- Speaker #0
Those of you who have been following the last few episodes will know that I have recently started a pretty epic travel project. Basically for seven months I'm traveling with my wife Natalia and my dog Ginzu and we are meeting some of the most advanced regenerative farmers and experts all around Europe. This week we arrived in a beautiful town on the west coast of France called Biarritz and here we met with Oliver Dort to record a really nice conversation about biodiversity. and about the role of biodiversity in farming. We also talked about beavers, bees, and the pros and cons of wolves coming back into our European ecosystems. Oliver makes a really strong case for why biodiversity is so important, and he gives us a few key ways everyone listening can contribute to improving it. This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital. I'm your host Raphael, and this is the Deep Seed Podcast. So in last week's episode, we were just outside of Toulouse in a beautiful, regenerative, organic almond farm. And after that episode, we kept driving west to the French Atlantic coast. And we are today in Biarritz, beautiful city. And I'm in the company of Oliver Doert, a biodiversity and wildlife expert. Right?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I always have a bit of an imposter feeling still with the word expert, but yeah, I definitely know one or two things about biodiversity by now. So yeah.
- Speaker #0
Certainly something you're very passionate about. Yeah,
- Speaker #1
for sure. Exactly. And try to do my part to get more people excited about it.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So for a bit of context, we're sitting at your home here in Biarritz. Very first time for me here in this city. And I had the opportunity yesterday to walk around and my God, such a beautiful city. I was not expecting that. Amazing place to live, right?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, no, I can definitely not complain. It's I think in Europe, at least for me personally, it's my favorite place. We have the mountains, we have the ocean right here. We live five minutes from the beach. It's still more or less green. It's a smaller place, but it still feels a bit international because there's a lot of people living from... all around the world. And yeah, for me, it's like, it is the right way of boring. So I just love outdoors and I love, I love like food and different cultures. And we have the Spanish culture, the bus culture, the French culture, all within the like 30 minutes radius. And so it feels even like traveling, even though you're not like leaving this place. So it's really nice. Yeah.
- Speaker #0
I know it's a city that's quite famous for surfing. Do you surf as well?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, as you see with the bun, surfer signal. Yeah, all right. No, I know. Yeah, I do surf. And yeah, it's a beautiful sport because in the end, you have this combo out of endurance, you build muscles, your nature. And yeah, you're really connected with nature in the best possible way. And you get a really good workout in. And when you're out there in the water, you... yeah you don't have anything in the world that really bothers you and you can just like really shut off and especially with this busy brain like ours where it's just constantly thinking how can we improve this wall like well what's like what are the blocking points how can we intervene and make this world a bit better and wilder it's a really good sport because it's it helps you to just also calm down a bit and relax and recharge the batteries yeah it's an amazing sport
- Speaker #0
Unfortunately, in Brussels, it's difficult to practice on a regular basis. I can imagine. I'd like to start the conversation with this one question. If there's one message that you would like people to come away with today, what would it be?
- Speaker #1
I would say that nature is not a nice to have, but a must have. A lot of the conversations that we have about nature are often around like, oh, this is a really beautiful, fluffy, cute koala, elephant, lion. And we have to protect them because they're so cute or because they're so adorable or because we would like to see them. And I would just like to challenge the listener today. To hopefully go away with another perspective of nature to see like we actually depend on the natural world. We need it for our survival. We need it for the water that we drink, the oxygen that we breathe, the food that we eat, the medicine that we take. Everything is at this base and that's the natural world. And so what kind of cars we drive, what kind of fashion we wear, how big our flat is, all of that stuff is really nice to have. But we should really have a much... bigger concern and do our uttermost to make sure that the base is staying there and that it's getting actually healthier because right now we are not doing a really great job in guarding the natural world.
- Speaker #0
What would be a great way for people living in cities to easily reconnect with nature?
- Speaker #1
The number one tip, and that's also going to be my action item if we come to it at the end of the podcast, is like everybody can do it. It's like five minutes. Just go five minutes outside. It doesn't cost you money. It doesn't cost you much time. And if you go outside and if you just like put yourself out there, we all have five minutes to spare. And just look up, look a bit around, listen, smell. And there's usually... there are some natures still holding on, you know? Even if it's sometimes like a pigeon or if it's like some of those weeds coming through cracks of a street or like a tree or whatever. But just be a bit more observing of the natural world, even if it's a park or if it's a river or if it's a lake, and try to find those spaces that are nearby and just look a bit and see how you feel. And look a bit around and see what you can find. there's also like still so much life that is holding on and that is still trying to push and hasn't given up yet and so yeah I think this is like the easiest thing that really everybody can do no matter like the income that they have and how much time they have and so forth I think this is like the
- Speaker #0
simplest one yeah um in the first few minutes of this conversation we've used the word nature quite a lot and I've had several guests on the podcast before telling me that we should refrain from using that term because it creates an opposition between culture on one side, which is us humans and everything related to humans, and nature on the other side, which is everything else alive that is not us. Yeah. What do you think about that?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, no, for sure. They definitely have a point. We definitely have this perception of like separating us. Rather than seeing us as a part of nature, we see us apart. And that's definitely a huge issue that we need to tackle. I think a lot of people even forgot that we are like animals. And we treat ourselves like we wouldn't be animals. And we create environments that are quite toxic for us in terms of noise, in terms of pollution, and so forth. Because we just got so disconnected. We are not like robots, we are like animals. And so we need to get back to that thinking. Now when it comes to the term, of nature. I work a lot in communication and so one of the guiding principles that I always like to use is simplicity. You don't want people to feel stupid when they listen to you. You don't want them to feel like, oh, I didn't understand anything of this, because then they're going to shut off and they're going to just pause your podcast or they're going to do something else. Just because if you speak in such a language where they feel like, oh, I'm not going to understand everything, it's not a really nice feeling. And so... What I like about the umbrella term of nature is that people, no matter who you ask, there is some sort of understanding about this. So it's very the simplicity of that word. And if we start to use very specific words that are maybe then pushed by a certain group of people, but that stays, let's say, in the realm of these people just because they like this term, then we're going to have the conversation between us and we're going to see like, oh yeah, we all understand this and so forth. But... we're not going to get the broad majority on our page. And to be honest, I think that's definitely something where we need to improve, especially in the nature community, that we bring more people in. And we can only do this through language that really everybody understands. So I think it's more of a journey. I think it's always important to, okay, what is the next step that we can take people and society on? And some people maybe want to jump the gun a bit and to say like, okay, we need to come up with an entirely new term. And... rather right now maybe say something like, when you talk about nature, you say nature, but we are part of nature. So make really clear that you're talking about nature, not as something separate, but that you talk about nature and hey, you know what, we are part of it. We are part of this. When it comes to biodiversity, we are included. And yeah, I think this is a bit like my stance point on this.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I like that. I like that vision. I personally have been struggling not using the word nature because I'm so conditioned and used to using that term. And I find it hard to express certain ideas without the use of the word. And yeah, so I quite like your vision, which is, OK, you can keep using the word nature, but insist on the fact that humans are part of it, part of nature and not separate from it. Yeah. I want to rewind a little bit. and talk about you. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about your personal journey and what led you to become so passionate about the living world.
