April 28, 2025 • 59 mins
This episode of The Daily Weekly features host Dakotah Daily in conversation with Amanda Desrochers, a master’s student in soil science at the University of Manitoba, discussing her research on sustainable phosphorus recycling through co-composting to close nutrient loops and promote organic farming. They explore the critical role of soil health, nutrient cycling, and symbiotic […]
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(00:12):
Well, hello, Curry Coast. You are listening to
the Daily Weekly, and I am your host,
Dakota Daley.
I am super excited to be offering this
show live today from our studio here in
Brookings, Oregon.
And I wanna start off at the top
of the hour by saying that we are
broadcasting
from
(00:32):
the unceded and traditional territories of the Chetco
and the Chattutnik Native American people.
I myself am
endlessly grateful for the ongoing cultural and ecological
stewardship
of the Northwest American Indian Coalition, which is
our local led, indigenous
led,
(00:53):
nonprofit
that is doing ongoing land management and cultural
stewardship in the area.
Additionally, I would like to thank the show's
sponsor, Rick McNamer.
And I would also like to let everybody
know who's listening that for just $5, you
can buy the host of this show a
beer either before, during, or after the recording.
And I would like to I would like
(01:14):
to thank our video producer, Michael, for sponsoring
today's show,
in terms of fermentation.
And without further ado, I would like to
announce that today's show is a very exciting
one in that we have a guest. Instead
of just listening to me yap
and all of my favorite songs, we're gonna
mix it up a little bit, and we're
gonna have another voice.
(01:34):
And I'm hoping that everything is set up
with Amanda
to come in and introduce herself. She is
calling today from Canada, and I reckon she'll
be able to tell you a little bit
more about
about that if she is online.
Can you hear us, Amanda?
I'm here. I'm here. Can you hear me?
Yeah. We can hear you. You are on
(01:56):
the air on KCIW.
This is awesome, and it's an honor. It's
been a long time.
So where are you calling from today, Amanda?
Well, I am
currently calling from,
the University of Manitoba
here in Winnipeg,
Manitoba. The one of the coldest
places in Canada for sure, but spring's just
(02:18):
around the corner.
Yeah. I was gonna ask, how how's the
weather at this time right here?
How's the weather?
It's kind of it's it's gross, honestly.
The geese are moving in. They're they're
everywhere.
Scary, terrifying, entering any building. They are, like,
bodyguards.
(02:39):
But I think I'm pretty sure of that.
Yeah. Seriously,
though, there's, like, beware of geese
every single door and every single facility because
you have to actually
caution, people. I think it's a legality.
But, anyways, where, the the grass is slowly
getting green, it's pretty.
I see runoff and snow melt runoff everywhere
(03:00):
in all of the fields and the ditches.
So it's,
I like I like spring. It's my least
favorite season. Y'all are concerned that the geese
are gonna get into the buildings. Is that
right?
I think it's more of a concern of
attacking customers. Uh-huh. There's been Biting fingers. Fingers,
those sorts of things. Fingers breaking
(03:22):
students' arms. It happened last year. Wow.
A goose broke students' arms. So What? They
just send out an email. They put precautions
up outside.
They're,
they're tough animals.
Where I used to live in British Columbia,
for a couple weeks in a row, we
had a couple consecutive
owl attacks.
(03:42):
And it was, like, all students that had
pretty, like, frizzy kind of curly hair.
And there was some nesting instinct or predatory
instinct that was activated by this spotted owl
behind our residential building. And there is warnings
going out for people to watch their mats
from getting
attacked.
I'm curly haired.
(04:03):
Oh my gosh. Yeah. It was pretty funny.
So question for all kids with Afros, don't
go time without That's pretty much how the
email read.
So,
Amanda, I know a little bit about why
you are where you are and what you're
doing right now, but not very much. And
our listeners don't know anything at all. So
I was curious if you wanted to give
us a elevator pitch about
(04:26):
what you're doing right now. What brought you
to Manitoba?
Yeah. Absolutely. So I'm born and raised born
and raised in Winnipeg.
My family lives in a small town outside
of Winnipeg, so I'm home.
Got a big family here. It's nice
to be home.
And
I went to school on the East Coast,
(04:47):
so I played hockey.
And then I was traveling around, which is
when I met you in one of those
years on Kauai,
and I came back to pursue soil science.
You the University of Manitoba has
the best program in the country for soil
sciences,
and
I have an opportunity,
a big scholarship,
(05:08):
to,
pursue some research
in the organic,
soon to be, hopefully, regenerative
organic space here at the at the university
as a master's student. So,
yeah, I'm a big dirt nerd.
I can confirm that is true. Yeah.
Yeah. So how far into the program are
(05:28):
you right now, and what are your thoughts
about it? Because the last time we actually
hung out, you had gone into the program,
and you're really excited, but you hadn't started
it yet.
Yeah. Super excited. So,
for those listening, Dakota and I met on
tiny little island,
magical place in our heart. We continue to
revisit this place called Kauai,
(05:49):
and it's the garden island of Hawaii. So
I was there living on a farm in
a tent, and Dakota,
we'll call that story later, but I was
also studying the soil there. Different soil than
we have here in the Prairies as it
is dormant for six months out of the
year, but
I am about one year no. Not quite
one year.
I am
(06:10):
acting as though I'm one year into my
program, but I'm about seven months into my
program and
and learning so, so much. I'm already completed
I've already completed all of my research,
per se. I have one ongoing experiment right
now where I'm
studying the effects of all of the different
compost that I made in my first experiment.
(06:31):
And so I do actually get to interact
with plants, which is
awesome.
A little bit about my experiment. I'm
studying recycled phosphorus forms
and their availability
when they are co composted. So we're trying
to
close some nutrient loops,
within agriculture
because
(06:52):
we
I was as well I was mentioning earlier
with this snow melt.
Usually, when you see flooded fields or you
see
runoff or full ditches, you're you're not concerned
too too much about the nutrients, you just
see water.
But whenever I see that, I think of
leftover
residue from applied fertilizers
(07:12):
and
other organic forms as well, not just,
synthetic fertilizers, but
that phosphorus, that nitrogen,
more so phosphorus,
ends up transporting off of the field. So
we're trying to find ways in which we
can sustainably collect that, get it back onto
the field, and have it stay there. So
I'm working with some organic amendments, and we're
(07:33):
co composting. So I like to say that
my master's project is very stinky. It's quite
stinky That's right. When we're eating with compost.
Yeah. Would you explain to me what co
composting is? I hadn't heard that term before.
Yeah. Yeah. So, basically, we are
I have these giant
biodigesters,
(07:54):
and they turn any material that's organic,
and organic meaning it contains carbon,
into
soil or
compost
fertilizer
within
forty eight hours, twenty four to forty eight
hours. So compost usually takes about a year
to two years naturally on its own, but
it's an aerobic process. So we can add
(08:15):
in materials.
So if we add in something into these
composting machines,
that material essentially is getting co composted with
other organic materials. So I'm adding in,
recycled phosphorus sources that we've collected from water
treatment plants
in with the compost
and determining which mixture is the best Mhmm.
(08:37):
Right now.
So what are the kinds of things that
you're considering in your researching adding to
finish this process?
Unfortunately, my
my scholarship is funded by Big Egg,
so we are studying
Quickly, we ran into the legally ambiguous area.
(09:00):
Our our listeners could sign NDAs if that
would help.
Yes. Oh gosh. Well, so I'm in I'm
in the system,
Koda. We know this. I'm in the system
to break out of the system. Yeah. I'm
getting another piece of paper to tell me
all of the things that
are required for me to
say that I know all of those things.
(09:21):
So I'm working in the system
for the system. And there's a concern that
you are
about to discover a genius
recipe, and the people who are sponsoring your
research
are copywriting
your research and own your research?
They own all of it. They own all
of my research. Yeah. So anything that I
find,
(09:42):
I am,
Well, we can just end the show right
there. I mean, that was really I was
just trying to figure out what the how
to make the Krusty Krab burger. But
Yeah. Yeah. Get so locked up. The secret
recipe. Oh my gosh. The secret ingredient.
Yep. But I am so I am funded
by,
a big a big company
(10:02):
that
wants to utilize
their product, which is being,
recycled and removed from wastewater. So we have
an abundance of this product,
and
it is
super beneficial, has been used in agriculture,
before, just not in organic agriculture,
the product, and the molecule is called struvite.
(10:24):
So it's a naturally occurring
bound form of phosphorus that's
it occurs in the piping systems of water
treatment plants,
ultimately, because when phosphorus interacts with a certain,
when it's put in a certain environment with
other chemicals and other
elements, that it does naturally
(10:44):
form this crystalline structure.
And so in removing it, they had an
excess amount of it, and they were like,
what are we gonna do with all the
phosphorus? Like, not big question, obviously, why the
phosphorus was in the water treatment plants. But,
basically,
they have an excess of it, and we
found a way to find a safe way
to put it back into the soils from
(11:06):
which it was getting lost from and in
the runoff that I was mentioning earlier. So
I'm working with struvite. That's one of the
the compounds that we are adding into co
compost. And then I'm also working with a
few other ones just to compare. But my
research is funded primarily
because of,
the potential for struvite to be used in
(11:27):
organic agriculture.
Got it.
And it sounds like struvite is something that
there is way more of than what we
know what to do with. Is that right?
No. Way more. Not necessarily
I'll word it in a way that's we
have a lot of it because,
It comes from poopy water?
It comes from poopy water.
(11:47):
Yeah. And I was thinking we would have
unlimited poopy water
virtually relative to our need for it. Don't
a lot of people don't question,
you know, where their poop goes when they
flush it. It's kinda out of sight, out
of mind. Yep. Right?
But,
I, myself, personally, am am quite curious about
where everything goes. I'm always asking. Well, you
(12:08):
had to come from where they go. Passionate
obsession about tiny crawling things, I've noticed.
Oh, yeah. And poopy water is a really
interesting place if you are on the scale
of tiny, tiny crawling things. Well, I'm wondering
for other people who are as ignorant about
soil science as I am. I'm wondering that
was a great conceptual understanding and context of
(12:30):
why your research matters
in the current state of affairs in your
field that contextualize your research. I'm wondering if
you could tell us a little bit about,
like,
what do you do with your hands? Are
you scooping up dirt and putting it under
a microscope? Are you letting things grow? Are
you hitting it with lasers? Are you taking
pictures of it? What is your We do
so many things here at the U of
(12:51):
M. Yeah. So I can hit it with
lasers.
I can do,
I can hit it with different sorts of
wavelengths of light in order to determine
what is in it. And why is that
interesting? Why would you use different kinds of
light?
I think
to back up a little bit more and
just talk about why soil is interesting
(13:11):
for
those curious enough to ask is,
do you eat food, Koda?
I eat food every day. I am You
eat food every day. Yeah. I'm a hardcore
a lot of people know this who listen
to my show. I am a hardcore supporter
of food.
Food. Yeah. Love It's a hot take, but
I'm gonna put my stick on the ground.
(13:34):
So we do we do all eat food.
I think that all of the listeners can
definitely relate
to just the enjoyment
of of nutrients going into the body in
order to fuel this vessel, which is my
human my human form. Right? So
all things
that we consume
(13:55):
came from
the ground, came from the earth.
Ultimately, if you eat beef,
that cow was grazing in a field somewhere.
So what I like to ask is
soil is extremely important because not only am
I the health of the things that I
put into my body,
but I am the health of what those
(14:16):
things grew in.
So
the cow can only be as healthy as
the grass it's eating, and the grass can
only be as healthy as the soil that
it's grown in. So backing
all the way up in the chain of
events,
it all comes down to soil and the
health of the soil.
