Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Kirk. There's Chuck Bryant. Whoa, And this is stuff you should have. You've been working on your Chewbacca friend. No, no, it did sound like Chewbacca, especially that last bit. Now, I haven't been working on at all. It's all natural talent. Never had a lesson, as Ferris Bueler said, do you remember Ferris Bueler. They came out fifty sixty years ago, back when we were cool. I was supposed to do that on the movie Crush, and then my guests couldn't make it, and so I have like this great document of notes prepared all about Ferris Spueler's sitting there going to waste. Oh you should just read them, read through them. On one of the notes, Yeah, Ferris Bueler sociopath or cool teenager? Would you come up with? Well? Udgment always has this sort of rant that, uh, Ferris's associopath. Upon looking back, M yeah, there's like, come on, man, there used to be like a whole blog for a little while about about that. They would like analyze film, like famous films like Top Gun. They basically pointed out how Maverick was like this terrible person who got his friend killed and felt like no, no responsibility for it and everything. People. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty eye opening. It's paradigm shifting, I guess you could say, and I think that's appropriate that we're talking about paradigm shifting blogs because there's a lot of paradigm shift involved it today's topic, and there's a lot of blogs too, it turns out about rewilding. Yeah, it's all over the place. Uh, it is, And we need to thank our old pal Julia Layton makes an appearance here for the first time in a while. Yeah, welcome back Lates helping us with this one. And um, I thought it was interesting because think you and I both I'm gonna go ahead and speak for you. I think we both agree that rewilding the concept of rewilding is pretty awesome. Pretty awesome, yes, But as evidence from even some of the stuff that Julia sent us, like there are some negative examples of like rewilding that didn't go well, but I would argue, like, that's not even rewilding, and calling it that is just hurts the cause. And then you sent me a thing that where a guy said, Hey, calling things that that aren't rewolding hurts the cause. Yeah. Yeah, I was like, I need to back chuck up today. I know he's thinking about something. I'm gonna send him something that backs it up. And I did. But rewilding, I guess we should just define so people are not angry at us for rolling that out twenty minutes in. But it is a term. When was it coined here? I've seen all over the place. Somebody claims eighty five. Another dude claims that he coined in nine two, but I think the first time it appeared in the scientific literature was some old hippie said that she coined it in sixty seven. Mm hmm, yeah, the same hippie that claimed to have coined will turn it up. Man. Uh. But here's the deal, and you know, we can get into the particulars, which we will, but generally, rewild ng is and its simplest form kind of returning nature back, turning it back over to nature to take care of itself, because, as Julia points out very aptly, like nature didn't need humans to come in and like all the things that you see human humans do for nature, it's because we had messed something up with nature. It's not because nature was like, oh, we need you to step in. Like if humans had never been around, nature would be just fine. Yeah. So the point of rewilding is to designate huge swaths of earth all over the earth, huge tracts of land. Yeah, to to basically remove ourselves from and just let nature do its thing, because we just we through everything up, even when we try not to, we screw everything up. We can overmanage, we can undermanage, we can mismanage. There are very few things that we properly manage. And that's kind of like what's given the idea, the concept of rewilding like such a like such great cachet, like in the ecological community, both the scientific part of it and also like this the popular part of it. It's it's saying like, well, then let's just get humans out of the out of the management business and let nature do its thing. I think it's wonderful idea, it is. And you know, it can uh, it can encompass you know, like plant growth and just kind of simple things like that, like where that things were once mowed down and mulched and like you know, quote unquote cared for by humans, letting that kind of run wild again all the way to the most extreme examples, which is something we touched on in the National Park episode that Julia brought up here was like reintroducing a carnivore to the scene that had long been gone, like the wolves of Yellowstone and letting them do their thing. And that's actually kind of a big part of one part of rewilding. Yeah, so you bring up something that you kind of reference what I sent you earlier about UM misusing the term like it does encompass all of those things. But the only reason rewilding encompasses all of those things because the scientific community is still trying to figure out exactly what rewilding is. They're trying to figure out the definition, they're trying to figure out what is not rewild ing UM. They're trying to figure out like what the best practices and best steps forward are for rewilding UM. And because they're still figuring it out, and