How to Save Forests, Creeks and Local Ecosystem with Griff Griffith

In this episode Rick speaks with Griff Griffith about forest restoration, the power of curiosity and why having native plants in your yard (or on your patio) is so important to local ecosystems. Griff is a powerhouse of knowledge and experience when it comes to ecology, wildlife conservation and empowering others to participate.
 
During their conversation, Griff also shares the importance of many different groups of people coming together to make a difference for the planet. He even shares how you can help too – Get curious, get to know your local flora & fauna and maybe even volunteer to help with habitat restoration. After all, supporting your local ecosystems supports pollinators, birds, and insects, especially caterpillars that feed our songbirds.

This episode is essential listening for anyone who cares about the planet—whether you're a seasoned conservationist or just starting to glimpse the power of native plants and habitat restoration. Griff’s hopeful message: the more curious you are, the more you'll want to learn, do, and share, igniting a movement to heal our earth—one native seed at a time.

Animals, Nature, and You on Instagram

Connect wth Griff:

Website: GriffGriffith.info

Instagram: @TheNatureNut

TikTok: @GriffWild

Other sites mentioned:

Jumpstart Nature

Redwoods Rising

Home Gown National Park

Redwood Parks Conservancy

Connect with Rick:

ZoologyRick.com

Social media:

Instagram

Threads

Facebook

YouTube

Music: Positive Carefree Folk Pop

Artist: Burgberg

Used with Full Music Standard Lic.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So you don't have to wait till you get to the park. You don't have to wait till you go camping. You can start learning about ecology and nature wherever you're at. And that's what I would recommend. It doesn't matter where you're at. Find out what's living around you and what it's doing, where it's from. Because just that knowledge and then you telling other people sparks curiosity. And curiosity for nature is contagious. Catch it, spread it. That's how we're going to save biodiversity, is by people asking questions and being curious about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

I'm Rick Schwartz, educator, public speaker, and all-around curious guy. Over the years, my curiosity and experiences, along with the many people I've worked with, revealed to me we all have a desire to feel connected to the natural world. You're listening to Animals, Nature and You, a podcast that explores the connection between animals, nature, and humans. A podcast that celebrates learning more, following our curiosity, and reconnecting with the natural world. Welcome to another episode of Animals, Nature, and You. And I'm I gotta say, if you can see me, if you're watching on YouTube or somewhere else, you know I'm just I'm I'm just so excited right now. This has been such a great week, a couple of weeks, as we've rolled into this. This is mid-March right now when this episode comes out. And we're not even two months old for a podcast, and the momentum continues to grow. The numbers continue to grow, people listening and watching, and I can't thank you enough. Clearly, you are sharing this information. You're sharing what you're listening to or watching because other people are joining you, and I appreciate it so very much. That's how these things grow, is that word-of-mouth concept. And you can market all you want, but a good podcast is going to really grow when the audience gets excited about it, and it's it's clear that it's there. But not only is it obvious because the audience is growing, you're showing up more and engaging more as an audience member, but the people who have been on the podcast are sharing it also with their network. And now people are asking to be on the podcast. Now, I'm not saying people are banging down the door. That's not it at all. But it is exciting to me that this podcast started as an idea for me to have these conversations about things I think are really amazing that people are doing for conservation, for animals, and for nature, and pointing out that how that also helps people. But then the other people are like, yes, this is important. We need to be a part of this. We want to share these stories. It's very exciting for me. And I want to go back to the very beginning, the end of January, when we launched this podcast, the second episode was with James Parker, co-producer and director of In Our Nature, a really great documentary. And one of the people on that, or in that documentary, excuse me, is Griff Griffith. And after the interview with uh James, I was like, yeah, if there's anybody in your network you know of I could reach out to that might be a good guest, he's like, Oh, well, you definitely need to reach out to Griff. I was like, Well, he's on my wish list, that'd be great. And so, long story short, Griff Griffith is now the guest on this episode, and there's so much great information. This guy has done so much. Now, most of these episodes, I am recording interviews about two or three weeks out before they get released. And it's pretty exciting for me to know what we've already talked about. So I'm gonna read his bio because I want you to get an idea of his background, just in case you don't know who he is. Of course, I'll have all his information. We'll wrap things up at the end. I'll have information down in the show notes for you. How to get a hold of him, find his work, everything else, because he's a great, great guy. I love chatting with him. So without further ado, Griff Griffith is a renowned nature interpreter and former host of Animal Planets Wild Jobs. With over 30 years of hands-on experience, including fish and wildlife surveys, wildland firefighting, trail construction, and leading ecological restoration crews, Griff has dedicated his life to understanding and protecting the natural world. Now, as an ecologically conscious social media expert, he shares his deep passion for wildlife and conservation, helping other people connect with nature. Griff has also appeared on CNN, NBC Nightly News, the Kelly Clarkson Show, MTV, and various documentaries, such as In Our Nature, and numerous other media outlets, inspiring audiences with his knowledge and enthusiasm for conservation. Through his work with Jumpstart Nature, Redwood's Rising, and as a natural and cultural resource interpreter, he continues to make a meaningful impact. Griff also creates viral nature interpretive videos on various social media platforms, with several of these videos reaching millions of views, who clearly not only great and important information, but very entertaining as well. He also hosts the Jumpstart Nature Podcast, one of the top-ranked nature podcasts worldwide, which is not surprising. He's a great guy. And Griff, I have to say thank you so very much for joining me and being a part of Animals, Nature, and You. Thank you. Thanks for having me here.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

