Future Ecologies

On the emerald isle of Ireland, an easily-overlooked creature holds the history of a nation within its shell. From the rise and collapse of heavy industry, to a bloody civil war, the riverbeds of Ireland have been witness — and they tell a story of change and possibility stretching far beyond any human lifetime. With the help of guest producer Caitlin Kennedy, we're tracing the modern arc of Northern Ireland through the story of the freshwater pearl mussel. — — — 🦪 Find photos, citations, and a transcript of this episode at futureecologies.net 🌱 Support this indie podcast, made with love for the world. Join our community on Patreon for as little as $1 each month to get Exclusive early access to new episodes Access to our discord (and bookclub) A back catalogue of bonus content Stickers, patches, hats (and a 50% discount on all merch at any membership level), and Your name listed at futureecologies.net/join — forever — — — Featuring the voices of Frank Mitchell, Mary Catherine Gallagher, Stiofán Cullen, and Sebastian Graham. Music by Olly Keen, Thumbug, Martin Austwick, Sorcha Kennedy, plus our theme by Sunfish Moon Light From Caitlin: As well as the episode’s incredible contributors, a huge thank you to everyone at the Ballinderry Rivers Trust, especially Mark Horton for introducing me to freshwater pearl mussels in the first place. Thank you to Dr Evelyn Moorkens and Dr Ian Killeen for their tireless work researching this endangered species over the past 30 years: without them, Irish pearl mussels would be in much worse shape. I'm incredibly grateful to Wetland Surveys Ireland, Dennis Funk, Sarah Jones & John D’Arcy for helping bring this project to life and to Carrie, Sorcha & Garfield for lending an ear with wise words of feedback. And finally, thank you Karina for lending me hydrophones and sharing in my sonic enthusiasm and Jessie for endlessly nerding out about mollusks with me - hopefully we'll come back as one in the next life.See also: Caitlin's article about nacre for Scientific American, and her soundcloud PS. Please do not go stomping around in sensitive Northern Irish river habitat looking for mussels without a survey license!

We have a soft spot for food systems that challenge the modern convention: food systems like forest gardens or sea gardens that don’t at all look like vast rows of monocultures, but instead blend into the landscape — to the point of being invisible… at least until you’ve learned how to see them. It just so happens that, not far from us (in the Cowichan Estuary), there’s another kind of ancient food system being revived, and we were looking forward to visiting it as part of our upcoming season 7. But when one of the all time greatest shows on Canadian radio beat us to the scoop, we thought we may as well save ourselves the effort and bring you the story that much sooner. From Ideas and producer Pauline Holdsworth, this is “What the River Wants to Be” This is just Part 1 of a 2-part series. Listen to Part 2 (or find CBC Ideas wherever you get podcasts)

Spring is here, and (not to brag, but) around these parts, the smell of flowers is in the air, and everything seems to be buzzing with life. Times like these, it’s hard not to have plants on the brain, and we fully endorse you getting out to meet your green neighbours. While you do that, we thought you’d like to hear from two of our favourite plant enthusiasts: Chelsey Armstrong and Leigh Joseph. You might remember Chelsey from our season 4 classic: FOREST / GARDEN, where we explored the roots of permaculture through the lens of Indigenous food systems which have been overlooked all too often. Today, Chelsey is sitting down with Leigh Joseph: Skwxwú7mesh ethnobotanist, author, and botanical entrepreneur. Both Leigh and Chelsey do incredible work, in academia and in community. Their conversation today will take us into some of the thornier parts of the field (and deliver us to fruitful gifts). Enjoy! — — — This podcast is supported by our incredible community. Join our Patreon (PWYC) for early episode releases, a back catalogue of bonus content, discord chatroom access (including our book club), stickers, patches, toques, and more!

