(upbeat music) - [Student 1] I am a mother of five.

- [Student 2] I really didn't see myself being able to go back to school.

- [Student 3] It was a lot of self-doubt.

- [Student 4] Cost of higher education, that was a big hurdle for me.

Once I found Amazon and all their free education programs, I was hooked.

- [Student 3] Amazon's footing the bill for it.

So we're gonna take advantage.

- [Student 1] I'm able to work towards a degree in computer and electrical engineering.

- [Student 4] Network engineering.

- [Student 3] Environmental engineering.

- [Student 4] It makes me feel confident I can get to the next level.

I feel like the sky's the limit.

- [Announcer] Thank you for joining us for the Crosscut Ideas Festival.

(upbeat music) Before we begin, thank you to our founding sponsor, the Kerry & Linda Killinger Foundation.

We'd also like to thank our title sponsor, Amazon.

- Hello, everyone.

Welcome to the Crosscut Festival.

My name is Michelle Nijhuis.

I'm an environmental journalist.

I'm a longtime contributing editor of High Country News.

I'm also the author of "Beloved Beasts," which is a critical history of the modern conservation movement.

I'm so glad you could join us today for this great panel.

So we are here to talk about the biodiversity crisis, by which we mean the interconnected threats faced by all species, including our own, and we face habitat destruction, pollution, disease, and, of course, climate change.

I think the three of us here today, myself and the two panelists who will be joining me in a minute, agree that the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis cannot be addressed separately.

They're deeply intertwined, both their causes and their impacts, but I think we also agree that there are ways to address them both at levels that range from the global to the local.

And we're gonna talk about that today.

So I am honored to be joined by Paula Swedeen who's the policy director for Conservation Northwest.

She works on wildlife and wildlands policy issues at the state capitol and beyond, including wolf conservation, forest policy and more.

I am also joined by Bruce Stein, who is the chief scientist and associate vice president of the National Wildlife Federation.

Bruce is a leading expert on species extinction and biodiversity conservation, and over the past decade, much of his work is focused on advancing the science and practice of climate change adaptation.

And I know he's recently spent some time in the Caribbean.

We were hearing about old growth sponge forest as well as the old growth forest of the Pacific Northwest.

So welcome to both of you.

- Nice to be here, Michelle.

Thank you.

- Yes.

When we talk about solving or reversing the biodiversity crisis, I think many people assume just from reading the news, that that means putting an end to human-caused extinction.

And, you know, often we think of the extinction of large charismatic creatures, but solving the biodiversity crisis is about much more than that, right?

What does it mean to both of you who are so immersed in this work?

Paula, maybe you could get us started.

- Sure, so I think you're absolutely right that most people's connection to biodiversity is through some sort of charismatic species.

But when an animal or a large plant, like a large tree is near extinction, and we're talking about trying to prevent their extinction, the problem has advanced really far, and it will take or would take an enormous amount of effort.

And so one aspect of the biodiversity crisis, I think that we need to think about is acting, intervening and acting sooner, prior to say, a species becoming listed on our US endangered Species Act or state-based lists.

And then I think the other thing is that when we have like a single species focus, we're losing sight of the fact that, you know, all creatures are part of ecosystems.

And when a species starts to go extinct, it's usually gonna take something else with it.

And it's also usually a sign that the ecosystem of which it is a part is not doing well.

And so, you know, we need to take a much more holistic perspective.

We need to think about, you know, abundance of species.

We need to think about their interactions, and we need to think about how we can manage, you know, entire ecosystems to not only prevent individual species extinction, but make sure those ecosystems are functioning, you know, for their own integrity and continuity, but also for all of the support they provide to humans.

- Yeah, and just to build on that, you know, we often think about species and species extinctions when we talk about the biodiversity crisis, but biodiversity is so much more.

I mean, biodiversity really refers to the variety of life on Earth in all its array, species, ecosystems and the genetic complexes that make up populations and species.

And so first of all, we need to think across those various levels.

We also need to think about, how do we ensure that systems remain functional?

Species, the evolutionary processes that maintain species, the ecological processes that maintain ecosystems and provide the services, the ecosystem services as we refer to them that are of direct benefit to people, and the genetic processes, the gene flow that ensures healthy animal and plant populations and species.

So one of the things that I think is important to think about is, how do we maintain the capacity of species and ecosystems to continue to adapt to changing conditions?

