Nature's Archive - #38: Beth Pratt - P-22 And The Age of Wildlife Crossings

#38: Beth Pratt - P-22 And The Age of Wildlife Crossings

01/24/22 • 63 min

Highways, roadways, and railways isolate animals, prevent them from reaching needed food and water, causing genetic isolation, and make populations vulnerable to natural disasters. And as you’ll hear today, the impacts go much deeper, and sometimes in surprising directions.
My guest Beth Pratt of the National Wildlife Federation and Save LA Cougars tells the astonishing story of how a Los Angeles mountain lion named P-22 triggered a cascade of support leading to one of the most ambitious wildlife crossings ever conceived - the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing.
Beth tells how P-22 helped the second largest city in the USA wake up to the fact that we need to find ways to coexist with nature. We discuss some of the details of wildlife crossing design such as pros and cons of overpass crossings vs tunnels and culverts, and how design can be used to influence animals to use the crossings.
Beth also describes many surprising ways that wildlife crossings help improve ecosystems and the food web. Even plants need connectivity, and even some bird species are negatively impacted by highways.
Beth also authored the book “When Mountain Lions are Neighbors”, which was influential in my progression as a nature advocate.

You can find Beth online at bethpratt.com, Twitter, and Facebook. And of course, you can also find P-22, the talented mountain lion that he is, on Twitter and Facebook.
More links and photos in the FULL SHOW NOTES

Related Episodes and Content
#20 Dr. Yiwei Wang
#35 Ben Goldfarb
#37 Dr. Stuart Weiss
Dr. Merav Vonshak's newt roadkill awareness efforts
Books
Cougar: Ecology and Conservation by Maurice Hornocker, Sharon Negri
Heart of a Lion: A Lone Cat's Walk Across America by William Stolzenburg
When Mountain Lions are Neighbors by Beth Pratt
Other
Annenberg Foundation
Puma Profiles
SaveLACougers.org
The Badger and Coyote Video

Support Us On Patreon!
Buy our Merch!

Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist site: https://brianholtzmusic.com

Discover the Jumpstart Nature Podcast - entertaining and immersive, it's the nature fix we all need.
Check past Nature's Archive episodes for amazing guests like Doug Tallamy, Elaine Ingham, and Rae Wynn-Grant, covering topics from bird migration to fungi to frogs and bats!

Support Us On Patreon!
Buy our Merch!

Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist site: https://brianholtzmusic.com

Previous Episode

#37: Dr. Stuart Weiss - Checkerspot Butterflies, Cars, and Cows

Today, Dr. Stuart Weiss unravels an amazing and unexpected series of discoveries that connect cows, cars, and conservation, all triggered by the study of the threatened Bay Checkerspot butterfly. These discoveries have had reverberations across ecological circles and have led to amazing conservation successes, despite a senior US Air Force official calling the tiny butterfly a national security threat.
Dr. Weiss has a PhD in Biological Sciences from Stanford University, and is the Founder and Chief Scientist at Creekside Science. He has 29 peer reviewed publications and has wide-ranging research experience in conservation and population biology, microclimate characterization, and statistical analysis.
To understand the checkerspot, we must understand the uniqueness of the land, so that's where we begin. The checkerspot had been in decline for decades, first due to direct reduction of habitat due to development and invasive non-native plants. But Dr. Weiss’s systematic study showed that something else was happening, leading him to unravel the mystery, revealing an unexpected relationship between cars, cows, and the checkerspot that we discuss today.
Dr. Weiss’s work also showed that landscape and population connectivity was a critical, and missing, component. This was at a time where connectivity was not well understood - and even today policymakers and the general public is often unaware of how important it is.
Ultimately, the story of the Bay Checkerspot and the cascade of conservation discoveries and actions is an amazing success story that continues to grow.
I hope you enjoy the discussion. I promise you’ll learn a bit about not only the checkerspot, but also soil ecology, the nitrogen cycle, the nuance of land management and grazing, tule elk, and much more.
Note that there was a bit of scratchy audio at a few spots, but stick with it because we did get it worked out.
FULL SHOW NOTES

Links
Bay Checkerspot
Bay Area Conservation Lands Network (CLN)
California Native Plant Society
California Rangeland Conservation Coalition
Committee for Green Foothills (now just Green Foothills)
Cows, Cars, and Checkerspot Butterflies - Dr. Weiss' 1999 Research Publication
Edith Allen at UC-Riverside
Howard Baker and the Snail Darter Controversy - wikipedia
The Moore Foundation
Valley Habitat Agency

Support Us On Patreon!
Buy our Merch!

Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist site: https://brianholtzmusic.com

Next Episode

#39: Dr. Elaine Ingham - The Ecology of the Soil Food Web

One common theme of my podcasts is that everything in nature is interconnected in multiple ways. And today’s episode demonstrates that in some mind bending ways.
What’s the topic? Well, it’s an often overlooked subject. If it is handled well, it will sequester carbon, reduce the impacts of droughts, improve our water quality, and probably save you money. And if you need another hint, when it is healthy it also makes your food more nutritious. By now you probably guessed the topic - soil ecology and the soil food web.
My guest is Dr. Elaine Ingham. Dr. Ingham has over four decades of experience in soil biology, and is generally recognized as the foremost expert in the field. She is the primary author of the USDA Soil Biology Primer, and founder of Soil Food Web Inc, a group dedicated to empowering ordinary people to bring healthy soils back to life. Dr. Ingham has a B.A. in biology and chemistry from St. Olaf College, an M.S. in microbiology from Texas A&M University, and a Ph.D. in microbiology from Colorado State University.
Our wide-ranging conversation only scratched the surface of soil ecology. As I said, everything is interconnected, so it makes conversations like these somewhat challenging since everything inter-relates.
So what did we cover? Well, we talked about the difference between dirt and soil, which is an ecosystem unto itself, consisting of varying amounts of fungi, bacteria, predators, and parasites such as protozoa and nematodes.
Dr. Elaine discusses the entire process of how fungi, bacteria, and other organisms convert soil nutrients to forms readily available to plants, and how plants actually induce this behavior through chemical signaling. She discusses how plants trade sugars for nutrients from fungi, and how these trades are constantly adjusting.
We dig deep into how to measure soil health, and surfaced from our microscopy deep dive to discuss shortcuts you can use to assess your own soil health and compost health without a microscope.
And we touched on many other topics, such as the impact of soil compaction, and the negative impacts of inorganic fertilizers.
Be sure to check out the show notes because some of the topics really require some visual aides. I’ve included a graphic provided by Dr. Elaine that summarizes the importance of soil health, as well as some videos showing Dr. Elaine’ technique for mixing your soil solution for the microscope, and a video of some spirilla bacteria - they’re pretty wild!
FULL SHOW NOTES
People and Organizations
Soil Food Web School - look for the resources and classes mentioned today
Soil Regen Summit 2022

Books and Other Things
Teaming with Microbes, The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis
USDA Soil Biology P

Support Us On Patreon!
Buy our Merch!

Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist site: https://brianholtzmusic.com

Nature's Archive - #38: Beth Pratt - P-22 And The Age of Wildlife Crossings

Transcript

Transcripts are automatically created and are 95%+ accurate. Apologies for any errors.
[00:00:00] Michael: Beth, thank you for joining me today.

[00:00:02] Beth Pratt: It is a pleasure to be here. I'm always happy to talk with you, Michael, about a wildlife cougars or whatever we want, whatever you want to discuss.

[00:00:10] Michael: Yeah. And I think it will be a fun discussion today before we get into the core of the discuss