Science Friday - Plastics And Ocean Life, Building An Animal Crossing, Indigenous Restoration. April 22, 2022, Part 2

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

Building The World’s Largest Animal Crossing Outside of LA There’s a spot on Highway 101 in Agoura Hills, it’s pretty inconspicuous. There’s brown and green rolling hills on either side of the highway. Homes are sprinkled here and there. And then a small metal gate that leads off on a hiking trail. You probably wouldn’t know it, but soon this spot will be the location of the world’s largest animal crossing. This crossing will reconnect habitats that have been cut off from each other for three quarters of a century and it’ll do it over a highway that is constantly buzzing with cars — 300,000 pass by this spot every single day. In this piece we’re going on a geography voyage — from the north side of the highway to the south, and up the hills, above the highway, to get the real view. We’ll start here — there’s a big open space on the northern side of the highway. It’s at the entrance to Liberty Canyon and where I meet Beth Pratt. “You have oak trees, a little creek area here. And we’re listening to, actually, an Anna’s hummingbird giving a little song for us that is actually resonating even over that, that noise of traffic,” Pratt said. She is the California Regional Director for the National Wildlife Federation. “For me what’s kind of remarkable, but also sad. It’s the last sixteen hundred feet of protected space on both sides of the freeway,” said Pratt. Read the rest on sciencefriday.com.   Life Has Found A Way On The Great Pacific Garbage Patch The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a huge collection of trash floating in the North Pacific Ocean. It’s made up mostly of plastic—things like water bottles, shoes, and fishing gear, but also a large amount of microplastics, tiny bits of broken-down plastic that can be invisible to the naked eye. A giant, swirling patch of trash seems bad. But recent research has revealed a complicating factor: Marine life has colonized the garbage patch, making the floating plastic their new homes. As the classic Jurassic Park quote goes, “Life finds a way.” Joining Ira to talk about life on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is Linsey Haram, AAAS fellow at the U.S. Department of Agriculture based in Alexandria, Virginia. Her research on the Garbage Patch was done for the Smithsonian.   Enzymes Are Taking On Our Plastic Problem Flip over a plastic water bottle, or a takeout container, and it’s very likely you’ll find the number “1” stamped on the bottom. This is the sign of the problematic plastic PET, which is a large source for plastic pollution. It’s estimated that only a third or less of this type of plastic is recycled into something new. Scientists are getting creative in trying to outsmart plastics that don’t want to be recycled. Some are looking into enzymes that can break down plastic into its more basic molecular building blocks. The idea is that these smaller molecules are easier to turn into new things, making upcycling an easier task. Joining Ira to talk about the frontier of enzymes as recycling powerhouses is Jennifer DuBois, professor of chemistry at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana.   Indigenous Knowledge Is Central To Climate Solutions As the United States observes Earth Day this year, many will be thinking about their personal relationship with—and responsibility to—the planet. But in an era of multiple planetary crises, including extinctions, global warming, and contaminated water, what about the Indigenous peoples whose millennia-old relationship with their land has been disrupted and sometimes severed by colonialism and other displacements? Indigenous environmental scientist and author Jessica Hernandez talks to Ira about the harms the Western science has perpetuated against colonized people, as white environmentalists created national parks on Indigenous lands and “helicopter scientists” continue to do research in the global south while using the wealth of Western institutions. And she explains why greater recognition of Indigenous science, and partnerships that center Indigenous peoples and their research questions, is good for the entire planet.   Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.     Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Irafledo. And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. St. Louis Public Radio. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. Southern California, including Los Angeles, is home to a diverse ecosystem, from big predators like mountain lions and coyotes to little lizards and mice. So many creatures call this area home. Unfortunately for them, so does. The 101. a busy multi-lane highway that roans up and down the west coast.

How can we make room for everybody? Well, engineers, conservationists, and animal enthusiasts have come together to break ground on a massive project they hope will make life a little easier for the species that live in the area. A giant animal crossing, a grassy path from one side of the freeway to the other. For the animals, of course, not the people. Work starts on this massive project today, and just, joining me to talk about the Animal Crossing of SoCal is my guest. Michelle Lockstone is podcast host and producer for a KCLU public radio in Thousand Oaks, California.

She reports the story for a KCLU's podcast, The 101. Welcome to Science Friday, Michelle. Thank you, Ira. Okay, for those of us who aren't based on the West Coast, tell us a little bit about the 101. Where is it? How long does it go? So the 101 Highway is a north-south highway that stretches along almost the entire west coast of the United States. The wildlife crossing will be built over Highway 101 in a city called Agora Hills, which is just north of Los Angeles.

