Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
Speaker 1: will be reading National Geographic Magazine dated June twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: which is donated by the publisher as a reminder Radio
Speaker 1: I as a reading service intended for people who are
Speaker 1: blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult to
Speaker 1: read printed material. Please join me now for the continuation
Speaker 1: of the article I began last time, entitled what we
Speaker 1: Can Learn from the Genius of Beavers by Ben Goldfarbe.
Speaker 1: If that isn't serving a societal need, I don't know
Speaker 1: what is in the San Pedro River. Shippek estimates that
Speaker 1: up to twenty one beavers now live on the Arizona
Speaker 1: side of the border, and perhaps seventeen more in Mexico,
Speaker 1: though the populations are divided by a metal floodgate that
Speaker 1: is part of the border wall. During our survey we
Speaker 1: saw ample chew and a few lodges, but no dams. Still,
Speaker 1: Shipeck hopes that beavers will could some day restore or
Speaker 1: the bountiful wetlands that long ago prevailed in many desert
Speaker 1: water courses and helped the Southwest address its water woes.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine how difficult it would have looked
Speaker 1: Shappek said wistfully as we waded through the shin deep
Speaker 1: flow of the former Beaver River, envisioning the ponds and
Speaker 1: marshes that once shimmered here. It just seems so important
Speaker 1: to bring back this critical species. It's the evolution of
Speaker 1: restoration in this area. As beavers reoccupy floodplains and stream corridors,
Speaker 1: they risk becoming victims of their own success. The rodents
Speaker 1: gnaw down orchards, flood roads, and block irrigation, ditches mischief
Speaker 1: to which landowners generally respond by calling trappers. The USDA's
Speaker 1: Wildlife Services program that deals with problematic animals kills an
Speaker 1: average of one beaver every twenty two minutes. But in
Speaker 1: the places where communities are learning to coexist, they're reaping
Speaker 1: surprising benefits. On a blue May morning, I found myself
Speaker 1: slogging through a wetland in Gresham, Oregon, a city of
Speaker 1: one hundred twelve thousand, a dozen miles east of Portland.
Speaker 1: A beaver built weave of willow stems had formed a
Speaker 1: pond whose mucky floor sucked at my boots. Red winged
Speaker 1: blackbirds buzzed in the bushes. Wood ducks glided across the
Speaker 1: glassy surface. Katie holds her the city's watershed scientists scooped
Speaker 1: up some translucent jelly peppered with black specks. Those little
Speaker 1: dots are the embryos of the Pacific tree frog. She said.
Speaker 1: This pocket of biodiversity wasn't always here. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, Gresham had excavated an elaborate maze of berms
Speaker 1: and canals known as the Columbia Slough Regional Water Quality Facility,
Speaker 1: to capture the heavy metals, nitrates, and pesticides that habitually
Speaker 1: ran off streets and into the nearby Columbia and Willamette Rivers.
Speaker 1: To the city's dismay, beavers damned the ditches, sabotaging humans.
Speaker 1: Best laid plans orchis destroyed the dams and trapped the beavers,
Speaker 1: but the beef came back. The animals, Holtzer finally figured
Speaker 1: were there to stay, so why not study them. When
Speaker 1: she analyzed the water trickling past their dams, she discovered
Speaker 1: something extraordinary. Beaver ponds were cleaning Gresham's storm water better
Speaker 1: than the water Quality Facility had without them. Mercury, copper,
Speaker 1: led and zinc settled out in ponds and were trapped
Speaker 1: within the sediment and woody lattices of dams, further strained
Speaker 1: out contaminants, Bird diversity increased, and salamanders hid in the
Speaker 1: dam's cool crevices. Beaver's, Holzer said, are a perfect self
Speaker 1: maintaining system. After every storm, they come out and patch
Speaker 1: things up for free. The city's relationship with Beaver's was
Speaker 1: still fraught. The resourceful animals were inudating access roads and
Speaker 1: clogging the wastewater facilities pipes. Instead of killing the troublemakers,
Speaker 1: city officials hired Jacob Shaki, a mop top biologist whose
Speaker 1: truck sported B three A V three R vanity place
Speaker 1: to mediate. I found Shaki waist deep in a pond
Speaker 1: behind a culvert packed with sticks and mud. Beavers are
Speaker 1: plugging this up so often that they have to clean
Speaker 1: it out once a week, Shaki said, wiping his brow.
