Whisky and Conservation

It’s Halloween in the U.S., which means it’s a good excuse to talk about spooky creepy crawlies! That’s right: bugs!

I know what a lot of you are thinking. “Bugs? Gross.” But wait! Bugs are actually really cool, really important, and really in trouble. There’s a lot of scary news about the insect apocalypse and the massive ripple effect it will have on everything else. If we lose bugs, we lose everything else!

But people hate bugs. How can we expect them to save an animal that they want to constantly kill? We have a hard enough time trying to save species that people do care about. To answer these questions, I called my local bug nerd and friend, Jarek.

Jarek spends a lot of time trying to get people to care more about bugs. On a recent trip to Thailand, he got new insights on how people in other parts of the world view bugs (hint, they don’t try to burn their houses down whenever they see a spider…). So poor a drink and get in a super spoooooky mood as we talk about things creepy crawly!

So this last month has been a little crazy, and I wasn’t able to turn out a new, full-length episode. Don’t worry – there’s more drunken, nerdy conversations coming, but in the meantime, pour a glass and enjoy this bonus episode. After our Alaska trip, Liz put together a great song. Take a listen, and go back to listen to our two part, drinking and driving Alaska adventure spectacular!

Stay tuned for more full episodes in November!

When we last left our Alaska adventurers, we were in Seward and watching wildfire smoke blow back in to the city. Fortunately, we were on our way north to Denali, with the hope of seeing more wildlife (which up to this point, we had hardly seen any!). In this episode, we head to Denali and wrap up our Alaska adventure.

Coming home and reflecting on the trip, Alaska left a mixed impression on me. On one hand, it is an amazing place, and the wildlife experiences I had there (especially in Denali) are unforgettable, and I don’t know if I’d have the same experiences in the lower 48. The biggest highlight were the grizzly bears (AKA: Danger Floofs) that we saw just acting like silly bears out on the tundra. On the other hand, climate change is impacting the poles a lot more and a lot faster than other places. Because of that, Alaska was constantly reminding me that the world was on fire and things were rapidly changing. It was a gut check for me of how severe the situation really is.

Honestly, I think that’s something we all have to prepare ourselves for when we go travel to see the amazing sights of the world. And especially if you’re visiting natural wonders, you’ve got to be ready to see something that is a ghost of what it once was. While we can’t turn back the clock, seeing this type of change motivates me to ensure that we are not only minimizing the impacts of climate change as much as possible, but that we’re also investing in the big changes needed to adapt to these changes (for both people and wildlife).

This summer, I had the privilege to visit Alaska with three of my favorite people, Liz, Jason (aka: Ocho), and David on an RV camping trip from Anchorage, to Seward, and finally to Denali. For all of us, it was our first time visiting Alaska, and we had big expectations. After all, Alaska is “the last frontier.” We’ve all heard stories of amazing wildlife encounters and pristine wilderness.

Leading up to our trip, though, we kept seeing news about large portion of the Alaskan rainforest on fire and smoke shutting down roads (a race that Liz and Jason were going to do in Seward was canceled because of the bad smoke). There were also stories of salmon dying in rivers that (because of climate change) were lethally hot. Even before all of this news came out, the Trump administration had opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

All of this news was taking some wind out of my sails, and I wanted to take you all with me on my emotional roller coaster through Alaska. This is part one of the trip covering our leg to Seward. After each day, we sat down to share our roses (highlight from the day), thorn (disappointment from the day) and bud (what we’re looking forward to). Anyways, I hope you enjoy tagging along with us as we explore the “last frontier.”

Social media seems to be in the news a lot more lately, usually for bad reasons. Election interference, violations of privacy, concerns about companies becoming monopolies, bullying, and on, and on. Even conservationists have been pointing out the problems with social media and how people relate to nature.

My friend Chris, who goes on a lot of hikes and posts picture on his Instagram, wanted to talk about some of the things he’s been seeing on the trails and social media, both the good and bad. In the end, social media isn’t going anywhere, so it’s on us to be better. When you’re out hiking, make sure you soak in the experience and that you’re not just looking for your next social media post or profile picture. Make sure that you’re prepared when you’re out camping and hiking, and know how to recreate responsibly and safely.

Lawns are the dumbest thing ever! They’re obsessively managed squares of an invasive species. And what’s the point of them? They don’t grow food. They don’t provide habitat. They’re just stupid green squares.

I recently bought a house (brag!), so I’ve been spending a lot of time finding ways to slowly kill off my lawn and replace it with native plants and veggies. It’s a personal action that I’m doing that makes me feel like I have a little more agency over the impeding biodiversity collapse happening all around us, and I think that if more people started to pull out their stupid green squares, we’d all be in a better place.

On this episode, my friend Kimmy climbs up on my anti-lawn soap box with me. We dive into the history of lawns to figure out how these stupid green squares even became a thing. Then we talk about how we can change our lawns for the better by turning them into little backyard ecosystems and mini-farms. There are a lot of changing cultural values in America, and lawn-culture changes from generation to generation. Maybe there’s hope that as more millennials start buy homes, more of these stupid green squares will turn into little ecological oases. That’s right, we further exacerbate the boomer vs. millennial divide…but I mean really, what the hell are boomers even thinking?!

