Roads, Beavers, And Why Humanity Has To Save Itself
- colin7931
- Jul 8
- 44 min read
Today Doug opens the container with author and beaver enthusiast Ben Goldfarb.
Doug begins the episode discussing our obsession with roads. While there is a lot to love about the highways that take us to amazing places, the world is undoubtedly suffering because we've paved in so much of them. The topic of roads is timely given the Trump administration's rescinding of the roadless rule threatens to open 58 million acres of national forest to road building, posing significant risks to habitats and species.
Doug is then joined by author Ben Goldfarb, who has written about road ecology and why beavers matter. Doug & Ben address the underpinnings of conservation, advocating for a shift towards recognizing the right of nature to exist independently.
Together they underscore the necessity of preserving roadless areas as essential components of a sustainable future.
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Episode Transcript:
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:00:00.160 - 00:09:52.620
Hey everyone.
Before we get started today, I want to thank you for listening to Open Container and ask that you please subscribe to the show by clicking Follow on the podcast app you're using right now. Following the podcast is the best way to ensure that we will continue to crack open the container every single week.
Thank you and let's start the show. Welcome to Open Container. I'm Doug Schnitzbahn. I'm a journalist, writer, writer and overall lover of the outdoors.
I fought wildfires, reported on national politics, published magazines, and I've even put a pick to the ground building sections of the Continental Divide Trail.
On this podcast, we're going to have an open conversation about culture, conservation policy, business issues that matter the most to the outdoor community. Let's get some. When we talk about.
Roads, especially in our forests and on our public lands, one thing is clear.
We have a lot of them, probably more than we need in the U.S. in the United States, we have over 4 million miles of roads, with about 1.3 million of those unpaved, often in rural areas on national forest lands. There are over 380,000 miles of roads crisscrossing through strands of timber meadows, over mountains and along streams in riparian areas.
Don't get me wrong, I love roads. I love a good road trip.
I love finding highways like U.S. 50 across Nevada, where you can roll down the windows and scream to the sky as you speed through the Sage Mountains rising on the horizon. I love Interstate 70, which cuts through the heart of Colorado's Front Range at Leveland Pass and the Eisenhower Tunnel.
I love that it's often blocked in vertiginous Glenwood Canyon because of rockfall. I love the way it bisects the San Rafael Swell, revealing millions of years of geology.
I love forest roads, too, like the gravelly Range Road in Montana, which reaches high meadows where only sheep ranchers and cowboys venture. I love small tracks and fire roads that seem to go nowhere but end at the perfect campsite.
Rock Creek here in Colorado is a fun place to take my four runner, a challenge that brings you to the high alpine where you can hear migrating birds and see the clouds up close. But even more than roads, I love roadless areas. Truly, there are so few left in the United States, so few in the world.
We have paved and routed nearly every place we can go. We are obsessed with access.
The only places we can't have roads in the US Are in legal wilderness areas created by Congress thanks to the Wilderness Act Road, written by Howard Zanisher and passed into law in 1964 visionary legislation. It preserves places of spectacular beauty and wildness for their own sake.
The key phrase in the law is a lovely and important one, that these places should remain untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. I still find it hard to believe that we had such visionaries working in Congress after World War II.
People like Senator Lee Metcalf, activists like Bob Marshall, and a government willing to preserve the quickly disappearing American landscape and the sanctity of wild places for their own sake.
Luckily, There are over 800 federally designated wilderness areas in the U.S. covering more than 111 million acres out of 2.26 billion acres of land in the U.S. 57.8 million of this is in Alaska.
Here in the lower 48, the farthest you can get from a road is in a place in Yellowstone national park called the thoroughfare, where you're 30 miles in and grizzly bears roam the night. Still, it's not that far, but there is still land that is roadless, yet not protected by the Wilderness Act.
These places are no less spectacular or worthy of preservation. In 2001, then President Clinton acted to preserve 58.5 million acres of roadless areas in the national forest system known as the Roadless Rule.
This measure, which took years to implement and survive fierce protests from states like Idaho and Wyoming, effectively stopped most road building. I've been to many of these places. They are no less lovely or important for lacking formal designation.
The vast sagebrush steps of the Oahe Canyonlands, the serene meadows and quiet forests of the gravelly range. These spots are often even wilder than designated wilderness or national parks because they're not called out on maps.
They exist quietly for the sake of wildlife, for the last stands of forests that once covered this great continent, and for the solitude they offer.
The great conservationist Aldo Leopold, a proponent of wilderness after witnessing the rapid disappearance of natural systems, wondered why we had to continue building roads everywhere. He wrote, to build a road is so much simpler than to think of what the country really needs.
A roadless marsh is seemingly as worthless to the alphabetical conservationist as an undrained one was to the empire builders. Solitude, the one natural resource still undowered of alphabets, is so far recognized as valuable only by ornithologists and cranes.
Thus always does history, whether marsh or marketplace, end in paradox. The ultimate value in these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate. But all conservation of wildness is self defeating.
For to cherish, we must see and fondle and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish. The truth is, we have far more roads than we can maintain on public lands.
Many of them go nowhere, do nothing, and simply disturb wildlife and ecosystems. And with federal agency budgets slashed, we no longer have the money to take care of the roads we already have.
So what's the point in building new ones? It seems to me to be an act of bitterness and dominion.
Proponents of road building say it's necessary for economic development or to stop wildfires, but these arguments are easily disproven. No, it's a stranger urge than that. It's a fear of wild places, of things that are not controlled, not paved. I honestly admit I don't understand it.
Every part of me wants to react against it. Every part of me wants there to be more than 30 miles. I can walk away from all this noise and confusion and fumes and bills and screens.
We need that so badly right now. Because what wilderness and roadless areas represent is a more advanced society, one that understands its place on a shrinking planet.
A society that seeks not dominion but harmony. A society that works within natural ecosystems to keep them sustainable, fruitful and beautiful.
That is a more evolved, more mature way of thinking and being in the world. Howard Zanisher's son Edward, once said in speaking about the iconic legislation his father helped create.
In its broadest sweep, the Wilderness act is a statement of social ethics.
It is about restraint and humility, about restraint and humility for what we do not know about the land organism, about which Aldo Leopold wrote, as acid rain, acidic deposition has forced us to understand soil relationships better, we find in soils the same spiraling downward of complexity that the Hubble Space Telescope finds spiraling outward as a complex complexity of the universe or multiverse. Last week, the outdoor community rallied people of all demographics and politics to stop the sell off of public lands.
But the assault on public lands continues. The push for dominion and concrete, a modern mordor everywhere, continues.
The agencies that manage public land have had their budget slashed so badly they can barely operate. And the Trump administration has rescinded the roadless rule, opening up those 58.5 million acres to cynical, pointless road building. Why?
Roadless areas are essential to the soul. And I'd argue for hours with anyone who says differently. My guest today is a champion of roadless areas and of beavers.
