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Declining populations can benefit space, opened up for ecological restoration, on the landscape. Fewer people translates into more nature in recent “rewilding” efforts in Portugal & the U.S. Midwest.
About The Population Factor:
A series of key conversations examining the connection between our planet’s growing population & related issues. Expect to be educated on a range of topics including climate change, wildlife preservation, immigration policy & consumption patterns.
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At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
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Declining populations can benefit space, opened up for ecological restoration, on the landscape. Fewer people translates into more nature in recent “rewilding” efforts in Portugal & the U.S. Midwest.
About The Population Factor:
A series of key conversations examining the connection between our planet’s growing population & related issues. Expect to be educated on a range of topics including climate change, wildlife preservation, immigration policy & consumption patterns.
EarthX
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Follow Us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthxmedia/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/earthxmedia
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarthXMedia/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@earthxmedia
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EarthXMedia
How to watch:
United States:
- Spectrum
- AT&T U-verse (1267)
- DIRECTV (267)
- Philo
- FuboTV
- Plex
- Fire TV
#EarthDay #Environment #Sustainability #Ecofriendly #Conservation #EarthX
Category
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TVTranscript
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00:33Hello and welcome to The Population Factor. I'm your host, Phil Cafaro.
00:38Today on The Population Factor, we discuss rewilding with my guest, Tom Butler.
00:44Tom is a longtime advocate for wildlife and wild lands.
00:48After many years as Vice President for Conservation Advocacy
00:52at the Foundation for Deep Ecology and Tompkins Conservation,
00:56he's currently a Senior Fellow at the Northeast Wilderness Trust.
01:01Tom is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including
01:05Plundering Appalachia, Keeping the Wild, and Energy,
01:09Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth.
01:12Tom, welcome to The Population Factor.
01:15Well, thanks, Phil. It's a pleasure to be with you. Very nice to see you.
01:19Great to see you.
01:21I think most of our viewers will have a sense of what wild nature is.
01:28But rewilding, we should talk a little bit about what that term means.
01:32So to start out, I thought I would read just the vision paragraph
01:37from the Global Charter for Rewilding the Earth.
01:40This was developed by you and some other people
01:43for the 11th World Wilderness Conference.
01:46So the vision statement reads,
01:49We believe that the world can be more beautiful, more diverse,
01:53more equitable, more wild.
01:55We believe that nature's innate resilience,
01:58bolstered by human care, can initiate an era of planetary healing.
02:03In that future time, when the world is whole and healthy,
02:07undamned rivers will run to the sea, their estuaries teeming with life.
02:12Following ancient patterns, whales and warblers will migrate unmolested
02:16through sea and sky.
02:18From tiny phytoplankton to tallest redwoods,
02:21all Earth's creatures will be free to pursue lives of quality,
02:26and humanity will thrive amidst nature's abundance.
02:31So that's the vision.
02:34How do we begin to get there?
02:37What's the practice of rewilding?
02:42We get there place by place, project by project, person by person,
02:47group by group, hectare by hectare,
02:50working incrementally to rewild the Earth and help nature heal.
02:55Before we even sort of talk about that,
02:57the mechanics of that or the specific application,
03:02let me just sort of tease out that word rewilding,
03:04because it may be a little bit unfamiliar to some of your listeners.
03:08Although it's certainly a term now that's gotten widespread adoption
03:13within the conservation community, conservation movement,
03:16but outside that fairly small family, it may be less familiar.
03:21Rewilding as a term was coined by the wilderness activist Dave Foreman
03:26back in the 1990s and popularized in the now defunct
03:30but late great journal Wild Earth,
03:32which I at the time happened to be working on that project.
03:36Dave Foreman was the co-founder and the publisher at the time.
03:40And there needed to be a term for ecological restoration writ large.
03:46At that time in the 1990s,
03:49there was a whole lot of interesting science that was emerging in the field
03:54of conservation biology and landscape ecology about how systems work
03:59and how ecosystems are damaged and how they can begin to heal again
04:05when missing species and processes are allowed or helped to recover.
04:11But there wasn't a term for large scale wilderness recovery.
04:17At that point, when people talked about restoration,
04:19they really meant cleaning up a brownfield or a Superfund site.
04:23And it was very site based, not system focused.
04:27And Dave coined that term rewilding as a stand in for this larger idea
04:34of wilderness recovery on a very large scale,
04:37on a scale large enough for those missing species like apex predators
04:42and processes to reassert themselves across the landscape.
04:47And in the few decades since the term was introduced in the conservation community,
04:52it's become broadly embraced and accepted.
04:56It means different things to different people, but it is very simplest to me.
05:01It is helping nature heal.
