7.16.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
will be reading National Geographic Magazine dated June twenty twenty five,
which is donated by the publisher as a reminder Radio
I as a reading service intended for people who are
blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult to
read printed material. Please join me now for the continuation

(00:21):
of the article I began last time, entitled what we
Can Learn from the Genius of Beavers by Ben Goldfarbe.
If that isn't serving a societal need, I don't know
what is in the San Pedro River. Shippek estimates that
up to twenty one beavers now live on the Arizona

(00:43):
side of the border, and perhaps seventeen more in Mexico,
though the populations are divided by a metal floodgate that
is part of the border wall. During our survey we
saw ample chew and a few lodges, but no dams. Still,
Shipeck hopes that beavers will could some day restore or
the bountiful wetlands that long ago prevailed in many desert

(01:03):
water courses and helped the Southwest address its water woes.
I can only imagine how difficult it would have looked
Shappek said wistfully as we waded through the shin deep
flow of the former Beaver River, envisioning the ponds and
marshes that once shimmered here. It just seems so important
to bring back this critical species. It's the evolution of

(01:25):
restoration in this area. As beavers reoccupy floodplains and stream corridors,
they risk becoming victims of their own success. The rodents
gnaw down orchards, flood roads, and block irrigation, ditches mischief
to which landowners generally respond by calling trappers. The USDA's
Wildlife Services program that deals with problematic animals kills an

(01:48):
average of one beaver every twenty two minutes. But in
the places where communities are learning to coexist, they're reaping
surprising benefits. On a blue May morning, I found myself
slogging through a wetland in Gresham, Oregon, a city of
one hundred twelve thousand, a dozen miles east of Portland.
A beaver built weave of willow stems had formed a

(02:09):
pond whose mucky floor sucked at my boots. Red winged
blackbirds buzzed in the bushes. Wood ducks glided across the
glassy surface. Katie holds her the city's watershed scientists scooped
up some translucent jelly peppered with black specks. Those little
dots are the embryos of the Pacific tree frog. She said.

(02:30):
This pocket of biodiversity wasn't always here. In two thousand
and eight, Gresham had excavated an elaborate maze of berms
and canals known as the Columbia Slough Regional Water Quality Facility,
to capture the heavy metals, nitrates, and pesticides that habitually
ran off streets and into the nearby Columbia and Willamette Rivers.

(02:51):
To the city's dismay, beavers damned the ditches, sabotaging humans.
Best laid plans orchis destroyed the dams and trapped the beavers,
but the beef came back. The animals, Holtzer finally figured
were there to stay, so why not study them. When
she analyzed the water trickling past their dams, she discovered
something extraordinary. Beaver ponds were cleaning Gresham's storm water better

(03:14):
than the water Quality Facility had without them. Mercury, copper,
led and zinc settled out in ponds and were trapped
within the sediment and woody lattices of dams, further strained
out contaminants, Bird diversity increased, and salamanders hid in the
dam's cool crevices. Beaver's, Holzer said, are a perfect self

(03:34):
maintaining system. After every storm, they come out and patch
things up for free. The city's relationship with Beaver's was
still fraught. The resourceful animals were inudating access roads and
clogging the wastewater facilities pipes. Instead of killing the troublemakers,
city officials hired Jacob Shaki, a mop top biologist whose

(03:55):
truck sported B three A V three R vanity place
to mediate. I found Shaki waist deep in a pond
behind a culvert packed with sticks and mud. Beavers are
plugging this up so often that they have to clean
it out once a week, Shaki said, wiping his brow.
Shaki had been asked with crafting tasked with crafting a

(04:17):
permanent solution, including fences to keep beavers from blocking culverts
and pipes to lower road flooding ponds. A study showed
that such non lethal interventions work up to ninety six
percent of the time, and they saved money to boot.
The best thing we can do for beavers, said Shaki,
is to partner with them in the places they've chosen

