 Are we good? We have 33. That's a good number. Yes. There are some people that are still joining, but I guess that we can start. Oh yeah. Okay. No, let's let them go on. All right. Well, it's great to see friends, old friends and new friends. And it's, it's great that the ecosystem restoration camps movement is growing. Lovely to see Kath. Who's been. Beavering away. Getting more and more people to learn about the movement. And Inga. Who's dedicated. And Marsha, my goodness, it's been a long time and. And she met her. Partner in the garden of Aidan's. What a. In, in free slant free slant is very interesting. Just a short vignette. I had the opportunity. To ride around. One of the, the castles with the queen Beatrix before she. She. She abdicated to villain Alexander. We rode in. In these ridiculous. Carriages with. Those freezing horses. They were so beautiful. The horses were stunning. But it was kind of odd because we were riding around in these carriages, which looked like, I don't know. Something out of a fairy tale. And. All the people walking in the park there. And they were walking in the back. It was like, we're in the back. In near Apple Dorn. We're like looking at us. I'm in the back waving. I'm sure they were like, what the hell. Is that what's he doing. In the, in the carriage. He must be a king. That's what they thought. No, it was really silly. And I. Well, it's recorded. So I'm not going to mention the other bit. So. So already Argentine line was a big thing. In the Netherlands back then. So. Okay. I think I did want to just say a few words. Primarily I've been, I am now in. Irvine, California. And my. I'm going to go back to. 2007 Subaru with 207. 225,000 miles on it. Is getting some service, but I'll be going back to Mendocino. Soon. And I wanted to. Just tell you a little bit about what's. What's been happening up there. So we've been. We've been working on a couple of things. Called the land. If you want to check out the land. And I don't think their page is ready yet. They've been a little delayed. But there's been a lot of work going on. Alex. Hi, Alex. RSA. Oh, nine. Yes. Well, anyway. So the land is very interesting because it, it has the headwaters of the Navarro River on it. And this is 160 acre property. That was owned by, I think it's the guy's name was Jeff Skoll, Skoll foundation. And I guess one of those. I'm not even sure which billionaire. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. The online thing he ran, but anyway, and something. So he decided that. When the world collapses, he needed a place to go. So he bought this 160 acre. Jewish. Summer camp. And. He never went there. I think he went there once or twice. And so after a few years, he said, well. That's enough of that. And so he decided to go away. So. He sold it. And it was purchased. And it was. It was a purchase by a group that made it into a. Retreat. Center where people would go to. Have retreats and nature in their redwood trees and. Wild deer and wild turkeys and they, every hawks, eagles. It's a wonderful place. And it was really funny because. All the intentional community was there. Basically, they all knew each other. From their work, but. They thought they wanted to go out to the countryside, but they didn't know anything about. About agriculture or. Ecology and. They went out there. And they had to learn about it. And then the. COVID hit. So it was really quite interesting because when COVID hit. Not so many people were able to go or nobody was able to go. They were locked downs and no one could go to retreat centers. So they, they kind of met together and they said, well, what should we do? And then they found the ecosystem restoration camps and they had. And then they started to. In that period, the same period where fires. And so they started to talk to the conservation district and to the. Land trust in the, in the area and the different agencies involved with fire. And they got involved with restoring their own landscape. And then they realized, well, that's not enough. You have to go larger. And they learned about the ecosystem restoration camps. And so they started to talk to the conservation district. And so they started to talk to the conservation district. I want to show you. The latest thing that they've been doing now. And there's more to tell, but I know we really want to get to Marsha because. She has something fascinating to show. So I'm just going to show you this very short. Flip here. Now this is. This is. Oh, wait. I'm going to, I'm going to unshare. This. I was told to make sure the sound could be shared. So now it's being shared. And. That's not mine. Is it? No. Okay. Sure. Is that, can you see? Yeah. Okay. Here we go. I think what's interesting here is that. We have multiple systems which are impacted. So the, the social systems and the, and the emotional and spiritual life of the, of the inmates and potentially also the guards. And then you have the landscape. And so in a way, what we're seeing is that the human consciousness is, is affecting the landscape. So if this turns into a flourishing, beautiful place, then I think we're going to see that same occurrence with the spiritual and emotional and physical health of the, of the prisoners. That would be wonderful. Yeah. And so the way that we're going to do that is by creating a botanical sanctuary here. And also what we would refer to as an ecosystem restoration project. So we're going to spend a little bit of time observing what's happening here and then think about what we can bring here as part of this botanical sanctuary that will become a hub for creating and propagating some of the most important trees that can then go out into the community and start to rehabilitate landscapes in the surrounding community here in Mendocino County. Not only can you do this important work for the society, but the people who study this are going to have something that is useful for the rest of their lives and that, that the society and the civilization absolutely