I love to talk about myself.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Well, you also love to talk about nature, and that's why I reached out to you. It's from a previous episode. My audience might remember, uh, interviewed James Parker. He put together the documentary In Our Nature, and you're actually in that. And that's where I was like, oh, I need to talk to him. Uh, you've you've done so much with interpretation, reaching out and connecting people with wildlife, connecting people with nature. But I want to ask, what is what does 2026 look like for you? What do you got planned? What's coming up?

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Well, if I had a crystal ball, it'd be as big as a beach ball and full of a rainbow and a thunderstorm. And that represents the hope. The rainbow is the hope and inspiration I'm feeling going forward. And the thunderstorm is not a negative thing. Thunderstorms are negative, um, unless you're in the wrong place the wrong time. And that's what I'm worried about. That's the only worry I have is like, where am I gonna be next? And the thing, it's really trippy being in your 50s. It's not what I expected because I did not expect to make it to 50s. Oh, okay. Which I recently learned is kind of a common thing for Generation Xers. It's a weird time for me because I didn't know 50s was gonna be like this. So I just feel like I've been in my 20s for three decades. Yeah, I'm right there with you, buddy. I learned labor crews doing uh ecological restoration, mostly SAM habitat ration and restoration. I did I fought fires and I and I led trail crews and did all this really amazing work, but it took its toll. Yeah. So now like I can't even volunteer for the English Ivy bashes because if I work longer than a couple hours, my wrists hurt, my back, my neck, my ball, like everything. So um going forward, right now I'm working for one of the coolest collaborations that's ever happened. It's between the federal government, the state government, and state of Rebbe League. So Redwood National Parks, California State Parks, and State of Rebbe League. And it's we're restoring, it's probably the biggest forest restoration project in maybe North America. Okay, in that we are restoring about 70,000 acres of previously clear-cut and aerial planted, which once was redwood forest, but the aerial planted with Doug Furs because at the time they were doing the aerial planting, Doug Furs were the king of the lumber market. Because second growth redwood is not nearly as valuable as old growth redwood, because old growth redwood grows up in the shade, and so the rings are tight. So the wood's packed with tannins and it's really good. And they quickly discovered that redwoods grow super fast in full sun, and when they do, the rings are far apart and the wood's no longer like redwood, it's just like anything else, and probably not even as good as dunk fur. So we have these 70,000 acres where they aerial seeded rodenticide-covered dunk fur seeds that you know, so anything that survived the clear cut died from the poison, right? And so dramatic. And uh, you know, and they built roads and roads and roads, and people don't realize when you build a logging road, it's not like you're building it to one place and stopping, you're winding through the clear cut. So, like you could have 30 miles of road in a square mile, like because they're right next to each other and they're winding, they're wrapping, they're winding, they're wrapping. So we're trying to take down the roads, you know, because most of them are inaccessible and dilapidated. And we're in a leaf zone for recreation, but most of them are just like causing landslides that are burying the creeks, and many, many, many creeks are buried. And some were buried on purpose by the lumber companies because that was the easiest place to drag these giant, giant trees down wherein these these that had been eroded through the mountains by creeks over thousands of years, and so they drug the trees down and buried these ephemeral streams. So this is a Mediterranean environment. So people have to like. I realize that I have to qualify this. In California, it doesn't rain during the summer. So our creeks go from 15 feet deep to six inches deep. So during the summer, it doesn't look like a creek, it looks like a trickle of water, but there's still fish and amphibians in there. And then um, most of our big adult fish, salmon, don't stick around. They either die or they go back to the ocean, stillhead, they'll go back to the ocean. So during the summer, you know, you could drag big logs down, bury these creeks, and then they buried them so thoroughly that during the winter they were unable to flush out. So they just kind of like trickle underneath the ground. And so Ribbon rising were daylighting like 30 some miles of streams. And we thought that fish wouldn't come back for 10, 15, 20 years. They came back in a year. They had within a year. Yeah, so it's there's a lot of hope. And we had baby fish in the creek. So we came back in years' time and we had baby fish in the creek.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

I appreciate you drawing that picture for us in the sense of how much work is needing needing to be done. Just the creeks is a great example and why this matters, and then the expectation that it might take upwards of a decade or more for these fish to start coming back in the population of wildlife enjoying this natural habitat. And yet you started to see this in a year. I also want to touch on real quick, you mentioned 70,000 acres. Is that correct, roughly?

