given another five years, maybe we'll
come back to it. Everybody. And since I said that,
(44:10):
it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this of
what the author called it, lesbians in the Military. Hi, guys,
really enjoyed your podcast about the term friend of Dorothy
and wanted to add something to your discussion about gay
men in the military. Uh. And this is probably on
us for just sort of saying gay men in the military,
(44:31):
But there were many lesbians in the military during World
War Two, as well as people who would we would
now describe as bisexual women, transmasculine people, and others. The
military was a safe place for queer women and a
fab assigned female at birth people since it was somewhat
of an escape for mainstream society that expected women to
(44:52):
dress and present femininely and marry men never consider this.
It's pretty great. This article is a great summary of
the history. I thought you might find it interesting. Uh.
And the name of the article I just click the
link is called this is from out history dot org
lesbians Comma not colin World War two and beyond. And
(45:14):
this is from Rebecca, a friend of Dorothy. Nice. Thanks
a lot, Rebecca. We're a friend of Rebecca who's a
friend of Dorothy. That's right. It's hard to keep track,
but let's just all be friends. That's pretty great. Um,
thank you for that email, Rebecca. And if you want
to be like us and point out something we hadn't
considered before. We love that kind of stuff. You can
(45:35):
wrap it up and send it in an email to
Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Kirk.
There's Chuck Bryant. Whoa, And this is stuff you should have.
(00:22):
You've been working on your Chewbacca friend. No, no, it
did sound like Chewbacca, especially that last bit. Now, I
haven't been working on at all. It's all natural talent.
Never had a lesson, as Ferris Bueler said, do you
remember Ferris Bueler. They came out fifty sixty years ago,
back when we were cool. I was supposed to do
that on the movie Crush, and then my guests couldn't
(00:43):
make it, and so I have like this great document
of notes prepared all about Ferris Spueler's sitting there going
to waste. Oh you should just read them, read through them.
On one of the notes, Yeah, Ferris Bueler sociopath or
cool teenager? Would you come up with? Well? Udgment always
has this sort of rant that, uh, Ferris's associopath. Upon
(01:06):
looking back, M yeah, there's like, come on, man, there
used to be like a whole blog for a little
while about about that. They would like analyze film, like
famous films like Top Gun. They basically pointed out how
Maverick was like this terrible person who got his friend
killed and felt like no, no responsibility for it and everything. People. Yeah, yeah,
(01:28):
it's pretty eye opening. It's paradigm shifting, I guess you
could say, and I think that's appropriate that we're talking
about paradigm shifting blogs because there's a lot of paradigm
shift involved it today's topic, and there's a lot of
blogs too, it turns out about rewilding. Yeah, it's all
over the place. Uh, it is, And we need to
(01:49):
thank our old pal Julia Layton makes an appearance here
for the first time in a while. Yeah, welcome back
Lates helping us with this one. And um, I thought
it was interesting because think you and I both I'm
gonna go ahead and speak for you. I think we
both agree that rewilding the concept of rewilding is pretty awesome.
Pretty awesome, yes, But as evidence from even some of
(02:12):
the stuff that Julia sent us, like there are some
negative examples of like rewilding that didn't go well, but
I would argue, like, that's not even rewilding, and calling
it that is just hurts the cause. And then you
sent me a thing that where a guy said, Hey,
calling things that that aren't rewolding hurts the cause. Yeah. Yeah,
(02:35):
I was like, I need to back chuck up today.
I know he's thinking about something. I'm gonna send him
something that backs it up. And I did. But rewilding,
I guess we should just define so people are not
angry at us for rolling that out twenty minutes in.
But it is a term. When was it coined here?
I've seen all over the place. Somebody claims eighty five.
(02:57):
Another dude claims that he coined in nine two, but
I think the first time it appeared in the scientific
literature was some old hippie said that she coined it
in sixty seven. Mm hmm, yeah, the same hippie that
claimed to have coined will turn it up. Man. Uh.
But here's the deal, and you know, we can get
into the particulars, which we will, but generally, rewild ng
(03:21):
is and its simplest form kind of returning nature back,
turning it back over to nature to take care of itself, because,
as Julia points out very aptly, like nature didn't need
humans to come in and like all the things that
you see human humans do for nature, it's because we
had messed something up with nature. It's not because nature
was like, oh, we need you to step in. Like
(03:43):
if humans had never been around, nature would be just fine. Yeah.
So the point of rewilding is to designate huge swaths
of earth all over the earth, huge tracts of land. Yeah,
to to basically remove ourselves from and just let nature
do its thing, because we just we through everything up,
even when we try not to, we screw everything up.
