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0:16

So this is the road between Forested

0:18

Area and another Forested Area

0:21

where there was a concrete barrier

0:23

for about a mile down the middle of the road.

0:25

So

0:25

as

0:28

I was driving down the road I

0:30

saw in front of me a possum that had

0:32

tried to cross the street but had come

0:34

right to this concrete barrier. So

0:37

he couldn't escape, he was obviously

0:40

hit by a car and it just passed away right there.

0:45

Poor possum. You're

0:47

listening to Crowdscience from the BBC World

0:49

Service. I'm Caroline Steele

0:52

and I'm with listener Terry next to a very

0:54

busy road on the edge of the housing development

0:56

where she lives

0:57

in Lincoln, California. I mean

0:59

it seemed like indignity heaped upon

1:01

indignity when he's this fully

1:03

knowledgeable animal. It's just a

1:06

consequence of the

1:08

process of developing and not taking

1:10

wildlife into concern. Frustrated

1:15

by how little humans seem to care

1:17

about other animals' lives, a question

1:19

started nagging at Terry,

1:22

which back in her much more peaceful garden

1:24

she put to us. So

1:26

my question is where

1:28

do humans fit into the

1:31

ecology of the earth?

1:34

The earth is filled with ecosystems and

1:38

many thousands of years ago it seems

1:41

like things were more in balance but

1:44

it seemed like we began to affect

1:46

all the ecosystems which

1:48

made me think do we have

1:51

a place in a balanced ecosystem

1:53

anymore or are we just an

1:55

invading species?

1:58

I've always been concerned. with

2:00

human effect on the planet? I

2:03

was in Los Angeles and we were fighting

2:06

to save the remaining wetlands. And

2:08

then when I moved up to Lincoln, they have

2:11

started doing a lot of developing. So

2:14

what is Lincoln like as a place? This

2:17

is their slogan. A

2:19

fast-growing community with a small

2:21

town feel. And since

2:24

I moved here, there's

2:26

been thousands of houses

2:28

built.

2:30

This development here is about 20

2:33

years old. It's wetlands.

2:36

And it's beautiful, but

2:38

I didn't realize it was wetlands when I first

2:41

moved here. They do build nice

2:43

neighborhoods with green space in mind,

2:46

but it's human green. So taking

2:49

away a lot of the territories

2:52

of the wild critters. So

2:54

where do they go or do they just die?

2:58

And how then does that affect

3:00

the ecosystem as a whole? So

3:03

what is humans place in ecosystems

3:06

and what could or should

3:08

it be? Terri's

3:11

question is huge, but I'm hoping

3:13

we can find some answers here in her

3:15

home state of California. Humans

3:18

have lived in this part of the world for over 10,000 years.

3:22

And for most of that time, it's safe to

3:24

say they've had a much closer relationship

3:27

with the rest of nature than most people

3:29

do today. My

3:32

producer and I drove seven hours north into

3:35

the Klamath Mountains of Northwestern California.

3:38

Off the main road and oh gosh,

3:41

including a rather bumpy bit at the end.

3:44

Yeah, we're

3:47

literally driving through a small

3:49

clearing. Really wild

3:51

and rugged.

3:58

We made it to a peaceful river valley.

4:07

and

6:00

the potatoes, it's got a purple flower

6:02

on top and we native

6:05

people like to eat the bulbs. If

6:07

you're coming out of a hard winter, these

6:09

are little packages of nutrition

6:13

and they have a lot of starch, a lot of vitamins

6:15

and minerals. I'd be starting to eat the greens

6:18

that they had that came here naturally. And

6:21

I'm gonna go dig a bulb out to show you. Oh,

6:23

that would be great. Go over here. I

6:27

don't wanna dig that one because you see there's a burl

6:29

right there. Oh, so you might accidentally disturb.

6:32

I don't, yes, I don't wanna disturb

6:34

him. So let's try this.

6:38

Cultivating Indian potatoes, a type

6:41

of wild lily, isn't just helping

6:43

humans. It's important for other animals

6:45

too.

6:46

They call it deer potatoes too because

6:49

deer like to come in and eat the tops.

6:53

So when you manage for

6:55

those types of plants, you're also managing

6:58

for the deer and the elk. We

7:00

wanna provide areas to welcome

7:03

the elk back.

7:07

Can't keep hitting these big rocks.

7:10

Kathy is an expert at this, but

7:12

she's having some trouble.

7:14

Should I help? How'd you get him out of here? Yeah, how

7:16

about it? Oh

7:19

gosh. There's a big rock there, which

7:21

is annoying. Yeah. And a big rock there.