It's something that we often refer to as adaptive capacity.

And although we've got newfangled word adaptive capacity, you know, although Leopold back in the '40s nailed it when he talked about as part of the land ethic and health of the land, the capacity for self-renewal of these systems.

So I think, you know, as we think about conservation for the 21st century, it's not just about species extinction.

Stopping that as important as it is, but it's about ensuring the continued ability of species and ecosystems to evolve and adapt.

- Yes, Michael Soule, conservation biologist, who I spent a lot of time with during my book research, often said that what bothered him most about extinction was not so much the death of a species, but the end of birth by which he meant, you know, the end of evolution, the end of the ability of a species to adapt to changing conditions.

So there are many levels of diversity from genetic to ecosystem and beyond.

And we also have different levels of conservation authority, so to speak.

We have the state level, we have the tribal level, which we'll talk about a little later on.

We have the community level, federal level, global level.

So Paula, you're sitting in Olympia, Washington, dealing with state politics.

Bruce, you've spent most of your career working at the federal and international level.

From where you sit, what do you see as the most pressing threat to biodiversity?

And what's your main concern?

- So I'll kick off that conversation.

Well, there's multiple, and I think that in itself is important to remember, that the threats come from many different directions, but one of the biggest I see is just a lack of ability for us as a society to be able to understand how our individual actions and the systems that we operate in, our economic systems, our social systems, our political systems, how we can't see the impacts of our day-to-day activities on biodiversity.

So, you know, there's an accumulated, there's an accumulative impact of all of our actions.

And I think about, you know, and I think we probably all hear this a lot, where sometimes there's shaming about consumption patterns, right?

It's like, oh, you know, and there's been great research recently about how people who live in relatively affluent parts of the country or affluent parts of the world are responsible for the largest amount of our carbon footprint.

But it's really difficult for an individual to understand that when they purchase something, like to know like what that means for like, where did those materials come from?

Like, how were they mined?

How were they transported?

Like all of the individual things.

And as I've thought about this over the years, I've been working on these issues for over 30 years, and as I've thought about that, I think it's almost intentional.

Like we're almost intentionally separate from how we live our daily lives and how we understand those impacts.

And that separation makes attempting to come up with policy changes really difficult.

And it also makes it easy for people who don't wanna see those changes to either drive wedges or make it hard for very busy politicians to be able to sort through a bunch of competing information, especially if a policy they're gonna pass looks like it's going to have an impact either on, you know, consumers or an individual sector of an industry.

And for us to be able to make the connection between like, no, like, we really need to do this it, and maybe it's not as painful as we think it is, but even if it is a little bit painful, isn't it worth it?

And it's very hard for people to understand that direct connection.

So I see that separation of, you know, just even our agricultural production systems.

I mean, that's not an area that I work in really closely with the exception of working with ranchers on wolf conservation.

We don't know, people don't know where our food comes from.

And people mostly don't know where their lumber comes from or don't understand what happens when you log a forest to be able to build a house, like, you know, what that does to a forest and the scale of the impact.

So that to me is one of the biggest threats, just our inability in such a highly differentiated complex society to be able to understand the impacts of our individual actions on ecosystem.

- Right, even in a state like Washington where, you know, the effects of over consumption of the forest, you know, are quite visible, they're far enough away or perhaps delayed enough that it just drains the urgency from those political arguments, yeah.

Bruce, what do you have to add to add to that?

- So I'll take a slightly different tack in addressing threats.

First of all, in order to come up with conservation responses, we need to have a pretty clear understanding of the problems and the scope of the problem.

Some of my past research has focused on understanding how many species in the US are actually at risk of extinction, and it's in excess of a third of our species are imperiled or at elevated risk.

And this may surprise people, but there's over 150 US species that already are extinct.

That is, they are already gone.

The biodiversity crisis is not something off in the future, right?

We are living it.

So what is it that's causing these extinctions and these imperilment levels?

We looked a number of years ago at what the leading factors were, and not surprisingly, habitat loss and degradation in its various forms was the number one driver of species imperilment.

But second was the problem of non-native invasive species.

Species that are found in other continents that make their way over here intentionally or unintentionally, and then, you know, they don't have their natural checks and balances, and so they wreak havoc.

I mean, as Michelle said, I'm actually sitting here in the Caribbean right now because I've been diving this past week.