(04:03):
We can overmanage, we can undermanage, we can mismanage. There
are very few things that we properly manage. And that's
kind of like what's given the idea, the concept of
rewilding like such a like such great cachet, like in
the ecological community, both the scientific part of it and
also like this the popular part of it. It's it's
(04:24):
saying like, well, then let's just get humans out of
the out of the management business and let nature do
its thing. I think it's wonderful idea, it is. And
you know, it can uh, it can encompass you know,
like plant growth and just kind of simple things like that,
like where that things were once mowed down and mulched
(04:44):
and like you know, quote unquote cared for by humans,
letting that kind of run wild again all the way
to the most extreme examples, which is something we touched
on in the National Park episode that Julia brought up
here was like reintroducing a carnivore to the scene that
had long been gone, like the wolves of Yellowstone and
letting them do their thing. And that's actually kind of
(05:06):
a big part of one part of rewilding. Yeah, so
you bring up something that you kind of reference what
I sent you earlier about UM misusing the term like
it does encompass all of those things. But the only
reason rewilding encompasses all of those things because the scientific
community is still trying to figure out exactly what rewilding is.
(05:28):
They're trying to figure out the definition, they're trying to
figure out what is not rewild ing UM. They're trying
to figure out like what the best practices and best
steps forward are for rewilding UM. And because they're still
figuring it out, and because it's such a buzzword, anybody
who's doing anything that has to do with restoration, whether
(05:48):
it's like, you know, reintroducing some voles into a place
where there's already voles um or you know, yeah, like
you were saying, like adding like some kind of g
asid raising the mower height in a park to let
more more of like the groundcover flower. Like Currently that's
(06:10):
technically rewilding, but really that's that's If you give it
five more years, probably those things will not be considered rewilding,
will have a much more coherent definition of it, and
hopefully a lot more data to back up the claims
that rewilding makes. Because the big problem with it is
it's a really great idea that we just need to
know more about. Uh we're jumping in feet first, and
(06:32):
that that can be It could be dangerous, as we'll see,
but I think more often than not it could just
be a failure and it could lose popular support. It'll
it'll make people think it just doesn't work if we
do it the wrong way a bunch of times to
start right, and there are some really bad examples for
free wilding. Well again, I don't even like calling it
rewilding because like one example that well you might as
(06:56):
well talk a little bit about a bad example is
uh South Georgia, not Georgia that we live in, but
Georgia and Europe. There's the reindeer in South Georgia where
there were whalers on this uh. I think it was
on an island, and they're like, well, you know, we
love to eat reindeer, and so we're just gonna put
a bunch of reindeer on this kind of smallish island
(07:17):
so we can hunt them as whalers and have something
to eat. And it went terribly and you know, years later,
I think they had to just go in and like
slaughter five thousand reindeer. That's not rewilding, that's just that's
a dumb idea, which is like bringing in an invasive
species and plunking it down there. That's not rewolding at all.
But it gets thrown in there as like there's a
(07:38):
bad example of rewilding. It's like it's not rewilding, right,
and it wasn't ever intended to be rewilding. It took
place at the turn of the century, and I think
South Georgia island is down by the Falklands if I
remember correctly, like below South America. So they brought it
in as like a like a food source because like
these these Swedes or Norwegians were like, there's nothing down
here that we've ever eaten before we need some reindeer
(07:59):
in this place. And they managed it just fine, Like
they hunted the reindeer and the reindeer apparently we're well
checked or well managed. But then when they stopped hunting
the reindeer and let nature take over, basically what we
would do with rewilding, the reindeer ran wild, and uh,
things just went out of hand really really quickly. So
(08:21):
it was not an example of rewilding by anyone's definition,
but it still serves as a cautionary tale about what
can happen when you do something like just back out
of the picture. That we do need to know more
about what our role is to set up an ecosystem
before we take our hands off of it, you know
what I'm saying. Yeah, And also Julia points out, um
(08:42):
again very aptly, that like when something like this hits
the news, then you're going to have animal activists and
environmentalists when they hear the word rewilding projects say we
can't do that. That led to the death the slaughter
of five thousand reindeer. Uh So it just gives it
all a bad name. So hopefully we'll try and give
it a better name. Yeah, because again I think it's
(09:05):
a really great idea. We just need to know more
about it. We need more science, everybody, So we talk
about bio diversity. Yeah, I think we should, because, um,
that's pretty much the basis of this whole thing, the
whole idea behind rewilding, the whole reason it has so
much supporters because it's become painfully clear that the damage
that we've done to the Earth is altering ecosystems, and
(09:27):
pretty much unfavorable ways. I don't think there's any way
that we've damaged an ecosystem where we're like, oh, that
actually worked out for the better, maybe for humans and conveniences,
but yeah, but even still, now we've reached Yeah, maybe
that was true like thirty forty years ago. Now we've
reached the time where it's it's time to pay the piper.
