Transcripts For CSPAN3 Michael 20240704

So lets take our blackberries in. The federal government. Did they issue you a blackberry . No, actually, have a palm pilot. I have a real. Plane. Thank you so much. This has been so fun. Ari. Thank for being here. My name is natalie gonzalez. I am a council member, Montgomery County. I represent district six in and also the chair of development for the Montgomery County. Besides all that, im a big environmentalist so im. So when the mayor of gaithersburg contact me and said, natalie, would you like to introduce author . And i said, yes, but whatever you give me or whoever you, me, you must be in an environmentalist like me, because thats what really im just really passionate about it. So he said, well, have you met Michael Mehta webster . I said, no. And he said, well, well, you should. And then he told me about the rescue effect. So you havent read it. Raise your hand if you had read the book already, if you have, lets just say okay. If you havent. Then im sure youre going to be eager to find it because i read it with children who are going to be here shortly. And it was actually breathtaking. So with that, im going to just a little bit i have the great honor of introduce professor Michael Mehta webster. Hes a professor of practice in the department of environmental studies at new york university. Is an expert on ecology conserving ocean and philanthropy as well. An ardent natural enthusiast. He has led efforts to connect edge science to protecting species and ecosystems in the wild. As executive director of the Coral Reef Alliance with that going to the mic to mr. The professor Michael Sahakian he can enlighten us about his book. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for that introduction, natalie and. Thank you all for showing up today. Im super to be here and i dont know if youve going to some of the other sessions. This ones a little bit different. Were not doing an interview. Im just going to tell you a little bit about my work and my book, and im going to start by just talking a teeny bit about the rescue effect. Thats the title of the book. And what that is, is its this tendency in nature for nature to be able to respond to environmental change successfully, a resilience in nature. And were to talk a lot about that today. But before we go there, i want to just do a quick poll. Who in the room in the last couple of months has seen a story, tv or in a newspaper about some environmental issue, some species, an ecosystem. All right. So a lot you as youre paying a little bit attention, youre seeing this. All right. Raise your hand if it was a good story. Okay. We got you. Excellent. Yeah. And what you can see is consuming the alternative was a bad news story. Yeah. When we hear about things in the environment and conservation, thats what we hear right now. And theres a good for it because theres a lot of things in the environment, nature that people are understandably about. But i want to talk in this session today about a little bit about the other side of things as well, which is about how nature is actually pretty good at dealing with change and that the story of whats going on in nature is not entirely that gloom and doom story. Theres another side. And the reason that other side exists is the rescue effect. All right. There we. All right. How many of you, that kid, when you were growing up who wanted to be a marine biologist . Right. I mean, it existed, right . So when was four years old, thats what i decided, i was like, im going to be a marine biologist. Thats what i was going to. And i did that. I made that decision of this guy right here. This is jack. And i used to watch these specials on pbs of Jacques Cousteau going around the in the calypso. And i was like that, is what i want to do. It probably helped that i grew up ionsi in a little tod li corn farming and dairy farming. Im like, yeah, i want to get out of here. I want to go there. Well, i guess i must be because not only was i that kid that wanted to be the marine biologist i became marine biologist. And by the i was in my twenties, i was in graduate school doing research. And the thing i really wanted to study was coral reefs. I was so in these amazing ecosystems and all the colors and the species and what i really wanted to know about were the fish and summer many, many of the turn white like this and some of these coral heads were gigantic things were like a, you know, like a statue on a city Street Corner that would take you like a minute to swim around underwater. These are colonies, coral, that had probably been living for hundreds and of years. But that year they bleached and most of them died. And so it started dawning on me that theres something really important goinon here, this is an event that this reef has probably seen in hundreds and hundreds of years. Theres real aroblem here. And so tshift a bit of my focus away from the fish that i really love that got me voed in the system in t pce and starting to take a look at what was going on with the corals. So these are corals in this photo, if you can se one that branching kind of heart shaped, one in the fd and that tbackground looks a bunch of little circles. So i say colony because corals made of a bunch of individual animals. The animals look Something Like a little anemone if youve ever seen an anemone before. And theyre all clones of each other in a colony. One starts the colony and it and makes two. It divides and makes for makes eight and so on and so forth. They can grow into these colonies of thousands and thousands of genetically identical animals. And you can see if you look closely at the one in the reound, these little pits, but in the