A Conservation Conversation

Biodiversity is key to our resilience as the climate changes. Our guest today is Conservation Biologist Charles Bier, Senior Director of Conservation Science the at Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Charles has nurtured a deep relationship with Pennsylvanian nature since he was a six-year-old walking around with snakes in his pockets, and has spent his career trying to preserve our wonderful woods, wetlands and waterways.

Visit waterlandlife.org to learn more about Western PA Conservancy’s work to protect and restore exceptional places. 

Watch the companion We Are Nature video series here, including a short video about freshwater mussels featuring Charles’ colleagues at WPC.

Episode Credits: Produced by Taiji Nelson and Michael Pisano. Editing by Michael Pisano. Music by Mark Mangini and Amos Levy.

Thanks for listening! Follow Carnegie Museum of Natural History on Instagram,  Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop on the latest news from the museum.

Transcript

Charles Bier (00:00:02):
We have to continue to work towards the realization that we are a part of our landscapes, we are part of nature. We can't survive without it, and yet we have this tremendous responsibility to take care of it. I think if we have that mindset that we'll be able to achieve a sustainable relationship with our surroundings, and I have to go back to that word every day, sustainability. We need to figure out what that means in the ways that we operate. And if that's going to be a driving force, it needs to become that sooner rather than later.

Michael Pisano (00:01:08):
Welcome to We Are Nature, a podcast about natural histories and livable futures presented by the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. I'm your host, Michael Pisano, and today we're learning about biodiversity and conservation. Diversity is key to resilience as our climate changes. Protecting biodiversity is protecting the essential qualities and functions of our habitats. For example, for Pennsylvania to have forests that sequester carbon and provide clean oxygen and mitigate flooding and offer food material and peace of mind to humans, Pennsylvanian needs biodiversity. A forest needs diverse fungi, bacteria and insects and nematodes living in the forest soil to create the right conditions for trees to grow.

(00:01:51):
The trees also need freshwater muscles that clean the rivers which move water and nutrients through the forest and across the state. As we learn from Eric Chapman back in episode six, freshwater muscles can't survive without the fish that are part of their incredible symbiotic reproductive strategies. This means that freshwater muscles also need the waterways to be full of healthy aquatic plants and bugs that the fish rely on for food. You get the idea. Biodiversity is all about interconnectedness. There's no question that we humans are part of that web of relationships, and no question that much of our species impact on biodiversity is troubling. However, today we're going to learn from an expert in positive human impact on biodiversity.

(00:02:44):
Conservation biologist Charles Bier joined the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in 1981. He spent 23 years as director and zoologist at the Conservancy's Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program. And in 2006, Charles stepped into his current role as Senior Director of Conservation Science. Charles has nurtured a deep relationship with Western Pennsylvanian nature since he was a six-year-old walking around with snakes in his pockets, and he spent his career trying to preserve our wonderful woods, wetlands and waterways. We chatted on the floor of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History back in 2021, and I am excited to share this conversation about everything from turtles to solarizing surfaces.

(00:03:24):
So without further ado... Okay. So the first thing's just very easy. Please introduce yourself, tell me who you are, where you work, and maybe even how long you've been at it.

Charles Bier (00:03:40):
Yeah. My name is Charles Bier and I'm with Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. I'm a conservation biologist and I've been on staff since 1981, so quite a few years, yeah.

Michael Pisano (00:03:56):
Fantastic. Yeah. I wanted to start really broad with Western Pennsylvania. From a conservation biologist's point of view, what is this landscape? What can you describe at a high level the ecology of the region?

Charles Bier (00:04:15):
Western Pennsylvania is part of the temperate forest eco-biome, and as such, we're at a mid-latitude. I think, of describing Pennsylvania and Western Pennsylvania in terms of the terrestrial and the aquatic, because in terms of Pennsylvania, this area is special in a way because it's part of the Ohio River drainage, which you don't find in the central and eastern part of the state. So that major drainage describes the biodiversity that you have in the streams here to a large extent species that are not found in the Susquehanna or Delaware, Potomac, and it's very rich in that way. So on the terrestrial side, it is called Penns Woods because William Penn-

Michael Pisano (00:05:18):
Please note Charles is putting up big air quotes right here.

Charles Bier (00:05:21):
... "founded" it for the Europeans, and it was almost entirely forested. And those forests are largely deciduous or a mixture of our state tree, the eastern hemlock, and a variety of deciduous trees. And then we have other trees that are evergreen cone bearing trees as well. But it's largely a deciduous forest. As you go south north, the forest changes, as you go up in elevation forest changes due to the difference, not only in the abiotic factors, the temperature of moisture, but also the geology changes. So here in West Pennsylvania, we're living in a plateau landscape. And if you go southeast, you get into the Allegheny Mountains and then further east you hit the Appalachian mountains and those are all different rock layers.