(04:38):
to live. Like a Holtzer and Shaki, researchers and policymakers
around the country are trying to let the animals thrive.
In Montana, a new beaver conflict resolution program helps landowners
solve their beaver problems without resorting to traps. In Maryland,
the collogists are counting on beaver ponds to filter out
nitrates polluting Chestapeake Bay. One of the swiftest progress is

(05:01):
happening in California, which in twenty twenty three launched a
statewide beaver program that set aside one point four million
dollars to implement beaver restoration initiatives. That same year, California's
Department of Fish and Wildlife released seven beavers onto the
ancestral lands of the Mountain Maidu, the state's first official

(05:22):
relocation in almost seventy five years. Other tribes are also
welcoming beaver's home in californiears Klamath River Watershed. The Yurok
Tribes Fisheries Department has constructed beaver dam analogs human built
dams designed to imitate beaver activity, encourage the rodents to return,
and create sheltering ponds for juvenile salmon. Some young salmon

(05:45):
have since gone to sea and come back to spawn,
a strong suggestion that the tribe's beaver based approach is working.
Higher up the claimeth the removal of four massive hydroelectric
dams has recently helped fish reclaim their spawning grend Yet
near the river's mouth, the beaver inspired dams, small and
permeable rather than colossal and concrete, have also produced substantial gains.

(06:10):
Every species teaches us lessons on how we're supposed to
live together, said Frankie Meers, the eurok's vice chairmen. Just
as beavers designed their own environment, Meyers said, Native people
are charged with activity, with actively restoring nature to ensure
its flourishing. We do this work to restore our fisheries,
restore beaver because this is our place, right, We belong

(06:33):
to this place. The future is liable to change for beavers,
for one thing, there expanding their range. As climate change
warms the Arctic, plucky beavers have followed onto willow doubted tundra.
In New York City, beavers have recolonized the Bronx River
and Staten Island in Seattle, they occupy eighty six percent
of suitable habitat. Considering the animals were once on extinctions,

(06:56):
doorstep beavers have made a spectacular recovery, yet they're still
at a sad fraction of their historic numbers, particularly in
Western states that need them most. Environmental laws like the
Endangered Species Act prevent scarce animals from going extinct, but
beaver's pose a different challenge. How do we help an
animal that's already fairly common become truly abundant. Perhaps it

(07:19):
starts with figuring out where they are and aren't. The
ultimate testament to beaver's influence may be that you can
study their architecture from space. Engineers at Google have recently
trained a machine learning program dubbed e Eager to identify
the distinct appearance of ponds and dams in satellite imagery.
California's Wildlife Department is using the algorithm to count its

(07:42):
beeaver's and guide restoration. A similar effort, the Colorado Beaver
Activity Mapper has already roughly counted this centennial state's beaver ponds,
the taily around eighty thousand, according to Sarah Marshall, the
ecologist who led the Colorado program's development. Getting a handle
on beaver distributions could allow wildlife managers to preemptively address

(08:05):
potential classes with farmers and ratchers, or pinpoint spots where
beaver dam analogs and relocations will have the biggest water
storage and fire fighting benefits. Comparing where beavers used to
be with where they are today as a prescription for
where to do large scale restoration in Colorado, Marshall said,
on a recent spring day, I visited Birch Creek, a

(08:27):
stream in southern Idaho that represents a different approach to
re beavering. I walked up stream with j Wilde, a
rancher who sported a battered cowboy hat and a drooping mustache.
Every sixty feet or so, Birch Creek was stapled by
another dam, some eighty feet long, some ten feet high,
some that formed staircases of mirrored acre wide lakes. Lobes

(08:49):
of waters shot onto the floodplain. Single channels split into
twisted strands, and beaver dug canals. Spiderwebbed everywhere. A few
neglected grass covered dams melted into the landscape. It was
glorious chaos, a mess of water and wood that scarcely
resembled a discreet stream. This was a recent transformation. Wild

