The RegenNarration Podcast
The RegenNarration podcast features the stories of a generation that is changing the story, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. It’s ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported. You'll hear from high profile and grass-roots leaders from around Australia and the world, on how they're changing the stories we live by, and the systems we create in their mold. Along with often very personal tales of how they themselves are changing, in the places they call home. With award-winning host, Anthony James.
The RegenNarration Podcast
248. Turning Problems into Solutions Across Australia & the Americas: With Mike DiGirolamo for Mongabay
Last month I had the honour of being a guest on the podcast of the legendary independent US media outlet Mongabay. It was a unique conversation, with US-born host Mike DiGirolamo based in Sydney, and me over here in the Americas, talking about some highlights from the seven months me and the family spent travelling across the USA last year, and relating it back to the seven years we’d travelled around Australia with the podcast before that.
Mike produced a unique patch up too, interspersing our conversation with enlightening editorial additions, and some material from a past episode that was wonderful to hear again. Mongabay kindly invited me to release the episode on The RegenNarration too, so here it is, in full - a fascinating 'reverse' cross-continental exchange for the moment at hand.
You’ll hear some highlights from last year’s US journey, including more personal stories behind the journey, more detail on the hope we derived from listening to people on the ground in that election year, and the exchange I had with Allan Savory in Colorado. And all while Mike and I were inspiring thoughts in each other from our respective experiences as we went.
Recorded mid-December 2024.
Title slide: Mike DiGirolamo.
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Music:
Intro music by Jeremiah Johnson.
Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.
The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.
Find more:
Hear more on the Haggerty’s early engagement with First Nations & how this is playing out on the farm now.
Ep.102 with Bruno Dann on Nyul Nyul Country.
The new Substack.
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"There is a principle there, and it's one for all of us who might despair on occasion. Don't despair, for even the worst of things that pass. ature's got incredible power - and the nature in us as humans too - to learn and transform. Why are you hearing a quote from me, you might ask. Well, last month I had the honour of being a guest on the podcast of the legendary independent US media outlet Mongabay. It was a unique conversation with US-born host Mike DiGirolamo, based in Sydney, and me over here in the Americas, talking about some highlights from the seven months me and the family spent travelling across the US last year, and relating it back to the seven years we'd travelled around Australia with the podcast before that. Mike produced a unique patch-up too, interspersing our conversation with some enlightening editorial additions and some material from a past episode that was wonderful to hear again. Mongabay kindly invited me to release this episode on The RegenNarration too, so here it is in full - a fascinating cross-continental exchange for the moment at hand.
AJ:G'day Anthony James here for The RegenNarration, your independent, listener-supported portal into the regenerative era. Standing in the snow back in Baltimore, Maryland. I figured the park would be empty about now, but it did only just empty out. They're a hearty lot here, s usual. I'd like to thank a few listeners - Jennifer West, Scott, Bronwen Morgan and Lindsay Sell. Thanks for being paid subscribers for over three years now.
AJ:To Fiona Hill, thanks for buying a couple of my old mentor Frank Fisher's books. And to you new paid subscribers on Substack, I'll thank you personally over there. If you're not yet part of this great community of supporting listeners, I'd love you to join us. Get benefits if you like and help keep the show on the road. Just follow the links in the show notes, with my great gratitude On Mongabay's release last month. ur conversation was titled Turn Problems into Solutions for Culture and Agriculture Across Australia and the Americas. So, yep, you'll hear me talk about some of the highlights from last year's US journey, including more of the personal stories behind the journey, more detail on the hope we derived from listening to people on the ground in that election year and the special exchange I had with Alan Savory on our meeting in Colorado, nd all that rolls out in a way where Mike and I were inspiring thoughts in each other from our respective experiences as we went. So, setting the scene, here's Mike.