Speaker 1: Shaki had been asked with crafting tasked with crafting a
Speaker 1: permanent solution, including fences to keep beavers from blocking culverts
Speaker 1: and pipes to lower road flooding ponds. A study showed
Speaker 1: that such non lethal interventions work up to ninety six
Speaker 1: percent of the time, and they saved money to boot.
Speaker 1: The best thing we can do for beavers, said Shaki,
Speaker 1: is to partner with them in the places they've chosen
Speaker 1: to live. Like a Holtzer and Shaki, researchers and policymakers
Speaker 1: around the country are trying to let the animals thrive.
Speaker 1: In Montana, a new beaver conflict resolution program helps landowners
Speaker 1: solve their beaver problems without resorting to traps. In Maryland,
Speaker 1: the collogists are counting on beaver ponds to filter out
Speaker 1: nitrates polluting Chestapeake Bay. One of the swiftest progress is
Speaker 1: happening in California, which in twenty twenty three launched a
Speaker 1: statewide beaver program that set aside one point four million
Speaker 1: dollars to implement beaver restoration initiatives. That same year, California's
Speaker 1: Department of Fish and Wildlife released seven beavers onto the
Speaker 1: ancestral lands of the Mountain Maidu, the state's first official
Speaker 1: relocation in almost seventy five years. Other tribes are also
Speaker 1: welcoming beaver's home in californiears Klamath River Watershed. The Yurok
Speaker 1: Tribes Fisheries Department has constructed beaver dam analogs human built
Speaker 1: dams designed to imitate beaver activity, encourage the rodents to return,
Speaker 1: and create sheltering ponds for juvenile salmon. Some young salmon
Speaker 1: have since gone to sea and come back to spawn,
Speaker 1: a strong suggestion that the tribe's beaver based approach is working.
Speaker 1: Higher up the claimeth the removal of four massive hydroelectric
Speaker 1: dams has recently helped fish reclaim their spawning grend Yet
Speaker 1: near the river's mouth, the beaver inspired dams, small and
Speaker 1: permeable rather than colossal and concrete, have also produced substantial gains.
Speaker 1: Every species teaches us lessons on how we're supposed to
Speaker 1: live together, said Frankie Meers, the eurok's vice chairmen. Just
Speaker 1: as beavers designed their own environment, Meyers said, Native people
Speaker 1: are charged with activity, with actively restoring nature to ensure
Speaker 1: its flourishing. We do this work to restore our fisheries,
Speaker 1: restore beaver because this is our place, right, We belong
Speaker 1: to this place. The future is liable to change for beavers,
Speaker 1: for one thing, there expanding their range. As climate change
Speaker 1: warms the Arctic, plucky beavers have followed onto willow doubted tundra.
Speaker 1: In New York City, beavers have recolonized the Bronx River
Speaker 1: and Staten Island in Seattle, they occupy eighty six percent
Speaker 1: of suitable habitat. Considering the animals were once on extinctions,
Speaker 1: doorstep beavers have made a spectacular recovery, yet they're still
Speaker 1: at a sad fraction of their historic numbers, particularly in
Speaker 1: Western states that need them most. Environmental laws like the
Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act prevent scarce animals from going extinct, but
Speaker 1: beaver's pose a different challenge. How do we help an
Speaker 1: animal that's already fairly common become truly abundant. Perhaps it
Speaker 1: starts with figuring out where they are and aren't. The
Speaker 1: ultimate testament to beaver's influence may be that you can
Speaker 1: study their architecture from space. Engineers at Google have recently
Speaker 1: trained a machine learning program dubbed e Eager to identify
Speaker 1: the distinct appearance of ponds and dams in satellite imagery.
Speaker 1: California's Wildlife Department is using the algorithm to count its
Speaker 1: beeaver's and guide restoration. A similar effort, the Colorado Beaver
Speaker 1: Activity Mapper has already roughly counted this centennial state's beaver ponds,
Speaker 1: the taily around eighty thousand, according to Sarah Marshall, the
Speaker 1: ecologist who led the Colorado program's development. Getting a handle
Speaker 1: on beaver distributions could allow wildlife managers to preemptively address
Speaker 1: potential classes with farmers and ratchers, or pinpoint spots where
Speaker 1: beaver dam analogs and relocations will have the biggest water
Speaker 1: storage and fire fighting benefits. Comparing where beavers used to
Speaker 1: be with where they are today as a prescription for
Speaker 1: where to do large scale restoration in Colorado, Marshall said,
Speaker 1: on a recent spring day, I visited Birch Creek, a
Speaker 1: stream in southern Idaho that represents a different approach to
Speaker 1: re beavering. I walked up stream with j Wilde, a
Speaker 1: rancher who sported a battered cowboy hat and a drooping mustache.
