For The Wild - DIANA BERESFORD-KROEGER on Replanting the Global Forest ⌠ENCORE⌡⧸32 & 33

00:00:00.000 It's high on a mountain

00:00:23.060 The warm winds are blowing

00:00:24.480 And where the winds are blowing to

00:00:26.380 There ain't no way of knowing

00:00:29.140 The mountain grass is short

00:00:32.660 It's dry and close to burning

00:00:35.380 Crying out for water

00:00:38.640 As the season's turning

00:00:41.680 Sweet smell of the pine

00:00:45.200 Tall western cedar

00:00:48.340 Drifting on the wind

00:00:51.820 Through the mountains like a river

00:00:59.140 Hello, I'm Ayanna Young, and I welcome you to Unlearn and Rewild, where we explore radical

00:01:09.160 ideas relating to earth renewal. Today, we're speaking with Diana Beresford-Kroger. Diana is

00:01:15.760 a botanist, medical biochemist, and self-defined renegade scientist who brings together ethnobotany, 1.00

00:01:23.520 horticulture, spirituality, and alternative medicine to reveal a path toward better stewardship

00:01:29.340 of the natural world. Orphaned in Ireland in her youth, Diana was educated by elders who

00:01:35.500 instructed her in the Brehen knowledge of plants and nature. Told she was the last child of ancient

00:01:41.300 Ireland and told to one day bring this knowledge to a troubled future, Diana has done exactly that.

00:01:47.560 Her bio-plan is an ambitious plan, encouraging people to develop a new relationship with nature, to join together to replant the global forest.

00:01:57.800 Her books include The Sweetness of a Simple Life, The Global Forest, Arboretum Borealis, Arboretum America, and A Garden of Life.

00:02:08.100 Diana Beresford-Kroger was included as a Wings WorldQuest Fellow in 2010

00:02:13.340 and named one of Utney Reader's World Visionaries for 2011.

00:02:19.400 We welcome you to the program, Diana. How are you doing today?

00:02:23.740 I'm good. I was looking out the window of the kitchen at all the birds at my bird feed are waiting for you.

00:02:30.200 So, I'm good.

00:02:32.120 How has this winter been treating you and your plant sanctuary there in Ontario, Canada?

00:02:38.320 Oh, well, very, very cold and we're expecting another bunch of snowstorms.

00:02:45.840 I've got a huge place, 160 acres, and a very large garden full of all kinds of rare species in there

00:02:52.780 that I kind of hold in a hermitage of all kinds of trees and ancient foods of the Aboriginal people

00:03:00.120 and gooseberries and all kinds of things like that in the garden.

00:03:05.660 So I watch the weather very carefully because some of them are annuals.

00:03:10.140 I have to carry them over from year to year, you know.

00:03:14.240 So I have a lot of things of great interest here to all kinds of people.

00:03:19.760 well your vision and your labors of love have been such an influence and catalyst for my work

00:03:29.980 as a restoration ecologist and you've inspired me to start a native plants nursery putting me

00:03:36.840 on this quest for rare plants and trees to propagate oh really you know the funny thing is

00:03:44.200 is that you have a wish list, okay?

00:03:47.840 And it's a very peculiar thing.

00:03:50.160 And I can't, I mean I'm a scientist

00:03:51.800 and I can't really give you an explanation for this.

00:03:54.620 I make a wish and the species comes to me.

00:03:57.980 Somehow, somewhere around the world,

00:04:01.160 the species comes in the door. 0.99

00:04:02.640 The next one that will come in will be of the Caria species.

00:04:06.480 And I want the Caria tomentosa,

00:04:08.440 that's the hickory, the hairy hickory,

00:04:11.460 the tomentose hickory, 0.97

00:04:12.620 that the aboriginal people used to smoke their foods

00:04:16.660 you know in the winter time here and actually down the continent

00:04:20.720 the foods that the aboriginal people grew were

00:04:24.740 things like you know all the cucurbits

00:04:27.980 the squash and so on and so forth but they only last for maybe about

00:04:32.540 four or five months and what they did is they strung them up and they smoked

00:04:36.640 the squash using the carriotomatosa

00:04:39.780 and all of those things are really really interesting to me so that is getting to be a

00:04:46.700 very very rare species of tree that's next on my bucket list you know it's very important really

00:04:52.720 because for instance just theoretically if our hydro goes down for one of many many reasons that

00:05:00.040 it could happen how would we protect our food sources over the winter for me and for you

00:05:05.740 And we have to know these things.

00:05:08.940 Yes, we cannot underestimate our reliance on forests.

00:05:13.380 I loved reading about the anti-famine trees, the different nuts, and the whole savannah dynamic.

00:05:19.720 You've given us such a solid basis for an action plan.

00:05:23.860 And it's now undeniable that we just can't go on any longer as we are.

00:05:29.940 No, absolutely no. I mean, there are two things I really want to do.

00:05:34.500 One of them is, of course, as close to my heart,

00:05:36.880 is to protect the forests that are already there.

00:05:39.260 And honestly, I am surprised doing this film

00:05:42.400 that the amount of forest that has gone is phenomenal.

00:05:45.940 The native, actually native wildwood,

00:05:49.220 virgin species that have gone all over the world,

00:05:52.360 except for the boreal, all over the world have gone.

00:05:55.720 So protect them and replant them back.

00:05:57.880 And the other thing is to have sanctuaries of the sea.

00:06:01.720 Start protecting the sea also.

00:06:03.920 Now, I mean, I'm not doing that, but I do speak about it a tiny little bit of it, but the forests are connected to the great seas and we can't have biodiversity, enormous amounts of biodiversity on our land by way of trees and species and not have it in the sea.

00:06:22.780 If the biodiversity goes on the land, it goes also in the sea.

00:06:27.160 So we must do this.

00:06:29.520 And you know, Ayanna, I've traveled the world now for this film,

00:06:33.520 and your heart is the heart of many, many people across the world.

00:06:40.780 So I see that as enormously hopeful.

00:06:43.940 Really it is.

00:06:44.880 You know, all of the news that we hear on the media, it's all bad news.

00:06:48.620 It's all police reports and murders and stuff.