05:04That is something that happens through our conscious action.
05:09Rewilding, of course, can also happen passively if we simply step back
05:13and let natural processes reassert themselves across the landscape.
05:18So one thing we're getting at when we use the term rewilding is ecological
05:23restoration and or preservation on a large scale.
05:27But another thing we're getting at with that word is greater freedom from nature.
05:34And in a way that's paradoxical because some rewilding efforts involve management,
05:40but with the goal of getting to a point where you don't have to manage as much.
05:46Exactly.
05:47Can you say a little bit about that aspect of rewilding?
05:51Sure. You've actually drilled right in on a little bit of a predicament,
05:57but in a paradox, but also one of the things that make a rewilding approach
06:02to conservation so interesting, so engaging.
06:05So this idea of active intervention with the goal and with an attitude of humility.
06:13And to me, that's that's the best approach.
06:15If we're if we're if we're trying to say that the earth deserves freedom,
06:20all creatures deserve lives of quality.
06:23Ecosystems deserve to flourish and evolve on their for their own sake and in their own way.
06:30Yet we're going to be engaged in helping that.
06:34To me, that analogy is a little bit like medicine.
06:38When when you're sick or you've had an injury, you seek medical care.
06:43And when you talk to the doctor, she doesn't heal you.
06:47She may intervene by setting a broken bone or prescribing a medication or doing an operation on you.
06:53But it's the body's innate healing powers.
06:57Ultimately, that will determine whether you do recover or not.
07:04Medicine bolsters and amplifies those innate qualities.
07:08To me, it's the same thing with active intervention, restoration techniques in an overall rewilding approach.
07:16Nature's in the driver's seat.
07:18But that doesn't mean that there aren't ways that we can help nature heal again with that attitude of humility.
07:24And with the ultimate goal of stepping back and letting ecosystems flourish in their own ways, in their own good time.
07:33So hopefully I think it makes sense.
07:36It makes sense to me now.
07:38Hopefully, as we get into this program, we'll be able to talk a little bit about Iberia National Park in Argentina, a rewilding program of the Tompkins Foundation.
07:51And I was getting ready for this show, and I went on the Tompkins Foundation website.
07:56I made a few clicks and got to the National Geographic 20-minute film about Iberia.
08:04And I'd really encourage viewers to go check that out if you can.
08:11It's so interesting because it talks about a variety of reintroduction efforts, including giant anteaters, scarlet macaws, jaguars.
08:24So this is what we're talking about, bringing species back that either have been totally extirpated from an area, or they might be there in small numbers, but they need a boost to get back to more robust populations, long-term sustainable populations.
08:43And to watch the team sort of doing all the spade work to get ready to release the jaguar, and then you see the jaguar in the pen, and then the door opens, and it's released out into the wild.
08:58It's very moving, and it's exactly what you're talking about.
09:05We're helping bring the jaguars back, but the goal isn't to keep having to manage jaguars.
09:12That's exactly right. The long-term goal is for all the creatures and the processes in that ecosystem to be operating in ways that expand beauty and expand ecological health, that advance the integrity of the whole system.
09:30But the active intervention there is so amazing. First of all, I'm delighted you watched that short film and saw the energy of that team.
09:40The handful of times that I've had the opportunity to visit that place and interact with my former colleagues there who worked for Tompkins Conservation and the Argentine spinoff, which is now called Rewilding Argentina.
09:55I've come back and just been so hopeful at the ambition and the scale of the work there.
10:03And I admit to feeling a little bit, not quite resentful, but envious that conservationists in North America don't have the same vision and creativity for this kind of large-scale work.
10:20Because what they have accomplished and are accomplishing in the Ibarra marshlands ecosystem is just astounding.
10:26So I hope viewers will go watch that short film and see the video and interact with some of those leaders in the team, especially Sofia Heinonen and Sebastian DeMartino and others on the team.
10:39They're very creative. But just to sort of put their work in the context of this overarching frame of what rewilding can be as an overarching framework for conservation.
10:56To me, it's really three parts, and that is protecting specific places from the current ecological threats or past problems and helping heal those ecological wounds from past land use practices.
11:12So it might mean healing those wounds. It may mean just a hands-off approach. Or it might mean active intervention, like reintroducing missing species or augmenting smaller populations or disjunct populations with translocations of animals to help bolster that.
11:32Helping advance natural processes like intact, free-flowing hydrology. Maybe it means removing dams or barriers in the Ibarra marshlands. That was actually, for a short time, there was a series of diking for kind of industrial agriculture that was threatening edges of the marshlands.
