1 00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:02,400 Hi Beyond the Shore listeners, I'm Rebecca Williams. 2 00:00:02,760 --> 00:00:06,160 The Great Lakes region is home to some incredible wilderness areas, 3 00:00:06,160 --> 00:00:09,160 the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on Lake Michigan, 4 00:00:09,200 --> 00:00:13,440 the Rock River Canyon Wilderness full of waterfalls and the beautiful remote Isle 5 00:00:13,480 --> 00:00:14,880 Royale in Lake Superior. 6 00:00:15,520 --> 00:00:19,440 But today, wilderness areas are changing a lot because of climate change, 7 00:00:19,440 --> 00:00:22,560 increased visitation, and new technologies that people are bringing 8 00:00:22,560 --> 00:00:24,640 with them on the trail and onto the water. 9 00:00:25,040 --> 00:00:27,400 What does that mean for the meaning of wilderness? 10 00:00:28,240 --> 00:00:32,320 Today, we're sharing a podcast from our friends at KALW Public Media that tries to 11 00:00:32,320 --> 00:00:36,520 answer that question. In the podcast, journalist and longtime backpacker Marissa 12 00:00:36,520 --> 00:00:41,080 Ortega Welch explores where the original ideas for wilderness came from and how 13 00:00:41,120 --> 00:00:43,640 today's changes are testing the definition of wilderness. 14 00:00:44,280 --> 00:00:47,560 In the first episode, Marissa ventures off trail in California's 15 00:00:47,560 --> 00:00:52,600 Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park to see a grove of ancient giant sequoia trees that 16 00:00:52,600 --> 00:00:57,040 burn down in a severe fire and learn why park biologists and environmentalists are 17 00:00:57,080 --> 00:00:59,480 grappling with how much to try and restore these trees. 18 00:00:59,930 --> 00:01:04,130 Both. How wild and beyond the shore are proud to be part of the American Storytelling 19 00:01:04,130 --> 00:01:08,250 collection. To find even more great titles to explore the outdoors this summer with the NPR 20 00:01:08,290 --> 00:01:12,930 network, just search for the American Storytelling Collection in the NPR app or on 21 00:01:12,930 --> 00:01:14,050 Apple Podcasts. 22 00:01:15,930 --> 00:01:19,930 My best friend Holly and I have been hiking in the wilderness together for 20 years. 23 00:01:19,970 --> 00:01:21,130 We got everything back there. 24 00:01:21,330 --> 00:01:23,050 I got my pack. You got the rainfly. 25 00:01:23,090 --> 00:01:25,330 Let's go. Where's the trail? 26 00:01:25,370 --> 00:01:26,010 I don't know. 27 00:01:28,530 --> 00:01:31,770 Every summer we go on a backpacking trip somewhere in the west. 28 00:01:32,050 --> 00:01:35,810 California's Sierra Nevada, the Olympic Mountains in Washington, 29 00:01:36,050 --> 00:01:37,890 the wind River range in Wyoming. 30 00:01:38,090 --> 00:01:41,610 I know the rain on the willows is glistening in the sunlight. 31 00:01:42,250 --> 00:01:44,650 Like, literally. This is so pretty. 32 00:01:47,370 --> 00:01:49,410 I love being in wilderness. 33 00:01:49,450 --> 00:01:51,890 It's my happy place away from roads. 34 00:01:51,890 --> 00:01:53,450 The pressures of daily life. 35 00:01:53,970 --> 00:01:56,450 The only things to think about are hiking and eating. 36 00:01:56,490 --> 00:01:58,380 I think you need help with those mangoes. 37 00:01:58,740 --> 00:01:59,940 I'll trade you for your snickers. 38 00:02:00,220 --> 00:02:04,580 And just getting to be in a beautiful place where humans and our stuff aren't the 39 00:02:04,580 --> 00:02:06,540 dominant features. Oh, marmot. 40 00:02:07,420 --> 00:02:11,020 Official wilderness is an area protected from development, 41 00:02:11,020 --> 00:02:15,900 set aside by the government to be a place where humans are just visitors. 42 00:02:19,660 --> 00:02:24,740 And even though I love visiting these capital W designated wilderness areas, 43 00:02:24,980 --> 00:02:30,220 the concept of wilderness itself has always bugged me because it could be seen as erasing 44 00:02:30,220 --> 00:02:35,020 the history of indigenous peoples who were forcibly removed from the land so it could be 45 00:02:35,020 --> 00:02:41,060 protected. And it can create this idea that humans are separate from nature. 46 00:02:42,820 --> 00:02:46,180 In the last ten years, Holly and I have noticed a lot of changes to 47 00:02:46,220 --> 00:02:50,180 wilderness. There was the year it was so smoky from fires, 48 00:02:50,180 --> 00:02:53,020 we couldn't see the mountains that were right in front of us. 49 00:02:53,580 --> 00:02:57,230 The year it was such a big winter, we couldn't get over mountain passes because 50 00:02:57,230 --> 00:02:59,470 of all the snow hanging on into the summer. 51 00:03:00,310 --> 00:03:04,310 The next year there was so little snow that the creeks had dried up and we had to carry 52 00:03:04,310 --> 00:03:05,950 drinking water for miles. 53 00:03:06,790 --> 00:03:10,710 There was the time we got to a view and looking out across the forest, 54 00:03:10,710 --> 00:03:14,670 it seemed every third tree was brown instead of green, 55 00:03:15,030 --> 00:03:18,790 killed by beetles that are spreading because of drought and a lack of fire. 56 00:03:20,310 --> 00:03:21,990 It's not just physical changes. 57 00:03:22,110 --> 00:03:23,990 I've seen more people on the trail. 58 00:03:23,990 --> 00:03:28,870 I bring my phone now to take pictures, but also I've had cell service in some places 59 00:03:28,870 --> 00:03:33,230 miles from a road. Some of the changes I've seen are really good, 60 00:03:33,550 --> 00:03:37,750 like how the internet is helping more people learn about wilderness and get outside. 61 00:03:38,630 --> 00:03:42,070 But good or bad, the meaning of wilderness is changing. 62 00:03:42,710 --> 00:03:44,830 The definition is being tested. 63 00:03:46,070 --> 00:03:50,510 If it isn't a place to unplug in a land untouched by humans, 64 00:03:50,710 --> 00:03:56,360 and if it never was, what does that mean for these physical places we call wilderness. 