For The Wild - DIANA BERESFORD-KROEGER on Replanting the Global Forest, Part One ⧸32

00:00:00.000 It's high on a mountain, the warm winds are blowing, and where the winds are blowing to,

00:00:26.400 There ain't no way of knowing

00:00:29.400 The mountain grass is short

00:00:32.680 It's dry and close to burning

00:00:35.440 Crying out for water

00:00:38.680 As the season's turning

00:00:41.680 Sweet smell of the pines

00:00:46.680 Tall western cedar

00:00:48.360 Drifting on the wind

00:00:51.840 Through the mountains like a river

00:00:54.420 Hello, I'm Ayanna Young, and I welcome you to Unlearn and Rewild, where we explore radical

00:01:09.180 ideas relating to earth renewal. Today, we're speaking with Diana Beresford-Kroger. Diana is

00:01:15.780 a botanist, medical biochemist, and self-defined renegade scientist who brings together ethnobotany, 1.00

00:01:23.540 horticulture, spirituality, and alternative medicine to reveal a path toward better stewardship

00:01:29.360 of the natural world. Orphaned in Ireland in her youth, Diana was educated by elders who

00:01:35.540 instructed her in the Brehen knowledge of plants and nature. Told she was the last child of ancient

00:01:41.320 Ireland and told to one day bring this knowledge to a troubled future, Diana has done exactly that.

00:01:47.600 Her bio-plan is an ambitious plan, encouraging people to develop a new relationship with nature, to join together to replant the global forest.

00:01:57.820 Her books include The Sweetness of a Simple Life, The Global Forest, Arboretum Borealis, Arboretum America, and A Garden of Life.

00:02:08.120 Diana Beresford-Kroger was included as a Wings World Quest Fellow in 2010

00:02:13.360 and named one of Utney Reader's World Visionaries for 2011.

00:02:19.460 We welcome you to the program, Diana. How are you doing today?

00:02:23.960 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.

00:02:32.140 How has this winter been treating you and your plant sanctuary there in Ontario, Canada?

00:02:38.340 Oh, well, very, very cold and we're expecting another bunch of snowstorms.

00:02:45.860 I've got a huge place, 160 acres, and a very large garden full of all kinds of rare species in there

00:02:52.820 that I kind of hold in a hermitage of all kinds of trees and ancient foods of the Aboriginal people

00:03:00.140 and gooseberries and all kinds of things like that in the garden.

00:03:05.680 So I watch the weather very carefully because some of them are annuals.

00:03:10.160 I have to carry them over from year to year, you know.

00:03:14.280 So I have a lot of things of great interest here to all kinds of people.

00:03:19.780 well your vision and your labors of love have been such an influence and catalyst for my work

00:03:30.000 as a restoration ecologist and you've inspired me to start a native plants nursery putting me

00:03:36.860 on this quest for rare plants and trees to propagate well really you know the funny thing is

00:03:44.220 is that you have a wish list, okay?

00:03:47.860 And it's a very peculiar thing.

00:03:50.180 And I can't, I mean, I'm a scientist

00:03:51.820 and I can't really give you an explanation for this.

00:03:54.640 I make a wish and the species comes to me.

00:03:58.000 Somehow, somewhere around the world,

00:04:01.180 the species comes in the door. 0.99

00:04:02.400 The next one that will come in will be of the Caria species.

00:04:06.600 And I want the Caria tomentosa,

00:04:08.700 that's the hickory, the hairy hickory,

00:04:11.460 the tomentose hickory, 0.97

00:04:12.640 that the aboriginal people used to smoke their foods

00:04:16.680 you know in the winter time here and actually down the continent

00:04:20.760 the foods that the aboriginal people grew

00:04:24.440 were things like you know all the cucurbits

00:04:28.000 the squash and so on and so forth

00:04:30.520 but they only last for maybe about four or five months

00:04:33.520 and what they did is they strung them up

00:04:35.320 and they smoked a squash using the area tomatosa

00:04:39.800 and all of those things are really really interesting to me so that is getting to be a

00:04:46.720 very very rare species of tree that's next on my bucket list you know it's very important really

00:04:52.740 because for instance just theoretically if our hydro goes down for one of many many reasons that

00:05:00.060 it could happen how would we protect our food sources over the winter for me and for you

00:05:05.760 And we have to know these things.

00:05:08.960 Yes, we cannot underestimate our reliance on forests.

00:05:13.400 I loved reading about the anti-famine trees, the different nuts, and the whole savannah dynamic.

00:05:19.740 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.

00:05:29.980 No, absolutely no. I mean, there are two things I really want to do.

00:05:34.520 One of them is, of course, as close to my heart,

00:05:36.900 is to protect the forests that are already there.

00:05:39.280 And honestly, I am surprised doing this film

00:05:42.420 that the amount of forest that has gone is phenomenal.

00:05:45.960 The native, actually native wildwood,

00:05:49.240 virgin species that have gone all over the world,

00:05:52.380 except for the boreal, all over the world have gone.

00:05:55.760 So protect them and replant them back.

00:05:57.900 And the other thing is to have sanctuaries of the sea.

00:06:01.740 Start protecting the sea also.

00:06:03.940 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.

00:06:22.800 If the biodiversity goes on the land, it goes also in the sea.

00:06:27.200 So we must do this.

00:06:29.560 And you know, Ayanna, I've traveled the world now for this film,

00:06:33.560 and your heart is the heart of many, many people across the world.

00:06:40.800 So I see that as enormously hopeful.

00:06:43.960 Really it is.

00:06:44.920 You know, all of the news that we hear on the media, it's all bad news.

00:06:48.660 It's all police reports and murders and stuff.

00:06:51.580 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.

00:07:09.560 absolutely and that's a big reason why we're doing the radio show to learn and to share these

00:07:18.100 stories of regeneration and in this time with you we're all poised to be sponges all the students of

00:07:26.000 life listening around the world and I just want to say what an honor it is to have you

00:07:32.420 You are truly a compass for all of us.