(09:10):
had grown up along Birch Creek, which supported his family's homestead.
By the late nineteen nineties, though the stream had dwindled
to a pitiful trickle that would dry up. By the
fourth of July. Birch Creek had lost its beavers. Wild realized,
and he resolved to bring them back. After two failed relocations,
he contacted Utah States Wheaton, the nearest beaver expert, who's

(09:32):
crew built twenty six beaver dam analogs in the creek
between twenty fourteen and twenty seventeen. The human made dams
created ponds in which subsequent reintroduced beavers could evade predators
and focus their own damming. By the time I visited,
more than two hundred beaver built dams spanned Birch Creek
and its tributaries, and native cutthroat trout populations had grown

(09:55):
more than tenfold better, Yet, the creek was again staying
wet deep into summer, as water seeped from the saturated
floodplain as though from a squeezed sponge. We've gained forty
days of flow, whild said, his drawl tinged, tinged with
wonder beavers. Researchers sometimes point out our critical infrastructure builders

(10:16):
of fire brakes and reservoirs and storm water catchments, but
there also beings with their own wills, desires, and volition.
Near my tour's end, a beaver popped up in one pond,
had raised and ears pricked. I had to train em
all winter to do that. Wild cracked a joke that
was funny precisely because beavers, for all their benefits to humanity,
serve no master. The rodents swam to and fro assessing us.

(10:40):
Then with a resounding KerPlunk, he thwacked his tail against
the surface, roiling the pond and raising a shower of droplets.
By the time the tumult settled, he was gone, gliding
invisibly through the watery world. He had created. Benefits of beavers.
These engineers create their watery kingdoms to evade predators and
access food, but their habitat modifications also provide surprising advantages

(11:04):
for entire ecosystems. Adapted to dam along with their stout
bodies and waterproofer, beavers have a host of adaptations that
allow them to thrive healthier landscape, from better water quality
to increased wildfire resistance. Beavers improve their surroundings in a
variety of ways. Next Why your dog looks like You

(11:26):
words by Terra Law. New research confirms your long simmering
suspicion that dogs resemble their owners and even act like
them too. When I walked into the ring at the
Pennington Day Dog Shows Lookalike contest in suburban New Jersey
in the mid nineteen nineties, I was brooming with confidence
and why wouldn't I be? Soccer, my buff colored Cocker

(11:48):
Spaniel puppy had long, floppy ears, the perfect complement to
my wavy, blond Bob. We stormed to victory. For the
next few years, Soccer and I competed at Pennington Day
in n array of matching outfits. We scored similar results,
wrecking up a row of blue ribbons. I have not
succeeded at anything as constantly since. At this point, it's

(12:10):
a cliche. Lots of people look like their dogs. It
turns out that there is actual science to support this stereotype.
A recent review of fifteen studies from around the globe
suggests that people and their pets look and act similar.
In several of the experiments, volunteers were asked to match
pictures of dogs in their owners, and they scored higher
than they would have just by chance. In one study,

(12:32):
participants successfully inferred whether dogs were matched with the correct
owners despite being able to see only the dogs or
owner's eyes. Another found that women often preferred dogs with
ears similar in length to their hair. So what gives
a blend of benign narcissism? Seemingly experts to suggest people
dogs that look like them or reflect them in some way.

(12:55):
I imagine when I was young, my parents subconsciously chose
our pet Soccer, as she looked a bit like a
canine version of their child. Perhaps even more strikingly, the
review also showed that dogs and owners share similar personality traits,
especially in the cases of extra version the term psychologists
use for xtro version and neuroticism, and that their temperaments

(13:20):
appear to grow more alike as the years pass. It
offers different theories for why this might be the case.
One idea is that owners could be drawn to dogs
that are like them to begin with. Another holds that
over time, the pair may regulate each other's emotions reinforce
each other's behavior by learning or observing and imitating one another.