Michael Pisano (00:06:27):
Excellent, thank you. That is exactly what I was looking for. And as a person who spent time in this area as a naturalist, but also just as someone who's lived here, I mean, this is maybe a floaty question, so take it in whatever direction you like, but how does it feel to be out in the woods in western Pennsylvania? What does it evoke for you?

Charles Bier (00:06:55):
Well, that's where I think I relax the most and I find the most freedom just to breathe and to walk. Walking is a big thing for me, just getting out and not going at any set speed. Some people might get a little frustrated with me when we go hiking because I tend to stop every so many steps. There's something else to see. But it's all interesting. It's so diverse. There's always something new. And even if you see a plant or an animal when you're on a walk a particular day, you might see it do something that you've never witnessed it before. So yeah.

Michael Pisano (00:07:43):
That's fantastic. And speaking of that diversity, I'm curious again at this big high level, tell me a little bit about the biodiversity of our region.

Charles Bier (00:07:52):
The biodiversity, again, is all related to the habitats that are found here, and so much of it is forest based. But because we do have many wetlands, because we have the richness of different types of streams, groundwater, there are some caves that are found in the western part of the state. So the biodiversity is all based on those riches of habitats. Quite a few forest species, lots of insects, a wealth of birds, and we have about 3000 species of vascular plants in Pennsylvania. A big chunk of those are not native, but yeah, a richness, again, based on soil and water, we have both those.

Michael Pisano (00:08:48):
That's great. It's a great start. Yeah. I know this is a very broad question and it's in part because I want to jump into a broad assessment of some of the threats to that biodiversity. So what is going on in our region, and if you feel like starting globally makes more sense that, what would you describe as the greatest threats to our biodiversity here?

Charles Bier (00:09:11):
Well, we're certainly now waking up to experience the number one being the change in the global climate. And because of other situations, the way that humans have treated the land or used it, a number of the other factors that have basically always been threats are becoming that much more important. So for example, the fragmentation of habitats and the need for species to be able to move around in that a landscape is going to become more and more rim for some of them that can't get around that well, or they can get around, but they don't do it on our sense of time. And that's the other major factor with the climate in addition to things that are happening with temperature and changes in patterns of precipitation, it's just the rapidity of just how fast it's happening that species generally can't respond that quickly.

Michael Pisano (00:10:32):
Yeah. I wonder if you could offer just a couple of very quick examples of the types of extreme weather or those rapid changes that you've seen at specific sites around here.

Charles Bier (00:10:48):
The climate scientists tell us that the climate has been changing for quite a while. We started seeing this in hindsight. So for example, I did a study in the Buffalo Creek Valley back in the mid 1970s, and I was very familiar with breeding bird populations and how to identify them. And one morning I heard one that I couldn't identify. I knew them all, and here was the one that... So eventually I found the yellow-throated warbler sitting on top of a sycamore tree. It wasn't supposed to be there, but that was actually an indication I think, of what was happening. Now, I didn't do a study on it, I don't have this scientific basis, but what I experienced with that one southern bird species that it was not breeding in Pennsylvania ever before, was that the whole population was shifting and moving north.

(00:11:51):
And in the coming decade, the yellow-throated warbler started showing up all over the place. Basically it was moving north and has now reached basically the northern border of Pennsylvania. There's part of biology called geography, which I'm very interested in. It's just the patterns of life on earth, what lives where. And those patterns are defined by certain things in the environment, some of them being those habitats based on soils, temperature and moisture. Those are some of the main drivers. Sometimes some of the drivers are other species that a particular species is related to and depends upon for survival. So it can only be found where that species is found. They've evolved together.

(00:12:51):
So these patterns have been in place for quite a while and the earth has been warm for a number of times. So those patterns also change. And a lot of people know, for example, that some of the species that used to live in Pennsylvania are no longer here, not for reasons of human persecution, but more that the environment has changed thousands of years ago when you had things like wooly mammoth and the mastodon, those two elephants occurring in the state.

Michael Pisano (00:13:27):
And so what are the kinds of impacts of climate change that you see here today in Western Pennsylvania?