Invasive lionfish from the Indo-Pacific have been eating their way through the Caribbean reef systems because there's no natural predators.

So that's just one example.

And, of course, there's other, you know, pollution, and we did a great job getting rid of certain classes of pollutants like DDT, which allowed the bald eagle to come back, but there are others.

And then emerging diseases like chronic wasting disease and others.

But I think we have to call out climate change as, that's my number one concern now, not because it is the near term threat to most of our species, but it is a threat amplifier.

It is basically making all of these other threats more potent.

Obviously there are certain climate-change-related impacts that are, you know, once you re reach certain temperature levels, lethal thresholds, you know, you start seeing direct population effects.

But we're saying the changing climate really ramp up the effects of our existing threats and then add some new ones on top of that.

- Yes, I think it does require us, as a saying goes, to hold not just two opposing ideas in our head at the same time, but many often opposing ideas in our head at the same time.

Climate change is a threat, however, so are things that are perhaps so familiar to us that we think someone must be working on them.

Habitat destruction, invasive species, these are all still very, very present and ongoing problems, if not worsening problems.

So let's talk about solutions.

I mean, I'm interested to have the two of you here talking to each other again, because you're working at different levels of governance, and I think there are, you know, one thing I've learned about conservation from reporting on it for many years is that it has to be done at many different levels.

So Paula, what's happening at this state level, at the state of Washington level that you are especially encouraged about, that you wish that more people, not only in Washington, but anyone who might be listening that you wish more of those people knew about?

- Yeah, so there are some really exciting things happening in Washington.

We just finished our 2023 legislative session, and we actually made some really big gains in both the climate and the biodiversity fields and the intersection.

And so a lot of my work these days is directly in that intersection trying to work on what's now known as natural climate solutions.

And that term really refers to restoring natural ecosystems, One, so they're resilient and have that adaptive capacity that Bruce was talking about.

But the second thing is to look to natural ecosystems to help us draw down excess CO2.

So a couple years ago, the state of Washington passed our Climate Commitment Act, and so it's a state level cap and trade system, and it was modeled after California's, but has some improvements.

And there are, so just a little bit of background, in a cap and trade system, the larger polluters have to purchase emission allowances in order to, you know, meet their required annual reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, and the funds that are created by them having to purchase their emission allowances at auction now go into the state budget.

And the law was written so there's three different buckets of how that money could be spent, you know, and in a way to help us both with the mitigation and adaptation parts of climate change.

And so I was very involved, myself and lots of my colleagues were involved in ensuring that one of those buckets was a natural climate solutions account.

And so this year was the first year that money was going to be available, and this was a budget writing, you know, a biannual budget writing year.

And so there were over $200 million that were allocated or appropriated from the Natural Climate Solutions account to various aspects of helping the state deal with climate change, you know, from that ecosystem perspective.

And so one of the things that we worked very hard on and were successful at was getting $83 million to help protect some structurally complex older forests on state lands and state DNR lands that are otherwise available to log.

And so these are stands that aren't quite old growth, but they have enough complexity, enough plant diversity, enough structural complexity that if you were just to allow them to grow, they're going to continue to improve in, you know, their hosting biodiversity, but also in their carbon sequestration capacity.

And then on the other hand, if those stands were to be logged, there will be net emissions, net carbon emissions from the logging of those older forests because our forests in Western Washington, especially really, really strong carbon sinks, and so mature forests and old growth forests contain, you know, hundreds of years of accumulated carbon, not just in the above ground, you know, in the trees and the plants and the dead wood, but also in the soil.

And after that's clear cut, that kind of disturbance just causes a great release of CO2.

And there is some carbon that's stored in wood products, but it's a much smaller amount than was in the forest.

And then that will decay.

So we got money to conserve some of those forests and then also for the state to buy replacement land.

So they will be purchasing timberlands that are, you know, that are currently being managed for intensive wood production, but not very high carbon sequestration.

And so the budget law is going to require them to manage these forests for a higher level of carbon sequestration than they were before.

So this one, so this is, you know, it's kind of groundbreaking, and it's only the beginning as far as, you know, as far as our intentions.

But it was the first step in laying the groundwork and laying the sort of muscle memory and, you know, conceptual idea that our forests do play a really important role in combating climate change.

And not only that, but when they're managed correctly, they're a reservoir of biodiversity, which, you know, which we need for resilience and just that ongoing, you know, continuity of our forests and everything that depends on them.