65 00:03:57,280 --> 00:03:59,560 And what does that mean for us as humans? 66 00:03:59,800 --> 00:04:02,560 If there's no place outside our impact. 67 00:04:02,800 --> 00:04:06,960 No separation between humans and this thing we call nature. 68 00:04:13,080 --> 00:04:16,320 I'm Marissa Ortega Welch, and this is How wild, 69 00:04:16,320 --> 00:04:19,360 a podcast about wilderness, how it's changing, 70 00:04:19,360 --> 00:04:22,160 and what that says about us as humans. 71 00:04:22,720 --> 00:04:25,960 In the next six episodes, we're going to be hiking through wilderness 72 00:04:25,960 --> 00:04:27,480 areas around the West. 73 00:04:27,800 --> 00:04:30,880 If you've never been to wilderness, if you're not a hiker, don't worry. 74 00:04:31,080 --> 00:04:34,440 I'm a former wilderness guide trained in backcountry first aid. 75 00:04:34,480 --> 00:04:35,760 I'm good at reading maps. 76 00:04:36,480 --> 00:04:41,040 If you've backpacked a lot, get ready, because we might be unpacking some 77 00:04:41,040 --> 00:04:43,000 of the assumptions you've brought with you. 78 00:04:43,160 --> 00:04:45,640 That's what I've been doing myself the last few years. 79 00:04:46,240 --> 00:04:50,280 So lace up your boots, bring extra water, and don't forget snacks, 80 00:04:50,640 --> 00:04:55,810 because the first place we're going is on a hike that I've been warned many times is 81 00:04:55,810 --> 00:05:00,770 hard. This is episode one, untrammelled. 82 00:05:02,050 --> 00:05:04,730 Where the trail ends. The official trail is down here. 83 00:05:04,730 --> 00:05:07,290 And then we start on these zigzags going up. 84 00:05:07,570 --> 00:05:12,330 We're in California's Sequoia National Park, and we're headed off trail to a remote, 85 00:05:12,330 --> 00:05:15,330 rugged corner, which is kind of the whole point. 86 00:05:15,370 --> 00:05:17,930 I can actually pull out a map. 87 00:05:18,530 --> 00:05:22,770 So this is the person I'm relying on not to get us lost. 88 00:05:22,770 --> 00:05:24,810 And then will you say your name and your title? 89 00:05:24,850 --> 00:05:26,130 Yeah. This is Andrew Bishop. 90 00:05:26,130 --> 00:05:29,210 I'm the restoration ecologist at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. 91 00:05:29,410 --> 00:05:30,130 I'm excited. 92 00:05:30,170 --> 00:05:32,930 Okay. Yeah, yeah, I'm here and nervous. 93 00:05:33,930 --> 00:05:35,250 I didn't mention rattlesnakes. 94 00:05:35,890 --> 00:05:36,170 Oh. 95 00:05:36,970 --> 00:05:41,650 We should be aware that in the lower elevation part of this hike, 96 00:05:41,690 --> 00:05:43,490 there's a good potential for rattlesnakes. 97 00:05:43,890 --> 00:05:48,770 Plus, there's poison oak and these annoying flies that keep getting in our face. 98 00:05:48,770 --> 00:05:49,410 The sunglasses. 99 00:05:49,410 --> 00:05:50,410 Are helping for the face. 100 00:05:50,410 --> 00:05:50,890 Flies. 101 00:05:51,330 --> 00:05:55,940 Just for the record, Yeah. I wouldn't be putting up with all this if I wasn't getting 102 00:05:55,940 --> 00:05:58,780 to see something today that not a lot of people have seen. 103 00:06:00,260 --> 00:06:06,260 It's 2022 and we're heading to board camp, the name of a grove of giant sequoias that 104 00:06:06,260 --> 00:06:09,140 burned two years before in the castle fire. 105 00:06:09,980 --> 00:06:14,700 Giant sequoias, the biggest trees on earth, only live here in California, 106 00:06:15,460 --> 00:06:19,460 and nearly half are found in Sequoia Kings Canyon national parks. 107 00:06:20,300 --> 00:06:26,180 But since 2020, severe fires burned up to a fifth of the world's giant sequoias. 108 00:06:26,740 --> 00:06:31,420 Some scientists are worried that we could face a future with no giant sequoias in 109 00:06:31,420 --> 00:06:32,740 Sequoia National Park. 110 00:06:35,020 --> 00:06:38,500 The national park wants to replant giant sequoias in the wilderness. 111 00:06:38,860 --> 00:06:43,100 Other people say that goes against the very definition of wilderness. 112 00:06:43,620 --> 00:06:49,180 The debate is really around the question what is natural and how much should humans 113 00:06:49,180 --> 00:06:52,070 intervene? That's why we're here today. 114 00:06:53,230 --> 00:06:57,310 Almost as soon as we leave the trailhead, we're in what's called the John Krebs 115 00:06:57,310 --> 00:06:58,070 Wilderness. 116 00:07:00,950 --> 00:07:05,990 I'm curious if we'll see a wilderness sign. Say we're entering the designated wilderness. 117 00:07:06,190 --> 00:07:08,030 Yeah. Well, let's pause if we do. 118 00:07:08,070 --> 00:07:09,030 I love those signs. 119 00:07:10,390 --> 00:07:12,470 It's like nothing says wilderness. Like a sign. 120 00:07:14,470 --> 00:07:20,190 The fact that we're in an area designated as capital W wilderness is really important. 121 00:07:20,750 --> 00:07:24,190 Wilderness areas are the most protected public lands in the US. 122 00:07:24,710 --> 00:07:26,430 Maybe you've been to Yosemite Valley. 123 00:07:26,430 --> 00:07:29,670 You drove there or took the bus to see Yosemite Falls. 124 00:07:29,910 --> 00:07:31,590 Maybe you've just seen pictures. 125 00:07:31,870 --> 00:07:36,110 It's beautiful, but the valley isn't technically wilderness. 126 00:07:36,510 --> 00:07:41,510 If you headed out on the trail away from the roads within a few miles, 127 00:07:41,510 --> 00:07:44,830 you'd enter into a designated wilderness zone. 128 00:07:46,510 --> 00:07:50,880 Starting in the 19 teens, as tourists flocked to national parks and 129 00:07:50,880 --> 00:07:54,560 forests. Roads and buildings were built to accommodate them. 130 00:07:55,320 --> 00:07:59,760 Environmentalists got worried that the land that was supposed to be protected was getting 131 00:07:59,760 --> 00:08:05,280 developed. So they came up with an idea for setting aside some areas from development, 132 00:08:05,280 --> 00:08:09,240 an extra level of protection as what they called wilderness. 