And now even for us, we're suffering the consequences of
(09:51):
damaging and altering ecosystems so dramatically that they can no
longer function. And the point behind rewilding is to re
established biodiversity in large parts so that humans and other
animals can survive on planet Earth in the next hundred years. Right,
And then you know, when you look into the more
(10:12):
I guess level headed descriptors of what rewilding can be
and sort of the tenants of them, which we can
get too later and full it's not hey, let's let's
dump a bunch of mountain lions into Central Park. It's
it's got to it has to work with humans as well.
But as we'll see, there's there's a lot of places
is where there are not humans and this is mainly
(10:34):
what they're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, and then then in
those places where there are some humans or whatever, it's
like we'll just we'll get them out all the way. Yeah,
but it has to work together. Like unfortunately, you know,
like it or not, humans are part of the ecosystem
now and it has to work for everyone. But right
now humans are just making it work for them in
many cases. Yeah. And then so even beyond also you
(10:57):
raise a good point, even beyond also the the fact
that it's got to work for us, that we can't
just coexist with mountain lions in Central Park. Um. It
it has to to work for us in the sense
that like a lot of the places that are being
like pointed to is like prime areas to be rewilded
(11:18):
if you like, if you look over to the right
a little bit. There's some like sheepherder. They're saying, Um,
this is my land that I use my sheep to
graze on, and sheep herds grazing is pretty much the
antithesis of rewilding, So what are we going to do
with that guy? So there's also one of the one
of the things that they're figuring out with rewilding is
how to evolve from a at least like um and
(11:43):
equally involved the community or the people who are going
to be most affected by this, if not from a
bottom up. Everyone's saying do not do top down, don't
don't figure this out in the city and then come
and tell the sheep farmers what to do. Like, that's
not going to work. I think I saw somebody say,
especially in Scotland, that is not going to work. Yeah,
and I was like, yeah, in a Scotland, I know
(12:04):
that's true. Yeah. Oh boy, I had like this long
string of Scottish obscenities. I was about ready to belt
out and my worst accent earned brew. Um. So, as
far as biodiversity goes, Julia put it away that I
think it really kind of hits it on the nose
it is. It's not just the quantity and variety of
species and individuals. It's really the interactions within the ecosystem
(12:28):
and how they all work together. That's what bio diversity is.
And ecosystems and bio diversity, they're meant to fluctuate like
things happen in nature naturally, and species may dwindle here
and there when resources are a little more scarce, and
sometimes they're not thriving like they should, but they're still
built for that. What they're not built for is human
triggered biodiversity loss. And this is what we've seen humans
(12:53):
do over and over in time and time again, and
that just makes ecosystems kind of crumble under pressure to
deliver and then do their thing. Yeah, and there's just
it's unequivocal that, um that we have are facing terrible
a loss of biodiversity all over Earth. The Living Plant
Index said that between nineteen seventy and two thousand and twelve,
(13:15):
fifty eight percent of the world's fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds,
and mammals all disappeared, like just gone goodbye, all of
those species. Yeah, so um like that when that happens,
like you're saying these these The way that that that
UM ecosystems have like evolved over time is that like
(13:35):
they function as a as a net, as a web,
as like a bunch of interconnected parts that create something
greater as a whole, and then that whole works together
with other similar holes to create something greater, and it
keeps going on to this macro scale until you reach
like planet level. So you're going from like you know,
dormouse to planet level, all following basically the same path.
(13:59):
And when you lose biodiversity, you're bound to lose species
that are performing really important, really valuable functions that affect
UM and support a bunch of other different kinds of species.
So you lose those other species, but then you also
lose what are called the services that that ecosystem provides,
everything from preventing floods and erosion to preventing forest fires wildfires,
(14:24):
um um speeding up the carbon sequestions sequestration, um speeding
up oxygen production, like all these things that that the
planet needs to live. We evolved on planet Earth, so
we need those two and we've also, whether we realize
it or not, built our economy taking those things for granted.
(14:46):
UM and so fortunately the UM Office of Economic Development
UM put together a paper that cited a hundred and
twenty five to hundred and forty trillion dollars worth of
these services are produced by Nature per year. They put
a number on it, which, on its face it sounds
(15:08):
like a lot of money, right. It is the global
gross domestic product all of the money produced by all
the goods and services produced on planet Earth in only
equal eight five trillion. So on the high end, Nature
produces services that are worth nearly twice of global GDP
(15:28):
in a whole year. And so now you're starting to
bring in the conservatives. They're like, okay, I hadn't consider that.
Let's talk about that too. So there's there's basically no
one who wouldn't benefit from a healthier, more bio diverse planet.
And I feel like we've reached the point for a break.