Mike:Welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. I'm your co-host, Mike DiGirolamo, bringing you weekly conversations with experts, authors, scientists and activists working on the front lines of conservation, shining a light on some of the most pressing issues facing our planet and holding people in power to account. This podcast is edited on Gatticle land. Today on the newscast, I speak with Anthony James, creator and host of the popular podcast focused on agroecological and sustainable land use stories. he RegenNarration. James has a prime ministerial award for service to the international community and is an honorary research fellow at the University of Western Australia. We recorded this conversation while he was in Guatemala during a tour of the Americas. In our conversation, James recounts the stories of communal collaboration, of restoring land, encouraging more independent civic participation in politics, and the generosity and hope he personally experienced in the wake of a contentious and, for many, heart-rending political season in the United States. We also discuss the challenge that invasive species present and highlight some of the more surprising ways in which humans and animals alike are adapting to these challenges, A theme I previously explored with Pulitzer winner Elizabeth Colbert on this very podcast, but is currently playing out in a remote homestead known as Kachana Station here in Australia. In the context of the current ecological breakdown we face globally. In the context of the current ecological breakdown we face globally, James reminds us how many times the answers we are seeking are right in front of us.
Mike:Anthony James, welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. It's great to have you with us. AJ: Great to be with you too, Mike, Good to meet y. MD: Before we get into anything, can you just give us a a primer? What is regeneration? Why did you start it?
AJ:I started it because I'd tell me which thread do I pull. So I I started to think about an old idea I had for a radio show years prior, but never did it because I was never going to do a graveyard shift at these community stations. But that was where I sort of did a course and so I hadn't had my chops up enough to do it, but I was never going to go anywhere with it in that sense. So it sort of sat there and then a friend said to me one day maybe you should do a podcast. And in that moment I'm like you're dead right. So I started in 2017, but it was very stop-start and in a bigger context of things I was trying to do as well, until the start of 2018. And that's why the events ended up stopping here, because I actually had another feeling and it was that I had to get out.
AJ:The last event I happened to do was with Charlie Massey, so Regenerative Agriculture Doyen in Australia published Call of the Reed Warbler. At that time I got on the phone to him straight away and said would you come down for this event? He came down and the festival that it was going to be at Sustainable Living Festival in Melbourne brought across two legends from Western Australia, from the rangelands, southern rangelands, at Woolene Station Francis and Dave. They brought them across. So it was just another all-star panel, incredible event, 300 plus people.
AJ:And it became a podcast soon too, one of the early ones, because what happened then was the events stopped and we thought as a family, it's time for us to get to know our country properly. Let's get out to these people rather than ask them to come to us in the city for a fleeting moment. Let's get out to them, learn about our country really for the first time in this way, Now that we know these people are out there, bringing it back, go meet them, see where that leads us. And I committed to a fortnightly release for the first time to share what we found, and I thought by the time we get back I'll know whether that's worth continuing, but I'll do it for now.
AJ:And, yeah, the shorter the long is it? It grew legs about halfway through. A couple of shifts in in the metric showed me that, to my great surprise, that people were starting to tune in and um and and wow is even a little epitaph to that story in that, in that about the time people started to tune in was the time we visited Kachana Station in the Kimberley in far northwestern Australia for the first time and that, by virtue of the story since resulted in them being on Australian Story, famous Australian TV show on the ABC for those who don't know further afield, TV show on the ABC for those who don't know, Further Afield just a month ago, and that's tracking at about 650,000 views so far already. So it's been very interesting to be part of that.
Mike:Yeah, I mean, before we even go further, just for listeners who aren't aware of regeneration. You highlight these incredible stories of people stewarding the land in ways that regenerate it or different ways of using the land. But this story about Kachana Station, before we even go further, can you just give our audience a primer on what is occurring here, because it's a really, really fascinating and incredible story and it's still ongoing as we speak. So can you tell us?
AJ:about it. Yeah, it is ongoing, in a critical way, in fact, would you believe. As we speak, I believe a judgment is being made, or has just been made, about the pointy end of what they're trying to achieve there. But let me back up first. Yeah, so here is a station bigger than the size of Singapore, which is, historically speaking, a small station in Australia, like a ranch for those.
AJ:It's a small one yeah 200,000 acres, yeah, but he bought him and his family. So Chris Hengler and his family bought the southern fifth of what was a standard issue back then a million acres of El Cuestro, and it's become quite a famous station, a bit of a theme park these days. But this was the southern part that had long been abandoned. After First Nations had been cleared off it and whitefellas had abandoned it and this is not an uncommon tale through the interior, australia was fully populated.
