After a serious of events that left me in need of a new car and long, arduous process of deliberation, I ended up getting a used PHEV, and decided to talk about my thought process here. Instead of going over the details, features, performance of the Rav4 Prime I ended up getting, I wanted to address the larger, more ethical issues associated with getting a car that still uses fossil fuels as gas, in addition to lithium in a battery, in this world we live in plagued by climate change driven impacts like extreme wildfire and drought.

I start by breaking down the choice between a car & public transportation in todays world, the differences between gas and electric cars ethically, affordability of the change, and the cultural shift of having to think of things differently in order to support technology that aims to create a better future. Lot's to cover here, so buckle up, and let's go for a ride!

Nerdy About Nature is an independent passion project that relies on support from folks like you.  If you’re enjoying this podcast and videos, help me keep making them by joining the Patreon family for 1$ a month or more!

Wanna ask a question?  Want community?  Wanna engage?  Do it all as a Patreon member, it’s easy!

You can also make a one-time donation, get NAN merch, resources and more information at www.NerdyAboutNature.com

You may have heard that being amongst a forest can help calm your nervous system, but did you know that getting your hands dirty can help clear your mind too?  

This week, I sat down with self-made gardening entrepreneurial creator Jordan Mara to chat all about the mental health benefits and aspects of gardening, and what he aims to do through his project Mind & Soil.  Come join us in his glorious backyard garden as it pops off in peak summer to learn all about mental health connections to the outdoors, attention restoration theory, creating play in your work, the joy of experimentation, how to make the best of your backyard, and growing your own garden whenever you may reside!

Mind & Soil: Website | YouTube | Instagram

Study from the Royal Horticulture Society

Attention Restoration Theory

National Geographic take on Attention Restoration Theory

Each episode of Nerdy About Nature makes a donation to a non-profit of the guests choosing using funds from Patreon supporters, and in this episode Jordan opted to support Food Banks Canada!

Learn more about their work

Nerdy About Nature is an independent passion project that relies on support from folks like you.  If you’re enjoying this podcast and videos, help me keep making them by joining the Patreon family for 1$ a month or more!

Wanna ask a question?  Want community?  Wanna engage?  Do it all as a Patreon member, it’s easy!

You can also make a one-time donation, get NAN merch, resources and more information at www.NerdyAboutNature.com

Learn more about this episodes sponsor, Hoka & their Anacapa 2's

Extinction is a common threat to thousands of species these days as a result of human development, logging, pollution, habitat loss and fragmentation, and the plethora of impacts relative to anthropogenic climate change. In all these cases, the two biggest contributing factors to a species going extinct is habitat loss and limited genetic variation in the population - but what if we applied that same logic to ecosystems?

Follow elsewhere Nerdy About Nature for more engaging fun-facts to make your next jaunt into the outdoors more rad!

Grasslands are incredibly biodiverse and carbon rich ecosystems that perform numerous ecological functions, yet many of them across Turtle Island have all declined for various reasons, whether that be decades of development, fire suppression, removal of grazing animals, introduction of invasive species and lack of Indigenous stewardship or a combination of them all.  Here in coastal Cascadia, our native Oak Meadow Grasslands play an important role within many First Nations cultures and are the most biodiverse ecosystem we have.  Sadly, they’re also the most threatened, down to less that 5% of their native range in BC alone.  

I sat down with Nancy Shackelford, assistant professor at Uvic & director of the Restoration of Natural Systems Program, to chat all about what makes these wonderful ecosystems so unique, what threatens them, and what we can do to ensure their health for a better tomorrow.

Restoration Futures Lab

Grasslands Conservation Council of BC

Each episode of Nerdy About Nature makes a donation to a non-profit of the guests choosing using funds from Patreon supporters, and in this episode Nancy decided to support Stewards Of Sc’ianew!

Learn more about their work here: https://stewardsofscianew.com/

Nerdy About Nature is an independent passion project that relies on support from folks like you.  If you’re enjoying this podcast and videos, help me keep making them by joining the Patreon family for 1$ a month or more!

Wanna ask a question?  Want community?  Wanna engage?  Do it all as a Patreon member, it’s easy!

You can also make a one-time donation, get NAN merch, resources and more information at www.NerdyAboutNature.com

Learn more about this episodes sponsor, Hoka & their new Anacapa 2 

I'm going to start releasing some of my slightly longer video here in a new series I'm tentatively calling 'Thought Snacks', because that's what they are...not quite a full meal, but just enough to get those wheels turning and reflecting about the world we live in.