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Yeah. So we have 80,000 acres of dog hair thicket in Redwood National and State Parks, and we're gonna we're gonna restore 70,000 of them. Wow. And the other 10,000, they're just in such steep, crazy, steep places that um it would be almost as destructive to get in there and fix them as it would be just to uh let them be there where they'll probably burn down, like because it's so thick in there, so it will probably just be a you know, a bunch of burn scars in there. But nature can heal itself, and it's funny because you know, working for I do the content creation for Rebid Rising, so I get more questions and comments than probably any other restorationist that I've ever met or heard of. So I run the social media for Rebid's Rising, and I read every single comment, and that has informed me so much about what people do and don't understand about restoration. And it is amazing how much people don't understand. I get it though, because one of my favorite personal quotes uh that I came up that I came up with myself was during college, before I went to college, I felt like I was 10 times smarter or maybe 20 times smarter when I graduated in college.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

And that was because before I went to college, I was a high school dropout. And I dropped out in like 10th or 11th grade. And I was pretty confident that I knew a lot of stuff before I went to college. And then what college actually taught me was I don't know hardly anything because there's so much to know. One brain can't possibly even get a snowflake off the iceberg worth of knowledge that is available to humanity. So I've spent a lot of, well, all my whole entire life actually studying wildlife, wildlife habitats, conservation, and restoration. And so when I read the comments, it's it's really good for me to see what people know, what they don't know, and to help me remember. And so a lot of what we're doing at Redwoods Rising, and a lot of what restorationists are doing, your local land trust is doing, is really complicated for the public to wrap their heads around. And so you have to keep it very, very simple. But when they go in for asking questions, you realize how much opportunity there is to keep teaching people.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

So with that, with with running the social, with uh for for Redwoods Rising and for all the feedback you get, though some positive and supportive, others who are just clearly online know-it-alls. I like the perspective you're taking in the sense that it shows you as an interpreter sort of the direction we need to go with teaching and having people understand. One thing you mentioned earlier on as we were talking, the the clear cutting occurred. Then they dropped a bunch of dog fur seeds that had redenticides on it because they wanted to grow. And then you used a term which I love this term, but I want you to frame it out for the audience: a dog hair thicket. Yes. So I know what that means in the sense of it is not a very good natural habitat for anything, but please help our audience understand, as you, the interpreter, would share this.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Yeah, and a and a good interpreter wouldn't use jargon like that. So it's okay. So if you have next time you get around a dog, pet it backwards and see all the hair stand up and how thick it is, that's how thick the replantings are in the forest. So in an old growth forest, in an old growth redwood forest, you would have 10 to 100 trees per acre. In a dog hair thicket, replanting of Dougfurs or whatever, you could have up to 2,000 trees per acre. So there's way more trees per acre, and they're all the same size. They grow up the same. So they start off really bushy and kind of looks like a Christmas tree plantation. And then as they get taller and taller, they form a roof of leaves. We call the tops of the trees crowns, and when the crowns touch, it's called a canopy, like a unbroken canopy. And that's what these second growth forests have. So they cast no light on the ground, and so nothing grows under these. And a lot of times, all over the United States, after they aerial seed with rodentocyte-covered seeds, they would fly over and spray this herbicide called 2,4D, which is a broadleaf defoliate. So it kills everything else besides conifer trees. Okay, so all your maple trees, alder trees, all your plants, flowers, everything gone. So it's people go, it's like a desert. And I'm like, no, deserts have way more biodiversity than a dog cars think of tree plantation. Way more biodiversity.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

It's a wasteland.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Yeah, it's it's it's you know, you will never hear a bird in there uh because there's no there's not enough insects for them to raise their young on. And this is not a few places, this is most of the forest in California are these kinds of single species, really thick tree plantations. And the public doesn't recognize them as unhealthy forests because they grew up seeing Hollywood um film in these places and pass it off as a fairy wonderland in the forests where the hobbits live and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, well, not the hobbits, they did pretty good with their filming.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

