#27 Vicki Hird: Rebugging the Planet
Muse Ecology
Bugs are foundational to life on Earth, and their numbers are plummeting due to human activity. In this conversation with Vicki Hird, author of Rebugging the Planet, we explore the wonders of bugs and how we can restore our relationship with them. You can find more information about rebugging, and purchase the book, at . Here's the two papers referenced in Vicki's book that came up in our discussion, on the potential effects of new higher frequency radiation on invertebrates: Arno Thielens et al., Exposure of Insects to Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Fields from 2 to 120 GHz, Science...
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#26 Addressing the Other Leg of Climate Change, 2nd Panel
Muse Ecology
"Water begets water, soil is the womb, and vegetation is the midwife." -Prof. Millan M. Millan This last episode, for now, in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, was a great panel conversation with 6 people from 3 different organizations, each working from distinct approaches to restore weather and climate through restoring natural processes. It was a lovely example of the diversity of backgrounds that are beginning to come together around this idea. Juliette Kool and Ties van der Hoeven, Maya Dutta and Jim Laurie, Marcel de Berg and Pieter-Paul de Kluvier, Here...
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#25 Addressing the Other Leg of Climate Change, 1st Panel
Muse Ecology
The understanding that we can restore weather and climate systems by protecting and restoring the living surface of the Earth is an idea whose time has come. In these final two episodes in this Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, we'll hear discussions of how this understanding is beginning to guide our response to climate change, from grassroots to international levels.
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#24 Renewables and Accountability: A Panel Discussion
Muse Ecology
This episode is a diverse panel discussion on the implications of renewable energy supply chains on life, water, and local communities, and how we might address them.
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#23 Life and Lithium at Thacker Pass
Muse Ecology
In this episode in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, we hear diverse voices from the resistance to the proposed lithium mine at Thacker Pass in northern Nevada, on Paiute and Shoshone ancestral lands.
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#22 Judith Schwartz and Walter Jehne: Climate Change Narrative Shift
Muse Ecology
In this conversation with author Judith Schwartz and scientist Walter Jehne, we discuss the importance of the shift from seeing the Earth as a resource base to seeing ourselves as enmeshed in a web of life that both manages and depends on natural processes. In particular, we focus on how this perspective shift affects how we understand and are empowered to address anthropogenic climate change.
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#21 Paul Cereghino Part 2: Bioregional Restoration and Social Complexity
Muse Ecology
In this conversation with Paul Cereghino, we discuss some of the challenges of collaborating in groups and groups of groups to protect and restore the Earth, including such topics as the role of online interactions, the importance of place-based reality, benefits and pitfalls of systems like sociocracy, Covid complications, and much more.
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#20 Paul Cereghino Part 1: Ecosystem Guild and Restoration Camping
Muse Ecology
In this episode in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, we explore one of the great challenges on our way back to harmony: humans. Through the lens of his Ecosystem Guild and Restoration Camping project in western Washington State, Paul Cereghino and I discuss some of the interhuman and intergroup complexities of grassroots ecological restoration efforts.
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#19 The Mangrove Action Project
Muse Ecology
In this episode we continue the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series with Alfredo Quarto, co-founder and international program director of the Mangrove Action Project. In our conversation with Alfredo, we discuss the importance of mangrove ecologies, their devastation by the shrimp farming industry, and how the mangrove action project uses an approach called Community Based Ecological Mangrove Restoration to facilitate their natural regeneration.
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#18 Neal Spackman; The Business of Restoring the Earth
Muse Ecology
We continue the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series with Neal Spackman, ecological restoration designer, regenerative entrepreneur, and bold visionary. Previously in this series, we heard how agriculture and development having long been destroying ecology and hydrology, causing disruptions of weather and climate systems, and leading to the fall of empires. Neal is working to change that ancient dynamic, by restoring ecological function and hydrology to regenerate economies and rainfall patterns.
info_outlineIn this episode, the second of four in this series on the bison in the Great Plains, we visit the lands of the Oglala Lakota in the Black Hills of Western South Dakota, where we met with Mark Tilsen, cofounder of Tanka Bar. Tanka Bar, a company owned and operated by the Oglala Lakota of the Pine Ridge Reservation, created the first commercial bison meat and fruit bar based on one of their sacred foods, called wasna. The mission of Tanka Bar is to restore the Pine Ridge landscape and economy by bringing back the buffalo.
Before the interview with Mark, I also share a bit more history of the time of the buffalo slaughter. I feel it's useful to have some understanding of the creation of the wounds that Tanka Bar is working to help heal.
There's also a bonus episode that wove with the buffalo investigation in the Black Hills, that will be released days after this one. We'll look at historic and and current natural resource struggles in lands granted to the Oglala Lakota in 1868. It's much the same story as the extermination of the buffalo that we dive deeper into in this episode, but has enough non-buffalo complexities that I decided to give it it's own space in a bonus episode. It includes an interview with Cheryl Rowe of Dakota Rural Action.
You can find out more about Tanka Bar and the Tanka Fund at the following links:
You can find the album, Under a Buffalo Sun, containing John Trudell's Buffalo Wild poem, and another album of Mignon and Good Shield's entitled Soul-A-Mente.
You can find the New Food Economy article Mark mentions in the update interview here.
Michael DiGiorgio recorded the banjo-bird jams I'm using in the intro and ending. You can find his amazing nature art at https://www.mdigiorgio.com. Mike says that if you'd like to buy the album of his nature-banjo jams, you can find his email on his website and he can mail you a CD.