7:23

Yep, so we're working. Trying

7:26

to dig in an old mining

7:28

area. In order to mine

7:30

a big area like this, they had

7:32

to shoot water at

7:35

the mountain slopes, tearing these

7:37

mountain slopes down and then they could

7:39

further mine it for gold.

7:42

The landscape here isn't the same as it was

7:44

when Kathy's ancestors lived here hundreds

7:47

of years ago. In the 19th century,

7:49

the outsiders who came to the area looking

7:51

for gold used destructive mining

7:53

practices that disturbed the environment.

7:56

They even rerouted the river. Before

7:59

contacting...

7:59

before they moved this river, this

8:02

soil wouldn't have been like this. So it's

8:04

kind of... You're almost there!

8:06

You

8:09

keep

8:09

going! This is like formula.

8:13

How much energy you

8:15

expend for the calories

8:17

you take in. What do you think, gang?

8:22

On average, we humans need to get

8:24

more calories from our food than we

8:27

spend harvesting it. Otherwise,

8:29

we can't exist as a functioning

8:31

part of an ecosystem. As

8:34

I discovered, after expending a lot of

8:36

energy trying to dig up one single potato,

8:39

the mining fallout skewed that equation.

8:42

But for thousands of years it did work

8:44

for the Karuk tribe, and that kind of

8:47

ecosystem balance would be a

8:49

dream for our listener, Telly.

8:51

But it's not the norm on the planet today,

8:54

with mined, farmed, built up and

8:56

polluted every corner of the Earth

8:59

to an extraordinary degree.

9:01

One study estimated only 3% of

9:04

land in the entire world remains

9:07

untouched by humans.

9:09

Humans have become, over

9:12

their long history, a

9:15

major, major component in

9:17

pretty much all the ecosystems

9:20

of the world. Obviously,

9:22

cities, which is where I work,

9:24

but you can, for example, find

9:27

microplastic residues in

9:30

soils and waters and ice, very

9:33

distant from dense human habitation.

9:36

So in fact, we are all over the

9:38

place. I'm

9:40

Stuart Pickett, and I work

9:43

at Cary Institute of Ecosystem

9:45

Studies in Millbrook, New York,

9:48

where I am an urban and

9:51

landscape ecologist.

9:52

Would you say that humans are part

9:55

of their ecosystems, or

9:57

do you think by now we've kind of become sector-like?

9:59

from them? That's a really

10:02

interesting question because in

10:04

many ways we still

10:07

so deeply depend on the

10:09

products of ecosystems. We

10:11

depend on ecosystems

10:13

around the world or maybe even

10:15

you could say the whole world ecosystem.

10:18

We depend on that. For oxygen

10:20

we depend on that for processing

10:23

our wastes, for our food,

10:25

for our cultural

10:27

amenities and the things that symbolize

10:31

spiritual well-being for us.

10:34

We're still very much embedded

10:36

in the ecosystem but

10:38

we kind of pretend that we're not because

10:41

we get our food from the grocery store

10:43

and we don't notice how connected

10:46

we are with ecosystem

10:48

processes.

10:50

It may not look like it but ecosystems

10:52

are at work in even the densest of cities.

10:55

So urban dwellers like me, listener Terry

10:58

and over 50% of the rest of the world

11:00

are also inescapably embedded in them.

11:02

I think it's really important

11:05

for people in cities to

11:08

see themselves as

11:10

part of ecosystems.

11:13

You can have functional ecosystems

11:16

in urban areas. They're going to be different

11:19

from the ecosystems out in wild

11:21

areas but still they

11:24

have the same kinds of components, the

11:26

same kinds of relationships, the

11:28

same kinds of biological

11:31

processes that any ecosystem

11:33

would have. We just have to kind of wake

11:35

up to it.

11:37

Were there any key developments

11:39

in our history that sort of changed the way

11:41

we think about our place in

11:43

Well, if you look at

11:46

sort of the Western philosophical

11:48

tradition, when you think

11:50

about the Enlightenment, the

11:53

birth, say, of contemporary

11:55

modern Western science or the

11:57

growth of the industrial era,

12:00

people, I think, began to

12:03

see themselves as separate from nature.

12:06

And that's a big deal because that means

12:08

now it's okay to

12:10

use nature in pretty much any

12:12

way you want to accomplish

12:15

those industrial goals or those

12:17

goals of empire, for example.

12:20

Colonialism is really all

12:23

about moving around the

12:25

world to exploit resources,

12:28

to grow more intense

12:31

kinds of agricultural products.