But uh, they had to go to New Zealand. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Yeah. But most of the forests you see in a lot of our TV shows and stuff aren't forests or tree plantations. And in the that type of forest would not occur. There's very few places where there were single species that went on for miles and miles and miles, but not anymore. It's a common thing. And so their biodiversity, the variety of life is much, much lower in those places. So, you know, our roads don't go inside a lot of those forests, and a lot of those forests are behind in California, are behind a screen of giant trees because back in the day, the automobile association was like, we don't want to look at that. So they they had to leave a screen of big trees. And behind that screen of big trees is a dog hair ticket tree plantation.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Right. As you mentioned, it's all one species, they're all the same height, they're very densely packed in. There's no opportunity for sunlight to hit the forest floor, there's no other plants growing, no food growing, no insects growing, and living there for the whole food chain is completely uh disrupted or destroyed. It's gone. Then you also mentioned, too, that the the creek beds were filled in with a lot of the work they were doing and therefore causing uh snow runoff and everything else in the proper season to actually head more underground, making it also impossible for wildlife.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Well, this forest giant dams that kept the fish out and the amphibians out, and yeah, all the insects and all the bird food that you know that the insects provide.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

So this forest rest restoration work that you you're doing, uh it's a it's a it's a partnership with the federal government, state government. I'm assuming you know the group itself is is a lot of volunteers and those that are getting paid to do the work as well. What's the timeline on something like that for 70,000 acres? So just consider it like restored.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

We say 30 years. And a lot of these watersheds, like they're they're mainly in two watersheds, uh Prairie Creek Waters watershed, and um well, they're in a bunch of little watersheds uh around Prairie Creek watershed and then Mill Creek watershed farther up north. And we say 30 years, but we've been working on it for a long time. I was I was doing restoration in these watersheds when I was 26. So um, you know, which was like at least five years ago or maybe maybe six. 30 years to mind me. And uh so these places have been getting worked on. So we're thinking 30 years, but it depends on, you know, one of our partners is Redwood National Parks. And right now, national parks don't have the resources that they had a couple years ago. So we've had to adjust our plans. Uh, state parks also is not sitting as pretty as it was. So we have to also schedule in these budget, unexpected, you know, budget things. You know, say the Redwood League is a major funder, and it's mostly by donations from people who believe in making the world a better place. Thank you. I'm so glad you all exist. So that's what's funding a lot of this is say the Reddit League. And I and I love working on this project. I don't know how long I'm gonna be working on this project. Uh I'll always be involved in this project in in some way, shape, or form. But I'm open to all kinds of different restoration, conservation out. I want to be where I'm gonna do the best work to save biodiversity. And right now I'm in a really great spot as far as protecting biodiversity. But if someone wanted to be like, hey Griff, how would you like to double your impact? I'd be like, Yes, sign me up. Because I am very, very hopeful about the future, but I feel like now is the time to strike and to really get as much education out there, get as much people involved up there, and as much access so people from all kinds of different walks of life can connect to nature. And that's that's what I really want to work on in as much as I can before I die.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

So that brings me then to my follow-up question perfectly. So thank you for the setup. Uh, how can somebody listening to this get involved? It's a state project, it's a federal project, there's other projects out there. You did mention that the Redwood League, I think you called it, is say the Rabbit League.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

You can go to redwoodsrising.org. Okay. Right now, donations are amazingly helpful for this work, especially. Um, some of our partners aren't doing as well as they were. But we also have a lot of groups that work with us. So those the three big ones that I mentioned, Redwood National Park, State Parts, and Save the Redwood League. But we also work with the tribes whose land we're working on. So the Yurok tribe, they do a lot of the restoration work. Uh, they do tons of the restoration work, actually. And then the Talawa tribe and they and they partner with us sometimes too. And then we have Redwoods Conservancy and different, like the No Ivy League and some other volunteer groups that help with invasive removal and trials and wildlife surveys and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

So let's say, for the funsies of it, let's say someone listening to this doesn't live in California and they listen to people like yourself or me or others they see on social media that are out there doing the work because they found a way to do this for a living or they have another source of income and they can volunteer to do this kind of work. What would you tell someone sitting at home or you know, driving into work while they're listening to this on a commute? What's something the average person can do to have an impact in the local environment wherever they may be?

