Two Podcasts You’ve Got to Hear: Thinking Trees and Rewilding

Oostvaardersplassen

The Oostvaardersplassen, an attempt to rewild a very unwild place in the Netherlands.

In case you can’t get enough of our podcasts, let me suggest two other podcast episodes that will definitely be of interest to Root Simple readers and listeners:

WNYC’s Radiolab released an episode, From Tree to Shining Tree which features the mind-bending research of Suzanne Simard. Her work shows that the root systems of forests form a sort of neural network, perhaps even a kind of plant consciousness.

The always worthwhile and thoughtful Ideas show has an episode on Rewilding, the tricky notion of returning landscapes to a “natural” state. One of the examples in the show is an attempt to rewild a region in the Netherlands that was reclaimed from the sea in the 1960s. I’m very familiar with this place from a bizarre, failed project I was involved with that attempted to create a monumental land art piece with explosives. Someday I’ll tell that crazy story, but let’s just say that this part of the Netherlands is probably the most dull landscape in the world. The Ideas show begins with the story of Ecologist Frans Vera introducing wild animals to this very artificial place. The show goes on to explore what “wildness” means. Spoiler: that’s a topic that will never have a neat conclusion.

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5 Comments

  1. Which is more worthwhile – rewilding areas that have never been wild (Oostvaardersplassen) or maintaining areas that Biebrza Wetlands?

    • We need to do both. I’m interested in creating corridors made up of wild and not-so-wild places so animals can migrate once more.

  2. Haven’t listened to the podcast yet but I hope to do so soon because I am both interested and invested in rewilding.

    My small acreage was once wetland, then cow pasturage, then a plant nursery business, and for many years just fields of mown grass. There was almost no wildlife present when my parents bought this place in the 1980’s–there weren’t even any squirrels here for many years.

    I was fortunate to work for a time at a local arboretum that has been a pioneer in sustainable landscaping using native plants, and it was there that I learned that about the importance of a healthy native environment that supports native species.

    Little by little, I have allowed areas of my yard to grow wild. As I have done so, native plants and animals have begun to thrive: ferns, sundew, pitcher plants, meadow beauty, Elliot’s blueberry, squirrels, foxes, turtles, and more.

    I was reminded, most unfortunately, this spring when a careless trash-burning neighbor set my side yard alight that the piney woods of Mississippi is naturally adapted to being a fire environment. I had always been told that native wax-myrtle can explode when burned, and now I know that’s true. It was a frightening experience but it’s interesting watching as nature retrieves itself yet again. From now on, though, I will try to make sure not to allow too much wax-myrtle to take hold.

    Rewilding is vital stuff but it’s truly important to understand exactly what natural local ecosystem you’re dealing with so you can be prepared.

  3. I’d listened to the rewinding one this week. It’s an interesting thing to think about. I live on the Canadian Prairies and most is still “natural” grasslands. Of course it’s fenced and its cattle instead of buffalo now.

    Nearby me is Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump which is a world heritage site. There were many of these but this is the most well preserved. I can’t remember exact dates but it had been used for thousands of years. In the museum there was even mention that fire was used by the Native Americans to help ensure a good hunt in the following year. Fire naturally runs across the prairies and leads to renewal. They learned to burn areas so that the fresh vegetation would bring them to the area.

    So what would wild be here? Humans have influenced the area for thousands of years. Even if you could go back before them the climate was different and species would be different.

    Ive gotten the Thinking Trees loaded on my phone for this weeks driving.

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