1
00:00:00,640 --> 00:00:02,919
Speaker 1: All right, welcome to another episode of a crime page.

2
00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:06,160
But Bodany doesn't podcast. I'm here with Somitra kel Car,

3
00:00:07,080 --> 00:00:10,880
who is a former public educator, former biology teacher, and

4
00:00:10,960 --> 00:00:15,599
also runs the Oakland Bio Instagram page, which is how

5
00:00:15,640 --> 00:00:17,800
I learned about you. And I lived in Oakland for

6
00:00:17,879 --> 00:00:19,600
twenty years, so a lot of the stuff you cover

7
00:00:19,679 --> 00:00:22,800
is very near and dear to my heart. And yeah, man,

8
00:00:22,800 --> 00:00:24,760
I'm really excited to just shoot the shit with you.

9
00:00:24,800 --> 00:00:25,359
Speaker 2: So how you doing.

10
00:00:26,640 --> 00:00:27,879
Speaker 3: Thanks, I'm happy to be here.

11
00:00:29,320 --> 00:00:29,640
Speaker 2: Okay.

12
00:00:29,679 --> 00:00:31,440
Speaker 1: So the thing, a couple of things I wanted to

13
00:00:31,440 --> 00:00:33,759
start off talking about. First, was this this dude cut

14
00:00:33,799 --> 00:00:37,960
down a bunch of trees on this hillside. Where was

15
00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:39,799
it like Claremont District or something, right.

16
00:00:40,479 --> 00:00:42,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was right across the street from Garber Park

17
00:00:42,320 --> 00:00:43,119
if you know where that is.

18
00:00:43,320 --> 00:00:46,119
Speaker 1: Okay, I remember just driving through there. I used to

19
00:00:46,200 --> 00:00:48,840
drive through there to get to UC Berkeley Botanic Garden,

20
00:00:48,880 --> 00:00:51,320
which I would go to like religiously, like twice a week.

21
00:00:51,600 --> 00:00:53,000
Speaker 2: So in Tilden too.

22
00:00:53,159 --> 00:00:55,359
Speaker 1: The Native Yeah, the Native Garden of Tilden where they

23
00:00:55,439 --> 00:00:57,640
got Ornithos Stafflos, they got a bunch of cool shit,

24
00:00:57,719 --> 00:01:01,399
like the whole California, Floristic province. It's not just California.

25
00:01:01,719 --> 00:01:03,679
And they going to bah too, so so I would

26
00:01:03,759 --> 00:01:06,760
drive through there and you know, they got the fucking

27
00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:09,840
all the you know, fancy shit. There's fancy lads. You know,

28
00:01:09,879 --> 00:01:12,840
it's a fancy lad neighborhood. They got the what is

29
00:01:12,840 --> 00:01:15,239
that fance the big building it's like a was it

30
00:01:15,280 --> 00:01:16,359
a golf course or something?

31
00:01:17,319 --> 00:01:19,280
Speaker 3: I think there's like the the Claremont Hotel, that big

32
00:01:19,319 --> 00:01:19,799
white castle.

33
00:01:19,920 --> 00:01:21,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, you ever been in there?

34
00:01:21,319 --> 00:01:23,159
Speaker 3: Yeah? I have been there.

35
00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:24,879
Speaker 2: I've never been in there. I want to. I should go.

36
00:01:24,920 --> 00:01:26,480
Speaker 1: I should have gone and loitered in there and seen

37
00:01:26,480 --> 00:01:28,480
if they had nice bathrooms before I left. I never

38
00:01:28,519 --> 00:01:31,040
did that twenty years in Oakland. Never fucking went in anyway.

39
00:01:31,280 --> 00:01:34,200
So this guy, he's a rich guy. He bought this

40
00:01:34,480 --> 00:01:37,640
piece of property and the coast live Oaks, got the

41
00:01:37,760 --> 00:01:42,200
beautiful trees, these massive just fucking they weigh tons right

42
00:01:42,280 --> 00:01:43,799
like they were like, you know, as much as a

43
00:01:43,799 --> 00:01:47,439
box car, and and they're everywhere, and they've got this

44
00:01:47,599 --> 00:01:49,840
whole I mean, they're the base of the ecosystem there.

45
00:01:49,879 --> 00:01:51,680
Speaker 2: That's what Oakland is.

46
00:01:51,760 --> 00:01:56,359
Speaker 1: It's like Oakland, you know, California Bay Laurel Madrone, toy On,

47
00:01:57,280 --> 00:01:59,519
et cetera. And so this guy, why he cut all

48
00:01:59,560 --> 00:02:02,079
these trees? Give us the loan on what happened? Why

49
00:02:02,120 --> 00:02:03,359
the fuck they cut all these trees down?

50
00:02:04,319 --> 00:02:07,439
Speaker 3: Yeah, great question. There's a San Francisco Chronicle article about

51
00:02:07,480 --> 00:02:09,479
it that came out in December that has probably more

52
00:02:09,520 --> 00:02:11,560
accurate details than I can recount on my own. But

53
00:02:11,639 --> 00:02:14,439
as far as I understand, he and his partner purchased

54
00:02:14,479 --> 00:02:17,879
the property in twenty twenty. It was zoned for residential housing,

55
00:02:17,960 --> 00:02:19,560
like one of those I think. The City of Oakland

56
00:02:19,560 --> 00:02:22,479
has a designation called Hillside Residential, which basically means like

57
00:02:22,840 --> 00:02:26,639
single family homes on these gigantic, sprawling parcels. But the

58
00:02:26,680 --> 00:02:29,520
City of Oakland also has a Protected Tree Ordinance, which

59
00:02:29,560 --> 00:02:31,840
protects all of the trees in the urban forest, including

60
00:02:31,840 --> 00:02:34,800
trees on private property. And the reason that policy exists

61
00:02:34,960 --> 00:02:38,719
is that the policy explicitly states that trees protect the

62
00:02:38,719 --> 00:02:42,479
public good by providing benefits like wildfire prevention by creating

63
00:02:42,759 --> 00:02:45,199
natural shaded fuel breaks, which these trees were definitely doing,

64
00:02:45,719 --> 00:02:48,800
and then also pervying landslides by holding hillsides together, and

65
00:02:48,840 --> 00:02:51,000
then other benefits that are more typical for trees planted

66
00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:54,360
in urban environments, like providing shade, cooling the air, trapping

67
00:02:54,439 --> 00:02:58,599
some amount of particulate pollution, damping noise pollution, sustaining biodiversity,

68
00:02:58,639 --> 00:03:02,639
and urban habitats. So these public benefits that don't end

69
00:03:02,680 --> 00:03:04,960
at property boundaries are the reason that these trees are

70
00:03:04,960 --> 00:03:07,680
protected under the Protect a Tree Ordinance. So if you

71
00:03:07,759 --> 00:03:10,159
purchase a property in Oakland that has trees on it

72
00:03:10,159 --> 00:03:11,960
that you want to remove to develop, you have to

73
00:03:11,960 --> 00:03:15,439
go through the process of applying for a permit, and honestly,

74
00:03:15,719 --> 00:03:17,639
I think the Protect a Tree Ordinance could do a

75
00:03:17,680 --> 00:03:20,960
better job of protecting trees. The ordinance basically says that

76
00:03:20,960 --> 00:03:23,400
once you apply for a permit, if you want to

77
00:03:23,439 --> 00:03:26,360
remove trees, you first have to figure out if you

78
00:03:26,360 --> 00:03:29,479
can redesign your development proposal to minimize the amount of

79
00:03:29,520 --> 00:03:32,199
trees you remove, and then part of the permit approval

80
00:03:32,240 --> 00:03:35,479
process is making sure that you are accountable to replanting

81
00:03:35,560 --> 00:03:39,240
trees to restore or to replace the amount of canopy

82
00:03:39,240 --> 00:03:41,039
that you lost, So you don't necessarily have to replant

83
00:03:41,039 --> 00:03:43,719
them on same site, but you are responsible for replacing

84
00:03:43,759 --> 00:03:46,520
some amount of tree canopy, which you know. I think

85
00:03:46,560 --> 00:03:48,400
it could be modified to be like, okay, it should

86
00:03:48,400 --> 00:03:51,080
be native trees, which currently that's not really a requirement.

87
00:03:51,159 --> 00:03:55,520
But anyways, but what this property owner did is tried

88
00:03:55,560 --> 00:03:57,319
to apply for the permit, didn't hear back in like

89
00:03:57,360 --> 00:04:00,039
a couple of weeks, which is not long enough to

90
00:04:00,039 --> 00:04:02,680
to get a permit from the government agency, and then

91
00:04:02,719 --> 00:04:05,840
went ahead and cut down like thirty eight trees, basically

92
00:04:05,879 --> 00:04:09,199
deforested the entire property and the parts of the neighboring properties,

93
00:04:09,240 --> 00:04:11,000
one of which launch shitty, one of which belonged to

94
00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:11,400
a neighbor.

95
00:04:12,240 --> 00:04:12,759
Speaker 2: Ah.

96
00:04:13,080 --> 00:04:15,919
Speaker 1: So this this guy went, this guy went big. So wait,

97
00:04:15,919 --> 00:04:18,800
first off, I want to say that that tree ordinance

98
00:04:19,360 --> 00:04:22,079
that I mean, for anybody listening in so many other

99
00:04:22,120 --> 00:04:25,519
states right now, that sounds like a very reasonable ordnance.

100
00:04:25,560 --> 00:04:26,839
Speaker 2: It sounds like the way it should be.

101
00:04:27,360 --> 00:04:29,920
Speaker 1: Just because you buy something, you know, where these semi

102
00:04:29,920 --> 00:04:34,040
conscious primates with eighty ninety year lifespans max. These trees

103
00:04:34,079 --> 00:04:36,839
live for hundreds of years, you shouldn't be able to

104
00:04:36,839 --> 00:04:39,600
just whimsically go in and cut these things down. Their

105
00:04:39,600 --> 00:04:42,959
community assets. They belong to everybody, And this go this

106
00:04:43,079 --> 00:04:45,959
is like this ideology is what you know. You get

107
00:04:45,959 --> 00:04:48,279
all these right wing motherfuckers complaining of I just you know,

108
00:04:48,319 --> 00:04:50,480
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to I'm trying to not

109
00:04:50,600 --> 00:04:52,839
sound you know, you can hear the indignation of my voice.

110
00:04:52,879 --> 00:04:56,360
But you get these people complaining about regulations that prevent

111
00:04:56,439 --> 00:04:58,920
them from these arrogant rich fucks, you know, and this

112
00:04:59,079 --> 00:05:01,920
is what they're complaining of, about these very well reasonable,

113
00:05:02,079 --> 00:05:07,040
you know, well reasoned laws that benefit everybody, and that

114
00:05:07,240 --> 00:05:10,560
should you know, should one hundred percent be in every state,

115
00:05:10,800 --> 00:05:13,480
like this should be a that should be a state law.

116
00:05:14,120 --> 00:05:16,879
And so anyway, So so I mean that alone. I

117
00:05:16,879 --> 00:05:20,759
mean because in Texas, you buy it, you know, Texas

118
00:05:20,759 --> 00:05:23,519
is where I live now for family reason, you buy it.

119
00:05:23,560 --> 00:05:25,439
You can do whatever you want. It doesn't matter if

120
00:05:25,439 --> 00:05:28,000
it's a critically endangered plant. It doesn't matter if you

121
00:05:28,040 --> 00:05:31,399
want to, like, you know, make a festival that's all

122
00:05:31,399 --> 00:05:33,920
about destroying it. You know, you get a little festive,

123
00:05:34,360 --> 00:05:36,680
make it like a joyous occasion, you know, kind of

124
00:05:36,800 --> 00:05:40,079
just like you know, I mean, you could do whatever,

125
00:05:40,199 --> 00:05:43,839
you could do whatever. I mean, it's it's it's yours.

126
00:05:43,920 --> 00:05:46,639
It's it's seen as being yours, which is totally insane

127
00:05:46,680 --> 00:05:48,680
to me. And if you go across the border to Mexico.

128
00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:51,439
That's not the case either. They've got the AHIDO system.

129
00:05:51,480 --> 00:05:54,360
It's publicly owned land. It's literally community owned land that

130
00:05:54,519 --> 00:05:56,040
was set up after the Mexican Revolution.

131
00:05:56,399 --> 00:05:59,120
Speaker 2: It's awesome. Yeah, so this is a reason.

132
00:05:59,199 --> 00:06:01,319
Speaker 1: So why did this guy, I don't understand why did

133
00:06:01,319 --> 00:06:03,000
he think he could get away with it? Like, what

134
00:06:03,319 --> 00:06:06,079
have you been able to glean from? Why he didn't? Wait,

135
00:06:06,120 --> 00:06:08,040
he surely had the new they know they were going

136
00:06:08,079 --> 00:06:10,240
to fuck him. Which didn't they just give him like

137
00:06:10,240 --> 00:06:12,279
a million dollar fine or something or I don't know

138
00:06:12,319 --> 00:06:13,000
what the uh.

139
00:06:13,079 --> 00:06:15,319
Speaker 3: Yeah, they ended up giving him a million dollar fine.

140
00:06:15,360 --> 00:06:18,040
And the valuation of that million dollars was based on

141
00:06:19,120 --> 00:06:21,680
I forget which organization, but it's one of those organizations

142
00:06:21,759 --> 00:06:25,000
that deals with urban forest canopy. So the valuation of

143
00:06:25,040 --> 00:06:26,879
each tree he cut down was based on the size

144
00:06:26,879 --> 00:06:28,519
of the tree and the amount of benefit that it

145
00:06:28,560 --> 00:06:31,680
provides in the context of being planted like in a

146
00:06:32,199 --> 00:06:35,439
tree well as a single standalone street tree. So the

147
00:06:35,519 --> 00:06:38,600
value of the ecosystem that he completely destroyed is just

148
00:06:38,800 --> 00:06:41,639
immeasurable and way beyond the find that he was charged.

149
00:06:41,680 --> 00:06:44,079
But you know, that's that's the protected tree policy. I

150
00:06:44,079 --> 00:06:45,639
think he thought he was going to get away with

151
00:06:45,680 --> 00:06:49,000
it because number one, the family isn't from Oakland. They

152
00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:51,120
don't currently live in Oakland as far as I can tell.

153
00:06:51,519 --> 00:06:54,000
They split their time in the US and Russia, and

154
00:06:54,000 --> 00:06:55,879
they currently live in Emoryville, which is the next city

155
00:06:55,920 --> 00:06:58,240
over from Oakland. So they purchased this parcel that they

156
00:06:58,240 --> 00:07:02,680
didn't actually live in the city yet, and I think

157
00:07:02,720 --> 00:07:04,639
they thought they were going to be able to get

158
00:07:04,639 --> 00:07:08,279
away with it because the dude is apparently rich. According

159
00:07:08,319 --> 00:07:10,839
to one of the neighbors, he basically said that he

160
00:07:10,879 --> 00:07:13,319
has deep pockets and connections and high places, so he's

161
00:07:13,600 --> 00:07:15,079
not afraid of what the neighbors are going to do

162
00:07:15,279 --> 00:07:17,120
if they try to cite him for cutting the trees.

163
00:07:17,199 --> 00:07:19,519
So she ended up getting a restraining order against the neighbor,

164
00:07:19,519 --> 00:07:21,959
which I can't say I blame him. After hearing the

165
00:07:21,959 --> 00:07:25,040
neighbors speak at the city council meeting, I was like, this,

166
00:07:25,279 --> 00:07:27,600
this is you know, it's not an ideal issue or

167
00:07:27,600 --> 00:07:28,560
not an ideal situation.

168
00:07:29,120 --> 00:07:32,199
Speaker 1: So wait, wait, wait, I listen, I lived there for

169
00:07:32,199 --> 00:07:34,839
twenty years. I know what it's like. Was the person

170
00:07:34,920 --> 00:07:37,279
the neighbor would, I mean, what's a nice way to

171
00:07:37,319 --> 00:07:39,240
say they were nuts? Or they were just like over

172
00:07:39,319 --> 00:07:42,040
the top or what I mean, like what exactly, I'm

173
00:07:42,040 --> 00:07:42,639
just curious.

174
00:07:42,759 --> 00:07:43,800
Speaker 2: We don't need to even so.

175
00:07:43,759 --> 00:07:45,480
Speaker 3: One of the things that was stated in the city

176
00:07:45,480 --> 00:07:48,079
council meeting that I don't doubt that this is real.

177
00:07:48,519 --> 00:07:50,839
Apparently at least one of the neighbors threatened to call

178
00:07:50,879 --> 00:07:52,839
ICE on him because he's an immigrant from Nigeria.

179
00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:56,800
Speaker 1: Oh shit, that's pretty feel Yeah, so this is like, yeah,

180
00:07:56,839 --> 00:08:00,160
oh my god, but ICE is only for poor people too,

181
00:08:00,240 --> 00:08:03,639
I mean that's the thing, right, yeah, So because and

182
00:08:03,639 --> 00:08:05,800
then this is the other like funny element too, is

183
00:08:05,800 --> 00:08:08,560
like there were arguments right at first that like, well,

184
00:08:08,600 --> 00:08:10,720
he's a point, he's like a marginalized They're like the

185
00:08:10,920 --> 00:08:14,920
full identity politics class deaf identity politics. They were like, well,

186
00:08:14,959 --> 00:08:17,000
maybe we should let him off the hook because he's

187
00:08:17,040 --> 00:08:19,759
a POC or something too. I mean, you had like

188
00:08:19,879 --> 00:08:22,240
both both sides of the nut job spectrum.

189
00:08:22,319 --> 00:08:26,279
Speaker 3: Correct. Yeah. I was quite disappointed by that argument because

190
00:08:26,360 --> 00:08:29,720
it was very clear that the Protector Tory Ordnance in

191
00:08:29,759 --> 00:08:32,559
Oakland is supposed to protect the public good, especially with

192
00:08:32,600 --> 00:08:35,440
all of the benefits that come from having trees and

193
00:08:35,519 --> 00:08:37,759
to hear city council members saying that it would be

194
00:08:37,840 --> 00:08:41,240
racially just to not allow a black man to commit

195
00:08:41,320 --> 00:08:43,559
the same injustice that white people have committed in the past.

196
00:08:43,639 --> 00:08:45,480
I was like, I think you're I think you're missing

197
00:08:45,519 --> 00:08:48,720
the point of why injustice is bad. It's like people

198
00:08:48,759 --> 00:08:51,919
think that we saw racial injustice by allowing people with

199
00:08:52,039 --> 00:08:56,440
all you know, chas and colors to commit the same plastenses. Yes, right, right,

200
00:08:56,480 --> 00:08:58,960
That's how I was. I was very disappointed by.

201
00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:00,000
Speaker 2: That's fucking amazing.

202
00:09:00,080 --> 00:09:02,360
Speaker 1: That is like such a I gotta like recite that

203
00:09:02,399 --> 00:09:06,519
because that sums up like just the total class deaf

204
00:09:06,639 --> 00:09:10,120
like identity politics of the last six years that like

205
00:09:10,240 --> 00:09:12,399
I think turned a lot of people over to trump Ism.

206
00:09:12,440 --> 00:09:15,840
But but anyway, anyway, that's a whole other argument. I

207
00:09:15,879 --> 00:09:19,039
just find it fucking amusing. But so anyway, so this guy,

208
00:09:19,120 --> 00:09:21,960
he's wealthy as hell, he does this. A million bucks

209
00:09:22,039 --> 00:09:25,320
is nothing because this is like I mean, yeah, these

210
00:09:25,320 --> 00:09:27,240
are not only is it that's gonna how much is

211
00:09:27,240 --> 00:09:28,840
it going to cost the city? Because this is on

212
00:09:28,879 --> 00:09:31,480
a slope too, right, So when you remove the roots

213
00:09:31,480 --> 00:09:34,919
that hold the soil together and you get torrential rains

214
00:09:34,960 --> 00:09:36,600
in the winter, how much is that going to cost?

215
00:09:37,320 --> 00:09:41,080
The city and anybody down below him to uh, yeah,

216
00:09:42,120 --> 00:09:44,399
you know I've done. It's not a million bucks. It's

217
00:09:44,399 --> 00:09:45,559
going to be a lot more money than that.

218
00:09:46,399 --> 00:09:47,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm betting it's going to be a lot more

219
00:09:47,720 --> 00:09:49,600
money than that, because if there's a major landslide, then

220
00:09:49,759 --> 00:09:52,360
like half of Claremont Avenue is going to be unusable,

221
00:09:52,399 --> 00:09:54,919
maybe more until all that soil gets cleared out. And

222
00:09:54,960 --> 00:09:56,519
the other big issue is that now that all the

223
00:09:56,519 --> 00:10:00,240
trees are gone, basically the entire hillside is just as

224
00:10:00,440 --> 00:10:04,039
like full on thicket of Italian dicile card you with picnocephalus,

225
00:10:04,360 --> 00:10:07,279
And when that stuff dries out, it's it's difficult to

226
00:10:07,279 --> 00:10:09,360
remove because it's got these like nasty spines, so it's

227
00:10:09,360 --> 00:10:10,960
hard for workers to work in it, it's hard for

228
00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:13,200
livestock to graize it down. And you know they do

229
00:10:13,320 --> 00:10:15,399
clear this side every year, but it's like in the

230
00:10:15,480 --> 00:10:17,279
time between when that this will dries out and when

231
00:10:17,279 --> 00:10:20,879
the hillside gets cleared, it can carry fire much much

232
00:10:20,879 --> 00:10:24,759
more quickly than any like healthy oak understory plants. Yeah,

233
00:10:24,799 --> 00:10:27,080
so that that I think is a and there's like

234
00:10:27,200 --> 00:10:30,000
multiple multimillion dollar homes around, So if that catches on

235
00:10:30,039 --> 00:10:32,559
fire and does serious property damage to the area. I

236
00:10:32,639 --> 00:10:34,480
wonder if he would be held liable. I think he

237
00:10:34,519 --> 00:10:36,320
should be, but we'll see.

238
00:10:36,080 --> 00:10:38,159
Speaker 1: A million bucks is nothing. I mean, he should It

239
00:10:38,159 --> 00:10:41,879
shouldn't even be about like finding him just to take

240
00:10:41,919 --> 00:10:43,519
the money for the city. It should be like, you

241
00:10:43,639 --> 00:10:48,039
have to spend money to completely restore this right like.

242
00:10:48,039 --> 00:10:51,240
Speaker 3: You Yeah, and that's that. The kind of infuriating part

243
00:10:51,320 --> 00:10:53,639
to me about all of this is that since he

244
00:10:53,679 --> 00:10:57,200
didn't go through the permit process. The Tree Protection Ordinance

245
00:10:57,679 --> 00:10:59,559
lays out the fines that you're supposed to get for

246
00:10:59,639 --> 00:11:03,080
violate it, but the fines don't include remedying any damage

247
00:11:03,080 --> 00:11:05,840
you've done. So if he went through the proper permit process,

248
00:11:05,879 --> 00:11:08,240
he probably would have been allowed to remove eleven out

249
00:11:08,240 --> 00:11:09,720
of those thirty eight trees, and he would have been

250
00:11:09,759 --> 00:11:12,519
required to leave the rest. But since he didn't go

251
00:11:12,519 --> 00:11:14,440
through the permit process, he got rid of all the trees,

252
00:11:14,720 --> 00:11:17,000
and since he violated the permit process, there is no

253
00:11:17,080 --> 00:11:19,600
requirement for him to replant any kind of trees. So basically,

254
00:11:19,679 --> 00:11:21,879
he'll pay the fine and he's still allowed to own

255
00:11:21,879 --> 00:11:23,919
the property. He's still allowed to develop on the property.

256
00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:25,879
Speaker 2: Thirty eight trees is insane.

257
00:11:25,879 --> 00:11:29,960
Speaker 1: Man especially coast live oaks, porkis agrafolia, those get super,

258
00:11:30,039 --> 00:11:31,639
they get big, they get it.

259
00:11:31,720 --> 00:11:33,799
Speaker 3: Oh norm Yeah, there's some big oaks on that property.

260
00:11:33,879 --> 00:11:35,840
Speaker 1: So how big is the area he cleared? Like a

261
00:11:35,840 --> 00:11:37,840
football field size there in or what.

