Save What You Love with Mark Titus

00:00:00:03 - 00:00:23:10
Mark Titus
Welcome to the Save What You Love podcast. I'm your host, Mark Titus. My guest today is Ben Goldfarb. Ben is the author of Eagar: The Surprising Secret Lives of Beavers and Why They Matter, which was published in 2018, and Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet in 2023. Ben grew up in New York and fell in love with the natural world in the Catskills.

00:00:23:12 - 00:01:07:04
Mark Titus
After school, Ben worked for the National Park Service in Yellowstone, tagged sea turtles in North Carolina and worked for the Parks Department in New York City doing urban forestry. And then turned his attention to writing, starting with High Country News in Colorado. Ben's career has gone on to include writing for The Atlantic, Science, The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The Guardian, Outside Magazine, Smithsonian, Biographic, Pacific Standard, Audubon Magazine, Scientific American, Vox on Earth, Yale Environment 360, Grantland, The Nation, Hawkeye Magazine, Vice News, and other publications.

00:01:07:06 - 00:01:26:09
Mark Titus
Eager as a book is one of the best titles I've ever come across in recent memory. And eager, I was to learn more about Beavers and their role in protecting salmon Country. I hope you enjoy meeting Ben and engaging in this fascinating conversation as much as I did. And we'll see you down the trail.

00:01:26:11 - 00:02:02:17
Music
How do you save what you love?
When the world is burning down?
How do you save what you love?
When pushes come to shove.
How do you say what you love?
When things are upside down.
How do you say what you love?
When times are getting tough.

00:02:02:19 - 00:02:05:20
Mark Titus
Ben Goldfarb. Where are you coming to us from today?

00:02:05:22 - 00:02:14:14
Ben Goldfarb
Hey, Mark. How's it going? I'm in. I'm in Salina, Colorado. Which is, a few hours southwest of Denver on the Arkansas River. It's. And it's an awesome spot. We love it down here.

00:02:14:16 - 00:02:17:15
Mark Titus
Why? Why is it so awesome? Why do you like living in Colorado?

00:02:17:19 - 00:02:34:08
Ben Goldfarb
Oh, man. I mean, every single outdoor activity imaginable is kind of world class out at the back door. The backpacking, the skiing, the mountain biking, the fly fishing. It's all just, phenomenal. And, all within an easy, drives reach. So it's it's, man, it's a, it's a sweet spot.

00:02:34:10 - 00:02:54:22
Mark Titus
That's fantastic. I'm going to ask you a little bit more about Colorado down the line here. But as we tend to do on this show, it's a long format show. And that I love it. I love long format because we don't have to really worry about whether stories meander like rivers or not. And, speaking of, I would love to hear your story.

00:02:55:00 - 00:03:13:14
Mark Titus
And it can meander and go any way which way you want, but, I am just curious, and I know our listeners are curious, what formed you? How did you get into this work? And, you know, what was the the backstory on this passion for the work that you very clearly demonstrate in all of your writing?

00:03:13:15 - 00:03:40:22
Ben Goldfarb
Oh, boy. Well, thanks. Thanks for asking that. That generous question. Let's see. You know, I was a kid who grew up hiking, camping, fishing, especially, you know, like, I like a lot of your guests and probably listeners, always, loved being outside. Also loved, loved writing. I, you know, I wrote lots of fiction as a, as a teenager and later in, in, in college, and, you know, after college, I had, kind of a series of field ecology tech type of jobs.

00:03:40:22 - 00:04:05:10
Ben Goldfarb
I worked for the National Park Service in Yellowstone doing fisheries work. I tagged sea turtles in North Carolina. I worked for the, the New York City Parks Department doing urban forestry, research. And so I, you know, I just loved being outside. Kind of imagined myself going down this ecology track or becoming a professional conservationist for an NGO in some capacity.

00:04:05:10 - 00:04:28:10
Ben Goldfarb
But, you know, the whole time I was doing that work, I was also writing about it, you know, keeping blogs and writing articles for, you know, various publications. And, over time, you know, I just came to. Yeah, I just came to love the writing, you know, almost more than the work itself. Or at least, you know, I saw more of a future for myself in that, I think, you know, like, once, once the science gets harder than counting.

00:04:28:10 - 00:04:48:08
Ben Goldfarb
You know, I'm kind of. I'm kind of out at that point, you know, I can I can write a sentence, but I, you know, I can't I can't do advanced statistics, you know? So I just, trying to understand myself and recognize that, you know, ultimately writing about nature was sort of the perfect way to combine my, my passion for conservation and wildlife with, you know, whatever aptitude I had as a writer.

00:04:48:08 - 00:04:51:20
Ben Goldfarb
And, that eventually became the gig. Word.

00:04:51:22 - 00:05:15:01
Mark Titus
Well, I'm curious how at what point did this idea come into your head that you could write and, you know, what was did you have a mentor? Did you have a particular favorite book? Did you have something that just sort of kickstarted that idea about, oh my God, I, you know, this might be something that I could do and I would love to do.

00:05:15:03 - 00:05:35:17
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah. That's a that's a good question. You know, in let's see, you know, in, in college, I mean, I remember reading, you know, David Quammen for the first time, you know, encountering books like song of the Dodo, you know, especially that book, which was just, you know, hugely influential for me and really, I think, changed my conception of what a book could do.

00:05:35:18 - 00:06:00:03
Ben Goldfarb
You know, here's this, this, this epic, tale of island biogeography. You know, for those who haven't read it, it's a book about basically how speciation happens, how where biodiversity comes from, and also why we lose it, why extinction happens. You know, using Darwin and Wallace and E.O. Wilson, you know, all of these legendary figures in scientific history as kind of the prisms, to tell those sorts of stories.

00:06:00:03 - 00:06:29:14
Ben Goldfarb
And so, you know, and that book is just incredibly globetrotting in scope. You know, Quammen goes everywhere and talks to everybody. You know, it's like 600 pages long. You know, I don't I don't think it could ever be published today. But, you know, it's just. Yeah, it's just it just, was this, you know, this mind blowing book that I read, in, in a conservation biology seminar, and, you know, I think just changed my conception of what environmental writing could do, and, you know, was something that, I wanted to emulate and will never successfully emulate.

00:06:29:14 - 00:06:32:14
Ben Goldfarb
But, you know, it's at least, a book to aspire to.

00:06:32:16 - 00:07:02:12
Mark Titus
Amazing. I know, for for me, getting into storytelling, it was a it was kind of a scary thing. You know, my folks, when they found out that I was studying acting in college, about both of them, about passed. Passed out, out of out of fear and or, you know, just general malaise. But, what point did you decide you're going to make a go go at it writing?

00:07:02:12 - 00:07:10:22
Mark Titus
And, I mean, were you working a full time gig? Did you kind of ease into it, or did you make a decision like, you know what, damn it, I got a good idea here, and I'm going for it.

00:07:11:00 - 00:07:30:18
Ben Goldfarb
You know, I, I ended up, getting an internship at a magazine called High Country News, which is, you know, based out in Colorado, and they cover environmental issues throughout the American West. Amazing publication with a really loyal and dedicated readership. And, you know, that was my first time in a, in a newsroom. You know, I had this kind of ecology background.

00:07:30:20 - 00:07:45:16
Ben Goldfarb
You know, I spent plenty of time in the in the field. I felt like I knew the issues well, but I didn't really know it. You know what it meant to be a journalist. You know how to. Editors decide what stories to commission and what pitches to accept and you know what is, you know what do what does fact-checking look like?

00:07:45:16 - 00:08:04:11
Ben Goldfarb
How do you go about, you know, interviewing sources? I mean, all of the fundamentals of journalism. You know, I'd really done almost none of that. And so is, you know, is that six month period in the High country news newsroom and, you know, a little tiny town called Pannonia, Colorado, out on the Western Slope. I mean, that was just, you know, totally formative to me.