133 00:08:10,280 --> 00:08:15,960 A wilderness is an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, 134 00:08:16,600 --> 00:08:20,160 where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. 135 00:08:20,560 --> 00:08:25,080 And in 1964, the president signed into law the Wilderness Act. 136 00:08:25,720 --> 00:08:30,000 An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this act, 137 00:08:30,200 --> 00:08:35,080 an area of undeveloped federal land, retaining its primeval character and 138 00:08:35,080 --> 00:08:39,880 influence without permanent improvements or human habitation, 139 00:08:40,200 --> 00:08:45,360 which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions. 140 00:08:46,240 --> 00:08:51,530 This is a very happy and historic occasion for all who love the great American outdoors 141 00:08:52,450 --> 00:08:54,730 and that, needless to say, includes me. 142 00:09:00,530 --> 00:09:05,770 More recently, land managers broke down the Wilderness Act into five measurable qualities 143 00:09:05,770 --> 00:09:10,450 of wilderness character untrammeled, undeveloped, 144 00:09:10,730 --> 00:09:15,210 natural, with opportunities for solitude and primitive, 145 00:09:15,250 --> 00:09:19,970 unconfined recreation and other features of value. 146 00:09:22,690 --> 00:09:27,330 Today, wilderness managers work hard to make sure they're meeting these standards. 147 00:09:27,570 --> 00:09:31,850 They do surveys to make sure people are experiencing enough solitude. 148 00:09:32,410 --> 00:09:35,650 They only put in trail signs if absolutely necessary, 149 00:09:35,650 --> 00:09:39,490 so as to not take away from the primitive recreation experience. 150 00:09:40,290 --> 00:09:43,970 I hear land managers talk a lot about the idea of restraint. 151 00:09:44,090 --> 00:09:47,170 They only intervene if absolutely necessary. 152 00:09:48,140 --> 00:09:50,780 Generally speaking, ecologists like my guide, 153 00:09:50,780 --> 00:09:55,340 Andrew, can only do restoration work in wilderness if the damage they're trying to 154 00:09:55,380 --> 00:09:57,940 restore was directly caused by humans. 155 00:09:58,340 --> 00:10:02,900 So, like pulling out invasive plants introduced by pack horses, 156 00:10:02,900 --> 00:10:06,380 or restoring a meadow that was impacted by an old trail. 157 00:10:07,540 --> 00:10:12,220 Sequoia National Park is a fascinating example in a growing debate. 158 00:10:12,660 --> 00:10:16,900 How much should people intervene to restore wilderness? 159 00:10:17,620 --> 00:10:22,020 Because with climate change, every part of the planet is affected by 160 00:10:22,020 --> 00:10:24,140 humans. Even wilderness. 161 00:10:24,820 --> 00:10:28,700 We'll kind of go around the back a little bit and over a ridge that you can't quite see 162 00:10:28,740 --> 00:10:30,820 from here. And that's where board camp is. 163 00:10:31,020 --> 00:10:32,380 A couple miles into our hike. 164 00:10:32,420 --> 00:10:36,580 Andrew and I stopped to look up the steep canyon where we're headed and we. 165 00:10:36,580 --> 00:10:37,220 Can see. 166 00:10:37,260 --> 00:10:37,980 Burned. 167 00:10:38,580 --> 00:10:43,860 Trees. I see a bunch of I mean, I think I'm just seeing skeletons of trees up 168 00:10:43,860 --> 00:10:44,700 there. Right? 169 00:10:44,700 --> 00:10:49,830 Yeah. This fire just ripped up that you can imagine. 170 00:10:50,150 --> 00:10:53,710 That's where we really saw high severity fire in the castle fire. 171 00:10:57,390 --> 00:11:02,590 The strategy for over the last hundred years has been to put out wildfires in California 172 00:11:02,590 --> 00:11:06,150 to protect homes and timber right in this valley. 173 00:11:06,270 --> 00:11:10,510 Fire crews extinguished dozens of lightning fires over the years, 174 00:11:11,310 --> 00:11:12,830 but fire is important. 175 00:11:13,190 --> 00:11:19,190 Without it, smaller trees and shrubs grow unchecked like matchsticks waiting to be lit. 176 00:11:19,750 --> 00:11:23,750 All that fuel on the ground, plus a hotter and drier climate, 177 00:11:23,750 --> 00:11:28,390 means California's fires now burn hotter, faster and bigger. 178 00:11:29,550 --> 00:11:34,430 Like the castle fire, it was started by lightning in August of 2020 179 00:11:34,670 --> 00:11:36,550 and burned for months. 180 00:11:36,550 --> 00:11:40,270 In the moment of the fire. It's very hard to know what you're going to find afterwards. 181 00:11:40,950 --> 00:11:44,310 This is Christy Brigham, chief of resource management and science at 182 00:11:44,440 --> 00:11:48,840 Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks as the fire kept spreading. 183 00:11:49,120 --> 00:11:53,440 She checked on the sequoia groves the way you might check on a loved one after an 184 00:11:53,440 --> 00:11:54,160 emergency. 185 00:11:54,440 --> 00:11:56,480 It's smoky. You don't know what's happening. 186 00:11:56,640 --> 00:12:01,360 So we were getting these different reports. I was calling people who had connections and 187 00:12:01,360 --> 00:12:04,000 like, has anybody seen this grove or that grove? 188 00:12:04,640 --> 00:12:08,440 As a biologist, Christy knows that giant sequoias need fire. 189 00:12:08,840 --> 00:12:13,840 The heat from the flames below triggers the cones to open and drop their seeds, 190 00:12:13,840 --> 00:12:18,280 and the fire clears the ground of underbrush and creates soft mineral soil. 191 00:12:18,320 --> 00:12:20,000 Perfect growing conditions. 192 00:12:20,920 --> 00:12:24,680 But Christy could sense that something different might be going on here. 193 00:12:25,120 --> 00:12:28,320 And then she got signs confirming her fear. 194 00:12:28,760 --> 00:12:31,160 Downwind in the town of Three Rivers. 