And transportation experts have actually measured how many vehicles pass through this spot in Agora Hills on the 101 Highway. It's 300,000 vehicles every single day. Wow, wow. Can you set the scene for what the economy? ecosystem is like around where the crossing will go? Sure. So if you're standing at the location of the future wildlife crossing, you'll see a lot of rolling hills on either side of the highway.

You'll see sage scrub, chaparral and patches of oak woodlands. To the south of the highway, you have this massive open wild protected space called the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. It extends all the way to the Pacific Ocean and it's the biggest urban national park in the country, in fact. And it's amongst this wild space in these neighborhoods on either side of the highway you'll find mountain lions, deer, bobcats, coyotes, badgers, rabbits, mice, wood rats, horn lizards, tree frogs, snakes, ants and quail, and all sorts of birds. Amazing. So how does the 101 impact, all these creatures that live there? It has a big impact on them. I'm going to bring in the voice of

Beth Pratt now, who I think describes the situation really well. So Pratt is from the National Wildlife Federation. She's led the campaign to get this wildlife crossing built. So the first thing to know about where the wildlife crossing will be built is that this is the last 1,600 feet of protected wild space on both sides of the highway in our region. Pratt describes this location like an hourglass where you have these big open spaces on either side of the highway that are funneled into the center point of the hourglass, the center point of the hourglass being the highway itself. But unlike with an hourglass where sand would flow from one side to the other, in this case the animals are the sand,

and they've been blocked for decades from moving through the area because of the impenetrable wall that is Highway 101. Here's Beth Pratt. The wildlife were already sort of coming to this area, and what the National Park Service study has shown for at least the wildlife, they have collared or tracking, like the mountain lions or coyotes, they get here and they're like, I'm not crossing this, and they turn around.

If they do try and cross, they could be hit by cars. But like Pratt said there, a lot of them don't even try and essentially are boxed into the region where they were born. And this has had a disastrous effect on genetic diversity. The National Park Service has been studying carnivores in the region for 20 years. And they found that mountain lions and the south, Anamanicas have very low genetic diversity, basically the lowest that anyone's seen, and that's because of inbreeding. Because mountain lions can't disperse, because of the highway, male mountain

lions are mating with daughters, granddaughters, and even great-granddaughters. For the wildlife experts, the wildlife crossing is a solution to this problem. It would allow the animals to safely cross the highway, firstly, and then it would allow them to mix with other populations in other regions. You know, we've buried the lead here a bit. There's a celebrity in this story. P22, a P-2, a P-Muma, who is local Los Angeles legend. Can you tell us about P-22? Yes. So P-22 really is our lead character in this story. P-22 is a mountain lion that was born in the Sanamanica Mountains over 10 years ago. P is for Puma, and 22 is because he was the 22nd Puma or mountain lion to get a tracking collar. And when he was really young, he went on this incredible journey. He left the Santa Monica Mountains and managed to cross two of the busiest highways in our region, unhurt and undetected,

and ended up in Griffith Park in Hollywood, where there are no other known mountain lines. Because his journey was such a fluke, he hasn't been able to leave Griffith Park and has essentially been stuck there for a decade on his own. But in this time, he's become a bit of a celebrity. Beth Pratt is kind of obsessed with P-22. She has a tattoo of him on her arm and carries around this life-size cardboard cut out of him so people can take pictures with P-22. She's called him the Brad Pitt of the Mountain Lion world, and the public loved that. For me, what he did was get the public engaged, which is really important. The Park Service and others have been talking about the need for sort of connectivity for a while.

But it wasn't something that resonated with people outside of the environmental or scientific world. But all of a sudden, boom, you get this lonely, dateless, handsome bachelor show up in Griffith Park. And it worked. People loved that idea of P-22 and got invested in this idea of connecting wild spaces. And they started raising money for a wildlife crossing. Now, unfortunately, this particular wildlife crossing that we're talking about today won't benefit P22. He's just too cut off at the moment, but it will benefit many other mountain lines. Oh, that's unfortunate. Let's talk more about the Animal Crossing.

How long has this been in the works? Well, the National Wildlife Federation started talking about this crossing behind the scenes in 2012, and then with P22 as the face of the campaign, They went to the public and started raising money two years later. It was a pretty steep fundraising hill to climb. The project was priced at $90 million, but they've raised the money through state funds, 40% and private philanthropy, 60%. The biggest single private donation was $26 million.