Ben Goldfarb is an independent conservation journalist.
He's the author of how rhodecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, named one of the best books of 2023 by the New York Times and the Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and why they Matter, Winner of the 2019 PEN EO Wilson Literary science Writing Award. So let's open the container with Ben Goldfarb. So, yes, it is a joy to have Ben Goldfarb here today on Open Container. Ben, it's great to see you.
Ben Goldfarb
00:09:52.620 - 00:09:54.620
Hey, Doug, how's it going? Thanks for having me.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:09:55.020 - 00:10:12.870
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Ben, I know that beavers are very close to your heart. And you recently posted on Instagram, where Beavers Go, Life Follows, which I loved.
But I'd like to know a little more about what you mean by that, for sure.
Ben Goldfarb
00:10:12.870 - 00:11:25.510
So beavers are keystone species, right?
These are animals who, you know, as every, as every western public lands lover who's ever been to a beaver pond knows, these are animals who are kind of creating and concentrating life, right? They're building dams, they're creating ponds and wetlands.
You know, here in the west, wetlands cover around 2% of land area and support 80% of biodiversity, right?
So beavers are these ecosystem engineers, keystone critters who are out there engineering these habitats that get used by trout and toads and mink and moose and otters and all kinds of critters, waterfowl, wading birds, you know, you name it.
And I mean, the context for that Instagram post was that I've got this trail cam set up at a beaver pond near my house right now, just, you know, seeing what those animals are up to.
And it was, it was awesome to see this, this mink just running around this beaver complex checking out their, their scent mound, you beavers mark their territory. And it was just so cool to see this other semi aquatic mammal taking advantage of this habitat that beavers had created.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:11:25.750 - 00:11:31.510
And I love how excited you. Your book Eager came out in 2019, I think a little while ago, right?
Ben Goldfarb
00:11:31.590 - 00:11:33.350
2018. 2018.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:11:33.350 - 00:11:39.510
Yeah. But you're still eager to talk about them. It's still your big topic.
Ben Goldfarb
00:11:39.590 - 00:12:14.450
I don't shut up about him. Yeah, exactly. But I do feel like they're kind of having a moment more now than ever here in Colorado, for example, Colorado Parks and Wildlife is.
They're in the process of revising their beaver management plan, hopefully to promote beaver restoration. California has this big new beaver program. New Mexico has a beaver program now. So all of these states are sort of in the process of boosting beavers.
So the opportunity to bang the beaver drum just never goes away.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:12:16.070 - 00:12:25.590
Banging the beaver drum. Beng Goldfarb. I love it. So what I mean, so when did your beaver obsession start how did beavers first become this thing?
Ben Goldfarb
00:12:25.670 - 00:13:56.080
They just came to me in a dream or something. I always, look, I always like beavers, right?
I think anybody who spends a lot of time hiking and camping and fishing especially, has been in and around the ponds and wetlands these animals create. And I'd seen plenty of beavers over the years and thought they were super neat.
But then, you know, in 2014, I had the chance to attend a beaver workshop that was happening just outside of Seattle where I was living at the time. And I was working as a correspondent for High Country News at that point, you know, looking for things to write about.
And a beaver workshop sounded like it could be a cool story. And so I went to this little, you know, day long beaver conference in a Marriott.
And it was just, you know, kind of an unlikely setting maybe to get radicalized about beavers.
But it was just one scientists after another, you know, getting up to say their piece about why beavers were so important for water storage and pollution filtration and fish habitat and wildfire mitigation and all of these fantastic ecosystem services and benefits that beavers provide.
So it was that, it was that little workshop that just, you know, that made me realize that beavers weren't just these cool, fun, interesting animals who I'd kind of grown up around.
They were actually, you know, one of the primary movers and shakers on North American landscapes and also this incredibly valuable ecological solution and for all kinds of reasons.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:13:56.640 - 00:14:06.160
Yeah, I just love how you still just light up about beavers all the time when you talk about them. It's a great passion to have. So can beavers, can beavers save humanity?
Ben Goldfarb
00:14:07.760 - 00:14:10.560
I think humanity has to save itself, Doug. I don't know.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:14:11.680 - 00:14:12.720
Good answer, good answer.
Ben Goldfarb
00:14:13.120 - 00:16:13.120
But I do think that beavers can help, obviously. I mean, look at, it starts with water, right? You know, we know that the west is getting hotter and drier. Obviously we're losing our snowpack.
I think here in the Arkansas basin where I live, I forget what the number is, but, you know, something like 60% of our historic average snowpack is what we're going into this season with, right? So just a really dire situation. And so we need some way of keeping water on the landscape, right?
If we're, you know, for, if we're losing this time released snowmelt that we're so reliant on for water in our rivers and streams and irrigation ditches and so on, you know, we need some way of keeping that water up in the high country. And hey, here's this rodent who builds thousands of little reservoirs for us. Right.
There's some great research by Sarah Marshall, who's an awesome beaver researcher and wetlands researcher with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program. And she basically developed this program where you can actually map beaver ponds on satellite imagery using machine lear.
The algorithm just figures out, you know, how many beaver ponds there are and where they are. And, you know, she's calculated that there's something like 80,000 beaver ponds in Colorado in an average year.
And each one of those is a little reservoir. Right. Again, you know, keeping water up in the mountains. And, you know, people have this idea, I think, that beaver ponds take water.
You know, they're stealing our water. You hear that sometimes from irrigators. But obviously, you know, a beaver pond is a permeable system. Right.
That water is, you know, running through the dam gradually. A lot of it's flowing underground. You know, beaver ponds are storing lots of groundwater.
And, you know, I've heard other people refer to beaver ponds as our second snowpack. Right. The idea that, like, you know, that that water melts up out of the mountains and then has to go somewhere.
And beavers are, you know, sort of the way of continuing to store that water up in the. Up in the high country.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:16:13.600 - 00:16:29.380
You know, I notice whenever you're up in the high country, especially after the snow's melted out, those ecosystems are in constant flux as well. Beyond the beavers. Right. There's nothing really permanent about those streams and the way everything melts up there. Right.
It's an ecosystem that's in constant flux.
Ben Goldfarb
00:16:30.260 - 00:17:26.670
Totally. Yeah. And that's kind of the awesome thing about beaver ponds, too, is that they're inherently cyclic. Right.
And beavers move in, they dam up a stream, they form this big pond. That pond is fantastic. Let's say juvenile cutthroat trout habitat.
And then over time, the pond silts in a little bit, and it becomes a little bit shallower and marshier around the edges. And, you know, the boreal toads move in and reproduce there. And then, you know, maybe the beavers move on.
And, you know, that pond turns into a lush, wet meadow. And now it's great, you know, deer and elk foraging. Right.
So, you know, these beaver ponds, like a lot of these upland systems, are inherently in states of flux, as you said. But at every state in that fluctuating cycle, you know, it's.
