Gourmet Dining in the Woods

  • Chef Ben Bebenroth and his crew plate mushroom dishes for their dinner guests. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Most people don’t spend a lot of
time thinking about where their food was
grown. Even fewer actually go out and forage
in the woods for it. But that’s what one
chef is trying to get people to do. Julie
Grant reports this chef wants people to
connect the dots between the environment
and their food:

Transcript

Most people don’t spend a lot of
time thinking about where their food was
grown. Even fewer actually go out and forage
in the woods for it. But that’s what one
chef is trying to get people to do. Julie
Grant reports this chef wants people to
connect the dots between the environment
and their food:

(sound of gathering)

The threat of rain has passed. Cars are pulling in the grassy
drive at Killbuck Valley Mushroom Farm. And Chef Ben
Bebenroth cuts big leafy greens from the garden as a visiting
dog chases a chicken through the yard. He’s starting
preparations for a six course meal.

(sound of chopping and sizzling)

“The menu is going to be a loose guideline tonight, at best.”

Most of the guests have driven an hour from the city and the
suburbs of Cleveland. They’re dressed for a dinner party,
not for hiking. But, a hike in the woods is exactly where
some of them are going.

Tom Wiandt: “Anyone who wants to see wild mushrooms,
come hither.”

Guest: “Question – how far and how rough?”
Tom: “Not too rough. We’re just going along the bottom of
the hollow here.”

(sound of hiking)

Farm owners Tom and Wendy Wiandt show their 20 guests
honey mushrooms growing on a log. They stop to explain
the difference between puff balls – some are poisonous,
others delicious. Each person carries a paper lunch bag to
fill with fungus.

Guest: “It’s a gold mine up there.”

Tom: “Oh, did this big stump produce this year?”

Wendy: “Yeah.”

Tom: “Holy moley did it ever. That’s the great thing about
dead trees.”

Guest: “Look at that. Wow.”

Tom: “That’s dinner tonight.”

The guests carry their bounty back to the chef. They’re
rewarded with a glass of wine. And they learn a little more
about the Wiandt’s farm – how they cultivate bright yellow
oyster mushrooms, fuzzy lion’s manes, shitakes, and more.

(sound of kitchen)

Chef Bebenroth and his crew are at work in his outdoor
makeshift kitchen. He’s using the mushrooms in various
dishes.
Some of the guests are excited about getting involved in
finding food for the meal. Others are a little skeptical.

Guest: “This is really farm to table, literally. We’re a part of
that movement, right Tony?”

Guest: “I’m a Wendy’s kind of guy.”

But that Wendy’s guy was impressed once dinner was being
served.

“Your first course is going to be a shittake and truffle tea,
with antelope tartar.”

After courses of cooked greens and mushrooms, squash
with local goat cheese, steaks, desserts and lots of wine –
the party was down right festive.

(sound of laughing and music)

Guest: “It is surreal to be here, under the stars, the dog on
stage, the exquisite cuisine.”

Chef Bebenroth creates these dinners at farms around the
region through the summer and fall. And despite what
seems like a high price – this event was $150 a plate – it’s
still tough for him to break even on them. But it’s important
to him. It’s taking that idea of farm to table that guests say
they want to be involved in – and showing them what it really
means.

“We’re so divorced from how our food becomes our food
anymore. You’re empowering people to say, ‘pick this,’ or
they’re watching me pick it. That, to me is really completing
that circle. And they’re starting to understand it does matter
what I put in the air, what I put in the ground, in the water.
This is going into my body, it’s going into my kids.”

Bebenroth hatched this whole plated landscape idea
because he wanted to be outdoors. Now, as his guests
drive back to the city and the suburbs, he hopes he’s made a
few converts – made people see small local farms and the
woods as essential to their dinner.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Climate Change and Wildfires

  • Jennifer Pierce and David Wilkins stand in front of a ponderosa pine forest just outside the city of Boise. They hope to study the relationship between fire and climate here and recreate a snapshot of ancient climate. They are both teach at Boise State University's Geosciences Department. (Photo by Sadie Babits)

Twenty years ago this year, the
country watched its oldest national park
go up in flames. Looking back, scientists
believe the 1988 fires of Yellowstone
National Park were the signal fire of
climate change. Researchers have been
working ever since to understand this
relationship between climate and wildfire.
Sadie Babits reports on two scientists
searching for clues to ancient climates,
using trees as their guide:

Transcript

Twenty years ago this year, the
country watched its oldest national park
go up in flames. Looking back, scientists
believe the 1988 fires of Yellowstone
National Park were the signal fire of
climate change. Researchers have been
working ever since to understand this
relationship between climate and wildfire.
Sadie Babits reports on two scientists
searching for clues to ancient climates,
using trees as their guide:

Jennifer Pierce wears work boots as she plows down a steep slope in a
ponderosa pine forest.