Wow. This seems like it would be a major feat of engineering. Okay, can you walk us through what's it going to look like? Absolutely. So there's so many wonderful details about the crossing itself. In terms of size, the crossing will be about the width of an American football field going over 10 lanes of highway. The people designing it have described it to me like a green roof on steroids or a green toupee. They're taking special care to make sure the crossing matches its environment.

So they've taken the very biggest things into account, like how the crossing will fit in with the watershed in the region. all the way down to the microscopic level with the building of soil ecology. Here's Robert Rock, the COO of living habitats and the lead architect, talking about all the different details that they've considered. Nine out of ten people are not going to even know that we spent all this time thinking about the microbial biomass in the soil and the degree to which that links to carbon sequestration or the minutia of how we design spaces to accommodate the California Kingsnake. you know, we're creating a project nursery for this, where we are going to be growing all the plants

that are going to be a part of this construction. Another big part of the design is it has to be inviting to animals. That's the whole point, right? They need to get these animals to use it. So here are a few things that they're doing. They're putting massive sound barriers on the crossing itself and along the highway to dampen the noise of traffic. The height and thickness of the bridge has also been considered to avoid. avoid the noise of the cars below.

They've also thought about the light, so they're looking into lowering street lights on the nearby off-ramps without affecting safety. The colour palette has been taken from the Santa Monica Mountains, as I mentioned before, and this will help darken the structure at night so they don't have this reflective glow that you sometimes see on concrete bridges. They want it to work for all animals, from a quail to a snake to the mountain lines. That is so cool, and it's great that work begins on this project today, Earth Day. Okay, so how long will it take to complete? Okay, with all big projects, there's always an approximate date, but Beth Pratt told me that she hopes it will open for business by late 2024, early 2025.

And they all have bets in place on what they think will be the first animal to use it. Pratt thinks maybe a lizard. I don't know if you want to hazard a guess. Ira, but I think maybe a bird or perhaps a very brave coyote. I'll go with the coyote. I think I'm with the coyote on this one. So this is going to be the first of its kind in terms of how big this crossing is. But could we expect to see more of these in California or perhaps even across other parts of the country? This is a big hope for everyone involved in the project.

Yes, animal crossings in different forms exist all over the world. We've seen ones for crabs going over roads. We've seen ones for bears going underroads. But one this big and intricate, going over such a busy highway is a first. And those involved don't want it to be cutting edge for long. Michelle, that's a really interesting Earth Day story. Thank you for bringing it to us. Thank you, Ira.

Michelle Lockston is podcast host and producer for KCLU Public Radio in Thousand Oaks, California. She reported this story for KCLU's podcast, The 101. And now here's SciFright trivia host Diana Montano with some Earth Day meditations. Thanks, Ira. Here's a few amazing facts about the Earth to help you wander around our planet in awe today. Sharks have been on this world longer than trees. In 2020, over 20% of energy produced in the U.S. came from renewable energy sources, including wind, solar, and hydroelectric power.

Conservation efforts have helped move the snow leopard on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's List from endangered to vulnerable. In Death Valley National Park, when the balance of water, ice, and wind are just right, stones can sail across the ground, and they leave a trail in the sandy soil as evidence of their journey behind. Who knew? Thanks, Diana. We have to take a break, and when we come back, we'll be talking plastics. Stay with us. We'll be right back. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. And now for an update on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. You know, that giant collection of trash floating in the North Pacific Ocean. It's made up mostly of plastic. Things like water bottles, shoes, fishing gear, but also a large amount of microplastics, you know, tiny bits of broken down plastic that can be invisible to the.

the naked eye. A giant swirling patch of trash seems wholly bad, right? But research on the garbage patch has revealed a complicating factor. Marine life has colonized the garbage patch, making the floating plastic their new homes. As the classic Jurassic Park quote goes, life finds a way. Joining me today to talk about life on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is my guest, Lindsay Haram, AAAS Fellow at the U.S. Department of Agriculture based in Alexandria, Virginia. Her research on the garbage patch was done for the Smithsonian. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much for having me.

Excited to be here. Okay. Walk me through what you found about life on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Yeah, absolutely. So colleagues and I studied what sort of invertebrates, so the little insect-like critters that colonize surfaces, what was growing on plastics in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. So we found all sorts of things from seaweeds to barnacles and anemones.

So really ran the gamut. Could you figure out where these came from? Yep. So some of them are actually native to the open ocean. So they require floating debris in order to live out their lives. And then others were actually coastal species that were able to colonize plastics and ended up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch somehow. So I guess the garbage patch is sort of like just another coast for them.