195 00:12:31,440 --> 00:12:36,680 Large chunks of sequoia needles were falling on the ground, 196 00:12:36,680 --> 00:12:38,360 on the ground in Three Rivers. 197 00:12:39,840 --> 00:12:43,370 And so those were indications when the win. 198 00:12:43,370 --> 00:12:49,650 The fire was burning that the fire was destroying a lot of sequoias. 199 00:12:50,330 --> 00:12:55,170 She knew this meant that the fire was burning hot enough to reach the needles of the 200 00:12:55,170 --> 00:12:56,730 world's biggest trees. 201 00:12:58,090 --> 00:13:02,050 As soon as winter was over, Christy assembled a crew to hike out to the 202 00:13:02,050 --> 00:13:03,450 board Camp Grove. 203 00:13:03,450 --> 00:13:09,170 Which was in itself a journey because none of us had been there before. 204 00:13:09,530 --> 00:13:12,730 The group climbed over, burned down logs and bushwhacked through 205 00:13:12,770 --> 00:13:15,210 chaparral to survey the fire's effects. 206 00:13:15,370 --> 00:13:19,570 It was terrible. It was really. 207 00:13:19,610 --> 00:13:21,330 It was like the surface of the moon. 208 00:13:21,330 --> 00:13:23,010 There was nothing alive. 209 00:13:23,410 --> 00:13:26,330 The fire had, in fact, reached the seed cones in the tops of the 210 00:13:26,330 --> 00:13:29,650 giant sequoias and killed off most trees entirely. 211 00:13:29,770 --> 00:13:34,690 So at that point, we thought, we're going to have to come back out here. 212 00:13:34,810 --> 00:13:41,130 There may not be Sequoia seedlings here because of the way the fire burned. 213 00:13:42,540 --> 00:13:44,660 That's when Christine, her team started to plan. 214 00:13:45,340 --> 00:13:48,260 Board camp wasn't the only Sequoia Grove that burned, 215 00:13:48,260 --> 00:13:51,540 and because most of the fire occurred in a wilderness area, 216 00:13:51,820 --> 00:13:54,860 the team knew they'd have to take special considerations. 217 00:13:55,980 --> 00:14:02,300 Now, the Wilderness Act asks land managers to not trample the land unless absolutely 218 00:14:02,300 --> 00:14:03,140 necessary. 219 00:14:03,180 --> 00:14:05,660 And Trammell is kind of a beautiful, poetic, 220 00:14:05,700 --> 00:14:08,820 old timey word, so people might not know what that means. 221 00:14:09,180 --> 00:14:12,740 A Trammell is a device used to shackle a horse's gait, 222 00:14:12,980 --> 00:14:16,860 so to be untrammeled means to be unshackled, unrestrained, 223 00:14:16,860 --> 00:14:17,380 free. 224 00:14:17,620 --> 00:14:23,900 But what it's been generally interpreted to mean within the Wilderness Act context is 225 00:14:23,900 --> 00:14:26,660 that we're supposed to let nature take its course. 226 00:14:26,660 --> 00:14:30,740 Humans aren't supposed to hinder or interfere with natural processes. 227 00:14:31,300 --> 00:14:35,620 Another one of the qualities of wilderness character is that the area is to remain 228 00:14:35,620 --> 00:14:36,540 natural. 229 00:14:36,540 --> 00:14:45,230 To have a place that's allowed to change and evolve and undergo its natural evolution. 230 00:14:45,230 --> 00:14:50,590 But that is really not what we're seeing with wildfire in California and with these impacts 231 00:14:50,590 --> 00:14:51,830 to these sequoia groves. 232 00:14:52,590 --> 00:14:57,270 Christie and other scientists agree that even though this fire was started by a natural 233 00:14:57,270 --> 00:15:02,790 cause, lightning, the severity of the fire was a result of human causes. 234 00:15:02,790 --> 00:15:05,550 They're driven by 100 years of fire suppression, 235 00:15:05,550 --> 00:15:11,150 which were poor decisions that we made as managers and made worse by climate change 236 00:15:11,150 --> 00:15:12,470 driven, hotter drought. 237 00:15:12,950 --> 00:15:18,070 That's why scientists feel that they should try and restore the groves by replanting 238 00:15:18,070 --> 00:15:21,190 sequoia trees from seeds, from surviving cones, 239 00:15:22,150 --> 00:15:24,070 which sets up this sort of catch 22. 240 00:15:24,470 --> 00:15:30,470 If the burning down of these thousand year old fire resilient trees wasn't natural, 241 00:15:30,670 --> 00:15:35,630 and the park wants to restore the groves, it might need to do a little bit of 242 00:15:35,630 --> 00:15:40,880 trampling. That's after a quick break. 243 00:15:46,520 --> 00:15:49,800 Okay, back to the hike I took with Andrew in 2022. 244 00:15:51,080 --> 00:15:56,320 So on our way to the board Camp Grove at a creek in a small grove of living sequoias, 245 00:15:56,560 --> 00:15:58,680 we run into the tree climbers. 246 00:15:58,920 --> 00:16:00,960 The climbers. Marissa. 247 00:16:01,000 --> 00:16:01,480 Hi. 248 00:16:01,960 --> 00:16:02,640 Nice to meet you. 249 00:16:02,680 --> 00:16:03,280 Good to meet you, too. 250 00:16:03,720 --> 00:16:05,120 This is Steen Christiansen. 251 00:16:05,440 --> 00:16:09,680 So Steen is the the leader of this wonderful outfit doing the cone collecting. 252 00:16:09,680 --> 00:16:10,440 This is the crew. 253 00:16:10,600 --> 00:16:14,040 They've been camping out here for days. And respectfully, they look like it. 254 00:16:14,040 --> 00:16:17,040 Steen's shirt sleeve is ripped and his socks are mismatched. 255 00:16:17,280 --> 00:16:19,480 We have. The flies have been there. 256 00:16:19,520 --> 00:16:19,840 Yeah. 257 00:16:19,880 --> 00:16:20,440 Unreal. 258 00:16:21,200 --> 00:16:25,840 The park contracted Steen and his team of tree climbers to spend the summer climbing 259 00:16:25,840 --> 00:16:29,480 giant sequoias and collecting seed cones from living trees. 