need. Well, and here's the other thing. You can go to the store and you can buy something, but that something can be taken away. It can be lost. It can be broken. Education can never be stolen from you. And I think that one of the things that these guys oftentimes are lacking in is hope in education. You know, for me, it's personal. I care about our town. I care about the community here. I want it to be safer and I believe that the way to make our community safer is through restorative justice in jails rather than punitive justice or retributive justice. I mean, it's been a fun experience. You know, like coming out here, like coming out here, tending to the bees and the chickens. Makes you feel a little bit more free and I want to say I don't feel like an inmate. The second component of the restorative model that is essential is skill building. People need to learn new ways to earn a living when they're in jail, in my opinion, that are, you know, lucrative and essential to our community. So the restorative model needs to have skill building programs, whether that be, you know, a metal fabricator program or construction. I was in the field doing and documenting the restoration of this vast area in China and then later all over the world. And what I found as I progressed was that there are principles which are the same everywhere. We depend on evolutionary succession. We can come up with the shared intention to do it together and that's really where the community fits and that's where these people then become essential part of the community because nobody has as much time to focus or focus and this will change their perspective, change their lives. I know that when I started to study ecology, it changed my life and I think it could work for many, many, many other people to start studying this. Observation is necessary to understand it. You have to look at the situation and do what you want to do. You have to read the landscape and understand what nature would do. I do want to get the water to come back. So what you're saying is what you're saying happened and how it did work all together. I'm going to go this way because we need it. Wow, John, this is really impressive. This is a topic on its own. Wow, wonderful. Well, I just said, I'd show you this, the camp at the land is also working to restore the Navarro River from the headwaters, which meets at the property and then goes to the ocean. And so this is, I think, the scale that we could start to consider because actually in my research, I don't think anything smaller than a watershed is not a real ecosystem because, you know, if you're in a system and you can see the edges, then that's an ecosystem. So really river basins are kind of like the right scale for us. So engaging everybody in the community together to get to know everybody and the agencies, the powers that think they have control over everything and the people who are completely separated from the environment. We all need to come together and learn together. And the main thing I've been focusing on now is an idea of central kitchens, which is to create spaces and cultural stages. Because if we, if we put together the basics for infrastructure, there's one more thing next time, perhaps I'll go deeper into the eco oasis concept. Because I think I'm starting to see that there is a magic door, which is like the connection between human infrastructure and the ecological succession. So if we open that door and you go in there, then we start to see the hydrological cycle, the soil fertility and the biodiversity. And we see how they interact together and we can control using the eco oasis, we can control the environment. And if we do this, we actually have a lot of control in terms of humidity, the temperature, the amount of biodiversity and things like the botanical sanctuary concept should also be thought about and maybe integrated into all the camps. Because if you have seed banks and you have, you have the ability to propagate and plant out the most endangered species, that makes each of the camps that does this, the most important place in their region. So gathering the genome, teaching people about it, seed saving, seed trading, but also propagation, understanding all these things, bring in all the experts. There's so many older people who have so much knowledge. And they're kind of separated from the younger people. And the younger people are looking for this knowledge. So by creating central kitchens, creator spaces and cultural stages, you have a place where you can introduce everyone to everyone and then you can work on water, soil and biodiversity. But now we are going to the Netherlands, which is rich in many things. And it's, it has grown obviously. And it's affected human civilization. It's brought us such tragic things as, as mercantilism and insurance and the global trade. And it's participated in the expansion of European thought around the world. But actually I find the people in the Netherlands quite reflective of their past and of the future. So it's a progressive and important place that's becoming an incubator for thought for how we can address many of our serious problems. And Marsha is in Friesland, which is a very special place also in the Netherlands. So thank you. And I'll turn it over to Inge for the thing. And I'm going to stay here with you. There's anything I can do later. So thanks for listening to me. Thank you, John. Thank you so much for your words and your inspirational story. It's, yeah, every time something for us to learn from. So thank you. I will, I will share my screen with you. To share the presentation. I hope you're able to see it. I hope you can. Yes, I guess everyone is. If not, let me know. Okay. Thank you. So welcome again to already this six fireside chat session. Although we're in the session already for 20 minutes. So as you know, this session will be well with Marcia and John, of course. I just want to go over some house room real quickly because I want to make it a little interactive session