00:08:04:13 - 00:08:33:11
Ben Goldfarb
That that was sort of what taught me to be a professional and also, you know, showed me, I think that this this really was the right, the right track for me. So after, you know, after I, after that internship, you know, that turned into a staff writing position that, you know, that allowed me to, you know, kind of earn a monthly, you know, a monthly paycheck while also giving me plenty of time to start pitching, other magazines and building up my, you know, my rolodex of editorial contacts and figuring out, you know what, what sorts of stories I wanted to write.

00:08:33:11 - 00:08:49:08
Ben Goldfarb
You know, it was a high country news story, about beaver restoration that ultimately turned into Eager, My my book about beavers. So, yeah, it was really that, you know, it was that opportunity back in. What was that, 2012, 2013, something like that, that, you know, that got me going.

00:08:49:10 - 00:08:51:22
Mark Titus
You still have friends and contacts there?

00:08:52:00 - 00:09:11:18
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah, definitely. I still I still I still write for those guys all the time. And I'm, you know, I'm, I'm an undying fan of that magazine. I mean, they just feel such a cool niche, you know, they just, they just cover natural resource issues in the West. So much deeper and smarter and with so much, you know, sort of more institutional memory than any other publication.

00:09:11:18 - 00:09:22:00
Ben Goldfarb
You know, they're just, yeah, they just fill this incredible, otherwise unoccupied niche. So any, any kind, writers or subscribers out there listening to this podcast, man, shout out, you guys.

00:09:22:02 - 00:09:47:05
Mark Titus
Yeah, we're the it's obviously a paragon, you know, here in the West. And, it's what a, what a place to start your formative career. Let's get into it. Your, your current book is Crossing's How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet. I was struck by this little factoid that you point out a million animals are killed by cars each day.

00:09:47:07 - 00:10:08:19
Mark Titus
Yeah. Holy crap. U.S. alone not. And I was I was thinking a month or a year, like a day in the U.S alone. Just that. But even more, you say the harms of highways extend far beyond road kill. Let. Let's dig into that. Tell us about the book, why you got into it and what do you mean by these harms beyond road kill.

00:10:08:21 - 00:10:29:06
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah. That's those are that's an awesome set of questions. So so Crossing's right. This book is about road ecology. And road ecology is basically this relatively small. But I would say very fast growing field of science that looks at all of the ways in which roads and really are all of our transportation infrastructure kind of intersect with and impact nature.

00:10:29:06 - 00:10:49:22
Ben Goldfarb
Right. And roadkill, as you said, as you allude to, is sort of the most obvious. Its impacts. Right? We've all seen that, you know, dead deer or raccoon or squirrel or elk or what have you by the side of the highway. And, you know, certainly that's really tragic. And I think the, you know, the number of animals killed, as you know, as you say, is kind of unfathomably large and vast.

00:10:49:22 - 00:11:08:10
Ben Goldfarb
And it's, you know, this huge conservation crisis for all kinds of, you know, threatened, endangered species. You know, grizzly bear 399 was just, killed, on a, on a highway a couple of weeks ago. Incredibly sad. Right? The most famous bear in the world. So it's, you know, it's this huge conservation problem. But, you know, roadkill is really only the tip of the iceberg, right?

00:11:08:10 - 00:11:30:21
Ben Goldfarb
And so, you know, road ecology looks at all of these other connections as well, you know, the impacts of road noise pollution, you know, on on animals. Right. The fact that, you know, the constant roar of engines and tires is, you know, having huge sublethal impacts on animals, you know, raising their stress levels and diminishing their reproductive success and driving them away from places they'd otherwise want to live.

00:11:30:23 - 00:11:54:13
Ben Goldfarb
You know, as a fish guy, you know, you're probably familiar with the whole road salt issue, right? We're adding, you know, many millions of tons of salt to our highways as a deicer every winter. And that stuff runs off into rivers and lakes and changes aquatic ecosystems. We've got, you know, tire particles, going into watersheds and killing coho salmon, you know, in mass in the Puget Sound watershed.

00:11:54:13 - 00:12:13:03
Ben Goldfarb
And then you've got all of the, you know, sort of the land use change that follows road construction, too, right? I mean, you know, if you're going to if you're going to log in an intact forest or drill for oil and gas or hooch, an elephant, you know, whatever you're going to do, the sort of motorized access has to precede it.

00:12:13:03 - 00:12:32:12
Ben Goldfarb
So, you know, in that sense, it's road building more than any other force that facilitates all of the environmental transformation that, you know, that we're that we see around the world. And, you know, road ecology, I think, tries to get it. Those those many relationships and interactions.

00:12:32:14 - 00:12:59:16
Mark Titus
There's so much to dig into and unpack. But, and there obviously are tons of nuances and case studies here, but just starting from the top of the mountain, what is your way of making sense of this and tackling it and understanding that this is a pervasive problem that has come in a very short period of time, really the last 150 or 100 years, really.

00:12:59:18 - 00:13:08:09
Mark Titus
How do you even just get your mind around what seems to be an intractable problem now that we're here in this moment and we've arrived here?

00:13:08:11 - 00:13:37:11
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah. That's that's that's a that's an awesome question. I mean, I you know, I think that what I try to do in the book, you know, is sort of tell, tell these different stories of road interactions and relationships through different species. Right? I mean, you know, every, every organism kind of interacts with roads differently, right? You know, on one end of the spectrum, we've got, you know, what scientists would call sort of non-responders animals that don't really notice traffic, you know, and amphibians are the kind of the classic example of that, right?

00:13:37:11 - 00:13:54:06
Ben Goldfarb
You know, you get these warm, wet spring nights and, you know, thousands of frogs and salamanders are just kind of on their march, migrating to their breeding ponds to do their thing. And of course, you know, we we tend to build roads in low lying areas where water collects. And so they have to cross roads to get there.

00:13:54:06 - 00:14:12:17
Ben Goldfarb
And, you know, they're probably not the smartest critters in the world. And so they don't really know what a car is and how dangerous it is. And so they just get crushed right in huge in huge numbers. And you get these, these mass squishing events as they've been called. So that's, you know, sort of on the non-response end of the spectrum.

00:14:12:17 - 00:14:34:02
Ben Goldfarb
And then, you know, the other end of the spectrum, you've got animals like, you know, mountain lions or grizzly bears, you know, these large, wary, intelligent predators, you know, who recognize that humans are trouble and highways are dangerous. And, you know, really avoid crossing highways. I mean, yeah, they get hit sometimes. But, you know, more often than not, they're not crossing roads at all.

00:14:34:03 - 00:15:08:18
Ben Goldfarb
And you know that that leads to its own set of problems, right? In terms of habitat fragmentation and genetic isolation, because these animals can't move around the landscape to find each other and mate and they end up, you know, very inbred and suffering genetic defects in the case of, you know, mountain lions in Southern California. So, you know, so I think that's how I tried to tackle this book, is just thinking about how all of these different critters, you know, whether you're whether we were talking about, you know, chum salmon or monarch butterflies or giant anteaters in Brazil or wombats in Australia, you know, all of these critters are kind of interacting with roads,

00:15:09:00 - 00:15:15:15
Ben Goldfarb
different. And I'm trying to get at those, you know, those many relationships through stories within the book.

00:15:15:17 - 00:15:34:03
Mark Titus
Of all these stories, they're all they're all fascinating. But was there 1 or 2 that, drew you in more than another that that really surprised you or or, attracted your, your attention more than one. One of the other ones.

00:15:34:05 - 00:16:04:03
Ben Goldfarb
Well, I'll tell you the, the, the, the place that I had the most kind of, like, profound and memorable reporting experience was in Tasmania, in Australia. You know, in Tasmania is the roadkill capital of the world that has the highest roadkill rates documented on on Earth. And, you know, the reasons for that are kind of complex, but it's the combination of high biodiversity, you know, really windy roads without shoulders that go through a lot of relatively intact habitat and so have very high roadkill rates.