So it's very it's a very important
(14:40):
ecosystem and universe
that I'm studying, all the tiny things under
my microscope, but the microscopy actually is just
a side hobby. It's not even my master's.
Like Oh. I decided to add a whole
entire other chapter into my master's just because
I I'm obsessed. But,
yeah, it's
it's quite a crazy, crazy world down there
(15:02):
when you take a look at
what goes down because everything that goes up
must go down.
Yeah. I think that's the saying. What's the
saying? Everything that comes up must no. Yeah.
That Yeah. That is that's one saying for
sure.
Yeah. It's interesting. I have a question I
wanna ask about
soil science kind of just generally.
But before I do that, I do wanna
(15:22):
say also that our phone number for texting
in is live. So if you're listening to
this either here in Brookings or online at
kciw.org,
you can text us at (541)
661-4098
and ask questions or make comments to anything
Amanda or I we are talking about.
(15:44):
That number is (541)
661-4098,
and we would love to hear hear your
thoughts. So please do not be shy, listeners.
And the question I have for you, Amanda,
is
so I spent almost a decade
as a raft guide, sitting on the back
of the boat and just yapping to people
(16:05):
in addition to making sure they're having fun
and staying alive.
And when I was on the boat, I
would tell people all the time about
how important the salmon
returning all the way to Idaho, which is
7,000
vertical feet they have to swim from the
Pacific Ocean,
and 700 miles up the Columbia River system
(16:27):
into the Snake, into the Salmon River.
1 of the things that I would talk
to people about was how important the body
of the salmon was
because they would be
eaten by or partially eaten by the first
predator to take a bite.
And then
you imagine, like, a bald eagle scoops the
salmon out of the river, takes a big
bite out of it. They've already stopped eating
(16:49):
when they're swimming back, so they start to
decay, and they're dedicating
all of their energy to returning to the
exact same rock that they were born on
however many years ago. They're swimming all the
way from the Pacific Ocean to the high
mountains of Idaho to go lay these eggs.
And then as soon as they spawn,
they die. So they're already kind of decomposing.
(17:10):
A bald eagle picks one up, takes a
big bite out of it, and there's so
many salmon coming back historically that it just
drops it. And then a bear comes and
eats half of it and drops it. And
it goes down the food chain. And eventually
they decompose and they deposit. This is the
story that I would tell people, which I
think has a lot of truth, but I
don't understand
much about the actual soil science. What we
(17:30):
would say is the Salmon River is like
a giant conveyor belt of phosphorus and nitrogen
to the soil and out here the high
dug fir and the yellow pine ponderosas
you could actually see historical
levels like when there was a massive salmon
run because the trees
are way bigger. The growth on one ring
(17:53):
from one year is exponentially bigger when you
have a massive salmon run because it's just
fertilizer
for the entire forest coming from a marine
ecosystem
that otherwise doesn't have as much access to
this. I'm wondering if you could talk a
little bit
just, like, conceptually
about phosphorus and nitrogen because I have zero
(18:14):
background in chemistry at all. Like, do either
of those things or any other major
things that you're looking for in terms of,
like, base elements for soil health,
do they have, like, particular characteristics? Like, when
people talk about, like, a nitrogen fixing plant,
how is that different than, like, capturing phosphorus
again, which I think is what you mentioned
your research was on if
(18:36):
I I don't really know much about, like,
soil chemistry. And I'm wondering if there's any
things as, like, a science communication piece at
kind of that, like, higher level about
phosphorus or nitrogen or other.
I know there's a third thing that they
put on fertilizer bags.
Is it phosphorus, nitrogen, and,
You're talking the NPK?
(18:57):
Yes.
So it's potassium.
Yes. Could you tell us a little bit
about these things?
Yeah. Absolutely. So
NPK is
the essential think of it as, like, you
think of essential amino acids for a human.
We have
eight, sometimes nine, depending on who you're talking
to, to build our muscle and to fuel
(19:19):
the enzymes that we create in our body.
And plants, they need sunlight,
they need water,
and they need a bunch of micronutrients, but
the macronutrients
are considered to be nitrogen,
phosphorus, and potassium.
Oftentimes, it comes in different waves. Like, for
example, phosphorus is extremely important for early plant
(19:42):
growth. It is also very important for fruit
development.
Nitrogen is also extremely important for early plant
growth, but too much nitrogen can cause the
burning of the seedlings.
So when we're talking about
nitrogen, phosphorus,
potassium,
nitrogen also helps make the the green chlorophyll
(20:04):
that you see on the leaves of the
plants that assist it in photosynthesis,
helps them build proteins. Obviously, nitrogen is is
a component in all amino acids. So, ultimately,
when you think of the salmon and you
think of returning
back to the the ecosystem,
that's the fate of absolutely
everything. Everything
(20:25):
comes from and will return to
the soil. You, yourself, me, myself, everyone listening,
we're all made up of
carbon,
nitrogen,
phosphorus,
potassium,
boron,
like, chlorine, all of the things just
reinvented,
reiterated,
(20:46):
kind of, like, scrambled up and put up
in in different areas. So, ultimately, we will
get
broken down into these core components
in order for them to be reused again
because matter cannot be created
or destroyed. So
here we go using my, like, old high
school science, pulling that up there.
(21:06):
I think that's, like, Newton's second law or
something. But,
when we're talking about phosphorus, which is my
specialty,
phosphorus has a very interesting life cycle because
it does not it cannot be,
it cannot be lost to the air, whereas
nitrogen is very complex. It has multiple
pathways in which it could be introduced into
(21:28):
the soil and lost to the air and
lost via leaching from the soil, whereas phosphorus
actually needs water in order for it to
move.
And plants also need to be able to
uptake that phosphorus,
and there's so many different forms. So there's
so many different forms of nitrogen,
so many different forms of phosphorus,
potassium as well, but less so more so
(21:48):
with phosphorus and nitrogen.
And the plant can only absorb
a small
tiny fraction of the forms that are actually
present in the soil.
And the responsibility
of the microbial
communities
in the soil, as well as the fungal
communities,
(22:08):
the archaea,
What they do is they play a role
to break down
the nutrients just as the bear and the
eagle eat pieces of the salmon.
That breaks the salmon down into smaller components
that then become
smaller building blocks within the bear as the
bear's microbes in its stomach
(22:29):
break it down.
And then, ultimately, you know, we love to
talk about poop, apparently, poopy water, poopy bear.
Yes.
That bear
disperses those nutrients around
the forest floor.
So think of think of it as, like,
the chain
gets built up to create what is possible,
which was the salmon, and gets broken back
(22:50):
down to become
what
is possible to become
the tree, the bear, the ecosystem.
It's feeding those nutrients back into it.
Ultimately, the salmon
is just a transporter.
Ultimately, we kinda all are just transporters
and walking
bunches of nutrients that will one day return
(23:11):
to the soil and become something new
with
and which is kind of beautiful when you
think about it as well.
But,
yeah, that's my I can go into more
detail as well in regards to phosphorus and
nitrogen and potassium, but those are the building
blocks,
for fertilizers as well in agriculture
(23:33):
speaking.
But,
yeah, I'm definitely
missus phosphorus around here. That's my my research
is primarily on
on phosphorus.
Well, I love the way that you scaled
that metaphor of the microbes
to
phosphorus are like the bear to the salmon
of you have this biological agent, whether it's
(23:55):
really big or really small, you have this
organism
that's taking the Legos apart, right, before the
Legos get stacked up to
whatever the new
creation is. And even breaking it down even
into the plastic that becomes the Lego. Right?
That's the microbial job. Mhmm. If without the
microbes present,
their building blocks would not be able to
be reused
(24:17):
in a way that's
phosphorus, for example, in the soil
needs to be made into an available
form
in order for the plant to be able
to take it up.
So there's a lot of chemistry that goes
on in the soil.
A lot of it is actually conducted by
plants. Plants are
absolutely phenomenal. They are the conductors of all
(24:38):
of it, secreting,
and excreting
different sorts of sugars in order to attract
microbial species, different kinds of carbohydrates, to attract
different specific kinds
of bacteria
and fungus.
They create relationships
with these fungus underneath the soil and recruit
(24:58):
the fungus and exchange. They work as, like,
a currency. They'll exchange their sugars
for other nutrients, like mycorrhizal fungi, for example.
The tiny little
root like hair structures that you see if
you pull up a plant and you see
a little bit of white fluff, it almost
looks like,
that is
mycorrhizal fungi. And what they are doing is
(25:19):
they're actually acting as extensions
from the plants to recruit
and find phosphors for the plants. The plant
is playing the conductor role.
It's like, hey. If you work for me,
you bring me a little bit of phosphorus,
I'll give you a little bit of my
sugar.
Mhmm. And it does that with with bacteria
as well. Cool. So plants ultimately are
(25:41):
quite intelligent things, although they cannot speak. They
speak without words. No kidding. Well, I just
got a text message,
and
I love the way it opens up. It
says perfect subject for Earth Day, which I
forgot that today is the day, but you're
absolutely right. So thank you,
texter. Perfect subject for Earth Day, Earth.
(26:02):
If soil or soil if you prefer.
I'm pretty sure Roundup
is horrible as a weed killer because of
the soil damage.
Is vinegar,
Dawn,
or dish soap a better alternative?
If not, what would Amanda suggest?
Amanda would suggest. Well, it depends on, I
guess, what you're trying to get rid of.
(26:24):
Because Roundup is usually used
for weeds and weed suppression and the killing
of of what do we call it? Glyphosate
around here. We're all we're all very familiar
with well, maybe we're not familiar with glyphosate,
but it is a very widespread,
chemical that is
Roundup Ready
Clamps are the ones that you see that
(26:45):
are marketed have been marketed since seed,
agricultural
boom, one would say.
But
for Roundup,
it is a weed suppressant. So I would
think more so in in
rather than how can I eliminate something,
what more can I add is the question
(27:07):
that I was taught in in Kauai would
be instead of trying to be rid of
a pest
or be rid of something that I no
longer want in my garden,
how can I either utilize that thing
and add it into
my ecosystem?
Or what can I introduce
that is
a predator
or a competing components to that that entity
(27:30):
that I'm trying to get rid of? So
for weeds, if you're thinking Roundup,
I would try to find a way to
mulch the ground,
meaning to get the ground cover
that's it's not exposed to sunlight as much.
So any weed seeds or any possible weeds
that are on the ground are then not
reaching the sunlight that the plant itself is.
(27:51):
I would plant
cover crops or
creeping, crawling. Like, you can use thyme. You
can use different sorts of pumpkins or or
cucumbers. I like to have my cucumbers vertical.
But if this is in regards to gardening,
there's definitely a lot of different approaches that
one would take. Vinegar isn't gonna kill a
weed, unfortunately.
(28:12):
Very good cleaning agent for inside. I use
that on I use a diluted,
form for cleaning all surfaces. It's a very
good antibacterial.
I use it for cleaning mostly everything because
it's not harmful to
to humans. It's a a very safe acid
to use.
But depends on that on that question if
it's specific for a garden.
(28:34):
I I love that change in philosophy
in looking at the entire thing. It's something
I think about a lot, working in land
management myself,
in particular and related to invasive species.
Because a lot of the money that goes
into invasive species management is about
removal and eradication.
And
(28:54):
we're facing,
you and I, in a sense, work on
almost opposite ends of the spectrum in of
scale when it turns,
comes to land management.
Because you are working at almost the smallest
scale physically possible
in terms of, like, the the level of
detail that you're noticing.