Charles Bier (00:13:33):
Well, it's critically important that we look to the scientists who are studying these things. So scientists are very careful. They never like to give you a definitive answer unless they're really sure about something. So you have all of these predictions that come out and tell us that there's this percent chance that this is actually the case or not. But we're seeing changes in the weather here in Western Pennsylvania, of course, we're not right on the ocean. So things like sea level rise we will experience, but in not the same way as if we were living on the coast. We don't really receive hurricanes. We receive them after they've already been across the continent for a while and they do change our weather. It's just a little hard for people to get this idea of global climate change when they're not feeling the temperature suddenly going up 10 degrees in a matter of a very short period of time.

(00:14:44):
But I think that what we are seeing is changes in the water cycle, and that will mean a lot to plants and animals and other life on earth when these changes take place. And in my life, I've come to know a couple streams very well, and I'm seeing them change. I started seeing them change a few years ago, and the beds of the streams are becoming very upset. We are receiving much more severe storm events. That is something the scientists can already point to, that our storm events are becoming much more energized with all of the extra energy in the whole global system. And we're receiving flooding that comes very quickly, large amounts of rainfall that might have been spread out over a few days. Now they're coming in hours and it's that much water flowing down a stream has not been designed to have those flow patterns. So the stream bed, the banks are being ripped up. You can tell by walking into the stream and looking around the rocks are getting flipped over. So all the things that live in the stream, they have to deal with this.

(00:16:24):
And for example, I've been concerned about a species in where I live and is found in western Pennsylvania, somewhat uncommon turtle called a wood turtle. And the wood turtle, it hibernates in stream banks and down in the bottom of streams. And I can just imagine that during hibernation when it's lethargic, it can't escape, it can't move. Some of these floods will just be unearthing it. And some of these individuals may not be able to wake up or find a way to get back into hibernation after they've been churned by the stream bed over churning or the banks being dug out by some of these huge events.

Michael Pisano (00:17:14):
And I think it might sound like an obvious or even a stupid question, but how is that connected to humans? Why should we worry about stream beds? Why should we worry about the macro invertebrates in the stream, things like that?

Charles Bier (00:17:29):
Human communities are being flooded more and more, and I think that that will only continue and will increase. But when you upset a stream in the way that I've described, the insects, the small life that's living in the stream is damaged. That's just part of the food chain. So you have birds in the forest that will be affected because those are the things that they rely on for their food. And then of course, the birds are part of a larger food chain. People become more sensitive to this when it actually affects us. So people who enjoy angling, the brook trout, our state fish, the eastern brook trout, is going to be influenced by streams becoming that much more energized when they're flooding, as well as the brook trout's also sensitive to water temperature. And that's the other thing that will affect it.

Michael Pisano (00:18:31):
I've seen a lot of very public facing conservation efforts like World Wildlife Fund. They focus very much on your charismatic animals, your charismatic megafauna, or when you look at invertebrate conservation... Excuse me. It's the monarch or the honeybee. Do you see amiss with that framing? Would you like to see that framing change towards a more habitat level view of conservation? Or do you think that that has a role to play that species focused conservation narrative?

Charles Bier (00:19:02):
Again, we talked about values before and those organizations are largely responding to the public. So what catches the public's attention? It's what we call the mega charismatic vertebrates more so than something that doesn't have a backbone or yeah, even plants can't compete with the bald eagle and the river otter. So I mean, I've actually fought that battle most of my career, and I think it's great to use the bald eagle to get people's attention, but then I've always tried to link it right down to the nematode in the soil. I think it's valuable to use the charismatic species to get people's attention.

(00:20:05):
Once you have their attention, you have to talk about the rest of the world. That was something that I thought really would've struck home and makes me a little more concerned because the polar bear is loved and it's a species that will likely go extinct. And there were some of the early films, they had footage showing the polar bears swimming in the ocean because the ice was gone. I mean, I just thought that was going to get at the heartstrings of the public more than it did. That's why I say it makes me concerned.

(00:20:51):
But the public, of course, these attractive vertebrates that they're large, people see them. And I think it's fine to be able to use those, but we also need to rely on the government to know what the best thing to do is. And again, the government needs to be reminded at times about the total responsibility they have for all of biodiversity. So we went a long way with being able to fund certain government programs using the same mega charismatic vertebrates. And I think it's fortunate, I'm much more pleased than I used to be with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, for example, and our state agencies paying more attention to the total mix of species that are out there, not just focusing on those showy ones.

Michael Pisano (00:22:07):
Yeah, I mean I certainly understand the rationale for focusing your efforts around something that has public appeal. It just strikes me that it's not particularly working, like you said, with the polar bears. And I wonder if there's a way to reframe it as solidarity, not with the big mammals, that we can see ourselves a little bit when we gaze into a whale's eye. There's clearly something incredible there. The behavioral things are incredible and human. I think that's part of the connection point.