00:16:04:05 - 00:16:28:16
Ben Goldfarb
And so, you know, it's just this place where, like, roadkill is incredibly pervasive, you know, and you can't drive. I mean, you literally can't drive more than two minutes without seeing, you know, a dead wombat or wallaby or possum or something. It's just, like, shocking and in a way that everybody who goes there notices that, you know, I mean, I've talked to so many people since the book came out who said, you know, oh my God, when when I was in Tasmania, you know, I just could not look away from all of the roadkill.

00:16:28:16 - 00:16:58:07
Ben Goldfarb
So it's this really pervasive, kind of unavoidable, omnipresent problem. And the reason that, you know, that roadkill is so distinctive in Australia, particularly, is that in Australia there are marsupials, right. And marsupials are these animals where the females, you know, carry their young in this frontal pouch and, you know, and so what happens oftentimes, is that, you know, unfortunately, that female marsupial be killed by a car, but, you know, her body is, like, so big and robust that her baby, her Joey actually survives in that pouch.

00:16:58:09 - 00:17:25:07
Ben Goldfarb
And so there were hundreds and hundreds of people all over Tasmania, this, you know, relatively small, low populated island who go around checking the pouches of dead female marsupials and extracting those, those babies, those joeys within. And then they raise them to adulthood, you know, which entails, in some cases, years of bottle feeding and butt wiping and, you know, anti antibiotic administration and so on.

00:17:25:07 - 00:17:52:05
Ben Goldfarb
And, you know, it's just this I just found that so beautiful in a sense. You know, like here in the US I think that we have this this sort of roadkill blindness. You know we don't we we habitually ignore roadkill and we sort of have to in order to function. Right. If you, you know, if you noticed every single dead songbird or, or lizard or rodent on the roadside, I mean, just that constant violence, I think, would make it difficult to go anywhere and do anything.

00:17:52:05 - 00:18:14:12
Ben Goldfarb
We just be so, you know, crushed by the weight of all of that death. So I, you know, I think we we blind ourselves to roadkill and ignore it and avoid it. Whereas, you know, in Tasmania, people actually actively seek it out and, you know, and try to provide reparations in a sense, but, you know, caring for the animals that are orphaned by, by roadkill.

00:18:14:12 - 00:18:25:08
Ben Goldfarb
So just that, that culture of paying attention to roadkill and caring about it and thinking about it, I thought there was something really profound and kind of wise in that.

00:18:25:09 - 00:19:00:05
Mark Titus
But, I've never heard that, till now. And, it is profound. I mean, I go around driving a lot now filming The Turn, my current film. Yeah, going over the past a lot and heading over to Idaho and, man, you know, I have this, sort of baked in habit of crossing myself when I see a road killed anything and just my arms getting tired, you know, like, I just for just sort of a just sort of an acknowledgment of that, that creature that was there and is now, you know, physically is gone.

00:19:00:05 - 00:19:31:10
Mark Titus
And, it's a lot it's so you're right. I mean, there has to be some sort of, sense of becoming inured to it so you can function, but, yeah, it is a lot. And I know making that trip, you know, so many times we have on I-90 heading east or coming back over here, to the west, there is a much, much heralded, wildlife crossing that's an overpass now, over the top of I-90, right at, Lake Cheese.

00:19:31:10 - 00:20:01:00
Mark Titus
And, I, I love every time going underneath it, it just it it there's a sense of some kind of satisfaction, like you were doing something. And of course, I don't get to hang out there. I don't get to really see it. There's. I've seen photographs of, you know, hunter cams of, of animals, going across, but, obviously you don't get to hang out there and see it.

00:20:01:02 - 00:20:18:20
Mark Titus
It's a good feeling, but what's really happening, what's going on? What have you discovered that's happening out there to address this issue? Obviously, there's many different use cases, as you've pointed out in adroitly. But, how are we starting to tackle this problem?

00:20:18:22 - 00:20:36:07
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I think you put your finger on it, right? Those, you know, those those wildlife crossings, you know, we know we know those things work really well. And that and that spot actually up at Snoqualmie Pass where that overpasses, you know, there actually I think there's something like 15 or so underpasses around there as well, right, that aren't as conspicuous to a driver.

00:20:36:07 - 00:20:58:07
Ben Goldfarb
But, you know, animals are are using those things all the time too, you know, and those those crossings have been used very widely by you know, deer, elk, black bears, coyotes, mountain lions, you know, you name it. So those, you know, those things work really well. You know, obviously you've seen the, you know, the roadside fences, alongside, those, those crossings that kind of guide the animals to those, those passages.

00:20:58:09 - 00:21:18:14
Ben Goldfarb
So, you know, I mean, to me, I think, you know, I think, I mean, I think that the scientific research shows pretty clearly, you know, that's like the best tool in our toolbox, right? You know, people talk about lowering speed limits, for example. Well, okay, that's that sounds good. Except how do you get American drivers to drive slower on highways that are meant to be driven at 70 miles an hour?

00:21:18:14 - 00:21:34:22
Ben Goldfarb
Right. It's hard to get people to to drive drive slower. It's just hard to change driver behavior. In a, in a lot of ways, you know, you can you can reach a small subset of drivers, I think. But, you know, the vast majority of people are just getting where they need to get to in this kind of automotive society that we live in.

00:21:34:22 - 00:22:03:17
Ben Goldfarb
And, you know, I mean, you alluded to all the driving that you do. I mean, I've driven tens of thousands of miles, you know, promoting my book about the ills of driving. Right? We're all kind of part of this system. And so, you know, I think the best thing we can do is, you know, make our infrastructure safer, you know, with, with, you know, with wildlife crossings and fences and you know, where I mean, where they've been studied in places like Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, you know, they're typically reducing crashes or collisions with animals by, you know, more than 90%.

00:22:03:17 - 00:22:32:09
Ben Goldfarb
They're letting these animal migrations continue. You know, they're often saving the public a lot of money by preventing all of these dangerous, expensive collisions. You know, hundreds of people die in animal crashes every year. Right? So there's this human safety component as well that, you know, that these these structures help to activate. So, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, ultimately that's that's you know, that's kind of the best arrow in our quiver, I think, is are those things wildlife crossings and fences.

00:22:32:10 - 00:22:54:06
Mark Titus
Yeah. Yeah. They again they just they've just makes so much sense. And, you know, we wish that they could have been installed in the first place. I didn't think about it. Folks. Didn't think about it. You you talk about these other harms of highways that extend beyond roadkill. What what are some of the things that most folks aren't aware of?

00:22:54:08 - 00:23:13:15
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah. You know, I mean, I think just, you know, just because I think we're, you know, we're both, fish people, right? I mean, I think about fish a lot, you know, and all of those, all of those, those culverts out there. Right. And, you know, culvert, I mean, a lot of people don't know what a culvert is, but, you know, culverts, you know, any any little pipe, that's funneling a stream under a road.

00:23:13:15 - 00:23:37:14
Ben Goldfarb
Right? You often see those corrugated metal pipes that are everywhere. There are literally millions of these things, in the United States. And, you know, every single one of them is potentially a fish passage barrier, right? They, you know, constrict the flow of the stream through that little narrow pipe. And they basically create this velocity barrier. You know, it's like you're blasting fish away with a fire hose, essentially, when you just cinch that stream, tight.

00:23:37:14 - 00:24:00:23
Ben Goldfarb
And so, you know, they're not it's not like, you know, the, you know, the the lower dams or something like that. Right? It's it's kind of like death by a thousand cuts, you know, it's just. Right. These much smaller barriers out there that are totally ubiquitous on the landscape and have really, you know, dramatically curtailed the places that, you know, the salmon and trout and all kinds of other aquatic species can, can get to.

00:24:00:23 - 00:24:22:12
Ben Goldfarb
Right? So we don't really think about, like, fish being roadkill, you know, but they're they're definitely suffering from this, you know, this dramatic habitat loss that, you know, that roads you're creating. And, you know, obviously, we know that, you know, when salmon can complete their life cycle and migrate into the headwaters and spawn, you know, their their carcasses are fertilizing forests and feeding bears and eagles.

