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Rewilding the Urban Frontier

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Greg Gordon argues that the Anthropocene presents opportunities for rethinking our relationship to the natural world and potentially healing the age-old rift between humans and nature.

Image courtesy of interviewee. September 10, 2024

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This video discusses the author's transition from a rural environment to the industrial city of Spokane, Washington, and their observations of how wildlife, including deer and moose, thrives in urban settings. The author remarks on the untapped ecological value of neglected urban spaces, emphasizing that these areas can support both human recreation and biodiversity amidst the impacts of climate change.

The author highlights the concept of "urban ecology" learned at a conference and expresses intrigue towards "novel ecosystems," which are heavily modified by humans yet possess their own forms of life. They critique the terms "restoration" and "renaturalization," arguing that they imply returning to a past state that may no longer be relevant. Instead, the term "rewilding" resonates more as it suggests a future of ecosystem autonomy and resilience.

The discussion also touches on the historical neglect of urban rivers and the effects of the Clean Water Act. The author notes that revitalizing these waterways has shown potential for both ecological recovery and enhancing the quality of urban life. They argue that through reimagining urban environments to support biodiversity, humans can create healthier ecological systems that also enhance well-being.

Ultimately, the author advocates for a collaborative relationship between humans and nature, recognizing that while humans have significantly altered ecological systems, there is an opportunity to adapt and support biodiversity within urban environments. They propose that by stepping back and allowing nature to self-regulate, cities can transform their landscapes to benefit both residents and wildlife.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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Kind of moved from a more rural, environment

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where I experienced the natural world in a little more

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typical setting.

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Like, you know, it felt more wild

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or more, when we think about nature more typical

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and into a, a city, Spokane, Washington,

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which is very industrial.

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It's, got a lot of infrastructure

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and it's a decaying city.

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It's, you know, post-industrial,

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if you wanna use that term.

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Uh, there's a lot of sort of infrastructure

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that's collapsing, a lot of vacant lots, a lot

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of broken up concrete.

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And, I was struck by

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how many animals inhabited the city

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and that I would see deer and moose

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and raccoons and turkeys

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and just an abundance of wildlife in, in,

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in the middle of a city.

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And I was like, where, where are these things coming from?

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How do they live here? Um,

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and, you know, walking around, it's like, you know, there's,

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it's the rivers, right?

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The rivers are corridors.

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They're, they're moving along and inhabiting the city

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because they have access to water vegetation.

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There's a natural landscape in the middle

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of the city, and it's neglected.

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And, you know, people aren't, it doesn't occur to us

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to value these empty spaces

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or these vacant spaces.

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Um, even though they, they have value both for us as humans.

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Um, they have some recreational value,

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but just value is open space,

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but also biological ecological value.

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There are places where plants

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and animals are, I don't wanna say necessarily thriving,

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but figuring out how to exist

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and how to exist as this era of climate change.

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How to exist in the Anthropocene, how to figure out how to

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mitigate all the things that humans throw at 'em,

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and some of the most neglected landscapes we can think of.

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And I thought, you know, maybe there's something here.

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Um, and so I,

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around the same time I attended a conference,

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the international, conference,

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international Congress on, landscape ecology.

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And they had all these sessions on urban ecology.

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And I thought, this is something I've,

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I've never really heard before, urban ecology.

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And they, they started talking about novel ecosystems,

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and there's, and I just got really intrigued.

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So I began looking at

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Rivers, not just in my city,

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but then different cities I would visit.

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And I just went straight to the river of San Antonio,

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in South PLA Denver or the Boise River.

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Every place I went to, over course of a couple years, I'd go

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and check out that urban river

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and it then start to talk to people

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and meet people that were working on, on these urban river.

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Again, the prob the problem is with the terminology

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restoration, rewilding, re naturalization,

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there's all these terms of thought.

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This is, this is a, this is a great story.

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This is a story that we should, we should start to, to tell

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and highlight in the sort of age

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where we're talking about all the,

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all the catastrophes that we're faced with.

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I'm afraid I'm kind of playing a little loose with the term,

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because I don't, for urban ecosystems,

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I don't like the term restoration implies

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that you're going back to a, a previous state.

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Those previous states are non-existent.

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They've, you know, especially with rivers,

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they've been dam you put a dam on the river

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unless you take out the dam,

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which an urban rivers isn't really happening.

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You know, you've dredged it, you've channelized it.