Mike:Perhaps we'll get to talk more about this. Unfortunately, I did not get to talk to Anthony further about this, but it is an incredibly powerful story for listeners who may be interested. Anthony hosted a conversation with archaeologist Peter Veth, who describes the evidence that points to Australia having roughly 6.5 million people in the tens of thousands of years before European colonists arrived. First nation Australians migrated to the interior of the continent and this was at a time when the size of the continent was around 25 to 50% larger and sea levels were 130 meters over 400 feet, lower than they are now. I really recommend giving that conversation a listen. Peter Veth, on the regeneration.
AJ:The First Nations map of Australia looks more like we're accustomed to seeing, well, perhaps a United States map with the different states or, if we're thinking more like countries, western Europe, a patchwork of hundreds of nations, each with languages of their own and dialects within, right across the interior. So it's very much a colonial artifact that that's an uninhabitable or harsh, quote unquote terrain of fact that that's an uninhabitable or harsh, quote-unquote terrain. So, but this is what we had done, have done to a lot of the interior of australia, and this was certainly true of this part of alquestra which suited the hengla family because they didn't have much behind them, having fled zimbabwe. Well, chris had, from his family, fled zimbabwe when the revolution happened there and white folk had to flee their farms because of the brutality going on there. And of course that's to acknowledge also the context of that brutality where the white folk got their farms. But that being the complexity it is, chris ends up in Switzerland at school, the shorter the longer, but you can hear more about it on the TV show and on the podcast too is that he meets his future wife there. They end up moving to Australia together.
AJ:To this clapped out, I mean, I'm talking total dust bowl, except that when Chris saw it in the late 80s, there was still water coming through it in the wet season. So I was like, okay, there's water, there's sun, I can work with it, we're going to get it for a soil. They got it. It's took them two years to get out there because there's no road access, so it's purely by. You know, they hauled everything they could in with Beesaburden initially, but then from there it's been Aeropane and more recently helicopter. There it's been aeroplane and more recently helicopter. So they get in there, they, they're sleeping in the back of the ute with, I think it was two kids. At that stage maybe they had the three or the third one was soon to come. Yeah, little kids picking dirt out of their teeth because it's such a dust bowl. Yeah, and and fast forward, oh.
AJ:And it got worse by the way. The water had stopped running by the time they got there, because it took years to actually get the logistics straight and move out there, which is to say, importantly, that the land wasn't coming back with no one on it. And this is a very common preset for Indigenous folk too. Country needs people, people need country, country needs people. It proved to be true. Here they stuck at it.
AJ:30 years on, it is wow. It's not an overstatement to say it's an oasis in the desert, because around it still desertifies, sadly and terribly. We need to get onto it. But here is this extraordinary exemplar, and I'm talking peat reforming in places. Now, 30 years down the track, even in the six years I've been going out there, you're spongy underfoot and in parts it's like swamp and in other parts you've got he sort of let forest do its thing, just to see what that would look like.
AJ:And then, to round out the pointy end of the story where I started, one of the methods they've used. Well, they've used holistic grazing and holistic management. So it's livestock as your fundamental tool to do this. To keep ground cover 100% ground cover 100% of the time as close to that as you can get, is the short of it. We might pick that apart a bit more, but that's the short of it, instead of having to burn it back or have wildfire completely destroy it which is a given, it's one or the other up there, basically or this method have livestock mulch, prune and fertilize, as they say.
AJ:And the thing that Kachana did was they started to use not only cattle, but the wild donkeys that have been designated pests and shoot on site type of thing responsibility of the ranchers to do that. They thought, well, maybe we can use them in the same way. They were social animals. They were brought here as transport. Let's re-engage them. They still would shoot the ones that didn't re-socialize, if you like, but the ones that did, they re-established their herd behavior, the trust, and they would graze on the upper ranges Together. They've made this extraordinary miracle happen, but the government has been on them only the last few years. So it's a very peculiar type of why now? Type of thing. But they have been going through the mill of a trial of sorts in the last few years as to whether they can indeed continue to use the donkeys this way or will be forced to shoot them, and that judgment, I believe, has just been passed.
Mike:So maybe we can stick an update in your show notes after we're done anthony emailed me after our recording and the judgment on whether the hangler family is ordered to shoot 72 donkeys has been stayed yet again for now and is pending further review. I I found this so just fascinating because it reminded me a bit of a conversation I was having with elizabeth colbert, um.