Interestingly, it seems like that may be the case. But we're trying to figure out, you know, how well they're actually living. on plastics out there. So is this really like a, just another habitat where they can live? Or is it an attractive place to live that actually isn't very good for them? We're trying to figure out those answers now. When you say not good for them, what do you mean by that? Yeah, so it's possible that these coastal species are settling on plastics and then swept to sea. So they don't actually intend to be in the open ocean, in which case they could be experiencing very different environmental conditions than they would on the coast from things like very intense UV light,

which can be destructive for small critters, or poor food resources. That's another major hypothesis that we have. So, yeah, it's unclear at this point. We know that their coastal species out there, but we don't know how well they're surviving. That's interesting. Some people may look at this issue from the outside and think, why doesn't someone just scoop up all this plastic? But your work shows that this is a more complicated issue than just that. That's true, yes.

So it's quite a complicated issue. You have the fact that, one, this is pollution. So, you know, we are putting our waste into the oceans, whether intention. or unintentionally. So we have an obligation to do something about that. But then you also have the fact that now, you know, critters are being found living on this plastic debris. That complicates things quite a bit. But then there are other other even more complicated matters to think about, which is, so if these critters are living on the plastics, like we talked about before, what if the plastics aren't actually a good habitat for them? And it creates a scenario

that's an ecological trap, which means that these organisms, these species, these critters, end up preferring to use this habitat, but actually in the end, their fitness is lowered. So it can become a sink for them. It can become a destructive source of habitat. tat. I see how complicated all of this is. Yeah, yeah. Are you saying then that it's better to preserve the patch than to try to clean it up? I'm saying we don't know, honestly. Yeah, there are a lot of open-ended questions right now that need to be answered. And then we also have to think about this in terms of the larger animals that will come into contact with bloating plastic debris as well, like seabirds, Albatrosses are a classic example. Their feeding grounds are in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

And as a result, they're one of the poster children for consuming plastics and suffering the consequences. So should we clean it up in an ideal world? Yes. But there are considerations to be made and more that needs to be known, I think. You know, in some ways, this research about the reef reminds me of how some scientists want to rethink invasive species, that just because a creature was introduced to a new environment by people doesn't mean that humans should have the right to determine their fates. Is this a fair comparison? I think it is to a certain extent. And I will admit, I'm an invasion biologist. So I might. and not be as middle of the road on this as others could be, I guess. But I'm coming to this from the lens of a pretty good background in invasive species literature. And I think one important thing to note is that we shouldn't, especially in the Anthropocene,

so now in this era when humans are essentially having effects on everything in the natural world, world. We can't immediately go into a situation and deem it to be negative. However, if the introduced species, talking about invasive species in particular, is having a negative impact on the environment and we can do something about it to either reverse that or at least give the native species a leg up to be able to compete and live and thrive among the new introduced species, I think that's the way to go and that's the philosophy that I have about invasive species. That's about all the time we have. I'd like to thank you. Lindsay Haram, a AAAS fellow at the U.S. Department of Agriculture based in Alexandria of Virginia. Her research on the garbage patch was done

for the Smithsonian. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. I really really enjoyed it. If it wasn't clear from our last story, plastic pollution is everywhere, and it's a big issue. One problem plastic that's increasingly common is P-E-T. It's the very common plastic you find on jars and bottles inscribed with the little number one on the bottom. It's estimated that only a third or less of this type of plastic is recycled into something new. But scientists are getting very creative in trying to outsmart plastics that refuse to to recycle. They're looking into enzymes that can break down plastic into its most basic molecular building blocks that can be given a second life. And they're engineering microbes that can

make these enzymes. Joining me today to talk about this new frontier of enzymes as recycling powerhouses is my guest. Jennifer Dubois, Professor of Chemistry at Montana State University in beautiful Bozeman, Montana. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi there, Ira. Great to be here. Nice to have you. let's start with what P.E.T. Plastic is. Tell us a little bit about it. Well, P.E.T. is a polymer that consists of alternating subunits. One is ethylene glycol. That's the dial that's found in your antifreeze. And the other is terethalic acid, which we like to call TPA. And TPA is sort of a flatish, aromatic molecule, if you remember from your organic chemistry days. My worst subject, my word. So I'm going to ask you, what makes PET so hard to recycle all these bottles and clothing and carpets that have them?