- Speaker #1
Ah, that's a good question. Where did it all start? So I was very privileged that my parents really nurtured that curiosity about the natural world that apparently I really had from a really young age. So there's a picture of me where I asked my mom to dress me up as an elephant seal for carnival. So in Germany we have like this carnival thing and like usually boys ask their mom to dress them up as like firefighters, policemen, astronauts, all of that stuff and asked her to be an elephant seal. Now you can imagine in the 90s like good luck trying to get an elephant seal costume and so she actually made it herself and so there's this really beautiful picture of me just like being the happiest boy in the world because I got to be an elephant seal. That just like shows a bit like where I'm coming from is like, apparently I was really lucky that there was this like calling on no matter what you believe in. But from a really young age, I've just really loved in nature. And so I grew up in Berlin. And yeah, I mean, it's it's a greener city than others. But I wouldn't say you know, I wasn't growing up next to elephant seals. I wasn't growing up in a in a in the African bush or in the Amazon. So yeah,
- Speaker #0
something I've noticed on the podcast is that many of my guests had an early childhood connection with nature. Some of them grew up on a farm or close to nature or had parents that were very passionate about nature and took them out on walks in the forest and in the parks and in the zoo and things like that when they were kids. And many of them went on to have a career that was completely unrelated in business and finance and education and politics and fashion, like many other examples like that. And later in life came back to it and became... prominent figures in the ecosystem restoration movement or the regenerative agriculture movement. And so I'm starting to see a pattern emerge here where when kids are exposed to nature from a young age and build that connection with it and that love and respect for nature, they tend to become members of society who actively contribute to preserving it and to protecting it and to improving it. Would you say that this was the case for you as well?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, no, no, for sure, for sure. I think that's like also like if a listener is a parent, I think you have like such a strong power to plant like really positive seeds for the child by just like exposing them to the natural world in all different ways. And my mom, for example, she always brought me to the National History Museum. And if you don't know, the National History Museum of Berlin has the biggest dinosaur skeleton in the world. They have the brachiosaurus. We went there every single day so that even the guards, they started to know me and I got free entry because they knew I was just going to want to see the brachiosaurus and then I'm off again. And so, please don't fire the security guards. And yeah, they were like incremental to nurture that weirdness or this really unique love that apparently I had for the natural world. And really important, what you were just saying is a lot of people, they lose that when they're growing up and me too. So it's not like... I was here and from there on it was just like a straight route and I was just like going more and more and more into this. No, this was actually really like really messy route as like for many other people because I was like in high school and there are like different interests and so like you start to play sports and then like girls and fashion and you get like really sidetracked and there's peer pressure and you... You start maybe to hide yourself and at least I was hiding my interest for the natural world looking back now I can say I was hiding it in that moment. It didn't even feel like it was just like I wanted to fit in I think isn't how many of us Yeah, having the same issues in high school and then I would just like finished high school and went to Australia because I knew I wanted to speak English and I Was really bad in English and I also was not ready to study because I was still very lost And then it took me this year in Australia to realize, why should I live for somebody else's expectations or views of me if I like really the natural world and if that is what's driving me and if that's my, let's say, purpose in life or my lifelong calling? Why wouldn't I? Now, like, really just like do it and just like go in on this. Because if we think about happiness, then I personally think a lot of the happiness come by doing really the things that you kind of meant to be or that you kind of grow into and where your biggest passions and motivations lie. And so then I studied business because I had the reflection that the business world has like the biggest impact on the natural world. Because if we look at this triangle of power of like citizens, governments and companies. I believe companies have the bigger lever when it comes to the two. And I said, okay, I need to understand why currently businesses destroy the natural world, even though they need it for their products and for their services. Why do they do this? Why do they get away with this? And what kind of techniques are they also using to influence the public? And can we use all of that to actually have a positive impact? Can we... bring companies towards like actually being a force for good and like actually restoring and regenerating this world because i really believe we can and so i studied business and lost myself again because now you're sitting with all kind of other people that study business for different reasons and i also got caught up in this so i did that internships i was working in e-commerce and mobility in also for some ngos but in travel tech and i lost myself again because now you were dealing with like the career ladder, the money, the privileges of like getting into certain positions or getting promotions and so forth. And I lost myself again a bit. And even working for these companies, I realized biodiversity was really, really like an agenda point and you didn't see it in the OKRs, you didn't see it in your annual review, nothing like that. And yeah, then COVID hit and I was like... What are you doing, Olli? Like you set out to do this thing for nature and you always labor yourself inside your head of like this nature person and that does everything for the natural world. And I just looked at my life and I was like, all right, let's do a little checklist. I don't work in anything nature related. Plus my company is not really working that much on that topic. Okay, already not really right. I don't consume anything. So if I don't consume that many books, I didn't consume that many documentaries, nothing. So I was like, I didn't study this so also not really um in my friend circle there were not that many people that are actually really into the natural world that I could like geek out about like elephant seals and so forth so also not really in a friend circle and I was just like it's bit like of a lie that you're telling yourself because also if you look at the time that you dedicate to other things you dedicate everywhere more time than actually be in nature or do something about the natural world and i was just like can't continue like this kind of like that was really like a reflection where i was like there's not like this really like a lie that i told to myself in my head and i was like no i can't continue like this and then i it was not like not 360 right away but like basically then I extended more time, more resources towards becoming that person that I was in my head. So yeah, fast forward.
- Speaker #0
So we're going to be talking a lot about biodiversity. That's kind of the key topic of this discussion. And while I was preparing the questions for the interview, I realized that I don't... precisely know what we mean when we say biodiversity. It feels like kind of a vague term that is thrown around a lot. And so I was wondering if you could give us your definition of biodiversity.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, you make a really strong point. The word itself, I think it's what we talked about earlier. It's, I think, pushing people away. For me, it still sounds like quite scientific. I use it because I want to send certain signals to people and to companies. But it's not a really easy to grasp term, I think. And even me for a long time, even that was like really like a nature person, I didn't know for a long time what it was and I misunderstood it. So biodiversity, really, really simplified. You can Google it yourself and to have like more scientific definitions, but really down to it, it's the diversity of life on our planet. So we're really looking at everything that is alive. And the definition between like nature and biodiversity and why it's quite often it's mentioned side to side and not like as one term is that the natural world, at least from a scientific, from a Western scientific point, is considered as this like also like non-living plus the living. So in Western science, you would say like a mountain doesn't necessarily live or a river doesn't necessarily live. And so the biodiversity is the living part is like the fishes, you know, the plants and so forth. And. But for example, especially in indigenous communities, that's already not really true. And so that's where, again, we can totally get sidetracked. But when it comes to biodiversity, what the listener just needs to understand is like, there's three components of biodiversity. There's one that is species diversity. So this is like, let's say, what most people even know about biodiversity is like, it's the giraffes, the elephants, the wolves. So what kind of different species do you have? And the same goes for plants and for fungi and so forth. The second one is genetic diversity, which is really important too. So that is like when we come to humans, because again, we are part of nature, it's the eye colors, the sizes and so forth. And we need this genetic diversity within one species, because if we don't have that, then if there's a disease, for example, or something majorly happening, then it can just like, evaporate like the entire species because you don't have the resilience, you don't have diversity within that. And so if there's a... disease coming like COVID for example if we wouldn't have genetic diversity it would have been really really much much much worse than it was already. And the third one is ecosystem diversity. So in especially western news we talk a lot about the amazon rainforest and that is really really crucial and yet at the same time we need all the different ecosystems too. So we need like some unsexy one like marshlands, we need like the stone deserts, we need the coral reefs around the world, we need the grasslands, we need the wildflowers. All of these different ecosystems are really important. And so there's also like a diversity along that, a bit like where you need to take a step back and they bring all the different diversity of life.
- Speaker #0
Okay, I see. So the diversity of species, the genetic diversity, and then the diversity of ecosystems. And I guess when we talk about biodiversity, usually we talk about it in a certain context, within certain boundaries, let's say. Because on the one hand, we could be looking at biodiversity globally. So that's all of the diversity of species and genetics and ecosystems on the whole planet. But a lot of the time we'll be talking about the biodiversity of a soil or of a teaspoon of soil even. So I guess there's different scales to be looking at this, right?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. And I think, I don't exactly know the numbers, but I think it was like just a teaspoon of soil has already tons of more species of... different sorts of life than we could ever have imagined. I think it was like billions of species just within a teaspoon of soil. And there's so much still to explore. We still don't even know who our neighbors are on this planet. It depends on how micro you want to get. But even big stuff, like if we go into the deep sea, there's still some bigger things as well, like floating around. Sometimes in jungle, they still find new species of frogs and spiders and... flies and yeah, in the deep sea as well. And then if we go to the soil, I mean, there's like still like so much of a gap of like what we know, because yeah. So far, like quite often it has been underfunded. And so that's why there's not, there's still like a bit of a knowledge gap.