(13:43):
After all, the relationships we build with our dogs can
be some of the longest and most meaningful of our lives.
It resembles the way we also look for our partners,
says review leader Yanna Bender, a doctoral research in the
Dog Studies Research Group at the Max Planck Institute of
of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. Dogs and their owners, she

(14:05):
points out, share a very close relationship comparable to many
human relationships. Authors of the review, published in the journal
Personality and Individual Differences, noted several limitations to their research,
such as the relatively small number of dogs and owners
included in the studies. Many of the owners who volunteered
to participate in the studies also had purebred dogs, and

(14:27):
scientists need additional data on mixed breed canines, which are
more common worldwide. Owner bias plays a role too. Even
with standardized methods for assessing dogs personalities, different researchers use
varying concepts, and it can be just as hard to
think that your own pet objectively as it is with
your human family. Who's the goodest boy you are? Ways

(14:51):
Researchers can address this bias using established questionnaires and asking
owners more clear cut questions about how their dogs act
int certain situations rather than asking them to weigh in
on Fido's goodness. The influence humans have on their dogs
comes as no surprise to Borbada Turkshan, who studies dog

(15:12):
behavior at Beauttris Darand University's Faculty of Science in Budapest, Hungary.
She estimates that while about a third of a dog's
personality is genetic, the remaining two thirds is influenced by
its environment, which means that if your dog has been
with you from puppyhood, you occupy a place of enormous
influence in its world. Dogs are also prime to trust

(15:34):
their owners because tens of thousands of years of domestication
made them deeply attached to us. Like parents raising a child,
pet owners can have a powerful influence over their dogs.
Turksand explains, for instance, if there is a truck coming
and it's very loud, then the dog will look back
at the owner. If the owner doesn't care, then the

(15:55):
dog will learn not to care, She says. Bender hopes
her study will help people build the eber more nuanced
understanding of dogs, particularly those like search and rescue, police
and service animals that work in Roll's vital to public safety.
Not long ago, my husband and I adopted Milo, a
mixed breed pup that loves playing fetch and taking daily walks.

(16:18):
We aren't quite the lock to win lookalike contests the
way Soccer and I were, though he does have short,
tan ears, not far off from my current hair style.
Maybe that influenced why my husband and I picked him
after scrolling through several hundred photos of dogs at shelters
and nonprofits all over Los Angeles. But even if I
grow my hair long or diet another collar, I'll be

(16:40):
mindful that the way I treat Milo can have a
profound effect on him, just as his behavior can affect mine.
To a point of course, however the facts, He'll always
be my goodest boy. Next. The future of fashion is
farm to Closet by Claudia Klba. How in INDONIESI which
and fashion brand is embracing traditional techniques to build a

(17:03):
new blueprint for making and selling truly sustainable clothes. On
a damp, de summer morning in the mountainous district of
Ambarawa in Central Java, a woman in an inky, black
sleeveless vest and gathered skirt, balances herself on the back
of a motorbike that carries her through a small village,
past houses adorned with tropical plants and bird cages, and

(17:26):
into a forest. The land here, some three hundred miles
east of Indonesia's capital of Jakarta, brims with shrubs and
trees that grow a variety of crops, including cassava and coffee.
But it's the forest floor that's brought Danika Riyadi Ni
Flesh thirty four to this corner of her home country.

(17:47):
Under the shade of banana, papaya, and cocoanut trees, she's
trying to seed a revolution in the form of hundreds
of vibrant indigo plants, all casting a glossy viridescence across
the soil. Riadini Flesh is the founder of Sukasita, a
fashion brand that partners with hundreds of Indonesian farmers and

(18:08):
artisans on Java and in neighboring Vali Flores and West Timor,
and it's her company then inspired the success of the
spurgeon and crop. Indigo comes in many varieties, but one
commonly used is Ambarawa. Needs profuse sunlight. Riadini Flesh realized
that boosting growth would require cutting down trees. Instead, she

(18:30):
offered the farmers an alternative, a hardy varietal called assam indigo,
which flourishes in the shade. To day. The forest is
a wash with indigo that brings vital income into the
community while fueling a kaleidoscope of colorful dyes for Sukasita's clothing.
This includes the very garments Riadini Flesh is wearing, which

