treehugger podcast

This is the episode where we discuss Indigenous Science with Binnizá & Maya Ch'orti' scholar Dr. Jessica Hernandez. Dr. Hernandez is a transnational Indigenous scholar, scientist, and community advocate based in the Pacific Northwest. Her work is grounded in her Indigenous cultures and ways of knowing with a background that ranges from marine sciences, land restoration, environmental physics and j...

treehugger has bounced from Julia Plevin's offer "what message might invasive species have to share for you" to the Just Language invitation to pay more respect and humility to them. Now Jenny Liou leads us through a critical rethinking of invasive species. This is the episode where we tell shories about identity/politics, our entanglement with weeds, the invasive vs. native ideology and more. Jen...

Dr. Laura Smith is a geographer at the University of Exeter, U.K. She works across cultural geography and the environmental humanities, with research interests in ecological restoration and rewilding, the history and conservation of U.S. public lands, national parks, American literature, and environmental protest and activism. Exeter University Profile and Twitter Her first book, Ecological Restor...

Take a break from the world heating up and let's discuss our curiosity about cold. Human and more than human communities rely on a stable climate and cool, clean air and waters. My guest on this show is Dr. Jannine Krause. Dr. Krause is a naturopathic doctor, acupuncturist & host of The Health Fix Podcast. She specializes in helping clients boost their energy, metabolism & athletic performance wit...

This is the episode where we discuss our feelings of anxiety with climate change and building emotional resiliency with Dr. Leslie Davenport. She works as a climate psychology educator & consultant and lives here in Grit City. Her most recent book is called All the Feelings Under the Sun. Leslie Davenport's website www.lesliedavenport.com and Twitter Davenport, Leslie. 2021. All The Feelings Under...

Which tree species impacted by climate change are we getting nervous about? This is the episode where we talk about climate disruption, our anxiety & grief as witnesses to tree loss while also coming to terms with environmental change in discussion with a few members of the Forest Adaptation Network.  Rowan Braybrook, Director of Programs for Northwest Natural Resource Group Jake Bentzen Biologica...

Treehugger podcast is celebrating two years and 10,000 downloads! Working from a foundation of feminist political ecology, Marlène Elias questions who decides the sustainability agenda and urges all of us to pay attention to the power and politics that shape the values, meanings and science driving restoration. Marlène leads gender research and gender integration at the Alliance of Biodiversity In...

It's First Lushootseed name is čaʔadᶻac aka Oregon white oak, Garry oak, or Quercus garryana. Join us on a deep dive on the intersections of urban development, environmental racism, organizing against tree loss, and the oak restoration imaginary. Oak savannas and prairies in the Willamette Valley-Puget Trough-Georgia Basin are one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America. In the Pacific...

Absence of species we feel belong in our lives gives rise to powerful emotions. "It's the feeling of environmental lost-ness and the potential found-ness that motivates decisions about recovering locally extinct animals," says Dr. Dolly Jørgensen, historian of the environment and technology and an environmental humanities scholar. Jørgensen's current research focuses on cultural histories of anima...

Disrupted by enclosure of the commons and colonialism, people have had a relationship with trees via coppice and pollard for eons. This is the show where we discuss the role moditional "modern" + "traditional" methods play in ecological restoration. The methods we talk about on this episode are known as live staking, coppicing and pollarding. My guest on this episode is Alex Slakie who is a restor...

Candace Fujikane leads us through Kanaka Maoli cartographies that articulates Indigenous ancestral knowledges via moʻolelo (historical stories), oli (chants), and mele (songs). Engaging in the art of kilo, observing laws of the natural order is based on longtime observation and recording in relationships with the almost half a million akua. The akua are the elemental forms, who guide the people in...

Forest gardens look and feel different than the forests farther from home or what one normally encounters on the NW Coast. Professor Chelsey Armstrong and her colleagues refer to these forests as novel ecosystems that have no natural analog - composed of communities of species that result from human agency, ecosystem engineering and the introduction of wildcrafted species from nearby regions. Whil...