11:56Which, first of all, let's just step back and say the Ibarra wetlands ecosystem is one of the largest freshwater complexes in South America. It's kind of the Pantanal of northern Argentina. So it's this vast subtropical wetland.
12:10And so that's safe particular places, reintroduce missing species and processes. And then the third part of that is arguably just as crucial, and that is rewilding our hearts and minds, rewilding ourselves.
12:25I'm glad you got to that. I wanted to ask you about that.
12:29Because ultimately we're not going to get to a framework of global conservation with a rewilding mission if we're not allowing and advancing that to happen. And that's the part of rewilding ourselves. But in the Ibarra project, we can see all of those things happening.
12:48There was work for decades to get an Ibarra provincial park and an Ibarra national park contiguous protected area designated officially and managed as a protected area. It's now the sort of largest wildlife habitat protected area park in Argentina.
13:06The second part of that is this very, very robust wildlife recovery program with reintroducing, as you said, giant anteaters and giant otters, jaguars, macaws, pompous deer and other species.
13:20And then the third part of that is really the outreach and the communications work that those Argentine conservationists have done, both locally, getting local communities to embrace the idea of a destination wildlife watching reserve that advances
13:41sort of the economic viability of these small communities that surround the protected area.
13:48And how that is in alignment with their cultural values, long standing cultural traditions, not in opposition to them. So those those three parts of a rewilding approach to conservation are all embodied in that Ibarra project.
14:06So let's talk a little more about the health angle of this because it's something you brought up several times now. And we could talk about it in the context of Ibarra.
14:19From what little I've gleaned in reading about it and watching the film, this was an area that not too long ago was mostly in private hands, right? Quite a bit of it in any case.
14:34It was a mix, yes, but private and public.
14:38And so, you know, some of the uses were either not compatible with preserving wild nature or maybe they were overdone. So, you know, maybe a certain amount of hunting is okay but maybe there was over hunting.
14:54And so the film talked a little about this and how, well, as with our Everglades here in the US, there was plume hunting, really harvesting plumes from birds, and so bird populations plummeted.
15:10Caimans were over hunted, etc, etc. So from various perspectives, you could talk about missing ecological processes, you could talk about interference with those processes, you could talk about some species that were extirpated or nearly extirpated.
15:30And I think you like to think about that in terms of ill health and bringing this back to the landscape is trying to create a healthier landscape.
15:42That's exactly right. And in this case, of course, a healthier landscape, one of more beauty and abundance, wildlife abundance, drives economic vitality of the local communities.
15:58So as long as the fortunes of those people are linked to beauty and abundance, local communities are absolutely going to support that.
16:08That is a key part of the strategy here and, frankly, this is all in that region of Argentina, this is all very new. Now it's not to say that Argentina's history with national parks is new.
16:22They've had an excellent national park system, going back to the, actually to the genesis of it was in 1903 from a private donation into public ownership. So it's, and they have a very strong and professional, professional National Parks Administration.
16:44But this particular area, we're talking about Corrientes Province.
16:49Northeastern Argentina.
16:51And an area that is in some ways culturally distinct from Argentine people. As my understanding, people from that province, Corrientinos, think of themselves first as Corrientinos and not Argentines.
17:03And so there's, you know, in that way, it kind of might be like Texas, you know, people from Texas are Texans and then maybe they're Americans.
17:13That sort of kind of cultural devotion to their particular place.
17:19But that area surrounding the Ybarra Marshlands region is not a wealthy area and really until very recently had no long, long standing tradition with ecotourism, with wildlife watching, with the kind of economic development that could be linked to a protected area.
17:39That's now changed. And due to the excellent work of the team at Rewilding Argentina.
17:48And the threats to that place were, as you mentioned,
17:53really a hunting and poaching culture and also a ranching efforts that were nibbling around the edges of the marshlands region in some places were
18:06were somewhat destructive to the ecological health of the place. And then the threat of industrial agriculture, particularly rice farming, at one point was a real threat
18:18to the health of the marshlands. So presenting an alternative, an economic alternative to that,
18:28that would be
18:31that would be attractive and could show real gains for local communities was integral to the conservation success. And these little series of 12 or 13 little communities surrounding the marshlands
18:44at one point, you know, all I think all the mayors of every single one of those communities
18:49got on board and embracing the idea of a scenic driving route around the marshlands and coordinated signage and portals where people could stop and go in and do wildlife watching and hiking and take tours into the into the marshlands. And so it really is an example of
19:09a large scale rewilding project that has both an ecological health component and an economic vitality component.
19:18And I think you often find that with these rewilding projects. I'm a little more familiar with projects in Europe and quite often you've got kind of a
19:30you've got sort of a template for these, whether you're talking about the Oder River Delta in Germany and Poland, or whether you're talking about the Velebit Mountains in Croatia.