because it's such a buzzword, anybody who's doing anything that has to do with restoration, whether it's like, you know, reintroducing some voles into a place where there's already voles um or you know, yeah, like you were saying, like adding like some kind of g asid raising the mower height in a park to let more more of like the groundcover flower. Like Currently that's technically rewilding, but really that's that's If you give it five more years, probably those things will not be considered rewilding, will have a much more coherent definition of it, and hopefully a lot more data to back up the claims that rewilding makes. Because the big problem with it is it's a really great idea that we just need to know more about. Uh we're jumping in feet first, and that that can be It could be dangerous, as we'll see, but I think more often than not it could just be a failure and it could lose popular support. It'll it'll make people think it just doesn't work if we do it the wrong way a bunch of times to start right, and there are some really bad examples for free wilding. Well again, I don't even like calling it rewilding because like one example that well you might as well talk a little bit about a bad example is uh South Georgia, not Georgia that we live in, but Georgia and Europe. There's the reindeer in South Georgia where there were whalers on this uh. I think it was on an island, and they're like, well, you know, we love to eat reindeer, and so we're just gonna put a bunch of reindeer on this kind of smallish island so we can hunt them as whalers and have something to eat. And it went terribly and you know, years later, I think they had to just go in and like slaughter five thousand reindeer. That's not rewilding, that's just that's a dumb idea, which is like bringing in an invasive species and plunking it down there. That's not rewolding at all. But it gets thrown in there as like there's a bad example of rewilding. It's like it's not rewilding, right, and it wasn't ever intended to be rewilding. It took place at the turn of the century, and I think South Georgia island is down by the Falklands if I remember correctly, like below South America. So they brought it in as like a like a food source because like these these Swedes or Norwegians were like, there's nothing down here that we've ever eaten before we need some reindeer in this place. And they managed it just fine, Like they hunted the reindeer and the reindeer apparently we're well checked or well managed. But then when they stopped hunting the reindeer and let nature take over, basically what we would do with rewilding, the reindeer ran wild, and uh, things just went out of hand really really quickly. So it was not an example of rewilding by anyone's definition, but it still serves as a cautionary tale about what can happen when you do something like just back out of the picture. That we do need to know more about what our role is to set up an ecosystem before we take our hands off of it, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, And also Julia points out, um again very aptly, that like when something like this hits the news, then you're going to have animal activists and environmentalists when they hear the word rewilding projects say we can't do that. That led to the death the slaughter of five thousand reindeer. Uh So it just gives it all a bad name. So hopefully we'll try and give it a better name. Yeah, because again I think it's a really great idea. We just need to know more about it. We need more science, everybody, So we talk about bio diversity. Yeah, I think we should, because, um, that's pretty much the basis of this whole thing, the whole idea behind rewilding, the whole reason it has so much supporters because it's become painfully clear that the damage that we've done to the Earth is altering ecosystems, and pretty much unfavorable ways. I don't think there's any way that we've damaged an ecosystem where we're like, oh, that actually worked out for the better, maybe for humans and conveniences, but yeah, but even still, now we've reached Yeah, maybe that was true like thirty forty years ago. Now we've reached the time where it's it's time to pay the piper. And now even for us, we're suffering the consequences of damaging and altering ecosystems so dramatically that they can no longer function. And the point behind rewilding is to re established biodiversity in large parts so that humans and other animals can survive on planet Earth in the next hundred years. Right, And then you know, when you look into the more I guess level headed descriptors of what rewilding can be and sort of the tenants of them, which we can get too later and full it's not hey, let's let's dump a bunch of mountain lions into Central Park. It's it's got to it has to work with humans as well. But as we'll see, there's there's a lot of places is where there are not humans and this is mainly what they're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, and then then in those places where there are some humans or whatever, it's like we'll just we'll get them out all the way. Yeah, but it has to work together. Like unfortunately, you know, like it or not, humans are part of the ecosystem now and it has to work for everyone. But right now humans are just making it work for them in many cases. Yeah. And