Conservation and Science

Welcome back after the break! The holiday season is well behind us, so we are getting back at it. And we are getting back at it with a classic episode of the podcast, where we talk about a book about science, ecology and the current ecological state of our planet. No, it's not depressing, and no, it doesn't offer a false sense of comfort. I'm sure you'll enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it. My guest Amy McEuen and I laughed a lot, and we also got into topics that are important for understanding the public discourse about biodiversity, climate change and planetary boundaries.

To kick off the post-holiday season properly, I'm also bringing you an episode of the 'Outdoor Minimalist' podcast, where I was invited as a guest to talk about wolf conservation in the EU and, more broadly, about why this topic is so disproportionately emotional. The episode was published some time ago, so you might have come across it already through recommendation engines. Meg, the host of the podcast, is doing a great job and I might invite her to Conservation and Science. She's based in the United States, and I think she will bring a different perspective to the one you usually get from my guests from the other side of the pond.

Finally, to cap off this back-after-the-break newsletter, there's a short blog about the film 'Irish Atlantic Rainforest'. Well, not exactly about the film itself, but rather my thoughts after attending its premiere at the Dublin International Film Festival six months ago. Yes, I was sitting on the idea for that long! But this is one of the things you might already know about me by now. Some stuff takes a long time, but it's never gone and eventually it does see the light of day.

Enjoy and it's good to be back!

How to Think Like an Ecologist

How do you tell solid science from something dressed up to look like it? Are we living through the sixth mass extinction? And why is the climate crisis not the worst of the planetary boundaries we have crossed? My guest today is Amy McEuen, a professor of Biology at the University of Illinois Springfield, where she has taught environmental biology, ecology and conservation biology for more than twenty years. Her book, 'How to Think Like an Ecologist: A Non-Scientist's Guide to Saving Our Planet', is written for people without a science background and is laid out like a field guide, so you can read the chapters in any order you like. What caught my attention is that Amy spends the opening chapters on what science actually is and on how misinformation works before she gets anywhere near ecology. Our conversation follows much the same path.

We spend a fair bit of time on that groundwork because I think it matters a lot. Amy explains the difference between misinformation and disinformation, why fact checkers read laterally rather than arguing with an article line by line, and why prebunking works better than debunking. From there we move on to nature itself. If humans are part of nature, does the word still mean anything useful? Amy also argues that we get further by asking people what they value about a particular place than by asking them to defend nature in the abstract. We also pull apart the idea of a historical baseline, since choosing a date to restore the land to is a fairly arrogant thing to do and not much use when the whole global environment is shifting.

Then we get to the numbers. To qualify as a mass extinction, 75% of taxa have to disappear from the planet, and Amy explains why the honest answer to 'are we in the sixth one?' is both yes and no. We also talk some more about planetary boundaries and why biodiversity loss and novel entities such as plastics and synthetic chemicals are worse than climate change, even though climate takes up most of the oxygen in the room. We finish with talking about policy, paradigms and eco-anxiety. Is policy change enough on its own or does something have to shift in how we see the world? And how do you talk about any of this without either frightening people into switching off or offering false comfort?

231: How to Think Like an Ecologist with Amy McEuen

How to Think Like an Ecologist: A Non-Scientist's Guide to Saving Our Planet

Wolves in Europe: A Conversation on Outdoor Minimalist

The topic of wolves is always interesting to me and, as you know, I have spent a great deal of time talking about it on my show. So when a fellow podcaster from the USA, Meg Carney, invited me onto her Outdoor Minimalist podcast, we quickly agreed during our initial chat that wolves in Europe would make an excellent subject. Mirroring what has happened in the EU, a push on several fronts is currently under way in the USA to remove wolves from the protection of the Endangered Species Act, something Meg has covered in previous episodes. And so we recorded a conversation about the wolf situation in the EU to highlight the similarities and differences for American listeners. Have a listen to our chat and subscribe to Outdoor Minimalist podcast.