They're supporting a different suite of wildlife and providing different services, and I think that's cool to think about.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:17:27.950 - 00:17:38.310
They're kind of like the tide pools of the Alpine, right. In a way you can go there and see all sorts of different wildlife assembled in a beaver pond, right?
Ben Goldfarb
00:17:38.310 - 00:19:13.250
Yeah, I love that analogy. And there's this guy, Adam Burnett, who's the president of the Beaver Institute.
He compared them to the coral reefs of the alpine, which I thought that was a cool concept as well.
These places that just, yeah, as you say, like tide pools concentrate biodiversity and provide all of these different niches for all kinds of critters. And like, what's been.
One of the awesome things about, you know, beaver ponds is that you can't go visit one without seeing something weird or cool or surprising.
A couple years ago I was in Utah checking out some beaver ponds with, with Joe Wheaton, who's this great fluvial geomorphologist, you know, guy who studies how rivers work and how they're shaped basically. And he's one of the, you know, the world's foremost beaver exper.
So we were checking out these beaver ponds, we saw this sandhill crane walking along the crest of a beaver dam and we're like, wow, that's pretty cool. Never seen a sandhill in a beaver pond before.
And then we, you know, later we took some pictures and later looked more closely at the pictures and realized that that crane had actually built a nest and laid eggs atop the crest of a beaver dam, which is this little sort of, you know, predator proof strip, almost like a little island, you know, out in the middle of this pond. And that was. Right, that's like, that's like not a thing you'd see, you know, in a textbook necessarily.
I've never seen, you know, a peer reviewed scientific paper about sandhill cranes and beaver ponds. But you know, you go there and here's this, you know, incredible, unmistakable biological connection. Huh.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:19:13.250 - 00:19:25.870
So this become a thing, kind of like birding, where you can go beaver ponding, right. Is it worth. Do you have any advice for people who want to go observe?
You know, it sounds like a great, great activity, great thing to do, go observe beaver ponds, right?
Ben Goldfarb
00:19:25.870 - 00:21:06.650
Totally. Yeah. I'm embarrassed to say how much of my time I spend doing exactly that. It's my ridiculous nerd hobby. But yeah, no, I mean, it's awesome advice.
I'll say. Two pieces of advice. First, you gotta find these places, right? And fortunately, beaver ponds really are highly visible on satellite imagery.
So whenever I'm driving around Colorado and I'm like, hey, I want to see some beaver pond wherever I'm road tripping and I'll just, I'll just go on Google Earth, you Know, I'll find a stream and I'll just follow that stream up, looking for the classic signature of a beaver pond. Right.
You'll see a stream that's this little narrow string and then suddenly there's this, you know, linear dam that's perpendicular to the stream flow with a big, you know, bulbous pond behind it.
And often you'll see, you know, a bunch of those beaver ponds in quick succession because obviously a single beaver colony is, you know, often buil multiple dams and ponds. And so, yeah, you can, you know, you can very easily see these structures on satellite imagery.
And then, you know, you go scope them out and then, you know, the best time to go, of course, is, is dawn or dusk. Right. These animals are generally nocturnal, but they do often come out, you know, right around sunset.
So, yeah, go, go there in the evening and, you know, your chance of seeing a beaver is pretty good. But you'll, you know, you'll see something cool regardless. Right? Some kind of cool.
You know, if you're a birder, obviously, you know, wetlands are great birding habitats. I've seen a million moose at beaver ponds. Right. So just, yeah, you're going to see something cool regardless.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:21:06.810 - 00:21:18.490
In the time you've spent observing beavers and writing the book, what has kind of surprised you the most? Or what's been some really odd thing about them that you've learned that you didn't know before?
Ben Goldfarb
00:21:20.650 - 00:21:28.090
Yeah, I mean, it's funny, we often talk about we in the beaver community, which is bigger than you'd think.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:21:30.310 - 00:21:30.870
I'm sure it is.
Ben Goldfarb
00:21:30.870 - 00:22:43.630
Yeah, it is, man. Yeah. You know, we often talk about, like, how beavers modify the landscape and all of these ecosystem services they provide. Right.
So we talk a lot about what beavers do, but the animals themselves are just crazy critters, Right. You know, they're just so many wild, you know, evolutionary adaptations.
They have, I mean, they have a second set of eyelids, you know, transparent eyelids that act like goggles underwater.
They've got a second set of lips that they can close behind their front teeth so they can, you know, chew and drag branches underwater without drowning. I mean, the tail is just, you know, the kind of the iconic beaver feature. Right. And that's such a wild organ with so many functions.
You know, it's a fat storage device.
For example, beavers actually put on fat for the winter in their tails and the tail basically doubles in size, you know, as they pack that, that fat away. So, yeah, they're just, you know, incredible. It's incredible little engineers.
Ye, but also Incredible little evolutionary success stories who have been on the landscape in basically their modern form for something like 8 million years and they've really figured out how to make it work.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:22:43.790 - 00:22:51.190
And I did notice you said that there were what, 80,000 beaver ponds in Colorado, something like that.
Ben Goldfarb
00:22:51.190 - 00:22:59.830
Yeah, that's sort of the year over year average, I guess, as Sarah Marshall calculated using the Colorado Beaver Mapper.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:23:01.820 - 00:23:18.140
And is that close to, I mean, so, so would that be close to, or is it far away from, you know, pre white settlement? Is it, you know, what's it compared to 50 years ago or even 20 years ago? Is that number changed or has it stayed pretty regular?
Ben Goldfarb
00:23:18.780 - 00:23:22.500
Yeah, that's, that's a, that's a great question. You should have, you should have Sarah on the show.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:23:22.500 - 00:23:24.860
Sure, yeah. Yeah.
Ben Goldfarb
00:23:24.860 - 00:25:19.630
I mean, look, I would, I would say broadly, you know, we know that these animals are at a very small fraction of their historic populations. Right. You know, we don't know exactly how many beavers there are in North America.
Best guess is something like 10 to 15 million, which, you know, sounds like a lot. Right. They're not an endangered species. Obviously they're not going to go extinct anytime soon.
But, you know, then you start to wonder, how many beavers did we have? Right. And again, we don't know, but you know, the best estimates are several hundred million.
So, you know, we're at a very small fraction of our historic abundance. And I think that's especially true, you know, in, in the west in states like Colorado, you know, where. Yeah, it's, you know, it's Colorado.
It's a hard place for beavers to recolonize in a sense. Right.
If you, you know, if you get beavers up at the headwaters of, you know, some very steep mountain stream and they're up there in the meadow right at the top of that stream and those beavers get wiped out. You know, that's a, that's a hard place for beavers to colonized. Right.
You know, it could take them a very long time to, you know, get up a long, steep stream with not a lot of COVID from predators and so on. And so, you know, I mean, again, you know, how many beavers did we have historically? I don't, I don't know.