Mike:Author elizabeth colbert yeah about in invasive species, and australia, as we know, is is very, very famous for having a large amount of introduced invasive species. But here it seems like there's this, this way of taking what started out as a problem and using it as a solution, rather than trying to control it, in a way that is sort of trying to remedy the problem, the original problem, and therefore creating more problems if that makes sense and I was just wondering from your perspective.
Mike:I was wondering from your perspective, if you think there's other situations in Australia where maybe we might be missing some opportunities to use this situation to our advantage 100% To me.
AJ:There is no doubt now and this is a vital piece of the puzzle if we are to get anywhere in Australia and further afield for that matter the first thing I think of is an Aboriginal elder that was also on the podcast. Episode 100 was Kachana, sort of the main episode there. When we went back the second time. Episode 102 was with these guys out on a peninsula in the West Kimberley, so the other side of the Kimberley, and I asked him at the time because they were talking about donkeys being on their property too, and I asked him at the time so what about donkeys being pests and so forth? And what about the donkeys, bruno? Oh, they're scared. Yeah, because they're scared. They see all the way up with the people Trying to shoot them too.
Mike:And they start shooting them, you know Trying to shoot them too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
AJ:The notion that you would regard them, or anything else including, I might say, colonial settlers as pests. I mean, this is where their extraordinary forbearance comes towards us as descendants of those colonists. A brutal history, Yet all I've ever received is welcoming and generosity. I had to try to make sense of that for a while, but it's because of the kinship structure. If you're there, you're kin. There's no sense of being greater than and that is what's got us into this pickle is this head of the hierarchy type thinking, and it's why all our attempted solutions well, I'm being general here, but essentially we're still going backwards, aren't we? Emissions going up and extensions marching on and so forth, Because they're coming with that mindset still. And so, yeah, when it comes to the actual animals, the other story I think about, which was amazing to me, it was a woman who got in touch from New South Wales, Brooke Purvis.
Mike:It became episode 181, maybe I think.
AJ:And she heard the Kachana episode and she got in touch and said I'm really moved by that. I wonder if there's some way I can help, like, if the donkeys stay on the shoot list, maybe that you can get them to me, because I started this and this was a completely unexpected turn for her, which is a common tale of people never thinking they'd be where they are. I'm included, I'm amongst them. She says I've started this thing. Now it's a donkey rescue thing, and then we sort of re-socialise them, we train them, and then we train people in how to handle them, because they're amazing stock guardians and now they're in huge demand over here on the East Coast as stock guardians because dingoes are a problem. So our apex predator, akin to sort of a wolf or coyote over where your families are from, but that's a big issue for as long as we want to still particularly have sheep, okay, so we do. It's particularly an issue with sheep predator too, should not be on the shoot list and is another necessary. Well, another form of kinship, and another very helpful form of kinship too, that station I mentioned, wolleen in the West. They basically left the cornerstone of their regeneration because it took care of all the goats that were overgrazing. Even the excessive kangaroos scared the cats off, got rid of the feral dogs, actually the sort of the wild dogs that weren't actually dingoes.
AJ:So Brooke tells me a story where this is working and it hit me. I thought, wow, she's demonstrating how we could stitch the Australian continent back together again and not regard any of these so-called pest animals. I mean, might, maybe you'll still mouth an argument against the cane tone or something. Maybe, maybe we could talk about the details, but in terms of the boars and the donkeys and the camels and that that there are ways to manage them and the dingoes to manage them. And this is the difference right To manage, not control, and not to just leave unmanaged feral, destroying the place. To manage as part of a patchwork that was akin to what was here before, even though, yeah, sure, now it's going to be, with different people, different climate and different animals and plants and so forth.
Mike:But there is a way and different animals and plants and so forth, but there is a way. Yeah, there there's got to be. I mean, and on the cane toad, I I heard that there's like actually a way now that people are eating them. I haven't looked into this yeah, I have not looked into this myself and I might cut this out if I, if I have this wrong, but I believe there is now that there's now a way that people are finding a way to eat them. Like how do you?
Mike:The cane toads are poisonous for folks that are there, are aware, but there's actually people that are cooking and eating them now. So, okay, before you go trying to eat a cane toad, please don't do that on your own, because cane toads are toxic and preparing them has to be done in a specific way that still isn't fully understood or researched, but apparently is working for now. Professor Philip Hayward from Southern Cross University told the ABC in Darwin last year that eating cane toads can be done safely and is an economic and environmental win-win, as there's roughly 200 million of them in the country. A food project known as Gulp NT has a method for doing this that involves freezing the toad and removing the legs for consumption.