00:07:36.820 Well, that's lovely. That's lovely to hear that.

00:07:39.580 And I really should start off by saying that when I interviewed Akira Mayuaki in Japan,

00:07:49.100 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.

00:07:57.400 and he has been trying to do work down in Brazil

00:08:02.340 in the rainforest down there

00:08:04.500 and really all over the world

00:08:05.920 and when he met me 0.83

00:08:07.820 he's a little roly-poly Japanese man

00:08:11.000 with twinkling eyes

00:08:12.500 and we met before filming

00:08:15.580 before I was going to interview him

00:08:17.400 and discuss biodiversity

00:08:19.120 and regeneration of forests and so on and so forth

00:08:21.920 and this is very unusual for a Japanese man 0.97

00:08:27.120 he's a scientist

00:08:28.940 he's the same as I am

00:08:31.180 and he held my hand

00:08:33.440 and he said to me

00:08:35.080 he said I'm glad

00:08:37.320 to meet you I'm no longer

00:08:39.140 alone

00:08:39.720 what a moment

00:08:41.820 I felt the same

00:08:44.680 I felt oh

00:08:46.540 the handshakes have already started

00:08:49.320 we are starting to hold hands

00:08:51.400 across the world

00:08:52.400 and his hand was a big hand

00:08:55.380 for me to hold

00:08:56.500 and I hold that in the landscape of my mind now

00:08:59.840 and I think about him

00:09:01.360 and he's doing what I'm doing

00:09:04.620 I'm doing more probably things than he's doing

00:09:07.300 I have more freedom to do things

00:09:08.980 but there are more out there

00:09:12.520 and we will meet them in the passage of this program

00:09:26.500 I'd love if you would also tell us about yourself, where you originate from,

00:09:36.080 and how you were sort of impelled by circumstance to become the earth defender and teacher that you are.

00:09:45.000 Well, to start off with, I'm an Irish woman, and I look upon myself as an Irish woman.

00:09:53.040 I'm kind of an aristocratic mongrel, if you want to look at me that way.

00:09:58.540 On my mother's family, my pedigree goes back about 3,500 years

00:10:04.720 in the Banshankas of the ancient Gaelic world in Noble Lines.

00:10:10.000 And you'll see my family home is the Castle of Ross on Killarney Lake.

00:10:14.880 And we were, in the ancient times, we were the teachers of the High King of Ireland.

00:10:20.760 That's what we had been.

00:10:21.940 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.

00:10:30.080 And so I come from that lineage, and then on my father's side, there are earls and so on and so forth in England, there are lords, and my grandfather was Lord William Beresford.

00:10:41.840 so I come from a mongrel side

00:10:44.520 but really my leaning is into the Celtic world

00:10:49.500 into the Gaelic world

00:10:50.480 because when my family was killed 1.00

00:10:52.100 I was the last child of that huge line 0.64

00:10:56.840 of the old pedigree of ancient Ireland

00:11:01.700 and all of my mother's relatives

00:11:05.280 now they would be third and fourth cousins

00:11:07.480 and maybe there was one second cousin too

00:11:11.140 a whole pile of them. They were all in their 80s and 90s, and they only spoke Gaelic. They never

00:11:16.520 spoke English. And they had Latin and Greek in their houses. All of the old people had Latin,

00:11:22.940 Greek, and Gaelic, and they didn't really bother with English. So I was brought in under a wardship. 1.00

00:11:28.880 Now, this was brought in under a Breham wardship. And in old Ireland, they had the laws of the

00:11:36.280 Brehen laws. And what they were, they were pre-Magna Carta. They had been gathered from

00:11:42.060 about 1,500 years before Christ. And they were put into a written form about 400 years after

00:11:50.280 the birth of Christ. And those laws became the Brehen laws. And they were in the old and ancient

00:11:56.620 times known as the Shonkas Moor, meaning the ancient laws of Ireland. And in those laws,

00:12:04.580 in the Brehen laws, a child who has been made an orphan is everybody's child. Everybody had an

00:12:12.220 ownership on me. And so the family thought, seeing that I was such an important child,

00:12:18.960 I was brought into a wardship for three years. And I was taught all the old, ancient way of

00:12:25.240 looking at nature. I was given an apprenticeship in nature in the way that I was taught all of

00:12:31.820 the old cures, the fishagri, which in Gaelic would be the charms, the way and the modality

00:12:39.340 of setting spells, the alignment of the mind for running threads on people, which is a

00:12:46.760 form of telepathy.

00:12:48.400 For me, as a woman, they knew that I would be growing up as an only child and that I

00:12:55.440 would not have enough love.

00:12:57.740 Love would be a problem for me.

00:13:00.140 I would have a scarcity of love in my life.

00:13:03.040 And so they taught me how to love myself in the way of blessing myself,

00:13:09.800 of being grateful for who I was and what I was and how I was thinking.

00:13:15.020 These are all the old ways of thought.