262
00:11:38,679 --> 00:11:40,320
Speaker 3: I would say a bit smaller than that. It was

263
00:11:40,480 --> 00:11:42,799
a like a pretty large parcel, the kind of parcel

264
00:11:42,840 --> 00:11:45,039
that you'd normally see like kind of a big mansion

265
00:11:45,080 --> 00:11:48,399
sitting on on a hillside in Oakland. Yeah, since maybe

266
00:11:48,399 --> 00:11:49,120
like an acre or two.

267
00:11:49,600 --> 00:11:50,039
Speaker 2: Yeah.

268
00:11:50,200 --> 00:11:53,039
Speaker 1: Yeah, God, I've gotten so since living in Texas, I've

269
00:11:53,039 --> 00:11:55,799
gotten so callous to that. I mean I just from

270
00:11:56,120 --> 00:11:57,840
that kind of shit, just from seeing it so much.

271
00:11:57,919 --> 00:12:00,879
I mean the amount of dis I mean we were

272
00:12:00,919 --> 00:12:04,679
like we were digging up astrophytem this extremely like critically

273
00:12:04,799 --> 00:12:09,200
endangered cactus species and a site that was being demolished

274
00:12:09,240 --> 00:12:12,080
to put in like you know, suburbs you would see

275
00:12:12,120 --> 00:12:15,080
in like the Fort Worth area, but down here in

276
00:12:15,120 --> 00:12:17,240
the desert, and they're gonna go they're gonna like try

277
00:12:17,240 --> 00:12:19,919
to grow grass and shit. It's just like completely shit

278
00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:24,200
for brand I mean, you know, completely Yeah. I can't

279
00:12:24,200 --> 00:12:27,200
wait to see it all abandoned and dead, dead lawns

280
00:12:27,200 --> 00:12:30,200
and ten years. Texas should be putting in water restrictions soon,

281
00:12:30,559 --> 00:12:32,879
I think, not like, you know, I feel like they

282
00:12:32,919 --> 00:12:33,320
should be.

283
00:12:33,519 --> 00:12:35,519
Speaker 2: Uh, that's what they should be doing. They're probably going

284
00:12:35,559 --> 00:12:37,639
to be doing it like any day now. They're already,

285
00:12:37,679 --> 00:12:40,320
you know, because the water situation here is just so

286
00:12:40,320 --> 00:12:40,919
so fucked.

287
00:12:41,799 --> 00:12:44,840
Speaker 1: But so yeah, like it would be ideal with that

288
00:12:44,879 --> 00:12:47,279
guy instead of like find a million bucks, like you

289
00:12:47,360 --> 00:12:47,639
have to.

290
00:12:48,080 --> 00:12:49,320
Speaker 2: You have to completely restore this.

291
00:12:49,399 --> 00:12:51,240
Speaker 1: You have to plant natives, and you have to pay

292
00:12:51,279 --> 00:12:55,120
for maintenance to keep weed whacking the invasives. Until the

293
00:12:55,240 --> 00:12:58,279
seed bank is exhausted and the natives are able to

294
00:12:58,320 --> 00:13:01,000
they get big enough to outcompete it, it's not an

295
00:13:01,039 --> 00:13:01,759
issue anymore.

296
00:13:01,840 --> 00:13:05,159
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, man, damn.

297
00:13:04,919 --> 00:13:08,159
Speaker 1: Well that brings up speaking of the invasives though, there

298
00:13:08,240 --> 00:13:11,360
was a I saw another clip you did which was

299
00:13:11,399 --> 00:13:14,399
really really struck me. I mean I was just so like, god,

300
00:13:14,440 --> 00:13:16,320
damn man, I'm glad someone's saying this. It was the

301
00:13:16,600 --> 00:13:20,000
you know, people always say nature is resilient and and

302
00:13:20,039 --> 00:13:21,879
it's you know, the planet's going to be fine. So

303
00:13:22,120 --> 00:13:23,600
it's not really going to be fine, Like we're in

304
00:13:23,639 --> 00:13:26,480
a mass extinction. It's not resilient. And then you pointed

305
00:13:26,480 --> 00:13:31,279
out everything growing in this patch of in the Oakland Hills.

306
00:13:31,320 --> 00:13:34,039
Everything there is invasive. It's it's not it doesn't benefit

307
00:13:34,080 --> 00:13:37,679
the ecology. It's not didn't evolve here. It's it's important

308
00:13:37,679 --> 00:13:41,240
somewhere else, five thousand miles away. But you know, everything

309
00:13:41,279 --> 00:13:46,320
that's so integral to this, this machine, this ecological machine

310
00:13:46,320 --> 00:13:50,879
that is the local ecosystem here is getting smothered by

311
00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:55,759
by these you know, mostly Mediterranean weeds, which I think

312
00:13:55,840 --> 00:13:59,720
is really exactly you know, for anybody who does ecology

313
00:13:59,879 --> 00:14:02,440
or pays an attention to plants in California. I mean,

314
00:14:02,440 --> 00:14:04,600
there's that moment when it dawns on you and you

315
00:14:04,639 --> 00:14:06,720
see those Golden Hills and you realize all that shit

316
00:14:06,799 --> 00:14:09,559
is is invasive. It's it's wasn't here a hundred years ago,

317
00:14:09,759 --> 00:14:13,519
you know, yep, yeah, So what is it? What has

318
00:14:13,559 --> 00:14:15,600
it been like for you? I mean getting because when

319
00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:17,320
I was living and I lived in Oakland, but I

320
00:14:17,360 --> 00:14:19,240
was always traveling to get you know, I would go

321
00:14:19,279 --> 00:14:21,399
on little like day trips and stuff they like clear

322
00:14:21,440 --> 00:14:22,879
my head. But when I wanted to look at Bonnie,

323
00:14:22,879 --> 00:14:25,120
I go to the desert's up the Ciscu County or something.

324
00:14:25,279 --> 00:14:27,080
What's it been like for you getting to, you know,

325
00:14:27,159 --> 00:14:30,080
familiarize yourself with the actual East Bay.

326
00:14:30,120 --> 00:14:32,720
Speaker 2: Native plant biome. You know, and how has it changed

327
00:14:32,720 --> 00:14:33,279
your outlook?

328
00:14:34,480 --> 00:14:37,039
Speaker 3: Oh man, It's been such an eye opening experience. I

329
00:14:37,039 --> 00:14:38,600
think a lot of what I've been able to learn

330
00:14:38,639 --> 00:14:40,559
has come from other people who have also been doing

331
00:14:40,600 --> 00:14:42,240
this a lot longer than I have. I know, you've

332
00:14:42,240 --> 00:14:44,039
had Damon Taie on your show before, and he's been

333
00:14:44,159 --> 00:14:46,480
so generous with his knowledge and show me so many

334
00:14:46,480 --> 00:14:49,279
things that I never even would have thought existed, especially

335
00:14:49,279 --> 00:14:52,720
in a place like Oakland and so well. I started

336
00:14:52,720 --> 00:14:54,799
getting into it because I, I mean, I've always been

337
00:14:54,840 --> 00:14:56,679
really interested in living things. I grew up in this

338
00:14:56,960 --> 00:15:00,399
super vanilla cookie cutter suburb in southern California where there

339
00:15:00,440 --> 00:15:03,159
was literally no trace of the native ecology except for

340
00:15:03,519 --> 00:15:05,480
if you read on Wikipedia that the concrete ditch in

341
00:15:05,480 --> 00:15:07,759
your neighborhood is actually used to be a river. That's

342
00:15:07,840 --> 00:15:10,000
pretty much the closest thing I ever got to like

343
00:15:10,519 --> 00:15:13,519
my local ecology. So I was interested in native plants,

344
00:15:13,559 --> 00:15:15,440
but I didn't really like understand the point. I just

345
00:15:15,480 --> 00:15:17,279
thought it was cool that there's like plants from here.

346
00:15:17,320 --> 00:15:20,679
I had no real understanding of all the symbiotic interactions

347
00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:23,000
that allow native plants to sustain life in ways that

348
00:15:23,039 --> 00:15:25,039
other plants cannot. So when I was high school, I

349
00:15:25,080 --> 00:15:26,679
was planting a lot of non native stuff because I

350
00:15:26,679 --> 00:15:29,200
was just like, oh, cool flowers, it'll attract hummingbirds or whatever,

351
00:15:29,240 --> 00:15:32,960
you know. And then I went to college and started

352
00:15:32,960 --> 00:15:35,440
studying forestry, and in one of the courses in the

353
00:15:35,480 --> 00:15:38,080
forestry program at UC Berkeley is this thing called Forestry

354
00:15:38,120 --> 00:15:41,559
Field Camp or Forestry Camp, and the UC has this

355
00:15:41,639 --> 00:15:43,919
campus in the Plumus National Forest that they're operating on

356
00:15:43,919 --> 00:15:46,000
a special use permit, and they've been in that campus

357
00:15:46,039 --> 00:15:47,440
for like over one hundred years now, so it's a

358
00:15:47,519 --> 00:15:51,840
very long running program. And one of the earlier things

359
00:15:51,840 --> 00:15:54,519
you're required to learn in that course while you live

360
00:15:54,559 --> 00:15:56,519
in the forest for two months is you have to

361
00:15:56,600 --> 00:16:00,440
learn pretty much all of the trees and the woody plants,

362
00:16:00,480 --> 00:16:02,120
and a lot of the non woody plants as well.

363
00:16:02,480 --> 00:16:04,799
We were required to learn I think fifty some species, which,

364
00:16:05,200 --> 00:16:07,080
now that I know a lot more plants, fifty some

365
00:16:07,279 --> 00:16:09,559
does not feel like a lot of species, But at

366
00:16:09,559 --> 00:16:12,039
the time it felt like so much to have to

367
00:16:12,120 --> 00:16:14,759
learn in three weeks. But once we learned it. It

368
00:16:14,919 --> 00:16:18,840
was just such an eye opening experience to exist in

369
00:16:18,919 --> 00:16:23,879
this fully living environment and actually know what the majority

370
00:16:23,879 --> 00:16:25,639
of the species in front of me were like. That

371
00:16:25,799 --> 00:16:28,799
is when I stopped seeing the world as just like

372
00:16:28,879 --> 00:16:32,639
different shades and textures of green and started understanding that

373
00:16:33,039 --> 00:16:36,039
every living creature is part of a unique lineage that

374
00:16:36,120 --> 00:16:38,919
has its unique evolutionary history and circumstances and all that.

375
00:16:39,759 --> 00:16:41,559
And then getting back to the Bay Area, I was like,

376
00:16:41,559 --> 00:16:43,279
wait a minute, now that I'm out of the Plumus

377
00:16:43,360 --> 00:16:45,360
National Forest, I don't recognize any of the plants anymore.

378
00:16:45,399 --> 00:16:48,039
And that feeling of having that deep familiarity with your

379
00:16:48,039 --> 00:16:50,879
surroundings went away all of a sudden, And that's what

380
00:16:51,000 --> 00:16:53,320
kind of got me to start learning Bay Area species.

381
00:16:53,360 --> 00:16:55,200
But I don't think I was really serious about it

382
00:16:55,360 --> 00:16:58,799
until twenty twenty one. I was teaching biology at Skyline

383
00:16:58,840 --> 00:17:01,519
High School, which is it's an Oakland public school. It's

384
00:17:01,519 --> 00:17:03,759
part of Oakland Unified School District, and it serves the

385
00:17:03,799 --> 00:17:08,039
same populations as the other Oakland Public schools, but unlike

386
00:17:08,079 --> 00:17:10,480
the other Oakland Public schools, it is located at the

387
00:17:10,480 --> 00:17:13,519
crest of the Oakland Hills along Skyline Boulevard. So it

388
00:17:13,519 --> 00:17:15,599
gets a ton of fog drip, and it's just this

389
00:17:15,799 --> 00:17:21,279
really really unique, fog driven mixed evergreen forest that kind

390
00:17:21,279 --> 00:17:24,200
of acts like a rainforest in some places, a really

391
00:17:24,200 --> 00:17:26,480
cool place. And there's all these like rings of redwoods

392
00:17:26,480 --> 00:17:28,359
on and around the campus that are, you know, ten

393
00:17:28,440 --> 00:17:30,640
twenty feet wide, and it just kind of makes you

394
00:17:30,720 --> 00:17:32,319
think of what it would have been like to see

395
00:17:32,359 --> 00:17:35,759
this gigantic pillar of redwood stand here, and that people

396
00:17:35,799 --> 00:17:38,640
did see it there for like thousands of years until

397
00:17:38,640 --> 00:17:39,880
just one hundred and fifty years ago.

398
00:17:40,119 --> 00:17:43,160
Speaker 1: There used to be three hundred and fifty foot tall trees,

399
00:17:43,240 --> 00:17:46,000
maybe three hundred I think in the in fucking Oakland.

400
00:17:46,039 --> 00:17:47,799
Speaker 2: That's insane. That's crazy.

401
00:17:47,880 --> 00:17:51,400
Speaker 3: It's insane. Yeah. And the other advantage to teaching at

402
00:17:51,400 --> 00:17:53,559
that school, besides you know, seeing the echoes of the

403
00:17:53,599 --> 00:17:56,319
giant forest that used to be there, was that. So

404
00:17:56,359 --> 00:17:59,079
my background is in mycology. I got into studying by

405
00:17:59,119 --> 00:18:01,759
diversity pretty serios through mushroom forging after I came back

406
00:18:01,759 --> 00:18:03,400
from forestry camp. That was one of the things that

407
00:18:03,680 --> 00:18:05,799
connected me so strongly to the locally college in the

408
00:18:05,799 --> 00:18:08,720
Bay Area, and especially connected me very strongly to Coast

409
00:18:08,759 --> 00:18:10,559
Live oak because Coast live oak is the main micro

410
00:18:10,640 --> 00:18:12,359
risle host for most of the edible mushrooms you want

411
00:18:12,359 --> 00:18:15,160
to find anyway. So because of my back of the

412
00:18:15,200 --> 00:18:17,519
mushroom forging, and because of the school's location in this

413
00:18:17,599 --> 00:18:19,759
mixed ever green forest, I was able to take the

414
00:18:19,799 --> 00:18:21,880
kids out mushroom foraging all the time. And then as

415
00:18:21,880 --> 00:18:24,799
I learned more about the plants, we went foraging for

416
00:18:25,000 --> 00:18:27,720
you know, different plant parts, and I ended up finding

417
00:18:27,759 --> 00:18:30,559
like a three acre grove of huckleberries right behind the

418
00:18:30,559 --> 00:18:35,319
schools campus, and the huckleberries tasted uniquely good, which leads

419
00:18:35,359 --> 00:18:38,079
me to believe that that grove was tended and selectively

420
00:18:38,119 --> 00:18:41,000
bred over centuries by indigenous people. And the other bit

421
00:18:41,039 --> 00:18:43,680
of evidence I have that supports that idea is that

422
00:18:44,000 --> 00:18:47,640
we also found quite a few gooseberry bushes Riby's menzzi,

423
00:18:47,680 --> 00:18:50,440
the canyon gooseberry or hillside brewsberry. I don't know what's

424
00:18:50,480 --> 00:18:54,400
the common name of Ribby's menzzi. Do you know? If

425
00:18:54,400 --> 00:18:55,240
the top of your head.

426
00:18:55,359 --> 00:18:56,440
Speaker 2: No, I haven't, I don't.

427
00:18:56,440 --> 00:18:59,400
Speaker 1: I pri arily pay attention to common names, and a

428
00:18:59,519 --> 00:19:02,759
crowd of plants have fallen out of my vocabulary like

429
00:19:02,839 --> 00:19:04,119
genera gotcha?

430
00:19:04,759 --> 00:19:07,839
Speaker 3: Gotcha? Anyway, So we were finding these ribies men zizi I,

431
00:19:08,000 --> 00:19:10,920
and as soon as they started producing berries, I was like,

432
00:19:10,960 --> 00:19:14,039
wait a minute, these berries are enormous, first of all,

433
00:19:14,079 --> 00:19:16,519
compared to all of the other ribbies I've seen. Second

434
00:19:16,599 --> 00:19:19,079
of all, they don't have thorns on the outside that

435
00:19:19,160 --> 00:19:21,920
they have these like sticky glandular hairs, but not thorns,

436
00:19:22,240 --> 00:19:24,200
And I found that very strange. I tried to key

437
00:19:24,200 --> 00:19:26,519
it out in jetson. There's only two varieties, and it

438
00:19:26,559 --> 00:19:28,839
wasn't either of them. Yeah, And then I posted it

439
00:19:28,880 --> 00:19:32,200
on a naturalists and someone I think here Morse commented

440
00:19:32,319 --> 00:19:35,880
and said that it was riby's men'sizii bar faustom, which

441
00:19:35,920 --> 00:19:37,200
is a variety I had never heard of.

442
00:19:38,640 --> 00:19:40,559
Speaker 2: Man, that's fucking crazy to think.

443
00:19:40,400 --> 00:19:43,839
Speaker 3: About, exactly. Yeah, and it's a variety that seems to

444
00:19:43,839 --> 00:19:45,680
only be found in the Berkeley and Oakland Hills. So

445
00:19:45,720 --> 00:19:48,640
that's another piece of evidence that that place was probably

446
00:19:48,640 --> 00:19:50,759
heavily tended by indigenous people and the plants there were

447
00:19:50,759 --> 00:19:55,240
selectly bred. Yeah, And that place is just it's amazing.

448
00:19:55,279 --> 00:19:58,759
It's so rich in huckleberries and hazelnuts and these interesting

449
00:19:58,759 --> 00:20:01,000
gooseberries and just like everything in that part of the

450
00:20:01,039 --> 00:20:03,839
woods is edible. All the oaks are coppae, So you've

451
00:20:03,839 --> 00:20:06,279
got these like massive old oaks with these like gnarled

452
00:20:06,440 --> 00:20:08,400
like and covered trunks. That's just like four to six

453
00:20:08,440 --> 00:20:09,960
trunks straight out of the ground.

454
00:20:10,160 --> 00:20:13,720
Speaker 2: That was That was aloney, right, that was all alone.

455
00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:16,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, god man, can you imagine that? That must

456
00:20:16,680 --> 00:20:19,119
have been a fucking what an. I just like it

457
00:20:19,359 --> 00:20:22,160
because it's such an easy place to live because it's

458
00:20:22,359 --> 00:20:24,880
the only bummer I think that they had was grizzlies.

459
00:20:25,119 --> 00:20:27,720
I heard they didn't like grizzlies very much, and I

460
00:20:27,720 --> 00:20:31,960
can understand. I cannot understand that because grizzlies would fuck

461
00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:33,480
your shit up. They'd come raid your food, and then

462
00:20:33,480 --> 00:20:35,079
when you try to fight back, they try to eat you.

463
00:20:35,559 --> 00:20:37,359
Speaker 3: But yeah, that sounds terrifying.

464
00:20:37,400 --> 00:20:39,839
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, I mean it's pretty ideal.

465
00:20:39,599 --> 00:20:41,559
Speaker 1: The human select I mean, that's such a good example.

466
00:20:41,720 --> 00:20:44,160
Why can't we do that now? Like, why can't we

467
00:20:44,200 --> 00:20:45,000
do that with natives?

468
00:20:45,039 --> 00:20:45,240
Speaker 2: Now?

469
00:20:45,279 --> 00:20:48,400
Speaker 1: You know, like the foraging or the permaculture thing is

470
00:20:48,440 --> 00:20:51,400
so you know, because people are really into permaculture a lot.

471
00:20:51,400 --> 00:20:53,720
That's kind of like a gateway to the plants whatever.

472
00:20:53,759 --> 00:20:55,440
And there's like some weird shit that comes out of

473
00:20:55,440 --> 00:20:59,799
that sometimes, like you know, the invasion, the denial of invasion, biology, whatever.

474
00:20:59,839 --> 00:21:02,759
But it's cool that it gets people into plants. But like, man,

475
00:21:02,799 --> 00:21:05,240
when you start the thing with permaculture is like you know,

476
00:21:05,279 --> 00:21:07,240
in the US, there there are a lot of the

477
00:21:07,240 --> 00:21:10,920
permaculture knowledge is based on Eurasian plants, And why don't

478
00:21:10,920 --> 00:21:14,440
you take that that you know, that selective breeding, because

479
00:21:14,440 --> 00:21:15,759
it's all it is and humans have been doing it

480
00:21:15,799 --> 00:21:18,279
for thousands of years. Do it on natives, you know,

481
00:21:18,359 --> 00:21:21,680
like like you know, native people in the US were

482
00:21:21,680 --> 00:21:25,200
doing they were doing that with commas camasia, which is

483
00:21:25,400 --> 00:21:28,519
you know, agaves, it's a gave relative. They were doing

484
00:21:28,599 --> 00:21:31,440
Like where I live, there's there's a gave. There's disjunct

485
00:21:31,440 --> 00:21:33,519
populations of a gave where they shouldn't be a gave.

486
00:21:33,680 --> 00:21:36,720
It's too fucking hot. It's it's like deep thorn scrub.

487
00:21:36,880 --> 00:21:39,559
But then you go south across the border two hours

488
00:21:39,599 --> 00:21:42,440
into Mexico where you get elevation, and those agaves are everywhere.

489
00:21:42,799 --> 00:21:46,559
You're like, okay, well, these aregaves are now way out,

490
00:21:46,599 --> 00:21:49,480
they're stressed out, they're like barely hanging on, and they

491
00:21:49,480 --> 00:21:51,880
were obviously planted here in a place that seemed like

492
00:21:51,880 --> 00:21:53,720
would be an ideal place to live, right above the

493
00:21:53,799 --> 00:21:54,680
Rio Grande River on.

494
00:21:54,680 --> 00:21:55,720
Speaker 2: These beautiful bluffs.

495
00:21:55,759 --> 00:21:58,160
Speaker 1: That's if you're you know, that's where you're gonna be.

496
00:21:58,440 --> 00:22:00,480
You're gonna be posted up near the water stores and

497
00:22:00,519 --> 00:22:02,720
they're you know, you can tell where they were brought.

498
00:22:02,759 --> 00:22:05,759
They were brought from the mountain to the Sierra Madre,

499
00:22:05,839 --> 00:22:07,079
two or three hours south.

500
00:22:07,119 --> 00:22:10,279
Speaker 2: You know. It's it's that. But that thing with the

501
00:22:09,960 --> 00:22:12,000
the rivies, man, that's fucking cool.

502
00:22:12,039 --> 00:22:15,440
Speaker 1: I didn't know about that. Is anybody did you? Did

503
00:22:15,480 --> 00:22:16,960
you try to grow them?

504
00:22:17,519 --> 00:22:19,720
Speaker 3: I have not yet. I should probably drop a location

505
00:22:19,759 --> 00:22:21,960
to one of my friends is interested in that stuff.

506
00:22:22,599 --> 00:22:24,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be really cool man, to get like,

507
00:22:25,799 --> 00:22:29,279
get that into cultivation and then I don't know, just

508
00:22:29,319 --> 00:22:32,119
you know, bring it back. What is the thing.

509
00:22:33,279 --> 00:22:35,440
Speaker 1: The thing I love about some of the Bay Area

510
00:22:35,799 --> 00:22:37,519
ridges too, is like, yeah, you've got the redwood force,

511
00:22:37,599 --> 00:22:38,240
but then you've.

512
00:22:38,039 --> 00:22:40,200
Speaker 2: Got those exposures of I.

513
00:22:40,160 --> 00:22:45,839
Speaker 1: Believe it's like Miocene Miocene shales and sandsungs and stuff,

514
00:22:45,839 --> 00:22:47,039
and you go up there and it's.

515
00:22:46,880 --> 00:22:51,160
Speaker 2: Like total chaparral, Like, uh, yeah, what is that little.

516
00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:54,480
Speaker 1: Cuddy town that all the hippies lived in? Canyon, right,

517
00:22:54,519 --> 00:22:56,440
you go up there. We used to go up there

518
00:22:56,440 --> 00:22:59,519
to look at like there's disjunc there's a disjunct stand

519
00:22:59,599 --> 00:23:03,000
of a species of knob cone pine, and there's arctos

520
00:23:03,079 --> 00:23:05,240
aphalos up there and a bunch of.

521
00:23:05,440 --> 00:23:08,440
Speaker 3: I've seen the I've seen the knobcone pine population on

522
00:23:08,519 --> 00:23:10,440
I naturalists, and I was wondering if it was just

523
00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:12,839
like people had planted it. But I guess maybe like

524
00:23:12,880 --> 00:23:14,880
indigenous people planted it or something.