Well, the way we recycle it now is really just to chop it up, melt it, and form it into new things. And decoupling those individual monomers from each other is not so hard. It's just we have to make it really, really cheap. And then we have to find something to do with the subunits once it's taken apart into the two individual pieces. And right now, the best thing to do with the TPA part is just make more PET. And really what you want to do is get away from materials like PET as much as possible in the future. So let's talk about the enzyme that you helped engineer. Tell us a little about what it is and what it does. So we've been working with actually three enzymes.

And the first one is kind of the first one out of the gate. And it's called pterothalic acid dioxygenase. And it takes the teratholic acid, which again is 50% of PET. And inside the cell, it converts the terethelic acid to an oxygenated product. And with the help of two other enzymes, ultimately makes it into another product called PCA. Sorry for the alphabet soup. Yeah. And so what happens with the products that are done that you're left with?

So one reason why we love PCA as a product instead of TPA is that we want to be able to convert lots and lots of materials, be they natural or non-natural, into central compounds that we can use for something else. So if we take something complicated like a tree or something chemically more simple like P.E.T and we grind it all up, ideally we want to have just one or two things come out the funnel at the bottom. Those are things that we can collect and give to chemists to find ways to use. And PCA is something that is a pretty great funneling compound. And so what do you get when that happens? Well, PCA itself right now, a lot of scientists are working on finding basically stuff to do with it. And inside of a microbe, a microbe can be sort of re-engineered to take that PCA and convert it back into a form of biological nylon.

We could just feed a bunch of bacteria, our polyethylene terathalate, which we ultimately got from petroleum. And then they would convert it to carbon dioxide and water, and at least we would have gotten rid of some garbage, but we would have put it right up into the atmosphere. But with upcycling, what we really want to do is collect the carbon from that polyethylene terethylate and change it into something valuable.

And so now we have at least one destination for PCA that could be carried out fully within a microbe, and that is to reconvert it into a form of nylon. But the sky is sort of the limit with what you can do with a compound if you have a creative chemist to stare at it for a while. If there are so many tons and tons of the PET plastic around, and there are microbes that would love to eat it and can be engineered

to do that and create products you want, why aren't we seeing more of these plastics being eaten by these microbes? You know, that's a great question, and I think what we're seeing is something like evolution occurring in real time. Charythalic acid is not really an abundant natural product. And it's something that these bacteria have been exposed to quite a bit, especially bacteria and wastewater treatment and other contaminated sites. And so they take an existing set of their own enzymes, and we call this evolution by duplication, they duplicate them. And then the duplicate evolves to handle a brand new compound that these organisms are now being subjected to having to deal with. And so what we think is that some of the enzymes and metabolic pathways that

we're discovering are really at the threshold of evolution, and they're not great. And that is probably why we don't see them really all over the place. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. In case you're just joining us, we're talking to Dr. Jennifer Dubois, Professor of Chemistry at Montana State University about using bacteria that make enzymes to recycle plastics. So is it possible that a recycling plant for plastics may actually turn into a place where you feed these plastics to the bacteria who chump on them and make them disappear? You know, that's just a beautiful vision of the future, isn't it? Yeah. You're telling me it couldn't happen? I think that we sort of feel like if it's going to happen, pet or PET is the material that it's going to happen for first.

PET looks a lot like a natural product in many ways. And so in some ways, it's not surprising that bacteria figured out how to eat it. So we think of all the plastics. And, you know, like you mentioned, this is plastic number one. PET is really the front runner for biological upcycling. But, you know, we still have fun. other plastics. And what we imagine is a future where those other plastics may be converted by biological or other means. So this is definitely a multifaceted problem. Yeah. You know, it's Earth Day,

and in some ways it seems appropriate and a little ironic that some of the smallest things on Earth are helping to solve one of the biggest problems we humans make. I think it's beautiful. Yeah. I hope it comes to fruition. Well, there's definitely a lot of us working really hard to make that vision of reality. And these are projects that just light the fire underneath the feet of young people. I have two outstanding grad students, Jessica and Rita, who are on fire to do this work. And I think young people are just so engaged with it. Well, we'll leave it there and hope that the young people are the key to our future, which I'm counting on,

in a lot of different ways when it comes to the earth. It was my pleasure. Thank you. Dr. Jennifer Dubois, Professor of Chemistry at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. I'm Diana Montana with another meditation for your Earth Day. And this time, I've got a true, false question for you about one of our favorite subjects, cephalopods, like octopuses and squids. I'll read the question and give you a few moments before I tell you the answer. Ready? Here we go.