00:06:51.560 But there are lots and lots of people across the world doing fundamentally fantastic things, but you never hear their story. And you need to hear about them. You need to know there are people doing unselfish things, things for the future. And that is happening everywhere.

00:07:09.540 absolutely and that's a big reason why we're doing the radio show to learn and to share these

00:07:18.080 stories of regeneration and in this time with you we're all poised to be sponges all the students of

00:07:25.980 life listening around the world and i just want to say what an honor it is to have you

00:07:32.380 You are truly a compass for all of us.

00:07:36.800 Well, that's lovely. That's lovely to hear that.

00:07:39.560 And I really should start off by saying that when I interviewed Akira Mayuaki in Japan,

00:07:49.060 he is the man who has planted, I think, something in the region of 40 million trees.

00:07:54.400 He is an extraordinary gentleman.

00:07:57.380 and he has been trying to do work down in Brazil

00:08:02.320 in the rainforest down there

00:08:04.480 and really all over the world

00:08:05.900 and when he met me 0.83

00:08:07.800 he's a little roly-poly Japanese man

00:08:10.960 with twinkling eyes

00:08:12.460 and we met before filming

00:08:15.560 before I was going to interview him

00:08:17.380 and discuss biodiversity

00:08:19.100 and regeneration of forests and so on and so forth

00:08:21.900 and this is very unusual for a Japanese man 0.97

00:08:27.080 he's a scientist

00:08:28.920 he's the same as I am

00:08:31.160 and he held my hand

00:08:33.440 and he said to me

00:08:35.060 he said I'm glad

00:08:37.300 to meet you I'm no longer

00:08:39.120 alone

00:08:39.700 what a moment

00:08:41.800 I felt the same

00:08:44.660 I felt oh

00:08:46.520 the handshakes have already started

00:08:49.300 we are starting to hold hands

00:08:51.380 across the world

00:08:52.380 and his hand was a big hand

00:08:55.360 for me to hold

00:08:56.460 and I hold that in the landscape of my mind now

00:08:59.800 and I think about him

00:09:01.340 and he's doing what I'm doing

00:09:04.600 I'm doing more probably things than he's doing

00:09:07.280 I have more freedom to do things

00:09:08.960 but there are more out there

00:09:12.500 and we will meet them in the passage of this program

00:09:26.460 I'd love if you would also tell us about yourself, where you originate from,

00:09:36.060 and how you were sort of impelled by circumstance to become the earth defender and teacher that you are.

00:09:45.040 Well, to start off with, I'm an Irish woman, and I look upon myself as an Irish woman.

00:09:53.020 I'm kind of an aristocratic mongrel, if you want to look at me that way.

00:09:58.520 On my mother's family, my pedigree goes back about 3,500 years

00:10:04.700 in the Banshankas of the ancient Gaelic world in noble lines.

00:10:09.980 And you'll see my family home is the Castle of Ross on Killarney Lake.

00:10:14.860 And we were, in the ancient times, we were the teachers of the High King of Ireland.

00:10:20.740 That's what we had been.

00:10:21.920 And that, well, you know, you call it a castle, but honestly, it's not a very big one, but that was built in the 5th century.

00:10:30.140 And so I come from that lineage, and then on my father's side, they're earls and so on and so forth in England, they're lords, and my grandfather was Lord William Beresford.

00:10:42.380 So I come from a mongrel side.

00:10:44.480 but really my leaning is into the Celtic world

00:10:49.480 into the Gaelic world

00:10:50.460 because when my family was killed 1.00

00:10:52.060 I was the last child of that huge line 0.64

00:10:56.820 of the old pedigree of ancient Ireland

00:11:01.680 and all of my mother's relatives

00:11:05.260 now they would be third and fourth cousins

00:11:07.460 and maybe there was one second cousin too

00:11:11.120 a whole pile of them

00:11:12.180 they were all in their 80s and 90s

00:11:14.620 and they only spoke Gaelic

00:11:16.040 they never spoke English

00:11:17.340 and they had Latin and Greek in their houses 1.00

00:11:20.200 all of the old people had

00:11:22.300 Latin, Greek and Gaelic 1.00

00:11:23.680 and they didn't really bother with English

00:11:25.660 so I was brought in under a wardship

00:11:28.700 now this was brought in under

00:11:30.420 a Breham wardship

00:11:32.360 and in old Ireland

00:11:34.300 they had the laws of the Breham laws

00:11:37.180 and what they were

00:11:38.720 they were pre-Magna Carta

00:11:40.220 they had been gathered from

00:11:42.180 about 1,500 years before Christ.

00:11:45.980 And they were put into a written form about 400 years after the birth of Christ.

00:11:51.780 And those laws became the Brehen laws.

00:11:54.020 And they were in the old and ancient times known as the Shonkos Moor,

00:12:00.400 meaning the ancient laws of Ireland.

00:12:03.240 And in those laws, in the Brehen laws,

00:12:06.100 a child who has been made an orphan is everybody's child.

00:12:11.220 Everybody had an ownership on me.

00:12:13.980 And so the family thought, seeing that I was such an important child,

00:12:18.760 I was brought into a wardship for three years.

00:12:22.060 And I was taught all the old, ancient way of looking at nature.

00:12:26.940 I was given an apprenticeship in nature in the way that I was taught all of the old cures.

00:12:34.340 The fishagri, which in Gaelic would be the charms.

00:12:37.100 the way and the modality of setting spells,

00:12:41.980 the alignment of the mind for running threads on people,

00:12:46.360 which is a form of telepathy.

00:12:48.380 For me as a woman, they knew that I would be growing up as an only child

00:12:54.500 and that I would not have enough love.

00:12:57.700 Love would be a problem for me.

00:13:00.220 I would have a scarcity of love in my life.

00:13:02.380 And so they taught me how to love myself in the way of blessing myself, of being grateful for who I was and what I was and how I was thinking.

00:13:15.000 These are all the old ways of thought.

00:13:18.360 I was taught how to use angutha, the voice for animals, the way of speaking to nature and a way of hearing nature, of holding silence in my mind.

00:13:30.180 And that's very, very similar to the Buddhist thinking.

00:13:33.480 In fact, it goes back into the ancient traditions of Buddha, and I was taught those things.