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The whole hydrology has changed.

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It's, restoration isn't really the right word.

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We talk about re naturalizing.

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That's kind of an awkward fa phrase.

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It doesn't really have a, I think

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what I like about Rewilding is it has a,

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it implies there's a future there.

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There's a re-imagining that occurs.

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It's not that,

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and also what I, my personal preference for that term is

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that it implies finding a state where

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nature is an active agent.

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That it's not necessarily a state where,

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we have a domesticated landscape, that it's one

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that has its own, like a novel ecosystem, right?

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Is an ecosystem that has been heavily degraded

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or changed by humans,

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but it has its own inherent structure,

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its own sort of progress.

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It's its own ecology, its own suite of, of species

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that are doing their own things without human manipulation.

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And I think that's one of the things

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that we lose when we think about, urban environments

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and designed ecosystems of parks, et cetera.

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They require a lot of human manipulation

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to maintain themselves.

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And Rewilding implies that,

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that the ecosystems themselves have a degree of autonomy

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and, self-regulation

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and resilience that you don't find like in a naturalized,

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landscape.

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Most of the research was pouring

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through the scientific literature on novel ecosystems.

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'cause that seemed to be sort of the key point that,

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that the idea

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of the book turns on is we have these ecosystems

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that are in the cities, these rivers,

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and by all definition, they meet the criteria

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of novel ecosystems.

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Ecosystems that have, again, been heavily manipulated,

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but are sort of on their own trajectory.

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Um, so a lot of it was pouring into that.

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Certainly in the US

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and especially in the American West, these are places

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that have kind of been neglected.

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They, and by their neglect,

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it's almost been a benign neglect.

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Um, you know, they've been sewers, they've been places

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where people dump trash and,

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but at the same time, they're not built, not built over.

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Um, some of the ones on the east coast now we're,

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we're seeing, starting to see the daylighting as,

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as an example, where cities are ripping up pavement

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to bring the rivers back that are flowing under buildings,

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which is kind of an exciting prospect.

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But by and large, it's, you know, most cities,

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especially in the American West, were built around rivers.

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But then, yeah, sometime in the mid 20th century, they just

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forgot about 'em.

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And, you know,

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it didn't become a place other than a sewer.

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And then we have the, the 1972 Clean Water Act

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that required every waterway in the United States

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to be drinkable and or swimmable and fishable.

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That goal has not yet been met.

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It's a pretty, high standard for every single

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waterway to, to meet that.

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Um, but it did have that legislative impact of,

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requiring cities to do something.

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And so there began, you know, over the last six 50 years

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to begin these massive cleanups.

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And as those cleanups were pro, were progressing,

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people began to ask themselves, what do these rivers mean?

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Why are they important? Do they have economic value?

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Um, some cities, for example, one

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of the chapters is about the Boise River

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and how Boise completely reconfigured their identity.

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The city's identity became integrated into the river.

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The river was the city's place,

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and it became a place of pride

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and a place of, of this is what draws people here.

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This is what draws Hewlett Packard

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and Boise is the, is basically another Silicon Valley.

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Why? Because of the river and

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because of the river's, people's ability to walk out

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of their office buildings and go fly fishing at lunch.

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Um, and we see that happening over and over and over again.

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Um, and so they become things

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that are valued by humans for their access to nature

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and to na nature recreation.

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But then they also become great ecological corridors

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for wildlife, plants, animals, et cetera,

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to move through the cities.

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Um, and they've sort of, it's been almost by accident.

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I think that's, that's more from sort of my

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desire to, to construct these, the overall whole

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of the book rather than the individual chapters.

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My hope is that the individual chapters illustrate different

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ways in which, we can

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address the Anthropocene, not

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as a hand wring, like, my gosh,

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look at all the terrible things we've done to the planet,

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but more as an opportunity.

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The, the Anthropocene.

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We have to accept

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that humans have changed the planetary systems.

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Um, whether it's, you know, climate, soils, hydrology,

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nutrient cycling, earth movement, we move more earth

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around than any other critter that's been alive.

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Um, you know, the, the biodiversity crisis,

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all these things that we've created, this new era

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that are going to be with us for hundreds,

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possibly thousands of years, that

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it also suggests that there is a way

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of rethinking how we as humans

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participate in the natural world.

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We're no longer separate from it if we, we sort

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of acknowledge that we've had this huge impact.