19:42These are often areas that have in Europe that have an agricultural history and agriculture, but they're areas that are not the greatest for agriculture. So they're not particularly productive.
19:55And so in many parts of Europe, you've had a decrease in the amount of area under crops, you've had a great decrease in the rural populations in a lot of these places.
20:08Exactly.
20:09And so, um, you know, they're sort of, they've sort of been bypassed by progress. But the question is always what's going to come next. And, you know, one thing that can come next, as you say, are various
20:24efforts to ratchet up industrial agriculture, but something that might, that certainly is better for wild nature and is often better for the communities involved, is some sort of ecotourism, some sort of effort to mesh some traditional agriculture with leaving
20:43more of the landscape wild.
20:45And then within that framework, the Europeans will often put together these kind of rewilding projects. And again, if it's, if everything comes together correctly, it can really be a win win for nature, and for the human communities involved.
21:04Exactly. You know, I'm glad you brought up that rewilding Europe context, you know, the NGO rewilding Europe is the, the, in the nonprofit, sort of that's helping spearhead in advance rewilding efforts in Europe, it's not the only one but it's doing fantastic
21:24work. Many interesting projects are falling under its, its banner now, including you mentioned several but one that that I know a little bit about is this Three Kingdoms project in Spain is being spearheaded by a former colleague Ignacio Jimenez, who actually
21:45found the rewilding program in, in the Ybarra marshlands. He's a Spanish biologist, but he was, he was at rewilding Argentina for more than a decade and he was the one who first started the giant anteater reintroduction program first got the permits to translocate
22:05and create a new founder population of a native species that had been extirpated. So that was all new. And it's interesting, and actually Ignacio has written a book about that experience and about rewilding principles.
22:19And, and this is where we get to the cultural context. What did it take to, you know, found and started and and create such success in the Ybarra, and then I'll morph back sort of segue back to your European context.
22:34It took the vision and the financial resources of Christine Tompkins and the late Douglas Tompkins, who, who advanced and funded that program, so we give them tremendous credit.
22:49But sort of underneath them, sort of the people on the team, the biologists and the veterinarians and all of the, the, the program people in that wildlife recovery project.
23:00They had to get over those cultural hurdles and for Ignacio and some of the other team members that meant going and sitting in little offices of local wildlife officials and political authorities and drinking endless cups of mate and talking and talking and talking
23:20and drinking more mate and drinking more mate and drinking more mate and talking. And the result of that was eventually you get your permit to try something new through a Byzantine Argentine bureaucracy, which has, you know, a local level of provincial level and a federal level national level.
23:41So, the work they did there allowed in fact I think helped is helping advance through, you know, wildlife related ecotourism, allowing a community, not to depopulate for rural exodus, not to occur.
24:02Whereas the the point you just raised in Europe, some of these project like the Three Kingdoms project in in Spain.
24:10The potential there is really because of this phenomenon of rural depopulation rural exodus as young people move from the villages into the cities and more marginal farmlands are abandoned.
24:23So rewilding linked to protected areas and wildlife watching and related cultural and ecological tourism really offers the best, or maybe it's not the best, a wonderful opportunity to maintain kind of cultural vibrance, while also expanding ecological health.
24:47It's really sort of the best of both worlds.
24:50That phenomenon of rural depopulation though is, you know, it may be very common now in parts of Europe and I mean the Great Plains of the US, it's not an unknown phenomenon in other parts of the world as well.
25:05It does present extraordinary opportunities to be thinking about large scale wilderness recovery large scale protected areas large scale national parks and wildlife recovery programs.
25:19And when you're thinking about a Great Plains context.
25:24You know, I don't know the Great Plains might be something like one fifth to one fourth of the lower 48 states, depending on how you define it and most of the counties in the Great Plains have fewer people today than they did in 1920 kind of a staggering figure.
25:43One of the things you're seeing in some places on the plains are new efforts at big conservation at rewilding on a large scale there's a there's a project in central Montana and I'm blanking on the name of it now, you might you might
26:00know it.
26:01Prairie Reserve.
26:02Yes.
26:04Yes. Fabulous project.
26:06And so there's this effort to purchase or put land conservation easements on, you know, one or 2 million acres of land eventually hopefully and and restore some of the large herbivores above all the buffalo, perhaps restore apex predators.
26:30Now as you know, there's also great pushback from that, because a lot of the ranchers in the area.
26:38They don't like the project at some level it seems to them that it's it's a negative commentary on on their efforts.