(00:22:46):
But then there's also maybe a metaphorical connection that I'm going to try to make on the fly between, like you mentioned, nematodes, things that are in the soil that are the base of the food web of the nutrient cycle. Without the base, everything else collapses. And I think you could make the same argument for people. It's been highlighted in a very specific narrative way during COVID where we have essential workers, people who are at the foundation level of our society and the way that we operate. And there's been a lot of expression of solidarity with those people who do these essential everyday services for us, it's very visible. Now, mean is there anything there? Can you talk about why we should care about these tiny things in the soil, whether it's bacteria or insects or anything?

Charles Bier (00:23:50):
The example I like to use in trying to get people to think about the larger environment, all of the biodiversity and how critical some of it is, are the fungi. If the mushroom isn't on our pizza, we don't tend to think about it very much. And it's a whole vast biodiversity, thousands of species in Pennsylvania that they're not animals, they're not plants, they're this whole other kingdom of organisms. And yet if you could just stop for a moment and think about what if the fungi went away, we'd be in great trouble. I mean, they are essentially running the decomposition of organic material on the earth. Can you imagine a tree falling in the forest and it doesn't rot away. And that's just how important they are in servicing the ecosystem and our dependence on it.

Michael Pisano (00:25:08):
Thank you. That's a great example. And I love to shove a little bit of fungi into everything. I am curious if you can give us the prognosis, like a sense of what might happen over the next 50 years in Western Pennsylvania. If climate change isn't mitigated in any way, what can we expect to see?

Charles Bier (00:25:29):
I think we're experiencing a pattern that's been actually underway for decades. I used the example of the yellow-throated warbler. I didn't relate that to climate back in the 1970s. I had heard about the greenhouse effect, learned about it in high school science, but no one was really waking up to all this at that time. But we're going to see continued changes in patterns. Some species will no longer be found in Pennsylvania, the species are all governed by limits of temperature and moisture for the most part. And as those limits change, we're going to see the patterns of... Some scientists have suggested that even our state tree, eastern hemlock may become very rare or may leave Pennsylvania. Leave meaning it'll die out, and the range will shift even more to the north. Presently a very commentary. It'd be surprising if that would were actually to happen, but that's one of the predictions. And then other species, if time allows, we'll be moving north into Pennsylvania species that do not occur here, or very rare they will become more common.

Michael Pisano (00:26:58):
And along those lines, I'm curious also I've heard that some parasites or pests, whether they're agricultural or things that target humans, disease vectors, things like that may find their range extending here. Can you just speak about that? Things like ticks or cattle, parasites, whatever that brings to mind for you.

Charles Bier (00:27:24):
The number of species that we've already experienced some change in their populations. We can't, again, always point to climate as being the answer to that. What conservation biologists are very concerned about, however, is that invasive species are often more suited to live in environments that are disrupted. And it's predicted that we'll have more and more invasive plants and animals occurring as the climate continues to warm and as it continues to get wetter.

(00:28:03):
One example the biologists are looking at with wildlife right now relates to West Nile virus, which affects birds quite a bit. And it's believed that the decline in our state bird, the rough grouse, is actually due to that virus doing better in the landscape as the climate warms. And this bird is not adapted to be able to react. So it's there's a greater mortality in the rough grouse.

Michael Pisano (00:28:41):
So I think with invasive species, I just want to go back to something you said there, the idea that they thrive in more disturbed environments. Just connect the dots. Why is it a problem that maybe an invasive species might displace a native species, especially I'm interested at a systems level. How does that destabilize things for our native ecosystem?

Charles Bier (00:29:11):
Well, other than the conversion of habitat, so taking a forest, turning it into a parking lot, that's the number one reason that scientists believe that species are becoming endangered and then eventually going extinct. But the number two reason before we had climate change to contend with has been invasive species. And you can move species around the earth from one continent to another, and often they will die. They just can't make it. But the ones that are really tough and the ones that are most adaptable, you can move them away from say a constraint that they had in the past to a new place that does not have that constraint and they will thrive.

(00:30:01):
And that's what we're seeing with the ones that really have a foothold in places like Pennsylvania. And they become so abundant that they basically displace, they choke out other species that are found. And it can be as simple as just crowding them out from where they want to live. In other cases, some of the invasive species actually will attack a native species directly or indirectly, and actually either by feeding on it or causing it other issues with its reproduction.