So you want to put good fire on the ground, but how?? We're taking you to Yurok territory, at the mouth of the Klamath River, to join the Cultural Fire Management Council for 3 days of burning — not just for fuel management, but for all sorts of cultural and ecological values: food, wildlife, materials, and more. We're finally moving from theory to practice, as we learn what it really means to be on the fire line. This is our 6th return to the subject of fire. Call us obsessed, but we can't think of a better symbol for what this podcast is all about: demonstrating how people can (and need to) be active stewards of their ecologies, rather than passive victims of collapse. In fire-evolved ecosystems all over the world, prescribed fire has been an ecological management tool since time immemorial. — — — 🔥 Learn more about the CFMC at culturalfire.org 📸 Find photos, citations, and a transcript of this episode at futureecologies.net 🌱 Support this indie podcast, made with love for the world. Join our community on Patreon for as little as $1 each month to get Exclusive early access to new episodes Access to our discord (and bookclub) A back catalogue of bonus content Stickers, patches, hats (and a 50% discount on all merch at any membership level), and Your name listed at futureecologies.net/join — forever — — — This episode features the voices of (just some of) the CFMC crew. In order of appearance: Elizabeth Azzuz, Dylan Stevens, Rick O’Rourke, Margo Robbins, Robert McConnell, Annelia Norris, Isabel Guerra, Amanaka Yancey, Jordan Spannaus, Claire Brown, Max Brotman, and Will Bruce. Plus music by C. Diab, Thumbug, Adrian Avandaño, G̱a̱mksimoon, and Sunfish Moon Light With special thanks to the Confluence Lab's inaugural Artists-in-Fire Residency (Sasha White especially). Thanks as well to Fern Purdy, and Anita & Micah Williams. Heads up — Adam is writing a blog post about his experiences at the CFMC. We'll link to it here when it's out! Cover art by Ale Silva Catch up on all our other episodes On Fire: FE1.5 - Camas, Cores, and Spores FE1.6 - Combustible Communities FE2.2 - In the Wobble FE5.4 - Under Water FE5.5 - Walking on Two Legs Plus three related episodes: FE4.7 - Phase Change Earthkin's Trial by Fire Disintegration Loops (by The Wind)

😅 We accidentally released an unfinished draft of our upcoming episode! If you auto-downloaded it, please don't listen to it (or don't be surprised that it's undercooked). It's going be a great one, and we want you to hear it when it's done — which will be very soon.

Summary Pending

Eric Higgs (of FE3.1, FE3.2, FE3.3, and FE4.9) sits down with Laura Govers, who has been working on bringing eel grass back to the Netherlands' Wadden Sea — on an island that moves, no less! This conversation covers the low-tech solutions that they concocted to plant hectares of eel grass, the social invisibility of the marine domain, and the semantics of "restoration" in a rapidly changing world. Catch some videos of Laura's team over at the Zeegrasherstel NL YouTube channel — — — 🪼💖 Everything we do is brought to you ad-free by our wonderful supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to get Hyphaedelity and all Future Ecologies episodes early, as well as exclusive bonus content, discord server access (where you can also find our book club), stickers, patches, cozy hats, and more.

Bogs are our absolute favourite places to be. They’re not only tremendously important ecosystems, rich in exquisite biodiversity and massive stores of carbon, they’re also uniquely beautiful. These serene, colourful spaces jumble land and water into something at once both alien and familiar. In this episode, we explore the wonders and the mysteries of peatlands, through the story of one very special (and threatened) bog just outside of the city of Vancouver. We meet the scientists who fought for its protection, and some of the folks who are studying it and working on restoring it to this day. Plus, we answer a tricky question: should we still be extracting peat to help grow plants? — — — Visit futureecologies.net/listen/fe-6-8-for-peats-sake for photos from some of our boggy adventures, full credits, citations, and a transcript of this episode 🪼💖 This episode is sponsored by our amazing community of supporting listeners. If you appreciate it, you can become one yourself! Get the scoop at futureecologies.net/support