But, you know, I think it's, I think it's safe to say that, you know, we're at something like 5 to 10% of our historic population. That wouldn't, that wouldn't surprise me at all. And, you know, and then you think about all of the, you know, the Urban areas, right.
That, you know, historically had. Had beavers. I mean, yeah, there are some beavers in you, Cherry Creek in the South Platte, you know, on the Front Range.
But historically, I mean, you know, those, those sort of flatter, you know, plains, prairie streams would have been, you know, wall to wall beaver ponds. Right. And now we've got, you know, a colony or two. So yeah, we're at a very small fraction of our historic population.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:25:20.190 - 00:26:04.150
Well, I have to say my one beaver story is not probably the best story, but I was skiing in Sweden once and during apres, we were kind of tricked by this local Swedish guy to have a shot of something. And as soon as we downed it, he laughed at us. And he's like, that came out of a beaver's ass.
And it was actually a secretion, it was called beaver gall. And it was a secretion of the beaver's anal gland that he had us drink, which I learned is also used in new car smell or something like that.
But we were pretty horrified. How important is that, that gland to the beaver? And have you ever had experience here with beaver gall?
Ben Goldfarb
00:26:04.390 - 00:26:08.310
Well, let me just ask you, what did you think? Did you like it?
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:26:10.230 - 00:26:18.310
It's hard to say. It was pretty rough. It was pretty rough. We were pretty hungover already. But I don't think I'd choose to have it again. I'd put it that way.
Ben Goldfarb
00:26:18.790 - 00:28:36.100
Yeah, that's fair.
Well, here's my drinking beaver secretion story, which is that a few years ago I was in northern Minnesota with this guy Steve, a beaver biologist in Voyagers National Park. And Steve gave me a bottle of what he called, you know, beaver Hoyt, which is, I think, the same idea, basically.
Like beaver schnapps, you know, with some castoreum, you know, one of their secretions in, you know, in vodka, basically. And you know, one of the, I mean, not to get too deep into the beaver weeds, right? But beavers, you know, beavers actually have.
They sort of secrete two different substances, kind of this anal gland secretion and then their castoreum. And the castoreum is, that's the substance that got used in vanilla ice cream flavoring and fruit sodas and is still used in perfume today.
That's kind of like a, you know, like a vanilla leathery scent. It's actually like, it's not the worst scent in the world.
But, you know, the anal secretions are mostly what they use to mark their territories and kind of send, you know, complicated messages to other beavers. They're really pretty sophisticated. Olfactory animals who can, you know, very easily tell unrelated animals apart from, you know, their relatives.
So, anyway, so Steve gave me this bottle of beaver schnapps, which I brought back. Which I brought back home with me, and I took a couple shots with him. And it was, you know, it was pretty disgusting.
I thought, I definitely like you. I wouldn't seek it out, but. But.
So one fun fact about beavers, and this is, you know, we're kind of getting far afield here, but it'll come back around. So beavers, you know, male and female beavers, are visually indistinguishable. You can't look at a beaver and know its sex.
You know, the males have internal sex organs. So the only way to, you know, to kind of sex a beaver to know whether it's male or female quickly is to actually smell its anal secretions.
If they smell like motor oil, they're male beavers. And if they smell like kind of like an old French cheese, they're a female beaver. Just sort of like very gendered, but.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:28:36.420 - 00:28:40.100
Very gender roles there. Yeah, that's classic gender roles. Yeah.
Ben Goldfarb
00:28:40.580 - 00:29:22.080
So anyway, so, you know, over time, and you really do get the scent, you know, once you know what you're smelling, you know, you really can smell it, you know, even like around the pond where they're marking their territory.
So anyway, so I brought this bottle of you beaver schnapps home with me, and I invited my friend Joe, who's also a beaver biologist, over, and I gave Joe a shot of this beaver vodka. I said, okay, what sex beaver did this come from? He's like, oh, this is definitely, definitely a male beaver.
So I texted Steve, who gave me the bottle and was like, hey, what was the sex of that beaver that you put in your schnapps? He's like, ah, that was a male beaver. So there you go.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:29:24.840 - 00:29:27.800
That is very good work on the bouquet there, I guess.
Ben Goldfarb
00:29:29.080 - 00:29:34.280
Yeah. Notes of willow and aspen, I guess.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:29:35.720 - 00:30:00.740
Well, looking at this beaver, I mean, I think we've had fun talking about beavers and looking at this beaver book and within your other work for various magazines and outlets and your most recent. Book, Crossings, which deals with road systems.
You know, how does this. How does the beaver book. How do the road book. How do they all work together in your general philosophy or scene of the world?
Ben Goldfarb
00:30:01.460 - 00:30:02.420
My oeuvre.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:30:03.060 - 00:30:05.620
Yeah, I think gestalt. Your gestalt.
Ben Goldfarb
00:30:05.780 - 00:31:18.020
Right, right. Yeah.
I think that what both of my books kind of cohere around and a lot of my magazine work as well is just the Idea of coexistence between humans and non humans.
Humans are obviously, you know, dominant planetary force whose infrastructure and modifications of the landscape have been, you know, profoundly detrimental to the vast majority of species on earth.
And, you know, I feel like the kind of the project of my writing and my career is, you know, is thinking about ways of coexistence with nature and with wildlife and you know, and also sort of promoting. Yeah, you know, promoting those people and places and projects where that coexistence is being actualized.
You know, I feel like my work often diagnoses ecological problems, but I also try to be pretty solutions oriented. And that was, you know, one of the things that drew me to beavers was, you know, hey, here's this.
We're so awash in kind of catastrophic environmental news. Understandably. There's so much catastrophic shit happening. Can I say that on the podcast? I think so.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:31:18.020 - 00:31:21.100
Oh yeah, we drop. Yeah, I'm from New Jersey. We drop a lot of F bombs.
Ben Goldfarb
00:31:21.100 - 00:31:47.000
It's fine. Awesome. So, you know, I mean, to me, you know, the beavers are one of the ultimate ecological success stories, right?
Here's this, you know, this incredible, you know, multi talented rodent who can help us address so many environmental problems if we just, you know, learn to live with them. And I think those sorts of coexistence solutions oriented stories are what I'm often looking for in my writing.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:31:48.040 - 00:32:09.130
Well, and, you know, how important do you think it is for ecosystems, you know, like the beavers create, to be allowed to develop up on their own accord without any human influence? As you said, we're modifying whereas getting in on stuff.
How important is it to allow a lot of these native ecosystems to continue to develop of their own existence?
Ben Goldfarb
00:32:10.250 - 00:35:43.290
Yeah, I mean, I think it's obviously profoundly important.
I think that's one of the, I don't know, to me, one of the takeaways from this book and from, from learning a lot about stream restoration practice in the course of writing Eager is that, you know, I think that we, I mean, this is. And this gets to, you know, kind of the famous idea of shifting baseline syndrome, right?