- Right and impact forest, not just, I mean, I think people hear a lot about the importance of planting trees, but, you know, trees that are planted in the ground are not going to be great carbon, preform great carbon storage functions for many, many, many years.

But the intact forests we have are performing a great service, and it's important, in fact, crucial to protect them from what I understand.

- Yeah, that's a really important point, very important distinction.

- Yeah, so the state of Washington, I'm gonna bring you in here, Bruce, to talk about the federal and international picture.

But can the state of Washington go ahead and act more or less independently, or was this progress dependent on things happening at the national and international level?

- So this particular action was not.

So, you know, it was state-based legislation, and, you know, I think we all know that there's been incredible activism and attempts to get some sort of, you know, either carbon tax or cap and trade system passed at the federal level.

I mean, that's been going on, you know, at least since Obama's years.

And you know, somewhat before then, but there was hope during the Obama administration that that would happen at the federal level.

But in the absence of that, state's have had to step up and act.

And so this legislation was not at all dependent on what was happening at the federal level.

We hope to spur, you know, action at the federal level.

And, you know, California was the pioneer in this, and our state will likely link its cap and trade system to California's.

And you know, Oregon is working on similar stuff.

So we'll have, you know, sort of this whole West Coast corridor, and so, you know, that's in the realm of climate change.

In the realm of species conservation, you know, there's huge interplay between the federal Endangered Species Act and the state.

And then there's also, and I will let Bruce talk about this a lot, but there's a lot of federal programs that states can take advantage of for habitat conservation and restoration.

And, you know, and I haven't even started talking about the whole connectivity aspect of it yet.

And so if there's time later, I will get into that.

But there's a strong interplay between state and federal policies on those issues as well.

- Yeah, that's key.

Bruce, anything you'd like to add about solutions or potential solutions that you are particularly excited about?

Things you think people should know more about?

- To me, one of the most exciting developments is that the federal agencies and state agencies as well, and the resource managers are beginning to take climate change more seriously and incorporate it into their conservation planning and design and their resource management.

This has not been the case until fairly recently.

In the early 2000s, I mean, I spent 20, 25 years working in more traditional biodiversity conservation work, and in the early 2000s, we began to see the first evidence climate change wasn't something off in the future, but that the fingerprints of climate impacts on species and ecosystems were here and now.

And people began talking about the need to, you know, do climate adaptation in addition to the important work of reducing emissions, which is referred to as climate mitigation, what Paula was speaking to in terms of carbon capture.

But let me tell you, in the 2000s, climate adaptation was considered taboo.

It was considered taboo.

Al Gore, for all the fabulous work he did, you know, did not seriously talk about adaptation.

Because there was a sense that if we talk about adaptation, it takes the pressure off of doing the hard work of mitigation, tight?

- That's right, I remember that, yep.

- You know, but what we discovered clearly, as impacts have been accelerating, these things are not competing, they are complementary.

We need to do both, right?

We can't adapt our way, if we don't get emissions under control, there's no way we can adapt our way out.

But even if we do get emissions under control, the changes are baked into the system so much that we are going to need to be dealing with the impacts for a long time to come.

So one of the things that I've been involved with working with federal agencies on is developing an approach that we call climate smart conservation, that really sets a framework for, how do you consider what the projected climate changes, climate impacts on your resource of interest, and then very specifically develop responses that are not just kind of general resilience.

Oh, this will make things more resilient, but it's actually specific to, here's the climate impacts and risks.

What are the actions that we can take that will directly and intentionally address those climate impacts and risks?

And a lot of that has to do with acknowledging that conservation in the 21st century is not about going back to the way things used to be, right?

The old frame was, you know, restore it back to historical condition.

We now need to think about what is the future condition, that it's gonna be different.

And sometimes it's gonna be disheartening, but we have agency.

We can do things that will make the outcomes better than they otherwise would have been.

And so to me, we are beginning to see state and federal agencies really take these principles of climate smart conservation, incorporate them into their resource management.

And now through the massive federal funding coming through the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law, we're beginning to see the resources that are flowing there make it a requirement that people begin to be very, are explicit about, you know, how is this going to address the particular climate impacts that are facing the system that you're focused on?

- Yeah, that is a real shift in approach, isn't it?

And it's been a long time coming.

- And it is hard for people, lemme tell you, conservation, the root of the word conservation is conservative, and it's the same thing as conservative.