- Speaker #0
Okay, yeah. How do we typically measure biodiversity?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, so that's a bit like the tricky. part when we compare it, let's say, often we try to compare it with like carbon, like, why don't we give like biodiversity a carbon ton or something like this? A problematic a bit with biodiversity is because of the diversity, you probably guessed it, it's like not as straightforward because you have different contexts. So let's say you have a different diversity and different like ecosystem and how it works in the coral reef than in the rainforest and so forth. So it's very, like scientists also like arguing, will there ever be like one key KPI that we say like, okay, we're going to try to optimize it or not. And so right now, at least we can say there is none. And most likely there will be none. Never say never, at least in my perspective, but I doubt that there will be one because of just the different contexts and the different complexities. But what I can say is like, so... You don't want life on earth to reduce itself. You don't want just to have humans. That would be really, really unhealthy. You want other species of life around us. And then you have a look a bit like, okay, how is that influenced? How is that life on earth influenced? And then you're looking at habitat loss. You're looking at how rich, how many species do we have in certain areas? How abundant is this species? How are the populations looking like? So if we have, for example, a wolf but then there's just like one wolf in there like you know in the entire forest and you know like okay not really biodiversity rich because how likely is it that the wolf somehow will reproduce not really uh you're looking at extinction rates for example where there's natural extinction rates and then there's really like due to human actions now it's just like 10 to 100 times higher than the natural extinction rates so there's there's different kpis that people are looking at and they will give you a bit of an overall feeling of like okay it's really not going in the right direction and i'm a big fan of metrics because i think in the end they help us with like you know what's gets measured gets improved and i do believe this but i also like everybody especially because we were talking earlier about like getting outside just go outside and look a bit around you like how much life and how much abundance of life do you see would you consider that a lot or not and uh you And a lot of listeners, if they go out and so forth, I will promise them life is not as abundant as it used to be. And yeah, it's going to be sometimes a bit harder to find a lot of different species and having especially bigger mammals. Or walking around the city. If you're maybe lucky, maybe have leopards and rhinos and so forth in your cities. But in a lot of cities, especially in Europe and so forth, we don't have that.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, but maybe one of the key issues with... measuring biodiversity using your senses is that there's something called the shifting baseline syndrome and basically the idea is that imagine someone a hundred years ago walking through a forest and they would see a lot of birds and insects and different species of plants and you know it would be very rich in biodiversity and that for that person would be the norm yeah but imagine the same person then walking the same ecosystem today a hundred years later and it has lost 70% of its biodiversity, that person would see that ecosystem as having a problem, as being unhealthy, as lacking biodiversity. But someone born today, seeing that ecosystem for the first time, would see it as being healthy, as being the norm, right?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I'm so happy that you brought that up, because it's like, literally, the shifting baseline is one of the three key components that I try to tackle in my life. Because the shifting baseline syndrome I was as well. a bit of a scientific and a bit mouthful. But in the end, it just means that we forget about nature with every generation, as you said. And I think this is like such a crucial concept that only a small percentage of this population know about. And that's really, really scaring me because in the end, exactly as you said, it means that just with every generation, we just got used to a depleted version of the natural world. until none will be left. And that's right now, at least the traction that we're on. We can break it. We can be the generation that says like, no, actually, you know what? We're going to stop here. But so far, that was the trend that basically everybody was like, oh, this is like a lot of butterflies. But in the end, it was only like 10% of the butterflies that used to be there. Or you say like, oh, this is a lot of fish. But no, there were some situations where people couldn't paddle because there was like so much fish there. Or like, you know, so it's just like, what do we consider as abundant? And if you take people... if you take a lot of Europeans out of the cities right now, you will put them into and go with them into nature. And they just like basically take them to monoculture farms and they would define that as nature because it's a green field and it's green. So that's nature. And we really need to teach people again, like, okay, this was what it used to look like before we altered it, before we changed how it looked like. And we... going to turn back entirely, it's going to be tricky, but there's definitely steps that we can take so that more life returns and that will benefit all of us.
- Speaker #0
Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to take a really short break from this conversation to tell you about the official partner of this podcast, Soil Capital. One of the biggest levers to motivate farmers in their transition to regenerative agriculture is financial incentives. And that's exactly what Soil Capital is doing. rewarding farmers who improve things like soil health or biodiversity. What they're doing is really inspiring and I'm super proud to be partnering with them for the podcast. Still talking about the idea of measuring biodiversity, we hear numbers. I don't have them on the top of my head, but things like we've lost 70% of individuals or things like that. What are the metrics that we do have that we can say this has happened in the last 100 years or so?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, sure. So there's numerous ones. So one is, for example, there's tons of scientific papers, but one is really powerful that 1 million species. So that's not individuals, but that's different species and every species has like different number of like how many individuals are still within that species but one million species are facing extinction in the next decades if we continue business as usual and that is usually increasing because we're also talking about agriculture and like how we can change it and how it can be part of a positive change agriculture has been responsible for 70 percent of biodiversity loss on land due to especially like deforestation and that is of course like a number that's like quite okay um on land um and we yeah and what else what else is there i mean we have the extinction rates so like nature's not the normal that i mean there's no dinosaurs anymore and so like and there's also like tons of other animals not anymore that like the mammoth and so forth and there's always like the question of like okay what is the natural kind of rate of extinction that just happens due to outside events or just like species adapting and going too hardcore and then the species can't adopt anymore and yeah it gets extinct but the rate that we're currently on and that is due to our activities is like 10 to 100 times higher and i think this is like a really powerful metric so then 10 to 100 times higher than the natural rate okay so now due to human activity we are losing species 10 to 100 times faster than it would normally be the case yeah exactly yeah okay yeah and so that's like uh that's like okay um that's a big one and um and then as well like one that i like which regarding metrics i think is like quite interesting to just like sometimes challenge our misconceptions of the world is that if you look at like just the amount of like life that is on earth actually if we look at animals in the national geographic you always see like different whales and like you see the Serengeti with the zebras and the wildebeest so we think there's so much abundant life out there but if you look at like mammals which are like elephants like buffalo and so forth there's actually 90 how much was it i think 96 percent of it of mammals on earth i actually park and like pigs and cows and so forth and goats and so forth. So all for our like agriculture. This is actually the abundant mammal life on Earth is actually those. And then if we consider us, then of course, like the ratio is a bit different. I think it's around like 60% or something is like from agriculture. Then 30% I think is like humans. And then only 3% of like this biomass on our planet is like wildlife.
- Speaker #0
Okay. Yeah. So if we measure in terms of total biomass of living creatures on the planet. Only 3% of that is still wild and everything else. So 97% is both humans and animals we breathe for human consumption.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, only like 3% of this entire like of all the mammals and of all the things that you see on land. It's like and the same goes for like birds. I think it's like 70% of something is poultry like a sort of like chicken and turkeys and so forth and only like 30 to 20. 20 to 30% is like wild birds.