I fortuitously got mixed up with this group called Just Language. Christopher Widmaier, Danielle Bunch, Lisa Fink and Celeste Williams interrogate our language around invasive species. Join in the dialogue and effort to make our conservation language more inclusive and purge terms like "invasive" and "alien" that have racist, prejudiced and xenophobic implications. Clayton County Water Authority a...

Think of this show when you are dismantling structures. The settler state reorganized the Elwha river physically and threatened the well-being of its original inhabitants for over a century. After the successful dam removals on the Elwha River, Whitney Mauer critically assesses the outcome of the restoration in light of ongoing challenges faced by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. While the full bene...

Found on the western edge of Turtle Island, the Pacific madrone (qʷuqʷuƛəc) is the largest and most charismatic species in the family Ericaceae . It is a broadleaf-evergreen tree that is rarely dominant in our forests, but indicative of very interesting plant communities. Join me and the Arbutus ARME (pronounced like "army") to hear about the interspecies love story we share with qʷuqʷuƛəc (Pacifi...

We cope with climate variability whether we acknowledge it or not in a variety of ways. On this episode, Brenda Clifton and I discuss the intentional ways practitioners are adjusting for climate change in restoration practice. This was a recording of a session I took part in at the January 19th virtual North Sound Riparian Conference. This event was hosted by the good people at the Skagit Watershe...

Welcome to the Restoration Decade! Ann-Kathrin Neureuther recently joined UNEP as Communication Manager for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. She walks us through the Decade Strategy that will help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The new U.N. Decade will officially launch on World Environment Day, on June 5, 2021. Ann-Kathrin's job is to communicate this gigantic restoration initi...

Dr. Nicole Redvers endeavors to integrate Indigenous and culturally-appropriate medicine into Western medical practice. If healing our relationship with land is key to revitalize traditional health and wellness, could ecological restoration become a public health strategy for the future? Native Land https://native-land.ca/   Dr. Redvers is an author, mother, Indigenous health advocate and assistan...

Dr. Robert Michael Pyle is a biologist and writer who has worked in conservation biology around the world. While the Xerces Blue butterfly disappeared in the early 1940s, in its honor Bob founded the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Contrary to the popular conservation cliché, extinction may not always have to be forever. In the year 2000, Bob published an article he called "Resurrect...

Shana Lee Hirsch investigates the Columbia River Basin of the past, the present and the sociotechnical imaginaries of the River in her new book. In this episode, we discuss emerging approaches to restoration and getting in right relationship with climate change. Last summer, UW Press published Hirsch's book: Anticipating Future Environments: Climate Change, Adaptive Restoration, and the Columbia R...

A lot has happened in the past year since we first discussed microbiome rewilding with Jacob Mills. At this reunion, we chat about building our immune system, rewilding greenspaces equitably, cultural restoration, decolonizing science and restoration, and updates on Jacob's research to restore native soil microbiota to urban greenspaces and schools. Eco Restoration Network https://www.ecorestorati...

Think you have a right to a healthy environment? You don't. Green Amendments For the Generations, led by Maya van Rossum, has been working to establish rights of all people to clean water and air along with a stable climate in our state constitutions. Elevating the environment on par with free speech, bearing arms and voting has the potential to empower constitutional change, protect our welfare a...

As liberal democracies fail to address environmental problems, what solution does the Chinese model offer? China Goes Green is a new book that peers under the hood of the authoritarian state's ambitions to pursue "ecological civilization." Chinese scholars Yifei Li and Judith Shapiro join me to discuss their cautious optimism and deconstruct this unique type of developmental environmentalism. Chin...

This episode delves into the intersections of climate change, community well-being, justice and restoration of our urban ecosystems. The focus is on urban heat and the challenge of heat islands. Treehugger is joined by Vivek Shandas who Professor of Climate Adaptation and Director of the Sustaining Urban Places Research Lab at Portland State University. Dr. Shandas' studies the effects of urban de...

The Pileated woodpecker is one of the quintessential forest species where I live. Their red crest helps them stand out in a crowd and the  charismatic pecking at dead trees characterizes them as "ecosystem engineers." They jumpstart a patchy mosaic of forest succession, facilitate biodiversity and are key to the recovery of some forest ecosystems. Listen in on this discussion in the suburbs of Sea...