525
00:23:15,079 --> 00:23:17,480
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's it's probably just I mean, I

526
00:23:17,480 --> 00:23:19,640
think it probably just occurs there because it's a different

527
00:23:19,759 --> 00:23:21,799
do the geology, it's a different stet you know, it's

528
00:23:21,880 --> 00:23:23,920
a little bit drier and so like Redwood's it's not

529
00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:26,000
going to be redwood forest, but it's it's drier, so

530
00:23:26,079 --> 00:23:29,599
you've got more manzanitas. And I remember we used to

531
00:23:29,599 --> 00:23:32,279
always go up there and park and like this this.

532
00:23:32,480 --> 00:23:34,000
I don't know what he was, man. He was like

533
00:23:34,039 --> 00:23:36,680
some bearded guy who was always angry, and he'd be like.

534
00:23:36,640 --> 00:23:39,839
Speaker 2: That's just that's just private property. You got parking. Fuck you,

535
00:23:39,880 --> 00:23:40,319
old man.

536
00:23:40,599 --> 00:23:43,079
Speaker 1: We always like fighting. We're just looking at stuff. Why

537
00:23:43,079 --> 00:23:44,680
are you being a dick? Leave us alone? You know,

538
00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:47,200
But it's a cool it's a fire road that goes

539
00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:49,359
through there, and yeah, it's it's a really cool and

540
00:23:49,480 --> 00:23:53,599
unique habitat Pete Pete vay lou at uh East Bay Wilds.

541
00:23:53,680 --> 00:23:55,119
Speaker 2: I think showed me that spot.

542
00:23:56,079 --> 00:23:56,839
Speaker 3: Oh that's cool.

543
00:23:57,240 --> 00:23:59,839
Speaker 2: I know. Do you ever go to that nursery I have?

544
00:24:00,200 --> 00:24:01,519
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think it's really cool. Oh.

545
00:24:01,559 --> 00:24:03,920
Speaker 2: He's fucking such a sweet man. I love him.

546
00:24:04,119 --> 00:24:08,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he was telling me about Oh nice. He

547
00:24:09,079 --> 00:24:11,319
was telling me about a client that he had who

548
00:24:11,480 --> 00:24:13,400
wanted him to do like a native plant garden for them.

549
00:24:13,839 --> 00:24:16,519
And they lived in the Cresmont neighborhood on the Serpentine

550
00:24:16,519 --> 00:24:20,359
outcrop that I've been really interested in lately, And thank goodness,

551
00:24:20,480 --> 00:24:22,240
he was the person they asked to do their garden

552
00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:24,279
design because he was basically like, I'm not going to

553
00:24:24,359 --> 00:24:26,240
put any plants that aren't from here, because this is

554
00:24:26,240 --> 00:24:28,519
one of the rarest and most unique botanical habitats that

555
00:24:28,559 --> 00:24:31,359
we have left, and everything that is here is the

556
00:24:31,359 --> 00:24:33,440
stuff that's supposed to be here. Yeah, And I think

557
00:24:33,480 --> 00:24:35,920
a lot of people just don't realize how special and

558
00:24:36,039 --> 00:24:39,440
unique each place on Earth is. They've been convinced that,

559
00:24:39,799 --> 00:24:42,960
you know, biodiversity exists, somewhere else, and that for us

560
00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:45,440
to create biodiversity, we have to wipe out all the

561
00:24:45,519 --> 00:24:48,279
you know, not biodiversity that's there so we can create

562
00:24:48,319 --> 00:24:50,640
something better. And I'm like, no, like learn, learn the

563
00:24:50,680 --> 00:24:51,880
plants that are already there.

564
00:24:52,079 --> 00:24:54,440
Speaker 1: No, it's fucked, it's and well I think the whole there,

565
00:24:54,680 --> 00:24:56,680
you know, I don't know what the fuck if I

566
00:24:56,880 --> 00:24:59,720
was like yeah, coffin, I was like sucking goblin dick

567
00:24:59,759 --> 00:25:04,559
early Todam. Sorry anyway, But there's a you know, there's

568
00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:08,799
there's nature, and then there's u there's gardening, there's horticulture.

569
00:25:09,039 --> 00:25:11,480
And this is where the problem runs into is that

570
00:25:12,119 --> 00:25:15,480
you've got you know, horticulture is rooted in this European bullshit,

571
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:19,279
the Victorian gardens and Spanish colonial shit, and and nature

572
00:25:19,319 --> 00:25:21,599
is something separate. So like, if you're gonna garden, you

573
00:25:21,599 --> 00:25:23,920
don't want to plant the natives, right, you want to plant?

574
00:25:24,279 --> 00:25:26,240
You don't want to plant this the weeds that are

575
00:25:26,279 --> 00:25:28,839
around you. You want you want you know, bogain V's

576
00:25:28,880 --> 00:25:32,640
and all this corny shit from wherever from the garden center, right,

577
00:25:32,720 --> 00:25:36,599
you don't want you don't why not just like a like, no,

578
00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:38,599
this is the habitat that you you know, you're whether

579
00:25:38,640 --> 00:25:41,680
you're in you know, Madrone Oak Forest and that's a

580
00:25:41,720 --> 00:25:43,440
really cool habitat and so get to know all the

581
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:47,319
cool species there and so just restore that and around

582
00:25:47,319 --> 00:25:49,480
your house. So now you're just living in the habitat

583
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:52,160
that's been there for hundreds of thousands of years, and

584
00:25:52,200 --> 00:25:55,839
you're gonna have all the cool insects, the salamanders, the

585
00:25:55,880 --> 00:25:58,200
scrub jays, all the cool you know, like and all

586
00:25:58,200 --> 00:26:00,680
the all the animals that come back. Like that's what

587
00:26:00,799 --> 00:26:03,680
I think needs to change. But it's again, it's this mindset.

588
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:05,880
You know, it's like, oh, we're parting a new housing development,

589
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:07,319
and so we've got to go out and you've got to.

590
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:08,960
Speaker 2: Clear everything like that.

591
00:26:09,119 --> 00:26:12,319
Speaker 1: Kyle Liberger in Alabama Native Habitat Project, He's always talking

592
00:26:12,319 --> 00:26:15,319
about that they go in. There's these beautiful Alabama prairies

593
00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:19,319
that developers fucking bulldoze everything. Why not just leave some

594
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:22,000
of the native plant They're fucking great plants, Like why

595
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:24,160
are you You're bulldozing all this shit and then you're

596
00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:27,880
planting the dumbest shit possible that's from somewhere else and

597
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:29,440
doesn't have any connection to the land.

598
00:26:29,599 --> 00:26:31,440
Speaker 2: And I have hope because I think this can change.

599
00:26:31,440 --> 00:26:32,240
I see it changing.

600
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:34,880
Speaker 1: You point out a fucking stupidness is in a nicer

601
00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:36,559
way than I'm describing it to you. But you know

602
00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:40,599
we're buddy buddying right here. I can voice my contempt.

603
00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:43,759
I would code switch if I was talking, but you know,

604
00:26:43,799 --> 00:26:44,960
you say it here.

605
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:46,359
Speaker 3: No, I have to do a lot of I have

606
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:48,960
to do a lot of myself.

607
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:51,039
Speaker 2: It's hard, though, it's hard.

608
00:26:51,160 --> 00:26:51,720
Speaker 3: It is hard.

609
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:53,839
Speaker 2: You're like, what the fuck are you doing? What are

610
00:26:53,839 --> 00:26:54,880
you doing? What do you do?

611
00:26:55,160 --> 00:26:57,920
Speaker 1: Like just stop and think about this, like you're part

612
00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:01,039
of everything. But what you were talking about that part

613
00:27:01,119 --> 00:27:05,480
when you you know, you realize, like everything stops being

614
00:27:05,519 --> 00:27:08,960
green weeds and now it's part of a lineage and

615
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:12,039
an ecosystem and a literal living machine, a living puzzle

616
00:27:12,119 --> 00:27:14,839
that is. That's like a kin to psychedelics. That's a

617
00:27:14,960 --> 00:27:17,519
kin to Maybe I shouldn't say this for the squares

618
00:27:17,519 --> 00:27:20,079
in Texas because people are still afraid of psychedelics here.

619
00:27:20,079 --> 00:27:22,400
You know, it's a result of the Nickstonian drug warn Ivan.

620
00:27:22,519 --> 00:27:26,880
But but it's like it's like waking up. It's like realizing, yes,

621
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:29,680
I am part of this, like living with the human

622
00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:33,440
world is infantesmally small all, you know, and we're all

623
00:27:33,519 --> 00:27:37,880
part of this this complex web of species, you know,

624
00:27:38,160 --> 00:27:41,880
all equally valuable, and we don't own this land. We're

625
00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:45,160
just stewarding it and caring for it. So it's yeah,

626
00:27:45,200 --> 00:27:46,799
and then you go to a new place, you agree,

627
00:27:46,839 --> 00:27:48,200
You're like, fuck, I don't know anything. I want to

628
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:49,920
know what these are, you know what these plants are?

629
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:53,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I really I really resonate with that,

630
00:27:53,519 --> 00:27:56,799
I think, I mean, number one, just the idea that

631
00:27:56,960 --> 00:27:59,519
a human can own land and not the other way

632
00:27:59,519 --> 00:28:04,000
around is just so what an absurd fantasy that the

633
00:28:04,359 --> 00:28:06,720
literal surface of the earth that has been here for

634
00:28:06,839 --> 00:28:10,640
billions of years can just be carved up with imaginary

635
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:13,640
lines on a map and then commodified like any manufactured

636
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:15,920
product that you can know by use and dispose of.

637
00:28:16,319 --> 00:28:18,400
And the idea that the laws that govern what you

638
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:22,480
can do with you know, this ancient living land are

639
00:28:22,519 --> 00:28:24,359
the same as the laws that govern what you can

640
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:26,000
do with a piece of plastic that was, you know,

641
00:28:26,079 --> 00:28:29,000
manufactured in the factory. That's just insane to me, and

642
00:28:29,039 --> 00:28:31,039
that needs to change. But you know, people don't want

643
00:28:31,079 --> 00:28:32,960
to give up the power that they already have and

644
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:37,640
the other thing I think that struck me, especially learning

645
00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:41,119
about plants and learning how to see the evolutionary history

646
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:43,880
and the lineage and understanding that these are creatures that

647
00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:48,880
are along this very long line of generations upon generations

648
00:28:48,880 --> 00:28:51,160
of creatures that have lived and died and reproduced based

649
00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:56,759
on their traits. To realize that, you know, I've always

650
00:28:56,799 --> 00:28:59,240
been interested in human evolution, but to me it was

651
00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:01,680
always about like, Oh, there's these cool fossils, and like

652
00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:03,640
structures in these fossils that tell us like when we

653
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:05,319
evolve to walk up right, and when we have all

654
00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:08,039
to use fire and all that stuff. And after teaching

655
00:29:08,119 --> 00:29:10,759
high school, especially at a school like Skyline, where I

656
00:29:10,759 --> 00:29:12,839
could take kids out into the woods and they're actually

657
00:29:12,880 --> 00:29:15,279
in a natural environment that's not designed for their safety

658
00:29:15,279 --> 00:29:17,799
and comfort versus when I lost my job at Skyline

659
00:29:17,799 --> 00:29:19,359
because the school distriction and agains and I had to

660
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:22,200
move to a different school in the same district, being

661
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:24,559
on a campus where kids don't have any kind of

662
00:29:24,599 --> 00:29:27,880
access to any environment that's not deliberately built and designed

663
00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:31,680
by humans, that really made me realize that just like

664
00:29:31,880 --> 00:29:34,799
these lineages of plants that are so specifically adapted to

665
00:29:34,839 --> 00:29:38,720
these specific conditions, and that they grow fundamentally differently or

666
00:29:39,119 --> 00:29:42,640
not successfully if they're outside of those conditions. We have

667
00:29:42,759 --> 00:29:46,240
forgotten the conditions under which we as a species evolved.

668
00:29:46,279 --> 00:29:50,200
And I think a lot about what it's like. Yeah,

669
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:52,000
And I think about this a lot with kids too,

670
00:29:52,079 --> 00:29:55,160
because kids are so much like you know, kids are

671
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:58,319
not born with preconceived notions about how society is supposed

672
00:29:58,359 --> 00:30:00,519
to work. So I think the younger kid kids are,

673
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:03,400
the closer they are to this kind of I don't

674
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:06,000
want to say primal, but like the true nature of

675
00:30:06,039 --> 00:30:07,119
what it is to be a human.

676
00:30:07,359 --> 00:30:10,799
Speaker 1: They haven't been soiled, their spirit hasn't been soiled yet

677
00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:15,200
exactly consumer society and stupid rules and all this, you

678
00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:17,160
know what I mean, it's uh yep.

679
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:20,240
Speaker 3: And I think in any ways, when we force kids

680
00:30:20,279 --> 00:30:23,200
to grow up in environments that we have entirely designed

681
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:25,400
for their safety and comfort because we're afraid of like

682
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:27,119
lawsuits or like we don't want our kids to get

683
00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:32,279
hurt or whatever we are deliberately withholding, we are taking

684
00:30:32,279 --> 00:30:34,880
them away from the environment that they evolved to thrive in.

685
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:38,920
Like kids evolved to thrive by running around and hitting

686
00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:41,240
each other with sticks and falling down and getting hurt

687
00:30:41,279 --> 00:30:44,079
and getting scratches and splinters and bruises and poisono crashes,

688
00:30:44,119 --> 00:30:46,279
and then getting up and getting over it and being okay.

689
00:30:46,759 --> 00:30:50,000
And when kids don't have those experiences, especially when all

690
00:30:50,039 --> 00:30:53,160
of their experiences take place either in the context of

691
00:30:53,240 --> 00:30:57,519
organized sports or organized academics or indoors in a rectangular

692
00:30:57,599 --> 00:31:00,559
room or on their phone scrolling an algorithm that's design

693
00:31:00,640 --> 00:31:04,960
to give them pleasure and nothing else. We just it's

694
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:09,039
so maladaptive. It's like we're trying to grow plants outside

695
00:31:09,039 --> 00:31:12,240
of their habitat and conditions that are so wildly unnatural

696
00:31:12,319 --> 00:31:13,680
and then wondering why they're not doing it.

697
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:16,920
Speaker 2: It's like watering your plants with Brondo. That's what it's like.

698
00:31:17,119 --> 00:31:21,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, if I can make an Idiocracy reference, but very

699
00:31:21,200 --> 00:31:23,279
after the times, but you know, yeah, that's one of

700
00:31:23,559 --> 00:31:25,279
the things that I want to start doing more is

701
00:31:25,319 --> 00:31:27,279
working with schools. Because someone invited me to speak at

702
00:31:27,319 --> 00:31:31,480
a junior high here in South Texas like two months ago.

703
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:33,599
I was like, all right, I mean, because I fucking

704
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:34,920
cursed out whatever, but I can you know again, I

705
00:31:34,960 --> 00:31:37,519
could code switch. It was just whatever. I worked for

706
00:31:37,559 --> 00:31:38,799
a fucking rail for fifteen years.

707
00:31:38,839 --> 00:31:39,160
Speaker 2: It's hard.

708
00:31:39,680 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 1: But but so I went and spoke to these junior

709
00:31:43,079 --> 00:31:44,880
high kids. It was like, how many of you know

710
00:31:45,039 --> 00:31:46,920
what a native plant is? How many of you know

711
00:31:47,039 --> 00:31:48,880
any of the plants that are here? And then I

712
00:31:48,960 --> 00:31:50,799
was like, this is your heritage, man, this is the

713
00:31:50,920 --> 00:31:53,839
land that you you grew up on, right, Like you

714
00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:56,519
want to know what's here like we and I always

715
00:31:56,599 --> 00:31:58,640
bring this up. I'm like, if you humans have been

716
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:02,039
a species somewhere between three hundred thousand and a million

717
00:32:02,119 --> 00:32:03,720
years so that we've been in the state that the

718
00:32:03,839 --> 00:32:06,240
exact you know, our genome has been what it is now,

719
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:09,680
a right slight alterations, but and so for most of

720
00:32:09,759 --> 00:32:12,480
that time, a good ninety nine point nine percent of

721
00:32:12,559 --> 00:32:16,440
that we were around the plants that you know they were.

722
00:32:16,480 --> 00:32:20,000
They were everywhere, like not just farming, but like wild plants,

723
00:32:20,079 --> 00:32:22,400
right because there wasn't sprawl everywhere. Our kids would go

724
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:26,359
run and play in forests or chaparral or scrub or

725
00:32:26,559 --> 00:32:29,400
gt meadows, grasslands, whatever. And it's only been the last

726
00:32:29,440 --> 00:32:32,720
few centuries that we've been alienated from that. And so

727
00:32:32,839 --> 00:32:35,720
how do you think that affects the human psyche when

728
00:32:35,759 --> 00:32:38,200
you go from you know, this thing that you basically

729
00:32:38,279 --> 00:32:42,160
were born in and nurtured in, and suddenly you're completely

730
00:32:42,279 --> 00:32:44,119
cut off and you spend most of your day in

731
00:32:44,200 --> 00:32:48,279
a car, at a desk, or in you know, or

732
00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:50,640
or just at home staring at a screen, Like do

733
00:32:50,759 --> 00:32:53,240
you think that has any effect in your mental and

734
00:32:53,319 --> 00:32:56,640
emotional wellbeing? And if you don't think so, that like

735
00:32:56,799 --> 00:32:59,759
that's why not? Like that seems crazy to me, right,

736
00:32:59,839 --> 00:33:02,160
Like we evolve to run, same thing. We evolve to

737
00:33:02,240 --> 00:33:06,519
run and chase things and get physical activity. And then

738
00:33:06,599 --> 00:33:08,400
now you know, so many of us spend most of

739
00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:10,720
our time sitting down, Like how do you think that

740
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:13,160
that's why we have all these metabolic diseases that we

741
00:33:13,240 --> 00:33:15,640
come down with the same thing for the psyche, it's

742
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:16,799
this exact same thing.

743
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:20,599
Speaker 2: And so I wanted, you know, just getting people more.

744
00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:23,759
Speaker 1: I think nature education should be one hundred percent mandatory

745
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:27,400
for elementary school. It really should, like not just like

746
00:33:27,519 --> 00:33:31,079
go go like germinate some cantalopes, you know, for a garden,

747
00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:33,640
Like it's like, no know the native plants. We're gonna

748
00:33:33,680 --> 00:33:35,720
go hang out, We're gonna look at the birds. We're

749
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:38,680
gonna give the kids binoculars. We're gonna go we're gonna

750
00:33:38,759 --> 00:33:42,200
learn plant names. We're gonna learn like what a flower is.

751
00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:44,920
It's a reproductive structure and it makes seeds, which you

752
00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:48,039
know are then a current of fruit, like all that

753
00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:51,839
stuff should be like before fifth grade, man, before fifth grade. Oh,

754
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:54,359
it gets them outside too, for fox's sake. It gets

755
00:33:54,359 --> 00:33:58,279
them outside. And it's you know, it's that's for kids, man,

756
00:33:58,319 --> 00:34:00,200
Because I've got a six year old daughter and we

757
00:34:00,359 --> 00:34:03,839
love she's she gets, you know, enough of it from

758
00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:07,319
me because my yard is just you know, all thorn scrub.

759
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:10,039
We'll go look at lizards and bugs, and so she

760
00:34:10,119 --> 00:34:12,199
picks up spiders. Man, I'm so fucking proud of her,

761
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:14,480
Like how many kids, you know, so many kids are

762
00:34:14,519 --> 00:34:16,719
afraid of spiders. Like I have to tell her some

763
00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:18,760
of the spiders you can't pick up, right, You gotta

764
00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:24,559
be careful. But you know, that's I just it's it's

765
00:34:24,639 --> 00:34:26,679
such a part well part of it's such a good

766
00:34:26,679 --> 00:34:28,119
part of a well rounded childhood.

767
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 3: You know.

768
00:34:28,679 --> 00:34:31,519
Speaker 2: So when you were teaching, you taught high school.

769
00:34:31,280 --> 00:34:35,679
Speaker 3: You said, yep, ninth grade, So I guess Inkland.

770
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:37,119
Speaker 1: So most of the kids, you know, most of the

771
00:34:37,199 --> 00:34:40,039
kids in Oakland are probably I mean, there's still everyone's

772
00:34:40,039 --> 00:34:42,679
addicted to screens and video games and ship but a

773
00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:45,199
lot of them probably were, you know, would have more

774
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:48,000
experience with nature than maybe say where I live right

775
00:34:48,199 --> 00:34:50,960
or we're more appreciative of it, what was your experience.

776
00:34:52,199 --> 00:34:54,320
Speaker 3: I think many of them were appreciative of it. I

777
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:56,480
also think many of them were very fearful of it,

778
00:34:56,599 --> 00:34:59,679
especially because even in Oakland, you know, you're never more

779
00:34:59,760 --> 00:35:03,280
than seven miles away from an undeveloped open space. But

780
00:35:03,440 --> 00:35:06,519
also there's certain parts of Oakland where if you live

781
00:35:06,559 --> 00:35:08,880
there and you don't really you know, prioritize getting out

782
00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:10,880
in nature because you know who's going to tell you

783
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:13,719
how great it is. If it's just never been part

784
00:35:13,760 --> 00:35:15,960
of of what your parents have taken you out to

785
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:19,000
do when you were a kid. Yeah, just a lot

786
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:21,880
of people in Oakland are so disconnected from nature, especially

787
00:35:22,039 --> 00:35:25,840
because all of these all of these open spaces, like

788
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:27,840
in the East Bare Regional Parks for instance, all of

789
00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:31,360
these places are kind of hidden behind neighborhoods that are

790
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:34,599
these big, sprawling developments of windy roads. So for the

791
00:35:34,679 --> 00:35:38,199
most part, even though nature is physically nearby, it's still

792
00:35:38,360 --> 00:35:41,239
not that accessible to the majority of people, especially like

793
00:35:41,320 --> 00:35:43,320
low income people and people of color, and people living

794
00:35:43,679 --> 00:35:46,400
formerly redline neighborhoods and Oakland. So I think we still

795
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:49,639
have a long way to go in terms of creating

796
00:35:49,760 --> 00:35:54,039
natural ecosystems for kids to actually experience. Because when I

797
00:35:54,079 --> 00:35:55,880
was at Skyline, like at the beginning of the school year,

798
00:35:55,880 --> 00:35:57,719
when I was first taking kids into the woods, there's

799
00:35:57,760 --> 00:36:00,719
a very clear difference in how kids felt about being

800
00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:02,840
out there because for a lot of these kids, like, like,

801
00:36:02,960 --> 00:36:06,320
we're not on a trail, there's no signs, there's no rangers,

802
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:09,360
there's no bathrooms, there's no trash cans, there's no Wi Fi,

803
00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:11,880
there's no phone reception. So when you're out there, you're

804
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:14,039
out there. You're like in the wilderness, even though you're

805
00:36:14,119 --> 00:36:16,159
you know, stones throw from the school campus. So for

806
00:36:16,239 --> 00:36:17,960
a lot of these kids, especially kids who had not

807
00:36:18,119 --> 00:36:20,559
really spent time like backpacking with their families for instance,

808
00:36:20,599 --> 00:36:23,440
which you know most kids haven't done that, it's a

809
00:36:23,559 --> 00:36:27,360
very fearful experience at first. And I think only through

810
00:36:28,199 --> 00:36:32,199
understanding the ecosystem and the way things work and how

811
00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:35,800
things actually live, do kids slowly begin to gain that

812
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:38,320
comfort and familiarity. And then by the end of the year.

813
00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:41,519
So many of these kids who were like terrified and

814
00:36:41,639 --> 00:36:44,679
extremely adverse to going outdoors in this environment, by the

815
00:36:44,760 --> 00:36:46,440
end of the year they love this place. Like they'll

816
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:48,440
go out on supervised and like go pick a bunch

817
00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:50,480
of mushrooms and come back, or like collect a bunch

818
00:36:50,480 --> 00:36:52,519
of firewood and then make a campfire with their friends

819
00:36:52,559 --> 00:36:56,480
and Brozemuschmellows or whatever. It's just a complete change in

820
00:36:56,559 --> 00:37:00,239
their relationship with the unknown and their relationship with the

821
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:02,400
rest of the world, and their ability to just like

822
00:37:02,960 --> 00:37:06,280
handle discomfort and and do things that they want to do.