What do you think right after I say one quick
(15:51):
soapboxy thing, it's sort of echoes back to what I
pointed out in the Yellowstone episode. Is this this wonderful
macro long view of the world that you embrace and
I embrace. That's uh, that's the problem because in the
short term, people like sure but what about this one
(16:12):
thing I can do? Now? What about all this crypto
I can mind today? Uh? Nuts getting into all that.
Good lord, but um, people need to take a longer
view of things, and I think humans are just unfortunately
want to look at the the five bucks right in
front of their face that they can make, you know, chuck.
It feels a lot like we're waking up, you and me, Yes,
(16:37):
But I think I think that's a big point. I
think you and I are very mainstream people, and I
think we're waking up even more than we had before.
And I think that that's usually reflective of people in general.
I think that people are starting to wake up more
as a group, as a collective, and you just see
so much less like greenwashing and PRBs, like people don't
(16:59):
buy it any more. People. I think people are starting
to understand on the whole it's how important this is.
I think younger generations continually do that through through time,
and it's uh, it's happening. So that's a good thing.
And I agree, g Z, we should we should take
that break. Go gen Z and whatever follows you. I
(17:20):
don't even know what my daughter is. I don't either.
I'm not sure if they've named that generation yet, because
right now it's Generation very selfish, but that's very young
six years old. Yeah, generation temper tantrum. She's not much
of a tantrumber. But anyway, uh, let's take that break
(17:40):
and we'll be right back. Okay, Hey, before we get going,
(18:05):
can I say one quick thing, and this is I
am always very sad when I see that, like Jogger
in California, Southern California has attacked in Mall by mountain lion,
Like that is a tragedy for that family. Um, but
my favorite thing is when those stories end with and
that's what happened, and that's too bad, and that's a
(18:26):
mountain lion doing what a mountain lion does and not
and they hunted it down and killed it. Yeah yeah,
you know. Yeah, speaking of releasing mountainins into Central Park,
which I doubt if they were over there anyway, Well,
I think that's that's one of the big tenants of
rewild ng is is like there there's a push that
of converting. So I was talking about those sheep sheep
(18:48):
herders in Scotland and what are they gonna do? Well,
some people say, well, you can actually there's stuff called
nature based economies, and you can change what you do
to make money. UM, if you are getting into rewilding
your land, you could start basically holding safari's and that's UM.
That's that. That illustrates two things. One, there's a lot
of money to be made. I've seen, UM, I've seen
(19:10):
that some farmers have reported making as much, if not
more than they did farming that they do now that
they're doing like eco tourism on their old on their
land that's been rewild And it's interesting sure. But but
then also it also shows you the role of humans
in this like we're meant to be like guided on
a tour in a very like um arranged visit to
(19:37):
these areas. It's not like this area is wild, just
do whatever you want in it. It's extremely well managed.
But what you're managing in this case is the humans,
not the wildlife, not the floora of the fall on it.
You're keeping people out, no hunting, no farming, no grazing
your livestock, no just like going camping there. I'm not
(19:59):
sure about that part, but I get the impression that
humans are meant to just be kept out of it
rather than the animal populations are are managed, it's the
humans that are Yeah. I think I don't know how
wilders feel about it, but as a camper, I think
if you do it right, then you shouldn't be harming
the ecosystems that you're in. But someone might argue that like, hey, man,
(20:21):
just setting a tent up like on the ground harms
the ground. Yeah. I mean I guess if you zoom
in far enough with a microscope you could probably back
that up. Yeah. Like I crushed a worm with my
big body, so then I slept in a hammock. And
what are you going to give that worms family? Now? Uh?
(20:44):
A small sum of money there, maybe some dirt. They
would probably prefer dirt, especially if it was really good dirt,
soil or soil from my body. Yep. Just take off
your clothes and roll on the ground and say I'm
sorry worm. And then they said, well, and he just
killed two more of us. Uh. Let's humans have to
(21:06):
remove themselves from the wilderness. Let's move on, please. Uh.
We should talk about the three CS because this was
sort of an early descriptor on rewilding, which is cores, corridors,
and carnivores, and the idea is that. And this has
a lot to do with like reintroducing wolves the Yellowstone carnivores.
(21:29):
Having an apex predator in an area is awesome and
super healthy for that area. Uh. They control and they
regulate that food chain like a champ. And they need
a lot of room though, and so uh it's called
a core reserve like their area. If they're gonna thrive
a lot, and when that core reserve shrinks, then all
(21:50):
of a sudden they're isolated. That's gonna harm them. And
then that's gonna have that trickle down effect that we
talk a lot about. Uh. Here on planet Earth, now,
there are a lot of cores that are too small.