AJ:You've just brought it back. No, you've just drinked something in me, mike, I think. Oh, did I hear about? Anyway, what I might be able to compliment in our speculation but it's worth looking up, isn't it is that animals are starting, so there's now a return. So Kachana, for example, this cane toad swept through Western Australia only recently and going east to west. So it was diabolical as they had been everywhere. But years on, so five years on, maybe now they're starting to observe the reptiles coming back and the kills of the toads that the animals do. So the humans are still killing them, but the animals do. They're learning to either avoid the animals altogether or kill them in a particular way where they don't succumb, and I can't remember if I did indeed hear.
AJ:Humans are doing the same thing. Yeah, nature's adapting.
Mike:There's, yeah, there was. So the ibis which, by the way, is not a bin chicken folks, it is an ibis it has found a way. It always breaks my heart when I hear people call them bin chickens because they're just, they're just so beautiful. But they found a way to knock the poison out of the cane toad before consuming it. More reporting from the ABC highlights how the ibis grips the cane toad in its signature long beak, flicks the toad around to stress it out, which forces the toad to release the toxins from its shoulder glands. The ibis will then wash the toad in a creek or a nearby body of water, and this is called the stress and wash technique.
AJ:Yeah, this is the thing, hey, like it's an important thing. It's like there is a principle there, and it's one for all of us who might despair on occasion Don't despair, for even the worst of things that pass. Nature's got incredible power and the nature in us as humans too to learn and transform.
Mike:Hey listeners, thanks as always for tuning into the Manga Bay Newscast. As a non-profit news provider, we rely on the generosity of our readers and listeners like yourself. It's the main reason we can bring you independent news and analysis from nature's front line. Now we always encourage you to donate if you can, but if you really want to help the Mongabay Newscast grow, I encourage you to share this episode or your favorite conversation with your friends. The more people that know what we do, the more we can do. Thanks again, and now back to the conversation with Anthony James. I couldn't agree more. This might actually be a good time for me to bring up something with you, but did you see the new study that just got released that said about 215 million hectares of degraded and deforested land in the tropics could regenerate naturally? I don't know if you saw that, but was keen to hear your thoughts about it. If you had seen that study, I can send it to you.
AJ:I haven't seen it. Please do send it to me. It's interesting, I think of. Well, I think of what I just said. In a sense I'm not surprised, but the thing that stood out to me about what you said I wonder instantly where the place of humans is in that.
AJ:What is our form of tending, that the country needs people bit, or is that proving? I mean, I'm here in Guatemala right now and they're still uncovering the old cities of the Mayan civilization, and it's fascinating for what people have learned just in the 20 years I haven't been in this country, sort of revisiting it, and it's interesting because I do remember, though, like these broad, sweeping cities with suburbs, would-be suburbs and the suburbs, sure, we can see the temples and stuff, but the suburbs are still largely buried in jungle and it does go to show perhaps the tropics are more adept at not needing us for periods, not needing humans for periods, more adept than, say, at Kachana. I mean, that's pretty tropical but it's dry tropics, so it's savannah type stuff. Maybe there's a difference there. But I wonder what place people are, what role people are having, including perhaps first peoples of those places that may have never left.
Mike:It's. Yeah, I mean this was reported on by one of our staff members, john cannon, and there I believe the study highlighted that when you have local people on board with restoring a piece of forest, it tends to work better, and People you get on board with re Foresting that land, that's when you get the results, but if you don't, there's there's more challenge. Hold up a sec. I actually encourage you to read the article from john cannon yourself, as I'm not really doing it justice here. But to be a little more clear, the study that john wrote about looked at areas that could regenerate naturally on their own if you do nothing.
Mike:However, though and this is the point I was trying to make the study co-author, matt Fagan, told Mongabay quote the only way a young forest sticks around is if local people are on board with letting that young forest stick around. This study just shows possibility. Persistence is the other half of it, and persistence is through policy, it's through working with people, it's through building partnerships and finding ways for people to extract money out of young forest and make them a good financial investment. So I mean, that doesn't surprise me, and I just think it's a pattern I'm I'm noticing. Is that I mean we talked with, I don't know if you um, if you know, tony ronaldo um and his story. Oh, yes, tony, yeah, in in in niger. We had him on the podcast likewise I did too.