(sound of walking, twigs breaking)

Her blonde hair is tucked up under her Boise State bronco cap, but it keeps
sneaking out. She has to keep brushing it back under. She and her
colleague David Wilkins are professors who work for Boise State
University’s Geosciences Department. They’re in the middle of tall pines in
a forest just outside of Boise, Idaho. Suddenly she’s crashing across the
brambles and heads for this tree.

“Oh that’s a great one! Wow! Sweet!”

She drops to her knees and shows me how this tree has been scarred by
fire.

“You see this little V shaped cat face here at the bottom of the tree that’s
blackened? So during a fire when the bark of the tree gets damaged that
preserves a record of the fire as a scar on the tree.”

Pierce says since the tree has annual growth rings, she can tell when the
tree got burned.

It’s one way Pierce and Wilkins reconstruct the fire history of this forest.
It’s a key to understanding how climate has affected forest fires in the past.

“I think as we move into a likely warmer and drier future, it’s going to be
increasingly important to understand the relationship between climate and
fire.”

She says climate is the primary control for wildfires. As the West warms,
there’s less control. Recently, that’s meant a lot more wildfires.

(popping sound) “There you go!” (sound of a drill bit going through the tree
with sound of birds and forest)

David Wilkins is twisting an auger into the tree.

“It’s a good upper body workout!” (laughs)

It’s a way to take a sample of the rings of this tree. Within a half-minute,
Wilkins’ auger is stuck. The tree is rotten inside. An eight-inch core is all he
gets.

(sound of drill bit coming out of the tree)

Jennifer Pierce takes a look at this sample Wilkins twisted out. The rings –
some light, some dark – reveal just how the tree has responded to moisture
and temperature.

“If you have a tree that kind of is at the edge of its comfort zone so to
speak, it will be more of a sensitive recorder of those environmental
stresses. See this one looks pretty good.”

Tree rings aren’t the only clue these scientists use to reconstruct historic
climates.

(scraping sound)

“I didn’t bring my big shovel. I kind of feel naked without it.”

Pierce scrapes away dirt and she finds bits of charcoal. She can sometimes
use charcoal for radio carbon dating. But these won’t do.

“But, um, I wouldn’t use them for dating because you want to make sure
that the charcoal is stratographicly in place and that you haven’t had
critters burrowing and mixing things up.”

Charcoal can be dated much further back than the tree rings. It helps
Pierce and Wilkins understand what happened here thousands of years
ago. With samples from other scientists, they’ll get a snapshot of ancient
climate and how it affects wildfire.

And possibly determine what climate change will mean for forests in the
future.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

Related Links

Only Trees Can Prevent Forest Fires?

  • Active flame front of the Zaca Fire, the second largest fire on record in California. (U.S. Forest Service photo by John Newman)

New technology might help the US
Forest Service detect fires in remote areas
more quickly. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

New technology might help the US
Forest Service detect fires in remote areas
more quickly. Lester Graham reports:

A chemical reaction makes batteries generate electricity. There’s a ph difference
between trees and the soil around them. MIT researchers say they can use that
chemical difference to generate a tiny amount of electricity.

Andreas Mershin and his MIT colleagues say it’s just enough power to trickle charge
sensors that read temperature and humidity. Then they send that data to the U.S.
Forest Service so it can determine the risk of fire.

“The advantage comes from the fact you no longer need to be going to very remote
locations and changing batteries all the time.”

The Forest Service will be testing these sensors next spring. They cost about one-tenth
of other sensors that need batteries. So it could mean more sensors in remote
locations. That way the Forest Service could have a better idea of if and when it needs
to put fire equipment near hot, dry areas.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Woody the Woodpecker: Save My Home!