00:13:39.580 And I was taught them all in Gaelic, and I was brought from house to house,

00:13:44.360 and the different teachings were given to me.

00:13:48.200 And then I was told that I would be the last voice of the ancient world of Ireland.

00:13:55.500 And I was 11 and 12 when I was told this,

00:13:58.780 and that I had to bring that voice into the new world.

00:14:03.760 And I understood the new world then to be the new world of North America.

00:14:09.880 But now I think it's the new world of the modern world, not just North America.

00:14:17.460 I think we have sold nature away.

00:14:21.160 We have put a price on nature.

00:14:22.960 We have put a price on a tree.

00:14:24.580 We've put a price on all the things that are sacred to us, like the air and the water and the fish in the sea, and all of the sacred things to do with love, the love of a child, the love of people.

00:14:39.340 All of those things have got a dollar value on them and a money value, and they shouldn't have, because they're part of the common age, the great common age of the human mind.

00:14:51.300 We all have ownership on the sky.

00:14:54.360 We all have ownership in the atmosphere.

00:14:56.960 We all have ownership on the land.

00:14:59.400 And we can hold these things in the landscape of our mind, in memory, almost forever until we die.

00:15:07.060 So there are things that are very precious to us.

00:15:10.500 And I think we've ignored them.

00:15:12.240 And so as a child, I was taught how to look after the body, the spirit, and the mind.

00:15:20.580 and the spirit is the soul in the old world of ireland as in all the old cultures the body is

00:15:28.100 not a unity on itself the body is connected to the mind and to the spirit and you have bodily

00:15:34.520 remedies for if you've got a cold or flu or broken limb or something like that but there are

00:15:40.860 great disasters of the mind too and the soldiers who've gone abroad and killed people they come

00:15:47.620 back with a broken mind. That kind of thing happens to children and it happens to broken

00:15:52.940 marriages where you have things, it's called PTSD now, but it is not. It's a mind that's

00:15:59.220 broken, that's got to get put back together by the compassion of all of the society around

00:16:06.820 them. And even animals and horses and dogs, they know that compassion and they'll give

00:16:13.040 that to you. And then there's the soul. The soul is something different entirely. For

00:16:20.060 us to look after our own souls, we have always got a battle with self, the child of self

00:16:27.120 within us. We have that battle of trying to be better and better and better. And even

00:16:33.620 the worst criminals have to be better and better because that's the dictate of our

00:16:38.920 dna and so you look after that part of you where you try to do a little bit of good you try to do

00:16:45.920 a little bit better you try to help somebody sometimes you succeed and sometimes you don't

00:16:50.840 all of those three things are known as the celtic triad of the ancient world and that was part of

00:16:56.880 the breham law that i was taught and so i carried them into my education and i was put into a

00:17:04.380 again by my uncle who really adopted me. And I broke all the systems at the Irish courts

00:17:13.160 in that I was given a choice by the judge of going to live with a bachelor uncle, which

00:17:18.480 had never happened before, or to my wealthy family in England. And I refused to go to

00:17:23.100 my wealthy family because they had money, loads and loads of money, even at that time

00:17:27.640 their own planes and I thought I would just be a servant in the home so with my uncle um oh I

00:17:34.940 wasn't a servant with him we would sit on one side of the fire I'd sit on one side he'd sit on the

00:17:40.340 other side of the fire of an evening and we would talk of theater of art of plays of physics of

00:17:48.440 Pierre de Champagne of Hilaire Belloc of G.K. Chesterton of all the old Celtic things of Celtic

00:17:55.720 plays, music, all of the old things between us day after day after day and we kind of

00:18:03.640 grew together in a way and the house was full of books and I kind of swam in the books and

00:18:10.440 read the books. He had 10,000 books, first copies of everything and that was my childhood

00:18:17.700 really in a way is learning and learning and then the school I went to a private school

00:18:23.260 and it was a convent

00:18:25.640 and the nuns in the convent

00:18:27.900 were so nice to me

00:18:29.520 they were so kind and so nice to me

00:18:31.340 I never heard a crossword from any of them

00:18:33.760 and I thought I was normal

00:18:35.960 I was probably about 14 or 15

00:18:39.140 and they decided to bring in

00:18:41.840 the math professor from the university

00:18:43.980 to teach me higher math

00:18:47.120 calculus and so on and so forth

00:18:48.800 and they pushed me ahead

00:18:51.240 with my physics and my chemistry

00:18:52.940 and I thought this was normal and none of the other kids there ever said boo to me.

00:18:57.360 I thought like I'd be hauled off to some other class and taught some stuff

00:19:01.720 and then come back to my own classroom and now I realize what they were doing to me

00:19:07.180 and they still write to me and then I went into university

00:19:11.540 and I graduated the first of the university and then I kind of went from there with my master's

00:19:17.320 and then I studied, I decided to do kind of different types of studying.

00:19:23.300 I was like a sponge.

00:19:25.100 Everything by way of chemistry and physics and theoretical physics, quantum mechanics,

00:19:29.820 like I sucked it all in, you know. 0.63

00:19:31.700 When I did my PhD, that was, I sucked it all in.

00:19:35.040 Everything I did, radiation physics, the effect of that on the human body.

00:19:39.360 I mean, I did all that stuff.

00:19:40.980 So then I decided when I was 27, 28, something like that,

00:19:45.820 I decided that I would

00:19:47.440 start looking after nature

00:19:49.240 that I would

00:19:50.320 I saw all the trees

00:19:53.880 coming down here on this continent

00:19:56.000 nobody knew what they were

00:19:57.900 I knew they were getting rarer and rarer

00:20:00.180 I knew that everything was going

00:20:02.120 I was deeply aware

00:20:03.980 of that and then I thought

00:20:05.740 well I'm going to

00:20:07.660 write about these species

00:20:09.240 I am going to

00:20:11.240 take a long

00:20:13.560 road of writing

00:20:15.200 and put what I had known into books.

00:20:20.240 All of my books are peer-reviewed pretty well through Harvard.

00:20:25.440 E.O. Wilson, that's Professor Wilson,

00:20:28.720 probably known by everybody in the United States,

00:20:32.460 and if they don't know him, they should know him.

00:20:34.200 He was really my patron, and he was wonderful to me.