The idea that, you know, we don't really know what landscapes were like hundreds of years ago. We don't know what wildlife populations were like because we inherited this kind of degraded present.
And I mean, of course, you know, indigenous people have, you know, have this deep cultural memory of the landscape. But, you know, us white folks, right, you know, we weren't here.
And so, you know, in the world of stream restoration, right, I think that we have this idea that, you know, a healthy functional stream is basically this, you know, free flowing, fast moving, kind of sinuous single thread sine wave, you know, running across the landscape, right?
You know, the kind of place that you'd like see in a, you know, field and stream or you know, an Orvis catalog or something and you know, where is it? Whereas in reality, reality, you know, so many of these aquatic ecosystems were actually heavily beaver modified, right?
And instead of the classic free flowing stream, you know, there would have been dams and ponds and wetlands everywhere with dead and dying trees all over the place. And the bottom is kind of like silty and mucky and you might, you know, lose a boot in there.
And if you tried to, you know, catch a fish, you'd probably get your, you know, fly hung up in the willows, right? I mean, like often you go to these beaver headwater and like you don't even really see the stream channel.
You know, you'd say like, where is the stream here? I don't know, it's just kind of like ponds everywhere.
And so, you know, and so I think that we don't, you know, we don't have this notion of a healthy stream as being a beaver system. But so many of these aquatic ecosystems were beaver systems, right?
And so, you know, if we try to restore these ecosystems using our own limited human knowledge, you know, we're probably going to get it wrong or we're at least at risk of getting it wrong because again, we don't really know what these systems look like historically.
But you know, here's this rodent who has this 8 million year, you know, sort of historic evolutionary memory of how to modify the landscape and does it all instinctively, you know, so much better than we do.
And so, you know, in that sense I think that, yeah, you know, one of the keys to, to aquatic restoration is basically, you know, getting out of the way and just doing what we can to facilitate beaver activity. And that, you know, requires this, I think, profound change of mindset, right?
I mean we, you know, we, we, we have this, this hubris as humans, you know, like we are the dominant species. We know how to, you know, we know how these systems work. We can fix it. You know, it's like a very Trumpian actually in that way, right?
Like the world is broken and I alone can fix it. Whereas working with beavers, I think requires this mindset of humility toward nature.
We're going to get out of the way and actually let this other species take over restoration for us. And that's again, a very different mentality, but I think a really important one.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:35:43.450 - 00:36:20.390
Yeah, I mean, we want to do everything so fast. I know you were a finalist for the EO Wilson Award and I'm a big EO Wilson fan and he talks a lot about, about this.
How are, you know, how these natural modifications are sort of normal for any species to do on the planet, but we all of a sudden have the ability to change freaking everything within, you know, a couple years or less. Right. And what's the big danger of that, of the artificial? Right.
That we're so good at the artificial, you know, artificial selection in some ways, but instead of taking 8 million years to, to do something, we're trying to do it in a year or two.
Ben Goldfarb
00:36:20.470 - 00:38:14.000
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I think that's, yeah, that's a great point as well. It's just like the, you know, the importance of patience too, in these systems.
And I think that's, you know, that's one of the issues with the inherent cyclicity of beavers is, you know, like people will look at, you know, a place where beavers come back, they do their thing for a few years and they move on.
And, and it's like, crap, you know, we didn't achieve our goal because we, you know, we want these systems to kind of like be fixed and permanent and, you know, and functional again. But, you know, inviting that dynamism, that cyclicity to return to ecosystems is, you know, I think really important.
I mean, that's like, you know, a lot of the beaver restoration work that happens, you know, happens under the banner of, you know, it's called process based restoration, which is, you know, this idea that, look, streams and rivers are, they're about their processes in a sense. Right. Like, what does a stream do? It overflows its banks and spills onto the floodplain.
It transports sediment, it erodes, you know, it's shaped by its, you know, its willows and cottonwoods. And so on. Right. So streams are just this kind of bundle of processes in a sense, rather than, than a fixed landform.
And beavers are one of the primary entities that catalyzes those processes. And so if we're going to let streams be functional, we have to let them fulfill all of their processes.
We can't just lock them within their banks and turn them into irrigation ditches as we tend to in the west. We have to let them do their thing. And inviting beavers back onto the landscape is one of the ways we accomplish that.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:38:14.320 - 00:38:55.740
Let's move on to your next, your Latest book and talk about roads and roadless areas. Right.
And instead of talking about the order that beavers kind of put on the world, the molding they do, talk about the order that humans do within the past, what, hundred years, really? I mean, when it comes down to it for automobiles.
And I think a big thing we're all facing now and worried about is that the Trump administration is poised to roll back the roadless rule, which will allow for road building, logging, other extractive uses on 58 million acres of land that's otherwise unprotected. This sucks, right?
Ben Goldfarb
00:38:57.660 - 00:39:02.020
Yeah, it does. Why should I say more about why it sucks?
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:39:02.020 - 00:39:09.060
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you should, yeah. Why does it. So, I mean, what are some of the deeper reasons why it sucks? You know, why?
Ben Goldfarb
00:39:09.060 - 00:42:03.580
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, I mean, let's start with importance of roadless areas and you know, the kind of the degradation that roads create.
I mean, if, you know, there's, there have been so many studies across so many species, and then I'll just, you know, name a few grizzly bears, wolves, lynx, wolverines, even bull trout, you know, aquatic species, basically finding that, you know, the, the single most important determinant of habitat quality is a lack of roads. Right? When roads go in, when degradation of habitat and wildlife almost inevitably follows. And that's for a bunch of different reasons.
You get sedimentation with roads, for example, all of those dirt forest service logging roads out in the middle of nowhere are just sort of hemorrhaging silt into streams after every rainstorm or snow melt event. Which is why you see bull trout or cutthroat trout being really harmed by roads. But the biggest thing is that roads mean people.
Roads go in and of course, you know, motorized access inevitably follows and you know, for sort of shy human averse species like grizzlies or lynx or wolverines, I mean, even elk, you know, which we think of as being, you know, relatively human tolerant.
But you know, in many cases, you know, recognize that roads are, you know, these huge disturbances, you know, people go in and you know, that habitat quality inevitably degrades, you know, conflicts with carnivores like bears inevitably increase. You know, you've got the noise pollution associated with roads, you've got obviously roadkill, you know, direct mortality from, from cars.
And so, yeah, again, you know, I mean, whatever, whatever kind of rare declining species you're concerned about, you know, roads are a serious threat to it.
And so preserving these roadless areas, you know, ends up being unbelievably important for, you know, for conservation and you Know, and obviously by rescinding the roadless rule and opening around 60 million acres of national forest land to roading, you know, it's going to be a huge issue for conservation unquestionably, and one that I think has gotten certainly some attention. But you know, there are so many threats. Right.
You know, I think that like the outdoor recreation community and the conservation community has been, you know, so focused understandably on, you know, on the potential sell off of public lands, you know, through the big beautiful bill that, you know, the recension of the roadless rule has I think comparatively flown under the radar.