So pour a drink and tune in. If you’re at a lawn, just slowly drink your whisky, stare angrily at it, then think about all the other things that space could be. Cheers to the death of stupid green square everywhere!

Hey friends,

If you’re a political junky like me, the current national news cycle has been really depressing. It feels like every day we hear about a new racist tweet from the President of the United States. It’s awful, and it reminds me of the work that people in this country have to do when it comes to challenging and undoing racism. That includes people in the environmental movement. So many of the issues we work on intersect with race, but we just don’t see these connections because our movement has been too white for too long. If we are going to succeed at protecting the environment, we need to make sure our movement is big enough and welcoming enough to everyone.

And if you’re a white person reading this (and I imagine there are quite a few of them), I get it. You’re probably a liberal white person like me who agrees that racism is bad and diversity is good. And that’s great! But that’s just one step in the right direction. I’ve been fortunate enough to go to trainings and work shops about undoing internalized racism and white supremacy, and those courses completely changed me. I went into them thinking I wasn’t part of the problem because “I wasn’t a racist.” And no, but I was doing and saying things that reinforced white supremacy. I wasn’t thinking about communities of color when I was planning events or programs. I realized that I wasn’t being a good ally. I was only paying lip service to it.

So I’m trying to do better, and I think I am moving in a good direction. The work takes time, and it take patience, but the rewards are so great. Since recording this episode, I’ve worked on some really great programs, hand-in-hand, with tribal partners, and I’ve been directing more program resources to racially diverse and low-income communities that haven’t partnered with environmentalists before. But there’s more work to do, and it’s incumbent on us to do that work. Not only is doing this work good for the conservation movement, it’s good for the country, which so desperately needs to have a conversation about race, equality, and justice.

Ok…off the soap box now. I swear the podcast episode is a lot more fun to listen to than my rants. Hope that you enjoy it, and I hope it inspires everyone to do more to fight racism.

Cheers!

My love for whisky started when I went to college in Iowa with my friend, Jenny. We learned that all bad ass conservationists have to drink whisky, so we learned to deal with the burn of whisky and have stumbled our way forward ever since.

In college, we also learned a lot about how what we call “natural disasters” are really just big ecological disturbances that are really important. Over the years, our country has suppressed fires and floods so we could build out our human communities. Sadly, this has just made these disturbances even more severe, and it has big ecological implications. With climate change further fueling wild fires and historic floods, we should ask if there’s a silver lining in all of this? Is this an opportunity (albeit a big and nasty looking one) to restore some lost functionality to these systems?

Sometimes, working in conservation can be tough, demoralizing, and frustrating. One of the reasons I started this podcast was (admittedly) to do some group therapy with other conservationists who are just as worried and depressed about the downward spiral the entire planet seems unable to pull out of. Every day, there seems to be a new study out about how much (or little) time we have left to fix climate change and the ever-accelerating rate of biodiversity loss.

Whenever one of these reports come out, I usually end up on the phone, with a glass of whisky, talking to one of my best friends, David. We have similar jobs and often end up venting to each other. Inevitably, the question always comes up: what’s the point of this? If the world is collapsing and we’re all gonna die, then what’s the point of even trying?

It’s a fair question, and one many of us either deal with or (as my Midwestern heritage taught me to do) suppress and ignore. Regardless, David and I have talked about this question a lot over the years, and I think we land in a good place: one that’s realistic, yet optimistic. Pour yourself a drink and join us for episode one of Whisky and Conservation.

Cheers!

Wildlife conservation is a stressful career, so it’s no wonder that whenever conservationists get together, we have a drink (or four). And because we’re all so passionate about our work, we all end up having drunken conversations about animals and nature. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege to meet and drink with some of the smartest and most passionate conservationists out there, and the things we talk about over a glass of whisky address some of the biggest questions out there.

It’s not an understatement to say that we are in an extinction crisis, with 1 out of every 8 species facing extinction in the near future due to human activities. If we want to prevent the greatest losses, we (as a global society) will have to make some pretty big changes to almost every aspect of our lives to make room for other species to thrive alongside us. This will require some creative thinking, and what better way is there to get creative than to throw some booze into the mix.

Whisky and Conservation is a bi-monthly podcast (first episode will be dropped in early July) by and for the conservation community. We’ll tackle big and controversial topics, highlight issues that aren’t getting enough attention, and share out ideas for how to save the planet. We’ll also spend time learning about the history of the conservation movement, especially highlighting people who have been overlooked, and talk about all of the up’s and down’s from working in the conservation field.

Importantly, all of these conversations will take place over a drink. These are some pretty heavy topics, but with whisky’s help, we’ll make these big issues easy to understand and fun to listen too.

Stay tuned for updates and our first episode. In the mean time, if you have any ideas or suggestions for topics to discus, contact us to share your thoughts.

Cheers!

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Music from https://filmmusic.io: “Carpe Diem” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) Licence: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)