12:34

So colonialism, I think, still

12:36

shows up as the

12:38

root of so much of our environmental

12:41

malaise today.

12:44

It's that legacy of resource exploitation

12:47

that Kathy and I banged right up against

12:49

while trying to dig for Indian potatoes among

12:52

the rocks left by miners in North West

12:54

and California. And mining's

12:56

not the only colonial practice to impact

12:58

the landscape there. There's also

13:01

been commercial logging, giant river

13:03

dams and legislation against native

13:05

traditions, all interfering

13:07

with the relationship the Karuk people have developed

13:10

with nature over thousands of years.

13:12

There's an incredible bird

13:14

circling over

13:15

us. Yeah, it's a turkey vulture.

13:17

You've got a bald eagle nest right

13:19

up here on the other side of the ridge. Really?

13:22

My

13:24

name is Bill Tripp and I'm the

13:27

director of natural resources and environmental

13:29

policy for the Karuk tribes Department

13:31

of Natural Resources.

13:33

Like Kathy, Bill is a Karuk tribal

13:35

member and a driving force in

13:37

landscape restoration efforts here.

13:40

He took us to a breathtaking viewpoint on

13:42

the side of a mountain where we looked

13:44

down on the valley we'd visited early with Kathy,

13:47

an important place in their culture. This

13:49

is what we call the red cap overlook

13:52

but the overall area is

13:54

a place where coyote is

13:56

from. You know there's stories about

13:59

how you roll

15:59

colonial settlers for its timber.

16:03

In the 19th and 20th centuries, fire

16:05

suppression laws were passed with the aim of protecting

16:08

these forests, but that effectively

16:10

made traditional burning illegal.

16:13

Now, fire is a key

16:15

part of California's ecology, as

16:18

lightning strikes naturally ignite its

16:20

parched vegetation, and ecosystems

16:23

here have evolved alongside these

16:25

regular blazes, as have

16:27

native traditions.

16:29

This time in memorial, tribal people have learned

16:31

to adapt and evolve to really diversify

16:34

the potential ecology here. So

16:37

living in a fire-prone ecosystem and then

16:39

developing a culture that becomes a fire-dependent

16:41

culture.

16:42

Dr. Frank Canala Lake is an ecologist

16:45

with the US Forest Service. He

16:47

is both indigenous and European heritage

16:49

and was raised in this area of northwest

16:51

California.

16:52

There was very sophisticated, ritualized

16:55

forms of management. So for tribal

16:57

people here, fire, using fire, was one

16:59

of those main processes. Lightning

17:01

has a certain chance of where it's going to strike, start

17:03

a fire. But as native people adapted

17:06

here as part of the living of that system, you

17:08

could see where burning more frequently

17:10

would favor certain plants over the others.

17:12

My kind of knee-jerk reaction to hearing

17:15

about burning something is, that

17:17

must be bad for the tree, but it

17:19

clearly has some benefits.

17:20

The benefits is fire will

17:23

kill other plants around it that could grow and be a competitor

17:25

for your favorite trees or shrubs, the ones that

17:27

produce your foods, nuts and berries and medicines. It

17:30

also cycles nutrients when it's a cooler burn.

17:33

And then in many cases, a lot of the trees may

17:36

actually benefit from a frequency

17:38

of fire. Fire would get rid of bugs

17:40

and diseases and other pests. Then

17:43

it would have a better crop. You would have the

17:45

rejuvenated growth.

17:47

Traditional burning can also limit

17:49

damage from wildfires. If

17:51

a blaze reaches recently burnt land,

17:54

it's less likely to keep burning. Because

17:56

some of the fuel, smaller plants and bushes,

17:59

have all

17:59

already been used it. The

18:02

laws banning tribal fires prevented

18:04

those benefits to the

18:05

ecosystem.

18:07

Maybe the thinking behind the bans

18:09

comes from that false separation of

18:11

humans and nature that's so embedded

18:14

in Western European thinking.

18:16

The newcomers just didn't understand

18:18

that Indigenous practices, like control

18:20

burning, were an important part

18:23

of this environment.

18:24

In Western science you have a null hypothesis

18:26

which is there is no effect. The control

18:29

or the nothing, right? And so for

18:31

me it's kind of what I call the colonial

18:33

null hypothesis that Native people didn't have

18:35

influence on ecosystems, on species,

18:38

biodiversity, not recognising

18:40

the Indigenous histories, processes

18:42

and protocols about how you live with your environment.

18:46

Despite what it might have looked like to settlers

18:48

arriving here, this landscape

18:50

was not untouched wilderness. Frank

18:53

is a scientist, so he wanted to know

18:56

more about this area's

18:57

history of human fire

18:59

use.