But, you know, I would call that, you know, an equally large, if not more significant threat, if not to recreation, then, you know, certainly to conservation.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:42:04.220 - 00:42:14.500
Yeah. And I think they're, what they're trying to argue is that we need the roads to fight wildfires, which is patently false.
I think when it comes down to it. I mean.
Ben Goldfarb
00:42:15.140 - 00:43:10.530
Oh man. I mean that's, that's, that's the, that's the most fallacious argument in my mind.
I mean, there's, you know, there have been so many, so many studies basically indicating that, you know, roads are obviously a huge fire ignition risk. Right. I mean, why do fires start?
Well, you know, generally for anthropogenic reasons, you know, people leaving their campfires untended or, you know, sparks coming off a flat tire. That's how a big fire, a few big fires in California have started.
So, you know, where people go, you know, fire ignitions tend to be exacerbated and obviously again, roads, you know, inject people into, into the, into the backcountry.
And so, you know, the notion that you're going to, you know, fight fires or reduce fires by increasing road access is just, I mean, to me that's, you know, patently false and contradicts a huge amount of research. Research.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:43:11.090 - 00:43:32.130
And then there's the fact that building roads cost money. Right? It's expensive to build roads and we, it's expensive to maintain roads and we've got so many roads as it is. Right. Already.
I mean, what's the furthest, the furthest we can get away from a road in the lower 38? I think it's the thoroughfare in Yellowstone. It's like 30 miles away from the road is the furthest in a massive national park.
Ben Goldfarb
00:43:32.130 - 00:45:11.550
Right.
So yeah, I mean, you know, and that's, that's, that's the other absurd thing about this is that, you know, they're, they're rescinding the roadless rule and kicking off this period of new road construction, theoretically, at the same time that they're just completely gutting the forest surface. Right. So, you know, so where is the, I mean, where is the money to maintain these roads going to come from? You know, who the. Who the hell knows?
I mean, that's, I mean, you know, you think about the origins of the roadless rule, and this is like, you know, a conversation that I had with Mike Dombeck, who is the chief of the Farm Service at the time that the roadless rule was implemented under, under Bill Clinton. I mean, you know, yeah, it was, it was certainly partly for conservation reasons, but it was largely a maintenance issue. Right.
I mean, you know, Mike basically felt like, look, you know, we have this multi billion dollar maintenance backlog in the late 1990s, you know, and we have something like 400,000 miles of road. You know, we can't afford to maintain the roads we already have. Why would we go building thousands of miles of new ones?
And, you know, if anything, the situation is worse today. Right? The maintenance backlog is bigger. The fire issue is bigger. Right.
So the fire service is even more cash strapped now in the age of mega fires than it was in the 1990s.
And so, you know, setting aside all of the conservation implications here, it's just, you know, it's just to me, to me, it seems preposterous to kick off this wave of new infrastructure construction when the infrastructure you already have is, you know, basically go in a hell in a hand basket in many cases. Yeah.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:45:11.550 - 00:45:31.950
I mean, what, what is the motivation on the other side?
It's sometimes to me, it seems, you know, I've done environmental work before, and it seems like it's almost just pure spite, pure bitterness that just put a road into someplace, you know, to, to stick it to the environmentalists or something like that. Right. I mean, what, why, why are we putting roads in.
Ben Goldfarb
00:45:32.350 - 00:47:11.320
Yeah, it's a, you know, it's a, It's a, a. It's a great question, Doug. I mean, I think that, I think that there were. I think there are two answers.
I think that, you know, one answer is just naked commercial interest, right.
That, you know, that it's a timber industry giveaway, you know, building, building new roads to facilitate logging under the guise of forest management. So I think that's, you know, I think there's.
There's the kind of the crass commercial reason, and then I think that there's the kind of the philosophical reason that you're alluding to, which is that, you know, I think there are Lots of folks out there who view the idea of roadlessness as kind of anathema, you know, that, like, these are lands, you know, for. Intended for human recreation.
And, you know, the idea of, like, designating areas as off limits to motorized recreation is just kind of fundamentally un American, I think, in some people's minds. And I think that building roads, there's a deep kind of philosophical component.
Roads are how we indicate that humans govern and manage the landscape and that it's under our dominion in a sense. So I think that that's where the road building desire comes from to some extent. And. Yeah, yeah.
So it's this kind of complicated mix of capitalistic and almost spiritual motivations, I think.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:47:11.720 - 00:47:44.520
Yeah. I think when you look at conservation, especially in the US there's these two sides, right?
The side to harness nature and the side to kind of protect nature that we are obviously on. But it seems that there was some point when the switch really flipped, right?
That there was a time, pioneers or whatever, when you really were fighting against nature, right? And then it's there all of a sudden, very quickly, I think, as E.O. wilson points out, right.
We hit a point where we had the dominion, you know, we have dominion now. We could do whatever we want, right?
Ben Goldfarb
00:47:44.680 - 00:47:45.440
When did that.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:47:45.440 - 00:47:51.000
When did that switch flip, do you think? Was it with cars? Was it with automobile roads?
Ben Goldfarb
00:47:52.040 - 00:50:58.750
That's a. It's a good question.
I mean, I think that, you know, maybe I'm dodging it a little bit, but you, you know, look, I think that, you know, an important point to remember, right, Is that, you know, we, like, we, as you say, we already, we do have dominion, you know. And I mean, I think about, you know, one of the things about the Forest Services road network is that it's incredibly redundant, right?
You know, like, there are national forests out there in Idaho and Montana that have higher road densities than New York York City, literally, right. That you can, you know, you can basically drive anywhere you want, you know, in a lot of these forests. And we do.
And I, you know, and, you know, I often feel like a hypocrite complaining about roads because I also love roads, right? I mean, they're, you know, they're those. All those old forest roads are how I get to, you know, trailheads and, you know, a lot of alpine lakes.
I love to fish and, you know, fire towers that my wife and I have camped in. Right. You know, I mean, anybody who, you know, who loves recreating in the west, you know, has driven these public land roads all over the place.
And if you've driven in any national forest, again, you know that there are lots of roads out there already, you know, and I mean, like, the Forest Service itself did this great study a number of years ago, and I forget exactly the statistics, but the, you know, the gist was, you know, they could essentially decommission. Right.
Obliterate a really significant proportion of their road network without reducing access in the slightest because there are just, you know, roads going to everything everywhere already. And so, you know, in that sense. Sense. I mean, I think we already do have dominion. We don't need more roads to further exert it.
And, you know, and we've had dominion. You know, I mean, I think, you know. Yeah, it's a good question. When would you date that, you know, that as occurring?
I mean, you know, I would really put it, you know, in sort of like the years immediately after World War II. You know, I mean, certainly there was plenty of. Of road building in the early 1900s.