then so even beyond also you raise a good point, even beyond also the the fact that it's got to work for us, that we can't just coexist with mountain lions in Central Park. Um. It it has to to work for us in the sense that like a lot of the places that are being like pointed to is like prime areas to be rewilded if you like, if you look over to the right a little bit. There's some like sheepherder. They're saying, Um, this is my land that I use my sheep to graze on, and sheep herds grazing is pretty much the antithesis of rewilding, So what are we going to do with that guy? So there's also one of the one of the things that they're figuring out with rewilding is how to evolve from a at least like um and equally involved the community or the people who are going to be most affected by this, if not from a bottom up. Everyone's saying do not do top down, don't don't figure this out in the city and then come and tell the sheep farmers what to do. Like, that's not going to work. I think I saw somebody say, especially in Scotland, that is not going to work. Yeah, and I was like, yeah, in a Scotland, I know that's true. Yeah. Oh boy, I had like this long string of Scottish obscenities. I was about ready to belt out and my worst accent earned brew. Um. So, as far as biodiversity goes, Julia put it away that I think it really kind of hits it on the nose it is. It's not just the quantity and variety of species and individuals. It's really the interactions within the ecosystem and how they all work together. That's what bio diversity is. And ecosystems and bio diversity, they're meant to fluctuate like things happen in nature naturally, and species may dwindle here and there when resources are a little more scarce, and sometimes they're not thriving like they should, but they're still built for that. What they're not built for is human triggered biodiversity loss. And this is what we've seen humans do over and over in time and time again, and that just makes ecosystems kind of crumble under pressure to deliver and then do their thing. Yeah, and there's just it's unequivocal that, um that we have are facing terrible a loss of biodiversity all over Earth. The Living Plant Index said that between nineteen seventy and two thousand and twelve, fifty eight percent of the world's fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals all disappeared, like just gone goodbye, all of those species. Yeah, so um like that when that happens, like you're saying these these The way that that that UM ecosystems have like evolved over time is that like they function as a as a net, as a web, as like a bunch of interconnected parts that create something greater as a whole, and then that whole works together with other similar holes to create something greater, and it keeps going on to this macro scale until you reach like planet level. So you're going from like you know, dormouse to planet level, all following basically the same path. And when you lose biodiversity, you're bound to lose species that are performing really important, really valuable functions that affect UM and support a bunch of other different kinds of species. So you lose those other species, but then you also lose what are called the services that that ecosystem provides, everything from preventing floods and erosion to preventing forest fires wildfires, um um speeding up the carbon sequestions sequestration, um speeding up oxygen production, like all these things that that the planet needs to live. We evolved on planet Earth, so we need those two and we've also, whether we realize it or not, built our economy taking those things for granted. UM and so fortunately the UM Office of Economic Development UM put together a paper that cited a hundred and twenty five to hundred and forty trillion dollars worth of these services are produced by Nature per year. They put a number on it, which, on its face it sounds like a lot of money, right. It is the global gross domestic product all of the money produced by all the goods and services produced on planet Earth in only equal eight five trillion. So on the high end, Nature produces services that are worth nearly twice of global GDP in a whole year. And so now you're starting to bring in the conservatives. They're like, okay, I hadn't consider that. Let's talk about that too. So there's there's basically no one who wouldn't benefit from a healthier, more bio diverse planet. And I feel like we've reached the point for a break. What do you think right after I say one quick soapboxy thing, it's sort of echoes back to what I pointed out in the Yellowstone episode. Is this this wonderful macro long view of the world that you embrace and I embrace. That's uh, that's the problem because in the short term, people like sure but what about this one thing I can do? Now? What about all this crypto I can mind today? Uh? Nuts getting into all that. Good lord, but um, people need to take a longer view of things, and I think humans are just unfortunately want to look at the the five bucks right in front of their face that they can make, you know, chuck. It feels a lot like we're waking up, you and me, Yes, But I think I think that's a big point. I think you and I are very mainstream people, and I think we're waking up even more than we had before. And I think that that's usually reflective of