When it comes to impacts of climate change, wildfire is one of the hottest topics there is days - pun intended!  A majority of our forests across Turtle Island have become prone to very violent, catastrophic fires, whether as a result of fire suppression that has allowed stands to become thick and overgrown, or excessive commercial logging that has replaced stand diversity with an even-aged secondgrowth forest.
As a means of addressing these issues, forest thinning has become popular, where trees are felled to increase spacing so that fire, when it does occur, doesn’t have the fuel connectivity to spread and escalate.
In many commercial thinning operations, companies are granted access to previously off-limits oldgrowth forests in order to thin them for ‘fire-proofing’, which in theory would consist of removing the smaller, immature trees to create the necessary spacing and reduce fuel load while leaving the older, more mature and naturally fire resistant trees that would have existed on those landscapes prior to colonization…but unfortunately that’s not often what happens.
This is expensive, skilled work and those little trees fetch very little market value, so instead this thinning is often done by ‘high grading’ these forests, which is a term that means they only take the biggest, most monetarily valuable old growth trees, and instead leave the smaller trees spaced out. This unfortunately does very little to increase the fire resilience and overall ecological function of these ecosystems, meaning that it’s no effective thinning for fire management.
Commercial operations hopping through loopholes and taking advantage of the situation by using either thinning or salvage as a justification to continue logging old growth forest for their own monetary gain, and doing so in a way that actually jeopardizes the health of these lands and our collective future amongst them is just unethical, irresponsible, and shouldn’t be allowed.  We need proper thinning efforts done to restore the health, vitality and resilience of these ecosystems first and foremost to create a better, safer future for our communities.

One of the biggest hurdles we face today is reducing our dependence on fossil fuels for energy, which are rampant in just about everything we do and consume on a daily basis.  Fortunately, it is possible and we have a roadmap for doing just that, which is the subject of today’s episode where we talk about decarbonizing the energy grid - that’s taking all of our electricity we’re currently using and finding ways to get the same amount from clean, renewable sources instead of from fossil fuels. What does that involve, what does it look like, and how do we get there as a society?

In this episode I sit down with Stephen Thomas, who is the Clean Energy Manager at the David Suzuki Foundation, to break it all down in terms of what it’s going to take for a country like Canada, which currently has plans to fully decarbonize the grid by the year 2035, to actually meet those goals.  

While we’re talking specifically about Canada in most of these examples here, many of these topics, methods, hurdles and solutions are very much applicable to communities and nations all over the world, especially those here on Turtle Island like the United States as we share lots of similarities in land use, long distances between cities across the continent, and how to ethically manage this change across existing nations in a decolonial way.

Lots to cover in this one from the types of energy we need to be focusing on, to the benefits of this energy, how much cheaper and more reliable it would be, to market opportunities and incentive programs in place to help support everyone throughout this transition so that no one gets left behind.  

Petition for Clean Energy in Canada

David Suzuki Foundation - Clean Energy

Shifting Power, Zero-Emissions Electricity Across Canada by 2035, DSF, 2022

Decarbonizing Electricity, and Decolonizing Power, DSF & Neegan-Burnside, 2022

Keeping the Lights On, DSF & Das-Martiskainan, 2022

Each episode of Nerdy About Nature makes a donation to a non-profit of the guests choosing using funds from Patreon supporters, and in this episode Stephen decided to send his donation to Mi’kmaw Grassroots Grandmothers!

Learn more and support them at https://stopaltongas.wordpress.com/donate/

Nerdy About Nature is an independent passion project that relies on support from folks like you.  If you’re enjoying this podcast and videos, help me keep making them by joining the Patreon family for 1$ a month or more!

Got Questions?  Want Stickers?  Want community?  Wanna engage?  Do it all as a Patreon member, it’s easy!

You can also make a one-time donation, get NAN merch, resources and more information at www.NerdyAboutNature.com

A few months ago in the news, you may have heard or seen articles about open net fish farms being removed from BC waters, and thought, “Wow!  That’s great!”...and then not done or heard much since then.  As you may or may not be aware, fish farms are one of the biggest threats to our at risk and endangered populations of wild Pacific Salmon that travel all over the ocean from down south in Oregon up through BC and into Alaska, and the fight to get these farms fully removed from BC waters is still ongoing, despite what you may have heard (or not heard) in the news.  

I sat down with Kilian Stehfast who is a marine conservation specialist at David Suzuki Foundation to chat all about these fish farms, their history, how they came to be, the threats they pose to wild salmon and why that matters, and what the future of aquaculture looks like here in BC.  It’s a great episode and you’re gonna learn a lot not only about this industry, but what you can do to get involved to help ensure the survival of those awesome anadromous fish that tie us and these ecosystems we all reside in together.  

David Suzuki Foundation - Fish Farms

More on Indigenous Clam Gardens

Background on Fish Farming & Aquaculture

Each episode of Nerdy About Nature makes a donation to a non-profit of the guests choosing using funds from Patreon supporters, and in this episode Kilian decided to send his donation to Clayoquot Action!

Learn more about the advocacy they do at www.ClayoquotAction.org

Nerdy About Nature is an independent passion project that relies on support from folks like you.  If you’re enjoying this podcast and videos, help me keep making them by joining the Patreon family for 1$ a month or more!

Got Questions?  Want Stickers?  Want community?  Wanna engage?  Do it all as a Patreon member, it’s easy!