SPEAKER_00 20:15

So I could talk about those for seven hours without taking a bus.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Well, let's see if we can whittle it down to a little bit less.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Okay. So let's be cheese balls and go back to that 80s or 90s slogan: think globally, act locally. Sure. Because that's that was genius when it came out. And no matter how many times we hear it, we should not stop appreciating that. So you can support a wildlife care center near you. That's a great way for a lot of our like people who are just mainly concerned about animals. Wildlife care centers, go volunteer one. I've I started volunteering at a wildlife care center when I was right on my 12th birthday, because that's how old you had to be to volunteer there. And I volunteered there for four years. I learned so much. That was that was like the best education. And and they're always underfunded and they're always volunteer ran. And so they really need volunteers. So wildlife care centers. Um, you can go to Animal Help Now. It's also a really good app to put on your phone. And because when you get Animal Help Now on your phone, say like you hit an animal on the road, you can go to Animal Help Now and it will tell you where the nearest wildlife rescuer is to you, even if you're traveling. So Animal Help Now, that's a great place to go for wildlife care center type info. Nice. And just pet info too, like lost dog and cat info. So Animal Help Now is a very, very valuable resource. Um, land trusts are also a big deal. So I'm actually I joined forces with California Coalition of Land Trusts, and I was like, you guys need a film festival of land trust competing for film festival. So we made a social media film festival. It's the third year. I'm one of the judges this year, and we need land trusts to get their message out because they always have volunteer opportunities for people that want to get involved. They always need donations, they always need people to help tell their stories. So that's another like you there, there's a land trust near you. That's a great place to put your energy because without the land being saved, there's only so much we can do. Like we can plant natives in our we can we can do habitat restoration in our spaces, even if all you have is a balcony. Yeah. You can plant like four milkweeds and be part of the Marnark corridor. So a really good resource for that is Homegrown National Park. And Doug Ptolemy has written some books that are so valuable in helping just the regular person understand why native plants are important. So you don't have to have any nature science background to get uh bringing wait, what's called? There's bringing nature home, but I like um the second one by him. What is it called? Nature's best hope by Doug Ptolemy. That's a really good resource. And then also, if you wanted to learn and figure out how you can help, you want to learn more about conservation and how you can help, you can go to my podcast and my partner's podcast, jumpstartnature.com, where we talk about what you can do. That's kind of the the whole motivation behind our podcast, the Jumpstart Nature Podcast. And there's a nature archive podcast, both part of the Jumpstart Nature umbrella. And we definitely have lots of call to actions on what you can do. And you don't have to listen to the podcast, you can just go to our page and go to the different podcasts and we list resources of what you can do to get involved to help. So it is going to take all of us, and you don't have to. Uh when I was younger, I was an extremist on a lot of different fronts. And one of the fronts was I was a vegan who carried his bags in there, barely used light, watched, took the bus everywhere. Like I was trying, you know. And I had a friend named Trent Seeger who was still a major restorationist. And he lived in a teepee and grinded his own grain. Wow. While doing Swainsen Hawks, uh Swaints and Hawk surveys in the middle of the desert. He was hardcore. And one day he goes, You know, we're not going to be very effective at saving biodiversity if you and I are both naked in the cave. And I was like, You're right. And and then, and also we made everybody feel that every time everybody got around us, they felt like they weren't doing enough. And it just was counterproductive. And so I realized like, if I want people to care about nature and biodiversity, I have to meet them where they're at. I can't guilt and shame them into coming where I'm, you know, thinking is the best place and starting there. Because it's not going to work. It's going to turn people off. And it did. It did turn people off, except for other radicals like myself. So I'm not in that space anymore. And I and I would love for you just to plant native plants in your yard. If that's all you did, if all you did was turn convert your yard into like half native plants, that would be amazing. That'd be huge, helpful. If all you did was plant a handful of native plants on your porch or balcony, that or at your place of worship or your workplace, that would be really helpful, especially if it was an oak tree or one of the keystone plants, like a willow or a goldenrod. You know, you can look up what keystone plants are at homegrown nationalpark.org.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Let's paint this picture. It's it's because it's I think it's worth discussing. That is, and I completely agree. I native plants, you know, uh especially I'm down here in Southern California, and we have such diversity here in San Diego County when it comes to plants, and it's so needed for the migratory birds and the insects and everything. But share with us why it's important, no matter where you live, to make sure you're finding and planting native plants of some sort. Like you said, one or two on your balcony, part of your yard, half of your yard, whatever it might work. In fact, you know, and it's understandable too. Some people live in areas where there's a homeowners association that's required to have a certain grooming standard, you can still get some native plants on that property without getting in trouble with the HOA. So why is it important to make sure you offer up some native plants in your neighborhood?

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Sometimes when you walk into a big box store, one of the big box landscaping stores or whatever, Home Depot or whatever, you'll see these tags on plants and it will say bug-free plant. And a lot of times you think, oh, it must be pumped full of poisons, but no, it's just from somewhere else, and none of the native insects here have evolved to eat it. 95% of our insects specialize on a specific plant or genus group of plants. Right. And so when you bring ginkga biloba trees over here and line our streets with them, and usually only the male trees, too, uh, so there's no food or anything, it doesn't support any insects. It might as well be plastic. You might as well plant plastic trees, fake Christmas trees along your roads because you're not supporting any insects. 95% of our insects are specialists. And there's some plants, like the Keystone plants, that support more types of insects. And you might be like, oh, I don't want mosquitoes and flies and stuff like that. Right. Bugs and insects are bad. What are you telling them about? Do not depend on native plants. We're talking butterflies and moths here, people. Yeah. Okay. So, and most birds feed their babies caterpillars. So think about it. If you're a bird mom and you loved your baby so much, would you bring them something spiny and horrible? Not unless you had to, but you would love to bring them something like a sausage, like a caterpillar sausage. So most of the native plants have caterpillars on them. Okay. Moth butterfly caterpillars, even a lot of wasps and stuff look like caterpillars when they're young. And that's what's feeding baby birds. And Doug Ptolemy did a study on how many caterpillars it took just to get the babies out of the nest, not including them in their fledglings and they're still can't fly, but they're out of the nest, and the parents are still feeding them. Just in the nest to get three babies out of the nest for chickadees, a little tiny bird, it took 9,000 caterpillars. Wow. And so they did a study on if it was in suburbia, how many of those nests failed. And many of them failed because the bird mom and dad bird couldn't find enough caterpillars within a short distance. So they had to fly further and further. And as they did, one baby starved to death, and then the next baby starved to death. And they were lucky if they got one. But that's not replacement, that's not population replacement for an animal that only lives three or four years. So the more native plants you have in your spaces, the less hard bird parents have to work. And we've lost half of our birds since I was born in 1920. What did you do?