people in general. I think that people are starting to wake up more as a group, as a collective, and you just see so much less like greenwashing and PRBs, like people don't buy it any more. People. I think people are starting to understand on the whole it's how important this is. I think younger generations continually do that through through time, and it's uh, it's happening. So that's a good thing. And I agree, g Z, we should we should take that break. Go gen Z and whatever follows you. I don't even know what my daughter is. I don't either. I'm not sure if they've named that generation yet, because right now it's Generation very selfish, but that's very young six years old. Yeah, generation temper tantrum. She's not much of a tantrumber. But anyway, uh, let's take that break and we'll be right back. Okay, Hey, before we get going, can I say one quick thing, and this is I am always very sad when I see that, like Jogger in California, Southern California has attacked in Mall by mountain lion, Like that is a tragedy for that family. Um, but my favorite thing is when those stories end with and that's what happened, and that's too bad, and that's a mountain lion doing what a mountain lion does and not and they hunted it down and killed it. Yeah yeah, you know. Yeah, speaking of releasing mountainins into Central Park, which I doubt if they were over there anyway, Well, I think that's that's one of the big tenants of rewild ng is is like there there's a push that of converting. So I was talking about those sheep sheep herders in Scotland and what are they gonna do? Well, some people say, well, you can actually there's stuff called nature based economies, and you can change what you do to make money. UM, if you are getting into rewilding your land, you could start basically holding safari's and that's UM. That's that. That illustrates two things. One, there's a lot of money to be made. I've seen, UM, I've seen that some farmers have reported making as much, if not more than they did farming that they do now that they're doing like eco tourism on their old on their land that's been rewild And it's interesting sure. But but then also it also shows you the role of humans in this like we're meant to be like guided on a tour in a very like um arranged visit to these areas. It's not like this area is wild, just do whatever you want in it. It's extremely well managed. But what you're managing in this case is the humans, not the wildlife, not the floora of the fall on it. You're keeping people out, no hunting, no farming, no grazing your livestock, no just like going camping there. I'm not sure about that part, but I get the impression that humans are meant to just be kept out of it rather than the animal populations are are managed, it's the humans that are Yeah. I think I don't know how wilders feel about it, but as a camper, I think if you do it right, then you shouldn't be harming the ecosystems that you're in. But someone might argue that like, hey, man, just setting a tent up like on the ground harms the ground. Yeah. I mean I guess if you zoom in far enough with a microscope you could probably back that up. Yeah. Like I crushed a worm with my big body, so then I slept in a hammock. And what are you going to give that worms family? Now? Uh? A small sum of money there, maybe some dirt. They would probably prefer dirt, especially if it was really good dirt, soil or soil from my body. Yep. Just take off your clothes and roll on the ground and say I'm sorry worm. And then they said, well, and he just killed two more of us. Uh. Let's humans have to remove themselves from the wilderness. Let's move on, please. Uh. We should talk about the three CS because this was sort of an early descriptor on rewilding, which is cores, corridors, and carnivores, and the idea is that. And this has a lot to do with like reintroducing wolves the Yellowstone carnivores. Having an apex predator in an area is awesome and super healthy for that area. Uh. They control and they regulate that food chain like a champ. And they need a lot of room though, and so uh it's called a core reserve like their area. If they're gonna thrive a lot, and when that core reserve shrinks, then all of a sudden they're isolated. That's gonna harm them. And then that's gonna have that trickle down effect that we talk a lot about. Uh. Here on planet Earth, now, there are a lot of cores that are too small. So the ideas, all right, why don't we connect these cores with corridors to allow them to keep moving? And this can look anything like I sit you that one thing I know that we've talked about these before. It's the coolest thing when they make like a a land bridge for animals to cross a highway without getting killed or go under like an overpass or an underpass like that could be a corridor at its most sort of fundamental or like literally sort of rejoining land that was not joined before because of human interaction. Yeah, there's a big there's a big push for that because yeah, there's plenty of cores around, but if they're disconnected, then there's not going to be enough um to support like a healthy ecosystem, and those like apex predators are going to get stressed and it's going to stress out the whole ecosystem. They don't have anywhere to go. But if you connect two small ones through a corridor, all of a sudden