00:20:38.220 He is the most marvelous treasure of a man,

00:20:40.640 and he really encouraged me in what I was thinking and doing. 1.00

00:20:44.040 And I started saving species and I started to see that the Aboriginal people were being bashed down and all of their cultures were going and their species were going.

00:20:55.380 And I thought, no, I'm going to start saving them here. 1.00

00:20:58.500 I'm going to start pulling them all in.

00:21:00.380 And as soon as I had a bucket list of them, then they'd walk in the door for some reason.

00:21:05.260 Well, I would write for free for all of the botanical gardens across the world.

00:21:09.940 And then I'd be given first choice of the seeds.

00:21:12.220 and I was always looking for repatriation, always, always, always.

00:21:18.020 And all the species that I have here, like the cucumber tree,

00:21:22.780 that's a very important tree, and the tulip tree is another one

00:21:27.980 because it has got compounds in it that are really important

00:21:31.500 for the management of heart diseases.

00:21:34.240 And so I have a medicine walk.

00:21:37.040 Let me make you imagine my garden.

00:21:39.740 I have a medicine walk of North American species, and I'm very interested in the Ointera species.

00:21:46.880 I'm very interested in a species called Hysop.

00:21:49.840 I'm very interested in all the chocolate-smelling, chocolate-colored species that are really, a lot of them are in North America.

00:21:59.300 So I pack the medicine walk with all of them.

00:22:02.480 And then I open that medicine walk to the public.

00:22:04.840 And when you come in, I ask you what propensity for diseases you have,

00:22:12.180 because I have studied biochemistry.

00:22:14.600 And then I will get you to touch this, only touch, or smell this, only smell,

00:22:20.260 on different species that will give you a preventative cure shield to your body.

00:22:29.980 So I have had lots of people.

00:22:32.460 I was really surprised when I opened the medicine walk first.

00:22:36.420 I thought, oh, nobody had come.

00:22:38.600 But that day, 4,000 people came.

00:22:40.720 So it was kind of quite a bit of a rush, if you know what I mean.

00:22:44.180 And then there is, I have a huge vegetable garden.

00:22:47.680 And inside and outside vegetable garden, they're all heritage species that I grow.

00:22:52.800 I have a heritage collection of potatoes.

00:22:55.100 And then I have a small vineyard.

00:22:57.540 And then, of course, I have my huge collection of nut trees that I continue to grade with my nut trees.

00:23:05.160 I have nut tasting.

00:23:07.000 I know you're going to laugh at this, but I have nut tasting in the fall.

00:23:11.020 And I like to have, with my husband Christian, to have the quality of butter in the nut, no rancidity in the nut.

00:23:20.420 That means the content of the nut.

00:23:22.960 These are walnuts and shagbark hickories and hickories.

00:23:25.780 It means that the oleic, linoleic and linoleic acids are at a high concentration in the nuts.

00:23:36.540 These are for brain repair.

00:23:39.280 These are for the repair of the myelin sheath, all of the fat tissues of all of the communication systems of the body.

00:23:47.640 because our food is very, very low in these essential fatty acids right now

00:23:54.200 because we're eating industrial food.

00:23:57.740 But the older ancient world had at its fingertips all of these different kinds of nuts

00:24:04.000 which are still essential for the body as is deep sea fish.

00:24:09.140 One is equivalent to the other.

00:24:11.260 One pound of nuts from North America, black walnuts or shag bark hickories or hickories,

00:24:19.660 one pound of nuts is equivalent to one pound of the best black angus steak that you can possibly eat.

00:24:31.240 So it's very, very high first class proteins.

00:24:35.220 And then I have an orchard.

00:24:36.460 in my orchard, I am breeding trees that will withstand climate change, will withstand the

00:24:44.000 huge variation of climate. And the climate here now for this year is very strange. I'm sure it

00:24:52.060 is for everybody who will be listening to me and it will get worse. So you need to bear that in

00:24:58.260 mind for all of the things that you're growing by way of food like apple trees or pear trees

00:25:03.500 and grow your apple trees or pear trees one class colder than what the area is you're living in.

00:25:13.040 Let's say if you're living in zone 6, then you grow the apple trees or pear trees or whatever into zone 5 or a zone 4

00:25:24.900 to get them to grow better for you now in zone 6 because of the variation.

00:25:30.620 And it goes back up and down the growing ladder.

00:25:33.500 here for north america and i have i have in my orchard i have nut trees too

00:25:39.980 and i have resistant um chestnuts the carry the the chestnuts castanea satyvan the chestnuts of

00:25:49.900 north america and they will go out in a project across north america for replanting the forest

00:25:57.100 So I've been looking after them and I have, oh my goodness, I have something really fantastic that I've just kind of managed to get my hands on.

00:26:07.860 And it's a white cherry.

00:26:10.200 And I knew there had been white cherries in Europe years ago.

00:26:14.960 And they were brought into a place called the Bruce Peninsula in Canada.

00:26:18.920 And I'd looked and looked for them and I couldn't find them.

00:26:21.760 And I put out my feelers across the world.

00:26:24.440 And in Germany, in the Alps, a friend of mine was traveling there about six or seven years ago now.

00:26:31.740 And she knew I was looking for this white cherry.

00:26:34.120 And I had described these things to her.

00:26:36.640 And she said, she contacted me and she said,

00:26:39.140 Oh, Diana, there's an old, old 90-year-old couple who want to cut down two cherry trees.

00:26:45.100 And she said, they might be the cherries that you're looking for.

00:26:48.540 Well, they were.

00:26:50.320 They were the white cherries.

00:26:51.780 So I sent instructions to them not to cut down the trees, to take the seeds, take the fruit when they were ripe, when they were ripe and full-fleshed.

00:27:02.400 And then what I did is I gave them instructions to ferment the seeds.

00:27:10.160 So you ferment the flesh off the shell of the seed, the hard seed inside the cherry.