AJ:Amazing story yeah he is.
Mike:I mean, it took him a lot of trial and error, but he had obviously the buy-in from local communities to do this, and now they're all on board with it.
AJ:Yeah, it's great. It's a great story, tony's story, and it is instructive.
Mike:Since you mentioned you're in Guatemala, I was going to ask you what are you working on in the Americas right now? What are some of the more amazing things that you have noticed since you've been over there?
AJ:So before we got to Guatemala so we've been here a couple of weeks now because I used to live here 20 years ago and I was being that close, relatively speaking, having traveled the States for the last seven months with the podcast had to come and visit, and now, with the family in tow, it's quite a special homecoming. But the seven months across the States was the big thing for a lot of reasons, including we hadn't been overseas for nearly two decades. We drew a line under that sort of travel for climate and equity reasons, leave future generations to have a chance of doing some of it, because we'd had a fill. But out of the podcast experience over six years the short of it is the calls had started to mount and the feeling that it could be of value started to grow. So from April we were traveling across the states with the podcast and there are so many things that were so interesting, as much because it was the election year that it was too right.
AJ:And so in a sense, yes, I saw. We saw extraordinary regeneration of land and culture, first Nations and other from desolation in many cases. We saw next generations taking up the mantle and sort of mentorship structures building, saw trust situations, bringing land access to people or land return to people, all these sorts of things, but in a sense, the biggest thing I saw, overarchingly I mean, I should add, I even saw community movements which summed to really looking to depolarize the politics and enable people to run for office who were community people, not career politicians, much less beholden to such a strong adversarial and corporate political structure, let alone media structure. So I found multiple facets of a movement on that front and one in particular captured my imagination because they're only 18 months running, born out of a young woman's experience in Maine who became the youngest ever senator, female senator elected there but then didn't run again to actually set up a non-profit that helped others run. They just had 38 of their alumni inside 18 months run for office in this election and many of them got voted for by Trump voters. So there's a fascinating thing coming out of that, which I'm still probing, but it just suggests which is what we found across the country. There are so many layers of nuance to what is very often portrayed as a utterly polarized and cleanly binary situation Trump, republican, bad lunatics in rural areas who vote for them bad, and city people who are educated voting Democrat. And well, wouldn't that have been good if they won, type thing. But I saw so many layers of nuance in this and of course we've just seen regenerative agriculture legends appointed to advisory positions or other around agriculture and health in Trump's portfolio.
AJ:Now I'm not advocating for a Trump administration. I still do feel like Chloe, that woman in Maine felt that he's the violent rhetoric. He as a character to me plays as much into the portrayal and exploitation of division as anybody else that I lament on both of those sides right, and I think the sides is the problem. So when I see these community efforts coming up, as is happening in Australia, of course, which you'll know too well with the independents, and this is a thing we talked about with a bunch of people in the States too, that sure, different system, but there's people working at those aspects of the system too, what can enable the transcending of the nasty, exploitative politics. So we saw plenty of that and in some, a human spirit that we didn't expect, that was shared across the political divide and other divides right across the country, urban, rural, right across the states. To us was the biggest picture of all. We didn't expect such generosity and spirit and hope, though tested hope. Many people said to us when we reflected back some of our observations well, thank you. I needed to hear this about my country. I'd almost given up and was buying the story that we're shot and awful by nature, like mostly, and so to me the biggest story is that and where I saw it happen. Just to round out my answer to your question, mike was in something that I've witnessed in Australia too and it's almost like a people whispery. I put that to what it said me jokingly, but I've seen people work with communities that are utterly divided.
AJ:Judy Schwartz wrote it up in the Reindeer Chronicles, even one of these stories, and I went on to meet the person she wrote up, which was a guy called Jeff Goble who facilitated a process with community in New Mexico, just for one example, and they would come to arms and the land reflected it. It was shot and in three days I remember her writing this up she's observing a day and a half in. She's seen the nature of the conflicts, the nature of the people, the defensiveness, all the bloodletting, all this stuff. She's like there's no way this is coming out with a resolution and some form of conciliation in three days. Yet it did, and then I went to Jeff in New Mexico and saw a process in person of a different kind on homelessness. How do we solve homelessness, as it were, before it gets totally out of hand in New Mexico?