(29:16):
And I look at
thousands of miles of mountains and ridges and
rivers and lakes, and I'm looking at really,
like, landscape level species management.
So one thing that I think is really
interesting is the conversation of invasive species, and
when I'm looking at it at a landscape
level scale and I'm seeing money go towards
(29:36):
projects
of removing invasive species, I
when I'm playing these things out of my
mind will sometimes kind of wonder,
okay, well what happened if
humanity
got the Earth to a place where it
couldn't sustain human life anymore and we kind
of stopped showing up like maybe even beyond
we stopped putting grant dollars
(29:58):
towards invasive species managed but like
what if there was an extinction event on
earth and these species just ran from where
they are right now
I spend a lot of time wondering what
does that landscape look like
and where what are the niches in this
ecosystem and the relationships in this ecosystem
(30:19):
that would eventually
reestablish
a moving and a dynamic
harmony Because
all ecosystems are in a state of flux
And
invasive species, even if we look at something,
and there's plenty of really good examples invasive
species
and as well,
disease and infestation Like, we're currently here on
(30:40):
the Oregon Coast experiencing
firmageddon
where Doug fir is just
changing climactic conditions Just heat and moisture are
changing
in a way that we are seeing
landscape level changes of entire regions having devastated
fir populations, which are essentially a cash crop
(31:01):
in the West of logging,
just dying faster than we know how to
process them. We're also experiencing sudden oak death.
Oak are one of the most important species
of trees to be working with and protecting.
And a lot of our best oak is
vulnerable to this, like,
black plague called sudden oak death that's been
running rampant the last couple years
(31:23):
And to me it's pretty clear that, like,
sudden oak death when I'm sitting around a
table that has forest service people, BLM people,
private people
from across
the South Coast in Northern California and deeper
into Oregon.
Honestly, we're getting to the point where we
sit around the table and people are like,
oh yeah, we're seeing sudden oak death. They
(31:43):
call it sod, S O D, sudden oak
death. They say, yeah, we've got sod over
there. We've got sod over there. And you
look at the map of where this
super highly contagious
disease is breaking out, and you look at
how widespread invasive species are, and you look
at how much work it is to actually
take invasive species out.
I think it's really interesting to say, okay,
instead of this process of removal
(32:05):
or of killing,
what are the ecosystem relationships that we can
work with that run on their own and
are moving towards a different kind of harmony,
even if that challenges what our idea of
a baseline
is, because it's really evident that baseline ecosystem
conditions
are changing both on a macro and a
micro scale. And I think looking at your
(32:25):
garden and being like, how can I change
the conditions of this to grow something else?
Because oftentimes, I know
weeds come back in disturbed areas. And I've
heard that
just in my my brief career that I
had as a gardener for a couple of
wary years where I was wandering around, I
remember people saying, you know, these weeds are
growing back in disturbed soil types
(32:48):
because they're the only plant that can work
in this ecosystem which is so depleted, and
they're also fixing the soil
The weeds are the first ones on the
front line
responding
to this, like, graveyard of barren soil, and
they're paving the way for other plants to
enrich the soil later on So if we're
growing and spraying them with Roundup, it's a
(33:09):
totally different approach than what you were saying
of, like, a more generative,
kind of will run on its own momentum
kind of
species management, which I think is really cool
to hear at that scale.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And,
like, what Roundup does is Roundup is,
it is like it the the
(33:30):
the trademark or the the punchline to it
is, like, Roundup ready because it is a
select. It is,
nonselective,
meaning it kills whatever it touches.
So it's very it's a very dangerous,
chemical that we we can find in our
drinking water and in our rain now throughout
North America,
and it doesn't break down,
(33:51):
at all from from my Wow. Research. I
do need to look into it a little
bit more. It is kind of like a
heavy metal. I do think that there are
ways in which we can remove it from
a system, but it has just been used
at such a large scale that it takes
hundreds of years to break down. And
since it is sprayed, you know, twice a
year, sometimes three times a year on so
(34:13):
on certain crops,
depending on on your cropping system and Yeah.
I mean land you have. I can attest
to that. I am right now,
well, not right now because I'm in a
recording studio. But yesterday and tomorrow, what I'm
working on is a
watershed monitoring project
through
this is funded by the Northwest American Indian
(34:34):
Coalition.
Big shout out to them.
They're funding a research project, which I'm the
lead on, where we are looking at watersheds
and ecosystem level health for springs and freshwater
sources.
And I'm going around and I'm collecting water
samples to test for glyphosate,
which is the primary chemical.
(34:55):
And it's because
in the forest here, we have a forestry
practice of
spraying
glyphosate
from
planes and helicopters.
That's the level and the scale at which
these pesticides are being used
for ecosystem management. And hearing you say that
these are essentially acting like heavy metals that
(35:18):
don't break up over hundreds of years.
I think it really just puts that into
context really when you think about drinking water
sources and clean water sources, what the impact
of glyphosate or Roundup would be.
Yeah. So it like,
in a system where there's more diversity, which
we talked about earlier
(35:38):
in regards to adding more,
which I'm I'm very happy that you resonated
with
ultimately because
we're trying to go back and and fix
a problem that we caused by
intervening
even more than we already have.
And nature does not favor
monocropping,
(35:59):
monoculture,
selecting for one thing. She favors diversity.
And I see she and nature as,
a separate entity. I found out through my
reading,
of some indigenous wisdom that nature actually does
not exist
in the indigenous language and in other languages
(36:19):
as well because it it
it solidifies
a separateness from humans
and nature.
So there is actually no separateness, which I
found absolutely beautiful.
But for in regards to adding diversity,
right, like,
glyphosate can break down. It has the potential
to break down. It does not it's not
a forever
(36:41):
chemical,
but it does depend on the health of
your soil and the microbial activity,
the moisture, the pH, like, how much
diversity you have within that garden. You think
about an old growth forest. It's some of
the healthiest, most
abundant,
profound,
amazing things to look at under the microscope
in regards to soil activity
(37:03):
because of the diversity, because of the amount
of different leaves that are falling, that are
degrading on the ground, because of like we
talked about with, you said with your land
management is
letting those
larger
species and smaller species roam
free. Like, that is one of the reasons
why there's such
(37:24):
degradation and such, like, negative
impacts with with these climates and these large
scale changes as we're not
we're not letting
herds
walk through environments anymore, and and plants have
evolved with animals
just as though plants have evolved with fungi.
And
and we're changing things at such an exponential
(37:46):
scale that
we're not letting
it catch up. We're not letting evolution catch
up. Evolution
happens non exponentially.
Right? It's very slow.
I love that you brought up the,
this idea about a separation between nature and
culture or natural and human society.
(38:08):
This is something that I
love to talk about on my show. And
I was thinking about it recently because as
you
attested to, like, oftentimes in traditional
ecological knowledge and native wisdom and a lot
of different cultures that we see in a
lot of different places,
not to homogenize
indigenous culture, but this is certainly a pattern
that I've noticed at least across the West,
(38:30):
that there isn't as strong of a distinction
between nature and culture as we
generally, like, imported with Western colonisation
and expansion
here,
into this part of Oregon is
is this idea that nature and culture are
two separate things. Human society is different than
the forest, and there are different laws that
(38:50):
govern them. And
the difference being that in traditional ecological knowledge,
oftentimes there's this story of connection and relationality.
And what that lends to is that, like,
our Western perspective on conservation
is that in order to conserve and protect
and steward a land, you should wall it
off, and nobody should ever go in there
(39:12):
so that it cannot be corrupted and degraded
by the menacing hands of mankind and society.
We gotta protect that up. That's our kind
of, like, fence and border conservation.
And I was thinking about this recently with
the idea of, like, well, imagine if, like,
nature,
mother Earth, like, imagine if that was your
grandma.
And the alternative vision that we see oftentimes
(39:34):
in traditional ecological knowledge is, like, actually, it's
about, like, relationship and, like, taking care and
being, like, really involved. Like, it's about being,
like, face to face with what's going on.
And I think that, for me, it's, like,
a helpful tool to explain it. In thinking
about, like, if mother nature was, like, your
grandma,
it becomes really clear that there's a difference
that, like, if your grandma is sick,
(39:57):
are you gonna just leave your grandma alone?
Is your idea of how to take care
of your grandma to not look at her,
to not talk to her, to make sure
that nobody ever goes to her house, to
make sure that she's completely isolated and there's
no
interaction. Or when your grandma is sick, is
your idea to go ask her what she
needs
and to check-in on her and to maybe,
(40:19):
you know,
be staying on the couch over at her
place until she gets better.
Like, this idea that we leave things alone
in nature in order to protect them,
is a uniquely western one. And I think
it's really worth
bringing in because oftentimes
the
answers to these questions of like should we
be using Roundup? Should we be cutting trees
(40:40):
down in the forest? If you tried to
ask me should we be cutting trees down
in the forest?
It's such a tough conversation
because it's not a yes or no answer.
Right? Like, we should not be clear cutting,
but we need to be doing fuels reduction
work, and we can be taking out a
lot of trees in areas that are high
risk, And we can be making money off
(41:03):
of timber and off of logging companies And
this is all the work I'm doing right
now We can make this a profitable thing
by removing trees in a way that make
the wildfire
risk less severe
and in the same way you can manage
invasive species in your garden if you're willing
to add some complexity
and really consider, like, your relationship to the
(41:23):
natural systems that you're working with, and just
spend some time really getting to understand the
web of relationships that they exist in
between each other as living organisms in in
your garden or in the forest.
Yeah. I love how you said living organism
there because that's a metaphor
that you talked about the grandma. Right? And
(41:43):
and it is beautiful to think of
all of it, but also to include
ourselves within the system
as
as the living organism that that you are.
You are an entire universe in respect to
the bacteria
and the cells, or even, like, you're an
entire universe to your cells,
which are then an entire universe for the
(42:04):
small, tiny, little,
like,
even smaller than microscopic
interactions or connections that happen at the at
the neurotransmitter
level. Right? So when you think of when
you go like we said, what goes down
what goes up must also go down. Well,
you can go back up again and think
of Earth as as the living organism, right,
(42:24):
where the trees being her lungs and
the mountains are her stability, her bones.
The water is her her bloodstream, her circulatory
system.
You've got
that. And and something that I've kind of
played with is is, like, what am I
as a human? You know? Like, am I
am I an endocrine system? Am I just
transporting
different sorts of of communications
(42:46):
and and trying to communicate these
multiple
organs going around? Like, but the trees don't
need me to communicate with the ground. Right?
They don't
need us. So I feel like humans are
almost the mind
where we think we're separate from the body,
and we have the egoic
sense of needing to protect or or needing
(43:08):
to take care of when it's actually not
just by letting it be, by becoming one
with her. It would make sense that what
you take from the ground, you should also
put back into it,
right, rather than just
taking from the ground.
So
it's just it's very interesting to think of
as humans, we have the ability to choose
(43:31):
how we want to create that relationship
and to heal our own individual relationship
with nature
so that we can reconnect. And and something
beautiful I've I've found on my travels was
I met a Reiki master, and she's
she was she's amazing. Her name is Julie,
and she lives in Portugal.
(43:51):
Shout out Julie if you're listening.
She probably said yeah. I read she's probably
listening. She's probably listening.
But she has some she has a beautiful
vision, and she has a beautiful calling. And
one of her
her things was, in order to heal the
planet, you have to heal the human
because the human cannot
imagine
(44:12):
a broken
human trying to heal a broken planet.
Right? There's I don't believe that anything is
broken. I believe that it's just a sense
of remembering and reconnecting.