background, all those circles are the individual. Miracle biology going onl these corals. The color of these corals is not the coral. Thisomething e its little tiny. You think of it as tiny plants. They little algal. , little species of algae that live in single cells and they actually live inside the of the coral in a mutualistic. And the way this works that the coral provides a nice place for algae live in the sun and the algae grow inside the coral and they produce food and they give some of the extra food to the coral. The algae gets, a place to live. It gets nutrients given to it by the the coral gets food. Imagine this if you were hungry right now, if you were a coral. All you have to do is go lie out in the sun for a little and youd get a meal. Its really kind of cool to think about whats going on here with this biology. And because corals are doing, they have some extra energy and they use energy to make a skeleton thats underneath what you can see right here. And its a white skeleton of Calcium Carbonate and they this to hold space to compete with their neighbors. And they also do it to overgrow their neighbors, to get access to the light, same way a tree might try and overgrow tree in a forest. And if you look at a healthy reef, you can see what that looks like. These corals are totally trying to grow over other in this masse thicketo ll out this healthy, healthy coral reef, which you can also seeose corals are building amazing matrix oe dinsional habitat in this stem. All of that structure is corals building different che reef. And if you ever go to a coral reef, yo notice caves and nooks and crannies and commenta all of that three dimensional structure is being by corals and similar organisms can do the same kind of thing. And so we can see that when we look at a reef, we can see all that. But if you pan back, this making of a Calcium Carbonate skeleton does a lot more. Heres a ribbon of reef in fiji and you see that ribbon of reef its entirely made of coral. The coral is basically building a giant wall. It can grow in the ocean, but it cant grow over the surface. So it grows right up to the top and it forms that massive barrier reef in that system. And as long as the core is healthy it can keep growing and can build that system forever. The biggest one of these in the worlis about hundredil long. This is northeastern australia and this is the Great Barrier re. You can see in the upper right of that photo the Great Barrier reef is arguably the largest biologically made structure the pletand its easilyisible from space and. So by building all this stuff on, reefs, the corals e creating a t of value for people and for wildlife, for people. Theres somethg like several ndred of millions of people who rely on coral reefs in some way or anoth for their livelihood. And that includes things like tourm. I mean look at this turtle on a reef in hawaii. Ok, many tourists are above it who have gone to place to see that animal above a coral reef. Theyre important for fisheries. People fish from coral recently also selfish coral ree. Theyre important for shoreline. Those barrier reef block waves help protect the shore. And theyre also really important for bio prospecting, new medicines, cancer, drugs or antivirals or, sunscreens and thing that ive always been most excited about. The corals are really important for wildlife. Coral reefs have Something Like a quarter of. All species in the ocean that are found on them where theyre only this little tiny fraction of 1 of the surface area. So theres all these species chock a block plaque packed into a coral reef in a way that kes coral reefschike tropical rainforests. And so you can tell, im excited about coral reefs. Im excited about corals. But the problem is that corals are facing an existential threat. Actually, theyre facing a whole bunch of existential threats. I dont use that term lightly. What im getting at here is there is a real question about whether we are going to have coral reefs the future . And i could give you a million statistics, but statistics are sometimes hard to like feel. I wont actually show you what this looks like to the that you can see the screen i know the lighting is not perfect this photo thats on the screen right now is a coral reef in discovery bay, jamaica. And this picture was taken in 1970 and it was by researchers who were interested in studying the coral and how it was changing over time. They built that white square, that quadrant, and they put it on the reef and they could go back to the same spot year after year. They drilled a hole in the coral head, the foreground, and they tapped in a little steel pin so they could put it right back in the exact same place. Make sense methodologically, scientifically. But 40 years later, somebody went back and found that pin and took the same photo in same place. D must show that one to you w. I know not easy to see, whats going o is that all that coral that was growing there, that was building that reef, creating all that, its all gone. You can look in the background and maybe see a little bit of coral, but its in reality. This isnt really a coral reef. Its shifted to a different of ecosystem. And this is not unique to discovery bay, jamaica. This same pattern is happening in place after place all over the world, and its got people really concerned. And its not that we dont understand this is happening. Theres actually an over of reasons for why its that this is just a partial list of things we know that are causing this kind of shift. It includes things like overfishing and pollution, outright habitat destruction. It includes diseases that are spreading around coral reefs and killing corals. And the biggest threat of all