So the ideas, all right, why don't we connect these
cores with corridors to allow them to keep moving? And
this can look anything like I sit you that one
(22:12):
thing I know that we've talked about these before. It's
the coolest thing when they make like a a land
bridge for animals to cross a highway without getting killed
or go under like an overpass or an underpass like
that could be a corridor at its most sort of
fundamental or like literally sort of rejoining land that was
(22:33):
not joined before because of human interaction. Yeah, there's a
big there's a big push for that because yeah, there's
plenty of cores around, but if they're disconnected, then there's
not going to be enough um to support like a
healthy ecosystem, and those like apex predators are going to
get stressed and it's going to stress out the whole ecosystem.
They don't have anywhere to go. But if you connect
(22:55):
two small ones through a corridor, all of a sudden
they can kind of go back and forth and you know,
the one, this one small place regenerates in their absence,
and then they go to the other one, and then
they go back to the first one, and the second
one regenerates while they're gone like that. That's a really
great idea because it also kind of shows that spirit
of like not giving ups, like, oh, the cores are
(23:15):
so small, what are we gonna do? I guess nothing.
It's like no, you connect the course and then you
can also look at it an even bigger scale, like
a good example of a core. The ideal version of
a core, or close to it, is an American National park,
Like you can't do anything in the national park, but
basically go in camp and and visit and that's about it, right.
(23:37):
Um the other national parks I was reading about ones
in in England at least like you can hunt their
managed for like grouse hunting and deer hunting, and like
they're not like American national parks. So um, the American
version is a really great example of kind of what
we're talking about re wilding. And then imagine if you
connected Yellowstone to Yosemite with a wildlife corridor, right, is
(24:02):
that even possible? Well, yeah, they're on the same continent
so effectively as possible. Yeah, you're gonna have to move
some some powerful landowners like Ted Turner. He's probably not
going to give up his land willingly, although I don't
know maybe he will. Um, there there has to be
like a shift in how people view the importance of
(24:23):
wilderness and nature and that's kind of part and parcel
with the concept every wilding too. Yeah, and a lot
of this research that we looked at comes from the
UK and we'll talk about that more later. But um,
it comes down to like a very smack I'm sorry,
a micro effort of going and convincing one landowner at
(24:45):
a time almost to do stuff like this, and they're
having some successes in the uplands of of the UK
where that you know, kind of one at a time,
some landowners are agreeing like all right, this is what
I can I'll agree to do and for the good
of everybody. Yeah, it's kind of cool, but it is
a you know, it's a pretty slow process. Like you're
not gonna see rewild ing on on the evening news
(25:10):
every night. It's a pretty I don't know about small movement,
but it's it's not mainstream, I don't think in the
in the consciousness no, but in the ecological community it's
like basically being touted as the future of ecology. So hot,
so um. The three c's, especially with the carnivores featured,
(25:30):
that's um, that's basically descriptive of one of the two
general umbrella categories for rewilding, and that would be trophic rewilding,
which will talk a little more about. But let's talk
about passive, real wild and kind of the other end
of the spectrum. Yeah, I mean this is kind of
uh taking a good look at where, um, where you
(25:53):
should do this, Like where to start, like what what's
a good area to even try this and where you
can kind of go unchecked and where it will benefit
people as well as the ecosystems around there. But the
two main goals of the passive rewilding are too and
this is something humans do a lot. Like there's a
lot of wildlife protection going on. So the first part
(26:14):
of passive rewilding is kind of that is letting wildlife
rebound and kind of get back, you know, get its
its land legs back under itself. Uh. And that means
like no hunting and stuff like that or hunting restrictions. Uh,
and then letting that land grow back together like you
talked about. So animals can you know, go where they
once could go, like just increasing their territories and just
(26:36):
saying here, nature, uh, do what you will with yourself.
And that sounds super dirty. We won't look we're walking away.
We had new idea nature would do that, right, oh god.
So um with passive rewilding, there's there's they're trying to
figure out what the initial steps are because in a
lot of these areas we've done a lot, it's just
(26:59):
kind of visible the city slickers like you and me.
Um to alter the ecosystem the landscape, so you know,
we would have to go in and like remove dams
that we've built there. Um, we would have to fill
in canals, UM, just anything anyway that we've altered or
put a human touch on the landscape. Um, we would
need to basically undo before we left, or else they
(27:23):
would still be an altered ecosystem that could be really problematic. UM.
So if we just basically kind of restore it then
and then we walk away, the idea is that it
will take care of itself faster. But like you're saying,
this is not a it's not a fast process. Like
some of these projects that are being proposed to have
(27:44):
timelines of a couple of hundred years before they reach
where they're supposed to be. It's hard. It is, it is,
But again I think it's getting easier and easier there.
