00:01:37.320Today we are speaking with Jodi Holmes.
00:01:40.460Jodi is a PhD project director for the Rainforest Solutions Project, a coalition of Greenpeace, Sierra Club of BC, and STAN.org.
00:01:49.820She has dedicated 20-plus years to achieving healthy human and ecological systems in the Great Bear Rainforest and was one of the primary architects of the historic Great Bear Rainforest Agreements, protecting the largest expanses of old-growth temperate rainforests in the world.
00:02:07.700Well, thank you so much, Jodi, for joining us.
00:02:12.640Well, I want to start off by saying that the temperate rainforests of Cascadia are deeply embedded in my heart.
00:02:21.400And, you know, just as you have, I'm honored to dedicate my life to their protection and restoration.
00:02:28.340And the work that you've been fundamental in for more than two decades in the Great Bear Rainforest
00:02:33.300has been a compass and an inspiration for my work with what I do here in the redwoods of southern Cascadia,
00:02:39.740as well as in the campaign that For the Wild is a part of with Earthjustice and other organizations
00:02:44.980and working to stop old growth logging in the Tongass National Forest of Southeast Alaska.
00:02:50.860You know the reality of how much old growth we have already lost,
00:02:54.660which never ceases to fill me with longing.
00:02:57.740You know, forests that took thousands upon thousands of years to reach the ancient state,
00:03:03.660harboring incalculable wisdom and biological diversity.
00:03:07.240and they've been almost completely obliterated in just a few hundred years since colonialization
00:03:13.340here in the contiguous united states intact temperate rainforests cover less than five percent
00:03:19.560of their historic range and for many people it's unfathomable what true old growth really looks or
00:03:28.180feels like you know to be amongst the thousand-year-old western red cedars that remain in
00:03:34.600isolated stretches of forest on the north coast of BC, or just to witness watersheds teeming with
00:03:40.460salmon as grizzlies and wolves celebrate their return. And although the rainforests of BC have
00:03:47.520not completely escaped the thralls of destruction, much more temperate rainforest remains in BC
00:03:53.460devoid of human development than anywhere else. The Great Bear rainforest specifically harbors
00:03:58.500one quarter of the world's unlogged coastal temperate rainforest. It stores immense amounts
00:04:04.080of carbon, it sustains 20% of the world's wild salmon, 2,000 genetically distinct runs,
00:04:11.060and it encompasses one of the most pristine marine ecosystems on the planet.
00:04:16.260So the ecological and cultural significance of the Great Bear Rainforest is manifold,
00:04:21.200but to journey past the scientific and definable significance, I'd love if we could start with
00:04:28.380you giving our listeners a sense of what these forests feel like and what makes the Great Bear
00:04:36.060so special to you and everyone else who has spent decades rallying for its protection.
00:04:42.100Well, maybe the best place for me to start is kind of where and how I fell in love with the
00:04:48.100Great Bear Rainforest. And it actually started first from a map that I saw on the wall, which
00:04:54.260came from the Sierra Club of British Columbia. And it was one of those maps of remaining temperate
00:04:59.420rainforest in the world. And they used yellow as the color for logged areas and green for
00:05:06.580everything else. And I remember looking at that map and noticing that Vancouver Island was
00:05:11.940basically obliterated. There was almost no green left on it, as was the lower mainland of British
00:05:16.300Columbia. And then as you started moving north, all of a sudden there was this area of green that
00:05:21.780stood out and was so much in contrast to the rest of the map that I got super curious and was like
00:05:27.900what what is that where is that subsequently because I've sort of really noticed the green
00:05:33.900area on the map and kind of fall in love with the idea of the green area on the map I went on a very
00:05:40.100long kayaking trip with my then husband and a couple of friends and we kayaked from the northern
00:05:44.920part of the Great Bear Rainforest down into the center of the Great Bear Rainforest which took us
00:05:49.280three and a half weeks. And in the course of that kayaking trip, we spent just a lot of time
00:05:56.560either sitting on beaches or wandering in old growth forests, where the first thing that you
00:06:02.940notice and the kind of the first thing that hits you is the smell. And the smell is that of deep,
00:06:10.520wet moss, of green all around you, of the ocean kind of lapping at your beachfront.