SPEAKER_02 28:27

I know.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

No, my bad, but killed all the birds. Um, it's very serious. I I kid, I kid with what you said there, but it is very serious. In our lifetime, I think we're very both uh we're close to the same age. Uh there's been such a drastic drop in our native wildlife. Birds, birds, insects, the whole deal. We we've seen it across the board so many places. And it's it is unfortunate that I think so many people want to wait until, or not even want to wait. I think so many people don't really pay attention until they heard hear a species is endangered. Yeah. And often at that point, then it requires that extreme action to help save whatever's left of that population. Yeah. And to your point, what you're saying here about the the value in the native plants, you had mentioned, I think, before when we were we were talking earlier, the your native plants know when the right time is to have berries and when to flower and our native species, then the insects, the birds, everybody else, who all it's all connected. Yeah. It's so important. Yeah. Appreciate you you explaining that a little more than you know, yes, it's important, please do the native plants, but here's why. Let's let's understand the bigger picture as to how this simple act, and it really is a simple act, you know, find what native species will do well in your area, get a few of them, get a lot of them, whatever you can do. And then yes, some bugs will eat them, but that's part of the process because then you're gonna start seeing birds in your neighborhood and in your in your area. And it's just it's such an impact, simple yet important.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Tell people, brag about your bite marks. Yeah. Like that. Brag about your bite marks, bring people over and go look at my leaves. Yeah. See how they're all chopped up. Now you can get your, you can get iNaturalist seek or something, an app, an identifying app on your phone, and you can find out what's eating your plant. Sometimes it it can even identify a bite mark. But if you can find the caterpillar, a lot of them come out at night or hang around the base of the plant during the day. But if you can get, if you can identify the caterpillar, and then you can see what it looks like in its adult form, you'll suddenly feel very motivated. Maybe you might even want to plant a couple more of that kind of plant because a lot of those caterpillars turn into something beautiful that pollinates. And so your bite marks are gonna are are for monarch butterflies for beautiful butterflies and moths and things that feed birds. So bite marks are not a bad thing. We really got brainwashed because everybody everybody's in America, you know, everybody in America has always thought that they were like a temporarily disgraced millionaire and that someday they're gonna become a millionaire. So they might as well landscape their front yard of their tiny suburban house or mobile home to look like a millionaire's yard. And so that means like square hedges and grass and tons of sterility. And that was greed is bad. And that greedy trying to be fake rich has led, you know, to us losing a lot of the beautiful wildlife we could have shared our spaces with. So we need to rethink the way. And if you want to have a landscaped yard, have a landscaped yard. Native plants doesn't mean your yard's not landscaped. You might have to do some more storytelling because when a native plant dies for the winter, you want to leave it there because it's got a bunch of hibernating native bees in it. And the United States, belicious. We have more native bees in the United States than I think anywhere does. California by itself has like what 1600 species.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

Oh, it's ridiculous. Yeah, I don't remember the number, but it's huge. And the people are always so surprised because again, to what we kind of grow up with and what we are just what we're showing growing up is the honey bee, which isn't even native. And there's so many bee species that are not hive-oriented. They they find these dead plants you're talking about, or dried leaves to make their little uh winter, you know, winter type of thing. There's just so many of them, or lay their eggs in in these native plants that have gone dormant, like you said. It's it's so valuable. Yeah, it does require perhaps understanding, no, just because it's gone dormant, I'm I'm not gonna cut it back yet. Yeah. You know, you don't you don't over-groom type of thing. But there's such value in that.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

You might have to be a storyteller because you might, you know, there's still a lot of neighbors who like in my mom's neighborhood. Hey, just want to let you know that your boosh is dead. Yeah. And um, you know, there's that pure pressure. So you got to be ready to be kind of an interpreter. You gotta like be an interpreter and go, yes, it's dead. Well, it's not really dead, it's just dying back for the winter. But if you look really carefully, and this means you have to be an investigator, see these little things right here. This isn't a terrible scale insect. This is an in-case of this really cool butterfly. Like you might need to do some deep digging, but you know what? I don't know anybody who needs uh more screen time. We need less screen time on more time. So get outside and you can use your phone, so you're kind of doing some screen time, and identify what's living in your yard and be able to tell stories about it, show kids, especially, because kids haven't been brainwashed to think that everything has to be sterile.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