during the Q&A part. So if you do have a question, please raise your hands. There is this. Button in zoom. That's called question. What is it? Reactions. And if you click on there, you can see the option to raise your hand so that you can ask your question in person to Marcia. And this session will last for one hour, but maybe a little bit longer. But we leave the room open for a longer discussion. And now I would love to go to give you some news about. Camp experiences and courses that are available for you. If you are interested in one of these camp experiences or courses, you can go to our website, ecosystem restoration camps.org. And we have a page called courses and events, or it's events and courses, it's courses and events. Yes. And you can find more about these experiences there. But to quickly go over them. There is a volunteering opportunity in camp human nature in Uganda. And you can go there between the 21st of June and the 30th of July. But we recommend to please get in touch with Ronald, the camp manager to find a date that suits you both. Then we have a camp experience coming up at camp Earth connection in Mexico. And these are weekend experiences. The first is coming up this weekend. And the second one is coming up this weekend. Maybe it's too soon for some of you, but the other one is from the 25th until the 26th of June. So this might be interesting for you. And then another camp in Mexico, can be organic. Is giving a course for you on learning regenerative farming techniques and gaining hands on experience. And then camp Yodi in California USA is hosting a summer camp from August the 12th until the 14th. And camp Alta Plano in Spain. Is hosting another regenerative culture course, which has been successful for I think already. Third three times. So they are opening another opportunity for you from the ninth until the 16th of September. So if you're interested, please go to our events and courses page on our website. And then some camp news from the camps all over the world. We are excited to share that we are welcoming two new camps. Camp Pachamama in South Africa and camp Naguga Hills Lodge from Kenya. Camp Pachamama is focusing on rehabilitating the lands and agroforestry and their fission is to restore the inner and outer landscapes. And we hope camp experiences or opportunities to help them will come up soon. And the camp Naguga Hills Lodge is working on rehabilitating the lands by agroforestry as well. And they are now focusing on two hectares, but we'll hope to restore more communal lands soon. So we are really excited that they are part of the movement. And then Camp Ciota Cree from Ireland visited the Netherlands to go to regeneration projects in the Netherlands and to gain learnings from them and bring them back home to Ireland to inspire Irish farmers on how to get their regenerative grown produce to the market. And this knowledge exchange is all possible by the Erasmus Plus Grants that we received together with the Ciota Cree. And a fun fact is that they visited a food forest in the Netherlands and because they have been so successful, the government changed their policy and they're now giving subsidies to food forests. So this is a very positive news. And then Canberra Genesis in the Philippines, they hosted a training to educated young local youth on permaculture together with a UN Women Federation for World Peace. And it was the untrained trainer principle. So the youth brought all this knowledge back home to their local communities and they can teach them on how to do permaculture. So I really like this concept of training the trainer. Then unfortunately some bad news from Kampdoko in Malaysia. They have been robbed of the construction materials needed to create infrastructure to host the campers and to offer onsite training. So this is really unfortunate and we are doing our best to find ways to support the Kampdoko with this loss. And then another note, the fireside chat sessions will be having a summer break. So the next one will begin in September, but we are hosting an Eurosea symposium about the role of non-native species in ecosystem restoration. And there isn't a date yet, but we do have two speakers that are excited to be part of this. So keep this space open to see it. All right. And now we're going over to Kampdoko's garden and John already mentioned something about Marcia. So I don't want to tell you. Yeah. I think we can just go over to Marcia if that's okay. Marcia, are you ready to share your presentation with everyone? Yes. Yes. I will do the screen sharing and then shares. I have to click on share sound. Yeah, perfect. And it should work. Thank you. Participants. Oh, I'm doing something wrong. I just have to go back to the beginning. You might want to make it full screen if you can. Yeah. First I have to go back to the beginning of the presentation. Yeah. This is the beginning of my presentation. Does everybody see it? We do not see the full size yet, but maybe. I do have it on full screen. Okay. Maybe it's just me. No, it's not full screen. Okay. It's not in the PowerPoint. Marcia, you need to start the slideshow first and then share your screen. Then you can go to the, because you only shared the PowerPoint, but not the share, not the presentation. All right. I'll share and I'll try it again. Yeah. It also has it so. That's true. But let's try again. Okay. I'm going to share the screen. How is this? Better. Yeah. Yes. Well, then, then, then I will start. So yeah, my name is Marcia. And I'm an entrepreneur and I'm working. For. An association. That's called caning. And caning is a citizen's initiative for a living landscape. And caning is Phrygian because in the north of the Netherlands. We actually have another language apart from Dutch and it's called Phrygian. And caning translates to King, which is short for King of the Meadows. But who is this? Who is this King that our association carries the name of. That's. This King. The God with lack of God with its, it's a bird. In Dutch, it's