that we know of right now is coral bleaching, which is tied to Climate Change. And so thats what i saw in el nino in 1998. This is what is really bringing coral reefs down today. So in this slide, thes a photo athows three different panes of the same photo taken at different time and whaithows you is the progression of a coral bleaching from 24 cember to a couple of months later to a few months after that. And what you see in the first fre that sort of orange brown color, which is happy coral reefs with their symbiotic algae in the next frame, the cora a all white. Thats the bleaching. The bleaching happens, the algae and the corals rationship breaks becau the water is too warm. And the coral basically expels those in order to survive. Once that happens. The color of the coral is gone. It lost e lor of its symbionts. And what youre seeing is its skeleton, its transparent flh. So that animalt this point is in acute. If the water cools down, i might survive. And we see that sometimes with coral. But if it stays hot, those are probably going to die. And in this you can see that they did once theyve turned gray in that last frame, thats a sign that the coral animals are gone. And other things like, seaweeds and bacteria are growing where they once. So about a dozen years ago i took a new job and i did lots of research around the world. I worked on conservation for a long but i started as the executive director, a coral reef Conservation Organization called the Coral Reef Alliance. And we were really cool work. That was largely what would describe as Community Based conservation. And the idea here was that people who live in coastal environments, who depend on reefs, have a vested interest figuring out how they can interact with their reefs a way that provides benefits to them but doesnt undermine this resource that rely on. And so we worked with them problems like trying to curb overfishing, trying to solve coastal pollution. And we knew from the research that if we did that we could create some benefits for that local reef, including some benefits for corals. Corals tend to grow a little bit better, survive little bit better, the young survive a little bit better. When you do things like make a healthier environment locally. So this is all really great, but i have to as i was doing this work, which i found meaningful and very compelling, i escape this sort of sense of concern that this very scale work might not really add up to anything in. This world where coral reefs are disappear at very large scales and started to wonder, is this is this something thats actually going to make a difference in the long run . And i was talking to lots of donors and lots supporters, and i had to tell them with the straight face, hey, work is getting things done. Its making a difference for these reefs. I realized that in order for to continue to do that, i needed to test some of those assumptions. I need to figure out, do we have reason to believe that coral are going to be able to survive this world that we are creating and, changing so quickly . And is there anything we can do to tip the scales in the corals favor. And so i started this project of working with a bunch of scientists and conservation folks to say, hey can we try and figure out whether or not we might have coral reefs in, the future . And the way we approached this problem, we built a big mathematical model. See big equation, big mathematical that tried to simulate how a coral reef works and corals grow and they reproduce and also how they evolve over. And then we used other simulations to try and figure out do we think corals are going to be able to make it through this bottleneck that theyre in thats in front of them around things like Climate Change and do we think things we can do in conservation are going to make any. Basically, this is an idea were trying to get the best possible answer to this question of are we going to have coral reefs and . Can we help . All right. Im going to summarize years of research in one slide. The answer is yeah it looks like corals actually they potentially adapt to the changes that were creating but they probably cant do particularly on climate if we dont do anything to mitigate Climate Change, its probably game over for. But if instead we mitigate coral Climate Change a little bit, draw down our co2 emissions a little bit, we start tipping the balance in their. The second thing is those little project of doing coral reef conservation, they actually can add up making a real difference for coral reefs. So that thing that was sort of bothering me and, i needed to take a look at. We got some evidence like, yeah, that can make a difference under circumstances. So im a biologist, im an ecologist by training. Im going to do a little biology foray. I hope you guys dont mind too much. Im going to throw out a little jargon, ill explain it. Okay, so whats going on . Are the whats going on inside the model that leads to this prediction that corals make it through . One of them is something that scientists call phenotypic plasticity. Its a big, ugly phrase. It means is that organisms can li across a range of different environmental conditions. Imagine you right now youre at a low elevation. If you went gh on a mountain, your body would begin to immediately change physiologic lee because you would be experiencing less oxygen in the air. Your blood composition would. You dont have to tell your body to do this it just turns on automatically your. Phenotype would be changing. Corals do this too. They can adjust to somewhat temperatures. They can adjust to somewhat different conditions. They can adjust to everything. Thats were having bleaching. But the ability to live