One of the major boosters of the National Park Service was the American Automobile association, because AAA wanted to give people places to drive, and parks were one of those places. So roads and conservation have always been kind of inextricable.
But you get to that post World War II era and there's this huge explosion of home building, of construction, of, you know, there's, like, the suburbs are springing up all over the place. And, you know, a lot of that. A lot of that construction is basically fueled by, you know, the cutting of forests on public lands.
And so, you know, in the 50s, I think, is, you know, is really when you see this true explosion of logging road construction in national forests. And, you know, I think that's when we kind of go from.
From the forests still being these relatively remote, inaccessible places to being places that you could, in many forests, drive to every inch of.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:50:59.390 - 00:51:08.990
Do you think we're. Do you think there's no hope for these 60 million acres? Do you think it's over for them?
Do we have any chance of protecting them, saving them, stopping this from happening?
Ben Goldfarb
00:51:09.790 - 00:54:04.750
Yeah, look, I mean, I think that first of all, there's, you know, there's this commercial consideration, right? I mean, you know, and this is a better question for somebody who really, you know, knows the. The economics of the.
The logging industry, you know, intimately.
But I mean, a lot of the reason that, you know, these roadless areas were roadless to begin with is because they didn't have, you know, incredible timber values, right? Yes, there are certainly places like the Tongass, you know, in. In Southeast Alaska, where there's, you know, lots of incredible. Tim.
Incredibly valuable timber that's protected by roadlessness and you know, roading the Tongass would be a, you know, an ecological catastrophe.
But there are also plenty of places where, you know, they're roadless because it's just a lot of, you know, spindly little dog hair trees that, you know, that the timber industry never wanted in the first place. Right.
And so, you know, just because you open up areas to road building and logging doesn't inherently mean that, you know, that, that timber industry or timber doesn't inherently mean the timber companies are going to want to log in those places.
But you know, if you also provide a bunch of, you know, quote unquote fire mitigation incentives, you know, maybe you make some of that, some of that, that stuff more valuable.
So just, that's just to say that, you know, this is not a fait accompli necessarily that, you know, just because places become eligible for road construction doesn't mean that it happens. But, you know, that's not to minimize or, you know, or kind of wash away the threat.
I mean, certainly, you know, we need, you know, the same conservation organizations and you know, and recreationists who, you know, spoke up for not selling off public lands to speak up for this issue as well. Because again, I mean, I think, you know, I think it activates a lot of the same sensibilities or sympathies.
You know, I mean, I mean, of course hunters were so, so important in, you know, in getting Mike Lee to kind of walk back some of his, his public land sell off plans. Not that, you know, he's, he's completely rolled them back, obviously not even close.
But you know, if you're, I mean, if you're, you know, an elk hunter, you know, don't you want elk to have, you know, secure habitat up there in the, the mountains? I think you probably do.
And you know, there's again, lots of, I mean there's like there was in the book I talk about this, you know, really interesting research in eastern Oregon that basically found that, you know, elk came to associate roads in national forests with danger. And so they all ended up moving to private land where hunters couldn't access them at all. Right.
And so, you know, so in that sense, I mean, you know, I think if you're, you know, if you're a hunter, you have this vested interest in the preservation of roadless areas, you know, is anybody else else does.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:54:05.150 - 00:54:52.630
You know, Ben, I'm so impressed with your resume, all the work you've done for so many magazines and your books that go into these patterns in ways people may not first look at the world. And I think you and I can sit here and talk about conservation and agree and talk to other like minded people and we all agree.
But the really important question, and I ask you this as a really great communicator, is how do we, we, you know, how do we get other people who may be on the fence or maybe even opposed to us, how do we get them to really appreciate conservation and not see environmentalists as a dirty word and not see this as a, you know, crazy against humanity thing that we're doing? How do we best communicate a world that can be ecologically stable?
Ben Goldfarb
00:54:53.190 - 00:58:38.620
Yeah, that's a cheese. That's a good, that's a good question, Doug.
And I think if we, you know, if we, if we knew the answer, we'd probably, probably be better off right now. I'll give two answers. I think that first of all, being able to make the economic arguments are certainly powerful and important.
It's a big reason that beavers are so in the zeitgeist is that beavers are again, these providers of ecosystem services that lots of farmers and ranchers and water managers have come to recognize are pretty valuable creatures, critters, you know, and that we all have an interest in conserving.
I mean, again, you know, returning to the kind of the incredible coalition of public lands advocates who have kind of made their voices heard recently. And I think a lot of that is about, you know, is about self interest, right?
I mean, yes, certainly some of it is, you know, about wildlife conservation and you know, sort of these broader spiritual concerns. But you know, I think a lot of it is like, hey, you know, these are valuable lands.
You know, they're kind of incredible economic drivers and privatizing them to build a few houses on is actually not as significant as keeping them open to recreation economically. And I think that's certainly part of why you see politicians in, for example, Wyoming being opposed to public land sell off. Right?
So just finding those issues and arguments that I think activate people's self interest, unfortunately, I think that's powerful. But you know, I also think that, you know, look, it was funny.
I remember seeing Bill McKibben, the, you know, great climate activist and writer, give a talk, you know, years ago and you know, Bill said something like, you know, people are always saying to him, you know, how do you avoid just preaching to the choir, right? And you know, and Bill actually said, you know what? I think there's A lot of value you. In getting the choir to sing louder.
You know, I thought that was a beautiful way of stating it, right, that, you know, that.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think there, I think that there are so many people out there who are predisposed to care about wildlife and conservation and public lands. I actually think those are, you know, those tend to be pretty bipartisan issues.
You know, it's why you see, for example, example, you know, lots of politicians in Wyoming supporting not only public lands protection, but, you know, the construction of wildlife crossings, you know, so that elk and deer and antelope can, you know, navigate the landscape safely, is a lot of what I read about in my most recent book.
You know, so I think that, you know, wildlife conservation tends to be pretty nonpartisan, but I also think it's kind of like a low salience issue for a lot of people. Right? Like, yeah, we care about wildlife, but, you know, we're not necessarily going to, you know, march in front of the, the Capitol for it. Right.
You know, you don't, you don't really, you know, like, you don't see questions about conservation being asked on, on debate stages, you know, and so, you know, how do we, how do we elevate this issue in, you know, in the minds of politicians and the public? And, you know, I think, I think that's, you know, I think that's where, yeah, that's, that's where I try to do a lot of work.
Honestly, it's like, okay, how do we, how do we make these issues more salient to people?
How do we get people who are predisposed to care about conservation, you know, make it an issue that just ranks more highly for them and an issue that they're going to, you know, pick up the phone and call somebody about.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:58:38.860 - 00:58:54.830
Yeah.
And this most recent, this public lands, the battle to stop selling off public lands, the most amazing thing to me has been I have never seen any issue unite the left and the right so much or kind of unite people, no matter what their political background was.