True or false? Although they are masters of camouflage, researchers believe cephalopods are colorblind. Their eyes can only see in black and white. Well, it's true. Cephalopods can't see color, at least not with their eyes and not the same way that we see color. We still need more research to understand exactly how they mimic their environments so closely. Until then, keep a keen eye out for an octopus during your next snorkeling trip. If you love trivia questions about the Earth,

to join me for our weekly trivia nights, go to sciencefright.com slash trivia. Thank you, Diana, Diana Montana, Sifra's trivia night host. We have to take a break, and let me come back, an indigenous perspective on conservation and environmental restoration. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. On Earth Day, people around the world are taking time to think about their relationship with the planet. consider, though, when your entire culture is built on your relationship with the environment you live in. That's the case of indigenous people, many of whom have been displaced from their ancestral lands, first by colonization and now increasingly by climate change.

That's part of the story of my next guest, Dr. Jessica Hernandez, an indigenous environmental scientist, community advocate, and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington. and she's the author of a book about how environmental science, as practiced in Western institutions, should be paying more attention to the knowledge of indigenous people if we want to solve environmental crises. The book is Fresh Banana Leaves Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science. Jessica, welcome to Science Friday. Yeah, Wendell, Paducci, thank you for having me here today, and it's an honor to have this conversation on Earth Day. Nice to have you.

Do you think indigenous people view earth differently from settlers in the U.S.? I think so. And I think that when we trace that back, it kind of is traced back to the separation from humans from nature. When we look at conservation, when we look at how we practice environmental sciences, we are, you know, always told to kind of remove humans from the equation. And I think that, yeah, as a result of that indigenous communities, we see our plants and our animals as our relatives as opposed to, you know, economic resources or something that we can extract from. So what you're saying is that Western conservation views people as the enemy of nature, where you're saying that we should be living in harmony with nature.

Yes, especially, you know, when we look back at our creation stories, our history since time and memorial, we have always had a close relationship with nature. But because, you know, colonization and all the organizations and frameworks that introduced, so we have, you know, been taught to extract from nature. So as a result, yes, we have become the enemy of nature, but we need to kind of reclaim those relationships so that we can holistically steward and caretake for our lands and our landscapes in this world.

Let's go back to the title of your book, Fresh Banana Leaves. You start this book with the story of your father who grew up in El Salvador and his connection to the banana trees. Why is this story important to this question of indigenous people's relationship with land. Yeah, I think the stories is very important because oftentimes, right, as indigenous peoples,

we are told to get over our past histories, especially when we talk about genocide. And for my people, especially indigenous Mayan nations across Central America, genocide can be traced back to our parents or our grandparents' generation because, you know, genocide occurred during the Civil War that targeted indigenous communities

that, you know, killed a lot of, of our children. And I think that tying it back to his story, he taught me that if we protect nature, nature protects us. And, you know, I lay the foundation of his story and how a banana tree actually saved his life when his guerrilla encampment was bombarded. He saw a bomb drop on this banana tree. And instead of, you know, the bomb igniting, he saw how the banana leaves kind of wrapped themselves to prevent the bomb from igniting. And I think that, you know, oftentimes we talk about our ancestors pray for us. but sometimes, you know, those ancestors are our plant and animal relatives.

That was a story he always told me as a young girl, and I think that as I grew older, I started to comprehend the importance and the message behind that story and how it's manifested in my life today as an indigenous woman in the environmental sciences. And that message is if we protect nature, nature protects us. Yes. Dr. Hernandez, when I introduced you, I gave a list of things you're up to, but how do you describe yourself and the work you do as an indigenous scientist who is also working with Western institutions?

Yeah, so why I use a persona of an indigenous scientist is because I use the Western sciences, the training that I have in the physical and environmental sciences, to advocate right for the inclusion of indigenous ways of knowing that I refer to as indigenous science. And I think that oftentimes the term that we use a lot is traditional ecological, knowledge. But when I have seen that being introduced into the environmental sciences, a lot of scientists kind of focus more in a traditional, and they continue to speak about indigenous peoples, our ways of knowing in the past tense. And the reason why I use the word science is because our knowledge is have adapted. We have survived, you know, colonization. We're still surviving climate

change impacts. As we know, right, climate change is already impacting our indigenous communities. and I see it as a science, especially, you know, the way that science is formulated, we are still making questions, we're still making observations. It's just that the methods or the ways that we pass down our knowledge is very different than, you know, it's done in Western science where you publish peer review articles, where you collect numerical, you know, data. And I think that is different, but in the same way, it's kind of the ongoing knowledge that adapts and formulates new knowledge as we speak today. That's good to know. One example you write about is Milpas, which is a method of agriculture that your family in Oaxaca used to grow food while also taking care of the local ecosystem. How does this work?

Yeah, so milpas are more of a holistic agricultural system, right, when we compare it to Western agricultural systems that have introduced monocultural farming. So Milpas have a diversity, a biodiversity, in terms of plant species that are integrated into that system. And because it's very holistic and, you know, the plants have built a relationship with one another. It doesn't require much human labor. The only human labor that we have is tending it and caring for it. But, you know, with minimal human physical labor. And I think that Nilpas kind of shows the nuances of indigenous science, right? Because it's our elders teaching us since we're young to kind of, you know, talk to the plants, to communicate with the plants, to be in ceremony when we're,

harvesting and I think that it's a intergenerational experience right because we have our elders and our toddlers working the milpas and we have our adults and that is a communal harvest right it's not a harvest where we take whatever we want we only take what we need and I think that has allowed me to see how in western environmental sciences is totally the opposite right because we take as much as we want instead of you know what we actually need and in terms of environmental science, I noticed reading your book that one big difference you talk about is how you relate to species that we call invasive, like the banana tree, which is native to Southeast Asia. Why aren't they invasive species as far as you are concerned?

So I was always taught as a young girl that they're not invasive species, that they're actually displaced relatives. And I think that that goes back to the first question, right? How as indigenous peoples, we view our environments where our animals and our plants are also our relatives. And I think that given that, you know, these are plants, they still have a spirit, they have become our displaced relatives. And, you know, in this case of banana trees, right, they have started to be incorporated into our traditional diets. Like if we have our tamales, we eat plantains. And I think that it shows the nuances and the relationship that as indigenous peoples, we embrace our displaced relatives. We don't, you know, use that rhetoric that can be

harmful and that kind of separates humans from nature because looking at, you know, the restoration work that I have done, the conservation work that I have done, invasive species are always painted negatively, but a lot of people who are practicing both restoration and conservation, these are their relatives that they're talking about negatively, right? Because a lot of invasive species have European displacement and that's something that many people also can tie their lineage and connections to us well. One of the statistics you mentioned in your book is that indigenous people steward 80% of the world's biodiversity on just 25% of the land. And knowing that indigenous peoples are not all the same, do you think there's an explanation for why they're doing so well at taking care of ecosystems?

Yeah, when I always say that statistics, right, if we want to like validate why it's important to incorporate indigenous knowges or indigenous science, you know, that's one of the data sets that, you know, that's one of the data sets that, you know, you know, can prove that point and also the fact that in Latin America, we, you know, are home for 50% of the world's biodiversity. So I think that given that, you know, our knowledge systems have been integrated or generated since time immemorial, and we have always looked at our landscapes through a holistic lens. It allows us to kind of store our lands to understand what are the differences that are taking place. How is climate change impacting them? And I think that oftentimes when I talk about indigenous science and how that relates to storing or caretaking of our lands, I like to use the metaphor of looking at a puzzle, right? In indigenous science and

ways of knowing, we're looking at the entire puzzle completed versus in Western science or Western Ways of Knowing. We focus only on two or three puzzle pieces, so we miss other things that are important for us to create more holistic frameworks and instill, you know, those conservation techniques that will look at the entire landscape as opposed to focusing on one species or one area that's not the entire landscape in itself. I want to talk about conservation and national parks. You're right that this idea that originated in the United States but spread to countries like El Salvador and has led to even more displacement of indigenous people from their land, please say more about that. Yeah, so National Parks, right, it was a framework created in the United States during

Roosevelt's presidency. And as a result of that, oftentimes we forget the history of national parks and that history is embedded in the violent displacement of the indigenous communities and peoples who were living in those lands that, you know, were decided that they were so pristine and beautiful that, you know, they wanted to package it in a national park. And when we talk about conservation and the national parks movement, it has like, as you mentioned, it has spread all across the Americas and in my home country, especially, in our Maya Chorti territories, we have national parks that are, you know, embedded in our rainforests. And yet when we look at our, you know, Maya Chorti or other indigenous communities, we don't have access to those national parks because they're being operated to generate tourism, to generate economic revenue for the country without, you know, supporting the indigenous communities who have the knowledge of storing and caretaking of those landscapes since time of memorial.