across a range of conditions makes a big in the model. The second piece is something that scientists call demographic rescue in this the idea here. So imagine a coral that gets hit by a bleaching event. Letsay its an incredibly severe bleaching event. It kills off every last coral. Well, how is that going to become a coral again . If theres no coral there, reproduce and provide young to the reef . That will never be a coral reef again unless comes in and puts new coral on it. However, corals, when they reproduce sexually, they make larvae that in ocean currents and. So those larvae on one reef can drift through the ocean and land somewhere else. So on our hypothetical reef thats lost all of its coral, if it gets an influx, baby corals in from other reefs, i think of it like a ticker tape parade of, babies coming down from the water and landing on the bottom. It can basically get a restart. Thats called demographic rescue. And it happens on reefs. And we see them get decimated. We see corals in and drift in and repopulate that reef and then the last one is called evolutionary rescue. This is really just darwinian survival, the fittest. But it happens very short periods of time where because like temperatures are going up very fast, theres selection for individual corals that are better at surviving at higher temperatures. And if those individuals survive and they reproduce, the whole population can to being able to survive at higher temperatures at the same time. Now, any one of these things alone is probably not enough for the corals, but when y combine all three of these processes together, the mathematical sort of underpinnings, e del it creates this emergent property, which is that the corals under right circumstce they look like they can make ithrough this emergent property is what i call the rescue effect. Its all of these different processes that happen in nature that combine when the environment is changing, they turn on autumn radically and collectively. They help organisms adapt to changing circumstances and it turns that the three ive mentioned here are three of about six. I six of them in nature that happening all over the world four species everywhere right. And as i was doing this work, i decided, you know what, i want to dig deeper into this, i want to look at whats going on nature more broadly than coral reefs. I want to take a look at the rescue effect. And so i decided to write a book and theres a copy of my book right there. The photo, the book and what i was doing in this book is i was really asking two questions. How is the effect working for species in nature moreroadly than corals . And what can we do in situations where we have reason to believe that the rescue effect is not Strong Enough to help species . And so i wrote the book as a series of stories. Stories, species, stories about places, stories, people that help illustrate nature is adjusting on its own and the kinds of options we have when we when we choose to intervene on behalf of nature. So one of those stories is about tigers. India tigers in india have had a really rough go of it for the last hundred years. Theyve lost a lot of land, lots of them have been shot and the populations really declined in response to. The Indian Government has made a series of parks they call them Tiger Reserves to try and protect tigers. In the book, i looked at the story of one of these reserves that has for a while a really sad story in the early 2000s this park which is called panda reserve, was had an influx of poachers who came in and were hunting tigers to sell black market endangered species products and. They killed every last tiger in that system. And so now this Tiger Reserve entirely devoid of tigers. This is like the worst conservation outcome for, a Tiger Reserves. And if we ended the story there it would simply be a tragedy. But the researchers and the wildlife managers thought you know what need to bring these tigers back. And so they went to the nearby parks. They darted few tigers. They introduced them panda and. They stuck and what happened with these new tigers when they arrived. Once they went through a period of adjustment, getting know a little weird like alien abduction lifted and moved to a new place but once they got over that they realized that they were in a really really sweet place. There were no other tigers to have to fight with for territories. There was lots of food and they really, really well, they had lots of babies. Their babies survived. Well, they had a baby boom. And this is something that happens over over again in nature when organisms get knocked down in abundance, their reproductive rates actually usually go up. So when you get a disturbance like this, if a few left, theyll actually repopulate within ten years this park was back to its pre poaching number of tigers in it and that pattern of responding to disturbances like that is one of the most common patterns we see in nature. The book i call it reproductive rescue, and you can think of it as this kind of baby boom. Heres an example of a species for which rescue effect just is not Strong Enough. This is a mountain pygmy possum. Its australias only hibernating marsupial. It lives in the Snowy Mountains of southeast australia. Who knew there were snowy in australia in the wintertime . This hibernates under the snow. Now it turns out that because of Climate Change, the environment on the top of these mountains is changing so fast that all people who work on the species are sounding alarm, saying this species is going to go extinct. All of these things in the rescue effect just arent Strong Enough. And this is one of those cases in nature. Weve got to decide are we going to intervene