Meet 3 Leaders Addressing Local Conservation Problems

IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow. As we look back at the last year, some of the climate news feels, well, pretty glum. But in the midst of countries largely failing important climate goals, some local communities took environmental matters into their own hands and got results. We wanted to know what made them successful.

So Science Friday started a newsletter called Tiny Nature Triumphs. It highlights small projects across the world and the creative way scientists and communities are protecting their local environment. Scifri producer Emma Gomez runs that newsletter and brings us three of those projects. Here’s Emma.

EMMA GOMEZ: Ever wonder if that friendly looking plant in your yard is invasive? And once you find out, what do you do next? Well, there are some programs across the country that aim to convince homeowners to remove invasive species from their yards and gardens. In Hamilton County, Indiana, their trade-in program allows homeowners to replace invasives with a native plant from the area for free.

Claire Lane is an urban conservationist at Hamilton County’s Soil and Water Conservation District. And she runs that program. Welcome, Claire.

CLAIRE LANE: Hi.

EMMA GOMEZ: So could you tell me something like, roughly how many people’s backyards in Indiana have invasive plants? Or what does the scale of this look like?

CLAIRE LANE: There are so many invasives. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a yard that probably doesn’t have one. A lot of these plants have been introduced through the landscape trade and then started escaping into natural areas. And a lot of people don’t see that happening. Because it’s not like your invasive plant is getting up and walking out of your yard.

So a lot of people think, well, mine’s not invasive. But what they don’t really see is those birds that are at their burning bush right now, picking up the berries, and then flying away to a nearby park or roadside, and then planting that berry for them. That’s how most of these plants spread. And it’s conceptually just a little harder for people to follow. But they’re so common and so pervasive that really, they’re pretty much everywhere.

EMMA GOMEZ: Right. I mean, even though a lot of them are beautiful, invasive species aren’t really that great for the environment of a city because they can reproduce pretty fast. It sounds like they can just take out habitats for native plants. And without those native plants, local insects, pollinators, and other wildlife in the ecosystem suffer, right?

CLAIRE LANE: Those species really are the foundation of our entire ecosystem. You can almost think about it like a house of cards, where we’re at the top. And these insects are that foundation at the bottom. And the invasive species can really tear that whole house of cards down.

And we’ve found that once people are educated about the harm the invasive species cause, they want to be part of the solution. And they want to help. And that’s the exciting part of all of this. And there are some great native alternatives that you can choose from that have the same great color, but are actually an asset to our environment, versus a detriment.

EMMA GOMEZ: So tell me more about how your trade in program comes in to solve the problem that you outlined with these invasive plants.

CLAIRE LANE: Yeah. So we were finding that a lot of people just didn’t know how to get started, maybe knew that they had an invasive species, but weren’t sure what to do with it. So this program allows us to help people break it down into some smaller steps. We are there to help people identify what species they have on their property. And then with the trade-in program, they can remove that invasive species, and then they apply on our website. And they get a coupon code to get for free, some native replacements out of our 40 different native species they can choose from.

EMMA GOMEZ: That’s a lot.

CLAIRE LANE: Yeah, it is. It is. But it’s less overwhelming than walking into a garden store and not knowing at all, where to start and what to look for. So I think that really helps people move along because they have a list of choices right in front of them.

EMMA GOMEZ: I love that that’s taking away the decision fatigue of finding a new plan. It’s like matchmaking.

CLAIRE LANE: Yeah. We hear a lot of I’ve wanted to deal with this burning bush or this pear tree or whatever species it is for a long time. I’m so excited that I finally got the push to do it. I’m so excited to have this opportunity to replace it. They get to see and meet other people who are doing the same thing, which I think builds a lot of community and is exciting. So it’s really motivating for us and for them because everybody’s excited about it.

EMMA GOMEZ: That is Claire Lane, an urban conservationist with Hamilton County, Indiana’s Soil and Water Conservation District. Thank you so much, Claire.

CLAIRE LANE: Thanks.

EMMA GOMEZ: If you want to see if your yard has invasive plants, Claire recommends doing an online search for your area’s list of invasive species. You can also check in with your local Soil and Water Conservation District to learn more about what removal options are available in your area. Speaking of protecting ecosystems, if you’ve lived in one place for a while, you’ve probably noticed the landscape change over time. Maybe the trees are bigger, or an extreme weather event seriously altered the landscape.

But there aren’t a lot of great ways to keep track of those changes. That’s where Chronolog comes in. It’s a series of photo stations set up in natural areas all over the world. You might come across one if you’re out enjoying nature, where you’ll see a sign inviting any passerby to take a picture of the habitat and upload it to a database, where it then becomes part of a years-long time lapse video. And researchers can use that video to see how the habitat has changed over time.

Jake Groves is a co-founder of Chronolog. Welcome to Science Friday.

JAKE GROVES: Hi, thanks for having me. I’m a fan of the show.

EMMA GOMEZ: Thanks for being here. So do you have a concrete example of how these Chronolog stations have helped scientists or the communities that they’re in?

JAKE GROVES: Yeah, so controlled burns are a really great use case. Some people have a really hard time understanding why you would set fire in the woods. How is setting fire in the woods a good thing? And so scientists will set up two Chronolog photo stations, one in an area that’s not managed, that’s full of brush, that’s kind of ripe for a wildfire, and another time lapse where there’s prescribed fire and the force is manicured. And you can see the difference of a healthier forest.

And then there’s the things we didn’t expect. Scientists will set up a photo station in Florida, monitoring one thing. And then Hurricane Helene or Hurricane Ian will blow through. And now it’s really important to have a baseline of what the mangroves looked like before the storm, the damage after the storm, how long it takes to recover. It’s a great tool for scientists to learn.

EMMA GOMEZ: That’s really cool. So I come across one of these stations, put my phone in, take a picture, and email it to Chronolog. But how do I actually see the time lapse that I’m contributing to?

JAKE GROVES: Yes, so you get an email reply back with the time lapse video. So while you’re standing in front of the basin or the river or the desert or the wetland, you get to see how that scene has changed over time while you’re still standing in front of it. Every park has a story to tell. When a person is out in nature enjoying that scenery, they want to help in some way. They want to give back.

And when you give people an option to do something positive, they take that. And that’s showing instead of telling. With science, there’s a communications hurdle to get over. And when you can show someone a video, they can see the change, they can understand it. And together, we’re creating a living archive of our planet that can inform decisions that shape the future.

EMMA GOMEZ: Well, thank you so much for answering these questions. And I cannot wait to visit a Chronolog station myself in the near future.

JAKE GROVES: Well, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

EMMA GOMEZ: To find a Chronolog station near you, check out chronolog.io. And finally, when a dead tree in a city gets cut down, where does it go next? Well, the city of Baltimore does something a little special with them. Camp Small is a city run lumber recycling program that takes dead trees and turns them into mulch, firewood, and sometimes even beautiful furniture. Shaun Preston is a woodworker and yard master at Camp Small. Welcome to Science Friday.

SHAUN PRESTON: Thank you so much. It’s great to be here.

EMMA GOMEZ: So before Camp Small was Camp Small, I heard it used to be called the Stump Dump, where dead trees would go to be thrown in a landfill. How did it begin its transformation into the recycling center that it is now?

SHAUN PRESTON: So the Stump Dump was just the five acre site where Baltimore City Recreation and Parks and Division of Forestry would bring all the material from downed trees throughout the city. It’s like on average, 2000 trees come down every year. And this was the site for housing, all of that, housing as much as 9,000 tons a year. So that fills up a football field, 16, 18 feet high. And it became very evident that the site was just a cost to the city.

EMMA GOMEZ: So you guys decided to start recycling that wood instead?

SHAUN PRESTON: Yeah. So you walk in the door to us. And you’re trying to build something at home. And you don’t really know what you’re looking for or quite how to build it. We’re long-time. woodworkers who have done a lot of that sort of thing. And we take our time to help guide you through it.

EMMA GOMEZ: So the city hands over dead trees and tree stumps to Camp Small, and then they prepare the lumber to get converted into furniture for businesses or wood for mushroom inoculation. But it goes beyond that, right?

SHAUN PRESTON: Yeah. I feel like the benefits to our community really stretch wide. I mean, probably the thing that we enjoy the most that we do a lot of is working with city schools to do outdoor classrooms. We’re in an urban area. And a lot of the children here don’t have good access to natural areas.

So we build physical classrooms outside, tables and chairs out of logs so that kids can leave the classroom setting. And the teacher can take a group of 30 kids and sit outside on wooden benches and logs and play spaces. We’ll truck a whole lot of logs, and we set them up so that they create this jungle gym of logs. And we’ll cut steps and platforms and make it into this really fun, engaging, interactive thing for kids.

EMMA GOMEZ: If I was a tree, that’s where I would want to end up. That is so wonderful.

SHAUN PRESTON: Yes, yes. I agree with that. And also just like how something simple and that’s a natural byproduct of nature can become this thing that gathers communities together, that gives children something to play on, we don’t need to look at it as a business. We instead, are a city service and a public service.

EMMA GOMEZ: And on a harder note, I know that there was a fire at the yard earlier this month. How are you all managing with the aftermath of that?

SHAUN PRESTON: Well, it was devastating. We had an accumulation of maybe 5 years worth of logs stacked on our facility. And a fire broke out. We’re not really sure how it happened, but we did lose a large inventory of logs.

Fortunately, we had the firefighters working really hard to try to save our facilities and our equipment. And when I woke up the next day, I was really relieved that those were still in place. And I think the thing that kind of blew me away was just the response from the community, the amount of people that reached out by phone and by email to offer assistance to us, or just to show the love, like that they love what we’re doing, and that they see the benefits of what we’re doing is yeah, it’s just completely inspirational. We’re really fortunate to be able to keep our program going, pretty much uninterrupted. And we’re right back at it today, sawing and sorting and doing what we always do.

EMMA GOMEZ: That is Shaun Preston, the YardMaster at Camp Small. Thank you so much, Shaun.

SHAUN PRESTON: Thank you. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.

EMMA GOMEZ: For those in the city of Baltimore, if you’re looking for lumber, a raised bed for your garden, or just a log to sit on outside, you can get in touch with Camp Small through their website. To read more about these projects, you can find our entire Tiny Nature Triumph series on our website at sciencefriday.com/triumphs. I’m Emma Gomez.

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