19:00

He and his team drilled lake cores to

19:02

reconstruct past climates, analysed

19:05

ancient tree stumps for evidence of burning

19:08

and studied land surveys and traditional

19:10

knowledge.

19:11

Now,

19:12

you'd expect there to be more burning

19:15

during hotter climate

19:16

periods. There was a big dry period

19:18

and then we saw a shift getting

19:21

cooler and more moisture of what you would expect less

19:23

fire, but you still thought there was

19:25

actually more fire that

19:28

was counterintuitive. Well, that's the intentional

19:30

burning that's counter than what you would

19:32

expect the climate to be doing under a cool

19:34

moist period. So there was

19:37

a high degree of cultural stewardship. Again,

19:39

the null hypothesis is there was

19:41

no effect and that you would expect climate to

19:43

be the main factor on the ecology

19:46

and the fire, but we were able to show using

19:49

all those different lines of evidence, there was more biomass

19:51

now than there was in like the last 1100,

19:55

1200 years. That means there's more trees

19:57

now. And so if we're wanting to look for

19:59

a reference.

19:59

So a

20:00

lot of times for ecological restoration

20:02

we want a reference condition. There was this mythological

20:05

time of how it was so great. And we

20:08

want to recreate that. We recreate

20:10

that, right? But if that reference condition

20:12

in part was the result of indigenous cultures,

20:15

you better plan that same type of stewardship and

20:17

fire use into the future of the decision that

20:19

you're trying to manage towards. Otherwise you're never going to

20:21

get there. Yeah. Right? You're

20:25

listening to CrowdScience from the BBC World

20:27

Service and we're exploring a question

20:30

from listener Terry who wants to know what

20:32

is humans' role in ecosystems?

20:36

I've often thought of humans as sort

20:39

of meddlers in ecosystems,

20:41

that we look after nature best by leaving

20:44

it alone. But, as was

20:46

heard from Frank, human activity,

20:48

even with something like fire, can sometimes

20:51

benefit the

20:52

environment.

20:54

Luckily, despite the fire suppression

20:56

laws, the cultural knowledge of fire

20:58

was not completely lost. As

21:01

Bill told me, back on Redcap

21:02

Overlook. You know, my great-grandmother

21:05

was a full-blooded karuk

21:08

from about four years old to eight years

21:10

old. I burned with her. You know, I was

21:12

starting a fire in the stove one day and

21:14

she told me if I was going to plant a fire, I'm going to do

21:17

something good with it. And so she

21:19

showed me how to use fire and started

21:22

telling me the stories associated with

21:24

all the places and the animals that are

21:26

built into

21:27

our traditional teachings

21:28

in karuk culture. But,

21:31

you know, fire largely was

21:33

kind of lost as that tool

21:35

that kept this place and our culture sustained

21:38

and healthy. So, you

21:40

know, we do a lot of work to try to bring

21:42

that back.

21:43

And it kind of looks like this

21:46

patch down here has burned

21:48

recently. Yeah.

21:49

A lot of that flat up there was burned

21:52

off in March this year with the cultural

21:54

fire practitioner. We

21:56

have some pretty strict

21:58

protocols on windmills.

21:59

we don't use fire. Kind

22:02

of a flexible protocol

22:05

around the birds coming back to

22:07

nest. You know, traditional

22:09

ecological knowledge by definition

22:12

is oral in nature. It's a community

22:14

knowledge system. The

22:16

knowledge holders in the Cuttock community

22:19

aren't necessarily the kind of people that are

22:21

gonna sit in a meeting all

22:24

day and write down a document that

22:26

says that this is how we're gonna do it. They're

22:29

more in tune to the smell of the air or

22:32

you know the way the

22:34

breeze is hitting the hair on the wrist you

22:36

know just little things like that. Those

22:38

are the things that these folks are tuned into

22:41

is when it's right here in this spot.

22:45

Although it is hard to put onto paper

22:47

the community here are trying to come to an agreement

22:50

on how best to use fire. There

22:52

has been greater acceptance of cultural

22:55

burning in recent years but there

22:57

are still restrictions. Fire

23:00

after all can be dangerous. As

23:03

the planet heats up Californian

23:05

wildfires are getting more frequent, hotter

23:08

and deadlier. Cultural

23:11

and controlled burning could help mitigate

23:13

them so this conversation is urgent.

23:17

During our visit a big meeting was held

23:19

to discuss fire planning in the area.

23:21

We're creating the human

23:23

emergency. We're taking fire out of

23:26

fire-dependent ecosystem.