Mendel has another show to share with you: Waterbodies It's a video podcast dedicated to a particular body of water we have here in Vancouver, called False Creek, but more generally it’s about how we can transform our urban spaces into thriving, biodiverse, celebrations of living nature — for everyone’s benefit. If you live in a city on a coast, and you dream of swimming in clean waters, tidepooling along the shore, and seeing all kinds of sea life, right next to downtown, this show is for you. So far on Waterbodies, we’ve discussed the interplay of environmental and human health, frameworks for Indigenous protected and conserved areas, environmental rights and personhood, marine biodiversity and citizen science, and urban planning in the face of rising sea levels, and there’s lots more to come. Find Waterbodies on the False Creek Friends YouTube channel and wherever you get podcasts PS. This is more than a podcast. It's a project in civic reimagination. If you'd like to get involved with grassroots environmental democracy, and take part in shaping the future of Vancouver, we'd love to have your help. Visit falsecreekfriends.org to learn more and get involved.

We had the opportunity to hang out with two of our favourite podcasters: Amy Martin of Threshold, and Amy Westervelt of Drilled. We've previously featured both of their work on the Future Ecologies feed, and we couldn't pass up the chance to talk shop about the latest (fantastic) seasons of their respective shows, and get to know more about their personal journey. That's this episode: Part 1 In the supporter-exclusive Part 2, we get into more of a roundtable on the practice of environmental journalism and podcasting in these especially scary and chaotic times. For the two of us, unschooled and unqualified in anything resembling journalism, it was a blast to have the privilege of what ended up being a private consulting session with two of our heroes. Interested? You can find it on our Patreon

What do you call it when a population of podcasts mysteriously drop episodes on the same topic at the same time? It's Critical Mast! We're so proud to present this nutty experiment in community podcasting, with its roots going back to the very beginning of our show (and the beginning of our dedication to silly puns). Thanks to help from our pals at Jumpstart Nature, Golden State Naturalist, Learning from Nature: The Biomimicry Podcast, Nature’s Archive, and Outside/In, it's time for a bumper crop of podcasts about (or inspired by) the perplexing phenomenon known as masting: where plants somehow synchronize their seed production across staggering distances. Give all these pods all a follow, & check out this Spotify playlist (to which episodes will be added as they drop). — — — 🌱 💖 Thanks to all our supporters for making this show possible (and keeping it ad-free and independent) Join our community for as little as $1/month for access to early episode releases, a bonus podcast feed, merch, our discord server, book club, and more!

We've got another edition of our intermittent interview show for you, this one featuring Sadie Couture in conversation with Hannah Tollefson. You'll remember Sadie as co-producer and reporter of FE3.4 — Dama Drama. Since then, she’s become a PhD student in Communication Studies at McGill University pursuing research at the intersection of media history, sound studies, and feminist science and technology studies. Hannah's work is situated at the intersection of environmental, media, and infrastructure studies. She researches the role of socio-technical systems in land, water, and labour struggles, infrastructures of energy transition, and the politics of green capitalism. This episode focusses on Hannah’s writing on the Port of Vancouver, the concept of "tidewater", the nature of logistics, and the supply chain in which we’re all entangled. Don't miss it. (Hannah's dissertation, the main subject of this discussion, is under University embargo until Dec 14, 2025. Check back here after then for a link. Until then, one chapter is available below). Hannah kindly compiled the following citations: References KD Derickson, The Annihilation of Time by Space: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335733261_The_annihilation_of_time_by_space Deborah Cowen, The Deadly Life of Logistics: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816680887/the-deadly-life-of-logistics/ Reconstructing Pre-contact Shoreline (UBC article): https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/facultyresearchandpublications/52383/items/1.0407075 Hannah Tollefson, on the ECHO program in The Journal of Environmental Media  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383972463_On_synchronicity_Green_shipping's_logistical_and_real-time_media Related news & links Future Ecologies episode “Terminal”: https://www.futureecologies.net/listen/fe-4-2-terminal On plans to dredge Burrard Inlet: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/dredge-burrard-inlet-vancouver-fraser-port-authority-tsleil-waututh-nation-1.7545465 On tanker traffic impacts of TMX: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tanker-traffic-trans-mountain-pipeline-expansion-1.7305702 Report on effectiveness of habitat compensation in the Fraser : https://www.cmnbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Assessing-Habitat-Compensation_2016Appendix-I-IV.pdf — — — ✨ Get Hyphaedelity episodes (and all other Future Ecologies output) early on our Bonus Feed