260 00:16:29,560 --> 00:16:31,480 We can. We can show you what we do. 261 00:16:31,840 --> 00:16:35,480 One of the climbers, Justin Marble, is going to harvest some cones from one last 262 00:16:35,480 --> 00:16:40,450 tree. He pulls on a climbing harness and attaches himself to a rope that's already 263 00:16:40,450 --> 00:16:41,290 been set up. 264 00:16:41,370 --> 00:16:46,810 I have a foot ascender and an ascender, so it allows me to basically walk up the 265 00:16:46,810 --> 00:16:47,210 rope. 266 00:16:47,410 --> 00:16:51,250 I give him my extra audio recorder, which he puts in his pants pocket. 267 00:16:51,730 --> 00:16:52,330 Here we go. 268 00:16:56,490 --> 00:16:59,930 Justin starts pulling himself up the rope and he's moving fast. 269 00:16:59,930 --> 00:17:01,610 Pretty soon I can't see him. 270 00:17:01,610 --> 00:17:03,490 He disappears into the canopy. 271 00:17:09,290 --> 00:17:10,850 Finally, to the first branch. 272 00:17:13,010 --> 00:17:18,010 Onward and upward. There we go. 273 00:17:18,970 --> 00:17:24,850 Things are picking right here. All right, I'm heading down. 274 00:17:25,450 --> 00:17:29,250 Stand clear. Yeah, we can come closer. 275 00:17:34,130 --> 00:17:34,730 How'd it go? 276 00:17:34,850 --> 00:17:37,370 Good. Here, I can show you what I got. 277 00:17:37,690 --> 00:17:39,090 She's got a few cones here. 278 00:17:39,650 --> 00:17:42,010 If you can break these apart, you can kind of see. 279 00:17:42,170 --> 00:17:44,010 There you go. That's what they look like. 280 00:17:45,090 --> 00:17:46,970 Oh, yeah. There's the little oatmeal flakes. 281 00:17:47,690 --> 00:17:50,850 Sequoia trees, despite their world record size, 282 00:17:50,850 --> 00:17:54,290 have tiny seeds smaller than oatmeal flakes. 283 00:17:55,010 --> 00:17:58,650 For the past few days, Justin Steen and the rest of the crew have 284 00:17:58,650 --> 00:18:02,690 been climbing trees in the board Camp Grove, where I'm headed next. 285 00:18:03,130 --> 00:18:08,970 Only about 40 trees survived the fire there, not necessarily enough to sustain a grove, 286 00:18:09,210 --> 00:18:13,090 and so the crew climbed them to collect some of their cones. 287 00:18:13,210 --> 00:18:14,690 I think we have it right here. 288 00:18:14,770 --> 00:18:15,330 Is this the. 289 00:18:15,970 --> 00:18:19,370 Steen opens up a big military canvas backpack. 290 00:18:19,810 --> 00:18:21,330 There's fresh sequoia cones. 291 00:18:21,530 --> 00:18:23,210 Fresh sequoia cones. Yes. 292 00:18:23,730 --> 00:18:25,930 Just collected yesterday from board camp. 293 00:18:26,570 --> 00:18:29,250 And now we're headed out with them. 294 00:18:29,250 --> 00:18:34,090 And we'll process these cones, get the seed out and grow the seedlings. 295 00:18:34,490 --> 00:18:38,020 And then if everything goes well, we'll get them planted back there. 296 00:18:38,060 --> 00:18:43,020 When he says if everything goes well, he means if the parks proposal to replant 297 00:18:43,020 --> 00:18:48,700 sequoias here undergoes an environmental analysis and the park doesn't get sued. 298 00:18:49,660 --> 00:18:51,980 See, their plan has some opponents. 299 00:18:51,980 --> 00:18:55,580 And it turns out Steen just met one of them a few days ago. 300 00:18:55,900 --> 00:19:01,500 When we got here, we were camped at the South Fork campground and there was a fellow there. 301 00:19:01,860 --> 00:19:05,140 He came over and asked a little bit about us and where we were going, 302 00:19:05,180 --> 00:19:08,060 and it turns out that he was with Wilderness Watch. 303 00:19:08,500 --> 00:19:09,380 Rene Voss. 304 00:19:09,860 --> 00:19:10,940 Yes. Yeah. 305 00:19:11,740 --> 00:19:13,340 Guess who hiked out with us? 306 00:19:13,500 --> 00:19:13,900 Oh. 307 00:19:14,500 --> 00:19:19,220 Okay. I know Rene Voss because he's been a vocal critic of the parks plan. 308 00:19:19,540 --> 00:19:21,420 The night before, in my motel room. 309 00:19:21,420 --> 00:19:26,260 I was reading an article by him about why the park shouldn't replant giant sequoias here 310 00:19:26,260 --> 00:19:29,820 and now. It turns out he and Steen were hiking together a few days ago. 311 00:19:30,500 --> 00:19:34,030 And, you know, I struck up some interesting conversations with these guys. And these 312 00:19:34,070 --> 00:19:36,870 these guys are all die hard environmentalists. 313 00:19:36,870 --> 00:19:39,270 So, I mean, we had something in common. 314 00:19:39,790 --> 00:19:44,830 This is René Voss. He's a natural resource attorney and on the board of Wilderness 315 00:19:44,870 --> 00:19:49,150 Watch, a national organization that advocates for wilderness protection. 316 00:19:49,550 --> 00:19:52,870 He just happened to come check out the project area a few days ago. 317 00:19:54,430 --> 00:19:59,150 Rene says the replanting work with all the boots on the ground and equipment required 318 00:19:59,150 --> 00:20:01,310 will have a huge impact on the groves. 319 00:20:01,550 --> 00:20:05,230 Plus, the park plans to lower materials using helicopters. 320 00:20:05,270 --> 00:20:06,990 So that means cutting down a bunch of trees. 321 00:20:07,230 --> 00:20:12,750 But Rene's main issue with the proposal is he believes planting trees in a wilderness is a 322 00:20:12,750 --> 00:20:15,070 violation of the Wilderness Act. 323 00:20:15,110 --> 00:20:20,110 We don't need gardening in a wilderness. We need wilderness to be left alone for its own 324 00:20:20,110 --> 00:20:20,830 devices. 325 00:20:21,590 --> 00:20:25,550 Rene says for park managers to go in and restore after this fire, 326 00:20:25,590 --> 00:20:28,510 as tragic as the loss of the sequoias may be, 327 00:20:28,870 --> 00:20:34,240 sets a dangerous precedent of imposing our human beliefs about what this area should 328 00:20:34,240 --> 00:20:38,200 naturally look like. Rather than letting nature take its course, 329 00:20:38,920 --> 00:20:44,120 it could open the door for land managers across the country to be able to intervene in 330 00:20:44,120 --> 00:20:48,960 wilderness. But I have to ask, Renee, given climate change, 331 00:20:48,960 --> 00:20:51,280 can humans afford not to intervene? 