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Then it also implies that there is a,

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an, that humans and the natural world are inherently

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and intimately connected, that what we do

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to the natural world has longstanding impacts,

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and those impacts come back to us.

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And so if we begin to think

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of ways in which we can create habitats,

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and again, I'm so for focusing on urban environments, right?

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Cities, that if we can create habitats in cities

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that are conducive to plants and animals

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and other organisms, they're also conducive

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to human wellbeing.

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You know, we have all these different studies that show

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that people need to see green.

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You know, they have green and hospitals.

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We need to see plants.

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We need to, we need to experience nature.

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We need to, we need, I mean, we need to get soil into our

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digestive system for it to work well, you know, we are,

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we are an organism of hundreds of different other organisms.

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And that rather than sort

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of separating ourselves from the natural world as we kind

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of done for well hundreds

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or even several thousand years, that there's humans

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as the paragon and then na nature's out there somewhere

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that the Anthropocene per up provides us

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with the opportunity to say, Hey, we're one in the same.

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And that we need to create conditions,

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humans being incredible creative, impulse.

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We need to create the conditions that are good

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for biodiversity, that can enhance biodiversity

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and can provide social

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and economic wellbeing for humans as well.

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Um, you know, we, we have the capacity to do that.

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Um, you know, I look at some of, some of the rivers

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that I've looked at, like, you know, one

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of the chapters on the Spokane River, one of the,

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I look at this pond

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and the pond has more biodiversity now

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as a human created ecosystem

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that it ever didn't in historical condition,

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which was basically just a backwater of, of cobble.

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Um, and now it's like this thriving wetland.

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So there is the capacity to do that.

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Um, and I think that there's a opportunity there to,

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to rise to that occasion.

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I think that's why I wanted to focus on cities

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and urban environments that have already been

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so badly damaged

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and degraded that it provides us with an opportunity to

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allow for things to find their own way.

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In other words, yeah, we need more wilderness

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and national parks hands down.

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That's, I, I want a separate,

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and I guess I think that's going back to that critique.

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It's like that's a separate issue.

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Those things are important.

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We acknowledge those are important, we want more of them.

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Yes. But when we see the changes we're

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making so dramatically and so drastically to the climate

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and other planetary systems, nature needs to figure out

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how to adapt to humans.

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And we're better to do that in a place that is

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pretty messed up ecologically.

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And this is sort of where I get the idea of like, well,

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our exotic species really that bad.

14:38.665 --> 14:39.685
You know, we don't want to have

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that argument in a wilderness area in National Park,

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but I think we can have that discussion in a city,

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for example, we have a lot of Russian olive and,

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and nap weed are both invasive species.

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Um, they're great for pollinators, right?

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We see the decline of bee populations.

14:58.955 --> 15:00.885
Well, maybe we need more plants

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and more pollinators that are figuring out how to use those

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exotic species, non-native species

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to help the native species.

15:11.865 --> 15:13.485
Um, surrogate species.

15:14.185 --> 15:16.125
Um, islands are a great example of this.

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I think there's, a lot of work done on in Puerto Rico

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where it's in Hawaii, where there's just massive changes

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that have happened and the new species have come in,

15:28.225 --> 15:32.245
can actually act as surrogates for the native species so

15:32.245 --> 15:34.165
that we're creating these ecosystems.

15:34.165 --> 15:36.245
This is why the idea of wilding rewilding

15:36.665 --> 15:37.685
to me is so important.

15:37.755 --> 15:41.205
It's like letting nature figure it out.

15:41.235 --> 15:44.205
It's our own hubris that we need to step us back from.

15:44.985 --> 15:47.925
And where that hubris is protecting nature

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as a separate entity from us,

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or having a designed human contained, manufactured

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nature, that I think it's really important for us

15:59.785 --> 16:01.885
to just step back

16:02.305 --> 16:06.675
and let nature show us the way.