here . And so what are we going to do . Theres a really interesting proposal on the table for this species of actually plucking some of them up and, moving them to an entirely new habitat and trying to establish a new population somewhere else. And this kind of question coming up all over in conservation because with Climate Change environments changing and organisms to survive are going to to move to new places. Some of them can it on their own. In fact, many of them already are. But some species wont be able to do it on their own. Were going to have to choose or this species anybody recognizes. Is is an american chestnut tree. So this was at one point in time a dominant in this part of th world. Ititxisted from mississippi all the way to canada and was one of the main tree species in the eastern forests, escily in appalachia. Well about 100 years ago. People accidentally introduced a fungal disease from asia that attaedhese trees. The trees had really no resistance to the disease. Disease spread from new york was first observed throughout the entire range of these trees, killing as as we know every single thing you would call a tree. Now, in some cases, the systems underground survived and keep sending up these little suckers of new trees trying to grow. But every time that happens they just get reinfected with the disease and, they die. This is a situation where when we look it, we can tell very clearly this species is going to go extinct unless we intervene and. So what people have been trying to do is theyve been looking at every rescue and saying, can we speed that process up and theyve done it by trying to raise crossbreed trees, take trees that survive, breed them together, see if they can breed of resistant variety or even cross them with other species of chestnut trees that can resist the disease to see if they can create a new pattern. The disease where the trees are able to survive. But the really interesting thing thats going on here is that in the last of decades, people have started making genetically modified american chestnut. And the way they d this is th looked at other species that were able to fight fungal diseases. They looked atheat, for example, which has fungal disease, and it produces a particular enzyme that helps it fight that disease. And what they did is they took a copy that gene from wheat, and they put into the american chestnut genome. And in doing so, they created trees that now can survive the disease and can see them in the photo. Those withering trees on the left. Those are the wild type trees that have been eosed to the disease and those flourishi trees on the right. Those are genetically modified trees. And so whats happening now in conservation is that as we are looking at species for which we have to intervene in new ways, we have a whole bunch of new questions that are t us about. Well, okay, maybe we can make genetically modified tree, but should we be. And what does it mean to be doing that . Should we be moving species to new places . How much effort should we be into trying to bring back any one species versus another . And happening is were having lots and lots of new off decisions and new values. In the book, i use the stories of these different places and these different species to help bring those Big Questions to. But my goal is not to tell you what the right answer is. Im not going to tell you. You should use a genetically modified chestnut tree or you shouldnt. I think i actually want you to think about that. I think and i think thats really important. Were entering this era where conservation is going to include lots and lots of decisions like that. And i think its time for people to start that and asking them, well, what do they value . Do they the existence of this tree more or do they not having a gmo more . Those totally valid things to be asking yourself. And so my hope is that as youre reading the book, you go through that experience of asking yourself, these questions and asking, but what feels right to you. All right. So while i was writing this, i also thought about what were some of my the major take home messages for conservation overall . What can we learn looking at the rescue effect . What can we learn this collection of stories . And one of the things that is, you know, one of the take home messages that im going to share now is the no brainer of the bunch. This one is like really obvious. Anyone works in conservation, but i think it warrants stating it again. And the problem species that are struggling to adapt right now is that their environment is changing too, too fast. Its not change per se. Thats the problem. Its how and how quickly. And the thing we can that will help most help nature the most is slow down. The rate of change. The biggest piece on this is around climate. If we can figure out how to slow down the of Climate Change, thats going to make an enormous difference for you know and number of species on the planet. So thats number one. Thats the no brainer. The second is when we are looking at individual, we can look at that options through this lens of the rescue effect. As i said earlier, there are six different processes in nature are adding up to this emergent pattern. If we begin our conversation, we can start with the whole set options that are on the table and really think through what we can do. We want species or organisms to persist and debate the merits of all the different options that are possible. And i think thats important, especially in a where we are like now where change is happening so fast we want to be thinking through all those options are from the get go. I am missing slide. So the last piece is that we to figure out how to celebrate