But how like, when you're sick, do you
know how hard it is to get things
done when you're sick?
When you can't breathe and you can't sleep
through the night, and you have to sleep
(44:33):
sitting up because you're so congested,
and you're coughing in class, and you can't
sit and concentrate because you're like, oh my
gosh. I need some water. Or these people
are gonna think I'm spraying them with COVID.
Like, oh my gosh. I had a moment
like that this year in my stats class.
I was like, guys, I'm fine. I just
swallowed water in an inappropriate way. It went
(44:54):
down the wrong pipe. Why is everybody scared
of me?
But, you know, how are you supposed to
focus and function
and and operate at your best if
if and and to heal something
else, to look after something else
when you are when you're not feeling your
best. And and the earth is gonna continue
to provide for us and look after us.
(45:15):
But she's
imagine how
proficient and how immaculate.
And it is a shift that's happening. What
I do like to focus on is the
the positive.
As much as we can say, everything's dying
and climate change is happening in these microclimates,
but there's a shift going on. There's a
shift going on,
(45:36):
and
it's being realized. And a lot of
individuals
are making big movements towards
that reconnection. They're realizing how good they feel
when they eat certain things and how not
great they feel when they eat others. They
realize how much better they feel and find
themselves seeking
more time in nature rather than, you know,
(45:56):
I think our
generation.
And
there was, like, a bit of miscommunication between
generations and some knowledge that
maybe wasn't quite
followed through with or passed down because there
was a lot of things going on
in in the previous generations.
There always is something going on. You know?
(46:17):
There's a big event, a big historical
transition period.
But, honestly, all of the things that I'm
exposing myself to and choosing to focus on,
because we ultimately do become our thoughts, are
the positives that are happening in the in
the world right now. Like,
generating more topsoil is such
(46:39):
a profound
and amazing
accomplishment.
And in The US and in Canada,
there are huge projects for shifting
large amounts of agricultural land to organic and
then eventually into a regenerative,
which is when you're adding more than you're
taking away
to regenerate the land that it was before.
(47:00):
Like, the rewilding
almost. I would love to rewild all of
the agricultural
fields. That would be amazing. But,
yeah, so just there is shifts going on,
and that's what I do want
to also
make very, very
present
in the way that I speak because it's
it's
there's hope. There's so much hope and so
(47:20):
much potential for
just the rewilding. Like you talked about, it's
opening up those spaces rather than fencing them
off.
And I know that you also I'm very
curious about your work with
the controlled bearings and how
how that's tying in
with, you know, ecosystem
systems
and
(47:41):
how that actually is a
naturally occurring thing.
But now it is regulated,
which is
awesome
that we can still do that. But then,
also, you have to fight for it. Right?
Yeah. Totally.
One of the to follow-up too on something
that we were talking about earlier with just
(48:01):
kind of this
parallels between more western perspectives
and incorporating traditional ecological knowledge. And that's something
that I pay attention to a lot because
my background is in
agency science. I used to do, federal wildfire
suppression.
And now I am fortunate enough to be
able to support indigenous and rural wildfire
(48:24):
reduction efforts
or wildfire risk reduction efforts, I would say,
efforts at reducing wildfire severity because,
spoiler alert, if you haven't listened to any
of my other episodes,
one of the things we gotta do to
make wildfires
less
bad, and by bad, I mean, destructive to
ecosystems and human resources,
(48:45):
is we actually gotta light more things on
fire. So in order to kind of reduce
scary fire, we're bringing in good fire. But
an idea that I because I do, I'm
kind of operating in worlds that could be
seen as separate with the science
on one hand that comes from more western
technologies
and ways of thinking, and then also trying
(49:06):
to balance indigenous wisdom.
And there's a concept that
is really important to me called
two eyed seeing. And it's kind of this
idea of walking a path
that
is respecting
both sides of the coin. And it's interesting
when you really get down to it, like,
at least in my field,
what the wildfire
(49:27):
scientists and oftentimes,
even more and more now, what the people
who are in charge of and are doing
wildfire suppression
are saying is really similar to the cultural
burn practitioners. And three weeks ago, I was
at
the Ignite prescribed burn training in Selma,
and we had the good fortune of just
being able to burn a couple dozen acres
(49:49):
or so. And
we started off with a cultural burn practitioner,
and then we broke up into smaller groups
and were working with, people who do wildfire
suppression for living wildfire fighters.
And it was amazing, other than the things
that people were wearing and the words that
people were using, people were talking about exactly
(50:10):
the same thing, essentially, between the cultural burn
practitioners who were using sap as drip torches
off of the ends of sticks
versus folks who were doing it, you know,
with a diesel
mixture out of a metal can We were
all there pretty much understanding and talking about
the same
dynamics And one of the things that comes
up with this idea of two eyed seeing
(50:30):
is that
the Western conversation,
you know, the military industrial complex the, like,
standard
scientific
communication dialogue of what's happening
with the forest and with wildfires in The
Western United States and Canada
is that we are in a wildfire crisis,
and the language is all about catastrophizing.
(50:51):
It's that we're at the brink of something
major It's that
there's so much potential for high severity wildfire
It's that we're one hundred and fifty years
behind
being able to catch up with this thing
and it feels like the doomsday clock is
running out
Even though the global doomsday clock did actually
re recently moved twenty seconds to midnight.
(51:15):
But this is the way that the conversation
is framed. It's big scary.
And there's a really interesting paper that I
read that talks about, well, if you're looking
at two eyed seeing, what is the other
eye seeing? If the western eye and our
two eyed seeing is seeing this catastrophizing
doomsday scenario,
then the other eye that's coming from more
(51:36):
of a place of indigenous wisdom and traditional
ecological
knowledge talks about the crossroads that we're at.
And talking about it as a crossroads, I
think does a couple really important things
differently than talking about it like
a impending catastrophe.
And when you talk about it like a
crossroads,
you are talking about opportunity.
(51:58):
You're talking about choice. You're talking about possibility.
And really what you're talking about is human
agency and the creative will and spirit and
belief in us as individuals
and as communities and natural ecosystems
to build resiliency And there's still a focus
on action, and there's still a focus with
organising
And maybe it can even come with a
(52:19):
little bit less of the debilitating
mindset that oftentimes
comes with, like, climate change anxiety.
So that's that's something I try to keep
in mind because it can be kinda scary
otherwise.
Yeah. And those things are like, when you
think of the origination of of those thought
processes and
(52:40):
and
ultimately, like, everything comes from either love or
fear.
And fear is just fear was created in
order for us to be able to experience
the full potential
of love in in the world of duality
and polarity. But,
without getting too deep into that, you you
can tie back or you can follow the
(53:01):
chord, follow
the roots back to the seed
of each thought and each given statement, whether
it's media, whether it's conversations, whether it's just
something that you said about yourself. Right? And
you go, okay.
I can't do that comes from fear.
Right? That's a statement that comes from fear.
(53:22):
Fear of the unknown,
fear of failure, fear of
and
the fear of
of uncontrolled
burns.
Right? That comes the bottle steam, say, that
that's originated in fears.
But if you were to focus on the
benefits, if we were to concentrate on the
benefits of
of the controlled burns which you'd mentioned as
(53:43):
well,
or even just thinking back to, like, you
mentioned the two wide seeing, that's that's something
I'm I'm also trying to build within my
masters. It's hard to write
about,
these kinds of things because from
the one eye, right, you have the indigenous
wisdom, which is
responsibility
rather than ownership. It's like ceremony
(54:05):
and kinships,
whereas, like, Boston Science is very
analytical,
and there's interventions, and it's data driven. And
and while all of those things are are
needed in order to come up with strategic
plans and to measure outcomes,
we do still need to, you know, stop,
take our shoes off,
(54:26):
and
stand in the dirt. Get your hands in
the dirt. And we mentioned earlier, you're asking
what I use. I I'm hands in the
dirt. Maybe not necessarily the soil or the
fresh compost, you know, because there is still
the compost needs to go through a natural
process,
in order to become safe to handle.
But,
yeah, you we gotta
(54:47):
there's so much beauty in braiding those concepts
together with the two eyes,
and I just love that you brought that
up for us to share that with with
your listeners today.
I also wanna share for everybody
because, Amanda, I think you already know this,
but
I am really, really fortunate to be able
to support some really, really cool work that's
(55:10):
happening.
I was able to come to this community
at a really good time two years ago
on the Smith River Complex.
And I, since then, have been living and
working out here,
a little bit on and off at times.
But
we are supporting some really, really meaningful
land management activities, and we're doing a lot
of planning right now. But there is actually
(55:32):
a lot of momentum
in terms of being able to do
good land stewardship. There's some really interesting things
that are happening right now, because of all
of the changing politics
around essentially, like,
easier access for
private
logging on federal lands, which is actually maybe
opening up some opportunities
(55:54):
for doing strategic fuels reduction work in federal
forest,
which benefits
local community members who are facing less wildfire
risk in protecting their homes. It benefits private
timber who's able to better protect their stands
and,
the way that they are bringing money into
the community,
and it's reducing wildfire risk across the board.
(56:14):
So people are interested in it. There's a
lot of support.
I get to work for these two really,
really amazing women,
Katrina, who runs the Northwest American Indian Coalition,
and Tabitha Rood who big shout big shout
out is listening to right
now, and is single handedly doing more to
bring people together around the table and have
hard conversations
(56:34):
and is so directly
related to and responsible for so many powerful
things that are happening
hopefully over the next couple of years, which
are gonna make substantial differences
to people living in this community,
kind of across the board in terms of
ecosystem health and safety.
And Amanda has been a massive contribution to
(56:56):
this effort in a really indirect and funny
way. So
Amanda
spent some time living in Kauai
at a farm, living in a tent like
she mentioned earlier.
And she worked once a week or twice
a week at the local smoothie stand that
was my favorite place to go and get
a smoothie or an acai every day when
(57:17):
I was done surfing when I was living
on the North Shore in Kauai.
And one day we started talking and we
started saying, oh, you know, we should go
out surfing together. This is where I surf,
yada yada yada. And I found out that
Amanda's
best friend from Eastern Canada
had just graduated with a super specific and
helpful technical degree
(57:39):
that I needed help with. So I hired
your best friend, Hannah, and Hannah
has been
shout out Hannah Green from Fredericton,
New Brunswick is single handedly
yesterday, I literally printed out 50 maps that
Hannah made, and I took them with another
20 or 30 maps that she made a
couple weeks ago. And all day today before
(58:01):
the show, I've been traveling around and I've
been talking with a lot of different people
in the community about the maps that Hannah
made for me so that we can be
here and we can be looking specifically at
We are working to create potential control lines
in areas of high severity
so that wildfire
fighters have easier and safer access
(58:22):
and better opportunities to control devastating wildfire when
it comes to this community.
And that work is happening because of Amanda.
So I just wanna give you a big
thank you and let you know that it's
really making a big difference for folks here
in Curry County.
Absolutely.
I,
I will never forget you
swinging in the hammock while we were in,
(58:44):
and you were
you we had backpacks.
And
we came there with with Dakota pulls out
four large carrots,
six sweet potatoes, and his Jetboil,
and
his water bag, which saved us,
and
Hannah's maps. He is setting
Hannah's maps first maps he ever made him.
(59:07):
Oh. And his hammock when we're in one
of the most beautiful places on Earth.
And the shadow, Hannah. You've captivated this man
since the beginning.
Alright, Amanda. That is the end of our
show. Thank you so much for being our
guest today. This has been great to catch
up with you. It's been too long.
And, yeah, it's been a real treat. So
(59:28):
thank you from KCIW.
