Maureen Cavanaugh: This is KPBS Midday Edition, I’m Maureen Cavanaugh. Through the years, we’ve all heard about the devastating impact humans have had on wildlife. Animal numbers and habitats are shrinking, and many species are struggling to survive, but in thinking about how to preserve and conserve animals in the natural environment, we often leave out one crucial element – Us, humans. We don’t think of ourselves as part of that environment, part of the natural world, but that may change after viewing a new and ambitious PBS series called Earth: A New Wild. This visually stunning series shows nature as it really is today, not separate, but vitally connected with human activity. Joining me is the host of Earth: A New Wild, conservation scientist, Dr. M. Sanjayan, and Sanjayan welcome to the program. Dr. M. Sanjayan: Thank you so much, and that was really well done, that was like the trailer to the show. Maureen Cavanaugh: [laughter] Well, you know I watched it [laughter]. This series is being promoted as showing nature as we almost never see it on television. So, what does that actually mean though? Dr. M. Sanjayan: Look, you know, I’ve been there, literally been there on the sidelines when they were filming, you know, the great spectacle planet earth, which has really set a new bar in natural history filmmaking, and there was shooting a scene and – of a grassland, and behind the camera of about 2000 villagers standing there watching, and I thought to myself, the story is really behind the camera as much as it is in front of it. Now, natural history filmmaking today really goes between, you know, these incredible shows that just show you a peace of the planet without a power line or road or person in the picture, or the other extreme where it’s all about let’s catch the animal and trying to eat it or maybe trying to get eaten in by it sort of that reduction has formed, and neither of that is the reality. First of all, the planet really is fundamentally more exciting and interesting to me given the human stories that are within it, and we conservationists – I’m always running around just trying to wrestle something to the ground. Maureen Cavanaugh: [laughter] Now, in talking about the concept of Earth: A New Wild, you said that you’ve discovered that you’ve been thinking incorrectly about human beings’ relationship with the natural world, can you talk a little bit about that, is it that that sort of a look of the grassland, that empty grassland with maybe a few animals in the distance without all of those villagers in the background? Dr. M. Sanjayan: Well, there are two things. That’s exactly right. There are two things that come to mind when you say that. The first is that I have fundamentally underestimated all through my life how many animals there once used to be, right. It’s far, far beyond anything that we can't really today imagine. So we’ve had a shifting baseline if you will. The second is that humans have been around for a long time, hominids, humans have been around for long time, enough to fundamentally alter what we now see and take for being natural. So that whole world of that’s natural and that isn’t really has to have some examination, I mean if a peregrine falcon is nesting on the side of a skyscraper, does it make it any less of a peregrine falcon. Maureen Cavanaugh: And so the idea that some conservationists and environmentalists have that, you know, humans need to take a step back, leave nature alone, we’ve heard it enough, we’ve interfered enough, just leave it alone, [chuckle] let it try to reestablish itself, et cetera, you think that that actually the boat to sail on that and that’s not the world we live in anymore. Dr. M. Sanjayan: That’s not the world we live in, I mean there are places and there are species for which extraordinary efforts have to be made, and I am absolutely for keeping Yellowstone National Park as Yellowstone National Park. But I think for the vast majority of places on the planet, you know, at the end of the day, love alone is not going to be enough to save the world. You really have to give people a reason, and that reason often lies on sort of an enlightened self-interest. And to me, this show tries to enlighten people that saving nature really is about saving ourselves. If you would take this entire show and break it down to four words, it would be, “save nature, live better” [chuckle]. Maureen Cavanaugh: [laughter] I’m speaking with the host of Earth: A New Wild, which is a PBS series. This is going to air on KPBS early in February. I’m speaking with Dr. M. Sanjayan. And, you know, we often say the tribal cultures in the undeveloped world, we often think of them as living in harmony with nature. Are those the types of lessons we need to learn? Dr. M. Sanjayan: Not always, I mean, you know, even indigenous communities have had profound impacts on the fauna of places, but people who have lived in a landscape for a long, long time, do understand certain fundamental truths about that landscape and how it works, and so there are lessons to be learnt from them. But, you know, this show isn’t just trying to find tribal cultures to see how they live, there’s a way of replicating it, you know, the very last scene of the very last episode of, which is the Oceans episode, actually ends in New York City. So I’m – this show really mixes traditional, historic, as well as very, very much cutting-edge techniques and ideas about how to think about the wild and why we want to try and save it. I mean, we’re with Maasai who are an indigenous community in East Africa tracking lines, but using very sophisticated GPS collars and thermal imaging cameras in order to follow them. Maureen Cavanaugh: Why are some of the places this series takes us? Dr. M. Sanjayan: Well, it doesn’t take us. You have better question, I mean we went to 29 countries, the film crew did, and we will go all the way from the Norwegian Arctic to the most remote atoll in the Pacific Palmyra Atoll. We go