And so we, a conservation community, tend to be very conservative, and, you know, we don't want to let things change.

We wanna either keep it the way they are because we've already lost so much or go back to the way they were.

But let me also just add one thing.

One of the more recent ways that we're getting folks to think about this is by encouraging them to actually manage for change, not just persistence.

And there's a term that's being used, the RAD framework, which is a former surfer.

I grew up in Southern California.

I think, you know, that's a great acronym, but it refers to resist, accept or accommodate and/or direct.

That is, there are times where we have to resist those changes because things are so precious.

There are other times when we're just gonna have to accommodate these climatic changes and other changes, and still other times when we are going to have to actually direct where the trajectory of change moves if we're going to end up with anything with a semblance of functionality.

- Yes, that makes sense.

So the couple of things we've talked about as far as solutions, they are, or at least aspire to be beneficial for both biodiversity and climate stability.

But there are a lot of climate solutions that have some pretty big potential impacts on biodiversity.

And the argument is often, well, you know, look, we're just going to have to make, we're just gonna have to make some trade-offs.

The climate emergency is an overwhelming existential crisis, which, you know, of course, is true.

We need to give some ground on biodiversity.

Are those kinds of trade-offs necessary?

And if they aren't, I'm hoping you'll say they won't, they aren't, won't be.

But how can we avoid them, or how can we at least argue effectively against them?

- So, I mean, it's a really interesting question, and I am not, so I'm gonna say a few things, and if I'm wide of the mark, please let me know.

But I know one of the places where this discussion is happening in Washington state is around energy siting.

And we know that we have to like really ramp up construction of, you know, large scale solar farms, of wind farms, of pumped energy storage, manufacturing facilities for all the components, more transmission lines.

And there's a couple different aspects of that.

And there is some, well, there's a lot of concern in the conservation community in my organization.

'Cause we have a program that is looking at conservation of the shrub step ecosystems and not just localized conservation, but you know, connectivity up and down the whole, what we call the connected backbone from southern Washington up into southern British Columbia, and migration corridors of species, even before you consider adaptation, are important, but then species are gonna have to move north in order to adapt to climate change as things get hotter.

And so you can't have 5,000 acre solar farm that like interrupts the migration corridors of pronghorn or sharp-tailed grouse or sage grouse.

And yet there are, we're speeding ahead in terms of the state granting permits to solar development companies that are not taking those things into account.

So there was a piece of legislation this year that was trying to balance the two, that was trying to say, okay, we need faster permitting.

We need to have all the state agencies that are involved in allowing for clean energy projects to move forward at an expeditious pace.

We need to do that, but at the same time, let's put together a series of programmatic environmental impact statements to try to look at the cumulative impacts.

And we were able to get language in there about ensuring that we look at connectivity and the impact to interrupting connectivity corridors if you were to place.

And then, you know, I'm gonna give a little shout out to the Nature Conservancy.

They put out a report earlier this year called "The Power of Place."

And they looked at west-wide, the essentially infrastructure demand for clean energy and also overlaid that with areas of very sensitive, you know, biodiversity and nature resources.

And the top line conclusion they came to is that, if we are careful, we can build out this infrastructure without having to destroy biodiversity.

We can avoid sensitive habitats.

We can avoid migration corridors.

We just have to take the time and essentially have the political will to be really careful about this.

So that is but one example of how I think we can avoid a conflict between doing what we need to for the climate crisis, which is, you know, switching over our energy sources, but doing it in a way that conserve natural habitats and the connections between them.

- Okay.

Bruce, anything to add to that?

- I think she covered it pretty well.

So if you want to go to questions, why don't we?

- Yes, we have a few questions.

And one, this is an another question about trade-offs in a sense.

Where do you stand on the spare versus share debate when it comes to habitat?

Should we be focusing more on land sharing with humans sharing land with other species?

Or should we be trying to spare, quote/unquote "spare" large swath of habitat and basically keeping humans out of them?

I'd be curious to hear from you on that at both the state and the federal level.

- Well, let me start on this.

I think it's kind of a false dichotomy honestly.

Because we really need to have a whole landscape approach to this.

It's not a spare or share.

In order for functional ecosystems and healthy species, it's clear that we need to have core natural areas, core native habitats that are well connected.

We also have to do what we can to manage what I'll call working lands.