  • Chet Meyers surveys the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve for Red-headed Woodpeckers. He's heading up a study to identify the bird's preferred habitat, and to encourage landowners to let dead and dying trees stand, as woodpecker homes. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Red-headed woodpeckers used to
be just about everywhere east of the Rocky
Mountains. But these days the number of
red-headed woodpeckers is about half of
what it was fifty years ago. Stephanie
Hemphill reports volunteers
are working on a new project to get people
to help red-headed woodpeckers. They’re
encouraging landowners to let dead or dying
trees stand rather than cut them down:

Transcript

Red-headed woodpeckers used to
be just about everywhere east of the Rocky
Mountains. But these days the number of
red-headed woodpeckers is about half of
what it was fifty years ago. Stephanie
Hemphill reports volunteers
are working on a new project to get people
to help red-headed woodpeckers. They’re
encouraging landowners to let dead or dying
trees stand rather than cut them down:

You can’t miss Red-headed Woodpeckers. They have long beaks,
bright red heads and snowy white breasts. And if you go to the right
place, you can find a lot of them.

“Somebody told me that there was Red-headed Woodpeckers up
here, so I walked five minutes, and there was a Red-headed
Woodpecker, and it flew into a hole in a tree, and I says, ‘wow, this is
easy.’”

Lance Nelson first visited the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science
Reserve about a year ago.

“And then I came up this year and found 8 nests. But the young
make a lot of chattering, so you can usually tell where the nest is.”

Today they’re not hammering on trees – the sound most of us
associate with woodpeckers – but they’re doing plenty of chattering.

This reserve in southern Minnesota looks a lot like how much of the
Midwest used to look.

There are clumps of big oak trees here, separated by open areas of
native grasses, shrubs and wildflowers. The biologists call it an oak
savannah.

And there are Red-headed Woodpeckers everywhere – about fifty of
them on this 500-acre patch of ground.

“There’s a red-headed, and he’s got a baby with him. God, they’re
beautiful. They are so beautiful.”

That’s Chet Meyers. After a career as a college professor, he’s now
in charge of an effort to make more places where Red-headed
Woodpeckers can build their nests and raise their young.

If they can figure out exactly what the woodpeckers like so much
about this place, maybe they can come close to reproducing the
same conditions other places.

Chet Meyers is marking every tree where the woodpeckers have
nested.

“See these two trees to the left, go to the right-most one, it forks, and
there’s a broken-off snag up there, looks like a ‘Y’. That’s where the
babies were sticking their head out a couple weeks ago. It was really
cute.”

Once the trees are marked, the group will catalog exact descriptions
of each tree. They’re hoping to come up with a profile of the perfect
home for Red-headed Woodpeckers.

“And we’re going to measure the diameter of the tree, how high the
nest cavity is, the species of the tree, is it alive or is it dead, so we
can get some data on what seems to be the preferred habitat.”

Once they’re pretty sure they know what the woodpeckers like, they’ll
reach out to land owners. They’ll to try to get them to leave dead and
dying trees standing.

That could work on old abandoned farms, where there are trees and
open spaces. Or in cemeteries. Or around golf courses.

“If our theory – see, this is all theory – if our theory is correct, the golf
course replicates an oak savannah and there should be birds there.
So, that’s what we’re hoping.”

And Meyers says helping woodpeckers means helping other wildlife
too.

“The woodpecker is called a primary nester, it digs the cavity. But
flying squirrels, mice, snakes, bluebirds, tree swallows – there are lots
of other animals that are secondary nesters. They can’t drill the hole.
But they live there. So what we’re trying to do is preserve the habitat
so the woodpeckers drill the hole and when they leave, something
else will come in and live in it.”

The researchers think if you have dead or dying tree, that could be a
home for a Red-headed Woodpecker. But usually homeowners are
worried the tree could fall and damage something, Meyers says you
can cut off the top and some of the bigger branches and leave the
rest of the tree standing. They think the red-headed woodpecker will
be just as happy.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, on a Singing Hike We Go

  • Music teacher Maura Volante leading students on her "Woods Walk Singing", a singing hike (Photo by Karen Kelly)

In many cultures, people sing as
they work or as they travel. But in North
America, most of us aren’t comfortable
singing out loud in public. Karen Kelly
reports on a music teacher who’s trying
to change that – by taking her students
into the woods:

Transcript

In many cultures, people sing as
they work or as they travel. But in North
America, most of us aren’t comfortable
singing out loud in public. Karen Kelly
reports on a music teacher who’s trying
to change that – by taking her students
into the woods:


“Ooh, ah. Ooh ah. Here’s another part: aay-oh”

Maura Volante is leading a troupe of six students through a path in the forest.