from Uzbekistan, which we kind of had to do a little bit under cover to Zimbabwe and to the American West and to New York, China, India, Bangladesh. The very few shows that can actually say this with, you know, we really try to cover some of the grandeur of the planet and bring you the most exciting, interesting visual spectacles that you’re going to see on television. Maureen Cavanaugh: And did you find any of what we would call pristine environments? Dr. M. Sanjayan: Gosh, that’s a tough question. It all depends on what you mean. I went to the place that scientists say has the highest biological diversity on the planet. It’s actually called the intangible zone, it’s in the Amazon, and far reaches the Amazon. And guess what, when I get there, there weren't any people lived there. I went to Palmyra Atoll, a speck of an atoll in the middle of the Pacific, and there are human influences. So there is no place really on the planet, except maybe the deepest parts of the ocean, that doesn’t have visible evidence of humans, and I think you have to take that into account, when you try to create solutions for why and how you save them. Maureen Cavanaugh: Now, in one episode, we see how new cattle ranching methods have revitalized a section of your home state [indiscernible] [00:07:20] in Montana, here is a clip from that episode. [Start of video presentation - 00:07:24] The new breed of cowboys are regenerating a landscape with cows acting like herds of wild bison riders mimicking wolfs, and the results have been extraordinary, changing vegetation, lush grasses, look at that birds endangered elsewhere, now flourishing. [End of video presentation - 00:07:48] Maureen Cavanaugh: And it really is an extraordinary landscape that we see in that section of the show green, rolling green hills from miles and miles, tell us more about that and how this just the way cowboys herd a cattle has changed the landscape? Dr. M. Sanjayan: So, there is a pretty famous, but controversial scientist by the name of Allan Savory. He is a famous TED talk out there that he did a few years ago. He is from Zimbabwe, and he came up with this notion that once upon a time there were enormous numbers of huff and mouth that were feeding on the grasses, but they were always harried by predators. They never stayed for very long. They’d always get pushed off by predators. Some cowboys in the West are bringing back this method, where they are pretending in some ways to be the predator and they mimic using the cows to mimic the vast herds of bison that once where there. Is it a perfect system? No. Will it work everywhere? No. But here in through the arid West, the places I have seen, it’s an amazing system that has really restored a lot of the grasslands, and it also allows other animals to co-exist in obviously a human-dominated landscape. Now interestingly, from there, we go to Africa and we look at how the African Maasai herders do a very similar thing and how wildlife really does thrive right in between the herds of cows. Maureen Cavanaugh: Oh, tell us about some of the people that we will meet in Earth: A New Wild. Dr. M. Sanjayan: Well, someone local from here of course is Dr. Jeremy Jackson. He is a very famous marine biologist from scripts, and he really created this incredible idea of what the – what the oceans really used to look like, what he called shifting baselines, this notion that we had forgotten how bountiful the sea used to be. But we also spent time with Jane Goodall in Gombe, which is an amazing thing. We meet a guy, director, Zhang Hemin in China whose so goal is to try to take a captive-born baby panda and release it into the wild. So you meet some people who are pretty well known, but then you also meet people you’ve never heard of. Mavericks and mavens around the world were doing these incredible things to find ways to live on a planet that has nature, but also has people. Maureen Cavanaugh: Oh, speaking of Dr. Jeremy Jackson, a San Diego-based scientist, we have a clip from him from the show. He talks about an area of Key West, Florida, where marine life is changing. [Start of Video Presentation - 00:10:28] There used to be a lot of big animals. There used to be a lot of three-dimensional structure, mangroves with kelp forest, coral reefs [indiscernible] [00:10:37] used to be very few bacteria and stuff in the water, now there is massive cloud of bacteria. That is what’s going on in the ocean today. That is the rise of slime. [End of Video Presentation - 00:10:57] Maureen Cavanaugh: And that’s from the Ocean episode of Earth: A New Wild. I’m speaking with the host of that program, Dr. M. Sanjayan. And Sanjayan, okay, so we have an Ocean episode, are the episodes broken down into various parts of the earth like oceans and mountains and things like that? Dr. M. Sanjayan: Exactly, so I mean it’s just a way of structuring these stories, but we have – you know, the first one is called Home that really, really deals with sort of big tricky animals to live with like tigers or chimpanzees or elephants as your neighbors, but it starts with home and then goes to plains, which is about the grasslands. I think its water then forest and it ends in oceans. So it’s a five-part series. Now, what Dr. Jackson was talking about, the rise of slime, you know, he really – he’s often called Dr. Doom, and one of the things I didn’t want to do on the show is to depress people to the point where they’re going to turn this off. So we start at that point and then we move forward. So we never shy away from telling you the problems. We don’t stop there. We want that to be the starting point of our journey of discovery. Maureen Cavanaugh: Well, one of the things that should keep people to – if I may say is the actual visual beauty of this series. It’s really extraordinary, the videography is astounding. How are some of the shots made? Dr. M. Sanjayan: Well, look, I had a very complicated idea, but I partnered with probably, I think, the most talented