It’s easy to advocate for saving pandas and elephants, but bugs are a harder sell. Look closer, though, and you’ll find tiny superheroes propping up entire ecosystems as pollinators, decomposers, predators and prey. We’ll wander the prairie with bison ranchers, in search of the dung beetles that work quiet miracles in huge piles of poop. And we’ll meet people overcoming their insect fears to help scientists catch and release bees, before they disappear.

Up From Dust is hosted and reported by Celia Llopis-Jepsen and David Condos. This episode was reported and written by Celia Llopis-Jepsen and produced by Mackenzie Martin with editing by Scott Canon. Mix by Celia Llopis-Jepsen and Byron Love.

A vast ocean of grass and wildflowers once covered one-third of North America. But that diverse prairie biome is collapsing, partly due to greenhouse gases and to our obsession with trees. Humans have unleashed an aggressive canopy that’s swallowing the Great Plains. For ranchers, saving the environment means being a tree killer — not a tree hugger.

Up From Dust is hosted and reported by Celia Llopis-Jepsen and David Condos. This episode was written by Celia Llopis-Jepsen and produced by Mackenzie Martin with editorial support from Scott Canon and Suzanne Hogan. Mix by Celia Llopis-Jepsen and Byron Love.

Humans opened a Pandora’s box by moving plants, animals and fungi around the planet where they didn’t live before. Some of those species become so successful in their new surroundings that they crowd out others. Come along on a hunt for rogue Bradford pears, meet the teens turning cityscapes into butterfly havens and learn how to turn invasive plants into delicious food.

Up From Dust is hosted by Celia Llopis-Jepsen and David Condos. This episode was reported and written by Celia Llopis-Jepsen with help from Blaise Mesa and produced by Mackenzie Martin with editorial support from Scott Canon and Suzanne Hogan. Mix by Celia Llopis-Jepsen, Mackenzie Martin and Byron Love.

Trees are swallowing prairies. Bees are starving for food. Farmland is washing away in the rain. Humans broke the environment — but we can heal it, too. Up From Dust is a new podcast about the price of trying to shape the world around our needs, as seen from America’s breadbasket: Kansas.

Hosts Celia Llopis-Jepsen and David Condos wander across prairies, farm fields and suburbia to find the folks who are finding less damaging, more sustainable ways to fix our generational mistakes. Coming soon from the Kansas News Service, KCUR Studios, and the NPR Network.