- Speaker #0
That's a crazy number when you really think about it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad that you brought up agriculture. Yeah. Because this is the central topic of this podcast usually. And I really wanted to, of course, make the connection between biodiversity and regenerative agriculture. We often hear in Region Act that there's a few key pillars and diversity is one of them. And so that's a great opportunity here to focus on that pillar and to really try to understand why biodiversity is so important to a healthy, resilient, efficient system for a farmer. What's the question? Could you maybe explain why biodiversity is so important for a farming system?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I think in the end, agriculture is like the most effective one and they have like the biggest... interest into keeping like the natural world as diverse as possible and that's due to numerous things so one is the pollination so pollination used to happen like a lot like naturally so you had like different pollinators that were doing their job and that were like pollinating the crops the trees and so forth and so if you would have to do this manually now you have a totally different economics of like that you need to consider like how do you pollinate if you have to do this manually by hand it's just not it's just impossible if you have to again get some more technology like bee drones or whatever, you have another investment that you need to make in order to purchase them, to maintain them and so forth. So one is like pollination, which is just like if you have more diversity, if you actually really do a good job on biodiversity front, you will have more pollinators, which are good for your whatever crop you grow, if you need pollination. Water. So we know that more biodiverse places, they're really good when it comes to water retention. like when it comes to avoiding floods, by avoiding white fires, by creating a better water quality. So like biodiversity, like for example beavers, they're just like incredible engineers that just like create these like wetlands so that we can restore more water and especially in a place that gets drier and drier and drier. You can imagine that this is really important. Climate regulation and like carbon sequencing and capturing all the carbon out of the air. which is also quite important for farming because in the end you don't want to really have a hotter planet. It's not good for, no matter if you're a cattle range farmer or if you're growing some crops, you don't want to have a hotter planet. And so biodiversity helps a lot in cooling us down and to regulate the climate. What else? There's diseases regulation. So if you have more biodiversity, then usually you don't have the tendency of just like... one thing being like attacking everything and just destroying everything if you have a really functioning ecosystem then it's self-regulating so it wouldn't let something like this happen that let's take if you have wolves um wolves are quite important to keep in check the deep population because if the deer population if there's no wolves the deer population will probably go through the roof and they will kill a lot of the younger trees and so forth and so in the end the wolves are coming in the deer is getting a bit more skittish and then they're gonna you know they go a bit away and so the same happens with all smaller insects as well and so forth it's like you want diversity because then it's self-regulating and so if you have that diversity you have less risks of like your your plants and or your animals to run into like diseases and so yeah um and there's like yeah there's like so much more and we can talk hours about it but yeah but let's i don't know but
- Speaker #0
um yeah you you give some really great examples here but i would love to dig a bit deeper and you know get into more detail yeah like the beaver we hear so much about them being these amazing uh keystone species maybe you could explain why that is yeah so first for the listeners that haven't heard the term like keystone species means like all
- Speaker #1
species are important but then there's certain species that just like are that build a lot of like they build really like the environment so that all the other species are going to keep on flourishing as well. So they just have a slightly more impact on their ecosystem than other species. The keystone from that famous bridge of like, if you have tons of stones and if you have them a bit like a bridge, there's one stone that kind of connects the arc. And if you would take that one out, the entire bridge would collapse. And that's the keystone species. And so when you come, when we talk about the beavers, it's like one of those keystone species because they create an entirely ecosystem where now like there's more yeah there's an entirely new species like popping up and they create this diversity that wasn't necessarily there before and they're so important especially when we look into the agriculture through the agriculture lens because of the water now they basically what they do is they They start to fell trees and they start to create wetlands. So they come in where before maybe there was just like a dried area and there was just like a river. And they actually start to sometimes, you know, like shift the direction of the rivers and they start to flood certain bits. And that's why quite often they're also not necessarily popular with farmers, because you don't want to have a certain variable on your land that is just like redirecting water from one place to the other. But it's very important because they... they allow you so they create basically the system so that when there is the next heavy rainfall that this water will actually go into the soil and this water will actually be stored and that it's not just like going to float off and say a lot of rivers for example in europe they're they're straight and so if beavers are coming in and they create these like side pockets of rivers and they create these wetlands then with heavy rainfall it will actually get the water into more diverse pockets whereas Right now it's basically just flushing down.
- Speaker #0
So what happens exactly? We have these fairly straight rivers, then the beavers come in, they build their nests on the river that slows down the water, that makes it drift to the side, creates these curves. Yeah,
- Speaker #1
exactly.
- Speaker #0
Right? Yeah. And keeps improving or changing in that way,
- Speaker #1
right? Yeah, exactly. So they build the dams and then... Maybe I have to find this picture and maybe you can share it in the show notes or something. It was like a river. And basically on one side, it's like a bit brownish and has like a lot of soil, a lot of sediments and so forth in there. And then basically it goes through the stem and on the other side you have like clean water. And so it's like a water purifier as well. So like the really like the water quality is usually very, very high when it comes to beavers. And so that's really important. And that being said, of course, if you have like tons of like chemical plants and if you have tons of like toxic plants and so forth, beaver can only do as much. But like as a... if you try to imagine beavers a bit like they're really great when it comes to like retaining waters avoiding wildfires and boosting other species improving water quality and so forth okay you also mentioned pollinators we hear a lot about bees like this fear of losing bees what do we do what's
- Speaker #0
the situation there maybe you could like get a little bit more detailed about the role of pollinators the different types of pollinators and how they contribute to agriculture yeah
- Speaker #1
No, that's a good point. First of all, insects are rarely loved in our society. And so first I would invite everybody to have another look at insects because they're really cool and they give us a lot of nice stuff like chocolate. Chocolate is done because of the mosquito. The mosquito is actually pollinating. You have also these honeybees and they are mostly used, let's say, in a lot of... a lot of agriculture but pollination is happening all around the world in different ecosystems of the natural world like you have like hummingbirds that are pollinating and you have even found just like just a couple of weeks ago they found out that there's this Ethiopian wolf that apparently does like pollinating as well so there's really like pollinating goes beyond like let's say the honeybees that we often like talk about and now they're really crucial because a lot of our plants they depend on pollination in order so that we can then grow some fruits out of it, some nuts out of it, and so forth, like almonds that you talked about in your introduction. And so if we don't have these kind of pollinators, one, we wouldn't have all of these products anymore. So we couldn't have this. And a lot of food is dependent on pollination, so we would have food shortages, which is not really something that we should aspire to have. And it would also drive up the cost because now if you If you want to keep on pollinating, you will have to come up with an idea. Okay, how do I, how do I, I'm going to do this.
- Speaker #0
By hand.
- Speaker #1
And yeah, just by hand. So now try to do this with like almonds and with cherries and with everything. And so, yeah, not a good idea. And last but not least as well, if we talked about diversity. So every little animal, even if you like them or not, or like plant or fungi has a role to play in this natural world. Nature is no dummy. They don't create things that are useless. So even if you think sometimes like a wasp is useless, a bee is useless, a mosquito is useless, a tick is useless, that's not the case. Like every single living thing has a role to play. And you're not always going to like it, but especially when it comes to pollination, we actually like it a lot because we use all the products in our like almonds and like honey and chocolate and so forth. Like just imagine like a world without it.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, yeah. But what's the damage so far? Obviously agriculture is using maybe 50% of the land, something like that. A bit of land, yeah. A bit of land. We use a lot of pesticide, a lot of chemicals, which are really bad for these pollinators. We hear that they've been disappearing. Is there any stats that we should know to have a general idea of where we stand?
- Speaker #1
General stats. The top of mind? I'm pretty sure there are. I'm pretty sure there are. I mean, already in the 70s, I think it was written in the 70s or 80s, there was a book called really famous and it's called The Silent Spring, just because she already noticed like, it was just like, there were less and less and less insects and that that can't be good. At the top of my mind, I have to say like, I don't know exactly the pollination, how they shrink because it's well like... it's it's like regarding counting it's not always like easy yeah of course so some uh some for example in the in the bees um they have also like different families and some species are a bit more affected than others but let's say it like this it is really really not a good situation because now what they started to do if you talked about almonds and you talked about california they started to ship pollinators from one place to the other just because there's not enough natural pollinators anymore and so now actually producing almonds becomes very very expensive because now you have a cost that was usually taken over by nature on nature's tap now we actually as a company or we as a government or we as a society have to come up with solutions of transporting sometimes pollinators just because yeah we eradicated them through our different practices i'm
- Speaker #0
sometimes struggling to understand how we managed to keep going this way for so long because i hear that Pollinators are crucial for food production and I hear that their numbers have been declining drastically over the last few decades. But that said, I haven't heard anything about an issue with yields dropping due to the lack of pollinators. So yeah, what's going on there?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I mean, one thing is that, I mean, there's also like, so there's obviously the natural world of like the pollinators that they provide. And then you can like breed, like you can breed like the... species that you need and that sometimes are maybe the most efficient so what we've seen is like they breed bees that are especially sufficient and especially efficient to do a certain job of like pollinating and so you can counterbalance let's say the natural one and you can subsidize by like releasing more like breed bees and so forth it's just like you wouldn't have to do that if you if you if you would have the natural like diversity still in order um So yeah, that has what we've been doing. Plus, quite often, this B-circle and so forth, they die really quickly. And so in the end, we just keep on subsidizing and put more and more into breeding those. And the life cycles just get shorter and shorter, which means in the end, you're just subsidizing it with money. You invest into breeding them and then releasing them.