Michael Pisano (00:30:45):
Yeah. Okay. So you've mentioned habitat destruction and degradation, invasive species. I'm curious about other pressures you see contributing to losses in biodiversity.

Charles Bier (00:31:00):
Certainly, the introduction of toxins and pollutants into the environment has been a major influence that humans have had on the environment and on other life. As we talk about this topic of climate change, and there is a lot of gloom unfortunately, but there's some good stories that have taken place recently. We have had a few birds return to very stable populations that were looking like they might potentially go extinct, referring specifically to the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon in Pennsylvania. And that was simply because we identified what the issue was and we acted. So there's a cert class of pesticides that were no longer widely distributing in the environment. And that's believed to be the main reason that those two birds, and there were others as well, were able to bounce back.

(00:32:14):
Our rivers here in Pennsylvania are another good story right around Pittsburgh with the three rivers that we have. At one time we were treating them basically as large sewers and we were dumping many things into to the rivers. And also we dredged them and we dammed them with the navigational oxbow and dams. These all have changed the habitat, but with the Clean Water Act, and again, with recognizing some of these issues that have taken place over time, we have reduced the amount of these pollutants in the environment, and we've seen the fish return.

(00:33:01):
We've seen freshwater muscles come back into the rivers. Once in the area of Pittsburgh, there were about 50 different species of the freshwater muscles, and it was down to zero back in the sixties, seventies, eighties. And now with the return of the fish, and because the fish and the muscles are related through the reproductive cycle of the freshwater muscle depends on the fish to move them around, we have quite a few species having returned in the river. So it's a good story and gives us some hope that we can potentially turn the climate issue around too.

Michael Pisano (00:33:50):
Absolutely. And I want to get into some solutions and some hopeful thinking. I'm curious, you mentioned like DDT and Clean Water Act. Do you think that those are still an applicable model or approach? Is that still the right way to tackle some of the problems we're having now with the human relationship with ecosystem?

Charles Bier (00:34:14):
In terms of what tools we need, laws or policies, we need to develop new ones for and really hone them in on a particular problem. Sustainable is the main word, and we're just not functioning that way. A number of our practices, a number of things that we rely upon are just not sustainable practices. And that's how we got ourselves into the climate situation in the first place. And until we start to operate with that as the basic driver in the things that we do in our economy and guiding what we do in the future, we're going to continue having problems.

Michael Pisano (00:35:12):
I appreciate, you framing it more as a paradigm shift to prioritize sustainable practice and these things. Yeah. I guess I'm curious if you could elaborate a little bit about what that could potentially look like. I mean, I think a lot of people have trouble visualizing a world beyond the extractive, capitalist, whatever string of adjectives you want to use, reality that we live in now, how could it be organized differently?

Charles Bier (00:35:46):
Well, I'm not an expert on these things, but humans need to operate without depletion. And whether it's other species or the type of energy we're using, we need to figure out how to conduct our lives in a way that will be more like nature. Nature can't get away with these sorts of things. Or if it tries to, eventually that part of nature will link out. The humans are fantastic species, but it's too good. We can basically out-compete anything that we set our minds to. And like all the species, you're always trying to survive to do better, to evolve when you have the chance and to out-compete your neighbor to pass your genes on and or at least live within your community.

Michael Pisano (00:36:59):
So I want to rewind just a little bit to what you said about us being very good at competing, and that's obviously extremely true and it's what we organize a lot of our culture around in the west, I would say. But I also would pause it, and this is in relation to a big theme we're trying to pull out from this series and all the interviews that we're doing is the power of collective action and the human capability to collaborate. And I'm reminded of, I think you often see the idea of misconstrued Darwinian theory about competition used culturally as a way to justify human behaviors that are sometimes less than savory and the way that we relate to each other can exploit each other.

(00:37:57):
And then on the other hand have other theories around altruism and selection based around that community and sacrifice. I would just love to hear you talk about the benefits of collaborating, of working together instead of framing this as survival of the fittest, as communal survival of the community that is the fittest together.

Charles Bier (00:38:24):
One of the concerns that I have, and I think a lot of people have, is that we don't share values. So without sharing values, we're not all trying to achieve the same thing. And the way society and the economics, the way we've designed it, it is people trying to be very competitive. Those tend to be the winners and aren't necessarily working towards the good of the whole. So I think that if we can achieve common values, and of course it's a big world and people are coming at it from different religions, different cultures, but that's really where we need to go. If we can come to an agreement about values, then one of those has to be sustainability. And I think that to achieve that and to get there, we need to go back and have another look at nature and to design human systems so that we're able to work with nature and not be impacting it to the number of ways and the degree that we have.