"Urban Ecology: Finding Life and Value Amidst Decay"

00:00:00 - Kind of moved from a more rural, environment where I experienced the natural world in a little more typical setting. Like, you know, it felt more wild or more, when we think about nature more typical and into a, a city, Spokane, Washington, which is very industrial. It's, got a lot of infrastructure and it's a decaying city. It's, you know, post-industrial, if you wanna use that term. there's a lot of sort of infrastructure that's collapsing, a lot of vacant lots, a lot
00:00:46 - And, I was struck by how many animals inhabited the city and that I would see deer and moose and raccoons and turkeys and just an abundance of wildlife in, in, in the middle of a city. And I was like, where, where are these things coming from? How do they live here? and, you know, walking around, it's like, you know, there's, it's the rivers, right? The rivers are corridors. They're, they're moving along and inhabiting the city
00:01:28 - There's a natural landscape in the middle of the city, and it's neglected. And, you know, people aren't, it doesn't occur to us to value these empty spaces or these vacant spaces. even though they, they have value both for us as humans. they have some recreational value, but just value is open space, but also biological ecological value. There are places where plants and animals are, I don't wanna say necessarily thriving, but figuring out how to exist
00:02:10 - How to exist in the Anthropocene, how to figure out how to mitigate all the things that humans throw at 'em, and some of the most neglected landscapes we can think of. And I thought, you know, maybe there's something here. and so I, around the same time I attended a conference, the international, conference, international Congress on, landscape ecology. And they had all these sessions on urban ecology. And I thought, this is something I've, I've never really heard before, urban ecology.
00:02:52 - and there's, and I just got really intrigued. So I began looking at Rivers, not just in my city, but then different cities I would visit. And I just went straight to the river of San Antonio, in South PLA Denver or the Boise River. Every place I went to, over course of a couple years, I'd go and check out that urban river and it then start to talk to people and meet people that were working on, on these urban river. Again, the prob the problem is with the terminology
00:03:32 - there's all these terms of thought. This is, this is a, this is a great story. This is a story that we should, we should start to, to tell and highlight in the sort of age where we're talking about all the, all the catastrophes that we're faced with. I'm afraid I'm kind of playing a little loose with the term, because I don't, for urban ecosystems, I don't like the term restoration implies that you're going back to a, a previous state. Those previous states are non-existent. They've, you know, especially with rivers, they've been dam you put a dam on the river unless you take out the dam,

"Rewilding Urban Ecosystems: Rethinking Restoration in the Anthropocene"

00:04:14 - You know, you've dredged it, you've channelized it. The whole hydrology has changed. It's, restoration isn't really the right word. We talk about re naturalizing. That's kind of an awkward fa phrase. It doesn't really have a, I think what I like about Rewilding is it has a, it implies there's a future there. There's a re-imagining that occurs. It's not that, and also what I, my personal preference for that term is that it implies finding a state where
00:04:55 - That it's not necessarily a state where, we have a domesticated landscape, that it's one that has its own, like a novel ecosystem, right? Is an ecosystem that has been heavily degraded or changed by humans, but it has its own inherent structure, its own sort of progress. It's its own ecology, its own suite of, of species that are doing their own things without human manipulation.
00:05:33 - that we lose when we think about, urban environments and designed ecosystems of parks, et cetera. They require a lot of human manipulation to maintain themselves. And Rewilding implies that, that the ecosystems themselves have a degree of autonomy and, self-regulation and resilience that you don't find like in a naturalized, landscape. Most of the research was pouring through the scientific literature on novel ecosystems. 'cause that seemed to be sort of the key point that,
00:06:17 - of the book turns on is we have these ecosystems that are in the cities, these rivers, and by all definition, they meet the criteria of novel ecosystems. Ecosystems that have, again, been heavily manipulated, but are sort of on their own trajectory. so a lot of it was pouring into that. Certainly in the US and especially in the American West, these are places that have kind of been neglected. They, and by their neglect, it's almost been a benign neglect. you know, they've been sewers, they've been places where people dump trash and,
00:07:02 - some of the ones on the east coast now we're, we're seeing, starting to see the daylighting as, as an example, where cities are ripping up pavement to bring the rivers back that are flowing under buildings, which is kind of an exciting prospect. But by and large, it's, you know, most cities, especially in the American West, were built around rivers. But then, yeah, sometime in the mid 20th century, they just forgot about 'em. And, you know, it didn't become a place other than a sewer. And then we have the, the 1972 Clean Water Act that required every waterway in the United States
00:07:48 - That goal has not yet been met. It's a pretty, high standard for every single waterway to, to meet that. but it did have that legislative impact of, requiring cities to do something. And so there began, you know, over the last six 50 years to begin these massive cleanups. And as those cleanups were pro, were progressing, people began to ask themselves, what do these rivers mean? Why are they important? Do they have economic value?

"Reimagining Urban Identity: The Role of Rivers in Human and Ecological Connection"

00:08:25 - of the chapters is about the Boise River and how Boise completely reconfigured their identity. The city's identity became integrated into the river. The river was the city's place, and it became a place of pride and a place of, of this is what draws people here. This is what draws Hewlett Packard and Boise is the, is basically another Silicon Valley. Why? Because of the river and because of the river's, people's ability to walk out of their office buildings and go fly fishing at lunch. and we see that happening over and over and over again.
00:09:08 - that are valued by humans for their access to nature and to na nature recreation. But then they also become great ecological corridors for wildlife, plants, animals, et cetera, to move through the cities. and they've sort of, it's been almost by accident. I think that's, that's more from sort of my desire to, to construct these, the overall whole of the book rather than the individual chapters. My hope is that the individual chapters illustrate different
00:09:49 - address the Anthropocene, not as a hand wring, like, my gosh, look at all the terrible things we've done to the planet, but more as an opportunity. The, the Anthropocene. We have to accept that humans have changed the planetary systems. whether it's, you know, climate, soils, hydrology, nutrient cycling, earth movement, we move more earth around than any other critter that's been alive. you know, the, the biodiversity crisis, all these things that we've created, this new era
00:10:32 - possibly thousands of years, that it also suggests that there is a way of rethinking how we as humans participate in the natural world. We're no longer separate from it if we, we sort of acknowledge that we've had this huge impact. Then it also implies that there is a, an, that humans and the natural world are inherently and intimately connected, that what we do to the natural world has longstanding impacts,
00:11:13 - And so if we begin to think of ways in which we can create habitats, and again, I'm so for focusing on urban environments, right? Cities, that if we can create habitats in cities that are conducive to plants and animals and other organisms, they're also conducive to human wellbeing. You know, we have all these different studies that show that people need to see green. You know, they have green and hospitals. We need to see plants. We need to, we need to experience nature. We need to, we need, I mean, we need to get soil into our
00:11:56 - we are an organism of hundreds of different other organisms. And that rather than sort of separating ourselves from the natural world as we kind of done for well hundreds or even several thousand years, that there's humans as the paragon and then na nature's out there somewhere that the Anthropocene per up provides us with the opportunity to say, Hey, we're one in the same. And that we need to create conditions, humans being incredible creative, impulse.

"Rewilding Urban Ecosystems: Embracing Nature's Resilience in Degraded Environments"

00:12:37 - for biodiversity, that can enhance biodiversity and can provide social and economic wellbeing for humans as well. you know, we, we have the capacity to do that. you know, I look at some of, some of the rivers that I've looked at, like, you know, one of the chapters on the Spokane River, one of the, I look at this pond and the pond has more biodiversity now as a human created ecosystem that it ever didn't in historical condition, which was basically just a backwater of, of cobble.
00:13:19 - So there is the capacity to do that. and I think that there's a opportunity there to, to rise to that occasion. I think that's why I wanted to focus on cities and urban environments that have already been so badly damaged and degraded that it provides us with an opportunity to allow for things to find their own way. In other words, yeah, we need more wilderness and national parks hands down.
00:13:58 - and I guess I think that's going back to that critique. It's like that's a separate issue. Those things are important. We acknowledge those are important, we want more of them. Yes. But when we see the changes we're making so dramatically and so drastically to the climate and other planetary systems, nature needs to figure out how to adapt to humans. And we're better to do that in a place that is pretty messed up ecologically. And this is sort of where I get the idea of like, well, our exotic species really that bad.
00:14:39 - that argument in a wilderness area in National Park, but I think we can have that discussion in a city, for example, we have a lot of Russian olive and, and nap weed are both invasive species. they're great for pollinators, right? We see the decline of bee populations. Well, maybe we need more plants and more pollinators that are figuring out how to use those exotic species, non-native species to help the native species. surrogate species. islands are a great example of this. I think there's, a lot of work done on in Puerto Rico
00:15:23 - that have happened and the new species have come in, can actually act as surrogates for the native species so that we're creating these ecosystems. This is why the idea of wilding rewilding to me is so important. It's like letting nature figure it out. It's our own hubris that we need to step us back from. And where that hubris is protecting nature as a separate entity from us, or having a designed human contained, manufactured nature, that I think it's really important for us
00:16:02 - and let nature show us the way.

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