Episode 2 of the “Speaking for the Trees No Matter Where They’re From” podcast is upcoming!

Aug. 12: full unedited version for paid subscribers of my Substack or my Patreon (3 hours and 14 minutes long)

Aug. 19: edited version for the public (2 hours and 34 minutes long)

Here’s the teaser on YouTube:

In episode 2 of the “Speaking for the Trees No Matter Where They’re From” podcast, I am joined by co-host Nikki Hill for a conversation with Calyx Liddick, founder of the Northern Appalachia School. Calyx has taken a deep dive into the common origins of the eugenics and conservation movements in the US in the early 20th Century, and what she has found is alarming. The boosters of race science, white supremacy, forced sterilization of “lesser” people and other now discredited concepts were the same men who founded conservationism, and their odious residue remains. Conservationism must now be re-thought so that what is good can be kept and what is bad dismissed.

In our far-ranging discussion, we talked about all this history plus “invasive species” (a central pillar of eugenics as expressed through anti-immigration sentiment and law); the futility of “fortress conservation”; how the wilderness ideal erases Indigenous people and their relationship to ecology; the importance of reciprocity, integration and coexistence in our interactions with nature; our disagreement with the characterization of “invasive plants” as agents of settler-colonialism; climate change, and more.

Calyx Liddick is a bioregional herbalist, ethnobotanist, holistic nutritionist, wildcrafter, writer, wildlife tracker and a mother of two. She is strongly interested in exploring the relationships between plants and people. Find out more about her and the school she runs at northernappalachiaschool.com

Also, check out Kelly Moody’s 2023 interview with Calyx on the Ground Shots podcast, which inspired this interview.