332 00:20:51,600 --> 00:20:52,880 Sequoia National Park. 333 00:20:52,880 --> 00:20:57,280 Will no may no longer have sequoias, and Joshua Tree National Park may no longer 334 00:20:57,280 --> 00:20:59,240 have Joshua Trees, and that is. 335 00:20:59,280 --> 00:21:01,880 Glacier National Park is probably not going to have glaciers. 336 00:21:02,600 --> 00:21:04,480 One of these days, for example. 337 00:21:05,240 --> 00:21:07,840 I mean, we can't create we can't intervene on that one. Right? 338 00:21:08,880 --> 00:21:13,000 But, you know, it is you know, where do we draw the line? 339 00:21:13,040 --> 00:21:16,920 I mean, climate change is affecting every ecosystem. 340 00:21:17,200 --> 00:21:20,920 We can't go down the line and try to fix the ecosystems that are caused by climate change, 341 00:21:20,920 --> 00:21:26,640 because climate is going to continue changing. And unless we solve the climate 342 00:21:26,640 --> 00:21:27,400 crisis. 343 00:21:35,810 --> 00:21:36,930 It's hard to talk about. 344 00:21:36,930 --> 00:21:39,450 Why I love wilderness without sounding really cheesy, 345 00:21:39,890 --> 00:21:43,130 but if you haven't been to a wilderness yourself, maybe you've gotten the chance on a 346 00:21:43,130 --> 00:21:45,770 dark night away from any cities to see a clear, 347 00:21:45,810 --> 00:21:48,810 starry sky. I don't know about you, but for me, 348 00:21:48,810 --> 00:21:54,650 looking at the layers of stars behind stars puts my own life and all of human existence 349 00:21:54,650 --> 00:21:57,050 into perspective. I know cheesy. 350 00:21:58,650 --> 00:22:02,210 Being in wilderness for me is like that feeling times infinity. 351 00:22:02,610 --> 00:22:07,250 Standing on top of a mountain and seeing a valley in each direction that rises up to 352 00:22:07,290 --> 00:22:11,530 another mountain. And knowing behind that, there's another valley leading up to another 353 00:22:11,530 --> 00:22:14,130 mountain and another valley and another mountain. 354 00:22:14,610 --> 00:22:17,370 And knowing that there isn't a road or a city for miles, 355 00:22:17,370 --> 00:22:21,490 that it's just animals and plants and fungi and insects living their lives, 356 00:22:23,250 --> 00:22:27,450 seeing an ancient glacier, making eye contact with a fox as it runs 357 00:22:27,450 --> 00:22:32,100 through the forest, watching finches eat seeds on snow after a long winter. 358 00:22:32,860 --> 00:22:38,980 It makes me aware of how vast and powerful and old and precarious and fleeting the earth 359 00:22:38,980 --> 00:22:44,700 is. It gets me thinking beyond my own individual lifetime and stretches my idea of 360 00:22:44,700 --> 00:22:48,820 size and time scale. Plus, it's also damn beautiful. 361 00:22:50,140 --> 00:22:54,620 And so I appreciate Rene's argument that wilderness areas should be places that are 362 00:22:54,620 --> 00:22:59,780 left alone from human intervention, where natural systems can dominate even after 363 00:22:59,780 --> 00:23:04,580 a devastating fire. Because isn't it a sort of hubris to think that humans can know 364 00:23:04,580 --> 00:23:09,340 what's best here, especially when humans are the ones causing the current changes? 365 00:23:13,380 --> 00:23:14,500 What is wilderness? 366 00:23:15,100 --> 00:23:17,980 Here's Steen Christensen, the head of the tree climbing crew, again. 367 00:23:18,300 --> 00:23:24,020 Historically, when you go on this trail that you're going on to board Camp Wilderness, 368 00:23:24,300 --> 00:23:26,740 there's a trail that was built in 1909. 369 00:23:27,340 --> 00:23:33,030 There were cows, grasses that were spread by cows that are not native. 370 00:23:33,870 --> 00:23:35,510 There's micro pollution. 371 00:23:35,510 --> 00:23:37,670 There's Fresno right down there. 372 00:23:37,910 --> 00:23:41,110 And I think Wilderness Act is fine, but you've got, 373 00:23:41,150 --> 00:23:46,790 you know, we've got this world that is much more cosmopolitan with its problems. 374 00:23:47,430 --> 00:23:49,230 René Voss and Wilderness Watch. 375 00:23:49,270 --> 00:23:54,550 The biologists and the tree climbers all have the same goal of being good stewards for this 376 00:23:54,550 --> 00:23:59,110 place. But the disagreement is about what stewardship should look like. 377 00:23:59,390 --> 00:24:03,470 When you see board camp, the fire effect is so extreme. 378 00:24:03,470 --> 00:24:07,030 With the granite exploding and giant trees burned down, 379 00:24:07,230 --> 00:24:08,630 it looks like a bomb hit it. 380 00:24:08,670 --> 00:24:10,510 It doesn't look like a natural fire. 381 00:24:10,870 --> 00:24:13,910 So yeah, I think you'll really see something that nobody has seen. 382 00:24:14,550 --> 00:24:17,270 Steen and his crew hike out with the cones they've collected. 383 00:24:17,270 --> 00:24:21,150 While Andrew and I continue our hike up the ridge to board camp. 384 00:24:21,270 --> 00:24:22,710 Thank you. I'll be in touch. 385 00:24:23,030 --> 00:24:26,990 We're following an old grass covered trail that the park no longer maintains. 386 00:24:27,160 --> 00:24:29,480 So you can see people have gone that way. 387 00:24:29,960 --> 00:24:34,000 But this to me is very clearly I'll switch back. 388 00:24:34,800 --> 00:24:37,240 And now I'm like doubting it as I said it, but I think. 389 00:24:37,280 --> 00:24:37,400 We. 390 00:24:37,400 --> 00:24:39,600 Stop our climb to take in the view down valley. 391 00:24:40,160 --> 00:24:44,000 Oh my gosh. And see where we came from. 392 00:24:45,160 --> 00:24:46,880 Finally we finish our climb. 393 00:24:47,080 --> 00:24:49,160 This is one of my favorite parts of any hike. 394 00:24:49,440 --> 00:24:54,320 When you leave behind one view and a new one is revealed from up here on the ridgeline, 395 00:24:54,320 --> 00:24:59,640 we get our first look down the other side into the burned board Camp Grove. 