00:24:22:12 - 00:24:44:00
Ben Goldfarb
And so, you know, those those culverts are, you know, in a sense, just completely curtailing or diminishing the whole function of aquatic ecosystems, right? So, you know, can we like, replace those culverts with better structures that, you know, let streams behave naturally and let fish complete their migrations? I think that's, you know, that's a really big one to me.

00:24:44:02 - 00:25:08:09
Mark Titus
Yeah, that's a big, big topic here, obviously in the Pacific Northwest. And there's been a fair amount of work and a large amount of money that's gone into that. And you're right, it's death by a thousand cuts. Other things, are there other things that are like non physical things that, that we don't think about that are causation from roads being in place as they are.

00:25:08:11 - 00:25:32:06
Ben Goldfarb
And I think about I think about road noise pollution a lot. Right. And you know, I, I touched on this a, you know, a moment ago. But I mean, I really feel like road noise pollution is like one of the great unsung public health crises of our time. You know, I mean, there's lots of scientific literature, you know, showing that road noise elevates our cortisol levels and our blood pressures and our risk of, you know, cardiac disease and diabetes and stroke and all of these maladies.

00:25:32:06 - 00:25:52:21
Ben Goldfarb
I mean, it's literally taking years off of our lives, you know, I mean, there's a study, in Paris that, that basically found that, you know, people living in the quietest neighborhoods, lived three years longer than people living in the noisiest neighborhoods with all other variables controlled right. So just this, you know, this mind blowing, health crisis.

00:25:52:22 - 00:26:10:14
Ben Goldfarb
And yet we're so kind of awash in it, you know, that we don't really even notice it or think about it, right? You know, I read a lot of this book while my wife and I were living in, in Spokane, in eastern Washington. And, you know, we were like a stone's throw from I-90, you know, on this busy arterial road.

00:26:10:14 - 00:26:27:21
Ben Goldfarb
You know, we had a car going by every 15 or 20s and, you know, below that you could kind of hear the constant monotonous hiss of the interstate. And I had I had never thought about it. And then I started reading all of this noise pollution, scientific literature. And I was like, you know, this is like literally killing us.

00:26:27:23 - 00:26:50:08
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah. You know, and so, you know, when we moved to Colorado, I mean, you know, we made finding a, a quiet street really a priority. And I think it's, you know, dramatically changed our, our quality of life. But it's doing the exact same thing to all kinds of other critters, too, right? I mean, if you, you know, if you're a, male songbird, you know, who has to sing to attract a mate, and your mate can't hear you over, you know, engine and tire noise.

00:26:50:08 - 00:27:09:22
Ben Goldfarb
Or if you're an owl who has to listen for the rustle of a mouse's footsteps in the leaf litter, you know, and you can't hear that, you know, you functionally can't live in that place, right? So, you know, a road might only be, let's say, 100ft wide from shoulder to shoulder. And yet it's creating this acoustic shadow, you know, that's that's covering.

00:27:10:00 - 00:27:12:09
Ben Goldfarb
I mean, in some cases, you know, a couple of miles.

00:27:12:11 - 00:27:41:18
Mark Titus
Yeah, I, I tell you what, getting older, I notice it incrementally more each year. And it's like to the point where we live on a fairly busy road in Seattle here and, to a point where it's I physically notice it in my body and I get I seek out, I got to get out of here to get to the river, get over to the Snoqualmie River, you know, once a week or as often as I can.

00:27:41:20 - 00:28:00:05
Mark Titus
And, you know, we're we're working on building a home north of here in Puget Sound. And one of the big things, honestly, top three things for me is noise and, you know, road noise, that very thing. And I don't know why it's taking me this long to really kind of notice it, but it's it's a real deal.

00:28:00:08 - 00:28:01:01
Mark Titus
It totally.

00:28:01:01 - 00:28:13:01
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah. No, I, I know, right. I mean, like you and you kind of feel like, you know, the crotchety old man, you know, on your little cloud saying, oh my. You mean it's it's really true. It's it's it's literally killing us.

00:28:13:03 - 00:28:15:11
Mark Titus
I am accepting and owning all day.

00:28:15:13 - 00:28:17:20
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah, yeah.

00:28:17:22 - 00:28:25:19
Mark Titus
Any last thoughts on, roads crossings, how road ecology is shaping the future of our planet?

00:28:25:21 - 00:28:48:11
Ben Goldfarb
Man, you know, I, I just think, Yeah. You know, I think I think about this stuff a lot in the context of climate change, too, right? You know, the the fact that, you know, helping animals cross roads safely would be important on any planet, but, you know, a planet that's warming up rapidly, it's it's extra important, you know, we know that animals are going to have to go farther to find resources.

00:28:48:12 - 00:29:09:05
Ben Goldfarb
And, you know, their habitats are changing. You know, I mean, here in Colorado and I, you know, I know this is true in, in, in Washington as well, obviously, is that, you know, we're susceptible to mega fires these days, right? And so if you're an elk, you know, living on the south side of I-70 and, you know, 500,000 acres burn up, well, you, you know, you better get to the north side of I-70.

00:29:09:06 - 00:29:25:05
Ben Goldfarb
And you need to you need some way of getting across traffic, right? That's right. And so, you know, the the ability to let animals safely navigate the landscape. You know, I think that's just like one of the great challenges of our, of our time when it comes to saving biodiversity.

00:29:25:07 - 00:29:40:11
Mark Titus
Well, more crossings. Right. Any other. Yeah. And, and, you know, any, any other kind of last thoughts about seeming solutions for this seeming intractable, intractable problem at this point?

00:29:40:13 - 00:30:00:17
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah. Look, I mean, you know, I what like one of the things that I really struggled with when I was writing the book was, was like, how radical to be in my prescription, right? I mean, you know, I think it's, you know, one of the one of the criticisms that I get sometimes when I give public talks is, you know, somebody will stand up at the end and say, you know, you're you're not advocating for the end of car culture.

00:30:00:17 - 00:30:22:11
Ben Goldfarb
You know, you're not being radical enough, you know, and end wildlife crossings are just kind of a Band-Aid on, on this, you know, this kind of catastrophic auto automotive society that we that we have. And, you know, I mean, there's there's a lot of truth to that. Right? And, you know, I absolutely believe in better walkability and bike ability and pedestrian access and public transit.

00:30:22:11 - 00:30:50:09
Ben Goldfarb
And, you know, all of those things are so important. I mean, you know, we need to find a way to reduce, you know, the number of cars in the footprint of the, you know, the personal car, in our society, at the same time, you know, I, I'm also kind of pragmatic or realistic, right? I mean, about the fact that, you know, we have all of this infrastructure for cars and it's it's not going anywhere, you know, and here in rural Colorado, it's it's pretty hard to imagine the, you know, the, the, the bus system that's going to replace the automobile, right?

00:30:50:09 - 00:31:15:22
Ben Goldfarb
When, you know, all of our towns are 20 miles apart. So, you know, ultimately, I think, yes, we need better pedestrian ism and transit in, you know, in urban and suburban areas, but, you know, in the rural areas, which happen to be where the wildlife is concentrated. And, you know, we're kind of stuck with the car and we need to make it as, you know, as, as non damaging to nature as possible.

00:31:15:22 - 00:31:19:03
Ben Goldfarb
So that's the needle I'm trying to thread.

00:31:19:05 - 00:31:50:15
Mark Titus
Well said. And Americans, we do love our cars and, you know, good, good or bad, in seemingly bad. But, agreed. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. So the ways to mitigate need to be coming on even faster. Yeah, I think we'll park it there for now. But.

00:31:50:17 - 00:32:19:08
Mark Titus
Half time, did you know you could have the world's finest wild salmon shipped directly to your door? It's true. Our Eva's Wild Bristol Bay sockeye salmon is the lowest carbon footprint center plate protein on the planet, and it's packed with heart healthy omega three fatty acids. Don't take our word for it. Ask chefs like Seattle's Tom Douglas and Taichi Kitamura, who are serving our sashimi grade wild salmon in their award winning restaurants.