film, natural history filmmaker out there, guy named David Allen who’s won Emmy’s and everything else. He works for a company called Passion Planet, National Geographic, and they really put together this incredible visual story-telling team. Stories are great, but you got to bring it to life on screen, right, so – and it’s got a sound good too. So we used everything from drones to Red cameras to underwater cameras to GoPros, and helicopters with what’s called a heligimbal that keeps the camera steady in a gyroscope to be able to film from very, very high up in the air. And sometimes, the other extreme way, you have one cameraman on the ground for six weeks trying to get just one shot that’s just the mating of the saiga antelope in Russia, which really hasn’t been filmed before. So, we combine all of that and I think that’s what makes this so unusual, because a lot of environmental storytelling tends to be preachy and at sometimes the visual suggests not really taking care of. In this case, I think every shot looks like a postcard and I love that. Maureen Cavanaugh: Well, I mean in one section you’re skydiving and a bird [chuckle] touches on your arm for a moment – that’s amazing. Dr. M. Sanjayan: That was – that was actually quite incredible. So – and in the background is Annapurna in the Himalayas. I’m actually paragliding in the Himalayas, and an Egyptian vulture lands on my arm. Maureen Cavanaugh: Ah. Dr. M. Sanjayan: So you’re eye level with these incredible songbirds. Maureen Cavanaugh: Amazing. We also seeing and imagining. I think you just told us that this is in the end of the program of what New York City would look like if nature took over, why is that part of the series? Dr. M. Sanjayan: Well, you know, this whole series tries to breakdown this barrier between where we live and where nature exists, because I firmly believe that people need nature to thrive. And so if you need – if you believe that, then you want to break those barriers down, you want people to realize where their water come from, where their food come from, where their jobs come from ultimately. So, by bringing it to New York City, we sort of bring that message down. New York City was literally built on oysters, quite literally. The foundations of New York City were laid down by incredible oysters that used to live in the bay. And there is this woman, Kate Orff, who is incredible. She is industrial architect, who is trying to bring back oysters in New York Harbor, and she succeeding. Maureen Cavanaugh: [chuckle] So, it’s coming back from the original? Dr. M. Sanjayan: It’s coming back through her restoration efforts. Maureen Cavanaugh: Wow. Dr. M. Sanjayan: And at scale, and that not only will clean up the harbor, because oysters – you know, an oyster can basically cycle eight gallons of water through its body every day, but it’s also bringing back this incredible marine life, I mean right there, you know, there’s a Statue of Liberty, there’s the financial district, and there were seahorses, seahorses mating in the water in New York Harbor, I mean it was extraordinary [chuckle]. I didn’t realize that we had that kind of bounty right at our doorstep. Even in San Diego, it doesn’t take a genius to go either side of the city and see incredible wildlife. And to me, that’s a story we’re telling, right. I mean anyone can go to faraway places and then screen out people and show you the spectacle, but when it’s happening within the environment that we know is home, to me it becomes magical. Maureen Cavanaugh: As you say, we see so many programs where it looks as if human beings are destroying the natural world that certain species are doomed, certain areas of the world are doomed, what is the takeaway from this series? Dr. M. Sanjayan: We don’t want to shy away from that. When we go to the Aral Sea, you do see what has happened to the fourth largest lake on the planet. When we – fall of the Colorado River into Mexico, you do see how it dies. But you can’t stop that, pessimism never change the world. At the end of the day, I want people to be amazed at the natural world that surrounds them and realize that they are part of nature, and that everything they have can be traced back to nature. When they do that, then I think the reasons for saving it become self-evident. Maureen Cavanaugh: I have been speaking with Dr. M. Sanjayan, host of Earth: A New Wild, the five-part PBS series debuts on KPBS Television on February 4th. Thank you so much. Dr. M. Sanjayan: Thank you. [music…] Maureen Cavanaugh: Coming Up: A San Diego man, who lived the fantasy of hitting the road and seeing the world, is back with the book, some great stories, and interesting recipes. That is KPBS Midday Edition continues. [music…]
We've heard about the devastating impact humans have had on wildlife. But in thinking about how to preserve and conserve the natural environment, we often leave out one critical element: how humans have shaped the natural environment.
A new and ambitious five-part television show by PBS, "Earth A New Wild," takes a look at how nature is vitally connected with human activity.
Host M. Sanjayan takes viewers to 29 countries, and shows that co-habitations with animals can work and be mutually beneficial. He gives us a close-up look at animals ranging from giant pandas to humpback whales.
"Humans have been around for a long time to fundamentally alter what we consider to be natural," Sanjayan told KPBS Midday Edition on Tuesday. "The reality is that the planet is fundamentally more exciting given the human stories in it."
Sanjayan, an American conservation scientist, said the show aims to educate viewers about nature in a way that other shows have not. It explores areas from the Norwegian Arctic to parts of Zimbabwe — areas which Sanjayan describes as the world's "most exciting spectacles" while focusing on the human role in nature.
"Love alone is not going to save the world," Sanjayan said. "This show is about saving nature and saving ourselves."