Michael Pisano (00:40:17):
What are the values that will help bring more people to prioritize climate action. This season we've talked about regeneration, respect, responsibility, and all sorts of elements of a right relationship with nature. I'm reminded of naturalist Robin Wall Kimmerer, who stresses the great power of reciprocity and gratitude, and I'm reminded specifically of her writing about the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, which you might describe as a greeting to the natural world.

(00:40:47):
To quote Robin's book, Braiding Sweetgrass, "Cultures of gratitude must also be cultures of reciprocity. Each person, human or no, is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream's gift of pure water, then I am responsible for returning a gift in kind. An integral part of a human's education is to know those duties and how to perform them."

(00:41:37):
I wonder if you have a vision for a better approach to coexisting with non-human life on the planet. I mean, I know it can't look the same everywhere, it's a wild set of variables involved, but let's maybe keep it local in western Pennsylvania. Do you have a better vision of how we could coexist with our neighbors here?

Charles Bier (00:41:55):
I think we have to continue to work towards the realization that we are part of our landscapes, we are part of nature, we can't survive without it, and yet we have this tremendous responsibility to take care of it. I think if we have that mindset that we'll be able to achieve a sustainable relationship with our surroundings, and I have to go back to that word, every day sustainability. We need to figure out what that means in the ways that we operate. And if that's going to be a driving force, it needs to become that sooner rather than later.

Michael Pisano (00:42:46):
As soon as possible, seems all right to me. So that might be a good segue to speaking about the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. I mean, how is that expressed through their work and the work that you do with them?

Charles Bier (00:42:57):
A real driving force in conservation has been what non-governmental organizations have achieved. So the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy is non-governmental, it's a private, non-profit organization, and the mission is varied. It has a pretty wide mission, but a big part of that is to maintain biodiversity, to protect habitats. We have worked over our whole lifespan of the organization since 1932 in concert with government. Many of the places that we've gone and protected, we then have made those public lands in the form of state parks, state forests, national forest game lands.

(00:43:59):
So out of the 265,000 acres that we've protected over that period of time, most of that has been transferred for the public as public space. We still do maintain our own set of lands. We have about 41 different properties that are nature reserves for the most part, and those places are protecting habitat for birds and animals, plants, ecosystems, as well as again, being available for people to visit. All of our properties are open to people to go and recreate there and try to tune into nature in those places.

Michael Pisano (00:44:46):
Extremely valuable resources. And I'm curious about how WPC is specifically working towards mitigating climate change.

Charles Bier (00:44:56):
Probably one way that the western Pennsylvania Conservancy has been engaged on climate goes back to a time when we weren't even thinking about it. And what I mean by that is a large part of what the conservancy has done is to protect natural habitats. And in Pennsylvania, most of those habitats are forests. And just by protecting those places and setting them aside so that they're not one more area that has been disrupted. We've participated in sequestering carbon, for example, in the environment. So any conservation organization that is protecting habitats like that, it's very important, including for that particular reason. Now, in addition to habitat for the species, we're actually locking up the carbon until we can address our situation, the human situation with the climate.

(00:46:14):
The protected places that we have in Western Pennsylvania and across the earth are outdoor labs. They're laboratories that people continue to study. We still haven't found all the species that are living in these places, and they're also valuable as outdoor classrooms to get people into those kinds of settings surrounded by nature. And I think the psychologists are telling us about the benefits of that. More and more they're learning that getting out, walking or walking into a forest, just spending some time on a regular basis does help the mental condition.

Michael Pisano (00:47:09):
1000%. And I also think that spending two hours in a forest is a more persuasive argument for trying to conserve that forest than I could ever personally make. At the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, the ways that you steward these places and the ways that you work, how will they be changing as our climate does change moving forward? I mean, thinking about perhaps the prognosis that it'll be wetter. There's more storms, flooding, warmer, that kind of thing.

Charles Bier (00:47:49):
A number of the conservation practices and principles are really the same during this change in climate than they were previously. So simple rules like bigger is better, and now bigger is even more better. So when we look at a reserve, there's something in a forest called the forest interior. So if you walk into a forest, you actually have to walk towards the center of it, some distance before you really get to leave the outside influences that can be all around a wood lot or a forest. So that buffer distance, we actually don't look at that as being part of the forest interior. And a number of studies have shown that, for example, forest interior birds, they do much better deep in the forest than they do in that buffer zone.