823
00:37:06,679 --> 00:37:08,719
Whereas a lot of the kids at the school that

824
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:11,199
I ended up teaching at Oakland Tech, it was really

825
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:14,400
hard for me to create those experiences for students, So

826
00:37:14,599 --> 00:37:16,480
by the end of the year there was still a

827
00:37:16,559 --> 00:37:21,440
pretty big divide in those respects between kids who had

828
00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:23,360
access to the outdoors through what their families did for

829
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:24,480
fun versus kids who didn't.

830
00:37:25,079 --> 00:37:25,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, got it makes me.

831
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:28,400
Speaker 1: It makes me so sad when I see kids who

832
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:32,000
are afraid of of like bugs and and snakes and

833
00:37:32,159 --> 00:37:33,159
nature and all that stuff.

834
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:35,679
Speaker 2: It's such a fucking bumber man. I'm like, oh, really,

835
00:37:36,320 --> 00:37:38,320
you know, and you see that too, Like you see that.

836
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:40,320
Speaker 1: Like if you go the like if you're in a

837
00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:42,559
hood like hood to Chicago, wherever people are, you know,

838
00:37:42,800 --> 00:37:44,679
people like, oh hell no, they like they don't want

839
00:37:44,800 --> 00:37:47,199
any part of you know, and I get it because

840
00:37:47,199 --> 00:37:49,280
there's it's not around they have no experience with it.

841
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:51,599
But it's you know in like Oakland too. That was

842
00:37:51,639 --> 00:37:53,280
the thing because I lived in West Oakland. I live

843
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:55,760
in the bottoms and which god, I think they got

844
00:37:55,800 --> 00:37:57,199
like a climbing engine. I don't know what the fuck

845
00:37:57,199 --> 00:37:58,639
it's like done, and I don't want to see it. Man,

846
00:37:58,679 --> 00:38:01,480
it's probably it's it's so expensive there, you know, like

847
00:38:01,559 --> 00:38:04,599
the favorite cafe I used to go to Hungover back

848
00:38:04,639 --> 00:38:07,679
when I used to drink seven dollars breakfast song. The

849
00:38:07,800 --> 00:38:10,000
Korean lady ran it and she was sweet as hell,

850
00:38:10,440 --> 00:38:12,760
and there'd be like, you know, just working class dudes

851
00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:15,559
arguing and like now there's like lines for avocado toast

852
00:38:15,639 --> 00:38:19,599
around the block and shit, like fucking anyway, whatever, I

853
00:38:19,679 --> 00:38:21,920
get districted because it still hurts, you know, I'm still

854
00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:24,440
working through the tramo see what happened to my neighbor. Anyway,

855
00:38:25,360 --> 00:38:27,039
but like in the low, you know, that's all low

856
00:38:27,079 --> 00:38:29,719
elevation then you go the rich neighborhoods, that's where all

857
00:38:29,800 --> 00:38:33,039
like the actual leftover nature is. So you got to

858
00:38:33,079 --> 00:38:35,639
go up there and it's it's uphill and then there's

859
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:38,440
it's you know, kind of like a stiff area depending

860
00:38:38,519 --> 00:38:41,920
on and where you are, and so yeah, it's hard

861
00:38:41,960 --> 00:38:43,760
to access, man, And so you know you got to

862
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:45,880
drive all the time too, like to get to the Redwoods.

863
00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:48,000
So that was that was like when I was planting

864
00:38:48,039 --> 00:38:49,599
on Mendela, like, I was like, I just want to

865
00:38:49,639 --> 00:38:51,039
have like this shit around. I want to have like

866
00:38:51,079 --> 00:38:53,039
a place to go hang out with plants, like in

867
00:38:53,159 --> 00:38:56,039
the in like the lower elevations, like in the bottoms.

868
00:38:56,079 --> 00:39:01,000
You know, there's that dude official Trap. He's a black

869
00:39:01,079 --> 00:39:03,519
dude who's like always handling snakes and stuff, and fuck

870
00:39:03,559 --> 00:39:04,639
I love what he does, man.

871
00:39:04,719 --> 00:39:08,039
Speaker 2: I love that he's like, I don't know, it's cool.

872
00:39:08,360 --> 00:39:10,599
Speaker 3: It's really important.

873
00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:13,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really it really is, man, Just getting people,

874
00:39:14,039 --> 00:39:18,239
just getting people exposed to it, especially now since there's

875
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:21,800
such a threat of just being addicted to screens. I mean,

876
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:25,079
the smartphone. I feel like it can be good, but

877
00:39:25,199 --> 00:39:28,559
it can obviously be a threat to mental health too, right,

878
00:39:28,639 --> 00:39:30,639
because you don't know because it's highly addictive and if

879
00:39:30,679 --> 00:39:33,480
you don't know how to how to manage your time

880
00:39:33,599 --> 00:39:35,199
or have self discipline around it.

881
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:38,719
Speaker 2: But uh yeah, what.

882
00:39:38,800 --> 00:39:41,280
Speaker 1: About so the serpentine We should talk about serpentine too,

883
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:45,920
because it's a really cool all the ultramafic habitats, you know, which,

884
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:50,360
of course like causes speciation of plants. It's a stressful

885
00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:54,000
geologic substrate. Most plants can't grow on it, but over time,

886
00:39:54,159 --> 00:39:56,679
seeds from plants nearby that are growing in quote regular

887
00:39:56,719 --> 00:39:58,880
soil will drift into the serpentine and every once in

888
00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:01,199
a while most so then we'll be able to handle

889
00:40:01,760 --> 00:40:05,960
the excess you know, nickel and iron and et cetera.

890
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:09,719
So what the serpentine habitats in Oakland? You spend a

891
00:40:09,719 --> 00:40:12,360
lot of time there, What are they like? There's serpentine grasslands,

892
00:40:12,679 --> 00:40:15,239
but there's some invasion by there. Actually, maybe there's not

893
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:18,719
invasion by invasives. What do you tell me about this?

894
00:40:19,920 --> 00:40:22,719
Speaker 3: I would say it's mostly invaded. I think on my

895
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:26,039
Instagram page, I do a lot of highlighting the areas

896
00:40:26,079 --> 00:40:28,320
that aren't totally invaded, And I wonder if maybe that

897
00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:32,000
is giving people the impression of more more natural ecosystem

898
00:40:32,079 --> 00:40:33,760
that actually exists because a lot of my videos I'm

899
00:40:33,760 --> 00:40:36,119
realizing I'm like, oh, I'm in the only patch of

900
00:40:36,199 --> 00:40:38,199
this particular plant community in Oakland, but like all of

901
00:40:38,280 --> 00:40:40,320
my videos are like that. But also it's like I've

902
00:40:40,360 --> 00:40:42,440
got like seven videos like that, and there's like seven

903
00:40:42,519 --> 00:40:44,519
of these grass line patches within the city limits of

904
00:40:44,519 --> 00:40:48,440
Oakland's that's like pretty much you know, Yeah, it's the

905
00:40:48,639 --> 00:40:52,000
these patches of intact serpentine habitat are very small and

906
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:54,599
very isolated and are still missing a lot of species

907
00:40:54,639 --> 00:40:58,880
that should be there, particularly things that bloom in like May, June,

908
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:01,280
and July, because and the city comes through and mows

909
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:04,880
down all the vegetation for wildfire mitigation. They're mowing down

910
00:41:04,920 --> 00:41:06,559
all the stuff that's going to be blooming in May, June,

911
00:41:06,559 --> 00:41:08,079
and July, and then it doesn't get to reproduced and

912
00:41:08,079 --> 00:41:10,880
then it gets extricated. So one of our rarest species

913
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:14,639
Oakland the presidio Clarkia Clarkia franciscana. It's only found in

914
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:17,679
two locations. It was first discovered in the serpentine out

915
00:41:17,679 --> 00:41:19,599
crop in the per city of San Francisco, and then

916
00:41:19,639 --> 00:41:21,400
a few decades later, in the nineteen eighties, it was

917
00:41:21,440 --> 00:41:24,599
discovered in the Serpentine Prairie habitat in Redwood Regional Park,

918
00:41:24,639 --> 00:41:27,920
which is kind of the top of the hill where

919
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:30,360
that serpentine out crop is in Oakland. And then in

920
00:41:30,480 --> 00:41:33,719
the following years people actually started finding populations of this

921
00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:38,280
Presidio Clarkia throughout the Cresmont neighborhood, which is this It's

922
00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:40,760
a pretty large neighborhood, but the houses are pretty far

923
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:44,159
apart because serpentine tends to be very steep and very

924
00:41:44,239 --> 00:41:46,719
unstable in earthquakes, so there's a lot of like open

925
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:49,119
serpentine space between these houses. That's where a lot of

926
00:41:49,159 --> 00:41:52,880
these rare plants still cling to existence. Unfortunately, the Presidio

927
00:41:52,920 --> 00:41:56,000
Clarkia populations since they were discovered in the late nineteen hundreds,

928
00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:59,599
so you know, forty years ago ish in that time,

929
00:42:00,039 --> 00:42:02,559
most of the populations had been extravated. At this point,

930
00:42:02,599 --> 00:42:05,639
I'm only aware of one surviving population outside of the

931
00:42:05,679 --> 00:42:06,679
protected area of the park.

932
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:09,840
Speaker 1: So this is an annual, right, like a lot of

933
00:42:10,480 --> 00:42:12,159
a lot of the plants out there, and that is

934
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:15,119
you know, unique to a Mediterranean climate too. You get

935
00:42:15,119 --> 00:42:17,320
a lot of annuals because the hottest season is also

936
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:21,000
the driest season. You get dry summers, wet winsors, and

937
00:42:21,159 --> 00:42:24,519
so it's that's a really unique thing for California, like

938
00:42:24,559 --> 00:42:28,239
abundance of annuals, and so these things die back and

939
00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:30,360
then you've just got the seed bank and that's you

940
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:33,840
know sometimes you know, at different parts of the year,

941
00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:36,719
the only plants that will be alive of that species

942
00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:40,480
exist in seed form in the seed bank. And it's

943
00:42:40,559 --> 00:42:42,639
really because it's just living there in the seed bank,

944
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:45,840
you know, dormant, waiting for rains. It's very very very

945
00:42:46,199 --> 00:42:49,039
fragile and prone to disturbance. So what are some of

946
00:42:49,119 --> 00:42:51,360
the like what are some of the disturbance factors that

947
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:54,000
are I mean, is there still a lot of development

948
00:42:54,079 --> 00:42:56,440
going on? Like are there are there are these parcels

949
00:42:56,599 --> 00:42:59,119
that are not developed, or this thing grows protected at all.

950
00:43:00,559 --> 00:43:03,480
Speaker 3: The places where it grows are protected because it's protected

951
00:43:03,519 --> 00:43:06,280
in the California and Dangered Species Act. So that's kind

952
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:08,760
of because it's a one B one species, it's state

953
00:43:08,800 --> 00:43:11,920
listed endangered. It's also federally endangered, so it has decent protections.

954
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:14,599
But I think my issue overall with this model of

955
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:18,760
like single species conservation is that even when these things

956
00:43:18,800 --> 00:43:22,039
are protected, if there's nobody making a big fuss about it.

957
00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:25,559
The protections aren't strongly enforced, and when they're not strongly enforced,

958
00:43:25,639 --> 00:43:28,320
especially for an annual species, it's pretty easy to just

959
00:43:28,440 --> 00:43:31,920
extirpay the entire population. And then once the population of

960
00:43:32,039 --> 00:43:35,639
that one super endangered species is extirpated, it doesn't matter

961
00:43:35,719 --> 00:43:38,079
how many other rare species or how rare the plant

962
00:43:38,119 --> 00:43:41,039
community that's left behind. Still is that plant community, that

963
00:43:41,119 --> 00:43:43,639
whole habitat is no longer protected because it's missing the

964
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:46,239
one protected species. And I think that is the situation

965
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:49,920
in most of these remaining serpentine patches in the Cresmont neighborhood.

966
00:43:50,079 --> 00:43:52,159
I don't think most of them are at imminent risk

967
00:43:52,239 --> 00:43:56,280
of development, especially because, like I said, these serpentine slopes

968
00:43:56,280 --> 00:43:58,400
tend to be very steep and very unstable in earthquakes.

969
00:43:58,440 --> 00:43:59,960
So I think a lot of people just aren't really

970
00:44:00,079 --> 00:44:03,360
building anymore in this area. But every time there's like

971
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:06,400
a little construction project, like somebody you know installs a

972
00:44:06,440 --> 00:44:08,440
solar panel not on a rooftop or a parking lot,

973
00:44:08,480 --> 00:44:10,159
which I don't know why people do that, but they do.

974
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:13,320
Or if someone like you know, redes part of the

975
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:15,599
driveway and ends up you know, shoving a bunch of

976
00:44:15,679 --> 00:44:18,760
dirt down the slope or whatever. Those things tend to

977
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:21,639
disrupt the plant community and allow in bass to encroach

978
00:44:21,719 --> 00:44:23,679
very quickly. I also think there's something to be said

979
00:44:23,760 --> 00:44:26,840
about excess nutrients, So whatever nutrients are running off from

980
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:29,400
people's gardens up the hill, or nutrients that are being

981
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:31,320
deposited by you know, dogs being on the side of

982
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:33,760
the road, or just like cars driving by and then

983
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:37,639
the car exhaust deposits nitrogen compounds. I think that extra

984
00:44:37,760 --> 00:44:39,920
nutrient deposition is making it a lot easier for these

985
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:42,400
really fast growing and basive annual grasses to grow, especially

986
00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:47,239
slender oat of enobarbada, italian rye grass, lowly A multiflorum,

987
00:44:47,519 --> 00:44:51,480
and then purple falseprone bracypodium distachion. Those three invasive grasses

988
00:44:51,559 --> 00:44:54,280
are really doing a number on this ecosystem, and I

989
00:44:54,360 --> 00:44:58,239
think most of the area of the ecosystem has been

990
00:44:58,320 --> 00:45:02,400
completely overtaken by those grasses. Ironically, especially in that protected

991
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:05,920
area in the in the regional park, Redwood Regional Park,

992
00:45:06,280 --> 00:45:09,639
because the East Bay Regional Park folks man, I really

993
00:45:09,679 --> 00:45:13,000
appreciate the work they've done to protect land from development,

994
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:16,519
but I really don't think they are doing enough to

995
00:45:16,760 --> 00:45:21,800
protect their land from invasive species. I think the idea

996
00:45:21,960 --> 00:45:24,880
that they should be doing landscape scale vegetation treatments to

997
00:45:25,039 --> 00:45:27,920
prevent invasive species from totally wiping out the natives that

998
00:45:28,119 --> 00:45:30,639
is just not a priority for them right now. So

999
00:45:30,840 --> 00:45:32,960
even though the serpentine habitat is like fenced off and

1000
00:45:33,039 --> 00:45:35,400
there's all these informational signs about how important you nique

1001
00:45:35,400 --> 00:45:38,559
this plant community is most of the protected fenced off

1002
00:45:38,599 --> 00:45:41,840
area like hasn't really been managed since like twenty fifteen.

1003
00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:45,199
I think they ended a study on Yeah, they wouldn't

1004
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:46,039
now manage people.

1005
00:45:46,679 --> 00:45:48,599
Speaker 1: That's it's the hard It's that's the hard part is

1006
00:45:48,679 --> 00:45:51,199
finding knowledgeable people to do it. So when you say

1007
00:45:51,599 --> 00:45:53,920
vegie treatment, you're talking about herbicide spring or what because

1008
00:45:53,960 --> 00:45:55,800
that would be another thing that would send people shit

1009
00:45:55,880 --> 00:45:57,360
in the brick there if they don't know.

1010
00:45:57,519 --> 00:46:00,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I don't think they're using herb size actually,

1011
00:46:01,119 --> 00:46:03,599
which for some plants maybe it would be a good idea,

1012
00:46:03,679 --> 00:46:05,320
but I don't think in this habitat that would be

1013
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:07,360
necessary because I think the most aggressive invader in this

1014
00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:10,079
habitat would be like yellowstar at this will actually know

1015
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:13,079
there's a caseum Milana's eylon, which keeps re sprouting because

1016
00:46:13,079 --> 00:46:16,039
pople keep cutting it down without rbsides. Anyways, the treatments

1017
00:46:16,079 --> 00:46:18,920
that they're doing, mostly within Redwood Regional Park in that

1018
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:22,599
protected area, are goat grazing, but only after the invasive

1019
00:46:22,599 --> 00:46:25,360
annuals have already dropped their seats. So they're using grazing

1020
00:46:25,519 --> 00:46:29,079
only as a method of fire prevention, not as a

1021
00:46:29,159 --> 00:46:31,360
method of habitat restoration. And of all you're trying to

1022
00:46:31,400 --> 00:46:34,119
do is reduce fuels. That's all you're going to get done.

1023
00:46:34,599 --> 00:46:37,280
And then on the medians which are owned by the city,

1024
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:38,639
and then in the rest of the neighborhood, which is

1025
00:46:38,639 --> 00:46:41,880
mostly private property. Again people are just clearing vegetation for

1026
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:45,840
wildfire prevention. They're not really paying attention to. Number one,

1027
00:46:46,639 --> 00:46:49,159
the thickets of invasive grasses are a much higher wildfire

1028
00:46:49,280 --> 00:46:52,559
risk than that serpentine prairie ecosystem. Serpenteine prairie ecosystem, the

1029
00:46:52,599 --> 00:46:54,159
plants tend to be a lot smaller and a lot

1030
00:46:54,199 --> 00:46:57,239
farther aparts. They just don't carry fire as well. And

1031
00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:01,519
number two, the more people mow down these ecosystems indiscriminately,

1032
00:47:01,679 --> 00:47:04,719
especially during the growing season, the more they are favoring

1033
00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:08,000
those fast growing fire hazards invasive plants over those slower

1034
00:47:08,039 --> 00:47:11,880
growing data plants. So I think mowing and grazing for

1035
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:16,239
fuel reduction without considering how that's affecting the plant populations

1036
00:47:16,679 --> 00:47:20,320
has been I think the major, the major force wiping

1037
00:47:20,360 --> 00:47:21,519
out a lot of these plant populations.

1038
00:47:21,599 --> 00:47:23,760
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean if you're not if you're not

1039
00:47:23,880 --> 00:47:27,559
mowing or grazing before these before the invasies produce.

1040
00:47:27,360 --> 00:47:30,360
Speaker 2: Seed, you're not doing anything. It's just exactly be there, right.

1041
00:47:30,440 --> 00:47:32,559
Speaker 1: I was like, I was cutting back buffal grass at

1042
00:47:32,559 --> 00:47:35,440
our conservation property yesterdays. I was like, fuck, man, this

1043
00:47:35,559 --> 00:47:38,239
is this is like half gonna work because half of

1044
00:47:38,280 --> 00:47:40,920
these have already gone to seed. So I'm just going

1045
00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:43,400
to have to keep coming back like at the right time,

1046
00:47:43,519 --> 00:47:46,599
right after a rain and weed whacking, unless I want

1047
00:47:46,639 --> 00:47:48,519
to spray, which I don't really want to do because

1048
00:47:48,519 --> 00:47:50,599
it's a pain in the ass and it's you know,

1049
00:47:50,599 --> 00:47:52,440
I'd rather just not use it if I don't have to.

1050
00:47:52,559 --> 00:47:54,880
I only really use glyc estate for like bermuda, which

1051
00:47:54,960 --> 00:47:57,239
is you know, really hard to get rid of this

1052
00:47:57,320 --> 00:47:59,480
bermuda do well and oakland I forget I wasn't really

1053
00:47:59,480 --> 00:47:59,960
paying attention.

1054
00:48:00,159 --> 00:48:02,320
Speaker 3: Oh it does. Yeah, it likes to have a little

1055
00:48:02,320 --> 00:48:04,119
bit more moisture. So if you're in like a really hot,

1056
00:48:04,199 --> 00:48:06,519
dry exposed location, it doesn't do too great. But if

1057
00:48:06,559 --> 00:48:08,719
you're in a hot, dry exposed location near a spring,

1058
00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:10,960
it does fantastic. And there's a lot of spring snow plods,

1059
00:48:11,000 --> 00:48:13,039
so it is. It is pretty evasive, but not everywhere.

1060
00:48:13,400 --> 00:48:16,559
Speaker 1: I'm still just blown away, like remembering a state that

1061
00:48:16,639 --> 00:48:22,480
had environmental regulations Texas doesn't have. There's nothing here. I

1062
00:48:22,559 --> 00:48:25,559
mean there's like again like no, you know, there's no

1063
00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:30,719
protected plants. But California has just got so much diversity.

1064
00:48:30,800 --> 00:48:33,639
I mean it's yeah, and it's just such a different culture.

1065
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:35,639
Speaker 2: You know, thank god.

1066
00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:38,400
Speaker 1: I wish I wish we had more of that, you know,

1067
00:48:38,519 --> 00:48:40,360
more of that here because it just it just makes sense.

1068
00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:42,920
It shouldn't be a political thing, but Texas is so

1069
00:48:43,239 --> 00:48:46,719
right wing that it's like, oh, that's all that's been politicized.

1070
00:48:46,760 --> 00:48:48,920
Like the like to admit that, like climate change is

1071
00:48:48,960 --> 00:48:53,199
real is controversial in some areas. Yeah, it's fucking nuts,

1072
00:48:54,880 --> 00:48:57,440
but yeah, man, do you do you uh so with

1073
00:48:57,639 --> 00:49:00,920
with like with I want to look talk about the

1074
00:49:01,119 --> 00:49:03,039
gorilla gardening stuff you did a little bit, so like

1075
00:49:03,840 --> 00:49:05,320
with because I know you were doing some of that,

1076
00:49:05,519 --> 00:49:07,519
Like how did how did all that start?

1077
00:49:07,639 --> 00:49:10,639
Speaker 2: How did you start just I mean just near where

1078
00:49:10,679 --> 00:49:10,960
you live.

1079
00:49:11,079 --> 00:49:13,679
Speaker 1: You just wanted to start seeing nice things around, like

1080
00:49:13,960 --> 00:49:16,159
cool native plants or how do you start doing it?

1081
00:49:17,519 --> 00:49:17,719
Speaker 2: Yeah?

1082
00:49:17,840 --> 00:49:19,760
Speaker 3: Pretty much. I mean I think I really started doing

1083
00:49:19,760 --> 00:49:22,400
it when I was teaching high school. It was you

1084
00:49:22,440 --> 00:49:25,519
know uldee. It's a pretty bureaucratic system. It's it's a

1085
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:28,079
district of like more than seventy school campuses, so it's

1086
00:49:28,159 --> 00:49:31,960
a it can be pretty difficult to like get permission

1087
00:49:32,000 --> 00:49:33,320
to get stuff done. So if you really want to

1088
00:49:33,360 --> 00:49:35,719
get stuff done, as long as it's not totally illegal,

1089
00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:36,920
you just kind of go do it and hope for

1090
00:49:36,960 --> 00:49:38,480
the best. So I was doing a lot of like

1091
00:49:39,000 --> 00:49:41,880
I was trying to restore the native grassland habitat in

1092
00:49:41,960 --> 00:49:43,840
the space behind the building that I was teaching in

1093
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:46,840
at Skyline, And to some extent it actually worked very

1094
00:49:46,880 --> 00:49:49,519
well because I was there for three years, so I

1095
00:49:49,599 --> 00:49:50,960
was able to like, you know, teach the students that

1096
00:49:50,960 --> 00:49:52,880
different species. We'd go out there and weed stuff. We'd

1097
00:49:52,920 --> 00:49:54,440
go out there and like or I'd go out there

1098
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:56,320
with the weed whacker after school during the early spring

1099
00:49:56,400 --> 00:49:59,039
and hack things down when when the invasive grasses were

1100
00:49:59,039 --> 00:50:02,000
about to bloom. So that really got things going. And

1101
00:50:02,079 --> 00:50:03,599
then I lost my job at the campus, and the

1102
00:50:03,599 --> 00:50:07,280
school district basically just like went back to treating it

1103
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:09,440
as just an empty space to just mow once a year. So,

1104
00:50:10,159 --> 00:50:12,039
you know, the native grassline plants I still landed, They're

1105
00:50:12,079 --> 00:50:14,599
probably still alive, but they probably will get out computed

1106
00:50:14,599 --> 00:50:16,760
by the weeds eventually. So after I lost that job,

1107
00:50:16,800 --> 00:50:18,159
I was like, Okay, I don't really want to be

1108
00:50:18,280 --> 00:50:22,239
like investing very much in gorilla gardening on school campuses.

1109
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:24,039
In context, that's going to take many years to be

1110
00:50:24,119 --> 00:50:27,679
successful because in OUSD your job isn't really that stable.