It’s rainy, buggy and muddy. But everyone quickly gets into a groove – both with their
feet and with their voice.

(sound of walking song)

“There’s lots to look at all the time: the green and the shadows, the lake, the sky and all
the different vegetation. And when I’m feeling relaxed and I’m in my body and I’m
walking along and I’m in nature like that, it just makes me want to sing. It inspires me to
let my voice out.”

Volante teaches singing in Ottawa, Canada. For her, people don’t need a good voice to be
able to sing. Instead, she says singing just comes naturally to humans, like breathing and
walking. Which is why she tries to get people outside where they can experiment and
make mistakes.

“It’s kind of like recreational softball. It doesn’t matter if someone sucks at it. They can
still play. It’s for fun.”

(sound of more singing)

We spend about two hours hiking around the heavily-wooded Mud Lake.

I did some research to see if I could find any other organized singing hikes. I found one
at a bible camp in Virginia. And there’s one at a kibbutz in Israel. And, at Yellowstone
National Park? They recommend singing loudly – or shouting – to scare the bears away.

Of course, lots of people like to sing when they hike. On this walk, Kathy Woodgold
says she sings differently when she’s walking in nature.

“When we’re in the woods, it brings sort of a primitive spirit. Like, I’m thinking, let’s
pretend we’re not civilized, instincts, and so on. And maybe that opens up a creative
spirit. It frees us to sing random notes, instead of having to feel like we have to do a
predefined melody.”

This isn’t really a conservationist group. But teacher Maura Volante says, in some small
way, doing this helps the planet.

“I think there is a benefit to the environment for people to sing more because that gets
them to appreciate nature more and appreciating nature helps you be committed to
preserving it.”

(sound of singing “O Canada”)

The small group stops at a dock overlooking Mud Lake for their only performance of the
day. The audience? Ducks, frogs and mosquitoes.

But they give it their all.

For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

Related Links

Songbirds’ Numbers Flying South

  • A Nashville Warbler - one of the birds that Matt Etterson heard during this bird count in Canada (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

The numbers and types of songbirds
are dropping dramatically in many areas of
the country. A lot of people are trying to
get a better count on the number of birds
that are still around. Stephanie Hemphill recently went with researchers
on one of the more ambitious bird count projects:

Transcript

The numbers and types of songbirds
are dropping dramatically in many areas of
the country. A lot of people are trying to
get a better count on the number of birds
that are still around. Stephanie Hemphill recently went with researchers
on one of the more ambitious bird count projects:

The jumping off point for this trip is a tiny airport with a grass runway in
northern Minnesota, about 20 miles from the Canadian border.

We fly for 15 minutes, over trees and swamps as far as the eye can see. Down
below we get a glimpse of a moose. And, later, a pair of rare trumpeter swans
in their nest.

The helicopter sets down in what’s known as a floating bog. Its runners are
sitting in six inches of water.

We jump out in knee-high boots and rain jackets, and douse with DEET to try
to keep the mosquitoes away.

I’m following Heidi Seeland, a graduate student who seems to know her way
around a bog.

We’re in knee-deep water. Then it’s thigh-deep Pretty soon it’s waist-deep. I try
to step on a clump of sphagnum moss. But it sinks. It holds onto my boot, and
I’m sitting in water.

Heidi helps me up, and we catch up with the others.

They fan out on different points of the compass. I follow Matt Etterson. He’s an
ornithologist, a bird expert. We slog through the bog for nearly half an hour.
Etterson is aiming for a piece of higher ground, where the trees are a little
taller, better for nesting.

Suddenly he stops. He’s found the spot he was looking for. He sets his watch
for 10 minutes and pulls out a notebook.

Etterson cocks his head this way and that, jotting the names of the birds he can
hear, and the time he hears them. He doesn’t pay any attention to the mosquito
biting the back of his neck. He just listens and takes notes.