26:47But a lot of ranchers do like the project, either because there's a part of them that likes the rewilding ideal, or because it might be a way for them to get more money selling their ranches I mean people have various various motivations, but it's, it's
27:04it's one of those kind of efforts are going forward now because at a larger scale it's really about how human beings are going to be relating to the natural world.
27:15Do we want more or less land set aside for other species. Do we want more or fewer opportunities to see and experience wild landscapes, or do we have other goals that are more important.
27:31So it's a big question.
27:34It's a big question and you've jumped into an area where we could we could spend a week just chewing over that that conundrum that predicament of where cultural traditions are linked to certain kinds of resources traction.
27:49Can they ever be made durable and sustainable, or do they have to go away.
27:54And how difficult that is for cultures when they do go away. So let's let's let's kind of tease that out for a minute and think about it.
28:03One can certainly imagine the Great Plains, with at least I can with vast systems of protected areas and bison herds, while also supporting vibrant family farms and ranches that those are not mutually exclusive goals.
28:23If that kind of ranching culture can persist.
28:28And if it does and I come from a ranching family. I don't think the threat to it is the fact that someone wants to create more protected areas for wild nature to flourish.
28:39The true threats to it are more economic and climatic. Is it, is it going to be possible to raise cattle in areas that have 10 inches of or less of precipitation annually, and where the climate change models show that sooner or later those places like
28:59of parts of eastern Wyoming and parts of Montana, that that may well be desert.
29:05In a few decades, there may not be cattle ranching appropriate still in some parts of the place where it's where it's done now and those the conditions are going to be beyond any of us to solve.
29:18But the, it may be easy for people to sort of throw darts at conservationists, who want, particularly those who want more of wild nature to flourish, but that's not the real threat.
29:30In my mind, and, and.
29:33But there are also some kinds of extraction, I would suggest that simply are not supportable either either ethically or economically.
29:44It used to be, if we were sitting here having this conversation 100 years ago, people would be very supportive of the whaling industry.
29:57We're not anymore. There's no commercial reason to kill our cousins, the large animals who live in the sea are distant cousins.
30:09We do not need to render their blubber for oil to light our lamps.
30:15It's economically, a non starter, it's a moot point, we do not need to to extract them. Now, if the if the whaling industry had had enough cultural clout to say well, it doesn't matter you can light your house with other things but just because whaling
30:32is so fun and so part of our culture, we should keep doing it.
30:37I would suggest that that is not a compelling argument, which isn't to say that wouldn't have been wrenching for those families and communities linked to whaling, as it as it dissipated as an industry.
30:51It's hard when when when things go away that you've counted on or, you know, we could say the same thing about coal mining in Appalachia.
31:00Sure. I mean, sure, families that fed their fed themselves and and grew their communities related to, to, you know, digging that coal and blowing off the tops of those mountains.
31:12But globally, that activity can no longer be supported. It is a global threat to everyone.
31:20Every, every lump of coal that continues to be combusted, as that CO2 molecules go into the atmosphere.
31:28So we well it might be a nice thing for for for some people to still have the traditions and the skills related to that activity is no longer supportable as a viable thing going forward.
31:42And that's tough. That's hard, but it's reality.
31:46Well, I mean, this is part of having a society right i mean you need an economy to support people, but a society that doesn't discipline its economy in various ways for higher values really isn't a human society at all.
32:03This is an ongoing discussion and argument that that will be having as long as we, we have human societies, I would just like that I mean, this is a show called the population factor.
32:16So, I would just like to bring in a further point here and that's the more people we have overall in a society.
32:25Globally, whatever scale we want to look at.
32:29The more people we have the more opportunities that will foreclose to share the landscape generously with other species. And so, um, you know, sometimes, and you've given a good example and you bet I think there are others as well.
32:47Sometimes, the, the most economically profitable use is preservation. I mean, that that is absolutely true in many places.
32:58But it's also true that at the margins. Those of us who want to preserve nature would hope that we'll we'll be willing to forego some profit and simply preserve more land more species, be willing to lose a few more cattle to the Jaguars, etc etc.
33:18The more people we have the more people we have to feed provide energy provide housing etc.
33:27The more resources we're going to have to take away from other species.
33:31The more difficult it becomes yes let's let's step back and think about what's an overarching goal for for rewilding the earth.
33:40I think the the ultimate objective of course, as you stated in that vision statement, is that all native species on this planet would have the space in the room and the freedom to flourish to have lives of quality and making space for all our relations
33:57to have those lives of quality and to pursue happiness and have freedom and habitat for all.
34:07Essentially requires area, and we will either be willing to to allow other species to have that terrain for their for their homes and happiness, or we will not because for better or worse, humanity in its current incarnation is in the driver's seat.