00:13:18.380 I was taught how to use angutha, the voice for animals,

00:13:23.380 the way of speaking to nature and the way of hearing nature,

00:13:27.880 of holding silence in my mind and that's very very similar to the buddhist thinking in fact

00:13:33.860 it goes back into the ancient traditions of buddha and i was taught those things

00:13:38.660 and um i was taught them all in gaelic and i was brought from house to house and

00:13:44.480 the different teachings were given to me and then i was told that i would be the last

00:13:51.220 voice of the ancient

00:13:53.280 world of Ireland

00:13:54.840 and I was 11 and

00:13:57.400 12 when I was told this

00:13:58.800 and that I had to bring that voice

00:14:01.440 into the new world

00:14:03.060 and I understood

00:14:05.440 the new world then to be

00:14:07.180 the new world of North America

00:14:09.240 but now

00:14:10.900 I think it's the new

00:14:13.320 world of the modern world

00:14:15.260 not just North America

00:14:16.920 I think we have sold

00:14:19.220 nature away

00:14:20.600 we have put a price on nature

00:14:22.840 we have put a price on a tree

00:14:24.600 we have put a price on all the things

00:14:27.000 that are sacred to us like the air

00:14:29.120 and the water and the fish

00:14:30.960 in the sea and all of

00:14:33.000 the sacred

00:14:34.800 things to do with love

00:14:36.700 the love of a child, the love of people

00:14:39.080 all of those things have got

00:14:40.920 a dollar value on them

00:14:42.760 and a money value and they shouldn't

00:14:45.000 have because they're part

00:14:47.180 of the common age, the great

00:14:48.780 common age of the human mind. We all have ownership on the sky. We all have ownership

00:14:55.800 in the atmosphere. We all have ownership on the land. And we can hold these things in

00:15:01.500 the landscape of our mind in memory almost forever until we die. So there are things

00:15:08.260 that are very precious to us. And I think we've ignored them. And so as a child, I was

00:15:14.680 taught how to look after the body the spirit and the mind and the spirit is the soul in the old

00:15:23.620 world of ireland as in all the old cultures the body is not a unity on itself the body is connected

00:15:31.000 to the mind and to the spirit and you have bodily remedies for if you've got a cold or flu or

00:15:37.580 broken limb or something like that but there are great disasters of the mind too and the soldiers

00:15:44.820 who've gone abroad and killed people they come back with a broken mind that kind of thing happens

00:15:51.120 to children and it happens to broken marriages where you have things it's called ptsd now but

00:15:57.080 it is not it's it's a mind that's broken that's got to get put back together by the the the

00:16:03.960 compassion of all of the society around them and even animals and horses and dogs and they know

00:16:11.560 that compassion and they'll give that to you and then there's the soul the soul is something

00:16:17.760 different entirely for us to look after our own souls we have always got a battle with self the

00:16:25.960 child of self within us we have that battle of trying to be better and better than better and

00:16:33.360 Even the worst criminals have to be better and better

00:16:37.040 because that's the dictate of our DNA.

00:16:40.540 And so you look after that part of you

00:16:43.280 where you try to do a little bit of good,

00:16:45.240 you try to do a little bit better,

00:16:46.920 you try to help somebody.

00:16:48.600 Sometimes you succeed and sometimes you don't.

00:16:51.180 All of those three things are known as the Celtic Triad

00:16:54.300 of the ancient world,

00:16:55.920 and that was part of the Bremen Law that I was taught.

00:16:59.460 And so I carried them into my education,

00:17:02.440 And I was put into a hardship again by my uncle, who really adopted me.

00:17:08.820 And I broke all the systems at the Irish courts in that I was given a choice by the judge of going to live with a bachelor uncle, which had never happened before, or to my wealthy family in England.

00:17:21.980 And I refused to go to my wealthy family because they had money, loads and loads of money, even at that time they owned planes.

00:17:29.020 And I thought I would just be a servant in the home.

00:17:31.680 so with my uncle

00:17:33.480 oh I wasn't a servant with him

00:17:36.240 we would sit on one side of the fire

00:17:38.440 I'd sit on one side

00:17:39.680 he'd sit on the other side of the fire

00:17:41.620 of an evening

00:17:42.220 and we would talk of theatre

00:17:45.140 of art

00:17:46.120 of plays

00:17:47.100 of physics

00:17:48.000 of Cair de Champagne

00:17:49.680 of Hilaire Belloc

00:17:51.100 of G.K. Chesterton

00:17:52.080 of all the old Celtic things

00:17:54.640 of Celtic plays

00:17:56.220 music

00:17:56.840 all of the old things between us

00:18:00.560 day after day after day and we kind of grew together in a way and the house was full of books

00:18:07.620 and I kind of swam in the books and read the books. He had 10,000 books and first copies of

00:18:14.340 everything and that was my childhood really in a way is learning and learning and then the school

00:18:22.020 I went to a private school and it was a convent and the nuns in the convent were so nice to me

00:18:29.560 They were so kind and so nice to me.

00:18:31.460 I never heard a crossword from any of them.

00:18:34.320 And I thought I was normal.

00:18:36.340 I was probably about 14 or 15.

00:18:39.980 And they decided to bring in the math professor from the university to teach me higher math, calculus, and so on and so forth.

00:18:49.020 And they pushed me ahead with my physics and my chemistry.

00:18:53.160 And I thought this was normal.

00:18:54.720 And none of the other kids there ever said boo to me.

00:18:57.320 I thought like I'd be hauled off to some other class.

00:18:59.560 and taught some stuff and then come back to my own classroom.

00:19:04.620 And now I realize what they were doing to me.

00:19:07.260 And they still write to me.

00:19:09.800 And then I went into university and I graduated the first of the university.

00:19:13.800 And then I kind of went from there with my master's and then I studied.

00:19:19.000 I decided to do kind of different types of studying.

00:19:23.340 I was like a sponge.

00:19:25.120 Everything by way of chemistry and physics and theoretical physics, 0.99

00:19:28.600 quantum mechanics like I sucked it all in you know when I did my PhD that was I sucked it all 0.50

00:19:34.800 in everything I did radiation physics the effect of that on the human body I mean I did all that 0.85

00:19:40.240 stuff so then I decided when I was 27 28 something like that I decided that I would start looking

00:19:48.520 after nature that I would um I saw all the trees coming down here in this on this continent

00:19:56.700 Nobody knew what they were.

00:19:58.080 I knew they were getting rarer and rarer.

00:20:00.380 I knew that everything was going.

00:20:02.580 I was deeply aware of that.

00:20:04.520 And then I thought, well, I'm going to write about these species.