We’ve got a great guest episode for you today, coming courtesy of our friends over at the podcast Cited. They’ve got a new series out called “Green Dreams” — covering stories of radical environmentalist thought leaders, and the ripples they’ve left on the present day. We wanted to share with you the very first episode from this series, called “The Green Cosmos”, covering Gerard O’Neil’s 1970s vision for humanity’s passage to the stars. Find the rest of Green Dreams and much more from Cited wherever you're listening.

We’ve got something a little different for you: something a little less in the sciences, and a little more in the humanities — in the realm of language and human experience. Today, through a series of conversations, we’re exploring the notion of what it means to have a relationship to land, to be or not be of a place (in other words, to belong or not) and how the intrinsic tensions in all that may be metabolized through the practice of art, and more importantly, that of life. Our co-producer and interlocutor for this episode is Darby Minott Bradford: poet, editor, translator, and the author of Bottom Rail on Top. Our guests are author Jordan Abel (Nishga, Empty Spaces), multi-disciplinary artist S F Ho (Green Lines), and poet Cecily Nicholson (Wayside Sang, Harrowings) Music by Thumbug

It's a double feature! With help from recordist/anthropologist/podcaster Louise Romain and musician/conservationist Javan Hunt, we're visiting the Caribbean. First, off the coast of Colombia, on the islands of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, and next a musical excursion to Grand Bahama. — — — From Reef to Ridge is an audio documentary love story with the Ocean, the reef, and its guardians; an invitation to travel to Caribbean shores to immerse yourself in the lived experiences of coastal communities, and in the sounds of the local ecosystems: the coral reefs and the mangroves. You will hear stories from Raizal fishermen, turning their ignorance for corals into love, respect and admiration, and learn about the work of the female marine biologists of the Blue Indigo Foundation to restore and heal corals. Together, they share about their dreams for the future of the reef, the challenges they face with global warming, climate change and extreme weather events, and the hopes of marine and coastal ecosystem regeneration after the recent hurricanes. Featuring the voices of Laura Valderrama Ballesteros, Yanelys Cantillo Villa, Pedro Livingston, Ruben Azcarate, Camilo Leche, Casimiro Newball Hyman, Josselyn Bryan Arboleda, plus original music by Marc Blandel. Find more from Louise at Circle of Voices, wherever you get podcasts, or at tuneintotheworld.com — — — As Waterkeepers Bahamas' Mangrove Nursery Coordinator, as a public educator, and as a musician, Javan Hunt has introduced folks of all ages to the joy of taking an active role in ecological flourishing. Javan's dedication to environmental stewardship is rooted in his love for The Bahamas — a place of stunning beauty. Its ecosystems, particularly its mangroves, are the lifeblood of coastal resilience. But after Hurricane Dorian, vast swaths of these critical habitats were destroyed, leaving communities vulnerable. both ecologically and culturally. The crisis wasn't just environmental — it was spiritual, a loss of identity tied to the land and sea. He has used his artistry and environmental work to create a movement that restores more than just mangroves — it restores connection, culture, and a sense of home. Find more from Javan on all music platforms, or at javanhunt.com

Hello! As you know well, we're not the news. The news is generally bad, and we prefer to not be bad news. So, it's a funny thing for us to release an episode about politics. In this edition of Hyphaedelity, our interlocutor Adam Davis (EIP, FE5.6) and his guest Tim Male (EPIC) discuss going from working at an environmental NGO to within the White House, the role of executive orders, the state of environmental regulation, effecting change, the voting age, and much more (from a vantage point of January 30, 2025). — — — Want to get Hyphaedelity (and all other episodes of Future Ecologies) early, plus bonus content, merch, community discord access* and more? Join our Patreon, and support ad-free, independent podcasting. *Where you'll find lots of impassioned conversation about this episode.