(18:51):
achieve their botanical black hue after being dipped into fermented
indigo leaves thirty times. Such a meticulous process is at
the heart of Suka Sita's environmentally responsible and ethical fashion brand.
The Kappas Kabaya vest she's wearing retails for three hundred
and twenty dollars, and the Angkasa Constellation cane, a fabric

(19:14):
she ties into a sarong, sells for about five hundred dollars,
pricing that reflects the workmanship of each garment. As she
stands among the trees, Rihadini Flesh exudes a sense of
awe that she hopes to convey to her customers. This,
she says, excitedly, is a fashion forest. Indigo is just
one ingrediment ingredient in Suka Sita's radically transparent supply chain.

(19:38):
Every piece of fabric in the brand's farm to Closet
collection is crafted out of one hundred percent plants, from
traceable natural fibers to regeneratively grown plant dyes. Cotton fibers
are hand spun and woven on manual looms. Fabrics are
decorated by indigenous artisans practicing an intricate hand drawn wax

(19:58):
technique called batis, before being dipped into vats of color,
dried in the sun, and finally cut and stitched into clothing.
The entire process from seed to garment takes about sixty
to one hundred eighty days. Once completed, clothing is sent
to Sukosita's flagship store in Jakarta, marketed online, or sold
at select boutiques in Singapore and New York, where clients

(20:22):
are increasingly inclined to by their dollars tourt an elegant
dress or a pair of pants designed by brands that
prioritize their social and environmental impact on the world. The
so called slow fashion movement has a ridden in direct
opposition to the values of fast fashion. The prevailing factory
lead process thats rife with excess and waste. Many of

(20:43):
today's clothing makers contribute to a one hundred billion dollar
plus industry of cheap polyester T shirts and spandex leggings,
which comes at the cost of both exploited workers and
the environment. In Indonesia, the Sietaurum River, a mainsae source
of drinking water and irrigation, is contaminated by toxic chemicals

(21:04):
dumped into the waterway by the textile factories that line
its banks, and the global impact stretches farther from the
Atacama Desert in northern Chile to a landfill outside of
Ghana's capital of Acraa mountains of discarded clothes pile higher
each year. Riodini Flesh believes that empowering consumers with knowledge

(21:24):
about how their clothes were made, be it the plants
that color them more the artisans who stitch them, will
lead to a deeper relationship with what they wear, a
stronger appreciation for both the craft and the product, and
a realization that the choices we make as consumers directly
affect people in the planet. She's already drawn an impressive
roster of influential supporters, rock musician Chris Martin from cold Play,

(21:49):
National Geographic Explorer at Large and oceanographer Sylvia Earle and
celebrated cellist Yo Yoman have been spotted in Sukasita garments.
Denika journey is testament to the best kind of cultural thinking,
says Mah, who is kept in touch with the founder,
powered by a willingness to put in deep work with head,
heart and hands. Sukasita is not the first brand to

(22:12):
provide an alternative blueprint to how fashion is created, and
it's met a fundamental truth had on Clothes made with
care and intention are going to be relatively more expensive
than the alternatives, but Riadini Flesh believes that if shoppers
understand the value of what they're paying for, they'll realize
that cheap garments bear a far greater cost. Clothes won't

(22:33):
change the world, but the people wearing them will. She
says her journey started with thinking about how she could
use her own knowledge as a bridge to uplift others
and replenish the planet. While Indonesia has made strides in
reducing poverty, nine percent of the population still struggles to
make a living wage. That's roughly twenty four million people,
many of whom live in rural villages. Growing up in Jakarta,

(22:57):
Riadini Flesh experience the country's deeply ruins, did issues with inequality,
and studied developmental economics in college. After a stint working
at the World Bank, she gained her most sobering understanding
of what that truth looks like when she began traveling
the countryside in twenty thirteen. Riodini Flesch knew nothing about fashion,