AJ:And this was a one-day process that I hastened away. I didn't even get through the agenda. So this became the subject of a podcast episode, because the next day I'm like Jeff, I didn't even get through the agenda. So this became the subject of a podcast episode, because the next day I'm like Jeff, I didn't even get through the agenda. How would people so enam room that?
AJ:Some people who are more action-oriented or less interested in the warm and fuzzies and they were self-described that way at the outset those people are going to be frustrated.
AJ:They spent another day and it didn't get through to resolution.
AJ:They were ecstatic about the process and, sure enough, within weeks afterwards there was amazing, unprecedented media coverage, half a million dollars on the table and some land bequeathed to start to take some steps and they weren't brought up at the time.
AJ:So there's something about these processes that create the conditions out of which this stuff came, and this is the same thing I hear from ranchers on the land they create the conditions out of which the stuff came, and this is the same thing I hear from ranchers on the land, they create the conditions out of which the regeneration comes. And that's the huge thing that I've observed, whether it be with the people part of nature or the land part of nature or whatever is that theme, and that again, there are ways we can do it. It's not what you'll see on the media, it's not what you get from the major political parties, but it is a buzz across all of those domains. What if we get on that wagon, more of us, get skilled up in these ways and make more of that happen? I mean, I wonder what critical thresholds we might be able to tip in the positive direction and surprise ourselves there is.
Mike:There does seem to be this sort of and just anecdotally, me noticing more communities taking things into their own hands, such as, yeah, like, like different cities getting rid of of ridiculous zoning laws that don't allow them to build homes in in certain places, or getting rid of, like, minimum parking requirements, which is responsible for a bunch of pavement and asphalt being put down on on land that that is critical for biodiversity, so like getting rid of those things. But it's not happening on a national scale, it's happening locally. Um, so, yeah, I, I do, I do see and witness things like that. Yeah, more so, more so, in case yeah, what would?
AJ:be the australian case, where, where, where. Because of the transformation in our national parliament. It's interesting, the transformation in the states transformation maybe it's early to say that, but that hint of change because, by the way, a bunch of those 38 candidates that came out of that community workshopping that ran, I think all one and and another person who hadn't been through it. That's connected with it. One is an independent in maine for fourth term running. So even an independent can win in the United States electoral system at state level at least. But in Australia the community-minded transformation in our parliament has happened at a federal level, interestingly, not at local or state. So sure, there'll be good local estate stuff happening too, but in terms of a change in the way our actual primary parliament works, that's happening at a national level in Australia. So it's to say let's not hedge ourselves in with where it can and can't happen, just look out for the opportunities based on wherever we are and what we can work with. But in general I totally agree with you, and I think it's as much because, as Alan Savory said to me the other day, I met him in Denver just briefly after the Regenerate conference there and he said regenerative agriculture, holistic raising, it's coming on everywhere.
AJ:But he lamented the fact that it's still so marginal and I know Charlie Massey is lamenting this too, because we've seen the power of the extractive super organism, if you will growth economy, that whole mandate double down, go faster, thinking. What it's missing is to go harder, not to take heed. So I think that is where it is leaving people to go. Okay, well, let's just create a different way and in our case, in Australia, amazingly, I still can't believe it. It's a transformation not many saw coming a few years ago. That's reaching up into our national parliament Great, but yeah, I think the good old grassroots is and just people taking it on themselves because what else are you going to do at this stage is absolutely the way, and that is bubbling up everywhere. So where that leads us to, I think if more of us can get involved and more of us who can back it, yeah, we'll see.
Mike:Before we get to the end here, I do want to try and pick your brain a bit about and this is a broad question and I understand it's going to vary by case by case practice that really just struck you, that you think is being underutilized either in the US or in Australia. That has a lot of potential that you really wish more people knew about.