novelty in nature. And what i mean by is we need to figure out how we can come to terms with the fact that nature is changing historically when you look at conservation of this field the goal has always been how do we keep nature from changing. If you look at Something Like a National Park a National Park is managed to minimize human impact. Its managed, keep the same species in the same in sort of this like static in time picture and happening as the world changes is thats increasingly impossible. The next best goal in conservation has been restoration. So if something has changed from what it was in the past, can we clawed back to it what it used to be in that system . What i would argue is that while both of those goals are laudable, their increasingly impractical in world we live in, and thats because the environmental conditions are changing everywhere. Species are moving, species are evolving, relative abundances are changing. I think we need to come to terms with this in way that allows us to celebrate when change happens, not see. Change in and of itself is something sea change as evidence that the rescue effect is. And so i want to just conclude by talking little bit about where we started. We started by talking about some the negative news thats in conservation. And i dont want to deny that that is true. Theres lots of things for us to be worried about. But if we actually peel it back and we look at whats happening to most species on the planet, the vast majority currently are already adapting to the changes that theyre experiencing. And this is because of the rescue effect. And i think thats good news because it means that were in a position where we are not going to lose a large fraction of the biodiversity on this planet any time soon. Still could based on our choices but we have agency here. We have the ability to make decisions around climate. We have the ability to make decisions. Conservation and individual cases that can tip the balance in favor of species and ecosystems that we care about. Moreover, we know something is really in trouble. Weve got this incredibly rapid early expanding toolkit that we use and we can apply to help things, persist and to help them remain on the planet. We just have to decide and how to use it. Theres going to be lots of difficult tradeoff decisions. Theres going to be lots of different values decisions. But at the end of the day, its our choice and. I think thats something to be reasonably optimistic. Thank you. As we go. Okay. Thank you so very much and going to your initial topic. So the resiliency. Okay, so i dont have any doubt and i think many people have any doubt of the resiliency of individuals pieces of by these mechanisms that you described as well as entire ecosystem and and also i have no doubt of the opportunity of embracing change as a structural characteristic of of the end of these ecosystem. The problem is that these status quo needs to be able to the Ecological Services that the vulnerable species by excellence needs which is us its us the problem that we cannot survive. We are a demonstrated that we really cannot embrace any type and we cant give up any thing we cant. And most of wont go back to preindustrial lifestyles. We we wont most of us wont have. Fewer children, most of us wont do. The things that are going to be required embracing that change so. What are you going to do about that . So thats a biggie, right . And you think that things like climate, right. Right now, track record is not very good. You know, havent really bent the curve on climate in any meaningful way yet. And if we choose as a species, not do that and go as were going, then yeah, were going to have more and more these problems. My, my point here, not that we got this in the bag that we, you know, that we know exactly. We have already committed ourselves to doing everything thats going to be necessary its more that we havent lost the opportunity to do it that we are in a position where can choose to do things like solve Climate Change, which is going to have a big impact on wildlife will. We do it well. I certainly hope so but i dont im not in a position to be able to guarantee that. And so, you know, you talked about sort of individual and ultimately individual actions are important in our relationship with nature. And, you know, i do lots of individual actions myself ultimately if were going to if were gonna solve big problems like that, its unfortunately going to take and i say unfortunately because its pretty difficult sometimes to convince government to you know i would say from my values do the right thing on climate for example. But one of my concerns since is having in conservation for a very long time is that sometimes we get to a position where were very demoralized people really sort of dont to hear anything more about nature and they begin sort of tune off and tune out. And i think part of the reason for that can be the drumbeat of sort of the stories. And again, not to deny those negative stories, but i think we its helpful to recognize there is hope in nature. We do have an ability to change that trajectory. And if we do so, we have every reason believe that most of the life that currently on the planet is going to make it through. So i havent answered your question directly, but i do think that having point of view that recognizes sort of the power of nature to heal itself, its useful piece of the puzzle as were thinking about how we motivate people to take action. One afternoon. My question is regarding the pollinators, the earth and their vanishing numbers, a. K. A. The honeybee. Hmm. How has man had a profound impact on their demise . Yeah so i am in no way an expert on