00:20:09.920 I am going to take a long road of writing and put what I had known into books.

00:20:20.260 All of my books are peer-reviewed pretty well through Harvard.

00:20:24.300 But E.O. Wilson, that's Professor Wilson, probably known by everybody in the United States.

00:20:32.500 And if they don't know him, they should know him.

00:20:34.680 He was really my patron, and he was wonderful to me.

00:20:38.240 He is the most marvelous treasure of a man.

00:20:40.660 And he really encouraged me in what I was thinking and doing. 1.00

00:20:44.100 And I started saving species, and I started to see that the Aboriginal people were being bashed down, 1.00

00:20:51.360 and all of their cultures were going and their species were going

00:20:55.240 and I thought, no, I'm going to start saving them here. 0.99

00:20:58.540 I'm going to start pulling them all in.

00:21:00.420 And as soon as I had a bucket list of them, then they'd walk in the door.

00:21:03.820 For some reason, well, I would write for free for all of the botanical gardens across the world

00:21:09.880 and then I'd be given first choice of the seeds

00:21:12.260 and I was always looking for repatriation, always, always, always.

00:21:16.780 and all the species that I have here

00:21:20.920 like the cucumber tree

00:21:22.220 that's a very important tree

00:21:24.840 and the tulip tree is another one

00:21:28.000 because it has got compounds in it

00:21:30.340 that are really important for the management of heart diseases

00:21:33.240 and so I have a medicine walk

00:21:36.860 let me make you imagine my garden

00:21:39.760 I have a medicine walk of North American species

00:21:42.340 and I'm very interested in the Ointera species

00:21:46.900 I'm very interested in a species called hysop.

00:21:49.860 I'm very interested in all the chocolate-smelling, chocolate-colored species that are really, a lot of them are in North America.

00:21:59.340 So I pack the medicine walk with all of them.

00:22:02.500 And then I open that medicine walk to the public.

00:22:04.860 And when you come in, I ask you what propensity for diseases you have, because I have studied biochemistry.

00:22:14.700 And then I will get you to touch this, only touch, or smell this, only smell,

00:22:20.280 on different species that will give you a preventative cure shield to your body.

00:22:30.000 So I have had lots of people.

00:22:32.680 I was really surprised when I opened the medicine walk first.

00:22:36.340 I thought, oh, nobody had come.

00:22:38.280 But that day, 4,000 people came.

00:22:40.740 So it was kind of quite a bit of a rush, if you know what I mean.

00:22:43.800 And then there is, I have a huge vegetable garden and inside and outside vegetable garden, they're all heritage species that I grow. I have a heritage collection of potatoes. And then I have a small vineyard. And then, of course, I have my huge collection of nut trees that I continue to grade with my nut trees.

00:23:04.180 I have nut tasting

00:23:06.840 I know you're going to laugh at this

00:23:08.540 but I have nut tasting in the fall

00:23:10.820 and I like to have

00:23:13.180 with my husband Christian

00:23:14.380 to have the quality of butter

00:23:17.100 in the nut

00:23:18.020 no rancidity in the nut

00:23:20.060 that means the content of the nuts

00:23:22.900 these are walnuts and shed bark hickories

00:23:25.180 and hickories

00:23:25.800 it means that the oleic

00:23:28.280 linoleic

00:23:30.220 and linoleic acids

00:23:31.980 are at a high concentration in the nuts.

00:23:36.460 These are for brain repair.

00:23:38.840 These are for the repair of the myelin sheath,

00:23:42.020 all of the fat tissues of all of the communication systems of the body

00:23:47.660 because our food is very, very low in these essential fatty acids right now

00:23:54.240 because we're eating industrial food.

00:23:57.240 But the older ancient world had at its fingertips all of these different kinds of nuts, which are still essential for the body, as is deep-sea fish.

00:24:09.180 One is equivalent to the other.

00:24:11.280 One pound of nuts from North America, black walnuts or shagbark hickories or hickories,

00:24:19.680 one pound of nuts is equivalent to one pound of the best black angus steak that you can possibly eat.

00:24:31.260 So it's very, very high first class proteins.

00:24:35.240 And then I have an orchard.

00:24:36.480 in my orchard, I am breeding trees that will withstand climate change, will withstand the

00:24:44.020 huge variation of climate. And the climate here now for this year is very strange. I'm

00:24:51.720 sure it is for everybody who will be listening to me, and it will get worse. So you need

00:24:57.340 to bear that in mind for all of the things that you're growing by way of food like apple

00:25:02.420 trees or pear trees and grow your apple trees or pear trees one class colder than what the

00:25:11.020 area is you're living in.

00:25:13.060 Let's say if you're living in zone six, then you grow the apple trees or pear trees or

00:25:20.080 whatever into zone five or a zone four to get them to grow better for you now in zone

00:25:28.720 six because of the variation.

00:25:30.640 And it goes back up and down the growing ladder here for North America.

00:25:35.620 And I have, in my orchard, I have nut trees too.

00:25:40.180 And I have resistant chestnuts, the chestnuts, castanea satyvan, the chestnuts of North America.

00:25:51.260 And they will go out in a project across North America for replanting the forest.

00:25:56.740 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, and it's a white cherry.

00:26:10.160 And I knew there had been white cherries in Europe years ago, and they were brought into a place called the Bruce Peninsula in Canada.

00:26:18.840 And I'd looked and looked for them, and I couldn't find them.

00:26:21.260 and I put out my feelers across the world

00:26:24.460 and in Germany in the Alps

00:26:26.700 a friend of mine was traveling there

00:26:29.040 about six or seven years ago now

00:26:31.080 and she knew I was looking for this white cherry

00:26:33.940 and I had described these things to her

00:26:36.040 and she said, she contacted me

00:26:38.760 and she said, oh Diana

00:26:39.680 there's an old, old 90 year old couple

00:26:42.000 want to cut down two cherry trees

00:26:45.000 and she said, they might be the cherries

00:26:47.300 that you're looking for

00:26:48.320 well they were

00:26:50.320 They were the white cherries, so I sent instructions to them not to cut down the trees,

00:26:56.040 to take the seeds, take the fruit when they were ripe, when they were ripe and full-fleshed.

00:27:02.000 And then what I did is I gave them instructions to ferment the seeds.

00:27:10.180 You ferment the flesh off the shell of the seed, the hard seed inside the cherry.

00:27:16.600 then you wash them and you make them as septic so that they will not carry any diseases anywhere

00:27:22.660 anyhow over into North America and they were expressed to me and I grew them and now I have

00:27:30.340 these white cherries and I have them protected one of them is now in my pump house

00:27:36.400 because I want to be absolutely sure that it's strong enough to withstand climate change and I

00:27:42.340 will probably espalier that one. So I have

00:27:46.220 lots of different things like gooseberries. And then in the other part of

00:27:50.280 my garden I have, oh well really it's just

00:27:54.320 gorgeous water gardens and frequent

00:27:58.120 walkways and feeding trees and then wild

00:28:02.300 areas. And the wild areas all around my garden

00:28:06.500 are a huge, kind of like a barrier for all of the

00:28:10.220 wildlife, the birds and for the bees.

00:28:13.400 I have enormous, enormous numbers of bumblebees, of all different kinds of pollinating bees

00:28:20.820 coming in here, just enormous.

00:28:23.440 But then I have the biodiversity all the way around the wild biodiversity, which I would

00:28:28.440 like everybody to have.

00:28:31.800 And really, then I write about that stuff.

00:28:34.500 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.

00:28:45.660 And then there are the books.

00:28:48.160 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.

00:28:58.120 and I have a huge group of people in Taiwan

00:29:01.120 who are my fans

00:29:02.500 which is kind of strange

00:29:04.860 but that book then

00:29:07.700 has become the film

00:29:09.440 that I call

00:29:10.480 Call of the Forest, The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees

00:29:13.480 and

00:29:15.100 we travelled

00:29:17.500 all around the world

00:29:18.660 now by we I mean

00:29:20.060 my director which is

00:29:22.840 Jeff McKay

00:29:25.160 and my executive producer

00:29:27.380 is Merit Carr-Jensen and she owns Merit Motion Pictures and Jeff and I and our crew filmed

00:29:34.520 what I thought would be the most important overview of the planetary problem and I wrote

00:29:43.860 the director's script and I wanted it to be very simple so I always say that it is a discussion

00:29:51.740 that can happen at the kitchen table.

00:29:54.600 I don't want it to be a discussion that's happening

00:29:57.200 in the ivory tower of any university.

00:30:00.180 I want ordinary people to hear the call of the forest

00:30:04.400 and to have it ringing in their hearts

00:30:07.480 so that the children will listen to them

00:30:09.960 and that the children will go out and look at the species

00:30:13.240 and also respect the biodiversity around them

00:30:16.920 and hear that call.

00:30:18.420 So I had to write and rewrite and rewrite, even as I was doing that film, I was simplifying, simplifying, to make it an easy film to understand.

00:30:31.500 I tried to put beauty in with science and science in with beauty, and to make it so that it is a gorgeous film, and that you look at it,

00:30:43.680 And because it is so gorgeous, I want you to understand that this is our world.

00:30:50.380 This is the garden of your world.

00:30:52.840 This is the global garden that we all share.

00:30:56.720 We all share in its biodiversity, and we will all hold hands to protect it across the world.

00:31:03.720 And how we're going to do that is by the bio plan.

00:31:07.540 Now, the bio plan, if you read my works, you will see that we have inherited the mantle of nature.

00:31:14.840 We have inherited a certain kind of divinity of life.

00:31:20.080 And the divinity of life is spelt in the piano of our DNA.

00:31:25.780 You just play the piano up and down, and then you get to understand how absolutely merciful it is

00:31:33.220 and how that piano is played in a zero-and-one pattern of thinking,

00:31:41.980 which is the same as your computer systems.

00:31:44.580 It's zero-and-one in all kinds of ways,

00:31:48.080 and it's a binomial pattern, a fractal binomial pattern that is in your body.

00:31:54.640 It's just like the falling of leaves of a tree.

00:31:57.760 It's the same thing.

00:31:59.360 It's the growth of a tree. It's the same thing.

00:32:01.780 it's binomial brewing

00:32:03.520 it goes in an exponential way

00:32:05.860 but it is binomial

00:32:07.020 we understand these things

00:32:09.280 so even if you're cooking in a pot

00:32:11.560 it is a fractal pattern

00:32:13.460 that makes your cooking

00:32:15.160 that makes you drive to your office

00:32:17.140 that makes you come home on the roadways

00:32:19.400 because that's how the pattern

00:32:21.560 of traffic works

00:32:22.620 so from that you can

00:32:25.500 understand that God is

00:32:27.460 in everything really

00:32:28.420 it's the pattern of a divine

00:32:31.480 something. I can't tell you what it is, but it is there for all of us. And really, in

00:32:38.900 a way, it's just only, I'm only saying, have respect, have compassion for those around

00:32:46.780 you, and respect nature, and respect the users of nature, and try to step back, and

00:32:53.340 try to have some thought, and have some compassion for the lives around you. The life of a mouse,

00:32:59.180 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.

00:33:12.220 Anyway, the bio-plan is something else.

00:33:15.680 In the bio-plan, I'm asking you to do something.

00:33:18.800 I have reckoned mathematically that if one person, one person, every person on this planet,

00:33:28.180 that's about 8 billion people, plant a tree, one tree, every year for the next six years

00:33:35.120 will have the job done.

00:33:37.480 But you have to do it a little differently.

00:33:40.380 What you have to do is look after the tree.

00:33:43.000 There's not enough to plant it.

00:33:44.320 You have to look after it, keep it.

00:33:45.900 Maybe for your children, even name the tree, because that will make sure they remember the tree.

00:33:50.880 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.

00:33:58.500 For instance, on the West Coast, you have to put in redwoods.

00:34:02.560 I'm just giving you an example of one of the many hundreds of trees on the West Coast.

00:34:07.680 Because the redwood grows to be the tallest tree on the West Coast, the coast of America,

00:34:14.840 It's an iconic tree.

00:34:17.360 And when you look at that tree, you have to lie down on the ground if you're a child

00:34:20.800 and look up to the top of the tree because the trees are so tall.

00:34:23.720 They're enormous.

00:34:24.840 But I want you to think back about something.

00:34:27.720 Because they are so tall, because they are so big,

00:34:33.300 They are the greatest eaters of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that we have for all species on Earth.

00:34:46.520 They have this hunger for carbon dioxide for growing and getting big and getting huge and getting dense and staying growing and grow maybe for 4,000 years.

00:34:58.780 So that's the kind of tree you need to have on the West Coast.

00:35:03.300 and then it looks after the water and then it looks after the rain then it looks after the aquifers

00:35:08.740 and the great oceans and the solutions of fresh water going into the great seas of the pacific

00:35:15.540 and then you have the protection of whales then you have the protection of the mammals and the

00:35:20.180 fish in the sea and then you can have some protection for the sanctuaries of the sea

00:35:24.900 but it starts with a tree it starts with the tree you're going to plant now and that planting will

00:35:34.660 add to the great forests of the world we can work around trees we can live around trees

00:35:41.540 we can behave around trees we can do this together we will have something worthwhile

00:35:49.620 because we will have put elbow grease, our own elbow grease, into nature.

00:35:55.660 And if you do that, it has a meaning for you and your children forever.

00:36:03.080 the acorn carries an oak tree sleeping but for a little while winter lies in the arms of spring

00:36:29.220 As a mother carries her child and never know

00:36:34.980 How all the wind blows

00:36:40.160 A thought carries a universe

00:36:49.340 A seed carries a field of grain

00:36:53.200 Love lies in the arms of change

00:36:58.260 As a joy carries a pain

00:37:01.640 And no one knows

00:37:05.060 A while the wind blows

00:37:23.600 I come away from your work with a jolt of optimism

00:37:27.440 because, as you show, trees are intelligent beings

00:37:32.500 and they're not as passive and inert as we may think.

00:37:37.880 One example that you wrote about was how trees can predict future growing conditions

00:37:42.480 and act accordingly.

00:37:44.840 So can you unpack this for us?

00:37:47.960 And how did you come upon that marvel of nature?

00:37:50.880 Well, I'll tell you, Ayanna.

00:37:53.100 I had been collecting butternut seeds and those are called juglans cineria, that's the Latin for those

00:38:03.080 and they are really kind of going extinct, they were the medicine, one of the medicine trees of the First Nations

00:38:10.460 a very very important nut bearing tree with all kinds of potential in that tree

00:38:17.060 And I collected the seeds of that tree from virgin forest one year.

00:38:23.600 I was very, very lucky to get maybe 100 seeds.

00:38:28.040 And they didn't seem to be growing.

00:38:31.620 And I thought, oh my goodness, what can I do to make them grow?

00:38:36.660 And what I did is I put them into, I know this is kind of a silly thing to have done,

00:38:43.340 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.

00:38:55.080 And they were there for, you know, I keep an eye on them.

00:38:59.180 They were there for over two years in cold storage in the pump house.

00:39:04.680 And one spring, I went into the pump house.

00:39:08.940 And the strength of germination of the seeds themselves burst the tin box apart.

00:39:19.520 And they all germinated together.

00:39:22.800 And then I started looking at weather patterns.

00:39:25.740 That was the thing that got me interested in this.

00:39:29.320 All those trees grew.

00:39:31.600 I germinated them on, I put them on, I put them out into nursery rows, and they all continued to grow.

00:39:37.540 They went out with my Millennium Project.

00:39:40.900 But then I started to see that I took good note of, let's say, for instance, down in California.

00:39:48.760 You would have a poor year under the following circumstances.

00:39:55.880 If you have a wind and if you have temperatures in the regions of, let's say, plus two, plus three, plus four in the spring,

00:40:05.780 any time, January, February, March, any time in the spring,

00:40:10.360 when the capcins, the male capcins for a specie were out,

00:40:15.360 when they were dangling out and they were very susceptible.

00:40:18.880 The drying of the air makes the male capcins susceptible to frost damage

00:40:27.140 under those set of circumstances and will kill the male pollen.

00:40:32.860 Pollination may happen, but it will be crippled.

00:40:36.340 And under those circumstances, for that year, you will have a very poor seed set.

00:40:43.600 If you have a very poor seed set in all of your species that are vulnerable to this,

00:40:50.140 then you will have a poor number of mammals, small mammals, all the different mice and rodents,

00:40:57.320 going right all the way up to the larger creatures.

00:41:00.440 then the birds get affected too

00:41:03.320 because all of the birds are dependent on seed pieces also

00:41:07.380 and that goes all the way up the line.

00:41:10.640 So if you have something like that in one year

00:41:13.740 and then you wonder what is happening,

00:41:15.960 that's what's happened.

00:41:17.240 It's a very simple phenomenon,

00:41:20.040 a very tiny thing of one or two degrees on the captains.

00:41:24.320 So you'll have a poor year

00:41:26.440 and in the ancient times in North America,

00:41:29.100 those were the years of famine and sometimes they would last for three years then after the fourth

00:41:36.600 or fifth year then you would have an enormous run of seeds on the continent and what would happen

00:41:44.320 is that you have a very high sun exposure on the canopy of the tree so spring would come

00:41:51.300 and the canopy, the sun's canopy, is enormous.

00:41:55.320 And that means that the leaves respond to the full effect of the sun

00:41:59.940 because they farm the sun.

00:42:02.100 The leaves actually farm the sun in the photosynthetic reaction

00:42:06.580 because the reaction within the leaves, in the mesophyll tissue of the leaves,

00:42:11.280 the mesophyll, the chloroplasts in the mesophyll

00:42:14.880 can drink the carbon dioxide out of the air

00:42:18.000 in the presence of moisture vapour, in the presence of sunlight to produce carbon.

00:42:23.120 Carbon sugars, loads and loads of carbon sugars and evolve out oxygen, the oxygen that we breathe.

00:42:30.720 The trees take this carbon sugar and pack it into their seeds.

00:42:35.460 The more carbon, the better the seeds.

00:42:37.460 The more sun, the better the quality of acorns.

00:42:40.660 The bigger the acorns.

00:42:41.780 And so you'll have a huge cycle of little mammals and creatures all the way up the line.

00:42:48.000 So it is connected to the length, it is connected to the temperatures.

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

00:42:55.600 I'd like to talk about another interaction of trees and climate.

00:43:01.420 What has science figured out so far about how trees control local climates within forests,

00:43:08.680 as well as the broader climate through the power of cloud seeding and other mechanisms?

00:43:14.460 ah okay well as the first of all there is a phenomenon within every tree all over the world

00:43:26.460 everywhere and that phenomenon is the same as you lose it using your lungs you've got two lungs

00:43:34.020 you breathe in you breathe out for a tree it's the same phenomenon it's called transpiration

00:43:42.380 It's a reverse phenomenon to your breathing.

00:43:44.920 The tree breeds in carbon dioxide and breeds out oxygen and uses water vapor for doing that.

00:43:53.620 The tree has to have water vapor to live.

00:43:56.480 That's called transpiration.

00:43:58.760 Transpiration is found really in a way, in a passageway, in a kind of a way throughout the whole tree

00:44:07.840 because the tree is controlled or does control a system of plumbing

00:44:13.780 called xylem and phloem, microtubules all throughout the tree,

00:44:19.480 from the top of the tree to actually the bottom of the tree underground.

00:44:24.100 And some trees go way underground, down to 30, 35 feet underground.

00:44:30.720 And it is, in other words, it's a column of water at the tree in the xylem,

00:44:36.600 passages and in the flown passages that the tree can hold in place and that column of water is

00:44:44.460 connected to the aquifer, to the moisture in the soil itself. Now I'm describing something to you

00:44:52.080 that nobody anywhere in any university, anywhere in the world understands how that works.

00:45:00.440 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.

00:45:23.260 We know there is a movement from one set of species to another and then into the apical meristem of the root.

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

00:45:38.240 We don't understand how it works.

00:45:40.900 We don't know.

00:45:41.760 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 pinings, of camphors, of boronyl acetate,

00:46:03.520 of all of these circular molecules that actually can go and have lift up into the air.

00:46:10.320 The extraordinary thing about all of those molecules is they have methane, methyl groups, CH3, methyl groups attached to them like the tails of a dog.

00:46:23.300 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.

00:46:33.520 It flies up into the air, it's released, there are fixing compounds, there's a whole

00:46:39.220 cacophony of chemistry that's released by the tree in the spring, in the summer and

00:46:45.100 in the fall, right into the atmosphere.

00:46:47.960 And those CH3 groups, those metal groups go flying up into the air and they hit all of

00:46:55.020 the moisture in the air and they're turned into CH3OH.

00:47:00.200 They're turned into another kind of molecule that's very, very water-soluble.

00:47:06.500 And it sees the moisture, and it goes into the moisture, and it picks up more moisture.

00:47:11.960 And that, again, picks up, like a snowball rolling down a snowy hill.

00:47:16.740 And it picks up more and more and more.

00:47:18.960 There's our rainfall.

00:47:20.360 That's what the trees do.

00:47:21.880 So they govern the atmosphere in the manipulation of moisture.

00:47:27.660 We are only just beginning to understand that.

00:47:31.520 There are cloud chamber studies that have happened between MIT

00:47:35.180 and happened with universities in Germany and happened to universities in Finland.

00:47:39.780 They're really, really expensive experiments to do.

00:47:42.440 What we're finding this phenomenon is happening all over the world.

00:47:48.520 And so the trees and the forests can govern the atmosphere in that way.

00:47:54.000 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.

00:48:14.540 you will have in an evergreen about a two degree temperature change

00:48:19.360 from the tree to the ground.

00:48:21.780 And that exacerbates the effect of moisture going into the tree itself.

00:48:28.260 The whole phenomenon of the cycle of what a forest does to the system of moisture,

00:48:35.680 we really don't understand.

00:48:38.260 and there isn't anybody there except i'm giving you the whist of what we do understand and it's

00:48:46.500 very very important the older the tree the greater the effect so when i talk about the bio plan you

00:48:54.780 folks will have to get a shovel you'll have to plant i would like you to plant more oak trees

00:49:00.200 in california as well because they shade the soil so you will have one tree going per person

00:49:07.020 and you will look at it but it will phenomenally change your atmosphere it will give you increased

00:49:14.720 moisture it will fill up your aquifers there are five major aquifers across the planet and they're

00:49:21.500 all going down not just in california all over the world so we have to pay attention to the fresh

00:49:28.200 water because you and i need water all the mammals of the world need water so we have to be sparse

00:49:36.780 with what we're doing and careful with what we're doing.

00:49:40.480 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.

00:49:49.420 We didn't even know the presence of bacteriophages.

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

00:49:56.840 put it on the cap of an electron microscope, scanned it, looked at it,

00:50:02.620 and said, oh, my God, there's all kinds of strange structures in this water.