they can kind of go back and forth and you know, the one, this one small place regenerates in their absence, and then they go to the other one, and then they go back to the first one, and the second one regenerates while they're gone like that. That's a really great idea because it also kind of shows that spirit of like not giving ups, like, oh, the cores are so small, what are we gonna do? I guess nothing. It's like no, you connect the course and then you can also look at it an even bigger scale, like a good example of a core. The ideal version of a core, or close to it, is an American National park, Like you can't do anything in the national park, but basically go in camp and and visit and that's about it, right. Um the other national parks I was reading about ones in in England at least like you can hunt their managed for like grouse hunting and deer hunting, and like they're not like American national parks. So um, the American version is a really great example of kind of what we're talking about re wilding. And then imagine if you connected Yellowstone to Yosemite with a wildlife corridor, right, is that even possible? Well, yeah, they're on the same continent so effectively as possible. Yeah, you're gonna have to move some some powerful landowners like Ted Turner. He's probably not going to give up his land willingly, although I don't know maybe he will. Um, there there has to be like a shift in how people view the importance of wilderness and nature and that's kind of part and parcel with the concept every wilding too. Yeah, and a lot of this research that we looked at comes from the UK and we'll talk about that more later. But um, it comes down to like a very smack I'm sorry, a micro effort of going and convincing one landowner at a time almost to do stuff like this, and they're having some successes in the uplands of of the UK where that you know, kind of one at a time, some landowners are agreeing like all right, this is what I can I'll agree to do and for the good of everybody. Yeah, it's kind of cool, but it is a you know, it's a pretty slow process. Like you're not gonna see rewild ing on on the evening news every night. It's a pretty I don't know about small movement, but it's it's not mainstream, I don't think in the in the consciousness no, but in the ecological community it's like basically being touted as the future of ecology. So hot, so um. The three c's, especially with the carnivores featured, that's um, that's basically descriptive of one of the two general umbrella categories for rewilding, and that would be trophic rewilding, which will talk a little more about. But let's talk about passive, real wild and kind of the other end of the spectrum. Yeah, I mean this is kind of uh taking a good look at where, um, where you should do this, Like where to start, like what what's a good area to even try this and where you can kind of go unchecked and where it will benefit people as well as the ecosystems around there. But the two main goals of the passive rewilding are too and this is something humans do a lot. Like there's a lot of wildlife protection going on. So the first part of passive rewilding is kind of that is letting wildlife rebound and kind of get back, you know, get its its land legs back under itself. Uh. And that means like no hunting and stuff like that or hunting restrictions. Uh, and then letting that land grow back together like you talked about. So animals can you know, go where they once could go, like just increasing their territories and just saying here, nature, uh, do what you will with yourself. And that sounds super dirty. We won't look we're walking away. We had new idea nature would do that, right, oh god. So um with passive rewilding, there's there's they're trying to figure out what the initial steps are because in a lot of these areas we've done a lot, it's just kind of visible the city slickers like you and me. Um to alter the ecosystem the landscape, so you know, we would have to go in and like remove dams that we've built there. Um, we would have to fill in canals, UM, just anything anyway that we've altered or put a human touch on the landscape. Um, we would need to basically undo before we left, or else they would still be an altered ecosystem that could be really problematic. UM. So if we just basically kind of restore it then and then we walk away, the idea is that it will take care of itself faster. But like you're saying, this is not a it's not a fast process. Like some of these projects that are being proposed to have timelines of a couple of hundred years before they reach where they're supposed to be. It's hard. It is, it is, But again I think it's getting easier and easier there. And part of the PASSI rewilding is what I was talking about in the uplands of England. Uh. That's where they're kind of going one farmer at a time and saying, hey, you know of England's drinking water comes from these uplands, and you know, I think when you start describing uh without maybe I think you can go too far and scare people in the other direction with the doom and gloom. But if you very just sort of calmly lay out some facts and figures, I think that can wait people at sometimes. Yes, and the UK super into this in no small part because of an ecologist Harry and Megan named George mombiatt. I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly. He