00:06:19.900And in the course of doing that, we also really met a lot of First Nations in their communities.
00:06:27.560And this was before there was a lot of kayaking activity and tourism activity in the area.
00:06:31.720So First Nations were incredibly friendly and I would have to say kind of tourist naive at the time and told us all kinds of things about places that had been important to them culturally and historically and sent us off looking for things,
00:06:47.520which honestly today they would never do because they're trying to make sure that those areas get conserved
00:06:53.120and that tourists aren't running roughshod all over them.
00:06:56.380But one of the places that I will never forget is an area that was called the Stadium.
00:07:01.340And it's found kind of almost dead center in the Great Bear Rainforest.
00:07:05.360It's found on a little isthmus, which has three kind of crescent moon beaches that sit around on the isthmus
00:07:17.520and in the little section of the isthmus when you walk into the forest there's this deep pit
00:07:24.820which has steps on it and that's all that's left of what used to be a gathering place for first
00:07:31.680nations up and down the coast and it's just these mossy steps with some really big big logs that
00:07:38.380have fallen down that used to be the roof logs and i remember stepping kind of into the undergrowth
00:07:43.940And we'd been looking for it for probably six or seven hours at that point and stepping into the undergrowth and noticing that there was this pit and then thinking, oh, my gosh, look, those logs aren't just random.
00:07:54.920And those logs are actually root poles and sitting there and realizing that for thousands of years, First Nations had been coming to this place, had been meeting, had been making decisions about marine use and allocation of resources and setting up marriages and learning songs from each other and establishing kind of territorial boundaries and things like that.
00:08:20.100and there he was sitting in the middle of it and all that was left were just these mossy steps
00:08:26.300and some big roofing logs and there was something about that experience of being in the middle of
00:08:34.280the Great Bear Rainforest and not having seen a lot of other people or been engaged in kind of
00:08:38.820western colonial culture for some period of time that I found incredibly moving and also just
00:08:44.540it stopped me in my tracks. And in that moment, what happened for me was this
00:08:51.500intense certainty and commitment to both wanting to look after the rainforest and make sure that
00:08:59.220the rainforest itself didn't go away, but also really wanting to be engaged in and support
00:09:05.380First Nations in a revival of their relationship with land, in an economic revival, and also in
00:09:12.020a revival of their traditional laws and culture. So that was kind of my pivotal moment where I had
00:09:19.280an experience going into the Great Bear Rainforest, kind of unexpectedly stumbling on something that
00:09:24.440was really powerful and ancient, which completely changed my life and really caused me to turn my
00:09:33.040direction to looking after and working on Great Bear Rainforest for the next 20 years. I'm going
00:09:39.180to come back and then say to you a little more about the what's it like to be in the great bear
00:09:43.860rainforest because I've had many trips back since then and in those trips back since then some of
00:09:51.640the things that have absolutely blown my mind are in the Kwe river estuary and then walking up the
00:09:58.840river you come upon these grizzly bear footprints in the moss and they're literally kind of the size
00:10:07.120of dinner plates and they're deep down into the moss and they're actually like a grizzly bear
00:10:13.000highway where grizzly bears walk over and over and so the moss never recovers and there's just
00:10:17.560these deep indentations in the moss because grizzlies go up and down that valley to catch
00:10:23.400salmon. I've sat in a little boat in an estuary watching grizzly bears literally 20 or 30 feet
00:10:31.940away from me, rubbing their backs and shoulders on logs, jumping down into the water, sitting in
00:10:37.820the water, scratching their heads, and then just kind of nonchalantly picking up salmon from in
00:10:43.760the water. They just stick their head into the water, pick up a salmon, pull it back up again,
00:10:47.060and then just crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, right in front of me. I've watched
00:10:51.700rainforest wolves cavorting on beaches where they don't think that you can see them because
00:10:56.660they're incredibly shy they're really unusual they actually spend their time mostly on the beach
00:11:02.800they're probably a subspecies and they eat a lot of crabs they do a lot of picking up rocks and
00:11:08.860reaching under rocks to grab for crabs and they eat salmon which is unusual relative to other wolf
00:11:13.300species and then there's just the experience of walking into estuarine areas where grizzly bears
00:11:22.100kind of are rooting around and you see the results of grizzly bears rooting around in the sedges in
00:11:26.980the springtime where they have just turned over huge amounts of soil looking for the sweet roots
00:11:31.560of the sedges and then the other things that kind of were unforgettable are standing at the base of
00:11:39.380a really big sitka spruce tree and looking up and kind of like realizing oh my gosh this thing's been
00:11:45.160here for a thousand years and it goes up as far as I can see and then it disappears into the sky
00:11:52.820and it's covered with moss and it's so integrally a part of this ecosystem and connected
00:11:59.220under the ground with its roots to everything else and it's been a home for something and it's
00:12:04.060been fed by the salmon that come up the streams and it kind of just again it's just one of those
00:12:10.280moments where you realize i'm right in the presence of utter connection and um beauty
00:12:18.000and then the final thing i'll mention is and i think you've already talked about it
00:12:22.520the the great bear rainforest comes down and and meets at the intersect with the pacific ocean and
00:12:28.480there's an incredible amount of biodiversity in the ocean as well and so often when you're
00:12:33.500traveling around the great bear rainforest you're doing it by boat there are almost no roads so you
00:12:38.100spend most of your time in boats and then coming into little estuaries and then walking up into
00:12:42.640the forest and while you're out on the boats you are very likely to see pods of killer whales with
00:12:48.660babies cavorting in the shallows and feeding and at some point we were in kayaks out in a little
00:12:54.960bay and about four or five humpback whales came and surrounded us this was just after the great
00:13:02.580bear rainforest agreements had been signed and this group of humpback whales came and surrounded
00:13:07.460us and kept coming up in the most incredibly gentle way and spraying great fishy breath all
00:13:14.220over us and I just kept having this sense of it was like the great bear rainforest and the ocean
00:13:19.300were sort of putting on this show for us and saying it was such a good thing you did it was
00:13:24.140so good that you looked after this area because look what you've protected
00:13:27.960Take me through the pine forest and over the mountains right up to the shore of the sea
00:13:42.080And there in the evening we'll board that same vessel that's bound for adventure and me
00:13:49.560For the journey I long to be easy, I know in my heart's not to be
00:16:18.780And in terms of strategy, what was discovered about how to successfully slow, and in many cases, stop the murder of a forest?
00:16:30.560Well, you know what, it is actually really helpful and instructive to start on Vancouver Island with Clackwit Sound.
00:16:36.260And also just to give you some context, so Clackwit Sound is quite small.
00:16:39.720Relatively speaking, there are hundreds of Clackwit Sounds in the Great Bear Rainforest.
00:16:44.200It's a small area with a small number of watersheds.
00:16:47.060However, it captured Canadian attention because there were these huge, huge old growth trees that were being logged by Macmillan Bloedel. And for the first time in Canadian history, and it became the largest civil disobedience in Canadian history, people stood on the roads, linking arms, singing songs, and saying no more logging trucks will pass.
00:17:09.800And that this was kind of like the first big civil disobedience blockade for logging in Canada of that size. And it was grandmothers and small children and doctors and lawyers. It really captivated the attention of a very broad range of Canadian society.
00:17:25.500And as the types of tools were being fine-tuned in Claquant Sound, one of the things that was being fine-tuned there was markets campaigns, which involved creating a lot of negative public attention of companies that were using ancient rainforest in their supply chain, unfurling banners.
00:17:46.320It's where the environmental community cut its teeth and really started to create much more sophisticated markets campaigns.
00:17:52.720So two things, basically really affecting public branding for companies that were using ancient rainforest in their supply chain, and then developing purchasing policies for those same companies so that they would refuse to buy ancient rainforests, and then putting a lot of pressure on the forest industry in British Columbia in particular.
00:18:11.200So that strategy and that particular technique developed in Clackwit Sound in the work that was done with McMillan Bloedel.
00:18:19.180Those same groups who'd been involved in Clackwood Sound realized they had a strategy that was a whole lot more powerful than they'd ever had before in terms of environmental campaigning, using the power of the marketplace to shift forest industry behavior up until that point hadn't really been tried and certainly hadn't been able to be brought to scale.
00:18:38.840So when we started working in the Great Bear Rainforest in the early days, and this is where things got interesting and a little more complicated.
00:18:49.820In the early days, the forest industry in the Great Bear Rainforest, many of the same players, McMillan, Bloedel was one of them, really was operating kind of under the radar.
00:18:59.500You've already mentioned how incredibly remote the area was.
00:31:42.320I just want to extend a bow of gratitude to you and the entire initiative.
00:31:49.780The immensity of what you all accomplished is truly groundbreaking and so inspirational.
00:31:57.960And it clearly was not an easy feat from the independent scientific team, which is the
00:32:02.760Coast Information Team that conducted the most comprehensive analysis ever taken on
00:32:07.620globally significant temperate rainforest to the coalitions of industry environmental groups the
00:32:12.800first nations uh you know it what a collaborative process and one thing that i think about when i'm
00:32:21.340imagining this collaboration is that sacrifice and compromise are inevitable when juggling so
00:32:28.880many values particularly in an agreement regarding such a large piece of land the logging industry
00:32:35.940and environmental groups probably both desire the intact and most productive valleys, places that
00:32:42.900harbor the oldest, biggest cultural sites and trees. You know, those are also most of the time
00:32:49.600the most profitable because it's the largest trees, it's high grading, that's the easiest to get to.
00:32:54.780So I'm wondering, how did the individual coalitions within the GBR agreements grapple with
00:33:02.700uh such compromise and i guess i'm also wondering who has the final say who has the right to decide
00:33:10.820um okay well let's let's deal with this issue of competing overlapping values you nailed it
00:33:18.900i'm sure you have this experience where you come from as well the big trees the big salmon fishing
00:33:24.620areas the places where first nations have had cultural use are the most productive ecosystems
00:33:29.660most of interest for ecological purposes, and obviously most of interest to the forest industry.
00:33:36.000So it became increasingly like this, trying to fit a camel through the eye of a needle.
00:33:42.220There was a very, very small sweet spot that we could all kind of agree on.
00:33:46.480And the process of getting there involved a lot of refining our underlying principles and values
00:33:53.000and agreeing that it was, in fact, important to all of us to come up with a solution that included
00:33:58.940both low risk ecological integrity, but also a viable forest industry and much better living
00:34:07.940conditions and economics for First Nations. So it was the coming to that kind of, we called it the
00:34:16.100egg of well-being, right? The idea that you needed to look after every single one of those values,
00:34:22.000that you needed to keep everybody whole, and the recognition and understanding that we weren't
00:34:27.560willing to compromise while at the same time we weren't willing to compromise on any of those
00:34:32.720individual values at the same time as understanding that we were everybody was going to have to take
00:34:37.940some hits so it was in large part workable because we had all of this kind of independent
00:34:45.300science from the coast information team that had clearly identified risk thresholds it identified
00:34:51.460the answer to how much is enough ecologically speaking and first nations have gotten very
00:34:57.180clear about what they needed to see in order for these agreements to work for them. And the forest
00:35:03.400companies, quite frankly, ended up having to be the ones that retooled their businesses and rethought
00:35:09.080how they went about doing business in order to be able to make this work at some level. So there
00:35:16.020were definitely compromises on the ecological side. Did we get every single valley that had
00:35:19.740the best possible values and the most fabulous big old trees? No, we did not. But what we did
00:35:26.940do, and we're really clear about in the negotiations, was we were able to meet those
00:35:31.420thresholds of, in order to be able to maintain low risk to ecological diversity, what we needed
00:35:36.080to be able to do was ensure that 70% of the natural levels of representative ecosystems
00:35:42.520were set aside. That's a pretty big number, right? But we had the forest industry on side,
00:35:48.020we'd been able to really kind of carve that agreement with them about the importance of
00:35:51.360those thresholds and so when it came time to come up with solutions we ended up kind of looking at
00:35:56.240things and going well yeah I know we know you want to have that but you can't hit 70 percent without
00:35:59.900that valley so that valley's got to get set aside or you can't you can't hit 70 percent without that
00:36:04.220particular set of trees because you're not going to be able to meet the requirements of the agreement
00:36:09.020so spending a lot of time and building all of that leverage initially was really important in
00:36:16.380terms of setting the constraints around which the agreements got made.