00:27:16.560 then you wash them and you make them as septic

00:27:19.320 so that they will not carry any diseases anywhere

00:27:22.640 anyhow over into North America

00:27:25.520 and they were expressed to me and I grew them

00:27:28.180 and now I have these white cherries

00:27:32.000 and I have them protected

00:27:34.320 one of them is now in my pump house

00:27:36.380 because I want to be absolutely sure

00:27:39.340 that it's strong enough to withstand climate change

00:27:42.020 and I will probably espalier that one

00:27:44.200 so I have lots of different things

00:27:47.160 like gooseberries

00:27:47.980 and then in the other part of my garden

00:27:50.820 I have

00:27:51.680 oh well really it's just gorgeous

00:27:54.700 water gardens

00:27:55.560 and fragrant walkways

00:27:58.860 and feeding trees

00:28:00.400 and then wild areas

00:28:02.920 and the wild areas

00:28:04.700 all around my garden

00:28:06.480 are a huge kind of like a

00:28:08.800 barrier for all of the wildlife

00:28:10.780 for the birds and for the bees

00:28:13.380 I have enormous, enormous numbers of bumblebees, of all different kinds of pollinating bees coming in here.

00:28:22.260 Just enormous, but then I have the biodiversity all the way around, the wild biodiversity, which I would like everybody to have.

00:28:31.780 And really, then I write about that stuff.

00:28:34.480 I've written probably about 300 or so, maybe more, articles for, you know, all over the world about pesticides and chemistry and so on and so forth.

00:28:45.640 And then there are the books.

00:28:48.120 And then I thought with my books with The Global Forest, that book, it was a bestseller, which was a really big surprise to me.

00:28:58.100 And I have a huge group of people in Taiwan who are my fans, which is, well, which is kind of strange.

00:29:05.020 But that book then has become the film that I call Call of the Forest, the Forgotten Wisdom of Trees.

00:29:14.760 And we traveled all around the world.

00:29:18.640 Now, by we, I mean my director, which is Jeff McKay, and my executive producer is Merit Carr-Jensen, and she owns Merit Motion Pictures.

00:29:32.180 And Jeff and I and our crew filmed what I thought would be the most important overview of the planetary problem.

00:29:42.300 And I wrote the director's script, and I wanted it to be very simple.

00:29:48.460 So I always say that it is a discussion that can happen at the kitchen table.

00:29:54.220 I don't want it to be a discussion that's happening in the ivory tower of any university.

00:29:59.520 I want ordinary people to hear the call of the forest and to have it ringing in their hearts

00:30:07.440 so that the children will listen to them and that the children will go out and look at the species

00:30:13.200 and also respect the biodiversity around them and hear that call.

00:30:18.880 So I had to write and rewrite and rewrite.

00:30:22.320 Even as I was doing that film, I was simplifying, simplifying.

00:30:26.700 To make it an easy film to understand,

00:30:30.960 I tried to put beauty in with science and science in with beauty

00:30:37.680 and to make it so that it is a gorgeous film

00:30:42.180 and that you look at it, and because it is so gorgeous,

00:30:46.140 I want you to understand that this is our world.

00:30:50.400 This is the garden of your world.

00:30:53.020 This is the global garden that we all share.

00:30:56.700 We all share in its biodiversity,

00:30:59.200 and we will all hold hands to protect it across the world.

00:31:03.700 And how we're going to do that is by the bio plan.

00:31:07.860 Now, the bio plan, if you read my works,

00:31:10.180 you will see that we have inherited the mantle of nature.

00:31:14.820 We have inherited a certain kind of divinity of life.

00:31:20.060 And the divinity of life is spelt in the piano of our DNA.

00:31:25.580 You just play the piano up and down,

00:31:28.580 and then you get to understand how absolutely merciful it is

00:31:33.200 and how that piano is played in a zero-and-one pattern of thinking,

00:31:41.960 which is the same as your computer systems.

00:31:44.640 It's zero-and-one in all kinds of ways,

00:31:48.420 and it's a binomial pattern, a fractal binomial pattern that is in your body.

00:31:54.540 It's just like the falling of leaves of a tree.

00:31:57.720 It's the same thing.

00:31:59.000 It's the growth of a tree. It's the same thing.

00:32:01.760 it's binomial growing

00:32:03.500 it goes in an exponential way

00:32:05.820 but it is binomial

00:32:06.980 we understand these things

00:32:09.240 so even if you're cooking in a pot

00:32:11.540 it is a fractal pattern

00:32:13.420 that makes your cooking

00:32:15.140 that makes you drive to your office

00:32:17.120 that makes you come home on the roadways

00:32:19.360 because that's how the pattern

00:32:21.520 of traffic works

00:32:22.620 so from that

00:32:24.660 you can understand that

00:32:26.500 God is in everything really

00:32:28.380 it's the pattern of a divine

00:32:31.460 something. I can't tell you what it is, but it is there for all of us. And really, in

00:32:38.880 a way, it's just only, I'm only saying, have respect, have compassion for those around

00:32:46.740 you, and respect nature, and respect the users of nature, and try to step back, and

00:32:53.300 try to have some thought, and have some compassion for the lives around you. The life of a mouse,

00:32:59.160 The life of the cat, the life of the dog, the life of the larger creatures, the coyotes, all of the creatures, so that we will all be one together because we're all stuck in this tapestry of life.

00:33:12.180 Anyway, the bio-plan is something else.

00:33:15.660 In the bio-plan, I'm asking you to do something.

00:33:18.760 I have reckoned mathematically that if one person, one person, every person on this planet,

00:33:28.140 that's about 8 billion people, plant a tree, one tree, every year for the next six years

00:33:35.080 will have the job done.

00:33:37.440 But you have to do it a little differently.

00:33:40.360 What you have to do is look after the tree.

00:33:42.980 There's not enough to plant it.

00:33:44.280 You have to look after it, keep it.

00:33:45.880 Maybe for your children, even name the tree, because that will make sure they remember the tree.

00:33:50.860 Water it, look after it, make sure it's growing.

00:33:53.300 But it has to be native tree to native species into a native area.

00:33:58.540 For instance, on the West Coast, you have to put in redwoods.

00:34:02.540 I'm just giving you an example of one of the many hundreds of trees on the West Coast.

00:34:07.640 Because the redwood grows to be the tallest tree on the West Coast of America,

00:34:14.820 It's an iconic tree.

00:34:17.320 And when you look at that tree, you have to lie down on the ground if you're a child

00:34:20.760 and look up to the top of the tree because the trees are so tall.