called grotto. And in the Phrygian language, it's, it's called Chris. But we also refer to it as the King of the Meadows. It's a beautiful bird. It makes a beautiful sounds and it's a migratory bird. So it visits our country each year in the spring and in the summer. And in the winter time it goes to the south all the way to Africa. So it's also a bird that actually. It's one of those birds that actually connects us with, with other countries as well. And the citizen initiative. So before I will tell you about our ecosystem restoration camp. I want to tell you a little bit more about. Yeah, the association behind our camp and why did we started and what are the other things that, that we are doing because the camp for us as a part of, of all our activities. So I wanted to bring you along on a little journey to tell you about why we are there. Our association was started in, in 2012. It was started in their warden, which is in, in Friesland. You could say the capital of Friesland. And it was started by a group of people from different disciplines. But they all had the same worry they were worried about the future of the landscape that they were living in. And here are a few of the people that had started this, this movement. You can see there's a poet, a musician. There was a farmer, the director, the director at the time of the Worldwide Fund for Nature and the professor of ecology, Thomas. And they all found each other in that, in that worry. And yeah, what, what was the worry? What was the challenge? Well, the reason we chose this, this bird, the king of the meadows is because this bird tells us something about our Dutch landscape and the Dutch land landscape is definitely not only meadow land. We have a lot of variety in different landscapes, but meadows are grassland meadows are a large part of our country. There's some, some data here. If you look at the total land of the Netherlands, 30% of that land is is grassland. And if you look at the total land use of agriculture, 54% of the agricultural land use is grassland. And in Friesland, where, where we are based, it's even more. So 60% of the total land of Friesland is grassland. And if you look at it from an agricultural perspective, 80% is is grassland. And here this is, of course, a very simplistic image, but here you can see the different ways of, of using lands on the left side, there's a natural situation. And on the right side, there's a situation of intensive farming of, of monoculture. But there's also another way, another possibility of using land and that's nature inclusive farming. And it's actually, that's actually very interesting because there used to be a time in the Netherlands. I mean, of course, first our country was was completely nature and then the humans became involved and they started to change things in the landscape. They started to grow food and slowly it turned into a cultural landscape. But there was a time when actually the hands of us as humans and the natural processes that we were working with. There was a good balance between those two. And that's a balance that we can find back in nature inclusive farming, but we've gone way too far as we, as we all know, we are trying to exclude the natural processes. And the more we are doing that. Yeah, the more biodiversity we are losing. And I just wanted to show you this is a picture of, of a situation where meadowlands are nature inclusive. And the best way to show you how it is to be there is to just take you there. But since that is not possible today, I recorded some sounds of what it can sound like and I hope you can hear it. But let's just try for a little while. We can thank you. Yeah. So here it's really a pleasure to be there. There's a there's a lot of sounds there. It's, it's really full of life. And yeah, also the smells, it's, it's, it's a beautiful place to be. And we used to have a lot of these kind of meadows in the Netherlands, but they are, yeah, they have really, really decreased. And that was the worry of the people that started this, this association. And here I think this, this image also tells a lot if we are changing our landscape and if we are, if we continue to exclude all these natural processes, then we will also lose all the biodiversity that belongs to it. And the difference is actually when we look at it on a worldwide scale, scale. I mean, a lot of people they visit the Netherlands and they cycle around here and they say, oh, it's so green here. But actually, that's the problem. Because we need a lot more colors than one color of green we need, we need all these herbs in the meadows and and we need the differences in landscapes. Yeah, we are, we are not on a worldwide level we are not doing well we only have 15% left of our original biodiversity. And we all know this report I think the alarming reports of the IPBS, which basically says that we as humans are doing this. So that's why this group of people thought okay then then we have to do something about it and we start in our own environment. And these people were all from different disciplines. They actually found out that that was a strength because there were people from looking at it more from a scientific point of view. There were people looking at it from a more cultural point of view, and there were people that were more the innovators. And we actually found out that if we would combine all these point of views and the different knowledge. Similarly, if you turn on one of the wheels, the other wheels also start moving so we we the effect that we had when we were cooperating was actually stronger than when we were doing it all by ourselves. And I just want to show you a few examples of things that came out of this movement. This is a scientific part of it. This is Tony Spiersma, he's a professor of ecology, and he's leading a scientific project in the southwest of Friesland. They are studying about 10,000 hectares, 3000 fields they are involved with 200 farmers and they are studying about 1000 pairs of Godwits. And actually, the