1111
00:50:29,239 --> 00:50:31,519
So that's when I started deciding to try to plant

1112
00:50:31,559 --> 00:50:34,920
stuff around my neighborhood. So I actually only really started

1113
00:50:34,960 --> 00:50:37,559
doing that seriously this past year. I wanted to get

1114
00:50:37,559 --> 00:50:39,199
a bunch of stuff in the ground before the rains came,

1115
00:50:39,280 --> 00:50:40,840
and that worked out really well because we got a

1116
00:50:40,920 --> 00:50:45,320
really nice, heavy, early rainy season. Yeah, I guess I

1117
00:50:45,480 --> 00:50:48,480
just wanted to see more native stuff in my neighborhood

1118
00:50:48,559 --> 00:50:50,960
and see what that did for the local pollinators, especially

1119
00:50:51,000 --> 00:50:52,960
because I do have a lot of native bees in

1120
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:56,679
that neighborhood. I live in Longfellow, kind of near the

1121
00:50:56,760 --> 00:51:02,760
Children's hospital along West Street, so yeah, and then because

1122
00:51:02,800 --> 00:51:05,760
I live so close to the Emoryville border, Emoryville also

1123
00:51:05,840 --> 00:51:08,480
has a bunch of spaces next to their next to

1124
00:51:08,519 --> 00:51:11,119
their roads where they've made like little bull abouts and

1125
00:51:11,199 --> 00:51:13,760
things to control traffic flow. But in those bullbouts, some

1126
00:51:13,880 --> 00:51:16,000
of them have like curb cuts in them so they

1127
00:51:16,039 --> 00:51:19,159
can drain drain the road. But honestly, hydrologically they're not

1128
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:22,599
that well designed, so I think the extra runoff they

1129
00:51:22,599 --> 00:51:24,440
get from the road isn't contributing that much water. But

1130
00:51:24,639 --> 00:51:26,639
it is a lot of space to just plant plants in,

1131
00:51:27,000 --> 00:51:29,679
and there weren't already a lot of plants established, because

1132
00:51:29,679 --> 00:51:31,400
I think the city actually tried to plant a bunch

1133
00:51:31,440 --> 00:51:34,199
of well native ish stuff. They planted some like man's

1134
00:51:34,239 --> 00:51:36,320
need to cultivars and see you know this cultivars. Some

1135
00:51:36,480 --> 00:51:38,559
of them survived, some of them did not. And I

1136
00:51:38,599 --> 00:51:41,119
think the soil that they put in those roadside areas

1137
00:51:41,280 --> 00:51:44,320
was mostly just like construction sand or something. It's very sandy,

1138
00:51:44,360 --> 00:51:47,239
but it doesn't feel like natural sand or the native

1139
00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:49,320
sand that would be there, I guess because it's mostly

1140
00:51:49,440 --> 00:51:54,039
like you know, infill from what used to be wetlands. Yeah, yeah,

1141
00:51:54,119 --> 00:51:56,280
so I think I I think if I were to

1142
00:51:56,320 --> 00:51:58,760
do it again, I would be more deliberate about picking

1143
00:51:58,840 --> 00:52:01,559
locally specific speed. She's I think With this one, I

1144
00:52:01,719 --> 00:52:03,480
was just like, all right, I've got some space. It's

1145
00:52:03,719 --> 00:52:06,159
completely unnatural soil. So I just want to throw stuff

1146
00:52:06,159 --> 00:52:07,639
in the ground and see what sticks. So I got

1147
00:52:07,679 --> 00:52:09,599
a bunch of plants from Watershed Nursery, which is my

1148
00:52:09,639 --> 00:52:13,719
favorite local native plant nursery in the East Bay. And yeah,

1149
00:52:13,800 --> 00:52:15,719
some stuff did really well, some stuff didn't do well.

1150
00:52:15,840 --> 00:52:19,719
I learned that aerophylum stick catafolium does fantastic in sandy

1151
00:52:19,800 --> 00:52:23,840
roadside habitats, and I also learned about what doesn't necessarily

1152
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:25,639
do fantastic and sandy roadside habitats.

1153
00:52:25,760 --> 00:52:29,320
Speaker 1: So it's kind of nuts to see what natives become rutural,

1154
00:52:29,400 --> 00:52:32,639
like what natives can tolerate growing in in you know,

1155
00:52:32,760 --> 00:52:35,159
the disturbed human environment. I always love seeing that. Like

1156
00:52:35,199 --> 00:52:37,320
where I live, most the most of the quote weeds

1157
00:52:37,360 --> 00:52:38,000
are native like.

1158
00:52:38,039 --> 00:52:38,760
Speaker 2: Are only real.

1159
00:52:39,559 --> 00:52:42,440
Speaker 1: The only real non native shit we get is all

1160
00:52:42,519 --> 00:52:46,760
the grasses, which is like guinea grass and buffalo grass,

1161
00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:49,679
you know, Penacetum silly air. But everything else, like all

1162
00:52:49,679 --> 00:52:53,039
the other stuff is like native euphorbias and you know

1163
00:52:53,760 --> 00:52:59,719
verbena species and Tritas procumbins, which is an aster. It's

1164
00:52:59,719 --> 00:53:02,079
like a it's invasive everywhere else in the world, but

1165
00:53:02,119 --> 00:53:05,000
it's native here. There's a bunch of cool bunch a

1166
00:53:05,079 --> 00:53:07,679
bunch of cool Mexican species of tritax, like a gypsum

1167
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:08,360
endemic too.

1168
00:53:09,639 --> 00:53:09,840
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1169
00:53:10,199 --> 00:53:11,239
Speaker 2: But uh, but one of my.

1170
00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:13,760
Speaker 1: Favorite things when I lived out there was I had

1171
00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:16,239
all my spots that I would like try to walk to,

1172
00:53:16,400 --> 00:53:17,719
Like I'd be like, all right, I got the day off.

1173
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:19,039
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna go on a long walk.

1174
00:53:19,079 --> 00:53:22,800
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go walk eight miles, bring a backpack, little sketsbook,

1175
00:53:22,800 --> 00:53:24,559
and go sit in a coffee shop lerk for a while,

1176
00:53:24,679 --> 00:53:26,000
drawshoot the shit whatever, and.

1177
00:53:26,039 --> 00:53:26,719
Speaker 2: I'll walk around.

1178
00:53:26,760 --> 00:53:29,280
Speaker 1: And I had all my spots, like you know, the

1179
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:33,239
Median Strip where I'd planted some shit illegally, or where

1180
00:53:33,320 --> 00:53:35,920
somebody else had or the you know, someone had a

1181
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:38,159
cool front yard with cool plants, and I'm like, ah,

1182
00:53:38,239 --> 00:53:40,519
I want to go check on that plant, and uh,

1183
00:53:40,639 --> 00:53:42,840
you know, see if it's put you know, putting out fruit,

1184
00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:45,119
yet I can get seeds or whatever. And so, you know,

1185
00:53:45,119 --> 00:53:48,079
it was always fun though. It's like, you know, I

1186
00:53:48,159 --> 00:53:50,719
have my just having your spots like where there's actually

1187
00:53:50,760 --> 00:53:53,559
like cool plants growing in a city, like cool shit

1188
00:53:53,639 --> 00:53:55,800
that somethings put out. And then you start when you

1189
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:58,239
do that enough, you start realizing all little nooks and crannies.

1190
00:53:58,280 --> 00:53:59,599
You're like, I might be able to get something in

1191
00:53:59,679 --> 00:54:02,480
here without it being hacked back, you know, like I

1192
00:54:02,559 --> 00:54:05,199
might be able to at the foot of this you know,

1193
00:54:05,559 --> 00:54:08,559
hard escaped boulder, or on this fence line, or a

1194
00:54:08,639 --> 00:54:11,639
place that looks like it's not being maintained where some

1195
00:54:11,800 --> 00:54:13,480
landscape is not going to come hack.

1196
00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:13,800
Speaker 2: Away at it.

1197
00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:16,800
Speaker 1: You know, I love doing that stuff. It was always fun.

1198
00:54:16,880 --> 00:54:20,880
Another thing I used to love was I worked this job.

1199
00:54:21,599 --> 00:54:23,960
We worked like a switch job, right, like a locally

1200
00:54:24,079 --> 00:54:26,599
take box cars out to a loading dock all the

1201
00:54:26,639 --> 00:54:29,079
way out at the end of this this industrial track

1202
00:54:29,199 --> 00:54:34,119
on next to International. Was it International or was it

1203
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:36,800
the I forget the name of the street. It was

1204
00:54:36,880 --> 00:54:38,679
the street that's not It wasn't International. It was a

1205
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:42,840
street that's under the the bar treks in East Oakland.

1206
00:54:43,039 --> 00:54:45,079
It was Sand's I can't remember, man, it's.

1207
00:54:44,960 --> 00:54:45,400
Speaker 2: Been too long.

1208
00:54:45,800 --> 00:54:49,800
Speaker 1: In East Oakland, yeah, San Leandro, Yeah, it was San Leandro. Yeah,

1209
00:54:50,079 --> 00:54:52,400
And so we would take this in. The fucking tracks

1210
00:54:52,400 --> 00:54:55,480
were sketchy, man, they were like barely raided, Like the

1211
00:54:55,679 --> 00:54:57,880
FRA shut them down a couple of times because you'd

1212
00:54:57,920 --> 00:54:59,880
be out there and they were so wildly the local

1213
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:01,719
motive would be like wobbling like a boat.

1214
00:55:01,880 --> 00:55:05,639
Speaker 2: It was fucking hilarious, Okay, but but we.

1215
00:55:05,679 --> 00:55:09,000
Speaker 1: Would cross over these creeks and there'd be like ducks

1216
00:55:09,039 --> 00:55:10,559
hanging out in these creeks and like, but it was

1217
00:55:10,639 --> 00:55:14,400
like nasty, like nasty, post industrial. They were like homeless

1218
00:55:14,480 --> 00:55:18,079
camps out there, like garbage everywhere, and you know people

1219
00:55:18,639 --> 00:55:20,599
live in I mean everyone I met down there, like

1220
00:55:20,639 --> 00:55:23,199
when all the homeless dudes I've met were really nice,

1221
00:55:23,239 --> 00:55:24,639
but it was, you know, it was just a fucked

1222
00:55:24,679 --> 00:55:28,639
up area, needles and shit everywhere, garbage, the garbage pile

1223
00:55:28,719 --> 00:55:31,360
got the garbage scene got really bad and like twenty eighteen,

1224
00:55:31,440 --> 00:55:36,679
twenty nineteen, just massive garbage piles. And so but I

1225
00:55:36,719 --> 00:55:39,119
remember seeing these creeks and being like, man, these drain

1226
00:55:39,800 --> 00:55:42,159
the hills, like you could see the body of water,

1227
00:55:42,400 --> 00:55:44,480
like it goes up into the hills they've been that

1228
00:55:44,599 --> 00:55:47,639
probably been there for millennia, Like what and then just

1229
00:55:47,719 --> 00:55:49,840
thinking about what did that look like?

1230
00:55:50,320 --> 00:55:52,079
Speaker 2: Like what did that look like? Five hundred years ago?

1231
00:55:52,079 --> 00:55:54,960
Speaker 1: They were fucking grizzlies hanging out here, you know, and

1232
00:55:55,400 --> 00:55:59,000
the alone like probably had villages scattered throughout here, and

1233
00:55:59,519 --> 00:56:00,039
and now.

1234
00:56:00,159 --> 00:56:02,079
Speaker 2: It's like it's just weird. But like you could go

1235
00:56:02,280 --> 00:56:03,280
back too, Like that's the.

1236
00:56:03,280 --> 00:56:05,000
Speaker 1: Thing you think about, Like, well, we could go back

1237
00:56:05,039 --> 00:56:07,719
to that if like enough people came together and we

1238
00:56:07,800 --> 00:56:10,760
got our shit together and we started prioritizing this and

1239
00:56:10,800 --> 00:56:12,199
we had a knowledge of it, like we had a

1240
00:56:12,239 --> 00:56:14,000
culture that had a knowledge of this, we could go

1241
00:56:14,159 --> 00:56:16,920
back to that. You could bring that back. This fucking

1242
00:56:17,079 --> 00:56:19,519
bleak dystopia that we live in. It doesn't have to

1243
00:56:19,599 --> 00:56:22,079
be like this. And that's like that's the big part

1244
00:56:22,119 --> 00:56:24,880
of making the connection between plants and people. You know,

1245
00:56:25,039 --> 00:56:27,000
you're like, it doesn't have to be like this. But

1246
00:56:27,119 --> 00:56:31,199
this fucking you know, late stage capitalist dystopia healthscape that

1247
00:56:31,280 --> 00:56:33,559
we live in. You know, you's got to change the culture, man.

1248
00:56:33,599 --> 00:56:36,239
You got to put the knowledge out there and once

1249
00:56:36,360 --> 00:56:37,960
people tap into it, you put out there in the

1250
00:56:38,039 --> 00:56:40,079
right way. They start getting the same dopamine shot that

1251
00:56:40,159 --> 00:56:42,599
you got when you were learning about all this, and

1252
00:56:42,760 --> 00:56:45,320
it becomes addictive, and it becomes something that you know

1253
00:56:45,519 --> 00:56:50,320
is easier to do than before. It doesn't seem impossible.

1254
00:56:49,760 --> 00:56:53,679
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there's there's two

1255
00:56:53,760 --> 00:56:55,719
things I think about with respect to that number one

1256
00:56:57,199 --> 00:57:01,599
I got, So how do I put it? I think

1257
00:57:01,639 --> 00:57:04,559
the thing that changed my perspective on biodiversity the most

1258
00:57:04,719 --> 00:57:06,519
was getting into foraging kind of at the same time

1259
00:57:06,559 --> 00:57:09,079
that I was getting into species ide Because as soon

1260
00:57:09,119 --> 00:57:14,079
as I really started trying hard to understand where to

1261
00:57:14,239 --> 00:57:16,519
find the species that I was looking for, or under

1262
00:57:16,599 --> 00:57:19,800
what circumstances I could expect to find certain species, that

1263
00:57:20,159 --> 00:57:23,880
is what suddenly I think created a bridge between knowledge

1264
00:57:23,920 --> 00:57:27,519
of species and identification and actually being able to perceive

1265
00:57:27,760 --> 00:57:29,880
how all those species kind of fit together in the

1266
00:57:30,000 --> 00:57:32,639
environment and create the conditions that sustain the rest of life.

1267
00:57:33,039 --> 00:57:37,320
So I do think that legalizing foraging and regulating foraging

1268
00:57:37,440 --> 00:57:39,960
in ways that can make it sustainable and accessible for

1269
00:57:40,039 --> 00:57:43,079
people on more public lands throughout the East Bay, especially

1270
00:57:43,119 --> 00:57:45,599
in the more heavily populated areas, I think that would

1271
00:57:45,599 --> 00:57:48,159
go a long way towards making people feel that they

1272
00:57:48,199 --> 00:57:50,960
actually are connected to the well being of the environment itself.

1273
00:57:51,360 --> 00:57:52,840
And you know, I think there's something to be said

1274
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:56,760
about the risk of getting people to only become familiar

1275
00:57:56,800 --> 00:57:59,800
with the invasive species, because unlike what you described in Texas,

1276
00:58:00,400 --> 00:58:03,760
almost all, almost all of our urban weeds and almost

1277
00:58:03,760 --> 00:58:06,559
all of our plant biomass is invasive species. In the

1278
00:58:06,599 --> 00:58:10,039
East Bay, Yeah, and I think people cling to what

1279
00:58:10,079 --> 00:58:12,639
they're familiar with. So I think getting people into foraging

1280
00:58:12,800 --> 00:58:14,880
would also in some ways have to come with getting

1281
00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:18,079
people into understanding the differences between native and invasive species

1282
00:58:18,119 --> 00:58:21,639
and feeling motivated to maintain populations of native species to

1283
00:58:21,719 --> 00:58:27,199
sustain themselves. For example, like I mentioned earlier, foraging for

1284
00:58:27,320 --> 00:58:29,440
mushrooms like candy caps and chantraill's and things like that,

1285
00:58:29,559 --> 00:58:32,559
especially candy caps is why I felt, is why I

1286
00:58:32,639 --> 00:58:35,400
continue to feel so closely attached to coast Live oak

1287
00:58:36,239 --> 00:58:38,480
And then also one of the other things about the

1288
00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:40,840
serpentine habitat that I really love in the hills of

1289
00:58:40,840 --> 00:58:44,639
East Oakland is that there is so much Calichordis in

1290
00:58:44,719 --> 00:58:47,400
that area. Like that is some of the densest populations

1291
00:58:47,400 --> 00:58:49,960
of Calicordis lutias I've ever seen, and somebody in the

1292
00:58:50,000 --> 00:58:51,760
comments of one of my Instagram posts told me that

1293
00:58:52,199 --> 00:58:55,559
that is probably because Skyline Boulevard was a travel corridor.

1294
00:58:55,639 --> 00:58:58,159
It was a very heavily traffic walkway for Indigenous people,

1295
00:58:58,440 --> 00:59:01,239
and because calichordas had edible bulk even though they grow

1296
00:59:01,320 --> 00:59:04,760
really slowly, Indigenous people over many generations have been cultivating

1297
00:59:04,840 --> 00:59:08,079
calichordas along that walkway, and then since Skyland Boulevard was

1298
00:59:08,079 --> 00:59:10,599
paved over the walkway, the calichortas that they planted as

1299
00:59:11,079 --> 00:59:14,480
basically trail snacks are still there. And I think to

1300
00:59:14,679 --> 00:59:17,960
really maintain the kind of abundance of these plants that

1301
00:59:18,039 --> 00:59:20,039
are supposed to be much more abundant than they are now,

1302
00:59:20,599 --> 00:59:24,079
we also have to normalize people relying on these plants

1303
00:59:24,159 --> 00:59:27,559
for food and then choosing to sustain those plants to

1304
00:59:27,599 --> 00:59:30,719
sustain themselves. And another thing is, yeah.

1305
00:59:31,079 --> 00:59:32,800
Speaker 1: I hold on to that thought for a second because

1306
00:59:32,800 --> 00:59:35,039
I want to just I think it's really important to

1307
00:59:35,159 --> 00:59:38,719
get people that incentivizes learning about it, you know, and

1308
00:59:38,840 --> 00:59:41,079
hopefully my hope of course though too, is it like, yeah,

1309
00:59:41,079 --> 00:59:43,320
people are gonna not just be taking, They're going to

1310
00:59:43,360 --> 00:59:45,480
be trying to give back too, like taking. But then

1311
00:59:45,559 --> 00:59:48,159
trying to grow from seed and plant more in their

1312
00:59:48,239 --> 00:59:50,440
yards and get them out there and make these plants

1313
00:59:50,480 --> 00:59:54,639
more abundant because they're edible and tasty and all that.

1314
00:59:54,760 --> 00:59:55,840
Speaker 2: There's that Robin Wall.

1315
00:59:55,719 --> 00:59:58,400
Speaker 1: Chimera quote where she's talking about some garden where it

1316
00:59:58,559 --> 01:00:01,400
is like, you know, they had hands off the flowers,

1317
01:00:01,840 --> 01:00:03,800
don't you know, don't touch them all that, and she's like, no,

1318
01:00:03,920 --> 01:00:05,880
we need a sign. What we need like a garden

1319
01:00:06,360 --> 01:00:10,000
where you're like a native a botanical garden where that's

1320
01:00:10,519 --> 01:00:12,320
that's the whole purpose. Like you get in there and

1321
01:00:12,400 --> 01:00:15,400
touch these things and eat the fruits and pick the seeds,

1322
01:00:15,440 --> 01:00:18,519
and like, man, I totally agree, Like this is what

1323
01:00:18,639 --> 01:00:21,079
it should be. You should that you should be. You

1324
01:00:21,440 --> 01:00:23,440
have to people have to be able to engage with

1325
01:00:23,559 --> 01:00:26,760
the plants or else they're not gonna appreciate them. And

1326
01:00:26,880 --> 01:00:29,280
also that ship, I mean you see what happens. Yeah,

1327
01:00:29,320 --> 01:00:33,000
Like people start selecting for this, you know, for certain

1328
01:00:33,079 --> 01:00:37,719
traits over time and effectively breeding cultivars of native plants.

1329
01:00:37,760 --> 01:00:40,719
And that's that's the relationship. That's the human plant mutualism

1330
01:00:40,800 --> 01:00:44,119
that's been going on for for millennia. It's it's it's

1331
01:00:44,199 --> 01:00:45,960
fucking nuts to just be like, don't you know? But

1332
01:00:46,079 --> 01:00:48,119
of course, I mean I was always breaking rules anyway

1333
01:00:48,199 --> 01:00:50,559
to go pick the huckleberries, pick the mushrooms whatever. But

1334
01:00:51,000 --> 01:00:54,320
it's so it's so crazy to me that those are rules,

1335
01:00:54,440 --> 01:00:57,519
especially with mushrooms, because you're not hurting the organism at all.

1336
01:00:57,599 --> 01:01:00,679
The mushrooms literally the fruit you know it's going to

1337
01:01:00,800 --> 01:01:02,960
die and whether or it's going to you know, the

1338
01:01:03,000 --> 01:01:05,280
tissue is going to die and shrivel anyway, right, it's

1339
01:01:05,320 --> 01:01:05,880
just out there to.

1340
01:01:07,480 --> 01:01:08,280
Speaker 2: Is that a thing though?

1341
01:01:08,599 --> 01:01:08,800
Speaker 3: Yeah?

1342
01:01:10,079 --> 01:01:13,599
Speaker 2: What like the anti foraging rules in the Bay Area?

1343
01:01:14,599 --> 01:01:16,480
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, definitely. And that's something I had to teach

1344
01:01:16,519 --> 01:01:18,719
my students explicitly because I was like, what, we are

1345
01:01:18,800 --> 01:01:21,920
going foraging in this land that is technically owned by

1346
01:01:21,920 --> 01:01:24,360
the EASTPA Regional Parks. We're forging is illegal, So you

1347
01:01:24,480 --> 01:01:27,000
got to know that, Like, we're doing this because we

1348
01:01:27,119 --> 01:01:28,760
know we're not going to get caught, and even if

1349
01:01:28,760 --> 01:01:29,960
we do get caught, we're not going to get in

1350
01:01:30,000 --> 01:01:31,719
trouble because the East our Origional Park isn't going to

1351
01:01:31,719 --> 01:01:34,239
make a political issue out of stopping public school students

1352
01:01:34,280 --> 01:01:36,519
from forging. But you got to know that it's like

1353
01:01:36,920 --> 01:01:40,480
super heavily criminalized everywhere in the East Bay besides a

1354
01:01:40,559 --> 01:01:42,440
select few city parks where it's just like they don't

1355
01:01:42,440 --> 01:01:46,199
really have parks bycinic rules. Yeah, and that's you know,

1356
01:01:46,519 --> 01:01:48,840
it was such a powerful way to get kids to

1357
01:01:48,960 --> 01:01:52,000
connect and feel a sense of belonging to and with

1358
01:01:52,320 --> 01:01:56,320
the ecosystem. And also I feel kind of bad knowing that,

1359
01:01:57,639 --> 01:01:59,960
you know, I've given them this experience that they really value,

1360
01:02:00,480 --> 01:02:01,960
and now they're going to have to live most of

1361
01:02:02,000 --> 01:02:03,639
the rest of their lives knowing that they're not allowed

1362
01:02:03,679 --> 01:02:05,760
to have that experience anymore. And I think number one,

1363
01:02:05,840 --> 01:02:09,119
that risks kind of set resevering that connection that we've

1364
01:02:09,159 --> 01:02:11,840
worked so hard to build. And number two, we've just

1365
01:02:11,960 --> 01:02:14,559
normalized living in a society where we think of nature

1366
01:02:14,679 --> 01:02:18,280
as you know, this thing that's fundamentally useless except to

1367
01:02:18,559 --> 01:02:22,280
gaze upon and admire and think it's beautiful and nothing else.

1368
01:02:22,440 --> 01:02:24,280
So if you don't think it's beautiful, it is literally

1369
01:02:24,360 --> 01:02:24,840
nothing for you.

1370
01:02:25,000 --> 01:02:26,679
Speaker 2: And that's more like a big state.

1371
01:02:26,800 --> 01:02:29,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's more like weird Victorian European ship, Like I

1372
01:02:29,880 --> 01:02:31,719
just go sit out and enjoy it and it's beautiful.