Well, and that's what I've I've often said too is you know, we are all born with this sort of innate curiosity about the world around us. And so it's a matter of what are we exposed to? What is our world? Is it outside? Is it a roly-poly? Is it a a a worm, a moth, a flower? And and lean into that curiosity for the kids. Uh otherwise, if they're only given screens, then they're just gonna be curious about screens, which you know, they they have their place, they have their time. Uh my kiddo, she's at school, they they hardly touch paper anymore. It's all about keyboards and screens. Yeah. And I get that. I do. However, there's a time to step away from those screens and and lean into our natural desire to be close to and curious about nature. So I I appreciate this discussion we've been having around native plants, uh and also the value of looking at forest restoration and any habitat restoration in in long term. You'd mentioned at least 30 years, if not more. You spent a good chunk of your life doing this kind of work and it's still not done yet. Oh, yeah. As we get close to wrapping this up, I want to hear from you because you have been doing this for a while. You've worked with people from kids that are in challenging spaces. You grew up as sort of that rebellious challenge space kiddo. Also, for you and your experience, why is it important for us to get away from our urban lifestyle or even suburban lifestyle and get out in nature? What's the value in that?

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Gosh, you know, it's I think about this all the time and I come up with new stuff all the time. So I have no idea what's going to fly out of my mouth right now. So I can securate my answer. But this might be too deep for your listeners. So if I tell you this and you want me to rewind and go a little bit shallower, all right. So every once in a while, I look in the mirror and I do this with my hand, I'd I'd flip my fingers around and I go, these evolve for berry picking. Not a kid one. And so um, we we adapted technology to go with our bodies, but our brains are everything we are evolved too. Like a lot of times we don't think we're evolved, we're evolved too. We're evolved for for being in nature. We evolved to be in nature in these little tribal groups, these little hunter and gathering groups. We spent hundreds of thousands of years like that. And it's only been recently that we have been doing agriculture. Some cultures have only been doing agriculture for a handful of years, some of them never even got there yet. And others, like if you're from the Middle East, you might have been doing it for, you know, 8,000 years or whatever. But the vast majority of our evolution has happened in nature and we're connected to this. And I I a lot of indigenous groups, you know, be they I work for a lot of indigenous people here that are way closer to their pre-colonized mindset. And and I'm Irish and I know my folks, you know, if you go back far enough anywhere, you're gonna find people who have these like earth-based spiritualities and absolutely yeah, animals as uh brothers and sisters instead of you know, like commodities. So I feel like I'm getting really deep, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

No, I love it. I I'm absolutely I'm on board, man. Keep going.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

Okay, so I think that like we need to remember where we came from and and understand that like a lot of the feel-good chemicals that get released in our brain, a lot of the health benefits, a lot of the happiness is tied to our evolution to nature. And so, as you know, we look around and we feel like everybody's angrier and everybody's more anxious and stuff like that, it's because it's true. We are constantly bombarded by a stimulation that's making our dopamine go off. We're constantly inside boxes or in front of screens. And when and so that when we do go out in nature, we feel like we don't belong there and we don't have a good time. A lot of people do not like to be in nature anymore. So, what I want to encourage people to do is to start small, start in whatever spaces you are and start getting more green time and less screen. Yeah, and I think room app coined that phrase, room app from outdoor afro. I like that. So, yeah, she's good. And so, um, and I think that if you start small like exposure therapy to nature and you do more and more and more, you're gonna be really grateful and thankful that you did. I feel like if I was in the city still and I had always been in the city, I'd probably be one of the crazy people. I'd be the guy that haunted you and flipped you off as I drove by and tried to fit because I get angry and I feel uncomfortable and I feel like I'm in competition with everybody. I have to be in nature. It's so good for me. And I think a lot of people aren't probably as prone to be as aggressive as I am, or I could be. But just getting out into nature a little bit at a time and then longer and longer and longer is very, very important. And I I'm so proud of so many parents that grew up not camping, but have made it part of their culture now because that's really one of the most important things you can do for the earth is is good parenting. It really is. If you do nothing else but like love your kids and spend a lot of time with them and making sure they get outside and get exposed to some nature and connect to nature a little bit, then you are making the world a better place. And we need more of you. If that's all you did, thank you. That's more than enough.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