(00:49:02):
So we're looking at making nature preserves larger and not fragmented. We're taking some of the lands that we've either purchased or have had donated to the conservancy and we're reforesting sections of them, so that it's a contiguous area forest and doesn't have a patchwork of holes in it. So there are places that used to be farms, for example, some of our lands, and we evaluate those to see whether those should become part of the forest. And when habitat is larger, it's less likely to be influenced. So as the temperature increases, that forest interior area is going to be more and more important as species are trying to maintain their populations and trying to stay within their tolerance limits for temperature.

(00:50:14):
Forest is also the best condition for a watershed. To be in here in western Pennsylvania, the effects of heavy downpours and so forth that will quickly run off of other areas, they tend to not only soak into the forest soils and percolate down and become part of the groundwater and feed streams. Some of that precipitation actually gets caught up on the trees themselves and on the other vegetation, and it's a much gentler way for the water cycle to operate.

Michael Pisano (00:50:57):
So take me then to the benefits of trying to rewild some of Pennsylvania to become forest. If we were to try to convert more land that's just say, been turned into golf course or something that really isn't contributing much in an ecological sense, if we tried to turn that back to forest, how else could that help us mitigate climate change here? You mentioned that it helps mitigate these big rain events that we have are flooding. Are there any other benefits that we see in that climate change mitigation context?

Charles Bier (00:51:35):
There are a few benefits in having that happen. We continue to lose forest in Pennsylvania and in North America. So if we're not trying to recover some of that and we're just basically chipping away at the total amount, we'll have less and less and less. But as we protect the forest, the habitats that are least disturbed will grasp and hold onto the most carbon. And that carbon, huge amounts of it can be in the soil and it stays in the soil a long time. And then of course if you walk into an old growth forest and see the huge trees there, that tree is almost entirely made up of carbon. So if we can use that as a way to mitigate climate by simply protecting the carbon that's in those forests now above envelope ground, as well as restore more places that could be forest into forest, so that they will capture it and be able to hold on to carbon, pull it from the atmosphere.

Michael Pisano (00:52:56):
Are there any other guiding top level criteria when you're selecting places with your collaborators? What is a good candidate for a space that needs to be conserved?

Charles Bier (00:53:08):
We're trying to stem the loss of species. So a lot of what we try to protect is identified as either being a rare type of natural community or habitat, or we know that there's a species or several species occupying a certain place. Endangered species, so we've realized why some species have declined and become endangered, and we often target those as places to go and protect.

Michael Pisano (00:53:48):
The scientific consensus is that we don't have much time to take decisive, meaningful action to mitigate climate change. And I hear that phrase a lot. Decisive, meaningful action or meaningful action or something. What does that look like to you? What is decisive, meaningful action look like to you? And if it's helpful to bound it to this area, that's great, but on whatever scale you hear that?

Charles Bier (00:54:14):
It's mainly an energy issue. We have to get away from the carbon based energy. Our use of fossil fuels was not sustainable. It wasn't sustainable from the get-go. I mean those resources are limited. Even if we use all of the coal, all of the oil and the gas, there's only so much there. Even after we figure out new ways to pull more and more of it out, so we need to find a sustainable system to drive our energy needs. A lot of it can be done by conservation. They tell us that a quarter or two, a third of the energy that we need to address can simply through conservation we can achieve the benefits of reducing our energy needs. It just makes a lot of sense to look towards the sun, and I certainly feel like we have other things to discover yet in terms of other types of energy we can take advantage of. But using as much solar applications we can to generate our energy needs, that has to be the way to go.

Michael Pisano (00:55:41):
And in the next decade, let's say before 2030, what steps towards that would you like to see specifically here in Western Pennsylvania?

Charles Bier (00:55:50):
If you'd have asked me 20 years ago, I would not have thought that a solar was a potential avenue for us to go down and now they've increased the efficiency of it and the materials and so forth. So with this however, is coming a challenge for conservation because people are seeing wild open areas as potentially places to site our solar farms. There are some of them that are already, there are forests that have already been cut down in Pennsylvania planning to put in a solar field. That has other issues that come along with it when we reduce the amount of force. So I would like to see us be able to use the surfaces that we already have and just solarizing as many of those as possible. Much rather people we're trying to figure out how to design the roofs on buildings to essentially be a solar collector.

Michael Pisano (00:57:10):
Yeah. I think in Western Pennsylvania we have plenty of buildings and roadways and human sites that could be augmented, as you say, with solar. Thinking ahead, we just did thinking towards 2030. Let's go 50 years into the future. What do you hope that people who have your role today, you're a naturalist who's concerned with conserving land and other WPC things. What do you hope that they will be doing or will have gotten to by that point?