- Speaker #0
As often, a very short-sighted solution.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, humans in the natural.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, yeah. Do you have any strategies or advice for regenerative farmers in terms of improving biodiversity on their farm?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, no, I think first of all, like if you're a farmer and if you're like looking into this, it's first step, you already took it by like listening to this podcast and like thinking about implementing regenerative farming. Or if you're already actually doing it, then kudos to you because that's already like really, really important. Because that at least means that. you slowly slowly start to change your practices and to avoid the a lot of the damage that is usually done the big one is obviously like habitat loss in agriculture so when it comes to you can be a very regenerative farmer um but it's also a bit about like how much habitat is still left and how much did let's say your ordinary farm pushed out of this and so one of the things that i would say at first is to look of like okay can you create certain pockets where nature can return, where you don't necessarily grow food on. Because that is like, there's a lot of different drivers that drive biodiversity loss, but space missing, just like space is like, is an issue. Because like you have like animals and plants of all different sizes and they need space. We need space. We need living space. And so as one first thing that is a bit like easier to just like think about is like, okay, are there some certain pockets of your farm? where you can consider there's a forest maybe anyways there can you maybe make some additional space around this so that nature can return and just like help it a little bit so i would say space is like one of the first one because it is really one of the most impactful actions that farmers can take yeah um
- Speaker #0
there's a there's a common belief that if you take productive land out of production. Here you mentioned very specifically land that is not used for food production. But even if you did, there's this common belief that if you take a part of your land out of production for rewilding or for like a pond or for trees or for biodiversity strips and things like that, that then you're producing less and therefore you're earning less money. But I find more and more evidence in my travels, in my conversations, that actually... you can actually gain a lot more than you lose by having to rely less heavily on irrigation, on chemicals, on fertilizer, on a lot of other things. So you might have a little bit less productive land, but the land that you have is more efficient as a system.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, not fully. I mean, it's like sometimes, especially as somebody, let's say, if you've been only doing conventional farming for a long time, it sounds a bit like counterintuitive, maybe. But that's exactly the case about regenerative farming. If you do it really right and if you listen to the best practices, if you learn from your peers, the productivity is higher. So that's one of the really exciting things that gets me really excited about this movement is that we will be able, if we do it right, to produce on less land. And that makes all the difference because we need to restore some of the habitats that we have lost and we need to bring some animals back. We're talking about wolves and especially the bigger animals, they just need a bit more space. And so if you can't do that on a tiny five by five square meters, yes, better than nothing, awesome. But you're not going to rewild a wolf on five by five square meter land, you know? Okay,
- Speaker #0
yeah,
- Speaker #1
yeah.
- Speaker #0
I'm hearing here the dilemma, sort of the debate between, what is it, land sharing and land sparing, right? Where some people argue that we should be super intensive to leave more space for...
- Speaker #1
rewilding and for nature and some say we should be more extensive and include nature into our food systems what do you think a bit of both i guess yeah yeah yeah i think uh probably like a bit of both like i was definitely starting out with like thinking like ah no we just need to we need to have nature on one side and then cities and like agriculture on one side and so forth and the more i the more i kind of like learn about this and the more conversations i have i think it's actually really really important that throughout our life at every different touch points and no ever kind of different business activities we have there should be nature somehow represented and so now i'm actually a big fan of like yes we should definitely make sure that the biggest vast areas of land that we still have and should be protected so really where there's still wilderness if you can call it like that we should definitely do our uttermost to protect it, to maybe increase it a bit, like to increase the buffer zone, restore it and so forth. And then at the same time, we should definitely look into like all of our different activities that we do, no matter if we're having a garden, no matter if we're having lands that we use for agriculture, no matter if we have a business in the city, we all have some agencies that we can create this like nature pockets. And by creating these nature pockets and by hopefully combining them, we can really create like abundance of life again. And so- Yeah, I think that's maybe a bit my answer about this. Because we definitely need, for the bigger animals, we definitely need some bigger spaces that are connected. So if you're working in the context of Africa or Asia and you have an Asian elephant, it's just like that one elephant needs some space. And so that elephant needs to have some passages where it can walk and so forth. And in Europe, we have some big animals too. We have like... European bison, we have bears, we have wolves and so forth. So they need some certain passages. But that's the cool thing, I think, as well, where farming can come in is because it's quite often privately owned. We can just decide that we just work together as farmers together to maybe create these pockets in such a way that they actually become like a connected system rather than tiny little islands that even if every regenerative farmer, let's say, is just doing it for themselves, that's better than nothing. but if it's not connected, if the pieces are not connected, then it's not going to have the same positive impact as if we collaborate collectively to see, hey, do you know what? Why don't you have a piece there that we can connect? And let me restore rewild a bit here. And that's going to increase the impact like much more than if we would do it all by ourself.
- Speaker #0
Okay. You mentioned the wolves a couple of times already. And here in the context of sharing Look, agriculture with wildlife. We hear a lot about wolves coming back to Europe. Some people are saying it's amazing. It's great for ecosystems. Their value to restoration is huge. And obviously some other people are quite against it because for safety reasons, maybe some farmers will argue that this is dangerous for their livestock. I mean, where do you stand on that? What is the full story here?
- Speaker #1
I think my stance is quite clear already if the person made it until here. But first I want to say for the farmers, I can totally understand. I can totally hear you. If you're, for example, working with sheep, there's definitely risks, there will be tensions. And so first of all, I hear you and I can totally understand your fear. We were talking earlier about shifting baseline syndrome. So the farmer that necessarily has these fears, it's quite normal because... For the past 50, 100 years, we did a really terrific job of eradicating all sorts of larger carnivores, like lynx, wolf, bears. There used to be an abundance in Europe as well, but we did a really awful job in protecting them. And so there's a generation and sometimes two generations, sometimes three generations where the animal was just not there. So they didn't grow up with this. And even in their sometimes now heritage, it didn't used to be there. So there's no, they would feel like this is actually something new or like this is a bit like an intruder, which is not like it's been there before. We are a bit sort of the intruders. And so we need to be understanding that these fears are normal and we need to listen. And we need to understand what is your reality and what are you really afraid about? And. When it comes to them putting this all in perspective, it's like, overall, the wolf has much more advantages to bring them back than disadvantages. For the farmers, however, because they are first in line when it comes to this, is we need to find systems so that their impact can be, the negative impact can be as minimized as possible. So how can we teach farmers of like, what are some prevention methods so that wolf attacks don't even become an issue? there's really classical things like dogs and different fence systems and so forth. And a lot of it is also supported by, at least in the EU, they have sometimes some schemes that farmers can tap into. And so there's definitely some support out there. And as always with everything in the news, the wolf is also such a classical fairy tale character that is a bit demonized. And so just from we are working a bit against culture because we learned for a long time in our upbringing that it's scary and that it's going to kill you and that it's going to you know damage you and so we're also working a bit against that and so we need to be careful when these kind of stories come either about like one farmer that was really angry or like the media blowing things up even though that's a lot of attacks on sheep if you look at really the statistics at least the ones that i found quite often you can even like see that most of the attacks are most likely happened by dogs rather than wolves because the attacking Like how they attack is different then and so yeah, it's like it's it easily becomes an emotional topic But we should see it from all kind of different perspectives in order to have like if just in a tough conversation about this But together rather than talking about one another.
- Speaker #0
Okay, and we just focused on the potential downside of having wolves back into our ecosystems. But maybe we could look at the other side of that story, the positive side, and you could tell us how wolves actually benefit our ecosystems. Yeah,
- Speaker #1
yeah, exactly. So like when it comes to farming, it's like, you know, when you when you when you are in the agriculture space, it's like you, you shape nature to a certain extent. And so usually what we humans got like quite good at and what we want is some sort of strong influence on it because we don't want necessarily variables that we are not really like because that has an impact on our production. And so now, of course, there's where the wolf has obviously a bit of contra arguments because the wolf brings a bit of chaos. That's literally their job is to bring disturbance because that's their job in the natural ecosystems. And so why they are so powerful is they bring this disturbance into an ecosystem that was not necessarily there, where before you had maybe deer overeating on all kinds of little plants and so forth. they actually become like skittish because now they need to actually look around left and right is there maybe a wolf nearby and so forth and so they become much more intense and so also that stress creates like a natural already just that stress is going to reduce also like like how many like deers they're going to be and they're going to keep the population in check and because they keep the population check of especially the deer now the deer is not eating as many of those younger trees the trees can grow bigger now the beavers are coming in that we talked a bit earlier so that happened literally that happened in yellowstone national parks it's really We've seen what happens in Yellowstone National Park if you reintroduce wolves. Because the park was still alive and a lot of people would say, you would take them in there and they would say, oh no, it's nature. But there was basically a lot of deer there. A lot of, I think they call it in America, I think they always call it elk. I think they call it elk, this really big, really... big deer and so but they destroyed like the park slowly and slowly and slowly just because they were like just like damaging everything because there was no disturbance there there was no hunter there so they reintroduced the wolves and what happened is now the deer were skittish they moved to different parts of the park they didn't just like stay in like areas they moved all around and by doing so by changing the movement of the deers and so forth now the trees were able to grow bigger now the beaver came back because they finally had like the right trees to to munch and the beaver started to munch on those tree changed the entire ecosystem there because now they created this wetlands and so forth and so all started with the wolf that just like brought disturbance that was not there anymore and we see this in a lot of europe from belgium i'm from germany we have hunters that do the job of the wolf bits because they need to shoot now the deer the wild boar just because the population numbers are not healthy for the ecosystem that they're in. They're basically an overpopulation because we decimated all the carnivores. And as soon as we bring in the carnivores, they do their job, and it's all become much more balanced. And we wouldn't need that many hunters because now nature is self-regulating.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so we can say in a way that's... Having wolves in our ecosystems, there's a downside to it. For farmers, they might get some loss for their livestock. They might have to invest in some protection systems. So there's a cost to that. But there's also a cost to reforestation, to ecosystem protection, to, like you said, controlling the population of deers, for example. All of that also has a cost. And so what I seem to hear is that the benefits of having them in the ecosystem far outweighs the... the damage that they're doing. And so maybe we should be able to compensate farmers or subsidize them to deal with the situation rather than go in the direction of saying, let's kill the wolves and let's get rid of them.