00:34:23.680 They're enormous.

00:34:24.800 But I want you to think back about something.

00:34:27.700 Because they are so tall, because they are so big,

00:34:33.260 They are the greatest eaters of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that we have for all species on Earth.

00:34:46.500 They have this hunger for carbon dioxide for growing and getting big and getting huge and getting dense and stay growing and grow maybe for 4,000 years.

00:34:58.760 So that's the kind of tree you need to have on the West Coast.

00:35:03.260 and then it looks after the water, and then it looks after the rain,

00:35:07.100 then it looks after the aquifers and the great oceans

00:35:09.740 and the solutions of fresh water going into the great seas of the Pacific.

00:35:15.520 And then you have the protection of whales,

00:35:17.540 then you have the protection of the mammals and the fish in the sea,

00:35:21.020 and then you can have some protection for the sanctuaries of the sea,

00:35:25.020 but it starts with a tree.

00:35:28.300 It starts with a tree you're going to plant now,

00:35:32.460 And that planting will add to the great forests of the world.

00:35:37.280 We can work around trees.

00:35:39.540 We can live around trees.

00:35:41.680 We can behave around trees.

00:35:43.700 We can do this together.

00:35:46.640 We will have something worthwhile because we will have put elbow grease, our own elbow grease into nature.

00:35:55.640 And if you do that, it has a meaning for you and your children.

00:36:02.460 forever the acorn carries an oak tree sleeping but for a little while winter lies in the arms of

00:36:28.620 spring as a mother carries her child and never knows how wild the wind blows

00:36:46.780 a thought carries a universe a seed carries a field of grain

00:36:53.020 Love lies in the arms of change

00:36:58.240 As a joy carries a pain

00:37:01.600 And no one knows

00:37:05.040 How wild the wind blows

00:37:23.020 I come away from your work with a jolt of optimism, because as you show, trees are intelligent beings, and they're not as passive and inert as we may think.

00:37:37.840 One example that you wrote about was how trees can predict future growing conditions and act accordingly.

00:37:44.800 So can you unpack this for us? And how did you come upon that marvel of nature?

00:37:51.480 Well, I'll tell you, Arianna, I had been collecting butternut seeds,

00:37:57.860 and those are called juglans cineria, that's the Latin for those,

00:38:03.460 and they are really kind of going extinct.

00:38:06.920 They were the medicine, one of the medicine trees of the First Nations,

00:38:10.960 a very, very important nut-bearing tree with all kinds of potential in that tree.

00:38:17.040 And I collected the seeds of that tree from virgin forest one year.

00:38:23.580 I was very, very lucky to get maybe 100 seeds.

00:38:28.020 And they didn't seem to be growing.

00:38:31.600 And I thought, oh my goodness, what can I do to make them grow?

00:38:36.620 And what I did is I put them into, I hope this is kind of a silly thing to have done,

00:38:43.320 I put them into a tin box in my pump house because I didn't want any squirrels or any rodents to get at these seeds.

00:38:55.060 And they were there for, you know, I keep an eye on them.

00:38:59.160 They were there for over two years in cold storage in the pump house.

00:39:03.440 and one spring I went into the pump house

00:39:08.920 and the strength of germination of the seeds themselves

00:39:14.680 burst the tin box apart

00:39:18.400 and they all germinated together

00:39:22.000 and then I started looking at weather patterns

00:39:25.540 that was the thing that got me interested in this

00:39:28.500 all those trees grew

00:39:30.800 I germinated them on

00:39:33.460 I put them on, I put them out into nursery rows

00:39:35.820 and they all continued to grow

00:39:37.520 they went out with my millennium project

00:39:40.020 but then I started

00:39:41.920 to see that

00:39:42.880 I took good note of

00:39:45.140 let's say for instance down in California

00:39:47.420 you would have

00:39:49.920 you would have

00:39:51.040 a poor year under the following

00:39:53.700 circumstances

00:39:54.720 if you have

00:39:57.280 a wind and if you have

00:39:59.500 temperatures in the regions of, let's say, plus two, plus three, plus four in the spring,

00:40:06.040 any time, January, February, March, any time in the spring, when the capcins, the male

00:40:12.360 capcins for a specie were out, when they were dangling out and they were very susceptible.

00:40:18.840 The drying of the air makes the male capcins susceptible to frost damage under those set

00:40:28.480 circumstances and will kill the male pollen. Pollination may happen, but it will be crippled.

00:40:36.360 And under those circumstances, for that year, you will have a very poor seed set. If you have a very

00:40:45.020 poor seed set in all of your species that are vulnerable to this, then you will have a poor

00:40:51.880 number of mammals, small mammals, all the different mice and rodents, going right all

00:40:58.820 the way up to the larger creatures. Then the birds get affected too, because all of the birds are

00:41:05.000 dependent on seed pieces also, and that goes all the way up the line. So if you have something

00:41:12.320 like that in one year, and then you wonder what is happening, that's what's happened. It's a very

00:41:17.940 simple phenomenon, a very tiny thing of one or two degrees on the captains. So you'll have a poor

00:41:25.880 year. And in the ancient times in North America, those were the years of famine. And sometimes they

00:41:33.340 would last for three years. Then after the fourth or fifth year, then you would have an enormous

00:41:39.740 run of seeds on the continent. And what would happen is that you have a very high sun exposure

00:41:47.680 on the canopy of the tree.

00:41:49.520 So spring would come, and the canopy, the sun's canopy, is enormous.

00:41:55.300 And that means that the leaves respond to the full effect of the sun

00:41:59.900 because they farm the sun.

00:42:02.080 The leaves actually farm the sun in the photosynthetic reaction

00:42:06.520 because the reaction within the leaves and the mesophyll tissue of the leaves,

00:42:11.260 the mesophyll, the chloroplasts in the mesophyll

00:42:14.860 can drink the carbon dioxide out of the air

00:42:17.980 in the presence of moisture vapour,

00:42:20.280 in the presence of sunlight to produce carbon.

00:42:23.160 Carbon sugars, loads and loads of carbon sugars

00:42:26.380 and evolve out oxygen, the oxygen that we breathe.

00:42:30.700 The trees take this carbon sugar and pack it into their seeds.