honeybees. Pollinators. So im a little out of my depth here. What i can tell you is theres actually been some really interesting studies recently, looking at honeybee honeybees as actually being of the problem rather than than the solution that. In some ways, weve sort of potentially overdone honeybees in a way thats resulting in outcompeting native bees in a lot of places and sort of simplifying ecosystem toward just one species, where in a native bee assembled have many. What i would put my money on is that that large array native species and if the things we can do to promote bee habitat those are the kinds of actions i would take. I like honey myself and i dont have opposition to honeybees, but i think we should be thinking about right sizing honeybees as pollinators amidst the pollinators, that we can also be supporting. That. We have to be just we are speaking to it. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is laquan safir. Im one of the references to the us. I was working the u. S. Government in afghanistan, but now im here. Im volunteering for afghan community, the silver spring. Im supporting like more than 100 and cultivation. Wow. And wanted to share our concerns and our issues regarding the rent of the Montgomery County which is going up every time and i want you to share these with you so. It does have to do with the rescue. So the michelle our main concern in issues we have regarding our rents a number of us almost 95 of the families are new to the us and trying to adapt the new culture tradition and lifestyle and. We dont have experience with the paying rents. Most of us had our houses back in our country. Number two, we are we are starting our lives from zero. And how many basic needs to survive and paying higher rent is an extra burden on our shoulders. Number three, most of us have survival jobs with more difficulties. We paying our current rent and other bills number four most of us are currently under the Government Support and we are not completely sold selfsufficient and we increased rent and bills which we are not able to pay them. And about five most of the families reduces their childrens food and pay their bills and rent. As i am working full time job and im also working after hours but im not able to my rent on time. So if youre doing if you dont have a home act passed by the consulates im sure a number of homeless families will be increased and it can affect children. And this. Whole market as. Were all so. Like leave that question was for our councilmember oh i cant so that so i would say please her afterward thats not something that im capable to comment on. Yeah. The rescue affects the Montgomery County county. We care deeply about the rescue right now at the right time, right. Of course. Back to the top part, thoughts on that. He was incredibly important. Anyway, im a huge supporter, a wildcat sanctuary. So big cats, huh . The United States, i think just, passed. Oh, my. Yeah, just some legislation about making it. Illegal to breed. And so tigers lions and that sort of thing because when theyre bred in captivity, they cannot be introduced back into the wildlife. I know that the country of india is trying to recoup their tiger because interesting alphabet there are more tigers captivity in the United States than there are left the wild in the entire world. So how is youre talking about going to affect that . I know we need the government to step and do more things, but um, and thats just one example of an animal is sort of on the verge of extinction, if you will. Yeah, i would actually give the government of india props on tigers. So theyve had a hard run and they were heading toward extinction. If you go back to 1970s, the trajectory was pretty clear where this was going in the time since then by creating bunch of parks and working more and more on those parks, their their tiger populations gone up, theyve more than doubled and most of the worlds wild tigers are now india. The that theyre going to have next is that theyre doing such a good job of managing tigers. Their tigers are filling up the parks and theres no space for the tigers. Theyre going to start exploring outside the parks. So i think the next issue for time for india is not going to be can they have more tigers in the wild . Its going to be can they manage the human tiger conflict as tigers dont have space in parks anymore and. They begin to explore the countryside. So, you know to the extent you want india or a place like that to have more tigers theyre really going to have to make more parks at a certain point, the parks get saturated and. Parks like patna at this point are pretty saturated. And more and more tiger parks in india are heading to that that sort of level. So its a different kind of problem. Youre right. The tigers go into domestication. The whole rules, and that changes right now. India doesnt need to be reintroducing tigers at a large scale theyve got plenty of tigers there theyre getting to the point where theyre going to have too many than. They know what to do with direct direct connection between the buffalo and the domestic battle outbreak in montana, where we introduced the buffalo and. Now that the viruses are killing a legend, now its a similar situation. A half step two, step three, step for step five. Right. And so you can try and control some of that epidemiological problem of reintroducing animals like i know that went before they reintroduced bison. They have to go in like quarantine for a year or Something Like that to see whether or not got the disease. So there are things you can do. Disease ecology is really though and you know are they gonna be able to do that perfectly . Im not sure. Im no expert on that