The Young Turks - [Bonus Drop] Trump’s DESTROYING The World, Here’s How You Can Fight Back!

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

John Iadarola of The Damage Report recaps a special project he did with the Redwood Forest Foundation to counter the environmental chaos brought by the Trump administration.  Follow and Listen to The Damage Report For Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-damage-report-with-john-iadarola/id1432118523For Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1wMFavmCvRMjB5qlx6v6FP Learn more about Redwood Forest Foundation: https://redwoodforests.org/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And they invited me and a number of other individuals representing organizations, activists groups, tech and all that to see firsthand how they are restoring and attempting to sustain a manage a 50,000 acre redwood forest. It was absolutely massive stretching for mountains and mountains and mountains. Well, I did have mountains and mountains, but miles and miles along the coast. And what I loved about it was this, this wasn't abstract. This was on the ground work being done by real individuals who have a passion and love for the environment and want to see this very unique aspect of it that we have here in California managed in a better way than it has historically been. This entire region was logged. It was mistreated. Invasive and parasitic species, both animals and plants were allowed to come in. It was just, it was exploited. That's all it was.

But it doesn't have to stay that way. And so they're trying to do it in a very different way. We're going to put up some images that I and others took on the trip, just so you can see sort of what it looked like just for scale. I mean, these trees are absolutely massive. This is in an old growth area. A lot of their territory is not old growth because it was logged almost out of existence. These are younger trees, but maybe someday they can be this big behemoths. And some of them are. We'll get to those pictures too. But we spent a day touring the forest and getting briefings from a lot of different people on their team. They have a team of, I think, a little bit less than 25 individuals. They have biologists, they have an awesome forest manager who was actually

a fan of the show, which that was exciting. They have technicians. We talked to their CEO about all of their plans and the different partnerships they're hoping to do. And it was people representing a lot of different roles, but they come together and managing this sort of territory, especially one as big as this, as important as this, it's inherently multidisciplinary. You have to have people who understand the business side, people who understand the plants, people who have a history dealing with the particular, you know, wildlife that lives in that region, and also people trying to be very creative with using technology to manage this massive territory with a staff of just a couple of dozen people, and we'll

get to that. But because redwoods don't grow in, you know, basically anywhere else in the world, and you might not know why this would be important. Isn't it just another forest? And I guess, you know, on some level, every forest is significant. But these redwoods, they have an absolutely massive outsized potential carbon storage advantage. They can take a lot of carbon out of the environment, especially when it's 50,000 acres of it. The region has, or at least should have incredible biodiversity that they're trying to get us back to. And in terms of resilience, you know, both climate, wildfire resilience here in California, they are very important. They're very resistant to fires. They can burn but not actually die. And so you have to protect them.

You have to restore them. And when you do that, you actually helped to protect and restore the climate from multiple different angles at the same time. And so I got to see the work that A lot of different people are doing there are people who are taking tours through. They're patrolling the territory because it takes, you know, one individual, it takes multiple days just to even at a relatively fast speed right around all this territory. You have people who are deploying remote sensors to track the movement of species to try to see how certain species like the snowy owl are hopefully coming back over time. And they in particular, they faced a lot of predation from the bard owls that have come

in. They're not supposed to be in this region, but through the westward expansion, expansion of the United States, they were brought into this region. Now they are hunting down and killing these other owls. They're trying to figure out a way to protect them. They're going around it. They're trying to renew some of the disconnected minor water, like the streams and small rivers, so that eventually we can get back to the point where salmon can do their historic traditional route all the way from the ocean, all the way up through this. All of this is possible and they've been making great strides in the years that they have been managing this territory. And one thing I wanted to mention has to do with AI. So obviously I have been very

critical of AI in a lot of different fields because it often feels like it's just, it's pushing out human creativity, it's pushing out human jobs. But I was able to talk to a couple of people who found a few ways to use it in this environment to, I think, do work that humans just couldn't do. So effectively, They want to place these sensors over this massive territory. You just can't cover it with manpower. You would need hundreds, maybe thousands of people on staff, which they can't have. And you want to have it listening. For instance, if it hears one type of bird versus another, that sort of thing.

But you can't have people listen to that. It would just be thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of forest sounds. But they have AI algorithms that can do that. And so this is one implementation of AI that even I, at least now, am comfortable with because I don't think it's replacing human creativity. I think it's an example of human creativity and I don't think it's losing anyone any jobs. And so it's great to see this technology that I generally am pretty hesitant to see move into new areas doing something good, particularly for the environment, especially considering all of the negative environmental ramifications of

AI, the data centers, and all that. And so it was just great to see all of this different work being done by just a staff of like literally two dozen people. And so, So that was awesome. And I left the trip a little bit car sick, but also filled with like a renewed hope. Not necessarily about what the United States government can do in terms of the environment because they're doing this stuff they're doing, but what regular people and organizations can do if they care enough and especially at a local level. And so I want to thank the Redwood Forest Foundation for bringing me out there.

I also want to do a shout out to the Inn at Newport Ranch. That's where we stayed. It's in Fort Bragg, California. not too far away from the Redwood Forest and it was a beautiful place to stay. So I really appreciate that too. And it was also, by the way, great to get an opportunity to meet up with all of these other people representing great climate-focused organizations. So that includes climate Congress, which backs local candidates to hopefully get to them before big money has turned them against climate advocacy for renewable energy, all of that. And they've had a lot

of success in supporting very local level candidates. Ree Wilde was there. That's the Leonardo DiCaprio affiliated environmental organization. They had a couple of representatives. So that was awesome too. And just being able to build connections with these people who all care about the environment and in their own way are trying to do something positive is great. And it's a reminder that you know, you may not have like a redwood forest in your backyard. You almost certainly don't. But I bet you have organizations like this, you know? Maybe they're trying to fix a local forest, you know, maybe they're trying to protect one species. Maybe they're trying to clean up a river

or a lake or something. Maybe they're trying to reclaim, you know, vacant and dormant urban spaces and set up, you know, urban, you know, gardens and those sorts of things. These sorts of organizations continue to work and arguably need your help even more than they did before Donald Trump became a president once again. So anyway, it was a great There's a great experience and I want to thank them.