wrote a book in two thirteen called Feral that basically called for rewilding and he really popularized it over there and since then it's really started to kind of take off and they have really lofty goals. Um, they have a goal of rewilding five of England's land. I believe it. It's just coming up quick and five percent. It's a lot. It's about out a million acres and they put in perspective there like there's a quarter of that is in like football fields in England. So really is that that much? Like if you're daunted by that idea, um, And but that's still in eight years, converting it to to to a rewilded state or starting to is pretty ambitious. Yeah. I think, Um, you sent me that one thing that was really cool where they sort of analyze, and this is from a UK side, I think, where they analyze like someone who might poop poo. This say is do we even have the space to do this kind of thing, Like, you know, we can't turn our cities over again to the to the mountain lions and just let everything grow wild. And that's not what they're talking about, but that one website, I can't remember which one it was, but talking about if you could traverse the entire UK in one day, yeah, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That of the land that you would find you would not see men, people or buildings. You would only spend about an hour and forty five minutes of that twenty four hours traversing all of the UK, moving through urban spaces. And some of those urban spaces even have green spaces, obviously not rewilded, but green space nonetheless. And of the population of the UK lives on six percent of the land mass, so in other words, there is a lot of land out there to be rewilded. That doesn't mean, you know, throwing wild animals in the middle of the city, right, It's the opposite throwing the humans out of the wilderness. Exactly. You go over there and build your city life where you don't breathe fresh air and you don't go outside and things like that. Well, some of the more radical proposals for rewild ng is like giving over you know, like nine tenths of the United States to wilderness and basically just pointing out, like how many more people you can pack into the urban centers of like the East Coast and the US coast and just like leave the middle alone as wilderness. I haven't seen that supported by many people. I think probably the guy who keeps promoting that, keeps getting told to be quiet by the other ecologists, is going to scare off the normals. You know, American suburbs are very big and important, right, but it does it does really point out to like, you know, there's there's people out there, and we have there we have to take their interests into consideration. And one of the things that I kept seeing pointed out in the UK is apparently after Brexit, the farm subsidies for farms that that could not support themselves through their own production, um like like it is in the US, and I'm sure Australia too, they were heavily subsidized by the government to make up that that that gap, and then after Brexit, apparently those things are beginning slash left and right, and so people have been saying, Okay, well, if we're not going to be giving them farm subsidies, what if we change the purpose of the subsidies from you know, farming, to you wilding land instead. If these farms aren't producing that well anyway, and we can still produce enough food, that's a very important point without these farms, and in fact, some of these farms would actually be way more valuable as untouched wilderness. Um, then maybe it would make sense to take that money and converted into that instead. And then you also have you've also taken care of the person problem because they're still being supported like they need to be. But at the same time, they also don't have to move. They just can't graze their sheep anymore. Just don't graze sheep anymore, and you're gonna make the same amount of money. And you can take tourists on wilderness safari's as a side gig. And I just pictured groundskeeper Willie staring us down from yeah yeah, and then getting on this tractor that pulls us along and point out the red deer just hopping all over the place on his rewilded land. Or he could just give us the one of the great groundskeeper Willie lines of all time from one of the uh Halloween episodes when he was Freddy Krueger. Do you remember that one? Yeah, of course, and I'm done with you. They're gonna need to come postmortem. So great, that's a good one, one of my favorite lines. Um. So, a lot of stuff we were just talking about falls under the pass of rewilding. Uh, we've hit on trophic rewilding. But within that, they're like, it kind of depends on how hardcore of an environmentalist you're talking to. There's something called plist to scene rewilding where they're like, hey, human disturbance started at the last ice age, and that should be our goal is to kind of like introduce if not uh wooly mammoth's like maybe a descendant of the wooly mammoth because they're not around anymore. And so you get some sort of other people. I mean, I don't know about how he did the arguments get but other people are like, pliest, the scene is really too uh we should really kind of move from that, like forward from there and think more along lines of the Wolves of Yellowstone