AJ:Yeah, totally. In a way it's again which they did pull. There'd be a number. I mean, I think, on top of what we said before about so-called pest or invasive species and in a biodiversity crisis that we would continue to play God with that is almost beggar's belief in a sense. Let's say, where whitefellas? So, for example, I'll say the Haggerty family in the Wheat Bolt of Western Australia. I'll mention them because as an example of where grassroots efforts end up breaking through, they've just been awarded the Western Australian Australians of the Year Award. Now they go in the big one, the Australian of the Year Award that gets awarded in January next year after 30 years of pioneering right. But it's a hint of how things are changing next year After 30 years of pioneering right. But it's a hint of how things are changing. They've only recently, relatively recently, connected with First Nations and what has come out of that connection already in like a couple of short years, is extraordinary.
AJ:It's on the podcast, it can be found, but it's to say that the fear that still commonly will stop people who have got land through the colonial system from engaging, for fear that they'll lose it or whatever the benefits on offer, the rewards on offer are immense in all respects in how the land works, in how the cultural stories get shared and the healing that happens from that. Oh that's huge. And obviously there's a 50,000, 60,000 year heritage in Australia alone, let alone anywhere else. I think of the actual methods on the ground, animal led in some cases to a degree again that I just couldn't believe what I was seeing, like animals showing farmers where to go, not the other way around. And in some cases, where farmers go but it's still dirt over there, what are you going there for? But they inoculated with their fertilizer. Their microbiome was so engaged over so long. Because these are animals that don't ship off right, they ship off some but they kept the microbiome in exchange with the land developing over these decades. These pioneers and and then that will spread to a different part of the land. That looks shot and that should be the last place.
AJ:You put more animals and and triggers the, the, the dormant microbiome or seed or whatever in in those parts. So even animal in parts, but certainly animal-utilized. And then there's that ground cover piece, hey, that I witnessed so starkly at Kachana, where even Indigenous folk we could speculate where they got expert with fire. Did they need to use it as much as they did. I mean, this is what you start to wonder because of the megafauna that were lost on both our continents, right, right, yeah, that perhaps there's a way for the large herbivores of today, the new megafauna, as Chris Hengler would call it, to mean we can use fire more selectively with animals and so not need to kill all them and leave more cover on the ground without it getting to be fire bait and so more microbiome thriving underneath and ultimately, fungi and et cetera, et cetera.
AJ:All these things we're learning now, so that 100% ground cover 100% of the time sort of holy grail. I mean we could go on, but there's some of the stuff that's really hit me and, of course, they're all interlinked and in that sense, maybe we'll figure out there's an overarching thing, answer to your question that just covers it all, or we might just come up with another few things that are interlinked with those, but there's some of the levels and layers that are just proving to again show ways that, even in places you least expect it, ultimately, once they start to pick up pace, restore land and people and community, right, people come back out to these places and people don't be so angry as the Trump voters in Wisconsin or something. You know that perhaps do feel a bit vengeful or neglected. I'd say vengeful would be sad, neglected. Fair enough in many ways, yeah. Yeah that there's a way to mend those things in surprisingly quick timeframes if we start barking up the right trees a bit more.
Mike:Well, Anthony, where can listeners learn more about your work and listen to some of your episodes?
AJ:Thanks, mike. Yeah, certainly, if anyone's interested, the podcast is the main outlet probably going to create a Sub stack. I'm going to add to the sub stack.
Mike:Get on the Su stack train.
AJ:Yes, that's right. I've been wondering whether I should or not, but I probably will, because I feel like there's stories between the stories, which is why it's also so great to speak to you. You get to flesh some of those out, so I might do some of that too. But there's certainly a website, RegenNarration. com with a little play on the word narration, like story RegenNarration, and then the podcast wherever you find podcasts.
Mike:Well, Anthony, it was a pleasure speaking with you. Safe travels, back to Australia, whenever it is that you, when you come back here.
AJ:Thanks, mike. I anticipate it'll be sort of mid next year. We might get back into the States after we've traveled around Central America a little bit. But thank you, it's been a great pleasure chatting with you too, mate, and love your work. Power to you. Mongabay Newscast's host, mike DiGirolamo, or more on Mike and Mongabay, the episodes on the Haggerty family's connecting with First Nations from back in the 90s through to the farm today, and the episode with Bruno Dan n that Mike patched in. ee the links in the show notes. And oh, I did end up launching a Substack column too, so I've linked to that as well, if you fancy a read. As usual, I'll have more for subscribing members soon, and great thanks for making this episode possible. You can join this great community of listeners by heading to the website or the show notes and following the prompts. Thanks a lot. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.
Mike:Thank you.