Thank you. Thank you so much for having
me. Alright. I'll talk to you later, skater.
And thanks everybody at KCIW,
greatest volunteer radio of all time, and you
can meet us here at the same time
next week.
Well, hello, Curry Coast. You are listening to
the Daily Weekly, and I am your host,
Dakota Daley.
I am super excited to be offering this
show live today from our studio here in
Brookings, Oregon.
And I wanna start off at the top
of the hour by saying that we are
broadcasting
from
(00:32):
the unceded and traditional territories of the Chetco
and the Chattutnik Native American people.
I myself am
endlessly grateful for the ongoing cultural and ecological
stewardship
of the Northwest American Indian Coalition, which is
our local led, indigenous
led,
(00:53):
nonprofit
that is doing ongoing land management and cultural
stewardship in the area.
Additionally, I would like to thank the show's
sponsor, Rick McNamer.
And I would also like to let everybody
know who's listening that for just $5, you
can buy the host of this show a
beer either before, during, or after the recording.
And I would like to I would like
(01:14):
to thank our video producer, Michael, for sponsoring
today's show,
in terms of fermentation.
And without further ado, I would like to
announce that today's show is a very exciting
one in that we have a guest. Instead
of just listening to me yap
and all of my favorite songs, we're gonna
mix it up a little bit, and we're
gonna have another voice.
(01:34):
And I'm hoping that everything is set up
with Amanda
to come in and introduce herself. She is
calling today from Canada, and I reckon she'll
be able to tell you a little bit
more about
about that if she is online.
Can you hear us, Amanda?
I'm here. I'm here. Can you hear me?
Yeah. We can hear you. You are on
(01:56):
the air on KCIW.
This is awesome, and it's an honor. It's
been a long time.
So where are you calling from today, Amanda?
Well, I am
currently calling from,
the University of Manitoba
here in Winnipeg,
Manitoba. The one of the coldest
places in Canada for sure, but spring's just
(02:18):
around the corner.
Yeah. I was gonna ask, how how's the
weather at this time right here?
How's the weather?
It's kind of it's it's gross, honestly.
The geese are moving in. They're they're
everywhere.
Scary, terrifying, entering any building. They are, like,
bodyguards.
(02:39):
But I think I'm pretty sure of that.
Yeah. Seriously,
though, there's, like, beware of geese
every single door and every single facility because
you have to actually
caution, people. I think it's a legality.
But, anyways, where, the the grass is slowly
getting green, it's pretty.
I see runoff and snow melt runoff everywhere
(03:00):
in all of the fields and the ditches.
So it's,
I like I like spring. It's my least
favorite season. Y'all are concerned that the geese
are gonna get into the buildings. Is that
right?
I think it's more of a concern of
attacking customers. Uh-huh. There's been Biting fingers. Fingers,
those sorts of things. Fingers breaking
(03:22):
students' arms. It happened last year. Wow.
A goose broke students' arms. So What? They
just send out an email. They put precautions
up outside.
They're,
they're tough animals.
Where I used to live in British Columbia,
for a couple weeks in a row, we
had a couple consecutive
owl attacks.
(03:42):
And it was, like, all students that had
pretty, like, frizzy kind of curly hair.
And there was some nesting instinct or predatory
instinct that was activated by this spotted owl
behind our residential building. And there is warnings
going out for people to watch their mats
from getting
attacked.
I'm curly haired.
(04:03):
Oh my gosh. Yeah. It was pretty funny.
So question for all kids with Afros, don't
go time without That's pretty much how the
email read.
So,
Amanda, I know a little bit about why
you are where you are and what you're
doing right now, but not very much. And
our listeners don't know anything at all. So
I was curious if you wanted to give
us a elevator pitch about
(04:26):
what you're doing right now. What brought you
to Manitoba?
Yeah. Absolutely. So I'm born and raised born
and raised in Winnipeg.
My family lives in a small town outside
of Winnipeg, so I'm home.
Got a big family here. It's nice
to be home.
And
I went to school on the East Coast,
(04:47):
so I played hockey.
And then I was traveling around, which is
when I met you in one of those
years on Kauai,
and I came back to pursue soil science.
You the University of Manitoba has
the best program in the country for soil
sciences,
and
I have an opportunity,
a big scholarship,
(05:08):
to,
pursue some research
in the organic,
soon to be, hopefully, regenerative
organic space here at the at the university
as a master's student. So,
yeah, I'm a big dirt nerd.
I can confirm that is true. Yeah.
Yeah. So how far into the program are
(05:28):
you right now, and what are your thoughts
about it? Because the last time we actually
hung out, you had gone into the program,
and you're really excited, but you hadn't started
it yet.
Yeah. Super excited. So,
for those listening, Dakota and I met on
tiny little island,
magical place in our heart. We continue to
revisit this place called Kauai,
(05:49):
and it's the garden island of Hawaii. So
I was there living on a farm in
a tent, and Dakota,
we'll call that story later, but I was
also studying the soil there. Different soil than
we have here in the Prairies as it
is dormant for six months out of the
year, but
I am about one year no. Not quite
one year.
I am
(06:10):
acting as though I'm one year into my
program, but I'm about seven months into my
program and
and learning so, so much. I'm already completed
I've already completed all of my research,
per se. I have one ongoing experiment right
now where I'm
studying the effects of all of the different
compost that I made in my first experiment.
(06:31):
And so I do actually get to interact
with plants, which is
awesome.
A little bit about my experiment. I'm
studying recycled phosphorus forms
and their availability
when they are co composted. So we're trying
to
close some nutrient loops,
within agriculture
because
(06:52):
we
I was as well I was mentioning earlier
with this snow melt.
Usually, when you see flooded fields or you
see
runoff or full ditches, you're you're not concerned
too too much about the nutrients, you just
see water.
But whenever I see that, I think of
leftover
residue from applied fertilizers
(07:12):
and
other organic forms as well, not just,
synthetic fertilizers, but
that phosphorus, that nitrogen,
more so phosphorus,
ends up transporting off of the field. So
we're trying to find ways in which we
can sustainably collect that, get it back onto
the field, and have it stay there. So
I'm working with some organic amendments, and we're
(07:33):
co composting. So I like to say that
my master's project is very stinky. It's quite
stinky That's right. When we're eating with compost.
Yeah. Would you explain to me what co
composting is? I hadn't heard that term before.
Yeah. Yeah. So, basically, we are
I have these giant
biodigesters,
(07:54):
and they turn any material that's organic,
and organic meaning it contains carbon,
into
soil or
compost
fertilizer
within
forty eight hours, twenty four to forty eight
hours. So compost usually takes about a year
to two years naturally on its own, but
it's an aerobic process. So we can add
(08:15):
in materials.
So if we add in something into these
composting machines,
that material essentially is getting co composted with
other organic materials. So I'm adding in,
recycled phosphorus sources that we've collected from water
treatment plants
in with the compost
and determining which mixture is the best Mhmm.
(08:37):
Right now.
So what are the kinds of things that
you're considering in your researching adding to
finish this process?
Unfortunately, my
my scholarship is funded by Big Egg,
so we are studying
Quickly, we ran into the legally ambiguous area.
(09:00):
Our our listeners could sign NDAs if that
would help.
Yes. Oh gosh. Well, so I'm in I'm
in the system,
Koda. We know this. I'm in the system
to break out of the system. Yeah. I'm
getting another piece of paper to tell me
all of the things that
are required for me to
say that I know all of those things.
(09:21):
So I'm working in the system
for the system. And there's a concern that
you are
about to discover a genius
recipe, and the people who are sponsoring your
research
are copywriting
your research and own your research?
They own all of it. They own all
of my research. Yeah. So anything that I
find,
(09:42):
I am,
Well, we can just end the show right
there. I mean, that was really I was
just trying to figure out what the how
to make the Krusty Krab burger. But
Yeah. Yeah. Get so locked up. The secret
recipe. Oh my gosh. The secret ingredient.
Yep. But I am so I am funded
by,
a big a big company
(10:02):
that
wants to utilize
their product, which is being,
recycled and removed from wastewater. So we have
an abundance of this product,
and
it is
super beneficial, has been used in agriculture,
before, just not in organic agriculture,
the product, and the molecule is called struvite.
(10:24):
So it's a naturally occurring
bound form of phosphorus that's
it occurs in the piping systems of water
treatment plants,
ultimately, because when phosphorus interacts with a certain,
when it's put in a certain environment with
other chemicals and other
elements, that it does naturally
(10:44):
form this crystalline structure.
And so in removing it, they had an
excess amount of it, and they were like,
what are we gonna do with all the
phosphorus? Like, not big question, obviously, why the
phosphorus was in the water treatment plants. But,
basically,
they have an excess of it, and we
found a way to find a safe way
to put it back into the soils from
(11:06):
which it was getting lost from and in
the runoff that I was mentioning earlier. So
I'm working with struvite. That's one of the
the compounds that we are adding into co
compost. And then I'm also working with a
few other ones just to compare. But my
research is funded primarily
because of,
the potential for struvite to be used in
(11:27):
organic agriculture.
Got it.
And it sounds like struvite is something that
there is way more of than what we
know what to do with. Is that right?
No. Way more. Not necessarily
I'll word it in a way that's we
have a lot of it because,
It comes from poopy water?
It comes from poopy water.
(11:47):
Yeah. And I was thinking we would have
unlimited poopy water
virtually relative to our need for it. Don't
a lot of people don't question,
you know, where their poop goes when they
flush it. It's kinda out of sight, out
of mind. Yep. Right?
But,
I, myself, personally, am am quite curious about
where everything goes. I'm always asking. Well, you
(12:08):
had to come from where they go. Passionate
obsession about tiny crawling things, I've noticed.
Oh, yeah. And poopy water is a really
interesting place if you are on the scale
of tiny, tiny crawling things. Well, I'm wondering
for other people who are as ignorant about
soil science as I am. I'm wondering that
was a great conceptual understanding and context of
(12:30):
why your research matters
in the current state of affairs in your
field that contextualize your research. I'm wondering if
you could tell us a little bit about,
like,
what do you do with your hands? Are
you scooping up dirt and putting it under
a microscope? Are you letting things grow? Are
you hitting it with lasers? Are you taking
pictures of it? What is your We do
so many things here at the U of
(12:51):
M. Yeah. So I can hit it with
lasers.
I can do,
I can hit it with different sorts of
wavelengths of light in order to determine
what is in it. And why is that
interesting? Why would you use different kinds of
light?
I think
to back up a little bit more and
just talk about why soil is interesting
(13:11):
for
those curious enough to ask is,
do you eat food, Koda?
I eat food every day. I am You
eat food every day. Yeah. I'm a hardcore
a lot of people know this who listen
to my show. I am a hardcore supporter
of food.
Food. Yeah. Love It's a hot take, but
I'm gonna put my stick on the ground.
(13:34):
So we do we do all eat food.
I think that all of the listeners can
definitely relate
to just the enjoyment
of of nutrients going into the body in
order to fuel this vessel, which is my
human my human form. Right? So
all things
that we consume
(13:55):
came from
the ground, came from the earth.
Ultimately, if you eat beef,
that cow was grazing in a field somewhere.
So what I like to ask is
soil is extremely important because not only am
I the health of the things that I
put into my body,
but I am the health of what those
(14:16):
things grew in.
So
the cow can only be as healthy as
the grass it's eating, and the grass can
only be as healthy as the soil that
it's grown in. So backing
all the way up in the chain of
events,
it all comes down to soil and the
health of the soil.
So it's very it's a very important
(14:40):
ecosystem and universe
that I'm studying, all the tiny things under
my microscope, but the microscopy actually is just
a side hobby. It's not even my master's.
Like Oh. I decided to add a whole
entire other chapter into my master's just because
I I'm obsessed. But,
yeah, it's
it's quite a crazy, crazy world down there
(15:02):
when you take a look at
what goes down because everything that goes up
must go down.
Yeah. I think that's the saying. What's the
saying? Everything that comes up must no. Yeah.
That Yeah. That is that's one saying for
sure.
Yeah. It's interesting. I have a question I
wanna ask about
soil science kind of just generally.
But before I do that, I do wanna
(15:22):
say also that our phone number for texting
in is live. So if you're listening to
this either here in Brookings or online at
kciw.org,
you can text us at (541)
661-4098
and ask questions or make comments to anything
Amanda or I we are talking about.
(15:44):
That number is (541)
661-4098,
and we would love to hear hear your
thoughts. So please do not be shy, listeners.
And the question I have for you, Amanda,
is
so I spent almost a decade
as a raft guide, sitting on the back
of the boat and just yapping to people
(16:05):
in addition to making sure they're having fun
and staying alive.
And when I was on the boat, I
would tell people all the time about
how important the salmon
returning all the way to Idaho, which is
7,000
vertical feet they have to swim from the
Pacific Ocean,
and 700 miles up the Columbia River system
(16:27):
into the Snake, into the Salmon River.
1 of the things that I would talk
to people about was how important the body
of the salmon was
because they would be
eaten by or partially eaten by the first
predator to take a bite.
And then
you imagine, like, a bald eagle scoops the
salmon out of the river, takes a big
bite out of it. They've already stopped eating
(16:49):
when they're swimming back, so they start to
decay, and they're dedicating
all of their energy to returning to the
exact same rock that they were born on
however many years ago. They're swimming all the
way from the Pacific Ocean to the high
mountains of Idaho to go lay these eggs.
And then as soon as they spawn,
they die. So they're already kind of decomposing.
(17:10):
A bald eagle picks one up, takes a
big bite out of it, and there's so
many salmon coming back historically that it just
drops it. And then a bear comes and
eats half of it and drops it. And
it goes down the food chain. And eventually
they decompose and they deposit. This is the
story that I would tell people, which I
think has a lot of truth, but I
don't understand
much about the actual soil science. What we
(17:30):
would say is the Salmon River is like
a giant conveyor belt of phosphorus and nitrogen
to the soil and out here the high
dug fir and the yellow pine ponderosas
you could actually see historical
levels like when there was a massive salmon
run because the trees
are way bigger. The growth on one ring
(17:53):
from one year is exponentially bigger when you
have a massive salmon run because it's just
fertilizer
for the entire forest coming from a marine
ecosystem
that otherwise doesn't have as much access to
this. I'm wondering if you could talk a
little bit
just, like, conceptually
about phosphorus and nitrogen because I have zero
(18:14):
background in chemistry at all. Like, do either
of those things or any other major
things that you're looking for in terms of,
like, base elements for soil health,
do they have, like, particular characteristics? Like, when
people talk about, like, a nitrogen fixing plant,
how is that different than, like, capturing phosphorus
again, which I think is what you mentioned
your research was on if
(18:36):
I I don't really know much about, like,
soil chemistry. And I'm wondering if there's any
things as, like, a science communication piece at
kind of that, like, higher level about
phosphorus or nitrogen or other.
I know there's a third thing that they
put on fertilizer bags.
Is it phosphorus, nitrogen, and,
You're talking the NPK?
(18:57):
Yes.
So it's potassium.
Yes. Could you tell us a little bit
about these things?
Yeah. Absolutely. So
NPK is
the essential think of it as, like, you
think of essential amino acids for a human.
We have
eight, sometimes nine, depending on who you're talking
to, to build our muscle and to fuel
(19:19):
the enzymes that we create in our body.
And plants, they need sunlight,
they need water,
and they need a bunch of micronutrients, but
the macronutrients
are considered to be nitrogen,
phosphorus, and potassium.
Oftentimes, it comes in different waves. Like, for
example, phosphorus is extremely important for early plant
(19:42):
growth. It is also very important for fruit
development.
Nitrogen is also extremely important for early plant
growth, but too much nitrogen can cause the
burning of the seedlings.
So when we're talking about
nitrogen, phosphorus,
potassium,
nitrogen also helps make the the green chlorophyll
(20:04):
that you see on the leaves of the
plants that assist it in photosynthesis,
helps them build proteins. Obviously, nitrogen is is
a component in all amino acids. So, ultimately,
when you think of the salmon and you
think of returning
back to the the ecosystem,
that's the fate of absolutely
everything. Everything
(20:25):
comes from and will return to
the soil. You, yourself, me, myself, everyone listening,
we're all made up of
carbon,
nitrogen,
phosphorus,
potassium,
boron,
like, chlorine, all of the things just
reinvented,
reiterated,
(20:46):
kind of, like, scrambled up and put up
in in different areas. So, ultimately, we will
get
broken down into these core components
in order for them to be reused again
because matter cannot be created
or destroyed. So
here we go using my, like, old high
school science, pulling that up there.
(21:06):
I think that's, like, Newton's second law or
something. But,
when we're talking about phosphorus, which is my
specialty,
phosphorus has a very interesting life cycle because
it does not it cannot be,
it cannot be lost to the air, whereas
nitrogen is very complex. It has multiple
pathways in which it could be introduced into
(21:28):
the soil and lost to the air and
lost via leaching from the soil, whereas phosphorus
actually needs water in order for it to
move.
And plants also need to be able to
uptake that phosphorus,
and there's so many different forms. So there's
so many different forms of nitrogen,
so many different forms of phosphorus,
potassium as well, but less so more so
(21:48):
with phosphorus and nitrogen.
And the plant can only absorb
a small
tiny fraction of the forms that are actually
present in the soil.
And the responsibility
of the microbial
communities
in the soil, as well as the fungal
communities,
(22:08):
the archaea,
What they do is they play a role
to break down
the nutrients just as the bear and the
eagle eat pieces of the salmon.
That breaks the salmon down into smaller components
that then become
smaller building blocks within the bear as the
bear's microbes in its stomach
(22:29):
break it down.
And then, ultimately, you know, we love to
talk about poop, apparently, poopy water, poopy bear.
Yes.
That bear
disperses those nutrients around
the forest floor.
So think of think of it as, like,
the chain
gets built up to create what is possible,
which was the salmon, and gets broken back
(22:50):
down to become
what
is possible to become
the tree, the bear, the ecosystem.
It's feeding those nutrients back into it.
Ultimately, the salmon
is just a transporter.
Ultimately, we kinda all are just transporters
and walking
bunches of nutrients that will one day return
(23:11):
to the soil and become something new
with
and which is kind of beautiful when you
think about it as well.
But,
yeah, that's my I can go into more
detail as well in regards to phosphorus and
nitrogen and potassium, but those are the building
blocks,
for fertilizers as well in agriculture
(23:33):
speaking.
But,
yeah, I'm definitely
missus phosphorus around here. That's my my research
is primarily on
on phosphorus.
Well, I love the way that you scaled
that metaphor of the microbes
to
phosphorus are like the bear to the salmon
of you have this biological agent, whether it's
(23:55):
really big or really small, you have this
organism
that's taking the Legos apart, right, before the
Legos get stacked up to
whatever the new
creation is. And even breaking it down even
into the plastic that becomes the Lego. Right?
That's the microbial job. Mhmm. If without the
microbes present,
their building blocks would not be able to
be reused
(24:17):
in a way that's
phosphorus, for example, in the soil
needs to be made into an available
form
in order for the plant to be able
to take it up.
So there's a lot of chemistry that goes
on in the soil.
A lot of it is actually conducted by
plants. Plants are
absolutely phenomenal. They are the conductors of all
(24:38):
of it, secreting,
and excreting
different sorts of sugars in order to attract
microbial species, different kinds of carbohydrates, to attract
different specific kinds
of bacteria
and fungus.
They create relationships
with these fungus underneath the soil and recruit
(24:58):
the fungus and exchange. They work as, like,
a currency. They'll exchange their sugars
for other nutrients, like mycorrhizal fungi, for example.
The tiny little
root like hair structures that you see if
you pull up a plant and you see
a little bit of white fluff, it almost
looks like,
that is
mycorrhizal fungi. And what they are doing is
(25:19):
they're actually acting as extensions
from the plants to recruit
and find phosphors for the plants. The plant
is playing the conductor role.
It's like, hey. If you work for me,
you bring me a little bit of phosphorus,
I'll give you a little bit of my
sugar.
Mhmm. And it does that with with bacteria
as well. Cool. So plants ultimately are
(25:41):
quite intelligent things, although they cannot speak. They
speak without words. No kidding. Well, I just
got a text message,
and
I love the way it opens up. It
says perfect subject for Earth Day, which I
forgot that today is the day, but you're
absolutely right. So thank you,
texter. Perfect subject for Earth Day, Earth.
(26:02):
If soil or soil if you prefer.
I'm pretty sure Roundup
is horrible as a weed killer because of
the soil damage.
Is vinegar,
Dawn,
or dish soap a better alternative?
If not, what would Amanda suggest?
Amanda would suggest. Well, it depends on, I
guess, what you're trying to get rid of.
(26:24):
Because Roundup is usually used
for weeds and weed suppression and the killing
of of what do we call it? Glyphosate
around here. We're all we're all very familiar
with well, maybe we're not familiar with glyphosate,
but it is a very widespread,
chemical that is
Roundup Ready
Clamps are the ones that you see that
(26:45):
are marketed have been marketed since seed,
agricultural
boom, one would say.
But
for Roundup,
it is a weed suppressant. So I would
think more so in in
rather than how can I eliminate something,
what more can I add is the question
(27:07):
that I was taught in in Kauai would
be instead of trying to be rid of
a pest
or be rid of something that I no
longer want in my garden,
how can I either utilize that thing
and add it into
my ecosystem?
Or what can I introduce
that is
a predator
or a competing components to that that entity
(27:30):
that I'm trying to get rid of? So
for weeds, if you're thinking Roundup,
I would try to find a way to
mulch the ground,
meaning to get the ground cover
that's it's not exposed to sunlight as much.
So any weed seeds or any possible weeds
that are on the ground are then not
reaching the sunlight that the plant itself is.
(27:51):
I would plant
cover crops or
creeping, crawling. Like, you can use thyme. You
can use different sorts of pumpkins or or
cucumbers. I like to have my cucumbers vertical.
But if this is in regards to gardening,
there's definitely a lot of different approaches that
one would take. Vinegar isn't gonna kill a
weed, unfortunately.
(28:12):
Very good cleaning agent for inside. I use
that on I use a diluted,
form for cleaning all surfaces. It's a very
good antibacterial.
I use it for cleaning mostly everything because
it's not harmful to
to humans. It's a a very safe acid
to use.
But depends on that on that question if
it's specific for a garden.
(28:34):
I I love that change in philosophy
in looking at the entire thing. It's something
I think about a lot, working in land
management myself,
in particular and related to invasive species.
Because a lot of the money that goes
into invasive species management is about
removal and eradication.
And
(28:54):
we're facing,
you and I, in a sense, work on
almost opposite ends of the spectrum in of
scale when it turns,
comes to land management.
Because you are working at almost the smallest
scale physically possible
in terms of, like, the the level of
detail that you're noticing.
(29:16):
And I look at
thousands of miles of mountains and ridges and
rivers and lakes, and I'm looking at really,
like, landscape level species management.
So one thing that I think is really
interesting is the conversation of invasive species, and
when I'm looking at it at a landscape
level scale and I'm seeing money go towards
(29:36):
projects
of removing invasive species, I
when I'm playing these things out of my
mind will sometimes kind of wonder,
okay, well what happened if
humanity
got the Earth to a place where it
couldn't sustain human life anymore and we kind
of stopped showing up like maybe even beyond
we stopped putting grant dollars
(29:58):
towards invasive species managed but like
what if there was an extinction event on
earth and these species just ran from where
they are right now
I spend a lot of time wondering what
does that landscape look like
and where what are the niches in this
ecosystem and the relationships in this ecosystem
(30:19):
that would eventually
reestablish
a moving and a dynamic
harmony Because
all ecosystems are in a state of flux
And
invasive species, even if we look at something,
and there's plenty of really good examples invasive
species
and as well,
disease and infestation Like, we're currently here on
(30:40):
the Oregon Coast experiencing
firmageddon
where Doug fir is just
changing climactic conditions Just heat and moisture are
changing
in a way that we are seeing
landscape level changes of entire regions having devastated
fir populations, which are essentially a cash crop
(31:01):
in the West of logging,
just dying faster than we know how to
process them. We're also experiencing sudden oak death.
Oak are one of the most important species
of trees to be working with and protecting.
And a lot of our best oak is
vulnerable to this, like,
black plague called sudden oak death that's been
running rampant the last couple years
(31:23):
And to me it's pretty clear that, like,
sudden oak death when I'm sitting around a
table that has forest service people, BLM people,
private people
from across
the South Coast in Northern California and deeper
into Oregon.
Honestly, we're getting to the point where we
sit around the table and people are like,
oh yeah, we're seeing sudden oak death. They
(31:43):
call it sod, S O D, sudden oak
death. They say, yeah, we've got sod over
there. We've got sod over there. And you
look at the map of where this
super highly contagious
disease is breaking out, and you look at
how widespread invasive species are, and you look
at how much work it is to actually
take invasive species out.
I think it's really interesting to say, okay,
instead of this process of removal
(32:05):
or of killing,
what are the ecosystem relationships that we can
work with that run on their own and
are moving towards a different kind of harmony,
even if that challenges what our idea of
a baseline
is, because it's really evident that baseline ecosystem
conditions
are changing both on a macro and a
micro scale. And I think looking at your
(32:25):
garden and being like, how can I change
the conditions of this to grow something else?
Because oftentimes, I know
weeds come back in disturbed areas. And I've
heard that
just in my my brief career that I
had as a gardener for a couple of
wary years where I was wandering around, I
remember people saying, you know, these weeds are
growing back in disturbed soil types
(32:48):
because they're the only plant that can work
in this ecosystem which is so depleted, and
they're also fixing the soil
The weeds are the first ones on the
front line
responding
to this, like, graveyard of barren soil, and
they're paving the way for other plants to
enrich the soil later on So if we're
growing and spraying them with Roundup, it's a
(33:09):
totally different approach than what you were saying
of, like, a more generative,
kind of will run on its own momentum
kind of
species management, which I think is really cool
to hear at that scale.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And,
like, what Roundup does is Roundup is,
it is like it the the
(33:30):
the trademark or the the punchline to it
is, like, Roundup ready because it is a
select. It is,
nonselective,
meaning it kills whatever it touches.
So it's very it's a very dangerous,
chemical that we we can find in our
drinking water and in our rain now throughout
North America,
and it doesn't break down,
(33:51):
at all from from my Wow. Research. I
do need to look into it a little
bit more. It is kind of like a
heavy metal. I do think that there are
ways in which we can remove it from
a system, but it has just been used
at such a large scale that it takes
hundreds of years to break down. And
since it is sprayed, you know, twice a
year, sometimes three times a year on so
(34:13):
on certain crops,
depending on on your cropping system and Yeah.
I mean land you have. I can attest
to that. I am right now,
well, not right now because I'm in a
recording studio. But yesterday and tomorrow, what I'm
working on is a
watershed monitoring project
through
this is funded by the Northwest American Indian
(34:34):
Coalition.
Big shout out to them.
They're funding a research project, which I'm the
lead on, where we are looking at watersheds
and ecosystem level health for springs and freshwater
sources.
And I'm going around and I'm collecting water
samples to test for glyphosate,
which is the primary chemical.
(34:55):
And it's because
in the forest here, we have a forestry
practice of
spraying
glyphosate
from
planes and helicopters.
That's the level and the scale at which
these pesticides are being used
for ecosystem management. And hearing you say that
these are essentially acting like heavy metals that
(35:18):
don't break up over hundreds of years.
I think it really just puts that into
context really when you think about drinking water
sources and clean water sources, what the impact
of glyphosate or Roundup would be.
Yeah. So it like,
in a system where there's more diversity, which
we talked about earlier
(35:38):
in regards to adding more,
which I'm I'm very happy that you resonated
with
ultimately because
we're trying to go back and and fix
a problem that we caused by
intervening
even more than we already have.
And nature does not favor
monocropping,
(35:59):
monoculture,
selecting for one thing. She favors diversity.
And I see she and nature as,
a separate entity. I found out through my
reading,
of some indigenous wisdom that nature actually does
not exist
in the indigenous language and in other languages
(36:19):
as well because it it
it solidifies
a separateness from humans
and nature.
So there is actually no separateness, which I
found absolutely beautiful.
But for in regards to adding diversity,
right, like,
glyphosate can break down. It has the potential
to break down. It does not it's not
a forever
(36:41):
chemical,
but it does depend on the health of
your soil and the microbial activity,
the moisture, the pH, like, how much
diversity you have within that garden. You think
about an old growth forest. It's some of
the healthiest, most
abundant,
profound,
amazing things to look at under the microscope
in regards to soil activity
(37:03):
because of the diversity, because of the amount
of different leaves that are falling, that are
degrading on the ground, because of like we
talked about with, you said with your land
management is
letting those
larger
species and smaller species roam
free. Like, that is one of the reasons
why there's such
(37:24):
degradation and such, like, negative
impacts with with these climates and these large
scale changes as we're not
we're not letting
herds
walk through environments anymore, and and plants have
evolved with animals
just as though plants have evolved with fungi.
And
and we're changing things at such an exponential
(37:46):
scale that
we're not letting
it catch up. We're not letting evolution catch
up. Evolution
happens non exponentially.
Right? It's very slow.
I love that you brought up the,
this idea about a separation between nature and
culture or natural and human society.
(38:08):
This is something that I
love to talk about on my show. And
I was thinking about it recently because as
you
attested to, like, oftentimes in traditional
ecological knowledge and native wisdom and a lot
of different cultures that we see in a
lot of different places,
not to homogenize
indigenous culture, but this is certainly a pattern
that I've noticed at least across the West,
(38:30):
that there isn't as strong of a distinction
between nature and culture as we
generally, like, imported with Western colonisation
and expansion
here,
into this part of Oregon is
is this idea that nature and culture are
two separate things. Human society is different than
the forest, and there are different laws that
(38:50):
govern them. And
the difference being that in traditional ecological knowledge,
oftentimes there's this story of connection and relationality.
And what that lends to is that, like,
our Western perspective on conservation
is that in order to conserve and protect
and steward a land, you should wall it
off, and nobody should ever go in there
(39:12):
so that it cannot be corrupted and degraded
by the menacing hands of mankind and society.
We gotta protect that up. That's our kind
of, like, fence and border conservation.
And I was thinking about this recently with
the idea of, like, well, imagine if, like,
nature,
mother Earth, like, imagine if that was your
grandma.
And the alternative vision that we see oftentimes
(39:34):
in traditional ecological knowledge is, like, actually, it's
about, like, relationship and, like, taking care and
being, like, really involved. Like, it's about being,
like, face to face with what's going on.
And I think that, for me, it's, like,
a helpful tool to explain it. In thinking
about, like, if mother nature was, like, your
grandma,
it becomes really clear that there's a difference
that, like, if your grandma is sick,
(39:57):
are you gonna just leave your grandma alone?
Is your idea of how to take care
of your grandma to not look at her,
to not talk to her, to make sure
that nobody ever goes to her house, to
make sure that she's completely isolated and there's
no
interaction. Or when your grandma is sick, is
your idea to go ask her what she
needs
and to check-in on her and to maybe,
(40:19):
you know,
be staying on the couch over at her
place until she gets better.
Like, this idea that we leave things alone
in nature in order to protect them,
is a uniquely western one. And I think
it's really worth
bringing in because oftentimes
the
answers to these questions of like should we
be using Roundup? Should we be cutting trees
(40:40):
down in the forest? If you tried to
ask me should we be cutting trees down
in the forest?
It's such a tough conversation
because it's not a yes or no answer.
Right? Like, we should not be clear cutting,
but we need to be doing fuels reduction
work, and we can be taking out a
lot of trees in areas that are high
risk, And we can be making money off
(41:03):
of timber and off of logging companies And
this is all the work I'm doing right
now We can make this a profitable thing
by removing trees in a way that make
the wildfire
risk less severe
and in the same way you can manage
invasive species in your garden if you're willing
to add some complexity
and really consider, like, your relationship to the
(41:23):
natural systems that you're working with, and just
spend some time really getting to understand the
web of relationships that they exist in
between each other as living organisms in in
your garden or in the forest.
Yeah. I love how you said living organism
there because that's a metaphor
that you talked about the grandma. Right? And
(41:43):
and it is beautiful to think of
all of it, but also to include
ourselves within the system
as
as the living organism that that you are.
You are an entire universe in respect to
the bacteria
and the cells, or even, like, you're an
entire universe to your cells,
which are then an entire universe for the
(42:04):
small, tiny, little,
like,
even smaller than microscopic
interactions or connections that happen at the at
the neurotransmitter
level. Right? So when you think of when
you go like we said, what goes down
what goes up must also go down. Well,
you can go back up again and think
of Earth as as the living organism, right,
(42:24):
where the trees being her lungs and
the mountains are her stability, her bones.
The water is her her bloodstream, her circulatory
system.
You've got
that. And and something that I've kind of
played with is is, like, what am I
as a human? You know? Like, am I
am I an endocrine system? Am I just
transporting
different sorts of of communications
(42:46):
and and trying to communicate these
multiple
organs going around? Like, but the trees don't
need me to communicate with the ground. Right?
They don't
need us. So I feel like humans are
almost the mind
where we think we're separate from the body,
and we have the egoic
sense of needing to protect or or needing
(43:08):
to take care of when it's actually not
just by letting it be, by becoming one
with her. It would make sense that what
you take from the ground, you should also
put back into it,
right, rather than just
taking from the ground.
So
it's just it's very interesting to think of
as humans, we have the ability to choose
(43:31):
how we want to create that relationship
and to heal our own individual relationship
with nature
so that we can reconnect. And and something
beautiful I've I've found on my travels was
I met a Reiki master, and she's
she was she's amazing. Her name is Julie,
and she lives in Portugal.
(43:51):
Shout out Julie if you're listening.
She probably said yeah. I read she's probably
listening. She's probably listening.
But she has some she has a beautiful
vision, and she has a beautiful calling. And
one of her
her things was, in order to heal the
planet, you have to heal the human
because the human cannot
imagine
(44:12):
a broken
human trying to heal a broken planet.
Right? There's I don't believe that anything is
broken. I believe that it's just a sense
of remembering and reconnecting.
But how like, when you're sick, do you
know how hard it is to get things
done when you're sick?