than these huge megafauna. Right, So some people say, no, the mega faun are are important. Yeah, And the people who are proponents of places scene rewilding um say that it's um. The reason that they've they've chosen that point is because they're they're suggesting that, like, if we go that far back, we could probably defend ourselves in the planet against climate change that much more quickly or more robustly, I guess is a better way to say. It's not like they're just doing it out of sentimentality, Like there's a there's an intellectual bent to it, like and that is that we basically need to go that far back to counteract the damage we've done in the last like two years senti mentality. You know. So there's a problem with palist to scene rewilding the chuck and that is a lot of those animals are extinct, Yeah, like the William emmoth. Yeah. Okay, so what are you gonna do if you want to recreate the place to see on the American Midwest. Let's say every state in the Midwest agrees to move eastward or westward, and they're giving up all of their land over to rewilding, and we've all agreed it was placed to see rewilding. Lord, are we going to rewild it with if there's no such thing as a woolly mammoth? Maybe, but elephants have evolved in the last ten and twelve thousand years to um to to live around equatorial Africa, if I'm not mistaken, So are they going to do well in Kansas? And then the same thing for the saber tooth tiger or actually, I don't think they call him anymore. I think it's a sabre tooth cat. Maybe. Um all of their families totally extinct. There's no descendants of the saber tooth cats that are alive today. So what are we gonna do? Put mountain lions out there. We're gonna put actual tigers out there, are regular like African lions, and are we're gonna move them over to Kansas? And then the larger problem, Chuck, The larger problem is this, those animals, as big and scary and ferocious as they are, are kind of pew compared to the actual Pleistocene megafauna, like a sabretooth cat, And it's not clear that they would be up to the task of managing enormous ecosystems like that, just because of their smaller size. Yeah. So there's a lot of problems with pleistocene wilding and bring back the megaladon for the oceans. Yeah. Uh no, there are a lot of problems with that. Uh. And you're sort of talking about you mentioned the top down control, uh, and that is that theory that these you know, if you bring in an apex predator, it can really uh, it can be a really good thing. That the cascade of interactions that it can trigger is can be vast. But you know, that's that's trophic rewilding. It worked out pretty well for the wolves and Yellowstone, uh, and the beavers that followed, and the birds and the fish that followed because of the beaver. So it's a it's it's always a sternling example that people bring up. Yeah, So just to button that up, you've got passive rewilding, which is basically like just trying to get rid of your damns and bridges and stuff and then leave. And then the trophic rewilding is where you're selectively putting back animals that used to play a role in that ecosystem or are related to ones that used to play a role, right and then um, with a focus on those apex predators because they have so much control over the ecosystems that they live in, and that that one is way more involved and needs way more thought before we start doing that. Yeah, should we take a break. Yeah, alright, we're gonna will gonna jeez, we're gonna take our final break, and um, we'll talk about some of the issues with rewilding and some of the examples and some of the tenants. How about that. That sounds great? So earlier on we talked about one bad example of what I don't even think is rewilding with those reindeer uh in South Georgia. Uh. There are other examples. There was one. UM. Because you know, people will point to stats people to say this isn't a good idea. We'll say that, hey, the failure rate for introductions and reintroduction introductions and nature is higher than se and we don't even really have a lot of data if this works out anyway, and sent pretty high. And look at the um look about what Look at what happened in Argentina in the nineteen forties when they brought these Canadian beavers in and they ran wild and destroyed the forest. People who know what they're talking about was say, that's an invasive species, and when the beaver and yellowstone eat the willow tree, the willow tree grows back. When they eat these beech trees here in Argentina, they don't grow back, So you just have a wasteland. It's not dropping invasive species down into another place where they were never supposed to be to begin with. Yeah, it's supposed to be a little more thought out than that. That, Like, like I was saying before the break, like these are carefully selected and carefully thought out, or they're meant to be um animals that are that fil specific niches in the ecosystem that you're trying to restore. That's right, not dropping beavers in South America, Canadian beavers no less. Yeah. One thing that really spoke to me was in that additional material that you sent over. I think it was the four Tenants Rewilding Britain. I think was the website. Uh, and therefore tenants um are pretty self explanatory, but one part of part two really spoke to me. The first one is