- Speaker #1
And I think this is super, super, super crucial. When it really comes down to this, what are farmers really interested in? If it's really about the individual sheeps because they're really deeply connected to those sheeps, then we need to find systems for that. A lot of farmers are also concerned about the bottom line. In the end, it's a really tough time right now to be a farmer because in the end, there's all these costs that are mounting up. Like quite often, like the systems as well with those supermarkets and so forth are not really benefiting actually the people that grow the food and so forth. And so totally understandable. And when it comes to these like financial pressures, because now there was a wolf coming in and now they killed like two, three, four, 15 of my sheep, then... they should be compensated and then still even if we start to compensate every farmer for the sheep that got killed it's still not going to be even like slightly to the balance of all the positive impacts that we can financially even like calculate of what wolves bring because now you can even argue okay now there's wolves a lot of people like to see wolves and so now you have tourism in that area maybe and it's you know creates like new income streams for the community there's people that maybe they want to come for photography tours there's like even from that perspective like they bring like much more money than it would cost us to to have them there and and yeah that's that that's just the money side of it and i'm totally i'm the first one that always says like yeah farmer should be compensated if there's like if there's like an accident that happened then yeah and at the same time we also need to see like okay other ways how we can minimize those accidents and so quite often it's just like yeah making the habitat bigger and making sure we restore the ecosystems so that in the end the wolf can yeah have more more space where they can really roam freely and if they have that then They usually have the tendency to even stay away from humans because it's like, we are noisy, we are having a history of like shooting them and so forth. So like a lot of animals by default, they actually leave you alone. They don't like come to seek you out. It's like almost like no animal. And then last one, and then I'm going to shut up. It's really important. It's not a really powerful argument for a lot of people. But for me, it is really, really important to mention that every species also has an intrinsic value. So Putting price tags on animal right now is, I think, one of the important way to go, just that people can put it in our capitalistic world so that we can have other arguments, so that we can just say like, okay, it's fluffy, it's nice looking, but also they create ecosystem services of XXX amount of year. And that is really good. And at the same time, we also need to always remember that every species has an intrinsic value. Who are we to say like, you have the right to exist or you don't have the right to exist? of specially animals and species that have been on this planet long before us.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. You also mentioned the lynx, right? And I remember reading a sort of positive story about reintroducing lynx in Spain, in northern Spain, I think. So not too far from here. Do you know that story? Can you tell us something about that?
- Speaker #1
No, actually a friend of mine who was just like last week there who was trying to find the lynx and didn't find some. But in general, I can't say so much about this. But what I can say is like lynx is like a smaller predator. So for everybody that has never seen a lynx. So if you just try to imagine a wolf, a lot of people have roughly understanding of how big a wolf is or bear. Lynx, I would say is maybe half the size of a wolf. Like really roughly saying maybe it's a bit like a...
- Speaker #0
A medium-sized dog.
- Speaker #1
Medium-sized dog, yeah, exactly. And it's also a really important predator, especially for like rabbits and like different, like mice and so forth. And so, yeah, all of these different species, they have always like the role to play. And so what we need to do is we took out, if we have a look at the Jenga tower, that's always an example that I like to take. So Jenga is like this wooden block game and you build a tower out of it with all different tiny wooden blocks. And you have to imagine biodiversity as this tower. And what we've done in basically the past centuries and decades is we took more and more and more stones out of there. And that becomes quite dangerous that the tower is going to fall. And we have to remember we are part of that tower. We have one stone in that tower. So as soon as you pull one stone that is too much, the entire tower will collapse. And that's what we've been doing and that's where we play with fire. And now what we need to do is there are still that sometimes the stone is not exactly pulled out yet, but it's like right on the edge. And so what we need to do with rewilding and restoring is we push that stone slightly back in. And that's what we're doing with like the wolf and with the lynx is like it's not falling yet completely. The species still exist, but it doesn't necessarily always exist where it used to exist. And so we need to bring it back locally where it got extinct so they can do again the job to create this ecosystem because all of them have like a different job to play in it.
- Speaker #0
that's a very nice way to visualize it. I have a tiny tiny favor to ask from you. If you're enjoying this conversation, and you would like to support my work, and this podcast, you can actually do that in just five seconds. Whichever platform you're using right now to listen to this episode, just click on the deep seat page and then click on the subscribe or follow button. It actually makes a huge difference for me, for the growth of the podcast and for my ability to keep bringing high quality conversations with amazing guests to your ears every week. Thank you so much in advance and let's get back to the conversation. For the last part of this conversation, I would love to leave the listeners in awe of nature by the end of the conversation. And so I'd love for you to highlight some of your favorite nature stories, like your favorite plants, animals, things that are weird and wonderful and that you love to talk about.
- Speaker #1
One of the first I would like to talk about is actually those fellas, like those dogs, because in the end they actually came from wolves. And so It's again like a really beautiful example of like how we treat even within the same animal family, we treat animals entirely different because you know, fellows like these, they are sleeping on our couch and at the same time we even have to tiptoe a bit around the conversation about wolves and should we bring them back and so forth. And at the same time those fellows there, we have like an entire industry dedicated to our dogs. And what I really like about dogs for example is that dogs And apparently evolution-wise, they learned how to show more of the white eye of the part, the white eye that we, the white part of the eye that we have here. They learned how to use more of that so that they'd look huger, more adorable so that we give them, you know, whatever they wanted from us. So next time you're looking at your dog, you'll have a look. But yeah, this is like often they learned how to trick us. And it's just like, it's just like these kind of things happening all around us. And. Yeah, the natural world too, okay, I can really drift away from this. What's really mind-blowing? Another thing is, for example, that mycelium is like the fungi basically under the trees that we often now start to realize, okay, the tree and the plant is actually not alone. It's not just like, just not the root of the plant. It's actually mycelium, which is the fungi that goes in this and that there starts to communicate. And we're only starting to understand this now, like how intelligent and how plants communicate with one another and can plants feel. And there's just like...
- Speaker #0
Yeah, that's actually one that we've explored before on the podcast and that I absolutely love. It's this symbiosis, this collaboration between plants and the mycorrhizal fungi in the soil, where the plant is capable of sending a clear signal to the mycorrhizal fungi to tell them which nutrients they need. And then the fungi can go really far into the soil to find these specific nutrients and bring them back to the plant roots and exchange them for nutrients. sugars. So there's this kind of intelligent communication happening between the two which is just mind-blowing.