You know, working forest, agricultural lands, ranch lands in ways that are wildlife friendly.

And then even urban areas, which, you know, many people might consider to be, oh, let's just create, you know, really dense population centers.

There are great opportunities for achieving conservation in urban and suburban environments.

So, you know, right now, there's a lot of energy around sort of how much is enough, how much conserved lands is needed?

And at the international level, the recent biodiversity convention conference of the parties adopted a goal of 30% of the earth's lands and waters in conserved status.

Now conserved does not necessarily mean locked up, and, you know, sort of the key thrown away.

It means there are certain areas that need to be protected in their most pristine and intact state.

And there are other areas that really can be managed for human uses, but where biodiversity conservation has an important role to play.

So I think, you know, increasingly the future of conservation is gonna be about navigating how do we use lands, how do we ensure that people have livelihoods in ways that don't completely undermine the biodiversity value and the ecological value of the lands that they're farming or ranching or, you know, doing forest re-activities on.

- Yeah, and one place where we've seen a lot of discussion and a lot of progress on this is with Indigenous communities and Indigenous nations, which are, you know, I think in many ways showing the way in terms of, here's how it's possible to live sustainably within ecosystems.

Paula, I know you have done some work with Indigenous communities in Washington state.

Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about that.

- Sure, yeah, and I wanna, you know, just be really clear that in my discussing our work with different tribal nations, I'm not in any way like speaking for them.

- Of course.

- Yeah, just wanted to be clear of that for the audience.

So a couple examples of big projects we've worked on is land acquisition in key places that were, you know, in the traditional territory of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville.

And these lands were very important for connectivity between the Cascades and the Rockies.

So for critters like lynx and for, you know, continued movement of mule deer, which is a, you know, traditional food for the Colville tribes.

And we were able to acquire some key properties in that area.

And rather than just, you know, keeping them under, you know, non-Native white ownership, we figured out a way to make sure that those lands went back to the Colville tribe.

And it was something that was incredibly, from their words, you know, meaningful to them.

You know, it's a small piece of reparations, but, you know, it was a way for them to, you know, get lands back where they, you know, used to, you know, used to be theirs, right?

Their peoples used to live there and do subsistence management, and so that's one aspect.

And then over on the west side, I'm a board member of an entity called the Nisqually River Community Forest.

And so the Nisqually River is, we like to say, it's the only river that has its headwaters in a national park and has its mouth in a national wildlife refuge.

But all along there, you know, that watershed against the traditional lands of Nisqually tribe, and salmon conservation and access to traditional hunting grounds is really, really important to them.

So Nisqually Land Trust has been operating there for a long time, mostly focused on salmon restoration and acquiring and restoring properties right along the main stem of the river.

But one of the biggest tributaries to the Nisqually is called the Michelle River.

And most of that landscape is currently owned by timber investment management organizations or large timber companies.

And research that was coming down the pike from a couple of, or, you know, several different places, suggested that the typical industrial forest management in that upper watershed was gonna make it really hard to recover steelhead and chinook, which are both listed species in that watershed.

And so the Nisqually Community Forest was formed to try to figure out a way to start acquiring, not just riparian areas, but look at it from an entire watershed perspective, and then manage those lands in partnership with the Nisqually tribe.

And so we've acquired about 4,000 acres, and we've also entered into partnership where the tribe is starting to be able to acquire some of those acres themselves in that watershed.

And then the Nisqually, the community forest is managing it on their behalf.

And this is an example of what Bruce was just talking about.

So this is not lock it up and put it away.

We're doing a lot of restoration of sort of simply structured former plantation stands and so managing for structural complexity, which will help recover the entire watershed.

But in doing that, there's a lot of commercial thinning, and then we're doing some experimentation with creating openings.

So recent research has found that a combination of having overall older age classes at a watershed scale, plus strategically located openings will allow higher river flows during the hotter periods of the late summer and early fall, which really stresses out the salmon populations in the lower part of the river.

So we're doing a bunch of management on a holistic scale in partnership with the Nisqually tribe in order to, you know, in order to restore salmon populations, and that management is helping the forest become more resilient, and it's providing jobs and products to the local community.

- Yeah, we started out this conversation talking about connections, getting beyond single species, and remembering the connections among species and ecosystems.

And many of these Indigenous-led conservation initiatives, I think, are such a powerful reminder of those connections.