When you can't breathe and you can't sleep
through the night, and you have to sleep
(44:33):
sitting up because you're so congested,
and you're coughing in class, and you can't
sit and concentrate because you're like, oh my
gosh. I need some water. Or these people
are gonna think I'm spraying them with COVID.
Like, oh my gosh. I had a moment
like that this year in my stats class.
I was like, guys, I'm fine. I just
swallowed water in an inappropriate way. It went
(44:54):
down the wrong pipe. Why is everybody scared
of me?
But, you know, how are you supposed to
focus and function
and and operate at your best if
if and and to heal something
else, to look after something else
when you are when you're not feeling your
best. And and the earth is gonna continue
to provide for us and look after us.
(45:15):
But she's
imagine how
proficient and how immaculate.
And it is a shift that's happening. What
I do like to focus on is the
the positive.
As much as we can say, everything's dying
and climate change is happening in these microclimates,
but there's a shift going on. There's a
shift going on,
(45:36):
and
it's being realized. And a lot of
individuals
are making big movements towards
that reconnection. They're realizing how good they feel
when they eat certain things and how not
great they feel when they eat others. They
realize how much better they feel and find
themselves seeking
more time in nature rather than, you know,
(45:56):
I think our
generation.
And
there was, like, a bit of miscommunication between
generations and some knowledge that
maybe wasn't quite
followed through with or passed down because there
was a lot of things going on
in in the previous generations.
There always is something going on. You know?
(46:17):
There's a big event, a big historical
transition period.
But, honestly, all of the things that I'm
exposing myself to and choosing to focus on,
because we ultimately do become our thoughts, are
the positives that are happening in the in
the world right now. Like,
generating more topsoil is such
(46:39):
a profound
and amazing
accomplishment.
And in The US and in Canada,
there are huge projects for shifting
large amounts of agricultural land to organic and
then eventually into a regenerative,
which is when you're adding more than you're
taking away
to regenerate the land that it was before.
(47:00):
Like, the rewilding
almost. I would love to rewild all of
the agricultural
fields. That would be amazing. But,
yeah, so just there is shifts going on,
and that's what I do want
to also
make very, very
present
in the way that I speak because it's
it's
there's hope. There's so much hope and so
(47:20):
much potential for
just the rewilding. Like you talked about, it's
opening up those spaces rather than fencing them
off.
And I know that you also I'm very
curious about your work with
the controlled bearings and how
how that's tying in
with, you know, ecosystem
systems
and
(47:41):
how that actually is a
naturally occurring thing.
But now it is regulated,
which is
awesome
that we can still do that. But then,
also, you have to fight for it. Right?
Yeah. Totally.
One of the to follow-up too on something
that we were talking about earlier with just
(48:01):
kind of this
parallels between more western perspectives
and incorporating traditional ecological knowledge. And that's something
that I pay attention to a lot because
my background is in
agency science. I used to do, federal wildfire
suppression.
And now I am fortunate enough to be
able to support indigenous and rural wildfire
(48:24):
reduction efforts
or wildfire risk reduction efforts, I would say,
efforts at reducing wildfire severity because,
spoiler alert, if you haven't listened to any
of my other episodes,
one of the things we gotta do to
make wildfires
less
bad, and by bad, I mean, destructive to
ecosystems and human resources,
(48:45):
is we actually gotta light more things on
fire. So in order to kind of reduce
scary fire, we're bringing in good fire. But
an idea that I because I do, I'm
kind of operating in worlds that could be
seen as separate with the science
on one hand that comes from more western
technologies
and ways of thinking, and then also trying
(49:06):
to balance indigenous wisdom.
And there's a concept that
is really important to me called
two eyed seeing. And it's kind of this
idea of walking a path
that
is respecting
both sides of the coin. And it's interesting
when you really get down to it, like,
at least in my field,
what the wildfire
(49:27):
scientists and oftentimes,
even more and more now, what the people
who are in charge of and are doing
wildfire suppression
are saying is really similar to the cultural
burn practitioners. And three weeks ago, I was
at
the Ignite prescribed burn training in Selma,
and we had the good fortune of just
being able to burn a couple dozen acres
(49:49):
or so. And
we started off with a cultural burn practitioner,
and then we broke up into smaller groups
and were working with, people who do wildfire
suppression for living wildfire fighters.
And it was amazing, other than the things
that people were wearing and the words that
people were using, people were talking about exactly
(50:10):
the same thing, essentially, between the cultural burn
practitioners who were using sap as drip torches
off of the ends of sticks
versus folks who were doing it, you know,
with a diesel
mixture out of a metal can We were
all there pretty much understanding and talking about
the same
dynamics And one of the things that comes
up with this idea of two eyed seeing
(50:30):
is that
the Western conversation,
you know, the military industrial complex the, like,
standard
scientific
communication dialogue of what's happening
with the forest and with wildfires in The
Western United States and Canada
is that we are in a wildfire crisis,
and the language is all about catastrophizing.
(50:51):
It's that we're at the brink of something
major It's that
there's so much potential for high severity wildfire
It's that we're one hundred and fifty years
behind
being able to catch up with this thing
and it feels like the doomsday clock is
running out
Even though the global doomsday clock did actually
re recently moved twenty seconds to midnight.
(51:15):
But this is the way that the conversation
is framed. It's big scary.
And there's a really interesting paper that I
read that talks about, well, if you're looking
at two eyed seeing, what is the other
eye seeing? If the western eye and our
two eyed seeing is seeing this catastrophizing
doomsday scenario,
then the other eye that's coming from more
(51:36):
of a place of indigenous wisdom and traditional
ecological
knowledge talks about the crossroads that we're at.
And talking about it as a crossroads, I
think does a couple really important things
differently than talking about it like
a impending catastrophe.
And when you talk about it like a
crossroads,
you are talking about opportunity.
(51:58):
You're talking about choice. You're talking about possibility.
And really what you're talking about is human
agency and the creative will and spirit and
belief in us as individuals
and as communities and natural ecosystems
to build resiliency And there's still a focus
on action, and there's still a focus with
organising
And maybe it can even come with a
(52:19):
little bit less of the debilitating
mindset that oftentimes
comes with, like, climate change anxiety.
So that's that's something I try to keep
in mind because it can be kinda scary
otherwise.
Yeah. And those things are like, when you
think of the origination of of those thought
processes and
(52:40):
and
ultimately, like, everything comes from either love or
fear.
And fear is just fear was created in
order for us to be able to experience
the full potential
of love in in the world of duality
and polarity. But,
without getting too deep into that, you you
can tie back or you can follow the
(53:01):
chord, follow
the roots back to the seed
of each thought and each given statement, whether
it's media, whether it's conversations, whether it's just
something that you said about yourself. Right? And
you go, okay.
I can't do that comes from fear.
Right? That's a statement that comes from fear.
(53:22):
Fear of the unknown,
fear of failure, fear of
and
the fear of
of uncontrolled
burns.
Right? That comes the bottle steam, say, that
that's originated in fears.
But if you were to focus on the
benefits, if we were to concentrate on the
benefits of
of the controlled burns which you'd mentioned as
(53:43):
well,
or even just thinking back to, like, you
mentioned the two wide seeing, that's that's something
I'm I'm also trying to build within my
masters. It's hard to write
about,
these kinds of things because from
the one eye, right, you have the indigenous
wisdom, which is
responsibility
rather than ownership. It's like ceremony
(54:05):
and kinships,
whereas, like, Boston Science is very
analytical,
and there's interventions, and it's data driven. And
and while all of those things are are
needed in order to come up with strategic
plans and to measure outcomes,
we do still need to, you know, stop,
take our shoes off,
(54:26):
and
stand in the dirt. Get your hands in
the dirt. And we mentioned earlier, you're asking
what I use. I I'm hands in the
dirt. Maybe not necessarily the soil or the
fresh compost, you know, because there is still
the compost needs to go through a natural
process,
in order to become safe to handle.
But,
yeah, you we gotta
(54:47):
there's so much beauty in braiding those concepts
together with the two eyes,
and I just love that you brought that
up for us to share that with with
your listeners today.
I also wanna share for everybody
because, Amanda, I think you already know this,
but
I am really, really fortunate to be able
to support some really, really cool work that's
(55:10):
happening.
I was able to come to this community
at a really good time two years ago
on the Smith River Complex.
And I, since then, have been living and
working out here,
a little bit on and off at times.
But
we are supporting some really, really meaningful
land management activities, and we're doing a lot
of planning right now. But there is actually
(55:32):
a lot of momentum
in terms of being able to do
good land stewardship. There's some really interesting things
that are happening right now, because of all
of the changing politics
around essentially, like,
easier access for
private
logging on federal lands, which is actually maybe
opening up some opportunities
(55:54):
for doing strategic fuels reduction work in federal
forest,
which benefits
local community members who are facing less wildfire
risk in protecting their homes. It benefits private
timber who's able to better protect their stands
and,
the way that they are bringing money into
the community,
and it's reducing wildfire risk across the board.
(56:14):
So people are interested in it. There's a
lot of support.
I get to work for these two really,
really amazing women,
Katrina, who runs the Northwest American Indian Coalition,
and Tabitha Rood who big shout big shout
out is listening to right
now, and is single handedly doing more to
bring people together around the table and have
hard conversations
(56:34):
and is so directly
related to and responsible for so many powerful
things that are happening
hopefully over the next couple of years, which
are gonna make substantial differences
to people living in this community,
kind of across the board in terms of
ecosystem health and safety.
And Amanda has been a massive contribution to
(56:56):
this effort in a really indirect and funny
way. So
Amanda
spent some time living in Kauai
at a farm, living in a tent like
she mentioned earlier.
And she worked once a week or twice
a week at the local smoothie stand that
was my favorite place to go and get
a smoothie or an acai every day when
(57:17):
I was done surfing when I was living
on the North Shore in Kauai.
And one day we started talking and we
started saying, oh, you know, we should go
out surfing together. This is where I surf,
yada yada yada. And I found out that
Amanda's
best friend from Eastern Canada
had just graduated with a super specific and
helpful technical degree
(57:39):
that I needed help with. So I hired
your best friend, Hannah, and Hannah
has been
shout out Hannah Green from Fredericton,
New Brunswick is single handedly
yesterday, I literally printed out 50 maps that
Hannah made, and I took them with another
20 or 30 maps that she made a
couple weeks ago. And all day today before
(58:01):
the show, I've been traveling around and I've
been talking with a lot of different people
in the community about the maps that Hannah
made for me so that we can be
here and we can be looking specifically at
We are working to create potential control lines
in areas of high severity
so that wildfire
fighters have easier and safer access
(58:22):
and better opportunities to control devastating wildfire when
it comes to this community.
And that work is happening because of Amanda.
So I just wanna give you a big
thank you and let you know that it's
really making a big difference for folks here
in Curry County.
Absolutely.
I,
I will never forget you
swinging in the hammock while we were in,
(58:44):
and you were
you we had backpacks.
And
we came there with with Dakota pulls out
four large carrots,
six sweet potatoes, and his Jetboil,
and
his water bag, which saved us,
and
Hannah's maps. He is setting
Hannah's maps first maps he ever made him.
(59:07):
Oh. And his hammock when we're in one
of the most beautiful places on Earth.
And the shadow, Hannah. You've captivated this man
since the beginning.
Alright, Amanda. That is the end of our
show. Thank you so much for being our
guest today. This has been great to catch
up with you. It's been too long.
And, yeah, it's been a real treat. So
(59:28):
thank you from KCIW.
Thank you. Thank you so much for having
me. Alright. I'll talk to you later, skater.
And thanks everybody at KCIW,
greatest volunteer radio of all time, and you
can meet us here at the same time
next week.
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Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.