- Speaker #1
Yeah and it's just like it all happens under the soil and so like we often yeah you would just like walk in the forest and you would be blind to it but these magic things are happening all around us like the entire time and like we don't necessarily always see things but yeah it doesn't mean that they're not there. Another really great example is culture, I think, because we quite often we think like animals don't... We separate us quite often from animals and we think like, ah, we're not an animal anymore, we're something else. We're not robots yet, but we're also not animals. And so in that way of thinking, we often think of like, nah, animals are dumb and they don't have like, you know... they just do their thing they just like eat and they sleep and that's it but actually the more we learn about them we also realize they even have some sort of culture so there's now more research done that dolphins have like some sort of like names that they give to each other we see that uh humpback whales have like different songs and they have like charts that are popular and so and they start to sing them in one area and then sooner or later they start to sing them in others and they're things like chimpanzees that teach each other like how to use tools and so for the next generation they learn how to use those tools to eat termites and so forth so showing that there's some sort of like you know like teaching and some sort of like giving culture we know that killer whales orcas they also like teach each other like different hunting techniques and if you would just like eradicate a certain part of this also you would lose that culture because basically an individual was teaching the younger ones how to do certain things. So we were talking about elephant seals at the beginning, and there's like an orca family that, and just like one matriarch, so a female, that taught the young ones how to basically hunt those elephant seals by... At the right time of that tidal pool, she can still go in without being like captured by the tides. but so it's still deep enough but it's already a bit shallow so that she can actually reach those elephant seal cups and so you see here just like i think this i i think it's our ocean that shows it i think so our ocean or or yeah i will i will figure it out i will send you the documentary but basically she figures out exactly at what time she can reach those elephant seals and the crucial time where she can also get out of it because if she would be stranded that's also a bit of a problem And then she teaches the next generation how to do this. And that's just like, you know, for me, this is always like mesmerizing how much we underestimate our natural world when it comes to plants, when it comes to fungi, when it comes to whales, when it comes to insects. It's like bottom message here. It's really do a bit search. When you see something really interesting or something curious, just like Google. like Wikipedia or like there's now also like apps where you can just make a picture or where you can just listen to a bird and it actually finds out what bird it is and these kind of apps this kind of technology can be really beneficial so that we can actually reconnect to that nature and can create these moments of awe where we are just like what it doesn't what it does what like how does this work and so forth and we and I think that's yeah we need to come back to this because if we have this awe if we have this like wow it's just incredible then we're also like much more likely to protect it restore it and rewild it and make space in our daily times make space in our on our land and so forth. But we don't have that if we don't appreciate it, if we are not mesmerized by it. Yeah,
- Speaker #0
that's a great message to probably close this conversation. I just wanted to add that I've been using for a few years this app called PlantNet and I'm obsessed with it. You just take a photo, scan it and it tells you automatically what plant it is. And so when I'm walking down the street, I take photos of tree barks or leaves or bushes or a little flower that comes through the cracks and things like that just to find out what it is. And yeah, it's quite fun to do. So yeah, I would definitely recommend that as a fun activity when you're outside on a walk. We mentioned that it was a great idea to get out more often and to go for walks, even five minutes a day. If you couple that with actually doing that and trying to learn about the...
- Speaker #1
the different plants and different nature that is around you yeah and that makes it even more fun yeah it's can it can be your own personal safari you know like we're always talking about like i'm i did like the safari guide training and so i can i can take people now into african bush and can actually guide them and show them like elephants lions and co and so We always think of our nature as a separate thing of like, I need to go on holidays to see something cool and so forth. But there's tons of cool things around you too. It's just like we forgot to listen or to look at it and to sometimes also make a bit space for this. So by doing this, exactly as you said, sometimes go out and just make a picture. And it doesn't mean that for the entire nature walk, you need to go around with your smartphone because then it's counterintuitive. But just like when you're out sometimes, you know, like, okay, this is this. bird I'd never heard. And then you just like open the, you know, Cornell labs and they will figure out like what bird that is. And then next time, you know, so next time you hear that bird, you can be much more appreciated. Ah, that's cool. It's nice that the bird is actually coming back because you will realize, ah, birds are actually migratory, some of them. And so sometimes you hear different birds than other times. And all of these connections can happen locally without you traveling, without you having to pay 5,000 euros to go to Costa Rica. All of this can happen right here. It's just like, it depends a lot about how open your mind is and what you consider worthy of like amazing because these kinds of amazements, they're happening really, really close to your home, not just in Africa, not just in the Amazon. We have really, really cool things happening here.
- Speaker #0
Amazing. Maybe before we finish, you could give us your, you know, your key actions that individuals can take to improve biodiversity.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Now it's really really important because a lot of my work is around like agency. So we all have agency in this. That's the really beauty about biodiversity is like when it comes to climates you do something and you don't necessarily see it. So when you take the bike instead of the car and so forth you know there will be less co2 and so it's hard to really grasp that. When it comes to biodiversity in nature the beauty is that you can see it. You will see it Sometimes in your environment, you will see that there's more forest now, or we managed to save that forest, or we managed to rewild our balcony, and you see some birds returning or some insects returning. And that's really beautiful. We can really see it. And sometimes it happens not necessarily where you are, but it's tangible. It's like living. You can see it. And so that's what I really love about biodiversity. And so what we can do all within ourselves is like... Number one, when it comes to biodiversity, is food. Like how you grow food, what kind of food you consume. These are really, really, really key pillars. When we take a look at climate change, we need to change how we produce energy and how we consume energy. When it comes to the nature world, we need to figure out how to grow food in the least destructive way possible. and we also have to consume food that is better for our health and plus better for the planet so that means you have to start switching more to veggie protein and making veggie protein more part of your daily intake because we can't all consume to the same extent that we currently consume meat and because that would just like lead to less and less appetite so it's just not it's just not doable and so Food is really, really battleground that we need to get our grip on without tackling food. It will be almost impossible to tackle the biodiversity crisis. And then food waste within food is also important because it's like one third of all food actually never, you know, is never even used. And so that's already like a very low hanging fruit, so to say. Yeah. Like eat your leftovers.
- Speaker #0
A few. Do's and don'ts when it comes to food? You already mentioned switching some of your protein, at least some of your protein to plant-based, but what else?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, so when it comes to food per se, so first, like, really easy tip is... create like a shelf inside your fridge of like leftovers so whatever you have leftovers or things that you know will go bad soonish then you put them all in the same shelf and that already allows you to make sure that they're visible put them on the eye line and that makes it sure that you yeah hopefully don't can basically have so much like food waste um then like switching step by step going vegan in a week is is tricky so go take it as a journey go step by step first like cut out a bit like beef and change it with pork from pork you go to chicken from chicken you go to then maybe some like tofu and so forth and some more broccoli legumes and so forth and so like seeing as this journey and don't say like okay i need to become vegan in one week go like step by step another really good one that people can do is like when you consume fish or like meat try to consume this maybe more in restaurants so when you cook at home you maybe cook more like vegetarian and then Yeah, when you eat out, then you do this. And another one that is quite good to...
- Speaker #0
I just wanted to bring some nuance here because I spend a lot of time talking to regenerative farmers, some of them that include animals in their system. I've personally been vegetarian for over 10 years, but I've gained some respect for the nuance there is in these conversations where there are farmers who farm in a way that is respectful of animals and who include them in their system in a way that increases. The life in the system increases biodiversity and have actually a positive effect on ecosystems. But this represents a very, very small percentage of the total animal production today. And sure, we need to increase that by a lot. But that also means that we need to reduce our total consumption right now, especially of industrially produced animal products.
- Speaker #1
For sure, fully, fully, fully with you on that. And I think especially regenerative farmed. like animals are a really great transition product as well so if you look at that it's like quite often when we look at cars you know like going directly to electric cars was for a long time quite challenging because the infrastructure was not there so Toyota created like this like hybrid system and so forth so that people can use less petrol and partially electric and then when the infrastructure is there then you have electric cars and I see especially this like regenerative farmed beef and pork and so forth, as a sort of solution. And also in the long term, I think it can still exist. It's just like we need to look at the... Is the cow, the classical cow, really the best possible ecosystem component in there? Or can we maybe be a bit more creative, like for example the bison used to roam the entire US? And right now I think... I might get the numbers wrong, but I think it's around like 500,000 or something of bison that we still have left. It used to be 30 million. Bison apparently, I haven't eaten it, but bison is apparently very tasty, very similar to beef. And it's actually the animal that was like from nature created to roam in these ecosystems. And there is definitely like a healthy threshold like where we can say like, okay, we farm those rewilded bison and use that as meat. So, I think that's a really always looking at like okay what is the best ecosystem player and is there maybe can we eat them without like damaging their population numbers and like the american bison is a really good example of that and the same goes for like deer right now there's an over population of deer in a lot of like european countries so it's a really good meat to to if you need to switch you can switch also first to this because at least it means that there's no editors no drugs in them and so forth and at the same time because they need to be controlled in their numbers like you actually do something positive for the natural world so it's always a bit like exactly is this nuances um for a lot of people just always want to make sure it's like just the amount of meat that we eat there can't be like really in my perspective there can't be really a discussion about this do we really need as much meat for breakfast lunch and dinner do we really need always like 100 200 grams or something i think that is like even with regenerative farming you're not going to get those numbers i think at scale and i think it's also not healthy for us and yeah that's that's just what i want to bring to the discussion here yeah there's a there's a healthy balance to be found somewhere and yeah right now we're really really far off in terms of the environmental
- Speaker #0
impact we're having on on on the planet and on the ecosystem due to intensive animal farming. And it's not even mentioning the ethical side of it and the way we treat these living beings. We talked about dogs earlier, but then we have these living beings who have a lot of personality, a lot of emotion, a lot of feelings, and who we treat in an appalling way that no one should be. accepting that we can do that to living beings.