00:42:35.440 The more carbon, the better the seeds.

00:42:37.420 The more sun, the better the quality of acorns.

00:42:40.620 The bigger the acorns.

00:42:41.760 And so you'll have a huge cycle of little mammals and creatures all the way up the line.

00:42:47.920 So it is connected to the leaf. It is connected to the temperatures.

00:42:52.700 And that's what I started to notice.

00:42:56.180 I'd like to talk about another interaction of trees and climate.

00:43:01.380 What has science figured out so far about how trees control local climates within forests,

00:43:08.420 as well as the broader climate

00:43:10.420 through the power of cloud seeding and other mechanisms?

00:43:16.180 Okay.

00:43:18.320 Well, first of all, there is a phenomenon within every tree

00:43:25.040 all over the world, everywhere.

00:43:27.880 And that phenomenon is the same as you lose it using your lungs.

00:43:32.740 You've got two lungs.

00:43:34.100 You breathe in, you breathe out.

00:43:37.100 For a tree, it's the same phenomenon.

00:43:40.220 It's called transpiration.

00:43:42.360 It's a reverse phenomenon to your breathing.

00:43:45.460 The tree breathes in carbon dioxide and breathes out oxygen

00:43:50.420 and uses water vapor for doing that.

00:43:53.600 The tree has to have water vapor to live.

00:43:56.440 That's called transpiration.

00:43:58.760 Transpiration is found really in a way, in a passageway,

00:44:03.620 in a kind of a way throughout the whole tree

00:44:07.800 because the tree is controlled

00:44:10.760 or does control a system of plumbing

00:44:13.760 called xylem and phloem,

00:44:16.280 microtubules all throughout the tree,

00:44:19.460 from the top of the tree

00:44:20.700 to actually the bottom of the tree underground.

00:44:24.640 And some trees go way underground

00:44:27.060 down to 30, 35 feet underground.

00:44:30.680 And it is, in other words,

00:44:32.340 It's a column of water that the tree in the xylem passages and in the phloem passages that the tree can hold in place.

00:44:42.340 And that column of water is connected to the aquifer, to the moisture in the soil itself.

00:44:49.160 Now, I'm describing something to you that nobody anywhere in any university, anywhere in the world understands how that works.

00:45:00.380 The moisture vapour, the moisture comes from the soil itself into the tree, into really all the mycorrhiza around the tree and the movement of mycorrhiza and the bacteriophages and the algae and the cyanophyte algae and all of the creatures and micro creatures in the soil, we actually don't really understand.

00:45:23.240 We know there is a movement from one set of species to another and then into the apical meristem or into the apical meristem of the root.

00:45:34.180 We know that the meristematic area, we understand some of that.

00:45:38.220 We don't understand how it works.

00:45:40.880 We don't know.

00:45:41.740 But we do know that from the surface of a leaf, the surface of a leaf releases micromolecules into the air.

00:45:54.020 And those micromolecules are in the form of alpha, beta, and gamma pinines, of camphors, of boronyl acetate,

00:46:03.500 of all of these circular molecules that actually can go and have lift up into the air.

00:46:10.300 The extraordinary thing about all of those molecules is they have methane, metal groups, CH3, metal groups attached to them like the tails of a dog.

00:46:23.260 So kind of if you're imagining this, try and think of a six-carbon molecule just like a kite with a whole bunch of dog tails hanging on the kite.

00:46:33.500 It flies up into the air, it's released, there are fixing compounds, there's a whole

00:46:39.200 cacophony of chemistry that's released by the tree in the spring, in the summer and

00:46:45.080 in the fall, right into the atmosphere.

00:46:47.940 And those CH3 groups, those metal groups go flying up into the air and they hit all of 0.97

00:46:55.000 the moisture in the air and they're turned into CH3OH, they're turned into another kind

00:47:02.640 molecule that's very very water soluble and it sees the moisture and it goes into the moisture

00:47:09.780 and it picks up more moisture and that again picks up like a snowball rolling down a snowy hill

00:47:16.500 and it picks up more and more and more there's our rainfall that's what the trees do so they

00:47:22.260 govern the atmosphere in the man in the manipulation of moisture we are only just

00:47:29.440 beginning to understand that there are cloud chamber studies that have happened between mit

00:47:35.120 and happened with universities in germany and happened to universities in finland

00:47:39.420 they're really really expensive experiments to do what we're finding this phenomenon is happening

00:47:45.680 all over the world and so the trees and the forests can govern the atmosphere in that way

00:47:53.960 But there's one unique thing about the trees is that when you have evergreens, when you have deep green leaves, they are capable of absorbing radiation, infrared radiation, and cooling the system underneath the tree.

00:48:14.960 You will have in an evergreen about a two degree temperature change from the tree to the ground.

00:48:21.020 And that exacerbates the effect of moisture going into the tree itself.

00:48:28.320 The whole phenomenon of the cycle of what a forest does to the system of moisture,

00:48:35.660 we really don't understand.

00:48:39.160 And there isn't anybody there except I'm giving you the whist of what we do understand.

00:48:46.000 And it's very, very important.

00:48:47.940 The older the tree, the greater the effect.

00:48:52.220 So when I talk about the bio plan, you folks will have to get a shovel.

00:48:56.480 You'll have to plant.

00:48:57.760 I would like you to plant more oak trees in California as well because they shade the soil.

00:49:04.500 So you will have one tree going per person and you will look at it.

00:49:08.840 But it will phenomenally change your atmosphere.

00:49:13.140 It will give you increased moisture.

00:49:15.580 It will fill up your aquifers.

00:49:17.380 There are five major aquifers across the planet, and they're all going down, not just in California, all over the world.

00:49:26.040 So we have to pay attention to the fresh water, because you and I need water.

00:49:32.020 All the mammals of the world need water.

00:49:35.100 So we have to be sparse with what we're doing and careful with what we're doing.

00:49:40.440 You see, up to 100 years ago, we did not know that this was so important.

00:49:45.520 And up to maybe even 10 years ago, we didn't know that was important.

00:49:49.400 We didn't even know the presence of bacterial sashes.

00:49:52.620 We didn't even know that they existed, except for somebody took seawater,

00:49:56.820 put it on the cap of an electron microscope, scanned it, looked at it,

00:50:02.580 and said, oh, my God, there's all kinds of strange structures in this water.

00:50:06.640 We didn't know about them.

00:50:08.280 We know about them now.

00:50:10.140 But what has happened is that, is what my good friend D.O. Wilson says,

00:50:14.460 is we started to look at angels on the top of the pin

00:50:17.420 and we didn't look at the big picture.

00:50:19.680 I'm trying to look at the big picture

00:50:21.580 and I'm trying to condense that big picture

00:50:24.700 back down for everybody

00:50:26.840 so that the story is like the parables of the Bible.

00:50:31.280 The parables, a lot of them weren't very real

00:50:33.520 but they're a way of telling you

00:50:35.980 what reality is all about

00:50:37.900 and that's really what I'm trying to do.

00:50:44.460 And there's a high-flying bird way up in the sky

00:50:54.100 And I wonder does he look down as he flies on by

00:51:03.260 Oh, he's riding on the air so easy in the sky

00:51:10.200 But, Lord, look at me here

00:51:14.440 Oh, I'm rooted like a tree here

00:51:18.680 I've got to sit down, can't cry

00:51:22.860 Oh, Lord, I'm going to die, please

00:51:26.340 Now the sun comes along

00:51:30.420 Oh, Lord, it lights up the day

00:51:33.640 And when he gets tired, he slides on

00:51:39.840 And over the way, oh, it's east to the west, he is gone every day.

00:51:49.780 But Lord, look at me here, oh, I'm rooted like a tree here.

00:51:58.380 Oh, I got to sit down, can't cry, oh, Lord, I'm going to die blue.

00:52:03.760 what an incredible story you have just woven about the hydrology of forests and you mentioned

00:52:15.100 pinings and i'd like if you could talk about the medicinal aerosols trees release that we may not

00:52:22.900 even realize are healing us i believe here in the redwoods it's taxidione can you explain this

00:52:30.520 exchange that is silently taking place in the forest of the world now if you go into the the

00:52:39.360 redwood forests in in california i mean we are talking iconic areas here like i'd ask you to go

00:52:46.180 in quite early if you want to get the taxodione onto your body or like we're i'm talking about

00:52:52.380 forest bathing here for all of the population of of california and honest to god i'm asking you i

00:52:58.960 would like you to go in to shield your bodies against cancer you're going to do this forest

00:53:05.220 bathing for me right now so you go in early in the morning before the dew has settled so that

00:53:11.760 would be i'm sorry you've got to get up early you've got to be there maybe by about 9 8 39 o'clock

00:53:17.940 and bring some sandwiches with you so you're going to have a lunch so you go in there and don't have

00:53:24.020 anything on your head like take your hats off and try and have something very loose on your body

00:53:31.060 like loose cotton of some kind and maybe a pair of shorts with your shoes so expose your legs

00:53:37.420 expose as much of skin as you possibly can to the air now as the air rises by the heat of the sun

00:53:46.660 the moisture in the air will pass by the trees

00:53:51.120 and this is for July, August and September

00:53:55.660 the holidaying seasons

00:53:57.440 you go in there and as that moisture is creeping up through the trees

00:54:02.480 there is a release by means of moisture and sun of taxodione into the air

00:54:08.860 and you will be aware of it because the smell and the scent in the air changes

00:54:14.020 And that is a slightly, how do I call it, a sharp smell, and you'll feel it in your teeth.

00:54:23.420 And what happens is it affects your salivary glands also.

00:54:27.140 You want to produce more saliva, and you will drink the taxodione by means of the air,

00:54:34.500 by just breathing and drinking the air.

00:54:37.320 And the taxodione will go into your system in that way.

00:54:40.420 It will also land on the open skin of your body and it has fixing compounds to go with it.

00:54:48.320 And what you will do is you walk slowly, breathing deeply so that the lower parts of your lungs,

00:54:56.740 so you have a diaphragmatic breathing, keep your shoulders up straight

00:55:01.100 and you walk just very slowly, lollygagging down the pathways

00:55:06.880 and breathe deeply with good strong breaths so you're getting the dione right into your system

00:55:14.080 that will give you a protective shield to cancers throughout your body you will be getting compounds

00:55:23.040 that are given to you and if you have cancer they're anti-cancer compounds they're chemo

00:55:29.920 therapeutical agents that are in the air, and they're there in just the right amounts of parts

00:55:37.040 per trillion in the air that your body needs as a shield. They are called phytokinicals. They will

00:55:44.240 go into your body, and your body will use them as your body sees necessary, and the rest of it

00:55:51.580 you will pee out. And when you've come home, take a couple of glasses of really good water

00:55:59.600 to flush your system and to flush your kidneys

00:56:03.620 and to give you an energizing effect of the taxodione in your system.

00:56:08.620 And that I have described as far as baby.

00:56:29.600 You've been listening to part one of a conversation with Diana Beresford-Kroger on Unlearn and Rewild.

00:56:40.640 If you're not too far from California on March 19th, there's a very special all-day event honoring Diana's environmental vision entitled Call of the Forest, Climate, Water, and Spirit.

00:56:53.400 There will be a series of panel discussions where Diana will be joined by noted authors and activists, and her film will be screened as well.

00:57:03.020 Go to Point Reyes Bookstore's website at ptreyesbooks.com to get tickets.

00:57:10.600 We hope to see you there.

00:57:11.860 The music you heard today was

00:57:14.700 Moni Musk Lads by Silly Wizard

00:57:17.920 How Wild the Wind Blows by Molly Drake

00:57:21.220 and High Flying Bird by Judy Henske

00:57:24.440 Our theme song is Like a River by Kate Wolfe

00:57:28.080 I'm Ayanna Young and our show's producer is March Young

00:57:32.560 Please support this fully volunteer project

00:57:36.160 by making a contribution at unlearnandrewild.org

00:57:40.340 Thanks for listening

00:57:41.780 Drittin' on the wind

00:57:44.400 Through the mountains like a river

For The Wild - March 27, 2019

DIANA BERESFORD-KROEGER on Replanting the Global Forest ⌠ENCORE⌡⧸32 & 33

Episode Stats

Transcript