34:28It's a conscious decision one based on humility and ethics to create a system of protected areas at the scale adequate enough to support all of life's diversity.
34:43The best way to get there of course is to have a stable and then a diminishing human population achieved through the most responsible and humane means which primarily of course means educating girls in the developing world, advancing the rights of women
35:01everywhere and making reproductive health choices universally available. Those are the kinds of things that should be.
35:11I think sort of a non starter in terms of agreement across the political spectrum. I think, you know, a political left to political right shouldn't we all be able to agree that there should be gender equity and that is particularly girls in the, in the underdeveloped
35:27world should be educated and, and that you know people should have the right and autonomy and the tools and information to make family planning choices.
35:38That should be.
35:40Should it not be kind of why I think, and universally endorsed. I think there's a strong moral argument for that and and I think very clearly in international law, and through UN treaties that almost all the world's nations have agreed to.
35:57There's a global commitment to all of that.
36:00Having said that, I think it's a much easier sell in Sweden or even the United States gender equity than it is in more conservative parts of the world tougher in Iran or Afghanistan or Pakistan for sure.
36:16Yeah, and other. Yeah, but but but sort of, but let's let's assume for a second, you know, zooming out to the big vision that we could embrace that whole range of life affirming tools for stabilizing and then gradually reducing the human population through
36:37voluntary and non coercive means. Well, that in effect if we get the sort of the human population bottleneck through through that narrow opening as quickly as possible and on the slow and decline toward a more stable and resilient sort of durable number for
36:58human population size, then that frees up all kinds of opportunities for ecological recovery that will hope happen both passively and actively through our intervention if we choose to do so.
37:11And this is really the great opportunity for the next century for the second half and really and the next century that once that human population begins to stabilize and create and have that slow downhill slide, then rewilding efforts can really advance quickly.
37:31And we can get as much of biodiversity as possible through this this current calamity this great sixth extinction crisis in Earth history.
37:43And, and on the backside of that there's there's again this this human benefit as well.
37:51And it of course is, you know, I come from the spectrum of the conservation community, and my work with Tompkins Conservation and with Northeast Wilderness Trust is all based on the idea that wild places and wild creatures have intrinsic value.
38:06They have inherent worth. We don't protect them because they're necessarily valuable to us we protect nature for nature's sake.
38:14But by doing so that's also wildly beneficial for humanity.
38:19And so a rewilding framework for for Earth is actually our best chance of maintaining a beautiful, durable human civilization long into the future, because the trajectory we are on right now is very grim and very dark for humanity, and very unlikely
38:40that human civilization will persist in the way that we have known it in recent decades.
38:47We had no concern with giant river otters in Ibera or scarlet macaws or cougars or wolves in Colorado.
38:59Really to continue to increase our population and increase our demands on nature
39:07threatens human well being. I noticed when I was on the Tompkins Conservation website for every one of the new national parks and protected areas they describe.
39:19There's a little bit of a history of how they were protected. There's a little bit of a natural history about what is being protected.
39:27But there's also for each one of them figures about how much carbon is being sequestered by not cutting down the forest.
39:37So, you know, that has to play a role in all this too and those of us who believe in that intrinsic value of nature. I think it's well worth our reminding our more economically minded friends and neighbors.
39:52You know these these things are these places are working for you to even if you don't want to see them a cause.
39:59Those utilitarian arguments and economic arguments, you know, work with some people they work, maybe better with most people than the intrinsic value argument.
40:10I think those those things again are not mutually exclusive. We can protect wild places and wild creatures, and we can recreate interconnected systems of protected areas, large enough resilient enough both to help mitigate climate change and to support
40:27ecological diversity of all the members in the community of life. We can do that, whether or not our motivation is to is because we want our grandchildren to inherit a living planet and have a good quality of life, or because the thing that feeds
40:46us is to be out in the boundary waters wilderness or in some Western landscape and have the Yellowstone ecosystem and hear a wolf howl and have that connection with our kind of wild kin in a most visceral way.
41:01The motivation really is sort of less important than the fact that everyone potentially on earth benefits from a rewilding conservation framework, especially if that framework advances quickly enough to mitigate climate chaos.
41:25The very best tool for mitigating or for climate for for carbon sequestration and storage happens to be a tree.
41:36Trees, wetlands, peatlands, intact natural grasslands sequester and store vast amounts of carbon.
41:46And so the idea of sort of quick transformation of our energy economy away from fossil fuels toward renewables is crucial.
41:54But you could do that. And if you don't fix the wilderness destruction problem, and the ever expanding human numbers and behavior that goes along with the kind of expanding human footprint problem.