So we see, again, in national parks how we're continuing to separate humans from nature. And hopefully that's a history that we see in our lifetime being addressed so that we can actually be, you know, create more just solutions and incorporate indigenous peoples into that framework. You also write that instead of the word conservation, we should perhaps be thinking differently about environmental science, that healing might be a better word. Tell me why. Yeah, so when I look at my native languages, Sapotech, and I talk about conservation, right? There's no word that translates to conservation. Most of our words translate to healing.

And I think that as a result of that, right, even as indigenous peoples, we always knew that post-colonization, we had to heal. And I think that, you know, going back to the discussion we were having on how humans have been separated from nature, a lot of us have a lot of healing to do, right? To reclaim those relationships, to reclaim, you know, living in harm. with nature. And I think that as a result of that, we had to heal a lot of layers, whether it be from colonization, whether it be layers that were exacerbated during the pandemic. And I think that as a result of that, in order for us to heal our landscapes, to heal climate change devastation that's taking place today, we also need to center the healing of ourselves, the healing of our communities and nation as we move forward. This is Science Friday from WNIC Studios. In case you're just

joining us. I'm talking with Dr. Jessica Hernandez, Indigenous Environmental Scientist, Postdoctoral Fellow University of Washington, author of Fresh Banana Leaves, Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science. So much to talk about her, so little time. I'm interested in learning a little bit more about what does healing indigenous landscapes look like in terms of practical steps. Practical steps will be like, you know, when we look at our relationship with invasive species, many of us have to. you know, reclaim those relationships with nature. So instead of, you know, just removing the invasive species very aggressively, we have to pray to it. We have to, you know, talk to it so that,

you know, that species is okay with being removed. It's also having that intergenerational relationships, right? Because a lot of us are, you know, separated from our elders. We're separated from our cultures. So, you know, having the elders teach the young people is also a way to heal. And also having, you know, discussions, conversations, conversations. being in healing circles when we're doing that restoration work is also very helpful. And I think that through my work, I have been able to implement that. And you may be working eight hours of physical labor, you know, removing our displaced relatives, those invasive species. But at the end of the day, you feel really relaxed because there was that healing components that were integrated

into that, you know, physical labor work that was done. Yeah. You feel satisfied. Yes. You feel like you've made a contribution. Yes, and sometimes there's crying, right? Because you talk about, you know, especially when I have done restoration work with indigenous communities and my relatives, right? There's a lot of crying because there has been a lot of loss during the pandemic. And I think that, you know, we're able to be in nature and be with our environments when we're doing that healing, right? It's like peeling those layers while being in nature as well. Yeah. Climate change is reaching what many scientists are describing as crisis levels. We call it a climate crisis. right? There is this consensus that action must happen soon if it is to be successful. Do you think

world leaders are ready to take the time that might be necessary to also embark on this healing that you describe? I think a lot of our role leaders are not ready. And I think that one of the discussions that I always bring to the forefront is how climate change is actually displacing indigenous peoples and is displacing them externally, right? And when we look at the immigration discourses, especially from, you know, world leaders that actually have power that, you know, are the leaders of global dominant countries, immigration is very forceful, right? Like the immigration policies enacted are very harmful. We see how a lot of our Afro-Indigenous relatives from Haiti were actually treated when, you know, they have been displaced into the United States. And I think that because

climate change is interconnected with displacement and displacement is negatively, you know, seen as immigration, our rural leaders are not necessarily equipped or ready to address the climate change impacts it's having on the global self, especially. As we've been talking about this hour, today is Earth Day, a day when many people around the world, the United States, are considering their relationship with the Earth. what do you think we should be sure to be thinking of or doing on holidays like this one? Yeah, I think that today, you know, if you're looking for our motivation, it's important to, you know, learn whose indigenous lands you're currently living on and then doing that research, right?

Because we know that indigenous histories, indigenous movements are often neglected, ignore, or silence in mainstream discourses. and if, you know, Earth Day would be a great way to start learning more about the indigenous histories of the lands we're occupying or settle on and then researching how we can support those indigenous communities directly. And that would be like, you know, amazing reciprocal relationships being built with not just indigenous lands, but also the indigenous peoples of those lands. Dr. Hernandez, thank you for taking time to talk with us today.

Yeah, thank you for having me. And, you know, it was an honor to speak with you. Dr. Jessica Hernandez is an indigenous environmental scientist and community activist. Her book is Fresh Banana Leaves Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science. And if you want to read an excerpt of the book, we've got it for you. Go to ScienceFriiday.com slash healing to take a look. ScienceFriiday.com slash healing. And that's all the time we have for today.

If you missed any part of this program or would like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your small. Smart Speaker to play Science Friday. Have a great Earth Day and a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato.