In The Reeds: Canada's Conservation Podcast

How will the efforts to address climate change look in a post-coronavirus world? Will it bring out the best in us? Or will our exhaustion and economic fears set the conservation movement back? Jennifer makes the case that important things can come from difficult events—including the existence of Ducks Unlimited. Seasoned crisis management expert Ben Morgan joins the pod to unpack this idea.

Word Nerd meets Bird Nerd in this episode about how the three North American organizations of Ducks Unlimited are adjusting course with the unveiling of a new international conservation plan. The conversation also touches on mysteries of corn, ducks in horror films, Bernie Sanders, and Harley Davidson. Sounds random, but it was recorded in a simpler time.

The theme of this year’s World Wetlands Day is biodiversity. As Australia’s bushfires rage on, the state of their biodiversity remains front-page news. Dr. Chris Dickman, a professor of ecology at the University of Sydney, assess the devastation and shares why he believes Australia is the canary in the coalmine for the rest of the world. Then, Canada’s own biodiversity expert, Dr. Kai Chan, helps us to understand what lessons Australia’s biodiversity challenges can teach us here at home.

Join host Jennifer Sanford for a conversation with Dr. John Clague, the grandfather of Canada’s natural hazard research. Learn about what happens to wetlands after major earthquakes and what role wetlands play in mitigating floods, tornados, and wildfire.

Ducks Unlimited Canada CEO, Dr. Karla Guyn, talks wins and challenges in conservation, how conservation partnerships lead the way, and the vision to strengthen Canada’s conservation community.

In The Reeds host Jennifer Sanford is joined by the pod’s former host, Wayne MacPhail, as they celebrate the best and brightest moments of the year. Together, they open the vault to 20 previously aired episodes. Don’t miss the end, as Jennifer shares what inspires the spirit of the pod.

What to do about carbon is a major issue. But what do we actually know about carbon? And how can the wetlands, grasslands, and coastal area we conserve help? We’re talking Carbon 101 on this special edition of our In the Reeds podcast.

In this episode, we’re continuing our conversation on sea-level rise. In Nova Scotia, the Acadian dykelands can no longer be maintained to the 2050 climate projections. The community must make critical decisions about dykeland maintenance and salt marsh restoration. But achieving a way forward will take community consensus – and concessions. Our guest, Dr. Kate Sherren, is a researcher and professor at Dalhousie University. She studies the relationship between climate adaptation and public resistance in Atlantic Canada, especially in the face of climate-related changes, sea-level rise, and storm surge.

Everything in conservation is about risk. That’s why, when you hear us talk about conservation, we always start with what’s at stake. A big risk to our landscape is the rising of sea levels – and thus here is part one of our two-part series on sea-level rise.  In this episode, Jennifer is joined by Globe and Mail journalist Matthew McClearn, author of Sea Change.

When the United Nations first ever biodiversity report was released in May, the results seemed pretty dire.  But there is no better guest to help us make sense of a way forward than Dr. Kai Chan. He was one of the report's authors and he joins our pod to help answer this question: In the great debate of climate change, what will it take to change?  

Abigail Derby Lewis marvels at monarchs and the perilous journey they make each year from Canada and the U.S. to Mexico and back. She's the Senior Conservation Ecologist and Senior Program Manager, Chicago Region at the Field Museum's Keller Science Action Center. Abigail's also a science translator, she turns research knowledge into practical actions citizens can take to conserve nature. And, Ms. Derby Lewis is also the first of a series of folks we'll be introducing you to who turned their passion for conservation in careers, creativity, and action in the community. Conservation of wetlands, of course, is near and dear to all of us at Ducks Unlimited Canada. But, we know we can’t tackle conservation alone and we’re happy to celebrate our fellow travellers. Abigail became passionate about conservation when, as a nine-year-old girl she looked into the face of a zoo-keep silverback gorilla. She went on to study primates all over the world. But, these days she's making certain that Chicago provides migrating monarchs the vital milkweed they need to feed and reproduce. I talk to her about the flight and plight of the monarchs, the role cities can play in providing those butterflies and other pollinators safe haven, and what you can do in your community to make certain that cities are habitable, not just for humans, but for the insects that are just passing through.

This episode begins with a remarkable story about vision, persistence and, sewage. It’s the tale of the little town of Niverville, Manitoba and its groundbreaking solution to dealing with night soil. Next, as winter approaches we ask the question everybody thinks of when they stroll past frozen ponds. It’s about ducks and feet. 

Dave Phillips, the chief climatologist for Environment Canada this country's homespun, homegrown weather guru. The Don Cherry of weather in terms of fame on the CBC anyway. For decades now he’s been the avuncluar go-to guy for journalists from coast-to-coast who want a folksy, informed dose of weather history, retrospective or prognostication. Why was it so hot in Calgary last August? Ask Dave. What’s with all the rain in Halifax. Ask Dave. But these days Dave Phillips, now 72, is answering a different, deeper question. Why has the weather been so aggressive, so persistent and, well, just plain weird lately? I caught up with Dave as he was about halfway through a Canada wide tour answering those questions in a talk he calls: Weather and Climate: Not What Our Grandparents Knew” The exhausting tour is Environment Canada’s way of celebrating Dave’s 50 years as this country's most famous civil servant. And, as you’ll hear, its also a chance for an older, wiser Dave Phillips to share his concerns and hopes for a country and world facing what he considered to be the most important issue of the day - extreme weather and climate change. We talked about that with a special emphasis on the role natural habitats, and especially wetlands, play as buffers against the increasing hard blows of amplified weather. As Dave says, it used to be that we worried about what falls from the sky. Now we need to worry about the surfaces it falls on. What happens with urban landscape replace and ignore the natural? Find out as I chat with Dave Phillips.

This episode begins with an engraving that was tucked into the corner of a 18th-century map of North America, a beaver map. The engraving depicts an almost Hieronymus Bosch-like scene. One that’s a psychedelic, fever dream of beavers in Canada. In the background, a bifurcated Niagara Falls tumbled into a broad river. In the mid- and foregrounds are rodentesque creatures, dozens of them. These are part beaver, part bear, part human animals that have the orderliness and industry of a work crew of navvies. Some carry logs on their shoulders like the seven dwarfs hefting shovels, some carry cowpats of mortar on their tails. Others seem to be barking orders from neatly constructed ramps. The beavers, an inscription on the engraving tells us, are building a Great Lake through their organized labour. To understand that map, and beavers' relationship with the landscape I spoke with Glynnis Hood, a professor of environmental science at the University of Alberta, Augustana Campus. Glynnis is a beaver expert. She’s studied the big-toothed rodents impact on the Canadian landscape. She’s especially interested in how its industry and ingenuity has keep water on the land, even in times of drought. And, how its ecological engineering has created and maintained wetlands for centuries. Ducks Unlimited Canada folks, like many Canadians, have a relationship with the beaver that is, well, complicated. As Glynnis will explain, the fur trade almost wiped out the entire population castor condensis, our native species of the rodent. In the late 1930s Ducks Unlimited wanted to enlist beavers as ecological good soldiers. It encouraged a beaver comeback, that was pretty successful. But these days, loggers, folks in the oil and gas industry and cottagers have seen the reborn beaver populations flood their lands and thwart their industries.  Even Ducks Unlimited Canada researchers find their wetland water control efforts confounded by busy beavers. I spoke with Glynnis about all of that, and how Canadians can best make peace with our little rodent friends.

We begin this episode 40 miles above the fertile fields of Alberta. From up here the rectilinear hashmarks of crop boundaries are pocked and dented by darker, irregular patterns, like raindrops pooling on a patio table. Those are pothole wetlands left behind by the scraping and gouging of the receding Wisconsin glaciation thousands of years ago. These days you’ll find these watery basins, often as many as 40 per square kilometre, all over the prairies in Canada and the U.S. But, when the glaciers receded their were many, many more of them, millions of them. They became an essential habitat for hundreds of plant, animal and insect species - especially at their margins. But in the last century humans have managed destroy a lot of those formerly abundant wetlands. In some places 70 per cent are already gone. Those that remain are often sometimes precariously surrounded by vast fields of canola, wheat or barley. In previous podcasts we’ve talked about the importance of those wetlands to waterfowl, for flood and drought protection, as natural water filters and as environments that increase our general health and sense of well-being. But, in this episode we’re going to explore another advantage of prairie potholes. To do that, we need to get a lot closer to the ground. Down there, a few feet about the heart of a wetland we’re in insect territory. Thousands of species of bees, flies, spiders and beetles make their homes in hollows, holes and native grasses. And many of those insects are pollinators. Others are predators that could make a light lunch out of other insects that attack the crops that surround the wetland. So, could the insects this wetland husbands be of service to the surrounding crops? In other words, could pollination and pest control be another advantage of keeping wetlands around? To find out I talked with Paul Galpern, a Landscape ecologist at the University of Calgary.