You can also make a one-time donation, get NAN merch, resources and more information at www.NerdyAboutNature.com

Have you ever seen those slick little certification logos on a product that claims it comes from sustainable forestry practices?  Unfortunately, those certifications aren’t those most ethical, accurate, and in some cases are just downright bogus, and may not truly reflect the logging practices used to obtain that wood.

Peter Wood is a campaigner for Canopy Planet, as well as an adjunct professor at the UBC Faculty of Forestry and a consultant for organizations such as Ecojustice.  With greenwashing being so prevalent these days, our forest products are no different, so I sat down with Peter to chat all about the nuances of these false certifications, how they came to be, current legal challenges, and what you can do to help create a better marketplace for ethically sourced wood products.

Links & Resources from this episode:

EcoJustice legal challenges:

Against the Canadian Standards Association (e.g. certified Teal Jones and Fairy Creek tenure) (July 2021):

Against the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (e.g. certified a large proportion of Canadian forestry, including all BC Timber Sales) (November 2022)

This letter was sent by Canada’s consulate to New York State Senators in response to their proposed Deforestation-Free Procurement Act. The letter argues that "widespread use of third-party forest management certification...provides added assurance that a forest company is operating legally, sustainably and in compliance with world-recognized standards for sustainable forest management”. 

In the end, these lobbying efforts were successful in making sure that this law did not apply to Canada, as detailed in this CBC piece.

Canopy Planet forest mapper tool

KPMG Article

TJ Watts before & after photos from certified ‘sustainable’ old growth clearcuts

Regime changes & logging affecting Salmonid survival study

OSO Landslide in 2014* logging influence

Unbuilders

Competition Bureau - 1-800-348-5358 - @CompBureau

EU Anit-Greenwashing

Protect Old Growth in BC 

Each episode of Nerdy About Nature makes a donation to a non-profit of the guests choosing using funds from Patreon supporters - this episode’s donation goes to The Awi’Nakola Foundation!

Learn more at https://www.awinakola.com/

Nerdy About Nature is an independent passion project that relies on support from folks like you.  If you’re enjoying this podcast and videos, help me keep making them by joining the Patreon family for 1$ a month or more! - https://www.patreon.com/nerdyaboutnature

Got Questions?  Want Stickers?  Want community?  Wanna engage?  Do it all as a Patreon member, it’s easy!

You can also make a one-time donation, get NAN merch, resources and more information at www.NerdyAboutNature.com

Charlotte Dawe is a campaigner with the Wilderness Committee who works on various issues regarding policy around biodiversity, at-risk & endangered species, old growth logging, glyphosate spraying, and many more.  Her and I caught up to debrief on COP15, the United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity in Montreal, to hear all about the good, the bad and all the goss of this global shindig, and what it all means for BC, Canada and the world.  We talk all about hurdles to protecting biodiversity, shotty old outdated legislation that stands in the way, crazy loopholes, big corporate interests lobbying for their own needs, policy failures and successes, glyphosate spraying and much much more.

Learn more about the Wilderness Committee at WildernessCommittee.org or @Wildernews

Each episode of Nerdy About Nature makes a donation to a non-profit of the guests choosing using funds from Patreon supporters - this episode’s donation goes to Indigenous Climate Action!

Learn more at IndigenousClimateAction.com

Nerdy About Nature is an independent passion project that relies on support from folks like you.  If you’re enjoying this podcast and videos, help me keep making them by joining the Patreon family for 1$ a month or more! - https://www.patreon.com/nerdyaboutnature 

Got Questions?  Want Stickers?  Want community?  Wanna engage?  Do it all as a Patreon member, it’s easy!

You can also get NAN merch, resources and more information at www.NerdyAboutNature.com

A founding member of Indigenous Women Outdoors and coach with ILSA, Sandy Ward is an avid snowboarder, mountain biker and climber from the Lil'wat nation working to carve out a path for more Indigenous folks to get into the outdoors in a safe, welcoming space, and to see their ancestral lands from new a perspective through sport.  Her and I sat down to talk about her journey in the outdoor sports world as a coach, athlete and mentor, how mindsets have shifted towards these recreational activities both within and outside of Indigenous communities, and other issues regarding working with Indigenous nations when it comes to building bike trails, skateparks and more.

Sandy is a really inspiring, awesome human, and you're gonna love to hear what she has to say!  

For more on the work she's doing, you can check out: 

Indigenous Women Outdoors: https://www.indigenouswomenoutdoors.ca/ 

Indigenous Life Sport Academy: https://www.lifesportcanada.org/

Nerdy About Nature is an independent passion project that relies on support from folks like you!

If you’re enjoying this podcast and videos, please don’t hesitate to support their production at my Patreon page for 1$ a month or more!

- https://www.patreon.com/nerdyaboutnature You can also get NAN merch, stickers, resources and more information at www.NerdyAboutNature.com