“We had a couple of hermit thrush — that’s the singing to the north of us. A
veery called a couple of times to the west of us. A Nashville warbler, and a
couple of western palm warblers, and that was about it. It was pretty quiet
otherwise,” Etterson said.

We trudge through the muck for another 20 or 30 minutes and he repeats the
process.

It’s two hours later, and the three researchers meet at the helicopter landing spot
and compare notes. They’re excited about Etterson’s veery and Nashville
warbler. The others heard a Connecticut warbler and a Lincoln’s sparrow.

They would have been really happy if they’d heard a golden-winged warbler.
It’s one of the most threatened of bird species. The number of golden-winged
warblers has declined by some 80% during the last 50 years.

Today’s trip is an experiment to see how well it works to count birds in remote
places, using a helicopter.

It’ll take five years to finish the bird count here. Then, in 10 or 20 years, they’ll
do it all over again, to see how the birds are faring.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

The Incredible, Edible Weed

  • Garlic mustard ranges from eastern Canada, south to Virginia and as far west as Kansas and Nebraska (Photo courtesy of the National Parks Service's Plant Conservation Alliance)

An invasive plant called Garlic Mustard is
taking over forests in the Eastern half of the country,
and it could be causing long term damage. Julie Grant
reports that some people are getting smart in their
efforts to get rid of Garlic Mustard:

Transcript

An invasive plant called Garlic Mustard is
taking over forests in the Eastern half of the country,
and it could be causing long term damage. Julie Grant
reports that some people are getting smart in their
efforts to get rid of Garlic Mustard:

Brad Steman spends a lot of time in the woods. He likes the serenity.
But as we walk through this park, he winces. The entire forest floor is
carpeted with one plant and one plant only: Garlic Mustard.
Thousands of them. The thin green stalks are as tall as our ankles.

Steman calls it “the evil weed.” Its triangle-shaped leaves shade out
wildflowers, so they don’t grow. Even worse, Steman says Garlic
Mustard poisons baby trees.

“So a forest filled with Garlic Mustard you will see very little
regeneration of that forest, very few seedlings, small trees. So
looking down the line, once those large trees start dying off there’s
nothing to replace them. And that now is the greatest threat to our
Eastern forests.”

Steman says every year Garlic Mustard is spreading farther into the
woods. Anywhere the ground is disturbed.

“So here’s a big stand of it along a trail. This is typically where it
starts. This is thick. This is a healthy stand. There’s potential there
for an explosion. So we should probably pull some. I’ll pull some;
you don’t have to pull any.”

Thank goodness he’s doing it – that looks it looks like tedious work.
Steman crouches down and starts pulling them out of the ground,
roots and all. He sprayed herbicide on some of it, and so far this
season he’s filled 35 big garbage bags with Garlic Mustard plants.
He’s sick of weeding. But it doesn’t look like he’s made a dent here.
All along the Eastern half of the US and Canada people are pulling up
Garlic Mustard from parks and just throwing it away. But some
people don’t like this approach.

“All these people are very shortsighted when they’re doing that.”

Peter Gail is a specialist in edible weeds.

“They’re not looking for other alternative uses – creative ways to use these plants that would be
profitable, that would be productive.”

Gail says: “If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em.” People brought Garlic
Mustard to the US in the mid-1800s because they liked it, to eat. And
they even used it for medicine. Yep. That same nasty weed.

Gail says today Garlic Mustard just needs an image makeover.
Some weeds have become big stars in the cooking world. A few
years ago Purselane was just an unwanted vine, with its fleshy, shiny
leaves matted to the ground. Now it’s known as a nutritional
powerhouse, and is the darling of New York and LA eateries. Gail
wants that kind of fame for Garlic Mustard.

“This is a Garlic Mustard Ricotta dip, Garlic Mustard salsa, stuffed Garlic Mustard leaves – these are all things you can do with this stuff. It’s fantastic!”

Garlic Mustard seeds taste like mustard, the leaves taste like garlic
and the roots are reminiscent of horseradish.
Gail says people should go after Garlic Mustard in the parks, but then
they should take it to farm markets to sell.

“My normal statement is that the best way to demoralize weeds is to
eat them.
Because when you eat them they know you like them and they don’t
want to be there anymore, and so they leave.”