The Miyawaki Method of micro-forestry is a viral sensation: sprouting tiny, dense, native tree cover in neighbourhoods all around the world. With the promise of afforestation at a revolutionary speed, this planting technique has become the darling of green-space enthusiasts, industry, and governments alike — yet few professional or academic ecologists have commented on its efficacy, or even seem to have heard of it! In this episode, we debate the legacy of Dr. Akira Miyawaki: the man, the myth, and the method. — — — Visit futureecologies.net for photos, a transcript, and citations for this episode If you appreciate the existence of independent, ad-free podcasting, you can support us — at patreon.com/futureecologies

Mendel here with an exciting announcement: I'm producing a new video podcast for a local environmental advocacy organization: the False Creek Friends Society. False Creek, as the name suggests, is not a creek. It’s a tidal slough, and it’s one of the most visible waterways here in Vancouver, where I live. It’s right next to downtown, and it’s always bustling with life. It also has a reputation for being highly polluted, thanks to bygone industry and present day civic infrastructure. Despite that, a recent bioblitz survey revealed that it’s home to more than 500 different species. The goal of the False Creek Friends Society is to see this waterway become a focal point of healing the intersection of ecology and urban society, and have it serve as a living lab for us to better understand our relationship with these waters. More specifically, the proposal is for False Creek to be designated as Canada’s first Urban Marine Park, with Indigenous co-governance, under the 30 x 30 conservation goals. Of course, getting there is going to take work, and a lot of learning — lessons which I think will be relevant not just for me and my neighbours, but anybody living near water. The story of False Creek’s future is about public health, climate resilience, Indigenous reconciliation, more-than-human beings, and environmental justice. Because after all, we’re all waterbodies. If you’re as excited about this project as I am, you can learn more and get involved at falsecreekfriends.org Waterbodies is recorded on location on False Creek. The first episodes will arrive this September, but the trailer is out now. So I hope you’ll get subscribed to the Waterbodies feed anywhere — YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etcetera. (Just in case you were wondering, Future Ecologies is not going away. But it’s also still not sustainable as a full time job for me or anyone else. If you want, you can help us out at Patreon.com/futureecologies, but in the meantime I think this makes for a pretty cool balance.)

We're excited to introduce our brand new spin-off format: Hyphaedelity (which will ironically be somewhat lower-fi than our usual output). Here’s the deal: Hyphaedelity is our experiment in chatcasting, but with a twist. On each episode, we’re inviting a past guest from Future Ecologies to conduct their own interview, and bring us all along to sit in on their conversation. We wanted to see what would happen if we chased some of threads outwards from the dense tangle of ideas usually on display in our main episodes, and to be a little looser with it — not having to worry about pesky things like narrative clarity, or scoring, or sound design. This inaugural episode brings together Sarah Jim (of Scales of Change, Chapter 6) and Lucas Glenn, to discuss Lucas's ecologically engaged art practice as the former artist-in-residence for the city of Kelowna. Let us know what you think about this new format! We've got a wide array of conversations heading your way, and we hope you enjoy going a little off-trail with us. Works mentioned: Seed Bomb Recipe and 9 Statements Pepaken Hautw M.A.S.S.I.V.E. Compost Cycles for Island X The Wild Ride

When is it ethical to kill one thing to save another? Lethal intervention is a common practice in the field of wildlife management, especially when the survival of a species hangs in the balance For as long as we’ve existed, human beings have employed killing as one of our primary responses to adversity. We seem to believe at some deep level that if we have a problem, killing the manifestation of that problem might just make it go away. This is the logic of political assassinations, revenge plots, and the endings of most Hollywood blockbusters. But when we actually apply this logic to the more-than-human world, what does it mean for the species and ecosystems we’re impacting? And what does it mean for us? In this episode, we're facing this essential moral dilemma as we learn a way to navigate the tension between collective and individual well-being. — — — Find credits, a transcript, and citations at futureecologies.net/listen/fe-6-4-humane-being Future Ecologies is completely independent and listener supported. Help us keep making this show, and get all the perks at futureecologies.net/join