396 00:25:02,720 --> 00:25:06,600 As an environmental journalist in California, seeing a burned forest doesn't really shock 397 00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:12,040 me anymore. I've been reconditioned to think about most burns as generally a healthy thing 398 00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:15,520 for a forest. Fires can help forests regenerate, 399 00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:18,280 and the land needs more fires, not fewer. 400 00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:23,120 But what's striking about this view is not just that every tree has burned, 401 00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:29,130 but there are these massive trees that have lost their tops and are completely hollow, 402 00:25:29,370 --> 00:25:31,090 so you can see down into them. 403 00:25:31,730 --> 00:25:35,450 I feel like I'm looking into humongous, blackened chimneys, 404 00:25:35,490 --> 00:25:41,130 not trees. Those are the burned shells of the oldest giant sequoias here. 405 00:25:41,890 --> 00:25:46,570 Wow. It's I don't know, it's striking. 406 00:25:48,010 --> 00:25:52,370 Nothing much to add. It just is a sad scene. 407 00:25:55,050 --> 00:25:57,610 After the fire scientists surveyed this grove. 408 00:25:57,930 --> 00:26:02,930 They say they didn't find enough living adult trees or seedlings to indicate that the grove 409 00:26:02,930 --> 00:26:04,330 will grow back on its own. 410 00:26:05,050 --> 00:26:09,410 They predict that without intervention, it will convert into a different habitat, 411 00:26:09,410 --> 00:26:12,530 one of shrubs and oak trees instead of sequoias. 412 00:26:12,810 --> 00:26:18,650 And I have a really hard time looking at a tree like that thousand or more years old and 413 00:26:18,650 --> 00:26:20,570 thinking, yeah, so what? 414 00:26:20,610 --> 00:26:22,170 That's because of what humans did. 415 00:26:28,580 --> 00:26:33,420 A year later, another fire called the PNP complex burned through the parks, 416 00:26:33,420 --> 00:26:34,980 killing more sequoias. 417 00:26:35,500 --> 00:26:41,980 In total, six sequoia groves burned so severely the loss of trees was unprecedented. 418 00:26:42,940 --> 00:26:46,460 Here's Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks Chief of Resource Management Christy 419 00:26:46,500 --> 00:26:47,340 Brigham. Again. 420 00:26:47,660 --> 00:26:50,060 These are very challenging times. 421 00:26:50,060 --> 00:26:58,180 We've never seen fires like this before, and it has taken a lot of really intense 422 00:26:58,180 --> 00:27:03,100 conversations, a lot of field work, a lot of philosophical probing, 423 00:27:03,260 --> 00:27:10,260 a lot of conversations with tribal partners about what what does it mean to be a steward? 424 00:27:10,780 --> 00:27:14,700 Wilderness. Land managers and scientists are starting to think differently about their 425 00:27:14,700 --> 00:27:19,660 role as stewards, based on a rethinking of the past and what's coming in the future. 426 00:27:20,020 --> 00:27:28,550 We're proposing that we made decisions that resulted in incineration of 1000 year old 427 00:27:28,590 --> 00:27:33,950 trees, and rather than just let them disappear to plant seedlings and give those 428 00:27:33,950 --> 00:27:40,470 trees a chance to continue to adapt and grow and evolve in the face of climate changes 429 00:27:40,470 --> 00:27:43,510 that are going to occur in the next 100 to 1000 years. 430 00:27:44,630 --> 00:27:48,270 The year after my hike, park staff and the tree climbing crew went 431 00:27:48,270 --> 00:27:50,270 back to the board camp with seedlings. 432 00:27:50,270 --> 00:27:52,270 They grew from the cones they collected. 433 00:27:52,710 --> 00:27:56,630 They replanted sequoias and other conifer trees in the burned down grove. 434 00:27:57,190 --> 00:28:02,190 Rene's group, Wilderness Watch and three other nonprofits sued the park. 435 00:28:02,790 --> 00:28:06,910 The litigation is still ongoing, so the park didn't provide new comments, 436 00:28:06,910 --> 00:28:08,630 but they did continue to plant. 437 00:28:11,110 --> 00:28:13,190 This debate makes my head spin. 438 00:28:13,670 --> 00:28:18,470 Is intervening the right thing to do to restore wilderness from climate and fire 439 00:28:18,470 --> 00:28:20,430 impacts that humans caused? 440 00:28:20,830 --> 00:28:26,600 Or will intervening mean accepting that there no longer places on the planet free of human 441 00:28:26,600 --> 00:28:30,080 impacts? Has that ever really existed though? 442 00:28:30,840 --> 00:28:34,000 Luckily, I know just the person to call with this question. 443 00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:37,680 There's no such thing as wilderness people. 444 00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:40,640 There isn't. There's no such thing as the wild. 445 00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:41,280 Not here. 446 00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:43,280 This is Rosalyn Lapier. 447 00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:46,640 She's a professor of environmental history at the University of Illinois in 448 00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:50,200 Urbana-Champaign and a member of the Blackfeet Nation and Metis. 449 00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:54,560 And if she sounds a little short, maybe it's because she's used to teaching 18 450 00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:58,720 year olds. Or maybe it's because she feels like we should all know this history by now. 451 00:28:59,040 --> 00:29:02,000 These lands have always been in use. 452 00:29:02,600 --> 00:29:04,840 As settlers moved west in the 1800s. 453 00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:08,480 They didn't find pristine wilderness empty of humans. 