1373
01:02:31,760 --> 01:02:33,760
It's no man, it's got a function more a part.

1374
01:02:33,599 --> 01:02:34,360
Speaker 3: Of it, you know.

1375
01:02:34,920 --> 01:02:35,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another thing.

1376
01:02:35,840 --> 01:02:38,079
Speaker 3: Yeah, to me, the beauty of ecosystems comes from their

1377
01:02:38,159 --> 01:02:40,400
ability to sustain life and knowing just how much more

1378
01:02:40,440 --> 01:02:42,360
life gets to exist because of what's in front of me,

1379
01:02:42,880 --> 01:02:44,760
not just because of you know, the shapes and colors.

1380
01:02:45,400 --> 01:02:47,119
Speaker 2: Did I did I fuck up? You're training of thought though?

1381
01:02:47,159 --> 01:02:48,599
What was the what was the one you're about?

1382
01:02:48,599 --> 01:02:49,480
Speaker 3: The stay not at all thing?

1383
01:02:49,519 --> 01:02:50,599
Speaker 2: Okay? Cool? All right?

1384
01:02:50,679 --> 01:02:54,440
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah. The other thing was that we already maintain

1385
01:02:55,000 --> 01:02:58,599
so much vegetation in the built environment, and the built

1386
01:02:58,679 --> 01:03:01,320
environment is kind of the only place where we are

1387
01:03:01,400 --> 01:03:04,519
effectively controlling invasive species such that we can actually grow

1388
01:03:04,599 --> 01:03:07,239
the plants that we want to grow. So I think

1389
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:11,440
it's we're really not that far away from meaningfully restoring

1390
01:03:11,519 --> 01:03:14,119
habitats on the landscapes where we already live, even to

1391
01:03:14,239 --> 01:03:17,199
maybe a higher quality than the habitats that are on

1392
01:03:17,599 --> 01:03:20,840
undeveloped landscapes, just because, like I said, most of these

1393
01:03:20,840 --> 01:03:23,920
public lands agencies are not devoting the resources necessary to

1394
01:03:23,960 --> 01:03:26,760
actually control invasive species and actually restore the ecosystems that

1395
01:03:26,800 --> 01:03:30,159
they do have on their properties. Yeah, I think I

1396
01:03:30,199 --> 01:03:31,880
think we're not that far away. I think we just

1397
01:03:32,079 --> 01:03:35,639
need we need it to be a shared understanding in

1398
01:03:35,760 --> 01:03:40,880
every individual location that the plant communities and the ecosystems

1399
01:03:40,920 --> 01:03:43,880
and the species in that location are unique and special

1400
01:03:43,920 --> 01:03:47,960
and unlike anywhere else in the world and deserving of existence,

1401
01:03:48,079 --> 01:03:51,840
Like they deserve to remain in existence right right, And

1402
01:03:51,920 --> 01:03:52,559
it's not up.

1403
01:03:52,519 --> 01:03:54,480
Speaker 1: To us to decide whether they have a right to

1404
01:03:54,599 --> 01:03:58,440
exist or not. You know, it's like, that's that's such

1405
01:03:58,480 --> 01:04:02,159
a crazy thought, man, and it is. But again, I

1406
01:04:02,280 --> 01:04:04,280
think it can change. It's just but that's you know,

1407
01:04:05,079 --> 01:04:06,800
I tell people people are what can I do? Like,

1408
01:04:06,840 --> 01:04:08,280
I don't even have a yar, what can I do?

1409
01:04:08,559 --> 01:04:08,719
Speaker 3: You know?

1410
01:04:09,000 --> 01:04:11,039
Speaker 1: I'm like, just learn about it, man, Just go out

1411
01:04:11,079 --> 01:04:14,280
there and spend time in these places and look at

1412
01:04:14,360 --> 01:04:16,719
these species, look at these pieces of a living machine.

1413
01:04:17,320 --> 01:04:19,480
Use an app like I naturalists. Just learn about it.

1414
01:04:19,599 --> 01:04:22,000
You know, learning about something is a way to show

1415
01:04:22,119 --> 01:04:24,920
that you have respect for it. You know, it's indicative

1416
01:04:24,960 --> 01:04:28,280
of having a respect and by that doing that, you're

1417
01:04:28,320 --> 01:04:31,480
creating a culture and you might influence other people that

1418
01:04:31,559 --> 01:04:33,480
would also care about it and know what this thing

1419
01:04:33,639 --> 01:04:35,440
is and then be willing to speak up for it

1420
01:04:35,519 --> 01:04:38,639
when it's under threat. And also, you know, engage with

1421
01:04:38,719 --> 01:04:40,480
it and try to care for it and nurture it,

1422
01:04:41,320 --> 01:04:44,000
and it becomes exactly, it becomes addictive too. Just it's

1423
01:04:44,000 --> 01:04:45,880
a way to take care of yourself. I see so

1424
01:04:46,000 --> 01:04:48,360
many people, Yeah, so many people that I've you know,

1425
01:04:48,559 --> 01:04:51,920
planted native plant gardens for or or have told me

1426
01:04:51,960 --> 01:04:53,519
I got them in a native plants, and they're they're

1427
01:04:53,519 --> 01:04:57,239
all so excited about it, like they're obviously it's really

1428
01:04:57,719 --> 01:04:59,960
making them feel good, Like plants make people feel good.

1429
01:05:00,239 --> 01:05:02,400
Speaker 2: That's just like, of course they do. That's where we

1430
01:05:02,519 --> 01:05:02,920
came from.

1431
01:05:04,039 --> 01:05:06,360
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think that's one of those human evolution

1432
01:05:06,480 --> 01:05:08,480
things that I was kind of alluding to earlier, which

1433
01:05:08,519 --> 01:05:10,960
is that this is another thing that I often tell

1434
01:05:11,000 --> 01:05:13,400
my students, especially when I'm trying to get them into

1435
01:05:13,400 --> 01:05:15,880
foraging for species that they've never eaten before, is that

1436
01:05:17,000 --> 01:05:20,719
we are the most generalist omnivore that has ever existed

1437
01:05:20,800 --> 01:05:23,760
on Earth. No other species ever in the history of

1438
01:05:23,800 --> 01:05:26,800
Earth has come close to being able to eat the

1439
01:05:27,039 --> 01:05:30,360
variety of species that we can and do routinely consume.

1440
01:05:30,960 --> 01:05:35,239
So part of what makes humans human is our ability

1441
01:05:35,360 --> 01:05:38,119
to learn how to identify species and learn to understand

1442
01:05:38,119 --> 01:05:41,320
their ecology and learn how to maintain their long term

1443
01:05:41,400 --> 01:05:44,599
populations so that we as long living creatures, can sustain

1444
01:05:44,639 --> 01:05:48,760
our lives in the long run in conjunction with these ecosystems.

1445
01:05:49,519 --> 01:05:53,719
And I think once people understand that familiarity with the

1446
01:05:53,760 --> 01:05:56,920
living world isn't some scary thing that's hard to memorize,

1447
01:05:57,000 --> 01:06:00,559
and it's just once you treat it as a dissimilar

1448
01:06:00,599 --> 01:06:02,960
to get it to know your neighbors rather than some

1449
01:06:03,159 --> 01:06:06,079
academic subject that you study, I think the relationship changes

1450
01:06:06,079 --> 01:06:06,320
a lot.

1451
01:06:08,239 --> 01:06:12,039
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, total, I mean totally. The memori the just

1452
01:06:12,159 --> 01:06:14,480
memorizing names thing is the wrong way to approach it.

1453
01:06:14,559 --> 01:06:16,039
It's like, don't you have to go out there and

1454
01:06:16,159 --> 01:06:19,079
you have to look at these things and to start associating,

1455
01:06:19,760 --> 01:06:21,199
you know, and think about what you're looking at.

1456
01:06:21,519 --> 01:06:23,480
Speaker 2: What's the flower look like, what are the statements, what's

1457
01:06:23,480 --> 01:06:25,599
the pistol? What is this doing? Does it? How does

1458
01:06:25,639 --> 01:06:26,000
it feel?

1459
01:06:26,079 --> 01:06:27,880
Speaker 1: How does this stem feel? That kind of thing, and

1460
01:06:27,960 --> 01:06:30,760
then and then associate a name with that afterwards, just

1461
01:06:30,840 --> 01:06:32,920
like the same way, like you give me a lineup

1462
01:06:32,960 --> 01:06:34,639
of twenty people and you're like, this is you know

1463
01:06:34,960 --> 01:06:36,559
so and so and so and so and so and

1464
01:06:36,639 --> 01:06:40,280
so and Ricardo and and you know Ernesto and fucking

1465
01:06:40,760 --> 01:06:42,960
John and but whatever, I'm not I'm not gonna remember

1466
01:06:43,000 --> 01:06:46,039
their names. But if I spend time five minutes with

1467
01:06:46,079 --> 01:06:48,079
each one of those persons talking about some real shit,

1468
01:06:48,199 --> 01:06:51,639
not just small talk, you know, then I'm gonna send

1469
01:06:51,639 --> 01:06:54,760
a lot better chance of remembering their name, right, like exactly.

1470
01:06:55,039 --> 01:06:56,679
And that's what you have to do with plants, right,

1471
01:06:56,719 --> 01:06:59,239
So it's not but school. American education teaches us just

1472
01:06:59,280 --> 01:07:02,000
to memorize, which again is like that's the wrong approach,

1473
01:07:02,559 --> 01:07:05,400
you know. And I see people stress out sometimes they're like,

1474
01:07:05,440 --> 01:07:07,920
I can't remember this name. I just know the common name. Well,

1475
01:07:07,960 --> 01:07:10,039
how do you remember the common name? You remember the

1476
01:07:10,119 --> 01:07:12,159
common name because you obviously have an interest in this plant.

1477
01:07:12,199 --> 01:07:14,159
So just learn the genus. Don't worry about the whole

1478
01:07:14,599 --> 01:07:16,880
genus and species of it that. Just just learn the

1479
01:07:16,960 --> 01:07:19,639
genus name, you know, and always ask what family it's in.

1480
01:07:19,920 --> 01:07:20,599
Speaker 2: And you could do it.

1481
01:07:20,679 --> 01:07:22,000
Speaker 1: You could totally do this, but you have to go

1482
01:07:22,039 --> 01:07:24,639
out there and spend time on this. Don't make it

1483
01:07:24,760 --> 01:07:28,320
something that is like intimidating, you know, just just the

1484
01:07:29,159 --> 01:07:31,239
you know, find what plants you like, and then just

1485
01:07:31,360 --> 01:07:33,159
learn the genus name of those. There's got to be

1486
01:07:33,199 --> 01:07:36,679
a dopamine drip attached to it, you know, totally.

1487
01:07:36,920 --> 01:07:39,880
Speaker 3: And I also think part of what makes it easier

1488
01:07:40,280 --> 01:07:42,880
than people think is that when people are first getting

1489
01:07:42,880 --> 01:07:46,199
into identifying plants, as soon as they start paying attention

1490
01:07:46,320 --> 01:07:48,360
for the first time, they're like, oh my god, every

1491
01:07:48,400 --> 01:07:50,159
plant is different. How am I ever going to figure

1492
01:07:50,159 --> 01:07:52,400
out what's what? There's like too many different species. But

1493
01:07:52,480 --> 01:07:55,360
then once you start really paying attention, you begin to realize,

1494
01:07:55,360 --> 01:07:59,440
wait a minute, there's a few species that are overwhelmingly common,

1495
01:07:59,800 --> 01:08:02,280
and if I learned those first, I'm going to know

1496
01:08:02,440 --> 01:08:05,400
the identity of the majority of individual plants that I see.

1497
01:08:05,760 --> 01:08:07,719
So you learn what ten twenty of the most common

1498
01:08:07,760 --> 01:08:09,360
weeds around you. Takes like a couple of weeks. You

1499
01:08:09,440 --> 01:08:11,079
learn two or three plants a day, and then all

1500
01:08:11,119 --> 01:08:13,840
of a sudden, you know like ninety five percent of

1501
01:08:13,880 --> 01:08:16,079
the plant biomass around you, and then the bits that

1502
01:08:16,119 --> 01:08:18,279
you don't know suddenly stick out much more to you,

1503
01:08:18,319 --> 01:08:20,079
and it's much easier to build that familiarity. So I

1504
01:08:20,159 --> 01:08:23,439
think my advice to people is always, you know, download

1505
01:08:23,439 --> 01:08:27,039
our naturalist, let it generate the you know, AI suggestions

1506
01:08:27,079 --> 01:08:29,119
for what species it is. It'll be wrong sometimes but

1507
01:08:29,199 --> 01:08:30,600
it'll be right most of the time if you're in

1508
01:08:30,600 --> 01:08:33,760
an urban area and just start learning the most common

1509
01:08:33,800 --> 01:08:36,680
stuff and maybe just like one to two species a day,

1510
01:08:36,760 --> 01:08:38,199
or like every time you take a walk or whatever.

1511
01:08:38,680 --> 01:08:41,319
And I think that gets people to familiarize with their

1512
01:08:41,319 --> 01:08:43,640
local ecosystem a lot faster than they expect.

1513
01:08:43,880 --> 01:08:44,800
Speaker 2: Well, you got you guys.

1514
01:08:44,880 --> 01:08:48,319
Speaker 1: At California, you have cal Flora too, Calflora dot org,

1515
01:08:48,439 --> 01:08:51,680
which is that's like the fucking best you know. I

1516
01:08:51,760 --> 01:08:54,800
wish ininat was more like Calflora dot org, you know,

1517
01:08:54,920 --> 01:08:58,399
cause it's the first off. Whoever selects the thumbnail photos

1518
01:08:58,439 --> 01:09:01,439
for each species really nails it because they're really easy

1519
01:09:01,479 --> 01:09:03,960
to identify, whereas like the inf photos are all over

1520
01:09:04,000 --> 01:09:04,399
the place.

1521
01:09:05,680 --> 01:09:07,079
Speaker 3: But then you know, it's kind of talking about the

1522
01:09:07,119 --> 01:09:08,840
caul Flora app or the caul Flora website or the.

1523
01:09:08,880 --> 01:09:09,880
Speaker 2: Cal Flora website.

1524
01:09:09,960 --> 01:09:11,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have never tried the app, but I used

1525
01:09:11,880 --> 01:09:13,479
to use the website all the time and it was

1526
01:09:13,560 --> 01:09:16,199
you know, it's it's really helpful because it's just like Inina,

1527
01:09:16,359 --> 01:09:19,319
you can type in a family and like Shasta County,

1528
01:09:19,680 --> 01:09:22,079
you know, or Kern County and see all the members

1529
01:09:22,119 --> 01:09:24,000
of the family. That have been recorded there and each

1530
01:09:24,039 --> 01:09:27,279
one's you know, it's got links to like herbarium records.

1531
01:09:27,479 --> 01:09:29,079
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's just so helpful.

1532
01:09:29,159 --> 01:09:29,279
Speaker 3: Man.

1533
01:09:29,359 --> 01:09:32,239
Speaker 2: It's such a great it's such a great tool.

1534
01:09:32,279 --> 01:09:34,479
Speaker 1: I wish fuck, I wish Texas had one, I wish

1535
01:09:34,479 --> 01:09:36,840
Illinois had one, I wish Arizona had one.

1536
01:09:38,720 --> 01:09:39,479
Speaker 2: And it's really good.

1537
01:09:39,520 --> 01:09:42,199
Speaker 1: And then they've got that what Grows Here thing where

1538
01:09:42,239 --> 01:09:45,239
you can literally place a spot on a place, a

1539
01:09:45,319 --> 01:09:49,239
point on a map and see what like all the invasives,

1540
01:09:49,359 --> 01:09:50,880
the natives, all that stuff.

1541
01:09:50,920 --> 01:09:54,920
Speaker 2: It's such a useful tool. Yeah.

1542
01:09:55,000 --> 01:09:56,840
Speaker 3: That was actually how I was able to figure out

1543
01:09:57,399 --> 01:09:59,000
a lot of the plants that I've been finding in

1544
01:09:59,079 --> 01:10:02,359
the Surpentine areas that Cresmont neighborhood and Oakland. I've been

1545
01:10:02,399 --> 01:10:05,039
finding species that are either you know, used to be

1546
01:10:05,119 --> 01:10:07,199
common and now they're really rare, but nobody figured out

1547
01:10:07,239 --> 01:10:09,600
that they were rare because nobody has paid that much

1548
01:10:09,600 --> 01:10:12,520
attention recently, or species that were thought to be extra

1549
01:10:12,560 --> 01:10:15,079
paid from the East Bay, like Era Tranti Grandis for instance.

1550
01:10:15,840 --> 01:10:17,560
On cal Flora, I was able to see that there's

1551
01:10:17,560 --> 01:10:20,720
a bunch of really old Bavarian records of Ara Trante Grandis,

1552
01:10:20,800 --> 01:10:24,000
but nothing after like nineteen fifty. And then I also

1553
01:10:24,079 --> 01:10:30,439
later learned about CCH two Consortium of California Orbaria or something. Yeah,

1554
01:10:30,439 --> 01:10:32,439
and basically looking through those records, I was able to

1555
01:10:32,479 --> 01:10:35,880
figure out that actually, yeah, like Ara Trante Grandis has

1556
01:10:35,960 --> 01:10:38,239
not been seen in Oakland since you know, at least

1557
01:10:38,239 --> 01:10:41,560
the last fifty years, and the place where I found

1558
01:10:41,560 --> 01:10:43,680
it in Oakland, it's never been seen within five miles

1559
01:10:43,720 --> 01:10:47,640
off there. But it was in a spring that's emerging

1560
01:10:47,760 --> 01:10:50,760
from a serpentine area, and it's like very open and sunny,

1561
01:10:51,239 --> 01:10:54,159
and most of the open sunny spring habitats in Oakland

1562
01:10:54,239 --> 01:10:57,159
have already been completely paved over and developed. So this

1563
01:10:57,279 --> 01:10:59,279
is a plant that was probably common and widespread throughout

1564
01:10:59,279 --> 01:11:01,439
the flatlands no Oak, that was probably found along most

1565
01:11:01,439 --> 01:11:04,079
of the major creeks, probably found it every spring, and

1566
01:11:04,159 --> 01:11:07,520
now it's only found in one location behind a shopping center.

1567
01:11:07,600 --> 01:11:10,720
And then I found one small population in Peralta Hacienda Parkway.

1568
01:11:10,720 --> 01:11:12,119
Speaker 2: Anyways, when did you do this?

1569
01:11:12,399 --> 01:11:15,479
Speaker 1: When did you found an earth rante species that was

1570
01:11:15,520 --> 01:11:17,239
thought to be wiped out from the area.

1571
01:11:18,399 --> 01:11:20,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think it was ever like declared to

1572
01:11:20,079 --> 01:11:21,680
be wiped out from the area. I think people just

1573
01:11:21,800 --> 01:11:23,840
like forgot that it existed and started calling it ra

1574
01:11:23,920 --> 01:11:25,800
tranti gatata because I looked on a Naturalists and I

1575
01:11:25,920 --> 01:11:27,560
was like, okay, people have found these plants before, they

1576
01:11:27,640 --> 01:11:29,600
just called them gatata. And then my friend and I

1577
01:11:29,760 --> 01:11:31,359
keyed it out using the jets and key and it

1578
01:11:31,600 --> 01:11:34,439
definitely keys out to Grandis. And then somebody on Ainat

1579
01:11:34,439 --> 01:11:36,880
who was like, Grandis doesn't occur except on the very coast.

1580
01:11:36,880 --> 01:11:38,960
Here's a webpage on it. We checked the web page

1581
01:11:39,680 --> 01:11:42,239
and according to every single feature listed on the web

1582
01:11:42,279 --> 01:11:45,680
page that distinguishes Katata from Grandis, our specimen was definitely Grandis.

1583
01:11:46,199 --> 01:11:48,479
And then Diane Lake, who is the chair of the

1584
01:11:48,600 --> 01:11:51,760
East Bay sorry she's the Rare Plant chair for the

1585
01:11:52,479 --> 01:11:55,039
East Bay Chapter of the California Native Plants Society, she

1586
01:11:55,239 --> 01:11:57,560
chimed in on a Naturalist and said that it seems

1587
01:11:57,560 --> 01:11:58,840
to check out for Grandis as well.

1588
01:11:59,039 --> 01:12:01,840
Speaker 2: Damn, that's cool. Where did you find it in? Behind

1589
01:12:01,880 --> 01:12:03,439
the shopping center and where?

1590
01:12:04,000 --> 01:12:06,079
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, you know Lincoln Heights shopping center, like the

1591
01:12:06,079 --> 01:12:07,960
big Safeway and then the Pats coffee and stuff on

1592
01:12:08,000 --> 01:12:08,600
Redwood Road.

1593
01:12:09,239 --> 01:12:12,199
Speaker 2: No, not off hand, where is that East Oakland or something.

1594
01:12:12,000 --> 01:12:15,560
Speaker 3: Like that was like, yeah, up hill of Sparky's drive Burgers.

1595
01:12:16,279 --> 01:12:19,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

1596
01:12:19,359 --> 01:12:21,279
Speaker 3: So it's like there's a there's a spring that just

1597
01:12:21,640 --> 01:12:24,439
pops out of the bottom of an old landslide. That

1598
01:12:24,520 --> 01:12:27,079
happened when they were developing the Cresmont neighborhood, so they

1599
01:12:27,079 --> 01:12:30,159
stopped developing in that area, thank goodness. And the spring

1600
01:12:30,199 --> 01:12:32,079
that pops out from the bottom of the landslide, it's

1601
01:12:32,159 --> 01:12:33,920
this like big patch of green with a lot of

1602
01:12:34,039 --> 01:12:35,840
yellow flowers that you can see from the long distance

1603
01:12:36,079 --> 01:12:38,119
and you get close and the yellow flowers are like

1604
01:12:38,279 --> 01:12:42,159
these gigantic blossoms that look like aer trantiakatata, except they're

1605
01:12:42,479 --> 01:12:45,000
absolutely enormous. So when I first found it, I didn't

1606
01:12:45,000 --> 01:12:47,439
know that Ara trante grandis existed, but I saw it

1607
01:12:47,479 --> 01:12:49,640
and I was like, oh my god, there's a version

1608
01:12:49,680 --> 01:12:52,239
of aer trantiqatata that's like ginormous that I don't know

1609
01:12:52,279 --> 01:12:54,680
about yet. I got to look this up. So I

1610
01:12:54,760 --> 01:12:56,279
looked it up and I was like, oh, er tranthy

1611
01:12:56,319 --> 01:12:58,319
grandis is the species that exists. That must be what

1612
01:12:58,439 --> 01:13:00,760
this is. So I posted on ininat and then somebody

1613
01:13:00,880 --> 01:13:03,319
media was like, no, Ara Trini Grandiz doesn't occur in Oakland.

1614
01:13:03,359 --> 01:13:04,920
That was like, oh, okay, it's just a big gatata.

1615
01:13:05,119 --> 01:13:07,000
And then two years later I finally keped it out

1616
01:13:07,000 --> 01:13:08,479
and that's how I figured out that it's granted Dam.

1617
01:13:08,720 --> 01:13:11,119
Speaker 2: That's crazy man. And it's only known from there on

1618
01:13:11,199 --> 01:13:11,600
one other.

1619
01:13:11,560 --> 01:13:16,359
Speaker 3: Spot in Oakland. Yeah, there's one calflora observation of one

1620
01:13:16,399 --> 01:13:19,319
specimen found in Wildcat Canyon Regional Park in twenty twenty four.

1621
01:13:19,840 --> 01:13:22,520
And then I found this relatively large population at that

1622
01:13:22,600 --> 01:13:25,520
Serpentine Spring in Oakland, and I found it in twenty

1623
01:13:25,600 --> 01:13:28,239
twenty two but didn't identify it until this year. And

1624
01:13:28,439 --> 01:13:31,920
then there's one more population that I found after looking

1625
01:13:31,960 --> 01:13:34,000
through ininat records, I was like, wait a minute. People

1626
01:13:34,039 --> 01:13:37,359
are photographing this like really big air tarnity gatata in

1627
01:13:37,479 --> 01:13:40,239
Peralta Hacienda Park, which is in East Oakland, and it

1628
01:13:40,319 --> 01:13:44,039
has Peralta Creek running through it. And if I understand correctly,

1629
01:13:44,600 --> 01:13:48,039
that property was developed very early in Oakland's history, so

1630
01:13:48,199 --> 01:13:50,920
I would bet that the native vegetation was mostly wiped

1631
01:13:50,920 --> 01:13:53,640
out during that development. But since it happened so early

1632
01:13:53,680 --> 01:13:55,600
in Oakland's history, a lot of the native plants that

1633
01:13:55,640 --> 01:13:57,840
were still there kind of had priority effects and were

1634
01:13:57,840 --> 01:14:00,520
able to re establish. Whereas if that were happened now,

1635
01:14:01,000 --> 01:14:03,239
native plants are sorry, invasive plants are so much more

1636
01:14:03,279 --> 01:14:05,840
abundant that the native plants would not come back if

1637
01:14:05,880 --> 01:14:07,000
that habitat was Yeah.