(blender sound)

Today Gail decides to blend a pesto using the early spring leaves.
He picks every last Garlic Mustard in his yard to make a batch.

“Well there it is, garlic mustard pesto. And it isn’t bad, is it?”
Julie Grant: “It’s delicious.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.
Gail: “I’ll use that on ravioli tonight.”

Related Links

Nature Profile: Women and the Woods

  • (L to R) Lorin Waxman, Cindy Waxman, Pamela Waxman, Bonnie Waxman, on their back deck. (Photo courtesy of Pamela Waxman)

Fairy tales and slasher films suggest that
the woods can be a scary place. It’s a place where
someone or some thing could hurt us. In our
occasional series about people’s connections to
the environment, Kyle Norris talks to one woman
who has every reason to fear the woods, but has
come to reject that notion:

Transcript

Fairy tales and slasher films suggest that
the woods can be a scary place. It’s a place where
someone or some thing could hurt us. In our
occasional series about people’s connections to
the environment, Kyle Norris talks to one woman
who has every reason to fear the woods, but has
come to reject that notion:


Pamela Waxman spends every minute of her free time hiking,
camping, and backpacking through the woods. And when she’s
in the woods she smiles a lot. And talks slower and a little
easier than when she’s in her day-to-day life. She likes
exploring nature with other people. But she also enjoys going out
by herself, and she does a lot. And that really stresses-out her
parents.


“They’re worried that something’s going to happen to me,
something bad. That either I will be attacked or that I’ll break a
leg or something and there won’t be someone else to help me or to go for
help. They don’t want to lose me and they don’t want me to
suffer.”


For some people, there’s a great fear involved when women go
into the woods. Especially when women go into the woods alone. For Pamela’s
family, this concern is based in reality.


“Well, my sister was murdered out in nature attending to
something she loved. She was alone in a wooded area and
somebody attacked and killed her. So it’s easy to see a parallel
with me going out in woods and being alone in a wooded area.”


Pamela’s older sister, Cindy, was sexually assaulted and killed
in the woods near her home. She had just turned eleven. Pamela
was eight. It makes sense that Pamela may not enjoy being out in the woods, but that’s not what happened. Instead of avoiding the
woods, she embraced the woods:


“I do turn to nature as a place to be and it’s definitely linked to
fact that Cindy was murdered in sort of a wooded area in the
suburbs but still. I reject that. I’m not going to live that way.
I’m not willing to stay indoors and not go out because
someone might murder me in the woods. I don’t think that’s
rational. I don’t want to and will not live that way and I don’t
want to set the example for other people to do that.


“Like the first thing my parents did, like really soon after my sister
was killed was send me away to camp. Which seems totally ridiculous now, but… backpacking which I don’t think I’d ever done, backpacking, rock
climbing and repelling. Under the supervision of basically
a bunch of teenagers, 19-year-olds. For a week, in the High Sierras. Sounds insane. Was totally great. I’m so grateful they sent me because it would have been so easy to clamp down.
And be like no you’re staying with us so we can watch you.
But they didn’t so that. They sent me out into the woods.”


(Norris:) “Did nature help you heal from her death?”


“Oh, I don’t know. Have I healed from her death? Not really…”


But she keeps going back to nature. Today Pamela works at a teen
center. And she recently took a group of teenage girls on a
week-long camping trip. She said the girls would say things like
“I’m afraid of the dark,” or “the woods are creepy”:


“There’s a lot of fear. I think it’s an internalized fear about
violence, rape. I never hear, then they feel it and repress it, but I
never hear boys and men say that they’re afraid to be out in
nature.”


So helping young women feel safer and more comfortable in
nature has become one of Pamela’s personal goals. Pamela says
that nature has taught her about survival. It’s taught her about being normal. And
being fine.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Birder Connects With Nature

  • Anya Dale (pictured above) says being in nature "forces you to look at your priorities." (Photo by Kyle Norris)

Here’s the latest installment in our
occasional series about people’s connections to
the environment. Producer Kyle Norris has been
asking people if they feel close to nature. Today
she hikes with her friend Anya Dale,
an amateur bird-watcher and nature enthusiast:

Transcript

Here’s the latest installment in our
occasional series about people’s connections to
the environment. Producer Kyle Norris has been
asking people if they feel close to nature. Today
she hikes with her friend Anya Dale,
an amateur bird-watcher and nature enthusiast:


Anya and I are walking through a shady, hilly forest. And birds are
chirping everywhere. Usually when Anya hikes, it’s just her and nature.
Microphones and reporter friends usually don’t make it into the
equation, so I think Anya’s a little nervous:


“See um, yeah, that’s where it is (bird sounds) I don’t know if you can
see it. Sorry I’m totally getting distracted. Do you see, it’s like
through that tree, the one tree behind it, now it’s flying back. I
think they’re red belly woodpeckers. Let’s go down closer.”