454 00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:12,240 They found hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples who were living on the 455 00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:17,840 land. And the U.S. federal government killed or forcibly removed them to create our 456 00:29:17,840 --> 00:29:21,010 national parks and forests and other public lands. 457 00:29:21,210 --> 00:29:25,370 The places that we set aside and we claim them. 458 00:29:25,370 --> 00:29:30,530 We, as in the United States of America, claim them as kind of these natural 459 00:29:30,530 --> 00:29:36,530 landscapes. They are not untouched, but they're actually the exact opposite. 460 00:29:37,130 --> 00:29:41,170 They are places that indigenous people have utilized, 461 00:29:41,210 --> 00:29:45,490 changed, you know, altered etc. 462 00:29:45,850 --> 00:29:47,210 for thousands of years. 463 00:29:47,770 --> 00:29:50,290 In the Sierra foothills near board Camp Grove, 464 00:29:50,650 --> 00:29:55,370 the Yokuts Western Mono and other tribes lived on and managed the land, 465 00:29:55,370 --> 00:29:59,690 including regularly burning it to encourage certain plants to grow, 466 00:29:59,730 --> 00:30:02,010 attract animals and open up habitat. 467 00:30:02,250 --> 00:30:05,050 So yeah, so the folks who are having this argument about, 468 00:30:05,090 --> 00:30:09,330 you know, people are doing this, you know, kind of restoration process 469 00:30:09,330 --> 00:30:14,210 incorrectly. They don't understand that the restoration process has been going on for 470 00:30:14,210 --> 00:30:15,290 30,000 years. 471 00:30:15,770 --> 00:30:19,180 Rosalind would be the first to admit she's not the only one to point this out, 472 00:30:19,460 --> 00:30:22,740 one person in the 90s, a historian named William Cronin, 473 00:30:22,740 --> 00:30:25,220 wrote an essay called The Trouble with Wilderness. 474 00:30:25,220 --> 00:30:30,140 That sort of kick started this conversation critiquing the concept of wilderness for 475 00:30:30,140 --> 00:30:36,180 erasing the indigenous history of the land and creating this idea that any land could be 476 00:30:36,180 --> 00:30:43,140 untouched, pristine. It's an essay I read while I was falling in love with hiking and 477 00:30:43,140 --> 00:30:45,340 capital W wilderness areas. 478 00:30:45,860 --> 00:30:50,700 It's just surprising to me that I even continue to have conversations like this, 479 00:30:50,900 --> 00:30:54,900 because we've been having this conversation for a very long time. 480 00:30:58,540 --> 00:30:59,420 It's the conversation. 481 00:30:59,420 --> 00:31:01,940 That I'm thinking about when I stand up on the ridgeline, 482 00:31:01,940 --> 00:31:06,140 looking down at the burned out trunks of these massive ancient trees. 483 00:31:07,020 --> 00:31:10,900 And it's a conversation I've had in my head for years as I've hiked in wilderness. 484 00:31:11,180 --> 00:31:14,580 Every time I notice a change, more fires, more smoke, 485 00:31:14,580 --> 00:31:17,580 more dead trees. Not just the physical changes, 486 00:31:17,580 --> 00:31:20,710 but more people on the trail bringing with us our smartphones. 487 00:31:21,910 --> 00:31:25,590 The ideas about wilderness have changed as society has changed. 488 00:31:25,790 --> 00:31:29,750 Ideas like natural and solitude and primitive recreation. 489 00:31:30,110 --> 00:31:32,870 Those are words that mean different things to different people. 490 00:31:33,030 --> 00:31:35,350 Words whose meanings change over time. 491 00:31:35,910 --> 00:31:38,950 A lot of these words are loaded and in tension with each other. 492 00:31:39,550 --> 00:31:43,150 What does primitive recreation mean in the era of smartphones? 493 00:31:43,550 --> 00:31:46,470 What does natural mean in the era of climate change? 494 00:31:47,070 --> 00:31:51,790 And what does wilderness mean given the indigenous history of these lands? 495 00:31:53,030 --> 00:31:58,270 If our ideas about wilderness have changed, the little W concept of wilderness has 496 00:31:58,270 --> 00:32:03,550 changed. What do we do about these capital W wilderness areas? 497 00:32:05,270 --> 00:32:08,950 That's what we're going to be exploring in this podcast. Over the next six episodes, 498 00:32:08,950 --> 00:32:12,950 we're going to examine each of the words associated with wilderness, 499 00:32:12,990 --> 00:32:15,190 understand their history, how they're changing, 500 00:32:15,590 --> 00:32:19,160 and we're going to consider other ways for thinking about wilderness. 501 00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:25,720 The next episode, we're going to the nation's first wilderness to hear the story of how it. 502 00:32:25,720 --> 00:32:30,200 And the idea of capital W designated wilderness came to be. 503 00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:39,120 How wild is created and executive produced by me, 504 00:32:39,160 --> 00:32:42,200 Marissa Ortega Welch. It's edited by Lisa Morehouse. 505 00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:45,280 Additional editing and sound design by Gabe Gribbin. 506 00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:47,400 Project management by Shireen Adel. 507 00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:53,560 It's produced in partnership with KALW Public Media and distributed by NPR and made 508 00:32:53,560 --> 00:32:56,320 possible with support from California Humanities, 509 00:32:56,360 --> 00:33:00,600 a partner of the NIH. This podcast is produced in Oakland, 510 00:33:00,600 --> 00:33:04,160 California, on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ohlone. 511 00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:07,520 Learn more about the indigenous communities where you live at. 512 00:33:07,520 --> 00:33:10,000 Native-land.ca.