And part of the PASSI rewilding is what I was
talking about in the uplands of England. Uh. That's where
they're kind of going one farmer at a time and saying, hey,
(28:05):
you know of England's drinking water comes from these uplands,
and you know, I think when you start describing uh
without maybe I think you can go too far and
scare people in the other direction with the doom and gloom.
But if you very just sort of calmly lay out
some facts and figures, I think that can wait people
at sometimes. Yes, and the UK super into this in
(28:28):
no small part because of an ecologist Harry and Megan
named George mombiatt. I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly. He
wrote a book in two thirteen called Feral that basically
called for rewilding and he really popularized it over there
and since then it's really started to kind of take
off and they have really lofty goals. Um, they have
(28:49):
a goal of rewilding five of England's land. I believe it.
It's just coming up quick and five percent. It's a lot.
It's about out a million acres and they put in
perspective there like there's a quarter of that is in
like football fields in England. So really is that that much?
Like if you're daunted by that idea, um, And but
(29:12):
that's still in eight years, converting it to to to
a rewilded state or starting to is pretty ambitious. Yeah.
I think, Um, you sent me that one thing that
was really cool where they sort of analyze, and this
is from a UK side, I think, where they analyze
like someone who might poop poo. This say is do
we even have the space to do this kind of thing, Like,
(29:35):
you know, we can't turn our cities over again to
the to the mountain lions and just let everything grow wild.
And that's not what they're talking about, but that one website,
I can't remember which one it was, but talking about
if you could traverse the entire UK in one day, yeah, England, Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland. That of the land that you
(29:57):
would find you would not see men, people or buildings.
You would only spend about an hour and forty five
minutes of that twenty four hours traversing all of the UK,
moving through urban spaces. And some of those urban spaces
even have green spaces, obviously not rewilded, but green space nonetheless.
And of the population of the UK lives on six
(30:20):
percent of the land mass, so in other words, there
is a lot of land out there to be rewilded.
That doesn't mean, you know, throwing wild animals in the
middle of the city, right, It's the opposite throwing the
humans out of the wilderness. Exactly. You go over there
and build your city life where you don't breathe fresh
(30:40):
air and you don't go outside and things like that. Well,
some of the more radical proposals for rewild ng is
like giving over you know, like nine tenths of the
United States to wilderness and basically just pointing out, like
how many more people you can pack into the urban
centers of like the East Coast and the US coast
(31:00):
and just like leave the middle alone as wilderness. I
haven't seen that supported by many people. I think probably
the guy who keeps promoting that, keeps getting told to
be quiet by the other ecologists, is going to scare
off the normals. You know, American suburbs are very big
and important, right, but it does it does really point
out to like, you know, there's there's people out there,
(31:22):
and we have there we have to take their interests
into consideration. And one of the things that I kept
seeing pointed out in the UK is apparently after Brexit,
the farm subsidies for farms that that could not support
themselves through their own production, um like like it is
in the US, and I'm sure Australia too, they were
heavily subsidized by the government to make up that that
(31:44):
that gap, and then after Brexit, apparently those things are
beginning slash left and right, and so people have been saying, Okay, well,
if we're not going to be giving them farm subsidies,
what if we change the purpose of the subsidies from
you know, farming, to you wilding land instead. If these
farms aren't producing that well anyway, and we can still
(32:05):
produce enough food, that's a very important point without these farms,
and in fact, some of these farms would actually be
way more valuable as untouched wilderness. Um, then maybe it
would make sense to take that money and converted into
that instead. And then you also have you've also taken
care of the person problem because they're still being supported
(32:28):
like they need to be. But at the same time,
they also don't have to move. They just can't graze
their sheep anymore. Just don't graze sheep anymore, and you're
gonna make the same amount of money. And you can
take tourists on wilderness safari's as a side gig. And
I just pictured groundskeeper Willie staring us down from yeah yeah,
and then getting on this tractor that pulls us along
(32:50):
and point out the red deer just hopping all over
the place on his rewilded land. Or he could just
give us the one of the great groundskeeper Willie lines
of all time from one of the uh Halloween episodes
when he was Freddy Krueger. Do you remember that one? Yeah,
of course, and I'm done with you. They're gonna need
to come postmortem. So great, that's a good one, one
(33:12):
of my favorite lines. Um. So, a lot of stuff
we were just talking about falls under the pass of rewilding. Uh,
we've hit on trophic rewilding. But within that, they're like,
it kind of depends on how hardcore of an environmentalist
you're talking to. There's something called plist to scene rewilding
where they're like, hey, human disturbance started at the last
(33:33):
ice age, and that should be our goal is to
kind of like introduce if not uh wooly mammoth's like
maybe a descendant of the wooly mammoth because they're not
around anymore. And so you get some sort of other people.