one. But youre right, there are challenges of taking in captivity and putting them back in the wild that you can inadvertently bring in diseases. And that was what we saw in the american chestnut, right. That basically was from people who planted chinese chestnut trees in, groves in their garden that brought the disease in, likely. Hi. Quick question. The cheapest form of solar energy is solar panels, fields, but increasingly throughout the state and throughout the United States of america. Local communities oppose them. And they usually say that why cant we put them on rooftops . But five times more expensive . So im just curious about your thoughts on that personally, im an all of the above guy. Guys support solar, wind and nuclear. So im i want to throw everything at this. But, you know, you be against solar unless youre also for wind and nuclear. Weve got to support one of those three things and solar in fields is the only affordable form electricity for middle class people. Im on board. If i had a roof, i could put it on. I would put on there. Listen, i think that from an Energy Perspective we need to be doing, you know, many, many Different Things at once and trying to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels again, that that sort of first no brainer take home message of slow the rate of change thats largely an Energy Question and can we do things to both reduce what were putting out there or draw down what weve already put out there. Solar is a great and i think that youre right what youre getting at is theres this you know exist, ing and in some cases increasing conflict between people terms of deciding where to site these these renewable Energy Questions all across the United States. Yeah, and thats not going to be helpful on climate. Right. So i would say that sounds like a worrying trend, not my area of expertise, but a worrying i think because solar has been getting more efficient and cheaper that we do have some opportunities. But ive just looked a map recently of how much of the u. S. Would have to be covered by solar cells in order to order to supply the countrys needs. Its big. Its really big so theres definitely going to be conflicts over space. Well, anymore, a very interesting perspective. I love the way youve titled it, the rescue, because as human sometimes we known to be constructive, which youve demonstrated, sometimes we can be extremely. Im thinking about the challenges trying to manage the ocean, but were pretty far from there right now. So we got to start taking look at our own Natural Environment, our water streams, our rivers, our lakes, how dams. So i guess my one question to you is what research have you done in that area . My next question is all point on arrays is the following everything discussing has to do with ecological and Environmental Protection correct. But i think if the very people that are responsible for protecting the environment, they themselves are not in a position of safety and that actually a challenge which is actually has led to a lot of the ecology local disaster that we find in world. Lets bring home a little bit so we find ourselves currently lets use domestic i like to talk about what im doing at home right so the schools of thought about how much should be used to wash your dishes you 20 different brands on the shelf thats all affecting your waterways right our sewers contaminated we have one product up to the next we have challenges lets go and write home into the home we said want a situation where weve just recovered from many of our are under stress. People are still trying to find a way. Its a challenge. At the same time, i must admire you for reaching out to the human spirit to say, lets go ahead and lets try and preserve one another. Youre a one man band, a one man army, as it were, trying to get it right. But you also to the people that bring governance us and inviting them to come and join your challenge and, also the society say lets get involved, but then how do we get it right . Even one once of fear we have a have community that are taxing the have nots unreservedly. It becomes a challenge. So exactly what we in nature is taking place within our own environment. So weve got two acts at the moment, one called the home act and another act. Thats all trying to rescue our economy. Madam second, i can do without this am very loud. And what what are we trying to do here . Hang on. No, hang on, maam, is this an open that is an open meeting. Oh, no. Im speaking to the author and he can help address it. You have said so in final acts. What i really saying is, can we have a solution in our Natural Environment where we can also look issues and finally afterwards what im really saying so i believe the home act is a great i know that the opposition is fighting with it and theyre looking find a resolve none us here today are yet to put on the fire were not yet embarrassing we just really think that the obstacles i mean youre leading and what is bleeding we please our political people on the opposition we want to talk to boys and make some good what needs be done. Thank you very much madam. Yeah. So listen, just want to say i dont i dont know the, specific issue youre youre talking about with the home act, etc. I can empathize with you in general in terms of the question about, you know, whats the solution. There will never be one solution. And the reality is that if we want to do things like preserve nature in the way that ive been about, theres many, many Different Things we need to do and we to include people in that process. So i think what i would say in general. Yeah. Mm hmm. Time to. Time to finish off. All right. Thank you, everybody, so much for coming. Re a