1638
01:14:06,840 --> 01:14:08,359
Speaker 2: They would get in there and smother everything.

1639
01:14:08,479 --> 01:14:08,680
Speaker 3: Damn.

1640
01:14:08,720 --> 01:14:09,239
Speaker 2: That's man.

1641
01:14:09,960 --> 01:14:12,000
Speaker 1: Is anybody collecting seed and growing that? That'd be a

1642
01:14:12,039 --> 01:14:14,359
cool thing to just grow it in mass in a

1643
01:14:14,439 --> 01:14:18,319
backyard basically farm seed and then go scatter seed around creeks.

1644
01:14:19,520 --> 01:14:21,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great idea. I'm actually growing it from

1645
01:14:21,520 --> 01:14:24,439
cuttings right now because it is super easy. My friend

1646
01:14:24,560 --> 01:14:26,439
just like grabbed a gigantic branch so we could take

1647
01:14:26,439 --> 01:14:28,239
it home and key it out. And once we were

1648
01:14:28,279 --> 01:14:30,279
done keying it out, I just snapped the branch of

1649
01:14:30,319 --> 01:14:32,319
the nodes and buried them in wet dirt and most

1650
01:14:32,359 --> 01:14:34,399
of them are currently growing in bluing on my balcony

1651
01:14:34,520 --> 01:14:34,720
right now.

1652
01:14:35,000 --> 01:14:36,880
Speaker 1: That's dope, man, that's cool. Yeah, that's basically what I

1653
01:14:36,960 --> 01:14:39,319
do in my yard. I just I'm farming seed, like, yeah,

1654
01:14:39,359 --> 01:14:41,720
it's a native plant garden, but all the seeds like

1655
01:14:41,800 --> 01:14:44,000
off the guahio and other stuff that I collect horse

1656
01:14:44,039 --> 01:14:46,760
crippler cact i, collect it and then I give it

1657
01:14:46,840 --> 01:14:49,640
to like three or four different nurseries for free. I'm

1658
01:14:49,680 --> 01:14:51,079
not trying to sell shit. I just want to get

1659
01:14:51,079 --> 01:14:52,560
them out. They're just fucking grow these so I don't

1660
01:14:52,600 --> 01:14:54,520
have to look anymore crape myrtles, you know.

1661
01:14:55,079 --> 01:14:56,680
Speaker 3: Ye. So yeah, like trying to get a bunch of

1662
01:14:56,720 --> 01:14:58,800
seeds to watershed industry this week because I've been collecting

1663
01:14:59,000 --> 01:15:02,439
mostly annuals. I think annuals I think are a harder

1664
01:15:02,520 --> 01:15:05,600
sell for for people getting into native plant gardening than perennials,

1665
01:15:05,680 --> 01:15:08,000
because annuals, I think require a lot more maintenance in

1666
01:15:08,079 --> 01:15:09,479
terms of like, oh, you have to pick out all

1667
01:15:09,479 --> 01:15:11,159
the non native weeds. Then you have to do that,

1668
01:15:11,279 --> 01:15:13,039
you have to be able to identify your seedlings, which

1669
01:15:13,239 --> 01:15:15,039
I think is great. I think it's super fun and

1670
01:15:15,119 --> 01:15:17,800
super rewarding in one of those you know, dopamine hit activities.

1671
01:15:17,840 --> 01:15:20,560
But again, I worry sometimes that maybe some of these

1672
01:15:20,640 --> 01:15:24,680
rare annuals are not as palatable to the average native

1673
01:15:24,680 --> 01:15:26,680
plant gardener as some of the perennials. So we'll see,

1674
01:15:26,720 --> 01:15:27,560
we'll see if that works out.

1675
01:15:27,760 --> 01:15:30,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Clarkias are so dope, man, There's so many

1676
01:15:30,720 --> 01:15:32,840
there's so many cool clerky as I miss those.

1677
01:15:33,079 --> 01:15:33,439
Speaker 3: What is it?

1678
01:15:33,600 --> 01:15:36,199
Speaker 2: Are crepe myrtles big in Oakland? I haven't. I didn't

1679
01:15:36,239 --> 01:15:39,199
hate them, oh, just living out there, they still know.

1680
01:15:39,279 --> 01:15:42,600
Speaker 3: I kind of hate them. They're Yeah, I think the

1681
01:15:42,720 --> 01:15:45,119
majority of new trees being planned in Oakland right now

1682
01:15:45,159 --> 01:15:47,840
are crepe myrtles, because everybody wants to like check the

1683
01:15:47,880 --> 01:15:50,560
box if I planted a tree, but nobody actually wants

1684
01:15:50,600 --> 01:15:52,039
a tree that those tree things. They just want a

1685
01:15:52,039 --> 01:15:53,479
tree that's going to like stay small and have thick

1686
01:15:53,520 --> 01:15:54,199
flowers or whatever.

1687
01:15:54,439 --> 01:15:54,640
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1688
01:15:54,880 --> 01:15:56,760
Speaker 1: I didn't come to hate them until I moved out

1689
01:15:56,840 --> 01:15:58,560
to Texas and I was like, what are these fucking

1690
01:15:58,680 --> 01:16:01,039
stupid things that are everywhere? They're pointless, They're like they

1691
01:16:01,560 --> 01:16:04,520
they just you know, and and they're way overdone. And

1692
01:16:04,560 --> 01:16:06,159
then I was like I was learning about all the

1693
01:16:06,239 --> 01:16:08,159
native Texas plants like when I first moved out there,

1694
01:16:08,159 --> 01:16:09,920
and I was like, fuck, these are so cool and

1695
01:16:10,000 --> 01:16:12,039
why are these not getting planted? Why is it these

1696
01:16:12,119 --> 01:16:15,079
stupid crape myrtles you know again, and just because because

1697
01:16:15,119 --> 01:16:17,560
they flower all the time. Like lowest common denominator metric

1698
01:16:17,600 --> 01:16:20,039
of whether a plant's worth planting, How does it look?

1699
01:16:20,119 --> 01:16:21,600
How does it look to human eye, It's like the

1700
01:16:21,760 --> 01:16:25,920
dumb as shit and so. But I faintly remember seeing

1701
01:16:26,039 --> 01:16:29,600
them in Oakland, but they'd be you know, it's yeah,

1702
01:16:29,640 --> 01:16:32,119
I would smell like urine because they were piss wells,

1703
01:16:32,119 --> 01:16:33,479
I mean, I would piss on the thing, you know.

1704
01:16:33,760 --> 01:16:37,319
And then the of course, due to the dry Mediterranean summers,

1705
01:16:37,359 --> 01:16:40,359
the leaves were always covered in like, uh, you know,

1706
01:16:40,560 --> 01:16:45,359
aphid dew and particulate exhaust, you know, from all the

1707
01:16:45,399 --> 01:16:49,880
trucks and shit. It's like, I wonder, I'll never forget

1708
01:16:49,960 --> 01:16:53,560
the sides of the MacArthur Freeway sloped and covered in

1709
01:16:53,680 --> 01:16:57,680
English ivy and like you know, used rigs, used fucking

1710
01:16:57,760 --> 01:17:01,079
dope needles and urine and then all the like particulate

1711
01:17:01,159 --> 01:17:04,560
The particular exhaust gets really bad there. But again that's

1712
01:17:04,600 --> 01:17:07,680
another benefit of planting trees. You plant the trees that

1713
01:17:07,800 --> 01:17:10,680
particulates fall on the leaves instead of your you know,

1714
01:17:11,079 --> 01:17:15,439
steps and your windowsill, and then gets washed off when

1715
01:17:15,520 --> 01:17:18,199
the winter rains and then fleshed out to the bay

1716
01:17:18,199 --> 01:17:19,800
where it goes and pollutes the bay. But you know,

1717
01:17:19,920 --> 01:17:23,000
still it's better than it being you know, directly on

1718
01:17:23,119 --> 01:17:25,159
your because how would get man especially when I live

1719
01:17:25,199 --> 01:17:28,439
in West Oakland. THEESEL particulates on everything, you know, like

1720
01:17:28,560 --> 01:17:31,199
it was just man gnarly man from.

1721
01:17:31,079 --> 01:17:36,359
Speaker 2: The freeways and shit, and yeah, those dry summers, you.

1722
01:17:36,399 --> 01:17:40,399
Speaker 3: Know, yep. And it's hard to get trees planted in

1723
01:17:40,479 --> 01:17:43,439
Oakland too, because you know, we have a protected Tree Ordinance,

1724
01:17:43,600 --> 01:17:45,800
so trees that are there and are over four inches

1725
01:17:45,880 --> 01:17:49,079
dbhr all protected. But the issue is that the City

1726
01:17:49,119 --> 01:17:51,199
of Oakland defunded their street tree care program in two

1727
01:17:51,199 --> 01:17:53,279
thousand and eight with the financial crisis and has never

1728
01:17:53,479 --> 01:17:56,319
restored funding to it. So basically there's all these like

1729
01:17:56,800 --> 01:17:59,680
low income neighborhoods in places like West Oakland and East

1730
01:17:59,680 --> 01:18:03,159
Oakland them like the bottom Lands, and there are people

1731
01:18:03,239 --> 01:18:05,279
who do own the home that they live in, but

1732
01:18:05,479 --> 01:18:08,119
they're still really struggling to afford it and really struggling

1733
01:18:08,159 --> 01:18:09,840
to afford the cost of living. And then on top

1734
01:18:09,880 --> 01:18:12,720
of that, you know, maintaining a tree is free until

1735
01:18:12,800 --> 01:18:14,760
suddenly it's not, and then it cost thousands of dollars.

1736
01:18:15,319 --> 01:18:18,640
And the city technically does cover emergency tree care, so

1737
01:18:18,760 --> 01:18:21,000
like if a tree is imminently in danger of harming

1738
01:18:21,039 --> 01:18:23,399
somebody or harming property or whatever, the city will come

1739
01:18:23,479 --> 01:18:26,880
take care of it. But because they don't fund routine

1740
01:18:26,920 --> 01:18:29,760
maintenance of street trees, they have a much higher like

1741
01:18:29,920 --> 01:18:32,520
workload for that emergency tree care, and often they're not

1742
01:18:32,600 --> 01:18:35,199
able to prevent problems before they start. So a lot

1743
01:18:35,239 --> 01:18:38,479
of these homeowners feel very resentful about the idea of

1744
01:18:38,560 --> 01:18:42,199
planting trees because in their experience, trees have done nothing

1745
01:18:42,279 --> 01:18:44,680
but cause them expense that they feel like the city

1746
01:18:44,720 --> 01:18:47,159
should be responsible for. Ye and out here here's the

1747
01:18:47,239 --> 01:18:49,720
city mandating that they keep the trees on their property

1748
01:18:50,319 --> 01:18:52,920
without the city doing anything to actually help them maintain

1749
01:18:52,960 --> 01:18:54,479
those stress. So I think that's another big issue.

1750
01:18:54,600 --> 01:18:56,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And you've got to go around the city. Man.

1751
01:18:56,520 --> 01:18:58,760
You need like a neighborhood group or a cool neighbor

1752
01:18:58,800 --> 01:19:00,239
or whatever. You live in a neighbor hood.

1753
01:19:00,279 --> 01:19:02,199
Speaker 1: You got to be the one to do that, especially

1754
01:19:02,239 --> 01:19:05,039
because most people don't know shit about trees. They're like,

1755
01:19:05,119 --> 01:19:06,520
I don't you know, they don't know, Like, oh, you

1756
01:19:06,560 --> 01:19:08,479
can prune it. You can cut off these branches that

1757
01:19:08,560 --> 01:19:11,239
are growing laterally, so the thing will grow taller if

1758
01:19:11,279 --> 01:19:13,319
you need it to, you know, or you know, how

1759
01:19:13,399 --> 01:19:16,680
can it whatever? Right and so but and so it's

1760
01:19:16,720 --> 01:19:19,079
but it's up to individuals. Yeah, because the city is

1761
01:19:19,119 --> 01:19:20,319
not going to come through the city does and give

1762
01:19:20,319 --> 01:19:20,600
a shit.

1763
01:19:20,640 --> 01:19:22,920
Speaker 2: They don't know. You know, have you ever seen the

1764
01:19:23,439 --> 01:19:25,960
what's the level of passion of your average city employee?

1765
01:19:26,119 --> 01:19:28,199
Are they passionate about their job? Right?

1766
01:19:28,439 --> 01:19:31,479
Speaker 3: Not? Like some are and some aren't. And I think

1767
01:19:31,560 --> 01:19:33,800
that's another thing I've been learning is that like, if

1768
01:19:33,840 --> 01:19:36,119
you find the right people in the right positions who

1769
01:19:36,159 --> 01:19:38,319
care about the right things, it is actually possible to

1770
01:19:38,359 --> 01:19:39,640
get a lot of It's possible.

1771
01:19:39,680 --> 01:19:41,399
Speaker 1: Example, I made it, Yeah, but they don't give a

1772
01:19:41,439 --> 01:19:43,439
fuck a lot of the time. I guess what I'm saying.

1773
01:19:43,439 --> 01:19:45,479
I keep hold that thought because I do want to hear.

1774
01:19:45,520 --> 01:19:47,479
But I'm just saying, like they just come out, they

1775
01:19:47,479 --> 01:19:49,279
don't give a shit, They do the bare minimum whatever,

1776
01:19:49,399 --> 01:19:52,319
and versus having someone who's just like a neighbor that's

1777
01:19:52,399 --> 01:19:55,720
really into fucking maintaining trees and making the neighborhood look good. Okay, sorry,

1778
01:19:55,760 --> 01:19:56,960
go ahead, were sick, We're sick?

1779
01:19:57,520 --> 01:19:59,640
Speaker 3: Oh no, not at all. I was actually to follow

1780
01:19:59,680 --> 01:20:02,079
upon you just said. I've also one of my experiences,

1781
01:20:02,319 --> 01:20:04,840
especially like trying to get Oakland Unified School District to

1782
01:20:04,920 --> 01:20:08,119
implement a native planting policy, which did not end up

1783
01:20:08,159 --> 01:20:10,119
being successful is that you know, a lot of the

1784
01:20:10,159 --> 01:20:13,920
people who work in vegetation maintenance for institutions like OUSD,

1785
01:20:14,600 --> 01:20:17,960
they care about doing a good job from what their

1786
01:20:18,039 --> 01:20:20,359
perspective of doing a good job is, but they don't

1787
01:20:20,399 --> 01:20:23,439
think a lot about how I guess they see all

1788
01:20:23,520 --> 01:20:26,520
these areas as like gardens to tend. They don't see

1789
01:20:26,640 --> 01:20:28,840
all land as part of the living skin of the

1790
01:20:28,920 --> 01:20:31,920
earth that is now part of their duty to the earth.

1791
01:20:33,880 --> 01:20:34,600
Does that make sense?

1792
01:20:34,840 --> 01:20:35,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I.

1793
01:20:35,920 --> 01:20:39,600
Speaker 1: Mean yeah, they're really Yeah, And I can't blame someone

1794
01:20:39,640 --> 01:20:41,760
for not giving a shit about their job because I mean,

1795
01:20:41,960 --> 01:20:44,600
you know, I don't know that the inner politics of

1796
01:20:44,640 --> 01:20:46,800
whatever the workplace might be. I'm sure there's you know,

1797
01:20:47,039 --> 01:20:50,000
there's everyone's had a boss that like you're like, damn,

1798
01:20:50,039 --> 01:20:52,319
this motherfucker. Like I'm not that smart, but I'm smarter

1799
01:20:52,439 --> 01:20:52,880
than this guy.

1800
01:20:52,920 --> 01:20:53,399
Speaker 2: What the fuck?

1801
01:20:53,720 --> 01:20:55,640
Speaker 1: Like, I know that, I know how disheartening it can be.

1802
01:20:55,760 --> 01:20:58,039
But that's why it's like, yeah, I don't even rely

1803
01:20:58,159 --> 01:20:59,760
on the say we do it ourselves, you know, Like

1804
01:21:00,399 --> 01:21:03,359
for my I'm maintaining trees all around my neighborhood now,

1805
01:21:03,479 --> 01:21:05,319
and it gets my ass to go outside and take

1806
01:21:05,319 --> 01:21:08,159
a walk and I'm doing it unofficially. I don't want

1807
01:21:08,199 --> 01:21:10,359
anything for it. If someone fucks with the tree, I

1808
01:21:10,439 --> 01:21:13,920
start fucking with them, you know. I make sure that

1809
01:21:14,039 --> 01:21:17,439
these things are the grass around them doesn't encroach. I'll

1810
01:21:17,479 --> 01:21:21,159
go out there and weed whack shit sometimes, you know.

1811
01:21:21,199 --> 01:21:22,680
I think that's just the best way that it's like

1812
01:21:22,760 --> 01:21:26,279
just doing it yourself for your people, your neighborhood. You know,

1813
01:21:26,399 --> 01:21:28,920
your your people around you, your friends and neighbors whatever.

1814
01:21:29,920 --> 01:21:32,720
Because the city, because man, the city city Oakland doesn't

1815
01:21:32,720 --> 01:21:34,960
even I get to. They got like one native tree

1816
01:21:35,079 --> 01:21:37,640
on their their street tree list. The ship they plan

1817
01:21:37,800 --> 01:21:38,399
is whack man.

1818
01:21:38,439 --> 01:21:38,920
Speaker 2: It sucks.

1819
01:21:38,920 --> 01:21:40,680
Speaker 1: I planted when I live in West Oakland. I planted

1820
01:21:40,720 --> 01:21:44,359
a TAKaD cypress across the street from my house on

1821
01:21:44,520 --> 01:21:47,359
sixteenth in Peralta, and I think it's still there, but

1822
01:21:47,439 --> 01:21:49,079
it's fucking dope. But I would also I had to

1823
01:21:49,159 --> 01:21:51,760
like go maintain it and prune lateral branches and make

1824
01:21:51,840 --> 01:21:53,680
sure because I knew that if I didn't do that,

1825
01:21:54,000 --> 01:21:56,039
it would make it hot. And now the city's gonna

1826
01:21:56,039 --> 01:21:57,680
come fuck with it and they're just gonna cut it down.

1827
01:21:57,960 --> 01:21:59,920
So I had to maintain it. But I was like,

1828
01:22:00,119 --> 01:22:01,960
why why are they you know, they're planning like African

1829
01:22:02,039 --> 01:22:06,920
sumacs and cinemonium or yeah what it would cinnamon camphor trees.

1830
01:22:07,239 --> 01:22:10,319
Speaker 3: And yeah, cinnamonum camp for and just god, just.

1831
01:22:10,399 --> 01:22:13,560
Speaker 2: Like lame shit, you know, like strip mall stuff.

1832
01:22:14,319 --> 01:22:16,479
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, I don't get what. I can't play

1833
01:22:16,520 --> 01:22:19,760
more Coast live oaks. There's this like perception among people

1834
01:22:19,800 --> 01:22:22,199
who do like landscaping in cities for some reason that

1835
01:22:22,399 --> 01:22:25,239
like native trees aren't or there's not always going to

1836
01:22:25,279 --> 01:22:27,600
be an appropriate native tree for a particular situation. And

1837
01:22:27,680 --> 01:22:30,359
I'm like, in a city like Oakland that has such

1838
01:22:30,359 --> 01:22:33,840
an astounding diversity of habitat types, you are not going

1839
01:22:33,920 --> 01:22:36,640
to be able to manufacture an environment in any condition

1840
01:22:36,920 --> 01:22:39,920
that is outdoors that cannot have a native plant community

1841
01:22:40,079 --> 01:22:40,399
right on it.

1842
01:22:40,520 --> 01:22:42,039
Speaker 2: God, And they would come nowhere.

1843
01:22:42,159 --> 01:22:45,359
Speaker 1: Toy ons, you know, heteromelees would volunteer everywhere. That's a

1844
01:22:45,399 --> 01:22:49,560
fucking dope small tree. Yeah, that would volunteer. Great to

1845
01:22:49,760 --> 01:22:53,439
coyote bush is fucking awesome, right, or like you know,

1846
01:22:53,560 --> 01:22:56,319
the scrub jays plant all the coast live oaks. There

1847
01:22:56,319 --> 01:22:59,720
were Coast live oaks. This presentation, I give right, give right,

1848
01:22:59,760 --> 01:23:02,399
nice show these Coast live oaks that were planted by

1849
01:23:02,439 --> 01:23:04,800
scrub chase in the fucking trainer. They're growing out of

1850
01:23:04,880 --> 01:23:07,359
railroad ballast. They're fucking awesome, man.

1851
01:23:07,920 --> 01:23:08,720
Speaker 3: You know that's cool.

1852
01:23:08,840 --> 01:23:10,760
Speaker 2: It's just the ship, I tell you.

1853
01:23:10,920 --> 01:23:15,000
Speaker 1: The more I just landscapers, man, they just fucking bumm

1854
01:23:15,079 --> 01:23:16,720
me out, so many of them, right, just like this

1855
01:23:16,840 --> 01:23:20,840
traditional horticulture mentality. And then the way they talk about things.

1856
01:23:20,680 --> 01:23:23,800
Speaker 2: Like so arrogant. You know, like, well, actually that's not

1857
01:23:23,920 --> 01:23:25,680
you know, it's a man, Shut up. You don't know

1858
01:23:25,680 --> 01:23:27,600
what the fuck you're talking about, Like you know what

1859
01:23:27,640 --> 01:23:27,920
I mean.

1860
01:23:28,000 --> 01:23:29,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's so many people in the comments of my

1861
01:23:29,880 --> 01:23:32,039
recent post talking about how like, oh, there's actually the

1862
01:23:32,119 --> 01:23:35,079
study where like this one bird is increasing in abundance

1863
01:23:35,119 --> 01:23:37,920
because of an invasive species. And I'm like, dude, if

1864
01:23:37,960 --> 01:23:41,800
you think one generalist species increasing in abundance while you're

1865
01:23:41,840 --> 01:23:44,079
not even paying attention to all of the specialist species

1866
01:23:44,159 --> 01:23:46,319
that are already vanishing, I'm just like.

1867
01:23:46,840 --> 01:23:47,880
Speaker 2: You're a fucking at college.

1868
01:23:48,159 --> 01:23:50,520
Speaker 3: Get you to understand what you don't understand. If you're

1869
01:23:50,600 --> 01:23:52,840
in my comments trying to explain things to me that

1870
01:23:53,079 --> 01:23:54,760
I know more than you're.

1871
01:23:54,319 --> 01:23:56,960
Speaker 1: You're in a collegist now you you know you cited

1872
01:23:57,039 --> 01:23:59,800
a paper and you've just it's it's it's nuts, man,

1873
01:24:00,399 --> 01:24:03,760
It's crazy. The invasive species denial. I never really understood.

1874
01:24:03,800 --> 01:24:07,159
It just seems I don't I don't know why that's

1875
01:24:07,199 --> 01:24:08,640
so threatening to some people.

1876
01:24:09,239 --> 01:24:11,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just don't think it's I think it's because

1877
01:24:11,560 --> 01:24:15,239
people just cling to what they're familiar with, and when

1878
01:24:15,399 --> 01:24:18,920
all people are familiar with is these aggressive, generalist, non

1879
01:24:19,000 --> 01:24:21,880
native species, that's what they cling to, and then they

1880
01:24:21,960 --> 01:24:24,319
feel very threatened when that stuff gets Because I also

1881
01:24:24,960 --> 01:24:29,359
something that I realized from teaching plant id to high schoolers.