I mean, I don't know about how he did the
arguments get but other people are like, pliest, the scene
(33:54):
is really too uh we should really kind of move
from that, like forward from there and think more along
lines of the Wolves of Yellowstone than these huge megafauna. Right,
So some people say, no, the mega faun are are important. Yeah,
And the people who are proponents of places scene rewilding
um say that it's um. The reason that they've they've
(34:16):
chosen that point is because they're they're suggesting that, like,
if we go that far back, we could probably defend
ourselves in the planet against climate change that much more
quickly or more robustly, I guess is a better way
to say. It's not like they're just doing it out
of sentimentality, Like there's a there's an intellectual bent to it,
(34:37):
like and that is that we basically need to go
that far back to counteract the damage we've done in
the last like two years senti mentality. You know. So
there's a problem with palist to scene rewilding the chuck
and that is a lot of those animals are extinct, Yeah,
like the William emmoth. Yeah. Okay, so what are you
gonna do if you want to recreate the place to
(34:59):
see on the American Midwest. Let's say every state in
the Midwest agrees to move eastward or westward, and they're
giving up all of their land over to rewilding, and
we've all agreed it was placed to see rewilding. Lord,
are we going to rewild it with if there's no
such thing as a woolly mammoth? Maybe, but elephants have
(35:20):
evolved in the last ten and twelve thousand years to
um to to live around equatorial Africa, if I'm not mistaken,
So are they going to do well in Kansas? And
then the same thing for the saber tooth tiger or actually,
I don't think they call him anymore. I think it's
a sabre tooth cat. Maybe. Um all of their families
totally extinct. There's no descendants of the saber tooth cats
(35:42):
that are alive today. So what are we gonna do?
Put mountain lions out there. We're gonna put actual tigers
out there, are regular like African lions, and are we're
gonna move them over to Kansas? And then the larger problem, Chuck,
The larger problem is this, those animals, as big and
scary and ferocious as they are, are kind of pew
compared to the actual Pleistocene megafauna, like a sabretooth cat,
(36:06):
And it's not clear that they would be up to
the task of managing enormous ecosystems like that, just because
of their smaller size. Yeah. So there's a lot of
problems with pleistocene wilding and bring back the megaladon for
the oceans. Yeah. Uh no, there are a lot of
problems with that. Uh. And you're sort of talking about
(36:27):
you mentioned the top down control, uh, and that is
that theory that these you know, if you bring in
an apex predator, it can really uh, it can be
a really good thing. That the cascade of interactions that
it can trigger is can be vast. But you know,
that's that's trophic rewilding. It worked out pretty well for
(36:48):
the wolves and Yellowstone, uh, and the beavers that followed,
and the birds and the fish that followed because of
the beaver. So it's a it's it's always a sternling
example that people bring up. Yeah, So just to button
that up, you've got passive rewilding, which is basically like
just trying to get rid of your damns and bridges
and stuff and then leave. And then the trophic rewilding
(37:10):
is where you're selectively putting back animals that used to
play a role in that ecosystem or are related to
ones that used to play a role, right and then um,
with a focus on those apex predators because they have
so much control over the ecosystems that they live in,
and that that one is way more involved and needs
(37:31):
way more thought before we start doing that. Yeah, should
we take a break. Yeah, alright, we're gonna will gonna jeez,
we're gonna take our final break, and um, we'll talk
about some of the issues with rewilding and some of
the examples and some of the tenants. How about that.
(37:51):
That sounds great? So earlier on we talked about one
(38:18):
bad example of what I don't even think is rewilding
with those reindeer uh in South Georgia. Uh. There are
other examples. There was one. UM. Because you know, people
will point to stats people to say this isn't a
good idea. We'll say that, hey, the failure rate for
introductions and reintroduction introductions and nature is higher than se
(38:39):
and we don't even really have a lot of data
if this works out anyway, and sent pretty high. And
look at the um look about what Look at what
happened in Argentina in the nineteen forties when they brought
these Canadian beavers in and they ran wild and destroyed
the forest. People who know what they're talking about was say,
(39:00):
that's an invasive species, and when the beaver and yellowstone
eat the willow tree, the willow tree grows back. When
they eat these beech trees here in Argentina, they don't
grow back, So you just have a wasteland. It's not
dropping invasive species down into another place where they were
never supposed to be to begin with. Yeah, it's supposed
to be a little more thought out than that. That, Like,
(39:20):
like I was saying before the break, like these are
carefully selected and carefully thought out, or they're meant to
be um animals that are that fil specific niches in
the ecosystem that you're trying to restore. That's right, not
dropping beavers in South America, Canadian beavers no less. Yeah.