(23:17):
but one day she met three batique artisans in a
village on the outskirts of Tuban in East Java. The
women told her that they had learned the ancient craft
from their mothers, who had used natural dyes to color
their fabrics, but their tradition was at risk. With limited resources,
the artisans had switched to cheaper and work readily available
chemical dyes that burned their lungs. Yet, even when they

(23:40):
could not compete with the speed of factory printed at textiles,
all were mothers or abus who worried about feeding their families.
Until then, Riodini Flesh had never thought about how clothing
was created. It may be realized that without not knowing it,
I was part of the problem, she says in the
months that followed, Rieti Flesh saw other problems in the

(24:02):
modern fashion supply chain, which affected not only the artisans,
but also farmers who had abandoned cotton growing for monocultural
crops like corn, thereby degrading the health of the soil
plants and wildlife that thrived with agricultural diversity. Both of
these age old practices, craft and farming, were deeply rooted

(24:23):
in village life. They just needed to be restored. Slow Fashion,
she realized, could create a new vehicle for change. Early on,
the IBus were wary of Riadini Flesh because of stark
class divisions in Indonesian society. Although she had only two
thousand dollars to invest, she put the money into paying
the batique artisans a living wage, which allowed her to

(24:44):
create her first sample, a bandana she called Cupoo or Butterfly.
By twenty nineteen, three years after incorporating, the company had
drawn enough interest from residents near Tubon to open its
first craft school with the Ruma Suka Sita Foundation, which
is funded by the company's profits, donations, grants, and entrepreneurship

(25:04):
awards from non profits and AIDS groups. The school provide
workshops where artisans can teach botique to younger generations, and
farmers can learn about regenerative ways to plant cotton. Villagers
are now leveraging an indigenous technique known locally as tupang sari,
which prioritizes the cultivation of multiple plants together, allowing them

(25:28):
to nourish each other. Cotton is planted alongside corn, which
provides shade, chilis help control past and peanuts add nitrogen
to the soil. The approach allows rural Indonesians to grow
cotton for sucasita while providing more food for their families
and additional vegetables or nuts that can be sold for
extra income. Now, Riodini Flesh and the ebus embrace each

(25:52):
other as family. On a recent visit, she bantered with
the women as they dip their tools or chantings into
bowels of hot wax and traced motifs onto fabric. A
sense of trust enveloped the group. Reclaiming their craft has
allowed the women to restore their identity. It is a
blood that flows through our veins, one of the ebus
once told Riadini Flesh, it's hot wax. From the start,

(26:15):
Sukasita has worked to raise the standard of living for
the people in its partner villages. That includes using some
profits to create grants for villagers who are interested in
purching purchasing farm land. The women are also trained to
reappraise both the social and monetary value of their work.
Rather than negotiate payment after their labor is complete as

(26:35):
many had in the past, they are taught to track
the time it takes them to complete a design or
even a cotton harvest. Sukasita then uses that number to
calculate a higher wage, increasing their income significantly. Initiatives like
these have established Riadhini Flesh as a role model for
other entrepreneurs and helped boost the companies following on social media.

(26:58):
Sukasita's clothes have been featured in vogues Singapore edition and
sales are now increasing by thirty to forty percent annually,
she says, allowing the company to bring economic opportunities to
the villagers. Linna Setiyowati, thirty two, received a grant from
Sukasita to purchase two and a half acre lot plot

(27:19):
of land, which she nourished back to health after its
degradation by chemical wheat killers and fertilizers. She is now
following the principles of Tupang Sari as she waits for
her cotton bowls to be ready for harvest. The land
is fresher, she says, it's healthy, and most important, it's hers.
Across the globe, other entrepreneurs are developing their own slow

(27:40):
fashion enterprises. The offerings range from ethically sourced alpaca sweaters
made in Peru to began leather derived from Sicilian cacti
and oranges. Angela Jolie recently opened to workshop in Manhattan
where clients can remake their own garments into new, one
of a kind designs. Concludes readings from National Geographic magazine

(28:02):
for to day, your reader has been Marsha. Thank you
for listening, Keep on listening and have a great day.