1882
01:24:29,439 --> 01:24:31,600
In a society that does not value the ability to

1883
01:24:31,720 --> 01:24:35,520
identify species at all, I begin to understand a lot

1884
01:24:35,640 --> 01:24:39,800
more about plant blindness, which I'm sure you've thought a

1885
01:24:39,840 --> 01:24:43,119
lot about, which is for those for those listening who don't,

1886
01:24:43,119 --> 01:24:45,479
who haven't heard this term before, it's it's the phenomenon

1887
01:24:45,640 --> 01:24:48,279
of just like not being able to see the diversity

1888
01:24:48,319 --> 01:24:49,920
of plants in front of you. You just perceive it

1889
01:24:49,960 --> 01:24:53,079
all as this like amorphous blob of green. And that's

1890
01:24:53,199 --> 01:24:54,720
kind of how most people walk through the world. It's

1891
01:24:54,800 --> 01:24:56,600
how I often walk through the world, even now that

1892
01:24:56,680 --> 01:24:58,640
I know plants. If I'm walking past a bunch of

1893
01:24:58,680 --> 01:25:01,079
plants that I don't know, not like heeing out every

1894
01:25:01,119 --> 01:25:04,159
little Euphorbia growing in the sidewalk cracks. I am actively

1895
01:25:04,199 --> 01:25:06,920
experiencing plant blindness even now. But I think for a

1896
01:25:06,960 --> 01:25:09,800
lot of people that plant blindness, which I guess extends

1897
01:25:09,840 --> 01:25:12,319
to all biodiversity, maybe we should call it biodiversity blindness,

1898
01:25:12,399 --> 01:25:17,319
or like bioblindness. It's not that they don't think the

1899
01:25:17,439 --> 01:25:21,640
native species are valuable. It's that in their minds, in

1900
01:25:21,800 --> 01:25:25,560
their mental construction of the reality of the world, those

1901
01:25:26,000 --> 01:25:30,760
valuable native species don't actually exist. Like in their mind,

1902
01:25:31,039 --> 01:25:33,960
if we are taking out the species that they're already

1903
01:25:34,000 --> 01:25:37,039
familiar with and already care about, if we're removing those species,

1904
01:25:38,079 --> 01:25:42,319
they think that means just destruction and nothing, no value

1905
01:25:42,319 --> 01:25:43,760
at it. They think that the land will now be

1906
01:25:43,840 --> 01:25:45,960
completely empty with the loss of the species that they're

1907
01:25:45,960 --> 01:25:49,119
familiar with. They don't see the return of native species

1908
01:25:49,199 --> 01:25:51,399
as the return to life on land. They see it

1909
01:25:51,479 --> 01:25:52,920
as the return of emptiness.

1910
01:25:54,199 --> 01:25:55,920
Speaker 2: That's yeah, it's so weird.

1911
01:25:56,439 --> 01:25:58,920
Speaker 1: And I think the thing I've been thinking about more too,

1912
01:25:59,199 --> 01:26:03,239
which is why I've been attacking modern horticulture in my rhetoric. Morris,

1913
01:26:03,319 --> 01:26:05,560
I think that that you know, in a lot of

1914
01:26:05,600 --> 01:26:12,680
ways landscapers and landscaping and modern ornamental horticulture, it actively

1915
01:26:12,800 --> 01:26:16,920
works against you know, the ecosystem, like the in the

1916
01:26:17,000 --> 01:26:19,800
human mind, because if you grow up expecting that and

1917
01:26:19,920 --> 01:26:22,840
you want everything to look like orderly and hedge shrubs

1918
01:26:22,880 --> 01:26:25,720
that are planted in uniform lines with variegated leaves or

1919
01:26:25,800 --> 01:26:28,680
some other quote redeeming quality about it, that ooh wow,

1920
01:26:28,720 --> 01:26:31,319
it makes it interesting. Then you see nature and you're like, hey,

1921
01:26:31,359 --> 01:26:34,119
it's fucking boring. It's just weeds, man, it's all you know,

1922
01:26:34,199 --> 01:26:37,159
It's just it's it's that's look that things not even flowering.

1923
01:26:37,239 --> 01:26:39,479
It's just a green weed. You don't know what to

1924
01:26:39,560 --> 01:26:41,279
look for. Yeah, And I just I think about that

1925
01:26:41,319 --> 01:26:43,680
all the time. I mean, it's just it's something I accepted,

1926
01:26:44,319 --> 01:26:46,079
you know, a decade and a half ago. Kind of

1927
01:26:46,159 --> 01:26:47,680
was like, yeah, most people just don't care, like this

1928
01:26:47,800 --> 01:26:48,880
is not on their radar at all.

1929
01:26:49,159 --> 01:26:50,960
Speaker 2: And I don't fault them for it, but I'm gonna

1930
01:26:51,000 --> 01:26:53,760
like aggressively push it, and I'm gonna make sure to

1931
01:26:53,880 --> 01:26:56,680
make sure they see it right because it's so fucking cool,

1932
01:26:56,960 --> 01:26:59,319
you know. I'm like gonna aggressively and.

1933
01:27:01,159 --> 01:27:05,800
Speaker 1: Benevolently, you know, and enthusiastically make sure they see this right,

1934
01:27:05,920 --> 01:27:10,439
and because it's it's so fucking yeah, it's just it

1935
01:27:10,600 --> 01:27:12,000
cleanses the mental pellet.

1936
01:27:13,439 --> 01:27:16,479
Speaker 3: I agree, And I also think on that note, there's

1937
01:27:16,640 --> 01:27:19,680
great potential to really tip the scales on this one, because,

1938
01:27:20,319 --> 01:27:23,399
you know, because people are so attached to the things

1939
01:27:23,479 --> 01:27:26,119
that they've been conditioned to think gardens are supposed to look.

1940
01:27:26,199 --> 01:27:29,880
Like if everybody who cares about native plants already just

1941
01:27:30,039 --> 01:27:32,520
like make sure that their yard, at their front yard

1942
01:27:32,560 --> 01:27:36,039
facing the street is just like loaded with native species

1943
01:27:36,119 --> 01:27:38,640
that represent the local natural environments. Like here in Oakland,

1944
01:27:38,640 --> 01:27:40,920
that would probably be a mix of like monkey flower, sagebrush,

1945
01:27:40,960 --> 01:27:44,039
coyote brush, maybe some California b plants or whatever. And

1946
01:27:44,319 --> 01:27:46,319
you know, when that's all in full bloom, it looks

1947
01:27:46,640 --> 01:27:50,680
really spectacular. And I think if that was more of

1948
01:27:50,760 --> 01:27:53,359
a norm, if that was a look that people recognized

1949
01:27:53,399 --> 01:27:55,960
when they walked up and down the street, there would

1950
01:27:56,000 --> 01:27:58,399
be a lot more. There'd be a lot more like

1951
01:27:58,640 --> 01:28:01,560
casual gardeners being like, hmm, what's that about. Maybe I

1952
01:28:01,560 --> 01:28:03,640
should plant that in my yard, you know, Yeah, they're

1953
01:28:03,640 --> 01:28:04,479
just snowballs.

1954
01:28:04,079 --> 01:28:06,680
Speaker 2: From the Yeah. More exposure to it. Yeah, exactly, man.

1955
01:28:06,800 --> 01:28:08,359
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then you know, and of course, if you

1956
01:28:08,439 --> 01:28:09,960
plant a lot of monkey flower in the day area,

1957
01:28:09,960 --> 01:28:11,640
you're gonna get a lot of checker spot butterflies, and

1958
01:28:11,680 --> 01:28:13,720
you don't really get checker spot butterflies otherwise. So I

1959
01:28:13,760 --> 01:28:16,359
think that adds another layer of like, oh, my garden

1960
01:28:16,439 --> 01:28:18,199
is actually sustaining life that I can see with my

1961
01:28:18,279 --> 01:28:20,560
eyes instead of me you know, reading on the internet

1962
01:28:20,600 --> 01:28:22,479
that dandy lions are good for bide diversity, Right, I

1963
01:28:22,479 --> 01:28:23,960
assu think that's what's going on in my lawn.

1964
01:28:24,199 --> 01:28:26,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that that's Yeah, that was the other thing

1965
01:28:26,600 --> 01:28:29,680
I mean, just that I used to not have any

1966
01:28:30,079 --> 01:28:31,680
clue on I mean, part of what did it for

1967
01:28:31,800 --> 01:28:33,880
me actually was when I was still living in Oakland

1968
01:28:33,920 --> 01:28:36,560
and I had that old whole illegal garden on Mendela,

1969
01:28:36,640 --> 01:28:38,199
which like a little bit of it is still there.

1970
01:28:38,239 --> 01:28:42,800
Speaker 2: The realtor lady that had a beef with me, she

1971
01:28:43,000 --> 01:28:45,239
like went and annihilated a bunch of it. It was

1972
01:28:45,399 --> 01:28:47,600
really weird. It was like territorial, but some of it's

1973
01:28:47,640 --> 01:28:48,039
still there.

1974
01:28:48,439 --> 01:28:50,279
Speaker 1: And Dame when it was like at its peak and

1975
01:28:50,359 --> 01:28:53,760
I was going out there every other day to maintain

1976
01:28:53,800 --> 01:28:55,720
it because I was always walking my dogs. I'd go

1977
01:28:55,920 --> 01:28:58,279
like do exercises there, like go jump rope, do push

1978
01:28:58,319 --> 01:28:59,880
ups there at like ten o'clock at night, looking like

1979
01:29:00,119 --> 01:29:02,840
crackhead in West localand just fucking you know, on the

1980
01:29:02,920 --> 01:29:04,600
Mendela Parkway like it was.

1981
01:29:05,119 --> 01:29:06,920
Speaker 2: It was shameless of me.

1982
01:29:07,079 --> 01:29:10,039
Speaker 1: It was totally I looked like in eccentric, but I'd

1983
01:29:10,079 --> 01:29:11,840
go hang out there all the time, and so it

1984
01:29:11,920 --> 01:29:13,640
looked really good because I was always maintaining it. And

1985
01:29:13,720 --> 01:29:16,039
Damon Tyn went and did a survey just of insects,

1986
01:29:16,079 --> 01:29:17,760
spent like an hour or two there and kind of

1987
01:29:17,840 --> 01:29:21,680
like fifty six insects, most of which were native or

1988
01:29:21,720 --> 01:29:23,119
most of the piece of which were native on that

1989
01:29:23,239 --> 01:29:25,800
fucking car like on all the stuff that I had planted,

1990
01:29:25,840 --> 01:29:27,279
and a lot of it wasn't even native. It was

1991
01:29:27,399 --> 01:29:29,640
like lineages that were native. But it was like a

1992
01:29:29,760 --> 01:29:32,600
cloud forest species, you know, because you get those Bay

1993
01:29:32,640 --> 01:29:36,079
area mild climates, you know, you can grow cloud forest stuff.

1994
01:29:36,479 --> 01:29:38,119
And that when he when he showed that to me,

1995
01:29:38,159 --> 01:29:40,199
and he made a little collage of pictures of all

1996
01:29:40,239 --> 01:29:42,159
the bugs he saw, and he sent it to me,

1997
01:29:42,159 --> 01:29:44,079
and he's like, good work, Joey, this is it must

1998
01:29:44,119 --> 01:29:46,239
have been like eight years ago, and I was like, damn,

1999
01:29:46,680 --> 01:29:48,680
you saw that out there, and he's like yeah. I

2000
01:29:48,760 --> 01:29:51,279
was like, fuck, man, that's amazing, Like that's kind of

2001
01:29:51,359 --> 01:29:54,960
cool because that's that's just been like shitty dyeing roses.

2002
01:29:55,039 --> 01:29:59,119
And yeah, they were like they were like European buckeyes

2003
01:29:59,159 --> 01:30:01,880
planted there. Man, you had a native buckeye, California buckeye,

2004
01:30:01,880 --> 01:30:03,960
and they were planning the oakland was planting European buckeys.

2005
01:30:04,000 --> 01:30:04,560
Speaker 2: It was crazy.

2006
01:30:04,880 --> 01:30:06,880
Speaker 1: And then yeah, I went, yeah, that was the big

2007
01:30:06,960 --> 01:30:09,119
wake up call. And now it's like that's part of

2008
01:30:09,239 --> 01:30:12,359
what I'm doing. I'm like, okay, well, what's what's its

2009
01:30:12,399 --> 01:30:13,359
ecological function?

2010
01:30:13,479 --> 01:30:14,239
Speaker 2: Oh and oak tree?

2011
01:30:14,840 --> 01:30:17,119
Speaker 1: You know, it's a big tree and it doesn't produce

2012
01:30:17,159 --> 01:30:20,000
showy flowers, but it's feeding like, you know, three dozen

2013
01:30:20,119 --> 01:30:24,319
different species of caterpillars, which then feed birds. And that's

2014
01:30:24,359 --> 01:30:26,560
an incentive and I want to see all that, you know,

2015
01:30:26,960 --> 01:30:30,039
So that's that's another incentive to plant this thing, you

2016
01:30:30,079 --> 01:30:31,479
know exactly.

2017
01:30:32,640 --> 01:30:34,279
Speaker 3: But uh yeah, and I think like you said, it

2018
01:30:34,279 --> 01:30:37,560
wouldn't it wouldn't take much like it really, I mean,

2019
01:30:37,600 --> 01:30:39,199
I guess, tying back to what I was saying earlier,

2020
01:30:39,279 --> 01:30:40,880
if you can find the right people in the city

2021
01:30:40,920 --> 01:30:43,560
who do want to support stuff like that. Basically, their

2022
01:30:43,680 --> 01:30:46,399
main concern usually is like legal liability, so like if

2023
01:30:46,439 --> 01:30:48,279
you plant something that ends up causing problems for like

2024
01:30:48,359 --> 01:30:50,079
infrastructure later down the road, they don't want to deal

2025
01:30:50,119 --> 01:30:52,079
with that. But if you can plant stuff that isn't

2026
01:30:52,119 --> 01:30:55,239
going to cause infrastructure issues and isn't going to cost

2027
01:30:55,319 --> 01:30:57,840
the city money, generally, you can find people who are

2028
01:30:57,880 --> 01:30:59,279
going to be pretty supportive of it, and then you

2029
01:30:59,319 --> 01:31:01,159
can work with them to be like, hey, when the

2030
01:31:01,199 --> 01:31:03,279
city crews come through and like mow down all the vegetation,

2031
01:31:03,760 --> 01:31:06,039
can you not mow all the vegetation that I've marked

2032
01:31:06,079 --> 01:31:09,960
with pink flags? And that it can often work really well.

2033
01:31:10,000 --> 01:31:11,680
That's that's what I've been doing to protect some of

2034
01:31:11,680 --> 01:31:14,079
the rare plant populations up on Skyline Boulevard in that

2035
01:31:14,159 --> 01:31:16,600
Serpentine area, because I've also found that, like you know,

2036
01:31:16,720 --> 01:31:19,079
even though the city's annual mowing has wiped out a

2037
01:31:19,159 --> 01:31:21,520
lot of the later blooming annual natives that are quite rare,

2038
01:31:22,279 --> 01:31:24,560
the fact that the city is doing any management at

2039
01:31:24,600 --> 01:31:27,279
all has actually maintained the populations of some of the

2040
01:31:27,359 --> 01:31:29,319
early blooming annuals. And then some of the really late

2041
01:31:29,359 --> 01:31:32,640
blooming perennials that are pretty much wiped out in that

2042
01:31:32,760 --> 01:31:35,720
protected serpentine habitat where they're not really doing much management.

2043
01:31:36,399 --> 01:31:39,319
So like agaceras hersuda, for example, is really common on

2044
01:31:39,399 --> 01:31:41,680
that medium in the Serpentine area. And I looked it

2045
01:31:41,760 --> 01:31:43,520
up on Calplora, I looked at up on Ainat, I

2046
01:31:43,560 --> 01:31:46,479
looked it up in cch two. Most of the are

2047
01:31:46,520 --> 01:31:48,840
barrier markets for that species are really old, and it

2048
01:31:48,920 --> 01:31:51,359
seems like there's really not a lot of populations of

2049
01:31:51,399 --> 01:31:55,840
agaceris hersuda left at all. There's like two populations Alameda County,

2050
01:31:55,880 --> 01:31:58,680
two populations in Modera County, and like a couple scattered

2051
01:31:58,720 --> 01:32:00,720
populations and a few other Bay Are counties, and like

2052
01:32:01,199 --> 01:32:03,359
that's it. I think it might be extirpated from Cinoma

2053
01:32:03,439 --> 01:32:05,479
County in the Santa Rose area and stuff like that.

2054
01:32:06,600 --> 01:32:09,159
But that's a plant that you know, marking out with

2055
01:32:09,279 --> 01:32:12,279
flags and then getting permission from the city staff member

2056
01:32:12,319 --> 01:32:15,119
who oversees the vegetation cruise that has worked really well

2057
01:32:15,199 --> 01:32:16,439
to protect that population.

2058
01:32:16,600 --> 01:32:19,880
Speaker 1: That's a chickory, right, It's it's a corioidy. Yes, subfamily,

2059
01:32:19,920 --> 01:32:20,520
asked Tracy.

2060
01:32:20,680 --> 01:32:25,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, it's a dandelion thing or dandylion relatives.

2061
01:32:26,119 --> 01:32:27,079
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh cool.

2062
01:32:28,119 --> 01:32:29,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, it's well, you're doing a lot of good

2063
01:32:30,000 --> 01:32:31,720
for the city of Oakland. You're an asset, so I

2064
01:32:31,800 --> 01:32:34,279
hope they appreciate you, because you know, we need more

2065
01:32:34,319 --> 01:32:37,439
people like that in every city, like monitoring their their

2066
01:32:37,680 --> 01:32:41,359
native plants and stewarding it and caring for it, right

2067
01:32:41,439 --> 01:32:43,840
and like just paying attention to it, man, because if

2068
01:32:44,199 --> 01:32:46,880
people aren't doing it, then then who is right the

2069
01:32:46,960 --> 01:32:51,439
city is not incentivized to sou Yeah, man, it's really

2070
01:32:51,560 --> 01:32:53,479
it's I really appreciate what you do, and thanks for

2071
01:32:54,359 --> 01:32:57,239
doing more to connect plants and people. Is there anything

2072
01:32:57,600 --> 01:32:59,279
before we dip out? Is there anything you want to

2073
01:32:59,319 --> 01:33:01,000
say and then you want to get out there?

2074
01:33:02,399 --> 01:33:06,640
Speaker 3: Hmm? Actually yeah. I think the more I've been thinking

2075
01:33:06,640 --> 01:33:10,680
about it lately, the more I think that some of

2076
01:33:10,800 --> 01:33:14,039
the most effective things that people can actually accomplish on

2077
01:33:14,119 --> 01:33:17,840
an individual level to protect the environment do have to

2078
01:33:17,920 --> 01:33:21,239
do with planting your locally common native species in more

2079
01:33:21,359 --> 01:33:24,079
of the built environment. So like in Oakland, for example,

2080
01:33:24,199 --> 01:33:26,960
I think if you have a couple people in every neighborhood,

2081
01:33:27,039 --> 01:33:30,079
just like planting coyote bush in the empty spaces between

2082
01:33:30,119 --> 01:33:32,119
the sidewalking the road. Every now and again, you know

2083
01:33:32,159 --> 01:33:34,119
you'll end up with a couple dozen coyote bushes on

2084
01:33:34,279 --> 01:33:36,439
each block, and then a couple dozen kyote bushes on

2085
01:33:36,479 --> 01:33:39,199
each block can actually sustain quite a lot of wildlife.

2086
01:33:39,239 --> 01:33:41,439
And if it's happening on each block, you can actually

2087
01:33:41,520 --> 01:33:44,600
create a good habitat connectivity from the undeveloped natural areas

2088
01:33:44,640 --> 01:33:47,319
throughout the entire built environment. So, like I said, we

2089
01:33:47,399 --> 01:33:51,199
already grow so much plant biomass intentionally in the urban areas.

2090
01:33:51,600 --> 01:33:55,079
If we just decide to make that plant biomass native species,

2091
01:33:55,199 --> 01:33:58,039
especially the locally common native species that already grow easily

2092
01:33:58,119 --> 01:34:01,359
like kyote bush, monkey flower, stage brush like that, I

2093
01:34:01,479 --> 01:34:04,159
think a much much better world with much more life

2094
01:34:04,239 --> 01:34:06,520
living on it is not that far away. And then

2095
01:34:06,560 --> 01:34:11,159
I think the converse to that is that the amount

2096
01:34:11,279 --> 01:34:13,600
of time that we have been driving life on Earth

2097
01:34:13,800 --> 01:34:19,439
to extinction has been so incredibly short that I think

2098
01:34:19,479 --> 01:34:22,479
a lot of people don't realize that the declines in

2099
01:34:22,560 --> 01:34:26,880
wildlife populations that we are currently seeing are just the

2100
01:34:27,000 --> 01:34:30,279
exponential decay in populations that are taking time to occur

2101
01:34:30,439 --> 01:34:33,079
because of habitat destruction that we did. You know, seventy

2102
01:34:33,079 --> 01:34:35,000
eighty years ago, like back in the fifties when when

2103
01:34:35,039 --> 01:34:38,119
the city was expanding really rapidly. So even if we

2104
01:34:38,520 --> 01:34:41,880
stop all development now and don't develop any more natural ecosystems,

2105
01:34:42,279 --> 01:34:44,840
those populations of you know, birds and amphibians and insects

2106
01:34:44,880 --> 01:34:47,720
and things, they're still going to decline to extinction for

2107
01:34:47,800 --> 01:34:50,640
most species. So I think the urgency of needing to

2108
01:34:50,720 --> 01:34:55,479
both protect remaining natural habitats but also restore and expand

2109
01:34:55,760 --> 01:34:58,720
natural habitats while the species that use them still exist

2110
01:34:59,600 --> 01:35:01,439
is a very urgent need that I think more people

2111
01:35:01,560 --> 01:35:05,359
need to need to feel. The urgency of it really is.

2112
01:35:05,560 --> 01:35:07,880
Speaker 1: It's you're using the tools that came with the land.

2113
01:35:08,079 --> 01:35:10,520
Those plants all they came with the land, They evolved

2114
01:35:10,560 --> 01:35:12,159
with the land, They were built by the land, they

2115
01:35:12,199 --> 01:35:15,520
were naturally selected for by that environment. All the all

2116
01:35:15,560 --> 01:35:19,840
the pollinators, all the antagonistic insects, the climate, the soils,

2117
01:35:19,840 --> 01:35:22,920
all that. It's it's nuts to you know, live in

2118
01:35:23,000 --> 01:35:25,319
a place. And I'm not saying don't have a couple

2119
01:35:25,319 --> 01:35:27,079
of non native plants if you like the way they look,

2120
01:35:27,159 --> 01:35:29,319
or if you're using them as crops, whatever, But like

2121
01:35:29,399 --> 01:35:31,560
to live in a place and plant fucking crape myrtles,

2122
01:35:31,960 --> 01:35:34,119
which you really don't need to do. It doesn't benefit

2123
01:35:34,199 --> 01:35:34,760
you in any way.

2124
01:35:34,840 --> 01:35:36,760
Speaker 2: You can't eat it. It's a non usable crap like.

2125
01:35:36,840 --> 01:35:38,880
That's fucking nuts, man. That stuff needs to stop.

2126
01:35:39,520 --> 01:35:41,960
Speaker 1: And you do it again by teaching kids what the

2127
01:35:42,079 --> 01:35:44,560
native plants are, creating a culture around it, hyping it up,

2128
01:35:44,920 --> 01:35:46,439
getting people to engage with them.

2129
01:35:46,640 --> 01:35:48,079
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so it's so important.

2130
01:35:48,119 --> 01:35:48,239
Speaker 3: Man.

2131
01:35:49,079 --> 01:35:51,960
Speaker 1: So anyway, man, well, thanks a lot, and people could

2132
01:35:52,039 --> 01:35:55,279
check you out at the Oakland is it Oakland dot bio.

2133
01:35:55,800 --> 01:35:58,079
Speaker 3: Or what is it Oakland dot bio on Instagram that's

2134
01:35:58,119 --> 01:35:59,000
the only platform on.

2135
01:35:59,239 --> 01:36:01,399
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, all right, son, thro thanks so much, man,

2136
01:36:01,439 --> 01:36:02,279
appreciate your time.

2137
01:36:03,479 --> 01:36:05,399
Speaker 3: Yeah. Likewise, thanks so much for chatting with you. This

2138
01:36:05,439 --> 01:36:05,880
has been great.

2139
01:36:05,960 --> 01:36:07,079
Speaker 2: All right man, I'll talk to you soon.

2140
01:36:08,159 --> 01:36:09,399
Speaker 3: Yeah, see you later. Take care,