One thing that really spoke to me was in that
(39:42):
additional material that you sent over. I think it was
the four Tenants Rewilding Britain. I think was the website. Uh,
and therefore tenants um are pretty self explanatory, but one
part of part two really spoke to me. The first
one is support people in nature together. The second one
is let nature lead. And the line that really got
(40:04):
me was it is not geared to reach any human
defined optimal point or in state, it goes where nature
takes it, and then that ties in with number four.
Number three is creazy create resilient local economies. It's a
big part of it. But number four is, uh, work
at nature scale. Like I think humans are so obsessed
with scale in business and they're basically saying, you gotta
(40:29):
do what nature. Let nature do it. Nature does at
its own pace and at its own scale. That's nature scale,
and just let it do it. Don't put don't put
your hang ups on nature, man on what you want
it to be. And that's kind of true though, Yeah, no, absolutely,
I think I think though that that kind of reveals,
like that the lack of consensus in the field of rewilding,
(40:53):
because what did you say that was rewilding Britain's four points? Yeah,
there were actually five. The fifth one was secure and
it fits for the long term, okay, yeah, five, And
then I saw the union of the conservation of nature. Yeah,
I think that's it. I think, uh, they they have
ten ten points, so you've got five, you got ten
(41:16):
depending on who you ask, but they all generally agree
that before we really start doing this stuff in earnest,
like we need more data. Like most of the people
who are like, yeah, we just you know, release some
voles into the into the woods. There's some rewilding project
right there. Like, these are the people who aren't necessarily
even thinking it through. If you're a conservation ecologist, if
(41:39):
you're a biologist, if you're a botanist, if you're a
scientist who's like actually looking at rewilding, pretty much everyone
agrees like we need way more data than we have
right now. That it's a great idea. We just need
way more data if the science just isn't even there. Yeah,
but you know, one of the tenants that they both
it seems like everyone is talking about is talk to
(42:02):
the local people. They call them stakeholders. Talk to the
local stakeholders, because you can't just come in there, uh
with your you know, with your science under your arm
and your folder and just say this is how it's
gonna go. Like, it's got to work for the people
and you have to get them involved and on boarders
(42:22):
just not gonna work. Don't even try that. In Scotland, everybody,
oh man, don't mess with their sheet. You got anything else?
I got nothing else? Uh? Well, maybe this last little
bit from that stuff you sent. Seventy seven percent in
increasing of the human population lives in urban areas and
(42:43):
they spend of their time indoors. Seventy seven percent of
humans spend nine of their time indoors. And just the
health effects and the and the role the trickle down
effects from that, We've talked about a lot, but people
need to be out in nature. Mental and physical illness, depression,
(43:05):
heart disease, anxiety, fatigue, obesity, a d h D like
you name it, like a lot can be not wholly
attributed to this, but certainly has an impact on people
that And I'm a city guy, you are too, Like
I love my urban areas, but uh, people need to
get out doors more. And this is a good way
(43:27):
to do what I think. Yeah, but that's a fine
line you've got to walk because we're giving this stuff
over to nature. So we have to ask ourselves, what,
what role, what place do we have in these wildernesses
that we're creating. And I think that's one of the
things that that that that rewilding ecologists are excited about,
is that would cause us to to rethink that that
(43:50):
would be like, wait, amount I want to be indoors
all time? Well, wait a minute, I'm already indoors all
the time. I need to get out there, and now
there's a place for them to go. So yeah, I
think that's an they're big question mark that we'd have
to figure out too. That's right. Um, well, that's it
for rewilding for now. Given another five years, maybe we'll
come back to it. Everybody. And since I said that,
(44:10):
it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this of
what the author called it, lesbians in the Military. Hi, guys,
really enjoyed your podcast about the term friend of Dorothy
and wanted to add something to your discussion about gay
men in the military. Uh. And this is probably on
us for just sort of saying gay men in the military,
(44:31):
But there were many lesbians in the military during World
War Two, as well as people who would we would
now describe as bisexual women, transmasculine people, and others. The
military was a safe place for queer women and a
fab assigned female at birth people since it was somewhat
of an escape for mainstream society that expected women to
(44:52):
dress and present femininely and marry men never consider this.
It's pretty great. This article is a great summary of
the history. I thought you might find it interesting. Uh.
And the name of the article I just click the
link is called this is from out history dot org
lesbians Comma not colin World War two and beyond. And
(45:14):
this is from Rebecca, a friend of Dorothy. Nice. Thanks
a lot, Rebecca. We're a friend of Rebecca who's a
friend of Dorothy. That's right. It's hard to keep track,
but let's just all be friends. That's pretty great. Um,
thank you for that email, Rebecca. And if you want
to be like us and point out something we hadn't
considered before. We love that kind of stuff. You can
(45:35):
wrap it up and send it in an email to
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