How We're Destroying this Jungle By Saving It

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What a good way to frame the age old debate of preservation vs conservation. John Muir and Gifford Pinchot both spoke into Teddy Roosevelt's ear about these topics years and years ago. Muir wanted full preservation; no commerical harvesting. Pinchot was a conservationist and wanted controlled harvesting and exlcuding only select unique or vital areas. That is why the US has a patchwork of both preservist National Parks and conservist national forests. Edit: fixed the term. I was saying "reservation", but I knew it was wrong. The term is "preservation".

This is why it’s so important to include local stakeholders in discussions whenever you are doing field research in an area where people live

So interesting. One of those things that an outsider separate from the local culture would never have thought about, and nobody's really to blame. Cool that you've been able to help bridge that gap a bit

I’be experienced similar in my every day life. I’m studying engineering in school, and on internships I’ve really learned to talk to the people whose decisions you’ll affect. You can work on a project redesigning a certain part for 3 months, but you won’t have the same perspective as the person who has made that part every day for 7 years. Different perspectives are valuable, not having a college education doesn’t mean they can’t point things out that you hadn’t considered.

This channel more than any other keeps showing me how, regardless of where you go, for every selfish egotist, you will find good people who truly try to do the right thing. It truly helps my fight back my internal cynic which had almost entirely consumed me in the past. Just to see that so many of us, however imperfect we all might be, are trying, started to give me hope again for this experiment called humanity. And we have to never stop talking to each other.

I had a discussion once with a researcher from NYSERDA (a public/private organization in NYS that works on energy efficiency). He was pitching CFL bulbs over incandescent, but I had electric heat, and I'd noticed since I'd switched my apartment was always cold in the winter. My apartment was designed and built in the early 80s. We eventually did get retrofit to natural gas, but my apartment was way more comfortable with traditional light bulbs and electric heat (at least in the winter... if I was designing a home without any regulations today I think I'd have lamps that could toggle between bulbs... LEDs in the summer, but incandescent or even heat lamps on a few key bulbs in the winter.) More importantly though, I think he kind of missed his own point with his presentation because he was looking at it from just one side of the issue. He was talking about a city owned housing project that he'd been called in to assess. It was costing the city a fortune to heat, so NYSERDA came in and made a bunch of suggestions- more insulation, new windows, new furnace for the building... and the city made the improvements, and... no improvement in the heating costs. He went back down to see what was happening and saw that in the middle of the winter lots of the tenants had windows wide open (to smoke, or just to get some air flow). His solution was to meter the units individually. The overall rent was lowered, and tenants had to start paying their own heating bill. His take away was that tenants should pay their own bill... which is fine... except the only reason the city spent all the money to upgrade the building in the first place was because it was costing them, as landlords, lots of money to heat. I'm on disability and live in subsidized housing where I pay my own heating bill... and a few years back my (private) landlord got a huge grant to go from electric to gas (heat exchanger). He went with the lowest bid and pocketed a lot of money in the deal. Our bills did go down, but our heat allowance went way down, so we as tenants ended up right back where we started, except we lost a whole closet each to a furnace (we've lost 2 closets since I've lived here). This was all before the big improvements in solar... there were grants for big solar projects and for single family units at the time, but our complex fell between the size of the two grant programs. So, natural gas was cleaner than what was producing electricity at the time, so as an energy initiative it was successful, at least short term, but as an anti-poverty scheme it just made a landlord a lot richer. And we do get HEAP for our energy bills, which are now low enough that the HEAP runs a surplus. National Grid gets a check, and holds onto the money (presumably earning interest on it), at one point we'd gotten a whole year ahead on our balances when they did the extra bonuses during the pandemic, so we really aren't paying our own bills anyway. If they'd asked any of us what would happen we could have told them. From an energy perspective, at least, it was a win (although now greener technology would work better than natural gas). It really screwed us though. We lost a closet and the installation was a nightmare. Our apartments were torn up for months. The furnaces, being the cheapest ones available, have pretty regular problems. Always talk to all the people with stakes in an issue.

There is an important amd relevant fishing technique that could apply to this, its rational fishing zones. Every few months the allowed zone is different and it can be a loop of 3 or 4 or more. Research showed that fish populations thrive doing that. I bet the same would apply to mangroves. Harvest a few spots for a few months then move. They will recover

I've learned more about the world from this channel than thirteen years in public school ever even tried to teach me.

The problem i have with some conservation groups is they want an area left untouched and ban everything when allowing felling a clearing will actually end up with a healthier and more divergent area.

'Since when does Rare Earth provide information?' Only always, Evan, only always. Glad your drinking habits had a positive effect.

It always bothers me when people decide the only way to do conservation is to kick off all people and manage the land like some sort of theme park. Humans and nature can live together just fine, so long as things don't get overpopulated (which seems like is very much so not a problem for Kosrae and many other Pacific islands). Hopefully that attitude will change as people see the damage from the sort of theme park esque management of various American national parks and see the success of various local community management schemes throughout the world.

They're a pretty big deal in Florida, as anyone who knows anything about fishing here will tell you. They have been protected from individual property owners for a long time, yet somehow large developers seem to be able to bribe local governments into letting them destroy these critical trees because they interfere with the view from waterfront property. Sadly we continue to destroy aquatic plants, spill oil, and dump sewage and radioactive mining waste into Tampa Bay for the worst reasoning throughout history: Think of all the money!

Best channel on this planet. Criminal how you don't have millions of views.

Do an episode on how putting out the fires in California has created so much fuel load in the forest that when it does ignite it burns with unimaginable intensity totally killing off everything taking it much longer than normal to recover. Fire is a natural part of the cycle in the forest that happens on a regular basis but the minute someone builds a few homes out there we fly in huge air tankers dumping retardant to protect them.

That's a great thought to have in mind when dealing with conservation, restoration, and rewilding. It's a tough idea to face - the thought that you could be doing more harm than good even when your all important data suggests otherwise, and it's radical as hell to face it and accept the challenge and find out if you're wrong.

Well done and well said. I've had similar discussions with local people about fish conservation, turtles, food trees, etc. Bringing a conservation strategy in from outside, without taking local conservation practices almost always creates the kind of frustration-from both sides- that you describe. Thank you for making this! Cheers from Guam! 🇬🇺

Rare Earth is the one channel I don’t wait for a little downtime to watch.

This shows the absolute essential nature of community engagement before doing any kind of intervention. We discuss it a lot in the context of public health but its good to see the principles in other fields as well! The community will always know the most about their context especially indigenous people who know the history of the area.

You are my favourite channel! Keep up the good work 👍