42:08If you don't do that, then all the, you know, hydrogen cars, solar panels and wind turbines in the on the planet will not save us.
42:19It's not enough. We have to do all of those things. We have to create a steady state economy that doesn't pretend that the earth is infinite, when it's not.
42:30And we have to transform that energy economy toward renewables, and we have to stop the wilderness destruction problem, and then begin to, well, not just then, at the same time, you know, create vast new protected areas that can store and sequester carbon.
42:45That can be done, even, you know, with the current human population size, to some extent, but it's flourishing is not going to happen until, you know, the human population stabilizes.
42:59Because for better and worse, you know, we're adding what is it about 225,000 new people to the global family every single day.
43:10That's right, about 80 to 85 million annually.
43:13Right. And, you know, I used to, when I used to hear that 85 million to 90 million or so annually, that's a kind of a large number, and it's an abstraction.
43:22But when someone explained to me that, you know, if you've ever been into a large stadium for a concert or a sporting event, you know, and you go in that, you know, Yankee Stadium or whatever, and you sit there with 50,000 other people,
43:40and everybody cheers, it feels like a lot of people, if you're sitting there with 50,000 or 49,999 other folks.
43:50Well, you know, now fill that stadium up four times and start again.
43:57And that's the number of human people, human beings that get added to our population every 24 hours.
44:05And of course we would want all of those people, every single one of them to have a decent quality of life, and not be sort of trapped in a life of poverty or struggle.
44:17We want each of them to have a life of beauty and potential.
44:24And that takes, for wherever you're born, some level of resource to support that life.
44:34So, less people probably means over the long term, not probably, will mean better lives of quality for other humans, as well as for our fellow members in the land community, all the creatures with which we share the planet.
44:50So, it's important to keep in mind that there are, you know, those trade offs, as we think about population policy.
44:59We talked a little bit about Iberá National Park in Argentina.
45:04I thought maybe I might give you a chance to reminisce a little bit and maybe tell our viewers about another place they might not have heard of.
45:16I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly. Cahuéscar National Park, another park that was helped to be set up by the Tompkins.
45:27This grabbed my attention because its area is over 7 million acres.
45:33I think Yellowstone is something like 2.2 or 2.4 million.
45:37So, we're talking about an immense new national park created in central Chile.
45:45Can you tell us, have you been to that park?
45:48I have not been to that protected area.
45:51I have flown along the Chilean coastline in a small plane with the late Douglas Tompkins right in that area, however.
45:59Yes, several years ago.
46:01I can tell you a little bit about the package deal that created Cahuéscar and added several other new national parks to the natural heritage of the Chilean park system through the work of Tompkins Conservation.
46:17This whole deal resulted really from decades of work really driven by Christine Tompkins and late Douglas Tompkins, who was an American entrepreneur, well known as a mountaineer and a rock climber.
46:34And also for founding a couple of very prominent American companies, including the co-founded Esprit, the fashion company, and before that founded a little ski shop in San Francisco, which he called the North Face.
46:50And that went on, he didn't actually make his great wealth from that company, but it went on to be a behemoth in the outdoor apparel industry.
47:00So when Doug sold his half interest in Esprit in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s married Christine McDivitt, who was then the then CEO of the Patagonia company, they relocated to South America, spending part of their time in Chile and part in Argentina.
47:25And essentially created a set of nonprofits, charitable foundations to channel their wealth into land conservation.
47:34Doug Tompkins used to talk about paying his rent for living on the planet and sort of, you know, the payback, making up for all of the mindless consumption he had promoted by through the merchandising of, you know, t-shirts.
47:50You're old enough to remember the period when every teenage girl in the United States wanted a t-shirt that said Esprit.
47:57Absolutely, absolutely.
47:59Well, all those t-shirts actually got recycled into huge amounts of land conservation in Chile.
48:06Westgar and several other national parks were created out of a package deal at the end of the term of President Michelle Bachelet, when Christine Tompkins worked closely with her administration and essentially said, we'll give you all of our remaining holdings,
48:24which were privately held and managed conservation lands in Chile. At that point, it was well over a million acres, or if you'll create this series, if you'll accept and expand the system of national parks.
48:41In the area of Cuesca, we had a private conservation holding, which we donated to the federal government. And in turn, the government designated this new national park, out of which were largely federal lands that had been a national reserve with a lower level of protection.
48:59The flagship protected areas from that deal were Pumalin National Park, a little farther to the north, and Patagonia National Park in the grasslands of the Chacabuco Valley.
49:12Both of these places, we had also spent, or the team, the Tompkins conservation team had spent years and years and years creating public access infrastructure, campgrounds, hiking trails, a visitor center.