00:36:23.680Yeah, I can only imagine the back and forth that had to happen to get a solution and just all of
00:36:30.620the intricacies. It's easy to say, well, of course, we have to stop all industrial logging.
00:36:37.500But when you realize the predicament that remote resource dependent communities face,
00:36:42.900lines begin to blur there's always this kind of tension the issue of immediate personal survival
00:36:50.520versus the survival of the forest on an evolutionary scale it's definitely easier to make a more hard
00:36:58.060line ecological argument that we have to curb this activity to avoid game over but it's more
00:37:04.200of a challenge to show how a local economy can continue in the absence of clear-cut logging be
00:37:10.500it by growing shellfish in the bays or edible mushrooms or understory medicinal plants or
00:37:16.800producing biochar even. The phrase ecosystem-based management or EBM appeared a lot and it definitely
00:37:25.520has an old paradigm ring to it but I assume that was the strategy to make deep ecology palatable
00:37:32.720or at least less threatening to human supremacists because at the end of the day trees are standing
00:37:40.060that would otherwise be dead. So before our dear tree sitters and monkey wrenchers in the audience
00:37:46.320raise objections, think about it. That means less trees to defend by other means, and that is a
00:37:54.820multi-tactical approach. What were the arguments you made against large-scale logging for the
00:38:01.800well-being of the land and her First Nations? And how did they hold up in the actual negotiations?
00:38:10.060Such great questions. I'm going to see if I can answer this quickly. So I would say the primary difference between ecosystem-based management and kind of traditional logging behavior is that the rate of cut of logging is an outcome of planning in ecosystem-based management, whereas it's usually an input in traditional logging.
00:38:34.540traditional logging usually says well we want to get these many logs let's just go out and get them
00:38:38.480and we don't think too much about what happens to the rest of the ecosystem while we're doing it
00:38:42.620so in this case we did a lot of planning that was geared towards meeting targets relative to salmon
00:38:50.380and representative ecosystems and red and blue listed plant communities and focal species habitat
00:38:56.180we did a lot of planning relative to that that was all informed by science that had determined
00:39:02.260this question around how much is enough so we did a lot of planning trying to ensure that we had as
00:39:08.020much of those values overlapping in individual places so we could minimize the overall impacts
00:39:12.980to the forest and then what we did was we looked at what's the amount of land base that's left over
00:39:20.080and how much logging can it support we look at what we need to keep first and then we set logging
00:39:26.800rates that's really the difference between ecosystem-based management and regular forestry
00:39:31.920I think one of the interesting things here that often comes as a surprise to people is that, in fact, clear-cut logging is still allowed here.
00:39:42.900The difference is that we've established what's the minimum amount over a large regional landscape of representative protection that we need to have.
00:39:52.340and once we've managed to attain that and this would frankly this was a part of the reason why
00:39:57.560this was appealing to the forest industry was that they didn't necessarily have to
00:40:01.120change practices so much as they had to change where and how much of the practices that they did
00:40:06.500so there's a much smaller portion of the land base that gets logged it's logged using quite
00:40:12.600traditional methods although there are requirements for protection of salmon there are requirements for
00:40:17.180set-asides for wildlife tree patches and things like that which frankly are still
00:40:21.140quite a lot more conservative than most other regions in the world but from the perspective
00:40:26.720of those of us looking at evm we think oh that's just so that's so normal but generally speaking
00:40:32.180they can still use clear-cut logging practices in the remainder of those areas because it's
00:40:36.780such a small amount of the land base relative to the area that gets set aside and then the other
00:40:42.440thing about ecosystem-based management, in this case, in the way that we kind of envisaged it
00:40:47.120here, is that it has a very strong emphasis on First Nations involvement and participation in
00:40:53.800decision-making, creating dignity for the people who live in the area, and ensuring that economic
00:41:00.000returns come into the communities that actually live within the area, rather than entirely leaving.
00:41:06.820And you already spoke about the idea of creating conservation economies and diversifying economies.
00:41:11.820so that forestry and mining and industrial fishery weren't the only game in town anymore.
00:41:19.920There was a lot more emphasis on smaller scale sustainable enterprises in the region
00:41:24.680so that First Nations in particular didn't have to make decisions that were defined by a hierarchy of need
00:41:30.220that said we need to be able to feed our children and so therefore we have to go with the only industry in town.
00:41:41.820When I'm in the woods, I know what to call you now.
00:41:46.940When I'm in the woods, I know what to call you now.
00:42:38.720Well, thank you for explaining those complexities in more detail.
00:43:05.780And I have one last question for you, although I probably have 30 more questions for you, but which I'm sad about because it's just incredible the depth of understanding you have of how to bring people together and actually manifest solutions.
00:43:26.720you know we just spend so much time discussing solutions and concepts of conservation
00:43:34.560and then contemplating how to stop oil extraction envisioning what we're going to do when our
00:43:40.560systems begin to collapse and although i think it's completely important to talk about it
00:43:46.040talking about such things only goes so far and while many in this realm of thought like to shy
00:43:53.240away from the nitty gritty from the way things transpire when you are working within the system
00:43:58.680you know the story of the great bear shows us that it is possible to work within the system
00:44:04.220and that it can be done it actually really needs to be done but it's also difficult to
00:44:12.900contemplate that it took 20 years not to say that it didn't need those 20 years but when we're
00:44:18.160looking in the trajectory of the Anthropocene and biodiversity loss, it feels like we don't
00:44:23.960have those 20 years to safeguard the biodiversity, or 20 years into the future, more years to
00:44:28.960safeguard the biodiversity that is currently on the brink of extinction on our planet.
00:44:33.280You know, the oceans can't wait another 20 years if we want to safeguard what's left.
00:44:38.000And the last tracks of tropical rainforest slotted to be logged can't wait. And I really
00:44:44.280want to ask you how we can take these lessons to other parts of our world that are in desperate
00:44:50.660need of our attention one thing i consider is bc is relatively undeveloped and wealthy and peaceful
00:44:58.460and first nations people are acknowledged you know kind of uh and a lot of land is publicly owned
00:45:06.480and also environmentalist groups have a strong sway but i'm wondering how does
00:45:14.300how do these solutions also translate to more tumultuous places so it's a kind of a two-part
00:45:20.720question of what are the lessons we can take from canada and the united states but also
00:45:27.200how do we translate those lessons to places that don't have the same privileges that we do here
00:45:34.480um also an excellent question and one that i am spending considerable amount of time
00:45:43.280contemplating right now i think i would say first and foremost the most important lesson
00:45:50.660from my perspective in the great bear is about power and when we turn our thinking to anywhere
00:45:57.640else and think about trying to shift timelines and do this a whole lot faster because i agree
00:46:04.540with you we have to be able to do this a whole lot faster in other places really the most important
00:46:09.800lesson is getting a very sophisticated analysis of power and systems and learning how to create
00:46:16.200kind of the buckminster fuller concept trim tabs like finding ways to do low effort actions that
00:46:23.140can tip a lot of and leverage a lot of change in our case it was this market campaign markets
00:46:30.420campaigns it turned out while they didn't actually have enormous impacts on the economics of the
00:46:35.440forest companies tied up their their senior leadership for extended periods of time and that
00:46:40.420was untenable for them and so they wanted to come to the table and stop that from happening even
00:46:45.540though we hadn't in fact shut them down or really had enormous impacts on them in terms of their
00:46:49.940economics. So I would say understanding who the power players are, who make decisions,
00:46:56.980who are influencing decisions, and finding ways that are efficient in trim tab to be able to
00:47:02.540affect them is a really important learning from here that we need to kind of transfer to other
00:47:07.700places. And what I will say right now is that I know a number of organizations who have done
00:47:13.980exactly that, who are taking a number of these learnings and are taking that power analysis.
00:47:18.280and the market's campaign capacity and shifting it to other places where there are far less stable
00:47:25.140governments and a whole lot more problems. Because I think one of the lessons for us here
00:47:31.120has been that, in fact, we never really lobbied the government to do a whole lot of stuff.
00:47:36.980What we did was we put a lot of pressure on the forest industry who had access to the government.
00:47:42.340And in the course of that, what we were able to accomplish was a whole lot of change because of
00:47:46.740a strong player arguing for, we have to change this, we've got to do something so that you can
00:47:51.360give us a certain business environment. So from a trim tab perspective, creating business
00:47:57.140uncertainty can be very powerful. I think creating circumstances where there's a lot of
00:48:03.860international public attention, so that the kind of repressive practices that happen in many other
00:48:09.660places in the world don't go unnoticed, because let's not kid ourselves, there are places in the
00:48:14.340world where people are killed for doing this kind of work we are incredibly privileged here
00:48:18.480um and then i think the other thing to me that feels really really important is these unusual
00:48:26.660collaborations out of left fields ways of and you know kind of like weird quirky unusual creative
00:48:34.200ways of interacting with people who we would normally see as enemies and finding ways to
00:48:41.560come up with solutions that neither of us would have come up with individually that arise because
00:48:47.160of the kind of the crucible and fire of the conflict between you something about that seems
00:48:53.440to have really created a very different solution here than often happens in other places and i know
00:49:01.440i said that was the last thing but i think the other thing which generally speaking is harder
00:49:06.820to accomplish in other places but was really pivotal here was a concept that we now kind of
00:49:12.280call project finance for permanence and it had to do with bringing together commitments to fund a
00:49:19.600large conservation financing package but not having the money flow or having the money kind of
00:49:26.000finally show up in our coffers until such time as a whole series of requirements were met
00:49:32.180And that created, it was $120 million that was jointly funded between the provincial federal government and private funders who the environmentalists had pulled together.
00:49:41.280that concept of there's 120 million dollars waiting and it can be expended on all of these
00:49:47.260great things but the following things have to happen we have to meet these requirements before
00:49:51.840that 120 million dollars flows is a really great model for creating kind of like a way to compress
00:50:00.140a whole bunch of change and press a whole bunch of of decision making into a short period of time
00:50:04.780because it incentivizes it with money and i recognize that that's not necessarily going to
00:50:10.140be a solution everywhere because it does also require governments and regimes that are able
00:50:16.140to create certainty. Project Finance for Permanence does require guarantees around protected areas and
00:50:22.280the fact that areas are never going to kind of change again. But it does really, really speed
00:50:28.540the process up. So those are my big ones in terms of things that I think are important that really
00:50:35.200could help speed things up here. It could have helped speed things up here even more if we'd
00:50:40.780kind of been sophisticated enough to understand how to use them at the beginning. And I think
00:50:45.540could be transferable to other places. It's incredible and heart enlivening what you and
00:50:53.900this initiative people have been able to do. And I know I am taking a lot of lessons away from it,