support people in nature together. The second one is let nature lead. And the line that really got me was it is not geared to reach any human defined optimal point or in state, it goes where nature takes it, and then that ties in with number four. Number three is creazy create resilient local economies. It's a big part of it. But number four is, uh, work at nature scale. Like I think humans are so obsessed with scale in business and they're basically saying, you gotta do what nature. Let nature do it. Nature does at its own pace and at its own scale. That's nature scale, and just let it do it. Don't put don't put your hang ups on nature, man on what you want it to be. And that's kind of true though, Yeah, no, absolutely, I think I think though that that kind of reveals, like that the lack of consensus in the field of rewilding, because what did you say that was rewilding Britain's four points? Yeah, there were actually five. The fifth one was secure and it fits for the long term, okay, yeah, five, And then I saw the union of the conservation of nature. Yeah, I think that's it. I think, uh, they they have ten ten points, so you've got five, you got ten depending on who you ask, but they all generally agree that before we really start doing this stuff in earnest, like we need more data. Like most of the people who are like, yeah, we just you know, release some voles into the into the woods. There's some rewilding project right there. Like, these are the people who aren't necessarily even thinking it through. If you're a conservation ecologist, if you're a biologist, if you're a botanist, if you're a scientist who's like actually looking at rewilding, pretty much everyone agrees like we need way more data than we have right now. That it's a great idea. We just need way more data if the science just isn't even there. Yeah, but you know, one of the tenants that they both it seems like everyone is talking about is talk to the local people. They call them stakeholders. Talk to the local stakeholders, because you can't just come in there, uh with your you know, with your science under your arm and your folder and just say this is how it's gonna go. Like, it's got to work for the people and you have to get them involved and on boarders just not gonna work. Don't even try that. In Scotland, everybody, oh man, don't mess with their sheet. You got anything else? I got nothing else? Uh? Well, maybe this last little bit from that stuff you sent. Seventy seven percent in increasing of the human population lives in urban areas and they spend of their time indoors. Seventy seven percent of humans spend nine of their time indoors. And just the health effects and the and the role the trickle down effects from that, We've talked about a lot, but people need to be out in nature. Mental and physical illness, depression, heart disease, anxiety, fatigue, obesity, a d h D like you name it, like a lot can be not wholly attributed to this, but certainly has an impact on people that And I'm a city guy, you are too, Like I love my urban areas, but uh, people need to get out doors more. And this is a good way to do what I think. Yeah, but that's a fine line you've got to walk because we're giving this stuff over to nature. So we have to ask ourselves, what, what role, what place do we have in these wildernesses that we're creating. And I think that's one of the things that that that that rewilding ecologists are excited about, is that would cause us to to rethink that that would be like, wait, amount I want to be indoors all time? Well, wait a minute, I'm already indoors all the time. I need to get out there, and now there's a place for them to go. So yeah, I think that's an they're big question mark that we'd have to figure out too. That's right. Um, well, that's it for rewilding for now. Given another five years, maybe we'll come back to it. Everybody. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this of what the author called it, lesbians in the Military. Hi, guys, really enjoyed your podcast about the term friend of Dorothy and wanted to add something to your discussion about gay men in the military. Uh. And this is probably on us for just sort of saying gay men in the military, But there were many lesbians in the military during World War Two, as well as people who would we would now describe as bisexual women, transmasculine people, and others. The military was a safe place for queer women and a fab assigned female at birth people since it was somewhat of an escape for mainstream society that expected women to dress and present femininely and marry men never consider this. It's pretty great. This article is a great summary of the history. I thought you might find it interesting. Uh. And the name of the article I just click the link is called this is from out history dot org lesbians Comma not colin World War two and beyond. And this is from Rebecca, a friend of Dorothy. Nice. Thanks a lot, Rebecca. We're a friend of Rebecca who's a friend of Dorothy. That's right. It's hard to keep track, but let's just all be friends. That's pretty great. Um, thank you for that email, Rebecca. And if you want to be like us and point out something we hadn't considered before. We love that kind of stuff. You can wrap it up and send it in an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.