49:24You know, all of the kind of accoutrements we're used to in very well capitalized national parks in North America, but in the Chilean park system, much, much higher quality because of that system, which is a really extraordinary ecological jewels,
49:44is very much underfunded and undercapitalized relative to the quality of the lands it safeguards.
49:52So right at the tail end of the Bachelet administration, this deal was struck, Christine Tompkins and the foundations gave those lands over for adoption into the Chilean national park system.
50:07Cuescar was the largest single one of those new units that was created, and an adjacent marine reserve was also subsequently established.
50:19So, it was really an extraordinary deal.
50:25And I had the great privilege of actually being there on the day there in the Chacabuco Valley outside the visitor center of Patagonia National Park where Chris and President Bachelet signed the agreements and it was quite moving for those of us who had known and loved
50:45Douglas Tompkins, that he was not there to see it because he had died shortly before in a kayaking accident, just outside the park boundary on a big water body.
50:57So, that place resulted from an extraordinary act really the largest act of wildlands philanthropy in earth history that I'm aware of, whereas about 11 million acres were added to the Chilean national park system in one fell swoop.
51:13So if, if viewers are getting inspired by this to do what they can to help preserve wild nature, I would just point out that Tom is now with the Northeast Wilderness Trust and if you go to their website.
51:34It'll tell you about a number of very what seemed to be very worthwhile projects where you can be your own wildlands philanthropist you can contribute towards protecting for instance the Duran Mountain Wilderness Preserve in Vermont.
51:53It's only two acres it looks like a lot of its wetlands from, from the, from the pictures of it.
51:59And they're still looking for more funding for that. So, it's great when these billionaires or semi billionaires pony up their money to preserve wild nature.
52:12Doug Tompkins.
52:16Ted Turner, we're very grateful for their efforts.
52:22You all have a role to play as well. So, I'd encourage viewers to support your local or regional land trust as well.
52:32And it's vitally important I think that individuals do that and it's a way that's direct and tangible, where people of modest means can support.
52:44Individuals, particularly as their, their, their donations are pooled can support tangible practical and beautiful ways of protecting wild places and wild creatures, and thereby also helping to mitigate climate chaos.
53:00Every single project that Northeast Wilderness Trust does every place it protects is a future old growth forest 300 years from now people will walk through those giant trees, which will be storing and sequestering vast amounts of carbon naturally, and
53:21And of course, that's that's true of people supporting their local and regional interest elsewhere as long as those groups are actually supporting projects that truly do preserve wild places and not sort of put a green sheen on extractive extraction that that really doesn't advance the climate mitigation ball very far.
53:49So, take a look at the the fine print before you write the check. Well exactly I think that's always wise when you're supporting any nonprofit, but there are great, great organizations out there, Kentucky Natural Lands Trust Northeast Wilderness Trust.
54:05There are organizations working on policy that are absolutely worthy of people support doing doing excellent defensive and and offensive work in the realm of public policy.
54:19And all these things add up and and they all can again help advance this, this overarching framework for conservation, which is global rewilding. And again, I know I'm going to be repetitive here and repeating myself but when we have this overarching frame
54:37of an earth of beauty and of abundance with these big beautiful ribbons of blue and green wrapping the earth in wildness, supporting all species right to exist and to flourish and and then helping to support a durable and beautiful human civilization.
54:55It's a wonderful aspirational vision. But again, it only happens place by place, project by project, person by person, acre by acre, as people invest their time and their energy, their influence, and their wealth to make these places protected forever.
55:17These projects only happen when people who love the land are engaged and Northeast Wilderness Trust it just happens to be an organization that I love, because I know it's highly efficient in doing those kinds of projects very well, very effectively, and with the exact
55:34ethical vision that I embrace which is that nature for nature's sake is the target, and that is wildly beneficial to people too.
55:44And Tom, you've convinced me you know I met my, my wife in Boston, about 25 years ago, and some of our favorite activities, when we were getting to know each other were were hiking and camping in in Vermont and New Hampshire so I'm going to make.
56:04I'm going to make a contribution to your land trust in her name. Hey, that's fabulous. Hey, that's so nice and you know what, be sure to let me know because I'll match it.
56:14I'll make a contribution to the same amount, and we'll double our contribution to the trust's work to protect future old growth forests. Wonderful, wonderful. Well, Tom Butler, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about rewilding today.
56:31Well, it was my great pleasure. I'm really glad to hear that you're doing this project that you're engaging these important conversations, and particularly, you know, the delicate and sometimes provocative topic of human overpopulation I'm really glad that you're
56:47in the mix there.
56:49Thank you so much, Tom.