Charles Bier (00:57:45):
Again, this notion of sustainability. Humans have to be able to live in landscapes in a way that's not depleting natural resources. I think conservation will look more towards regenerative agriculture and things like that, trying to mimic natural systems and trying to actually be able to insert our practices into a landscape without eroding more soil or using the harsh chemicals that we rely upon.

Michael Pisano (00:58:21):
Is there a way that you think an everyday Pennsylvanian can specifically, I guess... Let me frame it this way. I think when you hear sustainability, it's often associated with individual scale actions, how much plastic you use or the way that you recycle. And I guess I'm curious about if you could give me a definition of sustainability that people could engage with a working definition of how to evaluate whether something you see on Facebook is actually sustainable and important, or maybe you should be looking elsewhere for how to be sustainable?

Charles Bier (00:59:07):
I have come to put more other responsibility on government. I would rather the public apply a pressure to government to make the changes that we really need to make. I don't think it should be up to the individual. It doesn't work at that scale. We need to do big things and a lot of those can only happen through the government. So to the extent that the public should be involved, vote, apply your comments to your representatives and put the expectations on government to do more.

Michael Pisano (01:00:04):
I deeply agree with that. Did you grow up around here?

Charles Bier (01:00:11):
Yes.

Michael Pisano (01:00:13):
Can I ask you to take us out on that personal perspective of, I guess I'm curious about why you are in the line of work you are in and how that relates to your connection to the land here being a person who's from here. What is it like to be so committed to that, and why do you do it?

Charles Bier (01:00:39):
I've had an interest in the nature since I was... I can remember I started out studying snakes as a six-year-old, I had snakes in my pockets all the time. Snakes eventually opened up the rest of the world for me, and I found out that I was interested in many things. That's been a real gift to me, and as I developed those interests, then I saw some of the changes taking place even in childhood that I developed a commitment. I was influenced by some key educators along the way, and I've had this position with Western Pennsylvania Conservancy for 40 some years, and I never looked back.

(01:01:39):
I was working with things that interested me and I was working on a cause and I came out of the sixties, so that's when I had my moment of awakening, destroying the environmental movement and seeing the plight of species like the raptors that were affected by the DDT family chemicals and yeah, just experiencing that. When I first got into bird watching, I was 15. There were three bald eagle nests in Pennsylvania, and often they did not all produce chicks, and now there are 300 some nests in the state. So that's one of those positive stories that... I mean, it's just great to be able to have those at the same time that the scientists are telling us that we're losing a number of species every day from the earth. So yeah.

Michael Pisano (01:02:46):
It's important for it all to live together. It's not that the doom side is the only side and the hope side shouldn't wash away the other. I'm curious, based on your experience with conservation during that DDT time period, the environmental movement as it was then, are there any lessons, takeaways that you would suggest to people who are interested in making a difference now that helped win some of those victories or, yeah? I'll leave it there.

Charles Bier (01:03:21):
Education is a huge need. We've come through a period of time when humans have basically thought that they weren't part of nature, and now we're turning around and realizing that we are, and that we can't divorce ourselves from much from it. So I hope that people can continue moving in a positive direction about values and coming up with shared values that we can use to design a different economy and a different outlook to who this species is, and how it does its business.

Michael Pisano (01:04:22):
Special thanks to Charles Bier for sharing his time and wisdom. You can learn more about the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy's excellent work at waterlandlife.org. You can also listen to episode six of this podcast, Bridges and Bio Valves, which features Charles's colleague Eric Chapman speaking about his work as the Conservancy's Director of Aquatic Science. Thanks also to Taiji Nelson, Sloan MacRae, Bonnie McGill and Nicole Heller at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The music in today's episode was made by two of my most talented friends, Mark Mangini and Amos Levy. They also made the music for We Are Nature's Companion video series, which is linked to in the show notes.

(01:05:02):
Until next time, here's some wise words to help you think about what sustainable values you might hold dear and spread wide. "Let us pledge reciprocity with the living world. The Thanksgiving Address describes our mutual allegiance as human delegates to the democracy of species. If what we want for our people is patriotism, then let us inspire true love of country by invoking the land herself. If we want to raise good leaders, let us remind our children of the eagle and the mate. If we want to grow good citizens, then let us teach reciprocity. If what we aspire to is justice for all, then let it be justice for all of creation."

(01:05:50):
That was Robin Wall Kimmerer from her book Braiding Sweetgrass. I've been and hope to remain your host, Michael Pisano. Thanks for listening.