00:32:19:10 - 00:32:44:19
Mark Titus
You can have the exact same filets we deliver to them, shipped flash frozen to your door. What's more, Eva's Wild donates 10% of our profits to indigenous led efforts to protect Bristol Bay in perpetuity. That's the place we sourced the salmon from right now. That looks like supporting the Bristol Bay Foundation, granting Bristol Bay's indigenous young people scholarships to four year colleges, universities and trade schools.

00:32:44:21 - 00:33:25:11
Mark Titus
Visit Evaswild.com to join our growing community doing good by eating right. That's "save" spelled backwards. wild.com and eat wild to save wild. Now back to the show. Very different issue though, that has stemmed from what has been done. Damage that has been done, over the frankly human greed and, westward expansion and manifest destiny and all these things was the near extirpation of a small furry critter known as a beaver.

00:33:25:13 - 00:33:36:05
Mark Titus
And your last book was and by the way, the title is just supreme, in my opinion, simply too called Eager. Yeah, surprised.

00:33:36:07 - 00:33:42:06
Ben Goldfarb
I take no credit for that. That was that was my that was my editor's idea. So. Oh, shout out to shout out to Michael Michael.

00:33:42:06 - 00:34:07:11
Mark Titus
Well done. I just instantly head turn. Eager: The surprising secret lives of beavers and why they matter for us salmon nerds here in the Pacific Northwest in Alaska we are deep into beaver workings. People that have read their salmon history know why these little furry critters are important. Very well ingrained into deep salmon nerds, like I said.

00:34:07:11 - 00:34:14:18
Mark Titus
But for our listeners who wouldn't have a clue about why beavers of all critters could possibly be important, tell us why.

00:34:14:20 - 00:34:33:21
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah, right on man. So. So what do beavers do? Beavers, of course, build dams. Right. And the dams create ponds and wetlands. And beavers are doing that for their own safety. And habitat. You know, beavers are kind of these fat, slow, smelly meat packages who get eaten by wolves and cougars and bears and all kinds of critters. Right.

00:34:33:22 - 00:34:55:21
Ben Goldfarb
So a beaver on land is, you know, in a lot of trouble. But by building their dam, they can kind of, you know, widen the stream and deepen, deepen the stream and, you know, create that aquatic habitat where they're they're safe from predators and can access all of those riparian trees that they're, they're eating. But in the process, you know, all of those beaver ponds and wetlands are providing all of these other ecological benefits as well.

00:34:55:21 - 00:35:18:05
Ben Goldfarb
Right? They're, you know, they're storing water. They're creating thousands of little reservoirs up in the high country that help to help us mitigate drought and adapt to climate change. You know, they're creating incredible firebreaks. You know, they're filtering out pollution. They're attenuating, flash floods in some places. And, you know, and they're creating habitat for, I mean, every critter under the sun, right?

00:35:18:05 - 00:35:46:13
Ben Goldfarb
Wood ducks, salamanders, moose, boreal toads, and our friends and the salmon, you know, if you're, if you're, a juvenile salmon, or, or trout, you know, you don't want to live in the fast moving, free flowing main stem river. You're just going to get blown downstream and eaten by a kingfisher, right? You know, you want to live in that kind of slow water, deep side channel, any meander, complex refuge habitat, which is exactly what beavers create.

00:35:46:13 - 00:36:14:01
Ben Goldfarb
And, you know, there are a million, studies connecting beavers with, you know, with, with fish production and the the inverse, you know, when we lost beavers, you know, because of that westward expansion and colonization and industrial fur trapping that you mentioned, you know, that was I mean, that was this kind of aquatic, aquatic dustbowl, as some historians have said, and, you know, certainly coho salmon and, you know, steelhead and other salmon, as we know, would have been the primary casualties.

00:36:14:01 - 00:36:24:21
Ben Goldfarb
So, you know, bringing beavers back, you know, whether you're, you know, a rancher worried about drought or, a, a steelhead, in western Washington. You know, it's a it's a it's a good call.

00:36:24:23 - 00:36:52:12
Mark Titus
It seems like one of those rare pieces you mentioned a rancher or, you know, a steelhead or or a commercial fisherman all kind of having a similar. They can they can find some common ground here. What how did you how did you come to beavers as a topic? Why did they spark your interest in it? As we know, you know, anybody that writes a book or creates a film, it's got to keep your topic, your interest for a while.

00:36:52:12 - 00:36:57:02
Mark Titus
You're you're you're on this for some time. How did how did these guys invade your consciousness?

00:36:57:04 - 00:37:10:12
Ben Goldfarb
So, you know, I'm I'm still obsessed with them, you know, and it's baby books. Been out for free for years now. I mean, I always, you know, growing up, I always love beavers. I spent a lot of time. I'm from I'm from New York originally and spent a lot of time in the Catskills, in the Adirondacks, you know, very beaver replaces.

00:37:10:14 - 00:37:29:18
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah. You know, I've got this powerful childhood memory of, you know, canoeing with my parents on a, an Adirondack lake late at night and just hearing that gunshot of a tail slap, you know, be a beaver smacking the water right next to our canoe. You know, that's a sound that I'm sure all of your listeners have heard at some point.

00:37:29:20 - 00:37:45:19
Ben Goldfarb
And so, you know, I always I always liked them. I thought they were awesome. And then, you know, it was really in, my, I forget what year this was, but, you know, it was sort of right around that time that I started working for high country news. You know, I was actually living in Seattle at that point and looking for things to cover in western Washington.

00:37:45:19 - 00:38:08:11
Ben Goldfarb
And I happened to, receive a flier for a beaver workshop, that was going on, up and up in Everett. And I was like, well, I don't know what that entails, but that sounds like that. That could be a story. And, you know, it's just one scientist after another, you know, saying their piece about why beavers were so important for, you know, all of those different ecosystem services I was talking about earlier, especially salmon production.

00:38:08:11 - 00:38:32:21
Ben Goldfarb
And, you know, in Western Washington, that's such a big part of why beaver restoration has become so hot in the in the northwest. Is that that salmon connection. So I was like, wow, I mean, this you know, these animals aren't just, you know, cute, furry, interesting, fun rodents. You know, they're really, you know, one of the kind of the primary architects of our continent and one of the best ecological solutions we have for all of these, these different, crises.

00:38:32:21 - 00:38:47:20
Ben Goldfarb
And, and so it was that, that beaver workshop that just got me fired up and resulted in a couple of, high country news articles and eventually that that turned into the book. And, you know, here I am. I mean, the book came out in 2018 and there's, you know, there's still new exciting beaver stuff to write about.

00:38:47:20 - 00:39:08:16
Ben Goldfarb
You know, last summer I went up to, up to Nome, Alaska, you know, up into the subarctic and beavers are expanding their range. I'm at the tundra with with climate change. Is that willow line? You know, moves, moves north. So, you know, I got to do a week of, Arctic beaver reporting, which is really just, a grayling fishing trip disguised as a reporting trip.

00:39:08:18 - 00:39:14:03
Ben Goldfarb
But it was it was it was sweet up there, man. So, yeah, they're still a huge, huge part of my life.

00:39:14:05 - 00:39:16:02
Mark Titus
You. You're not supposed to divulge our secret.

00:39:16:02 - 00:39:16:08
Ben Goldfarb
Sorry.

00:39:16:09 - 00:39:39:09
Mark Titus
Yeah, there are secrets here are fishing secrets. The architects of our continent. I'm going to steal that. That's amazing. The Elwha. I was just out there filming, recently with, for the Turn, and as mentioned, and, ran into our mutual friend and Schaefer, and we were talking about you and your book and and beavers.

00:39:39:09 - 00:40:11:23
Mark Titus
And there was a beaver at, one of the the side channel about a pond, actually, there. Right adjacent to the mouth of the lower. And he's sadly, he's not there right now. And we think that it was a dog that might, might have got him, careful through dogs, folks. But can you. I think it's a great visual way to maybe explain, you know, everybody around these parts anyway, is somewhat familiar or has at least heard of the our dam removal.

00:40:12:01 - 00:40:25:00
Mark Titus
And can you maybe penis a picture of why beavers might be integral into the rehabilitation of that system back into a completely functioning, thriving system?

00:40:25:02 - 00:40:31:04
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah. So maybe I'm just, you know, I'm just paraphrasing and here and you should you should have her on as a guest if you if you haven't already.

00:40:31:06 - 00:40:32:04
Mark Titus
She's coming.

00:40:32:06 - 00:40:50:00
Ben Goldfarb
All right. Awesome. But, you know, I mean, I mean, my understanding, of course, is that, you know, when those, when those two dams came out, right? Yes. The river was liberated, but also all of that sediment was liberated, too, right? I mean, I mean, that's what, you know, in some ways, that's what, rivers are, you know, they're they're they're conveyors of sediment as much as, as much as water.

00:40:50:00 - 00:41:09:14
Ben Goldfarb
You know, I think maybe it was, you know, Lena, Lena Leopold who's, you know, Alda's, son in a great geomorphology, just described rivers as like the gutters down which flow the ruins of continents or something like that. I forget the exact phrase, but something a lot. I'm paraphrasing, but you know that idea that the river is just moving a huge amount of sediment?

00:41:09:14 - 00:41:43:06
Ben Goldfarb
Of course. True. And, you know, once those dams are gone, they can return to doing that. And, you know, all of that sediment builds up, you know, at that, at that, that delta, you know, where the Elwha meets the Pacific. And as that sediment returns, you know, all of those old side channels and that, you know, that kind of habitat complexity comes back and all of a sudden, you know, there's there are places for willow and alder to take root and, you know, and suddenly there's all of this, you know, fantastic kind of off channel beaver habitat popping back up, you know, beavers in Washington, they're, you know, they're

00:41:43:06 - 00:42:06:04
Ben Goldfarb
much more hostile than, than people realize. You know, I think that's one of those ecological connections or functions that, you know, was destroyed when we wiped out beavers was, you know, their their role in these, these coastal systems. I mean, there's been, you know, some really cool research, in the Puget Sound watershed, basically showing that, you know, beavers will actually build dams in these intertidal marshes, right?

00:42:06:04 - 00:42:33:08
Ben Goldfarb
So that, you know, the tide comes in and the dam is is completely submerged. And you could you could kayak over it and never know it was there. Then the tide goes out and that dam is suddenly holding this little bathtub of water. You know that the brackish water that ends up being really good, you know, juvenile salmon rearing habitat, it it turns out so, you know, beavers have this cool kind of intertidal, life history that they're capable of engaging in.

00:42:33:10 - 00:42:47:05
Ben Goldfarb
And, you know, they're doing that, to some extent in the, in the Loi again. So that's, you know, yet another kind of ecological connection, along with, of course, salmon migration that was revived when those, those dams came out.

00:42:47:07 - 00:43:01:22
Mark Titus
Once again with this book, maybe what was the most interesting or magnetic piece that, that you didn't know before that drew you in? And you, you now can't let go of that's a.

00:43:02:00 - 00:43:32:16
Ben Goldfarb
That's a, that's a really a really good question. I mean I, you know, I look I just, I just think so much about how different this continent was with beavers on it. Right? I think that's like it's like it's like being beaver pilled. You know, once you like, once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. You know, the fact of the Beaver Falls and the fact that, you know, like like Lewis and Clark, you know, Lewis, Lewis and Clark described going up the Missouri River and, you know, seeing beaver dams, wall to wall and every single tributary, you know, as far as the eye can see up to the mountains, you know, like you've got

00:43:32:16 - 00:44:10:14
Ben Goldfarb
explorers who, you know, were crossing the what is today Indiana, you know, couldn't find a dry place to camp for 100 miles because beavers had ponded everything up. You know, trappers, going through places that we considered desert today, you know, in southeastern Wyoming or northern Utah. And, you know, finding these lush marshes full of waterfowl. You know, the fact that this, you know, this continent and Europe to, you know, is once a a much greener, bluer, wetter, lusher place, especially the American West, you know, which which, of course, we think of as being, you know, fundamentally water limited and drought stressed today.

00:44:10:16 - 00:44:26:02
Ben Goldfarb
You know, I just I can't let go of that. You know, the fact that, Yeah, that that a fully beaver continent with several hundred million of these animals is there they're probably where, you know, it's just such a fundamentally different place than the landscape that exists today.

00:44:26:04 - 00:44:47:07
Mark Titus
Housing. It's such a great, great topic for a book. I'm so glad you wrote it. And, we're going to be coming back to it time and again. I think on not only, through this show, but, when we go on tour with, with the film, it's just such a critical part of salmon infrastructure here on the West Coast.

00:44:47:12 - 00:45:05:14
Mark Titus
Thank you for writing it. I know you are a friend of Bristol Bay, and I know you've been to Bristol Bay, and it's in your mind and it's in your heart. In fact, I see over your shoulder there for our YouTube watchers, they can see that beautiful Ray troll print for you. Yes, yes, Ben has a beautiful ray troll, print.

00:45:05:14 - 00:45:08:08
Mark Titus
And I think it's the. It's the.

00:45:08:08 - 00:45:09:12
Ben Goldfarb
Fishes, the Salish Sea.

00:45:09:12 - 00:45:33:06
Mark Titus
Fishes of the Salish Sea. There it is. Yeah. My very first piece of art that I ever purchased was, midnight, run by Ray troll with the salmon jumping over sort of the Japanese fair share. Yeah, of the river of the of the waterfall. And I bought it in the museum and in Dillingham when I was 19 years old, working in the canneries.

00:45:33:11 - 00:45:33:22
Mark Titus
Yeah.

00:45:34:00 - 00:45:34:09
Ben Goldfarb
Awesome.

00:45:34:09 - 00:45:55:00
Mark Titus
Yes. And that was my first interaction with Alaska with certainly with Bristol Bay, with Ray troll, who's a dear friend now and, I bought into everything. I bought into the whole thing. I'm like, I want this and I want all of it. I want more for the rest of my life. In fact, I'm wearing a Rachel shirt as we speak.

00:45:55:02 - 00:46:05:08
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah, I should, I should have one. I've got, I've got that that great, salmon Tree of Life shirt. There you go. I should have worn. I should wear my my my my matching Rei trail shirt. I didn't know we were doing that, but I know.

00:46:05:08 - 00:46:05:16
Mark Titus
Well, yeah.

00:46:05:21 - 00:46:07:07
Ben Goldfarb
I burst out.

00:46:07:08 - 00:46:25:16
Mark Titus
Well, we'll do it next time. We'll do next time. Did you know there is a, Tree of Life animation out there in the world right now? I think so, I don't think I did. I'll send it to you. It please. Yeah. It's outstanding. His son, Patrick Troll is a friend, and, we've been working together for years in a filmmaking.

00:46:25:16 - 00:46:50:06
Mark Titus
He's an editor capacity. He's also a great musician, part of the rat fish wranglers. And he has a full retro ray troll biopic coming out. I'm a producer on it. Oh no way. Cool. Yeah. Fantastic feature. Feature documentary about about the maestro himself. So I can't wait. Assess. But back to Bristol Bay. Yeah. How did you come to Bristol Bay or how did it come to you in your heart?

00:46:50:08 - 00:47:04:10
Mark Titus
And, what do you see? The way forward looking like for this singular place on the planet, for salmon and for people who have been there for thousands of years? And by the way, beavers, lots of them there. Yeah.

00:47:04:12 - 00:47:24:12
Ben Goldfarb
Man. Good, good. Good question. I mean, I think so. You know, I've, I've done, a bunch of work, with WWF over the years, in various capacities. I did some kind of communications work. And I wrote for their magazine, and, you know, they've, they've been, you know, I don't know if, if you've ever come across, Dave Aplin.

00:47:24:14 - 00:47:44:03
Ben Goldfarb
But he's he's there. Absolutely. Yeah. Of course he's he's sort of Alaska legend. So he's down in, in Homer. And so I, you know, I spent a summer in Homer working, working with, with, with Dave on, on, you know, Bristol Bay communications both, you know, sort of fighting oil and gas leasing, in Bristol Bay and also, of course, Pebble.