Love it, love it. I appreciate too that you brought up that we are in a a state of existence as humans that some people are uncomfortable in nature. One thing I'm always saying is get outside, get outside, get outside. And a lot of people be like, Oh, you're in San Diego, you get outside whenever you want, which is true. I get it. But I did see a post recently too, someone said I I've that they've been living in Florida for the last five years or whatever, and they're visiting friends in the north, and they they they posted a picture of these birds um out in a field, and they and the the quote on there was, I forgot how much activity is in the wild during the winter. Yeah. And and it's true if you go out there and look for it. But but going back to the original thought, which is a lot of people are uncomfortable in nature. And I appreciate you pointing that out and also saying there's still value in just getting out in small increments at first, getting more comfortable in it, getting used to it, because I agree with you completely what you were saying. You know, whether you are closely tied to nature already from your grandparents or your parents or great-grandparents, or more like a lot of modern people who have to go way back in their lineage uh to find their roots in another country, perhaps where they were in a tribe or community type situation living off the land appropriately. And I say appropriately, not that we are inappropriate, but in the sense of living off the land because that was how the well, like you said, we evolved with berry pickers. Uh you know, it's it's so cool. And it's such a great way to look at it. Like, yeah, we are in this meat suit that is evolved to be part of nature, not again, not adverse to it. So uh I appreciate that so much.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

Yeah, look, if you spend a lot of time in water, you'll see that your fingers like get to where they can grip rocks and sticks better.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Yeah, we get those ring. That's pretty, as they call it, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Yeah, it's like people think that you know humans are evolved for nature. Yes, we are, all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Griff, as we wrap this up, uh we've had such a great conversation. I think I'm gonna have to ask you to come on again sometime because we I think we could just keep talking so much about this stuff. That's why I love talking to fellow interpreters and educators. It's it's such a robust conversation. But if there is just one nugget, whatever, whether something we already spoke about or or something that you just want to share with everyone, make sure you leave people with us. Plant that flag. What's the one thing you want to make sure people know or understand?

SPEAKER_00 41:15

Oh, let me think about that. I guess I have a slogan, a personal slogan, and it's curiosity for nature is contagious. Catch it, spread it. And I think that if everyone just gets a little curious that it will suck you into a rabbit hole, even if it's just like identifying like I fell in love with nature in an urban mobile home park. A lot of people look at me and they're like, Mr. Wilderness, uh, Mr. Wilderness caught crowd adds in concrete ditches until he was 16 and finally got out of the city. But like I fell in love with nature in a city. Do you know where the pigeons you see all over the place? Do you know where they're from? Do you know where they're native to? Do you know where the snail that's on that, you know, the fence that you walk by? Do you know where that one's from? Do you know what its life cycle is? Do you are you assuming that those things are native and have always been here? Or did they bring us here? What about that rat that keeps you up at night? That's not even native. That's a that's a Norwegian rat. It jumped off the ships with the Europeans. Even if you are doing nature investigation in the city, it's gonna tell you a very interesting story. So you don't have to wait till you get to the park. You don't have to wait till you go camping. You can start learning about ecology and nature wherever you're at. And that's what I would recommend. It doesn't matter where you're at. Find out what's living around you and what it's doing or where it's from. Because just that knowledge and then you telling other people sparks curiosity. And curiosity for nature is contagious, catch it, spread it. That's how we're going to save biodiversity, is by people asking questions and being curious about it. And that's probably the most important place to start if we're gonna save this planet, is to get curious about it.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

I love it. Mic drop right there. And to save this planet, of course, means to save ourselves because humans are the ones that are in the biggest danger right now. So thank you, Griff. I this is this is great. That that's man, that we're gonna leave it right there. Thank you so much, buddy. Uh, we will definitely be in touch. I I can't imagine I would ever finish this year out not having you on again. So thank you for taking the time today. I appreciate it. Awesome. And of course, thank you, dear listeners. I do appreciate you joining me here on this curious odyssey we're having here on Animals with Nature and You. And I really do hope this conversation with Griff, like all of our episodes, has inspired you or made you realize that you too can make a difference no matter where you are or what you're doing, whether it's a couple of plants that are native on your patio or in your yard, all the way to taking part in forest restoration or educating others or helping out in any way you can. There are so many different options, and I'll make sure that all the links that Griff mentioned and all the ways to get a hold of them and get involved are down below in the episode notes, as well as my information. If you'd like to get a hold of me. And I do want to remind you: if you haven't already, please subscribe or follow this podcast, whether you're on YouTube or listening on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else. That way you don't miss any of our episodes. We have every Tuesday, 10-minute Tuesdays, fun little nuggets, whether it's animal facts and information, debunking myths, or anything that might be topical at the time, to then our Thursday episodes, like this one here with Griff, which is a full-blown interview with an awesome person doing awesome things. I do appreciate you guys being here so very much. It does mean a lot to me that I'm able to put this together for you and you keep showing up week after week to be a part of it. So thank you so very much. Have a good one, everybody.