And also the connections between ecosystems and people, which we often forget, as you say, you know, because as you say, sometimes those connections are so distant or attenuated.

These projects are a reminder of how real they are and how crucial they are for all of us.

We have a lot of great questions, and many of them revolve around what can be done, what can people do?

So I thought we could spend the few minutes we have left talking about that.

I think conversations like the ones we're having now often end with a sort of, you know, gesture of, oh, here's a few suggestions for individual action.

You know, recycle, call your representative.

But I think those are very worthy, don't stop doing that, anyone who's listening, but they're hardly enough.

So what are some ways that we can work together to make a difference for others, you know, that we can meet the scale of this challenge to make a difference for other species and ourselves.

Paula, I remember when we were talking before the event, you were saying how sometimes just a few people getting involved in a state policy process can make an enormous difference.

- Yeah, so you had mentioned, you know, sort of writing your representative as something that's sort of commonly out there, but doing so in an organized way and especially at the state level.

So even though, you know, we live in Evergreen state here in Washington, most legislative activity is really oriented towards social and economic issues.

And it's very hard to get, and this is not a criticism.

It's because, you know, there are very pressing issues, and the majority of the state budget, you know, is around education and around housing and around mental health issues.

And these are all really crucial things.

And so a lot of times, there's just not enough sort of bandwidth for legislators to work on it.

But if they hear really consistently from their constituents that biodiversity conservation, you know, forest management, you know, all of these things that we've been talking about are important to them.

And even getting like, you know, a few of your friends and neighbors and organizing, you know, requesting a meeting with your state senator or state representative and letting them know how important these things are, it really can tip the scale.

And at the state level, these folks are very accessible.

They love hearing, I mean, you know, my background is a wildlife biologist.

I never conceived myself of being a lobbyist, and I was amazed at the openness of legislators to hear from their constituents and hear from, you know, like regular people, right?

And so the more they hear, and especially on spending these climate commitment act dollars in a way that's like the most beneficial, that gets us the most bang for our buck, like just knowing that there's folks out there that are interested in that and, you know, demand smart spending of those dollars, that could be, you know, hugely beneficial between this year and the next time that they convene in January.

- Michelle, I'd like to offer two very specific things.

- Please do.

- For the audience.

- Please do.

The first is, we started out talking about species extinctions and the problem of endangered species, but really the way to get ahead of that is to keep common species common, as I think, you know, just is intuitive.

The problem is that the way conservation and species conservation is funded in this country, there's a lot of money that goes to species that are hunted and fished because there's financing that comes through, taxes on guns and ammos and fishing gear, and there's a lot of money or less money, but money that goes to endangered species.

But in fact, it's this middle group that are either common or declining but not yet endangered that really is where we can, they need the help.

And over the last decade or so, there's been an effort to really try and ramp up conservation funding, and there's an act that's been introduced in Congress called the Recovering America's Wildlife Act.

It came this close to passing last session and got dropped out of the omnibus, but has been reintroduced into the Senate this year.

And we are very hopeful.

And so I would say that people can, you know, it does make a difference to contact your representatives.

So that's at the highest level.

At a much more local level, one of the things that we also know is that insects and pollinators of all kinds are in decline.

And one of the things that people can do is begin to use native plants in their own gardens and in their communities.

Because most native insect species and pollinators, you know, the non-native horticultural plants that you get don't do much for them.

So I would suggest those two very specific things.

You know, support the recovering passage of the Recovering America's Wildlife Act at the high level and make your own backyard more wildlife friendly at the very local level.

- Great, so what I'm hearing is, everybody, don't forget really important habitat conservation and climate action are happening at the state level, and know that it's perhaps not easy, but much easier to have an individual impact at the state level than it is at the national level.

Also, keep an eye on the Recovering America's Wildlife Act.

I agree that's a really important way for us to start protecting those species that aren't endangered yet, but need our protection, and get out there and start planting some native plants in your garden and tell your neighbors to do the same.

And you can actually make a really big difference in terms of establishing pollinator habitat on a meaningful scale.

So thank you, everyone.

Thanks for participating with your questions.

Thanks for joining us today.

We are out of time, and I hope that you will check out some of the other sessions that are happening at the festival, and you can find information on all of those sessions at crosscut.com/festival.

They're going on tomorrow and in person on Saturday.

So thank you again, Bruce and Paula, for joining us, and thanks to everyone who tuned in.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues)