Future Ecologies

Vision without eyes? Intelligence without a brain? Are plants more akin to us than we have been prepared to acknowledge? Or are they different in ways we will forever strain to imagine? One way or another, a vine with some unusual abilities is shaking the field of botany to its foundations.

On this episode: Zoë Schlanger (author of the newly-released, New York Times bestselling book The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth) takes us to the misty rainforests of Chile and back to report on what might just be the world’s most extraordinary plant — hidden in plain sight.

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With music by Modern Biology, Mort Garson, Hotspring, Thumbug, and Sunfish Moon Light.

For credits, citations, transcript, and more, visit futureecologies.net/listen/fe-5-10-everything-will-be-vine

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🌱 Future Ecologies is an independent, ad-free, listener-supported podcast.

Be the first to hear new episodes, and get exclusive bonus content, behind the scenes updates, and access to our discord server, plus stickers, patches, and toques @ futureecologies.net/join

Tomorrow (Saturday Dec 5) is World Soil Day, and there are many exciting things underfoot!

The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of A Fish: The Understory of the Understory

• The 4th annual festival from the Serpentine Galleries
• Live streaming Saturday and Sunday (12pm - 5:45pm GMT)
• Register and attend for free: themind.fish
• Festival trailer: https://youtu.be/6_vz_avr8Js

Life in the soil

• A new podcast collaboration by Anja Krieger and the Plant, Fungus, and Soil Ecology Lab at the Freie Universität Berlin
• Episode 1 launches Saturday
• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Soundcloud
• Or listen online at https://rilliglab.org/podcast/
• Podcast teaser: https://soundcloud.com/mrillig/teaser-life-in-the-soil-podcast

On Friday October 21st, Lobe Spatial Sound Studio in Vancouver will present an immersive re-arrangement of our most recent episode, FE4.7 — Phase Change. You may have heard the episode before, but we guarantee that you haven't heard it like this.

Lobe Studio is one of only three of its kind in the world, featuring a holographic 4DSOUND engine — this room goes well beyond surround sound.

• Doors @ 7:00pm
• Episode @ 7:15pm
• Q&A w/ Mendel @ 8:30pm

Tickets (pay what you can) and more info: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/future-ecologies-phase-change-in-4dsound-tickets-431292386137

At the heart of the Salish Sea lies the Fraser River Estuary: home to over half of the population of the Province of British Columbia, thousands of endemic species, and one world-famous pod of orcas. But as the human population of the region has grown, wildlife populations — including salmonids, orcas, and over 100 species at risk — have been plummeting.

As economic imperatives press up against ecological thresholds, a mega-project that has been in development for over a decade is poised to further alter the character of the estuary, with massive implications for the health of Salish Sea and its many residents.

In this episode, we ask: can we find ways to hear each other through all the noise?

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For lots of photos, transcripts, citations, musical credits, and the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority's responses to our questions, head to www.futureecologies.net/listen/fe-4-2-terminal

UPDATE

The decision to approve Roberts Bank Terminal 2 was announced on April 20, 2023 by Steven Guilbeault, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, who said “With 370 environmental protection measures that the port must meet, we have set a high bar for this project to proceed. For the first time ever, we are asking a proponent to put up $150 million to guarantee the strict environmental conditions are met and habitats are protected for species such as the Western Sandpiper. Moreover, this decision is paired with massive government investment in the protection of threatened species like Chinook salmon and endangered Southern resident killer whales. “

The measures that have been announced have not addressed the concerns of the environmental and labor movements that oppose the project. Misty MacDuffee, who you heard in this episode, responded: “All viability assessments of southern resident killer whales indicate their threats must be significantly lowered for recovery to occur. Approving this project does the opposite. It increases threats, worsens their feeding conditions and increases their likelihood of extinction.”

While the approval has been made, this story is far from over. The project faces additional regulatory hurdles, a changing market environment, and continued opposition as it enters an estimated six years of construction. We’ll continue to follow the story as it unfolds and we’ll keep you updated.

Read more about the Roberts Bank decision

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North America abounds in wildlife — but why?

At the turn of the last century, many observers believed that species that we take for granted today would disappear forever. In this episode, we share a story about the way that wildlife conservation came to be practiced, the lives that it privileged, and the lives that it left out.

But despite any controversy, one aspect of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation (or "the NAM" for our purposes) is indisputable: its principles explain the landscape of laws and institutions in which North Americans enjoy nature today.

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For musical credits, citations, and more, click here.

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Future Ecologies is only possible with the support of you, our listeners!

Our patrons get early episode releases + other bonus content, a community discord server (which runs the gamut from meme trading, recipes and fermentation, nature sightings, media suggestions, to discussions on environmental restoration), plus stickers, patches, and more!

We are an independent and unaffiliated podcast. Listener contributions make it possible for us to keep producing stories that matter, make them sound great, and keep them ad-free.

Join our community of supporting listeners on Patreon for as little as $1/month