23:27

Will Harling is the co-lead with

23:29

Bill Trip and others of the Western

23:32

Klamath Restoration Partnership or

23:34

WKRP who are running this meeting.

23:37

Their aim is to restore the landscape

23:39

here

23:40

but that's not easy. While

23:42

there's not a lot of people in these mountain

23:44

communities they have very diverse

23:47

ideas you know from loggers

23:50

to miners to environmentalists to

23:52

tribal members to for service

23:55

employees to some of the early

23:57

settlers that came here five or six generations

23:59

ago. And they all have a different

24:02

vision about what the land should be

24:04

and how it should be managed. And

24:06

so the Western Climate Restoration Partnership

24:09

allowed us to come together, building

24:11

these projects together. You know, we've

24:13

made a lot of incredible progress.

24:16

I mean, it's evidenced by the fact that Bill

24:19

is currently on President Biden's

24:21

Wildfire Commission redefining the

24:24

rules of engagement with fire

24:26

nationally. So part

24:28

of these workshops is trying

24:31

to crowdsource the ideas that

24:33

are going to help us bring in fire back

24:35

to this landscape in a good way.

24:38

And there's evidence that it's working. Frank

24:41

Lake, the US Forest Service ecologist

24:44

we heard from earlier, carried out research

24:46

with the Karuk tribe and the University of

24:48

California, Berkeley.

24:50

They looked at the condition of traditional

24:52

gathering sites, assessing several

24:55

culturally important species for the

24:57

Karuk people.

24:58

They found many areas were degraded

25:01

because of a lack of tribal stewardship. But

25:03

in the areas the WKRP was managing,

25:06

with tribal guidance on which trees to cut

25:08

and which to leave and when and where to use

25:11

fire, there was a reduced threat

25:13

of wildfire and drought and increased

25:16

biodiversity.

25:17

This is something Kathy has witnessed firsthand.

25:21

There's more potatoes and they're bigger.

25:24

You see that one right there, that's almost two

25:26

feet. Yes. The bulbs have

25:28

been underground and they've been waiting to

25:30

come up. And so by removing

25:33

all of the dead vegetation

25:36

and having rotational burns, we're

25:38

waking up this area and that's

25:40

what world renewal is all about. Piki

25:43

Alish, we fix the world. So

25:46

that's what we're doing just by interacting

25:48

with the environment, with the light hand

25:50

at the right time of year, we're

25:53

improving the area for both

25:55

people and animals.

27:59

I've got you guys out here. Anybody

28:02

that'll listen, I'll tell them. I'll talk

28:05

to them because people can live

28:07

sustainably.

28:09

I left Kathy, Bill, Will and

28:12

Frank with an overriding sense of how

28:14

deeply connected the Karuk tribe are to

28:16

their environment, seeing plants

28:18

and animals as their relations. In

28:21

cities, like our listener Terry's home of Lincoln, our

28:24

place in nature can feel quite different.

28:28

But there are plenty of ways to aim for a healthier

28:30

balance in these places too. And with rampant climate change and

28:32

biodiversity loss, taking

28:36

those measures is pretty urgent. If

28:39

you want to hear more about living sustainably, you

28:42

can dip into the Crowdscience Back catalogue and

28:44

find the episode called, What Does a Sustainable

28:47

Life Look Like? But

28:49

a good start is to recognise we're not

28:51

separate from our ecosystems. We

28:53

depend on them and they also

28:56

depend on us. To

28:58

end the show, here's listener Terry again, reflecting

29:01

on living in a city surrounded by

29:03

wetlands.

29:05

People will come here thinking

29:07

this is human space now. But

29:10

if you're going to live this close to nature,

29:13

then you have to be sure to accommodate

29:16

yourself to nature.

29:19

That's all for this episode of Crowdscience

29:22

from the BBC World Service. Today's

29:25

question was for me, Terry

29:27

English in Lincoln, California. The

29:30

episode was presented by Caroline

29:33

Steele and produced by Kathy Edwards. If

29:36

you have a question, big or small, why

29:39

not send it to the team at crowdscience

29:42

at bbc.co.uk.

29:46

Thanks for listening. Bye.

29:59

See how the podcast is sitting

30:02

on stage. Expect the unexpected.

30:05

We were having a big, careful discussion. How

30:07

could someone ever do this? How could that ever happen?

30:10

And that's the first time I ever came out with

30:12

my story about how I was almost a school shooter.

30:14

Live less ordinary from the BBC

30:17

World Service. Find it wherever

30:19

you get your BBC podcasts.