Anya is little and feisty. She buys almost all of her clothes from
second-hand stores. I always see her in earth-toned corduroys and
fleece vests. She’s this eco-groovy chick walking down the path:


“Well, right now, we are walking through Bird Hills. Checking out the
trails. I partially try to just zone out a little bit. Coming out here to a
certain extent is an escape to do much of anything. But I also just
find myself listening to all the birds and trying to figure out what
kind they are and where they are. It’s usually not too successful, but it’s
still fun just listening and paying attention to what’s around.


Anya says that when she doesn’t spend time outside, she gets grouchy.
She recently visited New York City. Even though she had a fun time, she
says the city just doesn’t move her the way spending time in nature
does. Like the time she went backpacking with her friend:


“It forces you to look at your priorities and what does, it really
matter you don’t like your hair cut you got, does it really matter that
you don’t do all of these things. Or do you have time to focus on what
is important that you accomplish in your life? Or the people in your
life. And it forces you to slow down.”


As we walked through the woods, Anya pointed out tons of birds. We
listened to one that sounded like a monkey. Anya said that bird always
make her laugh. In fact, a lot of birds catch her attention. We
couldn’t walk for more than a few minutes without her stopping mid-
sentence to track some bird:


“Part of what the awe I have in birds is that they’re really tough. And
also just being able to survive the winters or even just the cold
nights, they essentially go into torpor, it’s sort of like a type of
hibernation not quite as deep. But they go into this every night and
lose fifty percent of their body weight and they have to shiver and
shiver and shiver to wake themselves back up. And it’s a huge stress on
their body and they truly, what they eat during the day is what’s going to keep them
alive at night. But you just hear their pretty songs and they’re flying
around playing and they’re incredibly tough.”


They’re not just tough. They have a bird’s eye view of life, literally.
Anya told me that she admires how birds can really see the big picture
of things. That’s because they migrate thousands of miles. She says
that larger view is something she strives to see in her daily life:


“And I think about them, they can just, not that there’s an infinite
number of place they can fly to, but they sort of get this more
regional or global view of the world than most other species or other
animals. So, sometimes I think that’s got to be amazing to see things
on a bigger scale like that…Sorry I always get distracted as soon as I see
a bird, so it’s hard for me to focus!”


I’m not a birder and I don’t really spend a lot of time paying
attention to birds. But after Anya and I went hiking I started to
notice them. Like the other day a cute little bird with a cherry-red
splash on its head stood next to me on the sidewalk. And I heard
woodpeckers during my morning run through the woods. Birds are
everywhere. And maybe you’re like me… you didn’t even notice them,
until somebody pointed them out.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Earth’s Forests Disappearing

  • A U.N. report indicates the planet is losing its forests. The U.S. and Europe have had net gains in forests, despite continued development. Poorer areas of the world are losing forests faster. (Photo by Lester Graham)

You might think that the countries with the most development are cutting down the most forests. But a new report by the United Nations shows that the United States and much of Europe are showing net increases in wooded areas. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

You might think that the countries with the most development are cutting down the most forests. But a new report by the United Nations shows that the United States and much of Europe are showing net increases in wooded areas. Julie Grant reports:


It’s the countries where a lot of people are poor, or face conflict, where clear-cutting and uncontrolled fires are continuing deforestation. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has just issued a report on the the world’s forests. It finds that about 32 million acres of woods are lost each year.


That meant a loss of 3% of the world’s forests between 1990 and 2005. One of the agency’s foresters says the net loss is actually lower than in the past, but he says the world is still losing woodlands at an unacceptable rate.


Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean are losing the most forests. The report says most of that land is being converted for farming. The study credits economic prosperity and careful forest management for forest gains in the US, East Asia, and much of Europe.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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