00:50:06.480 We didn't know about them. We know about them now.

00:50:10.180 But what has happened is that, is what my good friend D.O. Wilson says,

00:50:14.540 is we started to look at angels on the top of the pin, and we didn't look at the big picture.

00:50:19.700 I'm trying to look at the big picture, and I'm trying to condense that big picture back down for everybody

00:50:26.880 so that the story is like the parables of the Bible.

00:50:30.820 The power of a lot of them weren't very real, but they're a way of telling you what reality is all about.

00:50:38.280 And that's really what I'm trying to do.

00:51:00.820 As he flies on by

00:51:03.300 Oh, he's riding on the air

00:51:07.380 So easy in the sky

00:51:10.240 But Lord, look at me here

00:51:14.460 Oh, I'm rooted like a tree here

00:51:18.480 I got the sit-down, can't cry

00:51:22.880 Oh, Lord, I'm gonna die, please

00:51:25.920 Now the sun comes along

00:51:30.440 Oh, Lord, it lights up the day, and when he gets tired, he slides on over the way.

00:51:43.360 Oh, his east to the west, he gets gone every day.

00:51:49.800 But, Lord, look at me here, oh, I'm rooted like a tree here.

00:51:56.920 Oh, I got to sit down, can't cry

00:52:01.560 Oh, Lord, I'm going to die blue

00:52:03.900 What an incredible story you have just woven about

00:52:10.800 the hydrology of forests.

00:52:13.820 And you mentioned pinings.

00:52:16.540 And I'd like if you could talk about

00:52:18.460 the medicinal aerosols trees release

00:52:21.260 that we may not even realize are healing us.

00:52:24.800 I believe here in the redwoods, it's taxidione.

00:52:28.760 Can you explain this exchange that is silently taking place in the forest of the world?

00:52:36.880 Now, if you go into the redwood forests in California, I mean, we are talking iconic areas here.

00:52:44.880 I'd ask you to go in quite early if you want to get the taxidione onto your body.

00:52:50.540 or like we're I'm talking about forest bathing here for all of the population of of California

00:52:56.620 and honest to God I'm asking you I would like you to go in to shield your bodies against cancer

00:53:03.280 you're going to do this forest bathing for me right now so you go in early in the morning before the

00:53:09.780 dew has settled so that would be I'm sorry you've got to get up early you've got to be there maybe

00:53:15.780 by about 9, 8.30, 9 o'clock and bring some sandwiches with you so you're going to have a

00:53:20.700 lunch. So you go in there and don't have anything on your head. Like take your hats off and try and

00:53:28.540 have something very loose on your body like loose cotton of some kind and maybe a pair of shorts

00:53:35.140 with your shoes. So expose your legs, expose as much skin as you possibly can to the air. Now as

00:53:42.520 If the air rises by the heat of the sun, the moisture in the air will pass by the trees.

00:53:51.480 And this is for July, August, and September, the holidaying seasons.

00:53:58.240 You go in there, and as that moisture is creeping up through the trees,

00:54:02.500 there is a release by means of moisture and sun of taxodione into the air.

00:54:08.900 and you will be aware of it because the smell and the scent in the air changes

00:54:14.040 and that is a slightly, how do I call it, a sharp smell and you'll feel it in your teeth

00:54:22.800 and what happens is it affects your salivary glands also, you want to produce more saliva

00:54:29.160 and you will drink the taxodione by means of the air, by just breathing and drinking the air

00:54:36.640 and the taxodione will go into your system in that way.

00:54:40.860 It will also land on the open skin of your body

00:54:44.600 and it has fixing compounds to go with it.

00:54:48.340 And what you will do is you walk slowly, breathing deeply

00:54:53.220 so that the lower parts of your lungs,

00:54:56.320 so you have a diaphragmatic breathing,

00:54:59.220 keep your shoulders up straight

00:55:01.120 and you walk just very slowly, lollygagging down the pathways

00:55:06.900 and breathe deeply with good, strong breaths.

00:55:10.720 So you're getting the dione right into your system.

00:55:14.660 That will give you a protective shield to cancers throughout your body.

00:55:20.900 You will be getting compounds that are given to you if you have cancer.

00:55:26.660 They're anti-cancer compounds.

00:55:28.700 They're chemo-therapeutical agents that are in the air, and they're there in just the right amounts of parts per trillion in the air that your body needs as a shield.

00:55:41.600 They are called phytokenticals.

00:55:43.920 They will go into your body, and your body will use them as your body sees necessary, and the rest of it you will pee out.

00:55:53.540 and when you've come home

00:55:55.900 take a couple of glasses

00:55:58.140 of really good water

00:55:59.620 to flush your system

00:56:01.720 and to flush your kidneys

00:56:03.560 and to give you an energizing effect

00:56:06.260 of the taxodione in your system

00:56:08.180 and that I have described

00:56:10.080 as far as bathing

00:56:23.540 You've been listening to part one of a conversation with Diana Beresford-Kroger on Unlearn and Rewild.

00:56:40.600 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.

00:56:53.540 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.

00:57:03.160 Go to Point Reyes Bookstore's website at ptreyesbooks.com to get tickets.

00:57:10.620 We hope to see you there.

00:57:11.880 The music you heard today was

00:57:14.720 Moni Musk Lads by Silly Wizard

00:57:17.940 How Wild the Wind Blows by Molly Drake

00:57:21.240 and High Flying Bird by Judy Henske

00:57:24.460 Our theme song is Like a River by Kate Wolfe

00:57:28.100 I'm Ayanna Young and our show's producer is March Young

00:57:32.600 Please support this fully volunteer project

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

00:57:40.360 Thanks for listening

00:57:41.800 Drittin' on the wind

00:57:44.420 Through the mountains like a river

For The Wild - March 11, 2016

DIANA BERESFORD-KROEGER on Replanting the Global Forest, Part One ⧸32

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