00:47:44:04 - 00:48:18:21
Ben Goldfarb
And so, Dave in his you know, infinite wisdom and generosity, sent me out there for, for a few weeks, to, to Dillingham and Naknek, you know, hanging out with, you know, all kinds of set netters and other, you know, getting out on boats and, of course, you know, talking to a lot of you pick folks just, you know, trying to sort of understand, you know, all of the ways that people relate to and experience that place and, you know, and, you know, I, I did some, you know, sort of ghostwriting of op eds for various, you know, commercial fishing publications, you

00:48:18:21 - 00:48:45:11
Ben Goldfarb
know, working, working with fishermen there and, you know, taking pictures and putting together various, sort of media packages, around, around that place. And then and then Dave and I went back a couple years later with, a videographer and a photographer for, a story for, for World Wildlife magazine, about about Bristol Bay. And, you know, we got to, you know, we got to, all of the, all of the, you know, the, the special places up there, you know, riding little bush planes around all of those, you know, all of those.

00:48:45:11 - 00:49:06:14
Ben Goldfarb
There's many communities, that, you know, I can't say I know super well, but, you know, I've now spent, you know, cumulatively, let's say, a month out there. So, and it's just, you know, I mean, look, it's it's just an incredible, miraculous place. And, you know, I mean, I think that look, one of the things that's that, of course, is so special about it is, is, you know.

00:49:06:15 - 00:49:29:12
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah, it was always, you know, one of the great sort of biological spectacles and surges of biomass on Earth. But, you know, it's it's also this amazing window, I think, into what so many systems looked like to some extent. Right. I mean, it's so it's like it's, you know, that could, that could, that could have been, you know, the Columbia or the Klamath or, you know, all of these, all of these rivers, you know, whose salmon runs?

00:49:29:12 - 00:49:53:14
Ben Goldfarb
You know, we've we've degraded and, and lost the Central Valley, you know, and so and I think in some ways, you know, Bristol Bay just it just shows us, you know, the kind of spectacular biological abundance and, and, and, and, you know, like, almost like the generosity of these fish, you know, and giving their bodies and their, their lives to, you know, back to the system.

00:49:53:16 - 00:50:06:23
Ben Goldfarb
And, you know, it's it provides this benchmark that we can shoot for when projects like the Klamath Dam removals happen. You know, it's just it's just this incredible example, I think, of, you know, of what nature is capable of.

00:50:07:01 - 00:50:39:18
Mark Titus
Yeah. I couldn't agree more. That generosity of salmon. I come back to it again and again and it's it's why I stay doing the work. It's that north star of that, that generosity. Whether they know it or not, it doesn't matter. It's it's a it's it is a physical act of love. And I guess, you know, when I'm looking at asking you to look forward, you may have noticed that, we're going to have a distinct new incoming presidential administration, in this nascent moment of its formation.

00:50:39:19 - 00:50:50:17
Mark Titus
How are you getting your mind around what this will mean for your work and the critical environmental work that needs to be done right now, including places like Bristol Bay?

00:50:50:19 - 00:51:05:00
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah. I mean, that's a that's a good question. And, you know, I don't want to speak too much to Bristol Bay specifically because, you know, I know there I know that, you know, so many of your listeners know it so much better than I do and, you know, follow every sort of turn of the political screw there. I mean, you know, sure.

00:51:05:02 - 00:51:32:01
Ben Goldfarb
Obviously, you know, the fact that the fact that Don Jr, you know, has has spent a lot of time fishing up there and, you know, obviously, you know, last time during the last Trump administration, you know, supported its protection. I mean, that seems like, you know, potentially a good sign. I mean, you know, I think broadly, look, you know, one of the things I go back to is when I, you know, I signed the contract to write, eager, my book about beavers back in, in 2016.

00:51:32:01 - 00:51:57:06
Ben Goldfarb
And I just happened to sign that contract and start that process the week before Trump was elected the first time. And at the time, I sort of thought, like, man, you know, I can't believe I'm doing this. I just, you know, sign up to spend the next couple of years writing a book about beavers, of all of the, you know, ridiculous, frivolous things when I, you know, I should be spending the next two years, you know, filing information requests for, you know, Trump's Interior Department or whatever.

00:51:57:06 - 00:52:21:11
Ben Goldfarb
You know, I should be watchdog-ing this administration. But, you know, it ended up being this incredible gift in so many ways, right? In part because beavers are this issue that, you know, in some ways, is just so hyper local that it doesn't really, interact much with the federal government. Right? I mean, yes, you know, the fire service and the BLM have some role to play in Beaver restoration.

00:52:21:17 - 00:52:45:20
Ben Goldfarb
But, you know, so much of bringing beavers back comes down to the actions of private landowners, you know, county commissions who manage public roads and, you know, kill beavers when they flood roads and shouldn't, you know, town councils, you know, they're all of these hyper local levels of government, and again, private landowners, you know, who really control the fate of these, of these animals.

00:52:45:20 - 00:53:19:08
Ben Goldfarb
And so, you know, here's this incredible ecological solution, you know, that doesn't actually require a whole lot of help from the federal government, which was a good thing, because, of course, we didn't get any help. You know, those those four years. And so, you know, that's that's one of the things that I'm thinking about right now is like, okay, what are the you know, what are the issues, the places, the people, you know, who are kind of operating, you know, at local levels below, you know, the level of the federal government who, who can continue their work, you know, over the next four years, relatively uninterrupted and, you know, and how

00:53:19:08 - 00:53:28:23
Ben Goldfarb
can I, help facilitate that work and shine a light on those, those local efforts? I think that's how, you know, conceiving of my my role right now.

00:53:29:01 - 00:54:00:00
Mark Titus
Such a great answer, man. I've been talking about local, hyper local for the last several days as well. Awesome. Slight derivative of that. And we're going to we're going to wrap this up for today, but, we are look undeniably in the most partizan tribal with a lowercase t. Fractured time, I think besides the civil war in our country and, you know, you're living in Colorado, there's.

00:54:00:00 - 00:54:23:16
Mark Titus
Yeah, there's, there's there's plenty of of red and blue, folks and communities, just just like the rest of America in Colorado. How do you see, just as a person from where, where you're sitting, what do you see as ways to get us all to the same table? We we are made of the exact same genetic stuff.

00:54:23:18 - 00:54:44:18
Mark Titus
We we all want to come home to our families at night. We all want to be able to provide for our families. We all want to. I think we all want to be able to enjoy, the beauty and the grandeur of of nature. What are some of the ways that that, you think we might be able to find our way back to a table where we can have these conversations?

00:54:44:20 - 00:55:00:17
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah. You know, it's such a good question. Mean, you know, I look, I do I do think that, you know, that's one of the beautiful things about about wildlife, right, is that, you know, there's, you know, there is this kind of shared set of values, around wildlife. And I, you know, look, I don't want to say that that's that's true of all species.

00:55:00:17 - 00:55:31:06
Ben Goldfarb
You know, obviously, you know, wolves were reintroduced to Colorado, last, last winter. And, you know, here's, I mean, here's this hyper polarizing, animal that, you know, has really divided the state and so many ways. So it's, you know, it's not it's not like wildlife is some, you know, magical kumbaya thing. But, you know, on on some level, I mean, I think that's one of the things that attracted me to a book about, about roads and wildlife is, you know, is because, you know, the like the topic of wildlife vehicle collision prevention and avoidance.

00:55:31:06 - 00:55:51:20
Ben Goldfarb
I mean, that's that's totally nonpartisan, right? You know, when you look at, you know, the the groups that, you know, in states like Colorado and Utah and Wyoming have supported building wildlife overpasses for deer and elk and pronghorn. You know, it's I mean, it's also it's often the hunting lobby, you know, who don't want to see animals, you know, highway any any more than anybody else does.

00:55:51:20 - 00:56:11:23
Ben Goldfarb
Right. You know, I mean, that truly is this kind of nonpartisan issue in this hyper partizan world. You know, in Colorado, there's just a a public opinion poll that found that, you know, 85% of Coloradans support more wildlife crossings. You know, when you I mean, you would see the same stats in Nevada or Oregon or, you know, any any western state.

00:56:12:01 - 00:56:36:03
Ben Goldfarb
So, you know, I think that's that's another thing I'm thinking about a lot as well as, yeah, trying to highlight those, those hyper local issues around which we can sort of generate progress at a time when the federal government is likely to be hostile to to conservation. But, you know, can we also find, you know, these, these kinds of nonpartisan wildlife issues, like wildlife crossings that we can convene people around.

00:56:36:03 - 00:56:55:11
Ben Goldfarb
And, you know, I mean, that was that was the case, you know, during the last Trump administration, too. You know, the only good thing that, Ryan Zinke, his interior secretary ever did, you know, was sign a secretarial order basically directing Western states to, to protect, large ungulate migrations, you know, which was which was awesome.

00:56:55:13 - 00:57:18:11
Ben Goldfarb
And, you know, a good sign of progress, you know, some of the text around federal funding for wildlife crossings was written by, John Barrasso, you know, Republican senator from Wyoming. So, you know, here's the here's this relatively nonpartisan issue and, you know, can wildlife, be this convener of people and, and values and, you know, in a state like Colorado, maybe, maybe I can brilliant.

00:57:18:11 - 00:57:42:09
Mark Titus
I, I'm so grateful for your time. This has been such a wonderful conversation. And you do not escape, though the, the the bonus round here that everybody gets, which is, a very simple little thought exercise. In these times of climate change that we're in, these things are not as fantastical as I originally had intended them as a as a bonus question, but we're just pretending now.

00:57:42:09 - 00:58:07:01
Mark Titus
It's not going to happen. I'm not going on quit here. But let's just say fire came to your your neck of the woods. And you've only had a little bit of time. You get your critters out, you get your loved ones out, all the physical people and things that we love. But if there's only one physical thing beyond, an organic human or an animal that you could take with you, what would that be?

00:58:07:03 - 00:58:14:07
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah, that's a that's a great question. And one and one which my wife and I have discussed. And we have come to a consensus answer, which is.

00:58:14:07 - 00:58:15:00
Mark Titus
That for.

00:58:15:01 - 00:58:36:09
Ben Goldfarb
For our wedding eight years ago, we had a friend who was, he was living up in Barrow, Alaska, studying sea ice. And he bought, for us for our wedding, a strip of bowhead whale baleen whales of, off of a native, hunter who had who had killed that. Well, and he he,

00:58:36:11 - 00:58:46:14
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah, he gave us, for our wedding, a strip of baleen that now hangs on our wall. So that's that's the most sacred object in our house, and that's what we're saving for sure.

00:58:46:16 - 00:58:52:03
Mark Titus
Trees. Ding ding. That has not been answered in that way ever. Wonderful.

00:58:52:04 - 00:58:54:00
Ben Goldfarb
What's your what's your answer?

00:58:54:02 - 00:59:13:07
Mark Titus
I've got a I got a tub of journals. Yeah. You know, since I was 16 years old. And like, anybody's going to want to read that crap, but you know, it's it's my, my sacred thing. There is one part that I'm going to follow up with here, though, if it's a metaphysical thing about you, one thing that makes Ben Ben, what?

00:59:13:07 - 00:59:16:08
Mark Titus
What would that thing be? What trait would you take?

00:59:16:10 - 00:59:38:00
Ben Goldfarb
Oh, man. She's that's a that's a good question. You know what? I try to avoid introspection whenever possible. I think that's, you know, maybe why I'm a journalist. Not and not a, not a a memoirist. I mean, look at, you know, I think it's like the whole, man, you know, I think it's like the whole Araby, you know, reluctant crusaders that that famous line.

00:59:38:00 - 01:00:02:16
Ben Goldfarb
Right. That you know, that, like that the reason that we care about this stuff and work to save it is because we just, you know, love, love being in it. And, you know, I think that that kind of like. Yeah, that I mean, I like to imagine that that, that that's something that kind of suffuses I think a lot of my writing is just, you know, there's this love and passion for wildlife, for fish, for, you know, for, for landscape.

01:00:02:18 - 01:00:18:08
Ben Goldfarb
And, you know, I hope that's what you know, that's what makes my work fun to read, is that, you know, not only that, that I like to imagine that I understand, you know, these, these systems and critters, but also that I'm, you know, I'm genuinely passionate about them and have a, you know, a deep, abiding love for them.

01:00:18:08 - 01:00:27:03
Ben Goldfarb
So, I don't know, maybe that's my that's my answer. But I don't often consider myself metaphysically Mark. I tried I really try to avoid that whenever possible.

01:00:27:05 - 01:00:50:17
Mark Titus
Would I'm hearing passion, but I'll also also mark down some genuine humility. And because that's what I'm hearing too. Well, it's been a pleasure. Ben Goldfarb. The author of your The Surprising Secret Lives of Beavers and Why They Matter and Crossings How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet. Ben, how can folks follow along with what you're doing and get these important books?

01:00:50:19 - 01:01:08:23
Ben Goldfarb
Yeah, you know, the books are available, wherever books are sold. So, you know, ask your local bookstore to to, to stock them if they don't already. I'd love supporting independent bookstores. I bet most of your listeners do. And my website is, is Ben goldfarb.com, where you can, you know, read more of my articles, as well.

01:01:08:23 - 01:01:21:11
Ben Goldfarb
And, Yeah. Mark, it was a pleasure, man. Come down to Colorado. We'll get you up into some some of the high lakes around here. We'll catch some some native, cutthroat. It's going to be. It's going to be awesome, dude. Can come on down.

01:01:21:13 - 01:01:31:03
Mark Titus
I'm there. And likewise, invitation is extended to come out here and visit the Skagit with me here out on the Olympic Peninsula. We'll go. We'll go chase after some steelhead.

01:01:31:08 - 01:01:38:15
Ben Goldfarb
That'd be so cool. Yeah, that's that's that's a that's a fish that I have, you know, spent hours pursuing. Totally unsuccessfully. So I'll also put myself in your hands.

01:01:38:16 - 01:02:02:14
Mark Titus
We. Well, I don't know if they're good hands to be put into because I have had the exact same experience. I'm in love with them. I can't get them out of my mind or out of my body. But, you know, despite being a guy in Alaska and I caught the salmon some gear, back in the day, I have yet to land a steelhead on a fly, so, we could we could pursue those together, but, we'll we'll do that for another day.

01:02:02:16 - 01:02:05:19
Mark Titus
Ben Goldfarb, thank you for your time. And we'll see you down the trail.

01:02:06:01 - 01:02:07:20
Ben Goldfarb
All right. Thanks, Mark.

01:02:07:22 - 01:02:10:01
Mark Titus
Thanks, brother.

01:02:10:03 - 01:02:41:09
Music
How do you say what you love?
How do you say what you love?
How do you say what you love?
How do you say what you love?

01:02:41:11 - 01:03:05:11
Mark Titus
Thank you for listening to Save What You Love. If you like what you're hearing, you can help keep these conversations coming your way by giving us a rating on whatever platform you're listening from and leaving a comment on Apple Podcasts. It really helps get the word out. Check out photos on our Instagram feed. We're at Save What You Love podcast, and you can get links from today's featured guest in the show notes of this episode.

01:03:05:13 - 01:03:34:09
Mark Titus
Join our growing community by subscribing to our newsletter at evaswild.com, and then clicking on connect in the upper corner. You'll get exclusive offers on wild salmon shipped to your door, and notifications about upcoming guests and more great content on the way. That said, Evaswild.com the word save spelled backwards, wild.com. This episode was produced by Emilie Firn and edited by Patrick Troll.

01:03:34:11 - 01:03:40:08
Mark Titus
Original music was created by Whiskey Class. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you all down the trail.