228. Why Wolf Recovery Is So Controversial

An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: Notes from a premiere I attended six months ago

I have waited a long time to write this piece. It is about Eoghan Daltun and Gary Lennon's film titled *An Irish Atlantic Rainforest*. Given the film's continued success and now that it has hit the mass media on the RTÉ Player, it strikes me that maybe the best time to write this piece was shortly after I watched it. But the second best time is now. This is not a review as there are plenty of those, but rather a record of my thoughts and observations that I would like to share with you.

Eoghan is surely known to most people interested in the natural environment, nature restoration and rewilding in Ireland and beyond. His quick rise to public recognition started with his book *An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey into the Magic of Rewilding*. In it, he describes his work and passion for rewilding the farm he acquired near Eyeries on the Beara Peninsula in West Cork. The story is well known, so I'm not going to repeat it here. Besides, you can read the book and now also watch the film to learn all there is to know about it.

Now, back for a second to the 'waiting a long time' bit. I had the pleasure of attending the world premiere of the film at the Dublin International Film Festival on the last day of February (yes, I waited six months to write this). We can safely say that the dust has settled since then and I'm writing this not so much from the position of having had time to order and develop my thoughts as of still remembering them. So, this piece is as much for you as it is for me.

I know Eoghan personally and have had the privilege of walking with him in his forest. He was also a guest on my podcast, although not yet on an episode dedicated fully to his work. I knew the film was being made and even had a chat with one of the camera operators when I awkwardly tried not to trample the plants he was filming. So when I saw an announcement about the premiere during the festival, I quickly decided to turn it into a family day out and bought three tickets. I thought it would be a good idea to not only introduce my girls to Eoghan but also let them experience, albeit only on a screen, a native Irish forest and make them aware of the wider environmental issues presented in the film. Or so I assumed, since I knew little about it other than what I could anticipate from knowing Eoghan and his work. At least, I thought, it would be someone else talking, which would surely be a welcome break from my constant yapping about biodiversity and ecology.

Attending a premiere is a different experience from going to a regular screening, at least when it comes to the ambience and everything that surrounds the 91 minutes of watching the film. As expected, we met Eoghan, who, despite being the centre of attention and being pulled in many directions, made sure to make time to meet and greet people who arrived and were interested in the film. Predictably, I also met a number of listeners to the podcast as well as some of the previous guests. This created an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual understanding and perhaps this was a part of... not so much a problem as an observation. I felt that most people were not the people who would need to watch the film to be introduced to the issues it talks about. They were overwhelmingly people who already knew what was up. Preaching to the choir sort of thing.

Of course, it's a different audience at a premiere and I hoped that future screenings would attract people new to the subject, and give them an opportunity to learn about Irish native forests. I believe that the film now available on the national broadcaster's streaming platform has delivered on that hope in spades.

The second observation or slight issue, was the small number of young people attending the screening. I keep saying that I have so much hope and trust in young people, so not seeing many of them was a bit concerning. Then again, this was a premiere at a film festival, so perhaps that's not where a younger audience turns up. An echo of this sentiment can be found in the film itself, where Eoghan says that his two sons don't share his enthusiasm. But in all fairness, he also describes his own interest as an obsessive passion, so perhaps it's all as it should be. A note here, I'm not quoting, I'm paraphrasing. It's been a long time since I watched the film, but I'm close enough!

Finally, I want to acknowledge that there are some people, including a few listeners of my podcast, who, for a variety of reasons, are not big fans of Eoghan's rewilding project. Or perhaps more accurately, of the online debate around it. I blame social media for that. It excels at turning a difference of opinion into a row. And just as spending a day with a farmer on his farm can change, or at least soften, one's views on farmers and farming, spending a day with Eoghan on his forested farm will surely do the same. At the start of most episodes of my podcast, I repeat a tagline that I want us all to internalise and live by: less division and fighting and more dialogue and understanding.

Creating quality content about nature takes time and resources.
Support my work, buy me a coffee!

☕

P.S., if someone forwarded this email to you, you can sign up to get your weekly newsletter here.

600 1st Ave, Ste 330 PMB 92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2246
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​