- Speaker #1
I think that opens another...
- Speaker #0
I really wanted to bring that nuance because I've seen firsthand how amazing regenerative farming systems can be while including animals and how important they can be to regenerate ecosystems actually. So they can actually have a positive impact done in a certain way. I know it's a very touchy... topic. And so yeah, I just wanted to make sure we brought that nuance to the conversation. And I want to let you get back to your citing a few actions, or do's and don'ts about food. And I interrupted you. So I'm gonna...
- Speaker #1
No, no, it's all good. No, so definitely like food is like the major like look at your food. That's like, if you can only do like one action first, go outside, do a bit more, go a bit more outside and just like appreciate nature and try to spend a bit more time. Because I think if you do that, then I think the food part will follow. At least I always try to see it as a bit of a step by step process because I don't think people like wake up one day and then they are the next David Attenborough, the next Steve Irvin and so forth. I see it often like as a step by step journey. So first one, go out. Second one, look at your food. The third one I would say is like we don't need everybody to be a biodiversity like scientist or nature scientist. But I think We definitely, unfortunately, need to still do a bit of homework in terms of the general public. We need to have a bit more of a basic understanding of what it is. So concepts like the shifting baseline syndrome, an understanding of what biodiversity is, an understanding of what are the biodiversity pressure points. Why are we in this situation? So we didn't even talk about this, but really, really quickly, it's habitat loss. So it's the major one driver is like, okay, we just like, we... take more more more space from nature and re-encroach through agriculture through urbanization and so forth that's number one number two in terms of impact is over expectation so that's especially when it comes to the ocean the most important one because we just like keep on taking far far far too much of what is not sustainable and so again very food related because over exploitation is like we really take too much of salmon too much of tuna and so forth and so again it's like food related so already the two biggest impacts are basically dealt with quite a lot if you change like a bit like food third one is it's always like some some people put it in other places scientific papers uh climate change so there you have like probably by now you know already a bit more actions that you can take so mobility where energy is coming from and so forth and that has a really big impact of the natural world as well because if you let's say coral reefs if we hit like two degrees And if we don't change that, then unfortunately we lose all the coral reefs. And that will create like following effects because people need coral reefs, because the fish is protein for billions of people. And that will be all gone because coral reefs are playing a crucial part for like nurseries for fishes and so forth. And so climate change really important to use certain actions there. The fifth, fourth one is pollution. So pollution You've heard this probably tons of times before, but like, yeah, especially when it comes to plastic. So have a look of like just yesterday, Rafa and I, we were watching a documentary about plastic pollution. So try to do your part of like, OK, how can you avoid, for example, single use plastic? How can you try to make plastic of less of an issue in your life and try to reduce it? It's good for you. It's good for your family. It's also good for nature. But there's not just plastic pollution. There's also light pollution and sound pollution, noise pollution. So just be a bit aware of all sorts of pollution and try to reduce this. And that can be simple as at night, don't leave the outdoor lights on because that kills off, unfortunately, moths and things like that. So that's pollution. And the fifth one is invasive species. So invasive species means that you bring species to another place that are not originally there and then they're creating some damages. that's as an individual is quite hard to have an influence on uh just because that often has to do with like logistics like logistics companies or historical contexts where settlers brought some like some european like colonizers brought like animals to other places that were not originally from there so invasive species the thing that you can do is mostly connected to plants so have a look at your garden we were talking about pollinators and like insects Really, really crucial. Have a look at your garden of like what kind of plants you may be planting. So just by planting native plants like native flowers, native trees and so forth, you will see your garden coming. back with life and so that's like quite a powerful one is like not necessarily touching on invasive species as much um but more of like boosting native species um and that's something really beautiful and i mean like this you can see the changes happening with more birds no more insects and so forth that actually is a little personal story here um so the the
- Speaker #0
house i grew up in it's uh in the countryside it's surrounded by a farm and we had a garden and my father is a nature lover. And he started a few years ago leaving sort of one third of the garden unmowed. He doesn't mow it anymore. He leaves the, he lets the plants grow and herbs grow wild. And in just a year or two, the life, the colors, the insects, the biodiversity that came to that patch is amazing. And it's so beautiful. And it's such a source of wonder. It's something super easy to do. Just stop mowing parts of your garden and actually you will see life come back naturally. It's amazing.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, and I think if you ask like 90% of the population, I would say like, oh my god, I don't have to mow the lawn anymore. Like it's amazing. So, you know, it's like even the low hanging fruit, like you don't, you know, now you don't have to put like the one hour or two hours to mow the lawn. You don't need to. It's just like nature takes a course and... Yeah, like try to look at especially like what kind of plants you grow, because if you do that, in addition to like letting it, you know, go a bit like wild, you will see like, again, exactly like this in one year, you will already see changes happening. And you're like, oh, why didn't I do this earlier? Now give even more land, more of my garden, more of my garden. And I really like this one third example, because we were talking earlier about like, what does global policy do? And they having this like 30 by 30 goals, so 30% of the planet protected by 2030. And I think it's a really beautiful example that we can all take into our personal lives, into our communities, into our companies. It's like, okay, how can we make sure that this kind of rule is maybe implemented in our lives? So how can it be 30% of our balcony? How can it be 30% of my, even if it's like a tiny garden, 30% goes to nature. Partially, maybe some of my company revenues, maybe there. bits go to nature if i'm a farmer is i know 30 sounds a bit scary but uh is there ways how i as a farmer can contribute to those 30 by 30 goals and maybe make it work individually on my lands and if we all do this then we're going to get there because i think it's all of this like little actions and collectively um yeah we can build this water world and i hope that everybody also goes away with this is that it's not too late we all have agency this is a tricky situation not going to sugarcoat it but we can choose right now like we're going to be the generation that can say like you know what enough is enough we saw a decline we hit the bottom we want to now bend the trend we want to become nature positive and in our generation we could see more life than what we were born with and i think this is like super exciting and i just want people to get away with that that we can be this generation that makes this decision and that acts accordingly
- Speaker #0
to create this and for me this is like this is why i'm in this like because it gets me super super excited yeah love that message thank you so much uh just last question if there's one documentary or book that people should absolutely read or watch yeah
- Speaker #1
um so netflix it's our planet i think a lot of people know netflix or have netflix so our planet i think is a really good really good solid starter um i think it's like four episodes or something and this shows you just like the beauty of our natural world so would take that. When it comes to books... books books books books books... if you're a bit into science, a bit like I think the rewilding book of Cain Blythe is like really good. He talks about rewilding and the science behind it so a lot of like the conversation is often like emotionally driven but if you're a bit like into science it has a lot of pictures a lot of infographics so it's not the classic science book or something. I would say that. Another one, David Attenborough has one, Life on our Planet, I think it's called, from David Attenborough. He's been like a legend in this nature space and he's seen like the decline of life in our, in his lifetime. And so he explains it a bit and he talks a bit about the importance of biodiversity and it's really, it explains it really nicely how how much we benefit from the natural world. And I feel even as a nature lover, I feel it was like written in a way that really everybody can understand it and really everybody can resonate with it. And he's like such a great storyteller that has seen it all in this life. So it also makes him really credible because he's seen the wilderness and he's seen it disappearing and he wants us to do better and to bring it back and to actually live on a wilder planet. So yeah, Life on Our Planet, I think it was called the book.
- Speaker #0
Sweet, I will look. them up and I will put them in the description of this episode, of course. Thank you so much, Oliver, for this amazing conversation. I loved every minute of it. And thank you for your time and passion.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk with your audience, to talk especially with people that are in the regenerative farming space and that are looking into regenerative agriculture, because no matter where you are in this journey, you're doing a fantastic job in order to... boost biodiversity. So thank you so much for listening in and listening to my rumblings and mumblings about nature. And yeah, hope you took away that nature is not nice to have, but a must have. And so, yeah.
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