Ben Goldfarb
00:58:55.140 - 00:58:55.380
Right.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:58:55.460 - 00:58:58.580
Nothing. That never happens in American politics. And we just saw it happen.
Ben Goldfarb
00:58:58.660 - 00:59:02.660
Right? Yeah, Pretty extraordinary, for sure.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:59:04.020 - 00:59:33.630
And one last thing I wanted to get into with you, it kind of came up when I first met you, as you said, was at the Robert McFarland event that you facilitated. And his book Is a River Alive.
And I think it brings up this really interesting question that I hear some politicians even here in Boulder and in some other places bringing up. And that's the idea, does water and land and wildlife do they have a right to exist on their own?
Ben Goldfarb
00:59:34.190 - 00:59:35.710
Yeah. Are you asking me?
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:59:36.590 - 00:59:37.950
I am asking you, yes.
Ben Goldfarb
00:59:38.670 - 01:01:56.170
Yeah. I mean, of course I am inclined to feel that way, and I think that Rob makes a really powerful case for that in his book. Book.
And, you know, look, I think that there, you know, there are some interesting. One of the interesting things about Rob's book is a River Alive?
And, you know, I really encourage everybody to read it because it's a wonderful, powerful book, but it's like, it's a hard case to articulate, in a sense. Right. And, you know, I think that there.
I think that you read that book, and Rob is obviously clearly a big believer in the idea that rivers and other natural features and wildlife have inherited inherent rights and are alive. But it's, you know, it's a difficult case to articulate, in a sense.
You know, I think that, like, you look at a river, this, you know, trickling, moving, vocal being, in a sense, and, you know, of course it's alive, but, you know, for reasons that are kind of hard to. Hard to articulate. I mean, I think that, you know, one of the.
One of the things that I always get to when I think about this question is just like the incredible geologic and evolutionary age of nature, like the fact that obviously these rivers have in many cases been on the landscape for millions of years, that the rocks that underlie them have in some cases been on the landscape for billions of years, that beavers and wolves and bears and all of these critters just so far precede us, you know, on. On the. On the landscape. And, you know, to. To kind of heedlessly vandalize them is, you know, in a sense, I think this.
Just this great injustice towards their. Their ancientness, you know, and that's. That's.
That evolutionary and geologic age is something that, you know, I think we should have more veneration for and more. More respect for. And, you know, like, that's like. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know, Doug. I mean, how would you answer that question?
I'm clearly stumbling around it.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:01:56.170 - 01:02:24.450
Yeah. I mean, I think there's an important moral right, isn't there? There's a.
There's a moral reason to preserve these places beyond the utilitarian one, as you said. The utilitarian. You know, recreation, economics. That's. That's great. That's a great argument. It's a winning argument. Right. But.
But doesn't there need to be some deep, deeper, moral, ethical reason that we think these places should survive and Have a right. I mean, I think so. I know you do too.
Ben Goldfarb
01:02:26.610 - 01:03:56.500
I do, yeah, of course I do.
I mean, I, you know, I think I like, I return to the idea of a river as a kind of a bundle of processes that, as we were talking about earlier, that, you know, beavers help facilitate and that salmon help facilitate and that, you know, cottonwoods are involved in. Right.
And, you know, I find something so beautiful about that, about, you know, the idea of sort of natural landforms like rivers or mountains or prairies being this incredible collaboration between, you know, the landscape itself and the organisms who inhabit it. And that's this, you know, just incredibly beautiful set of relationships.
And that's what Rob talked about, you know, during our event as well, is the idea of relationality being one of the things that, you know, makes. Makes rivers inherently alive.
And, you know, I think, I think that to sever or shatter those relationships is a crime against nature and it's a crime against humans as well.
I think about, of course, all of the generations who are going to follow us and the idea that they may not be able to have the same ecological experiences that we can have, just as we can't have the same experiences that our parents and grandparents. Parents had. I think there's, you know, something profoundly tragic about that.
And, and I think that, you know, that when we kind of vandalize nature, we also. We also do a grave injustice to, you know, to. To our. Our own species future.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:03:57.060 - 01:04:02.540
Well, I know you mentioned that everyone should read the McFarlane book, but I think everyone should read your books as well, my man.
Ben Goldfarb
01:04:02.540 - 01:04:03.180
Thanks, Doug.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:04:03.180 - 01:04:34.730
Yeah, the first Being Eager, the Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and why they Matter, which is a book you're still obviously really passionate about. We talked a lot about beavers and I think really important for people to learn more about.
And then your 2023 book, How Rhodecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet. Extremely important in this moment right now when we're looking at the roadless rule and not being rescinded.
Well, where's the best place for people to find your books, the best way for them to get in contact with you? Learn more about what you're working on on anything like that.
Ben Goldfarb
01:04:35.130 - 01:04:48.170
Yeah, my website is just BenGoldFarb.com and I'm on all of the social media platforms. And yeah, of course, I always love when people pick up my books at their local independent bookstore. So thanks for doing that.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:04:48.570 - 01:04:58.250
Fantastic. Yeah.
And then finally, and I'm excited to hear your answer to this question, the final question we give everyone on open container is simply what gives you hope.
Ben Goldfarb
01:05:00.500 - 01:05:03.700
Man. I mean, would it be a cliche to say beavers at this point?
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:05:05.060 - 01:05:06.220
No, that's not a cliche.
Ben Goldfarb
01:05:06.220 - 01:06:13.140
No, I'm actually not going to say beavers. I'm going to say because I'm in the fish migration space right now, so I'm looking forward to my next or my current project.
I mean, I'm going to say dam removal.
And one chapter of this book is about the Klamath Dam removal where four dams were obliterated last year and thousands of salmon have already gotten past those histories dam sites. So, you know, that fish population is already incredibly rapidly recovering, which is, you know, incredible to see.
You know, just a month or two ago, I was, I was in Massachusetts writing about, you know, the removal of much smaller old mill dams.
And, you know, I was on a creek in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where, you know, a few small dams had come out a few years ago, and now there are a quarter million river herring, you know, migrating up this, this little stream.
So just the, you know, the amazing resilience of fish when we get out of their way and to let them do their thing is one of the things that gives me hope.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:06:13.860 - 01:06:23.220
That's incredible. Well, you give me hope. Your books give me hope. And it was such a pleasure to have you on the show.
I think we're gonna have to have you back on again sometime. Thank you so much, Ben.
Ben Goldfarb
01:06:23.540 - 01:06:25.060
Thanks a lot, Doug. Appreciate it.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:06:26.340 - 01:06:54.040
Thanks for imbibing Open Container, a production of Rockfight llc.
Please take a second to follow our show and whatever podcast app you're listening to us on and send your emails and feedback to myrockfightmail.com learn more about BenGoldFarb at BenGoldFarb.com and find his books at your local independent bookseller. Our producers today were David Karstad and Colin True. Art direction provided by Sarah Genser. I'm Doug Schnitzbahn. Get some. Thanks for listening.