Speaker 1: Every sixty feet or so, Birch Creek was stapled by
Speaker 1: another dam, some eighty feet long, some ten feet high,
Speaker 1: some that formed staircases of mirrored acre wide lakes. Lobes
Speaker 1: of waters shot onto the floodplain. Single channels split into
Speaker 1: twisted strands, and beaver dug canals. Spiderwebbed everywhere. A few
Speaker 1: neglected grass covered dams melted into the landscape. It was
Speaker 1: glorious chaos, a mess of water and wood that scarcely
Speaker 1: resembled a discreet stream. This was a recent transformation. Wild
Speaker 1: had grown up along Birch Creek, which supported his family's homestead.
Speaker 1: By the late nineteen nineties, though the stream had dwindled
Speaker 1: to a pitiful trickle that would dry up. By the
Speaker 1: fourth of July. Birch Creek had lost its beavers. Wild realized,
Speaker 1: and he resolved to bring them back. After two failed relocations,
Speaker 1: he contacted Utah States Wheaton, the nearest beaver expert, who's
Speaker 1: crew built twenty six beaver dam analogs in the creek
Speaker 1: between twenty fourteen and twenty seventeen. The human made dams
Speaker 1: created ponds in which subsequent reintroduced beavers could evade predators
Speaker 1: and focus their own damming. By the time I visited,
Speaker 1: more than two hundred beaver built dams spanned Birch Creek
Speaker 1: and its tributaries, and native cutthroat trout populations had grown
Speaker 1: more than tenfold better, Yet, the creek was again staying
Speaker 1: wet deep into summer, as water seeped from the saturated
Speaker 1: floodplain as though from a squeezed sponge. We've gained forty
Speaker 1: days of flow, whild said, his drawl tinged, tinged with
Speaker 1: wonder beavers. Researchers sometimes point out our critical infrastructure builders
Speaker 1: of fire brakes and reservoirs and storm water catchments, but
Speaker 1: there also beings with their own wills, desires, and volition.
Speaker 1: Near my tour's end, a beaver popped up in one pond,
Speaker 1: had raised and ears pricked. I had to train em
Speaker 1: all winter to do that. Wild cracked a joke that
Speaker 1: was funny precisely because beavers, for all their benefits to humanity,
Speaker 1: serve no master. The rodents swam to and fro assessing us.
Speaker 1: Then with a resounding KerPlunk, he thwacked his tail against
Speaker 1: the surface, roiling the pond and raising a shower of droplets.
Speaker 1: By the time the tumult settled, he was gone, gliding
Speaker 1: invisibly through the watery world. He had created. Benefits of beavers.
Speaker 1: These engineers create their watery kingdoms to evade predators and
Speaker 1: access food, but their habitat modifications also provide surprising advantages
Speaker 1: for entire ecosystems. Adapted to dam along with their stout
Speaker 1: bodies and waterproofer, beavers have a host of adaptations that
Speaker 1: allow them to thrive healthier landscape, from better water quality
Speaker 1: to increased wildfire resistance. Beavers improve their surroundings in a
Speaker 1: variety of ways. Next Why your dog looks like You
Speaker 1: words by Terra Law. New research confirms your long simmering
Speaker 1: suspicion that dogs resemble their owners and even act like
Speaker 1: them too. When I walked into the ring at the
Speaker 1: Pennington Day Dog Shows Lookalike contest in suburban New Jersey
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen nineties, I was brooming with confidence
Speaker 1: and why wouldn't I be? Soccer, my buff colored Cocker
Speaker 1: Spaniel puppy had long, floppy ears, the perfect complement to
Speaker 1: my wavy, blond Bob. We stormed to victory. For the
Speaker 1: next few years, Soccer and I competed at Pennington Day
Speaker 1: in n array of matching outfits. We scored similar results,
Speaker 1: wrecking up a row of blue ribbons. I have not
Speaker 1: succeeded at anything as constantly since. At this point, it's
Speaker 1: a cliche. Lots of people look like their dogs. It
Speaker 1: turns out that there is actual science to support this stereotype.
Speaker 1: A recent review of fifteen studies from around the globe
Speaker 1: suggests that people and their pets look and act similar.
Speaker 1: In several of the experiments, volunteers were asked to match
Speaker 1: pictures of dogs in their owners, and they scored higher
Speaker 1: than they would have just by chance. In one study,
Speaker 1: participants successfully inferred whether dogs were matched with the correct
Speaker 1: owners despite being able to see only the dogs or
Speaker 1: owner's eyes. Another found that women often preferred dogs with
Speaker 1: ears similar in length to their hair. So what gives
Speaker 1: a blend of benign narcissism? Seemingly experts to suggest people
Speaker 1: dogs that look like them or reflect them in some way.
Speaker 1: I imagine when I was young, my parents subconsciously chose
Speaker 1: our pet Soccer, as she looked a bit like a
Speaker 1: canine version of their child. Perhaps even more strikingly, the
Speaker 1: review also showed that dogs and owners share similar personality traits,
Speaker 1: especially in the cases of extra version the term psychologists
Speaker 1: use for xtro version and neuroticism, and that their temperaments
Speaker 1: appear to grow more alike as the years pass. It
Speaker 1: offers different theories for why this might be the case.
Speaker 1: One idea is that owners could be drawn to dogs
Speaker 1: that are like them to begin with. Another holds that
Speaker 1: over time, the pair may regulate each other's emotions reinforce
Speaker 1: each other's behavior by learning or observing and imitating one another.
Speaker 1: After all, the relationships we build with our dogs can
Speaker 1: be some of the longest and most meaningful of our lives.
Speaker 1: It resembles the way we also look for our partners,
Speaker 1: says review leader Yanna Bender, a doctoral research in the
Speaker 1: Dog Studies Research Group at the Max Planck Institute of
Speaker 1: of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. Dogs and their owners, she
Speaker 1: points out, share a very close relationship comparable to many
Speaker 1: human relationships. Authors of the review, published in the journal
Speaker 1: Personality and Individual Differences, noted several limitations to their research,
Speaker 1: such as the relatively small number of dogs and owners
Speaker 1: included in the studies. Many of the owners who volunteered
Speaker 1: to participate in the studies also had purebred dogs, and
Speaker 1: scientists need additional data on mixed breed canines, which are
Speaker 1: more common worldwide. Owner bias plays a role too. Even
Speaker 1: with standardized methods for assessing dogs personalities, different researchers use
Speaker 1: varying concepts, and it can be just as hard to
Speaker 1: think that your own pet objectively as it is with
Speaker 1: your human family. Who's the goodest boy you are? Ways
Speaker 1: Researchers can address this bias using established questionnaires and asking
Speaker 1: owners more clear cut questions about how their dogs act
Speaker 1: int certain situations rather than asking them to weigh in
Speaker 1: on Fido's goodness. The influence humans have on their dogs
Speaker 1: comes as no surprise to Borbada Turkshan, who studies dog
Speaker 1: behavior at Beauttris Darand University's Faculty of Science in Budapest, Hungary.
Speaker 1: She estimates that while about a third of a dog's
Speaker 1: personality is genetic, the remaining two thirds is influenced by
Speaker 1: its environment, which means that if your dog has been
Speaker 1: with you from puppyhood, you occupy a place of enormous
Speaker 1: influence in its world. Dogs are also prime to trust
Speaker 1: their owners because tens of thousands of years of domestication
Speaker 1: made them deeply attached to us. Like parents raising a child,
Speaker 1: pet owners can have a powerful influence over their dogs.
Speaker 1: Turksand explains, for instance, if there is a truck coming
Speaker 1: and it's very loud, then the dog will look back
Speaker 1: at the owner. If the owner doesn't care, then the
Speaker 1: dog will learn not to care, She says. Bender hopes
Speaker 1: her study will help people build the eber more nuanced
Speaker 1: understanding of dogs, particularly those like search and rescue, police
Speaker 1: and service animals that work in Roll's vital to public safety.
Speaker 1: Not long ago, my husband and I adopted Milo, a
Speaker 1: mixed breed pup that loves playing fetch and taking daily walks.
Speaker 1: We aren't quite the lock to win lookalike contests the
Speaker 1: way Soccer and I were, though he does have short,
Speaker 1: tan ears, not far off from my current hair style.
Speaker 1: Maybe that influenced why my husband and I picked him
Speaker 1: after scrolling through several hundred photos of dogs at shelters
Speaker 1: and nonprofits all over Los Angeles. But even if I
Speaker 1: grow my hair long or diet another collar, I'll be
Speaker 1: mindful that the way I treat Milo can have a
Speaker 1: profound effect on him, just as his behavior can affect mine.
Speaker 1: To a point of course, however the facts, He'll always
Speaker 1: be my goodest boy. Next. The future of fashion is
Speaker 1: farm to Closet by Claudia Klba. How in INDONIESI which
Speaker 1: and fashion brand is embracing traditional techniques to build a
Speaker 1: new blueprint for making and selling truly sustainable clothes. On
Speaker 1: a damp, de summer morning in the mountainous district of
Speaker 1: Ambarawa in Central Java, a woman in an inky, black
Speaker 1: sleeveless vest and gathered skirt, balances herself on the back
Speaker 1: of a motorbike that carries her through a small village,
Speaker 1: past houses adorned with tropical plants and bird cages, and
Speaker 1: into a forest. The land here, some three hundred miles
Speaker 1: east of Indonesia's capital of Jakarta, brims with shrubs and
Speaker 1: trees that grow a variety of crops, including cassava and coffee.
Speaker 1: But it's the forest floor that's brought Danika Riyadi Ni
Speaker 1: Flesh thirty four to this corner of her home country.
Speaker 1: Under the shade of banana, papaya, and cocoanut trees, she's
Speaker 1: trying to seed a revolution in the form of hundreds
Speaker 1: of vibrant indigo plants, all casting a glossy viridescence across
Speaker 1: the soil. Riadini Flesh is the founder of Sukasita, a
Speaker 1: fashion brand that partners with hundreds of Indonesian farmers and
Speaker 1: artisans on Java and in neighboring Vali Flores and West Timor,
Speaker 1: and it's her company then inspired the success of the
Speaker 1: spurgeon and crop. Indigo comes in many varieties, but one
Speaker 1: commonly used is Ambarawa. Needs profuse sunlight. Riadini Flesh realized
Speaker 1: that boosting growth would require cutting down trees. Instead, she
Speaker 1: offered the farmers an alternative, a hardy varietal called assam indigo,
Speaker 1: which flourishes in the shade. To day. The forest is
Speaker 1: a wash with indigo that brings vital income into the
Speaker 1: community while fueling a kaleidoscope of colorful dyes for Sukasita's clothing.
Speaker 1: This includes the very garments Riadini Flesh is wearing, which
Speaker 1: achieve their botanical black hue after being dipped into fermented
Speaker 1: indigo leaves thirty times. Such a meticulous process is at
Speaker 1: the heart of Suka Sita's environmentally responsible and ethical fashion brand.
Speaker 1: The Kappas Kabaya vest she's wearing retails for three hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty dollars, and the Angkasa Constellation cane, a fabric
Speaker 1: she ties into a sarong, sells for about five hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: pricing that reflects the workmanship of each garment. As she
Speaker 1: stands among the trees, Rihadini Flesh exudes a sense of
Speaker 1: awe that she hopes to convey to her customers. This,
Speaker 1: she says, excitedly, is a fashion forest. Indigo is just
Speaker 1: one ingrediment ingredient in Suka Sita's radically transparent supply chain.
Speaker 1: Every piece of fabric in the brand's farm to Closet
Speaker 1: collection is crafted out of one hundred percent plants, from
Speaker 1: traceable natural fibers to regeneratively grown plant dyes. Cotton fibers
Speaker 1: are hand spun and woven on manual looms. Fabrics are
Speaker 1: decorated by indigenous artisans practicing an intricate hand drawn wax
Speaker 1: technique called batis, before being dipped into vats of color,
Speaker 1: dried in the sun, and finally cut and stitched into clothing.
Speaker 1: The entire process from seed to garment takes about sixty
Speaker 1: to one hundred eighty days. Once completed, clothing is sent
Speaker 1: to Sukosita's flagship store in Jakarta, marketed online, or sold
Speaker 1: at select boutiques in Singapore and New York, where clients
Speaker 1: are increasingly inclined to by their dollars tourt an elegant
Speaker 1: dress or a pair of pants designed by brands that
Speaker 1: prioritize their social and environmental impact on the world. The
Speaker 1: so called slow fashion movement has a ridden in direct
Speaker 1: opposition to the values of fast fashion. The prevailing factory
Speaker 1: lead process thats rife with excess and waste. Many of
Speaker 1: today's clothing makers contribute to a one hundred billion dollar
Speaker 1: plus industry of cheap polyester T shirts and spandex leggings,
Speaker 1: which comes at the cost of both exploited workers and
Speaker 1: the environment. In Indonesia, the Sietaurum River, a mainsae source
Speaker 1: of drinking water and irrigation, is contaminated by toxic chemicals
Speaker 1: dumped into the waterway by the textile factories that line
Speaker 1: its banks, and the global impact stretches farther from the
Speaker 1: Atacama Desert in northern Chile to a landfill outside of
Speaker 1: Ghana's capital of Acraa mountains of discarded clothes pile higher
Speaker 1: each year. Riodini Flesh believes that empowering consumers with knowledge
Speaker 1: about how their clothes were made, be it the plants
Speaker 1: that color them more the artisans who stitch them, will
Speaker 1: lead to a deeper relationship with what they wear, a
Speaker 1: stronger appreciation for both the craft and the product, and
Speaker 1: a realization that the choices we make as consumers directly
Speaker 1: affect people in the planet. She's already drawn an impressive
Speaker 1: roster of influential supporters, rock musician Chris Martin from cold Play,
Speaker 1: National Geographic Explorer at Large and oceanographer Sylvia Earle and
Speaker 1: celebrated cellist Yo Yoman have been spotted in Sukasita garments.
Speaker 1: Denika journey is testament to the best kind of cultural thinking,
Speaker 1: says Mah, who is kept in touch with the founder,
Speaker 1: powered by a willingness to put in deep work with head,
Speaker 1: heart and hands. Sukasita is not the first brand to
Speaker 1: provide an alternative blueprint to how fashion is created, and
Speaker 1: it's met a fundamental truth had on Clothes made with
Speaker 1: care and intention are going to be relatively more expensive
Speaker 1: than the alternatives, but Riadini Flesh believes that if shoppers
Speaker 1: understand the value of what they're paying for, they'll realize
Speaker 1: that cheap garments bear a far greater cost. Clothes won't
Speaker 1: change the world, but the people wearing them will. She
Speaker 1: says her journey started with thinking about how she could
Speaker 1: use her own knowledge as a bridge to uplift others
Speaker 1: and replenish the planet. While Indonesia has made strides in
Speaker 1: reducing poverty, nine percent of the population still struggles to
Speaker 1: make a living wage. That's roughly twenty four million people,
Speaker 1: many of whom live in rural villages. Growing up in Jakarta,
Speaker 1: Riadini Flesh experience the country's deeply ruins, did issues with inequality,
Speaker 1: and studied developmental economics in college. After a stint working
Speaker 1: at the World Bank, she gained her most sobering understanding
Speaker 1: of what that truth looks like when she began traveling
Speaker 1: the countryside in twenty thirteen. Riodini Flesch knew nothing about fashion,
Speaker 1: but one day she met three batique artisans in a
Speaker 1: village on the outskirts of Tuban in East Java. The
Speaker 1: women told her that they had learned the ancient craft
Speaker 1: from their mothers, who had used natural dyes to color
Speaker 1: their fabrics, but their tradition was at risk. With limited resources,
Speaker 1: the artisans had switched to cheaper and work readily available
Speaker 1: chemical dyes that burned their lungs. Yet, even when they
Speaker 1: could not compete with the speed of factory printed at textiles,
Speaker 1: all were mothers or abus who worried about feeding their families.
Speaker 1: Until then, Riodini Flesh had never thought about how clothing
Speaker 1: was created. It may be realized that without not knowing it,
Speaker 1: I was part of the problem, she says in the
Speaker 1: months that followed, Rieti Flesh saw other problems in the
Speaker 1: modern fashion supply chain, which affected not only the artisans,
Speaker 1: but also farmers who had abandoned cotton growing for monocultural
Speaker 1: crops like corn, thereby degrading the health of the soil
Speaker 1: plants and wildlife that thrived with agricultural diversity. Both of
Speaker 1: these age old practices, craft and farming, were deeply rooted
Speaker 1: in village life. They just needed to be restored. Slow Fashion,
Speaker 1: she realized, could create a new vehicle for change. Early on,
Speaker 1: the IBus were wary of Riadini Flesh because of stark
Speaker 1: class divisions in Indonesian society. Although she had only two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to invest, she put the money into paying
Speaker 1: the batique artisans a living wage, which allowed her to
Speaker 1: create her first sample, a bandana she called Cupoo or Butterfly.
Speaker 1: By twenty nineteen, three years after incorporating, the company had
Speaker 1: drawn enough interest from residents near Tubon to open its
Speaker 1: first craft school with the Ruma Suka Sita Foundation, which
Speaker 1: is funded by the company's profits, donations, grants, and entrepreneurship
Speaker 1: awards from non profits and AIDS groups. The school provide
Speaker 1: workshops where artisans can teach botique to younger generations, and
Speaker 1: farmers can learn about regenerative ways to plant cotton. Villagers
Speaker 1: are now leveraging an indigenous technique known locally as tupang sari,
Speaker 1: which prioritizes the cultivation of multiple plants together, allowing them
Speaker 1: to nourish each other. Cotton is planted alongside corn, which
Speaker 1: provides shade, chilis help control past and peanuts add nitrogen
Speaker 1: to the soil. The approach allows rural Indonesians to grow
Speaker 1: cotton for sucasita while providing more food for their families
Speaker 1: and additional vegetables or nuts that can be sold for
Speaker 1: extra income. Now, Riodini Flesh and the ebus embrace each
Speaker 1: other as family. On a recent visit, she bantered with
Speaker 1: the women as they dip their tools or chantings into
Speaker 1: bowels of hot wax and traced motifs onto fabric. A
Speaker 1: sense of trust enveloped the group. Reclaiming their craft has
Speaker 1: allowed the women to restore their identity. It is a
Speaker 1: blood that flows through our veins, one of the ebus
Speaker 1: once told Riadini Flesh, it's hot wax. From the start,
Speaker 1: Sukasita has worked to raise the standard of living for
Speaker 1: the people in its partner villages. That includes using some
Speaker 1: profits to create grants for villagers who are interested in
Speaker 1: purching purchasing farm land. The women are also trained to
Speaker 1: reappraise both the social and monetary value of their work.
Speaker 1: Rather than negotiate payment after their labor is complete as
Speaker 1: many had in the past, they are taught to track
Speaker 1: the time it takes them to complete a design or
Speaker 1: even a cotton harvest. Sukasita then uses that number to
Speaker 1: calculate a higher wage, increasing their income significantly. Initiatives like
Speaker 1: these have established Riadhini Flesh as a role model for
Speaker 1: other entrepreneurs and helped boost the companies following on social media.
Speaker 1: Sukasita's clothes have been featured in vogues Singapore edition and
Speaker 1: sales are now increasing by thirty to forty percent annually,
Speaker 1: she says, allowing the company to bring economic opportunities to
Speaker 1: the villagers. Linna Setiyowati, thirty two, received a grant from
Speaker 1: Sukasita to purchase two and a half acre lot plot
Speaker 1: of land, which she nourished back to health after its
Speaker 1: degradation by chemical wheat killers and fertilizers. She is now
Speaker 1: following the principles of Tupang Sari as she waits for
Speaker 1: her cotton bowls to be ready for harvest. The land
Speaker 1: is fresher, she says, it's healthy, and most important, it's hers.
Speaker 1: Across the globe, other entrepreneurs are developing their own slow
Speaker 1: fashion enterprises. The offerings range from ethically sourced alpaca sweaters
Speaker 1: made in Peru to began leather derived from Sicilian cacti
Speaker 1: and oranges. Angela Jolie recently opened to workshop in Manhattan
Speaker 1: where clients can remake their own garments into new, one
Speaker 1: of a kind designs. Concludes readings from National Geographic magazine
Speaker 1: for to day, your reader has been Marsha. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening, Keep on listening and have a great day.