main question that they are asking themselves is what do Godwits tell us about the health of the health of our landscape because it's really it's not about protecting. It's not only about protecting this, this species, it's about the health of our landscape in in general and this bird is a storyteller. One of the things that they've learned is that if we look at her bridge grasslands. The chick survival so the small Godwits is three times higher than in the right grass monocultures which you see on the left. And there are several reasons for it, but the important reason, one of the most important reasons is the availability of food. These chicks they they are dependent on insects. And when they are born they immediately have to look for their food on their own their parents are there to to guide them but they have to do it and they are completely dependent on insects and if you look at the monoculture landscape. There are no herbs that have flowers and insects that they are attracted by the flowers so on the left side they they won't find enough food to to grow. Another problem is that when the grasses is is moan moan or mode I don't know the exact English word but I hope you understand me. And they also lose shelter against predators so they are much more visible for predators, and they will also much sooner be eaten by by the predators. And of course, if we are mowing at the time that these little chicks cannot fly yet. They will get into the mowing machine and they will be killed in that way so for these chicks to survive in a really intensively used landscape it's practically impossible and that's why the God with population is is is decreasing so much so we in order to keep the God with in our landscape we need to make that transition to her bridge meadows. And this is another also another really good illustration I think it's made by the researcher you see on the right yet on this and he's studying. And on the left side you see a situation of a dairy farm that is dependent on artificial fertilizer and on pesticides. And on the right side you see dairy farm that's working with ecosystem so working with with nature and you, you can see the difference in biodiversity and also the difference in stability because on the left side if one thing. fails, it's it's it's a very fragile system well on the right side it's it's much stronger. And well for the cultural parts. It's one thing to know what's going on and it's very important to know what's going on, but what we have learned is that it's also very important to feel what's going on so that's why we have this cultural aspect of our work as well and we made. One of the things we made together with theater maker is was a play, and it was about a farm family it's based on a true story that lost unfortunately lost their son in a farm accident. And close to the place where or exactly at the place where they lost their son. And a year after there was a God with that started to breathe there. And the farmer at that moment decided to completely change his way of farming and they really wanted to protect these got this, but his wife saw the financial consequences of of doing that. I understand that you want to do this but how can we make our farm financially viable if we if we make this step, and so it was something that a lot of farmers and a lot of people could relate to and we could really feel what is going on. That it's that that yeah that it could be scary to make make that stuff because can you still earn a living if you do that. Also we had in the museum we had an exposition where children could look at the world from the perspective of God with and we made this film. A while ago and I wanted to show you a little bit. And you can show it later completely. Let me see. Let me know if you can hear this. The ground. The green. The soil. The soil. In the ground, under our feet, plays a magical game that we can't see. The ground we produce with each other in our farm is more than a container with sediment. It is a beautiful organism. 95% of our food comes from the ground. The ground plays a central role and at the same time is a heavy pinot. But the ground you are still in can be used again. By the beginning. By the beginning. The ground where I hope to deliver in good state to the next generation. A foundation for a good existence. Because we already know what crisis and disaster is like. The ground plays a central role. The name of the ground is to trust the people. And we still learn. I want to be my colleague. I want to learn. I want to learn the sense of the bridge. And trust only on machines. And I am in the middle. We have already started. Do you still know me? Do you still know me? How quiet Nomi. Wetter Laimi Del. Drunk Mi and Laimi Verbleet. Ekener Rij, Studs Jirender. Poppen de Wegenhut. Sleep de zee. Kronkelende Dieptes in het labyrinth van mijn lichaam. Iw en lang spul tussen mij en het wetter. Which for me had passed in the blink of an eye. Oud ik ook ben. Ever again I'm ready to be young. Een dartel veulen. Een springende wijn. I promise that everything is yours. Om wat van haar hart. Arms and round hips I invited you. For a salty embrace. De ogenotst van mij. Cozest mij. I will stop it here. It will go on for a little while. But I think Inge can send the link. Or maybe the link can be shared in the chat. So that you can look at it later. I will do that. Okay, thank you. And another example of how we are using culture is that this year we have started a new ritual. We are working together with a lot of organizations in Friesland. And we made a promise. To nature. Actually three humans made a promise to three species, which was a symbol for a new connection between humans and the rest of nature. And they spoke out that promise. And the promise was brought to a place in Friesland. Where it is. Where you can see it for 400 days. And we want to do this each year to renew our promises. And the innovation branch. We started a living lab for nature inclusive farming where which is mostly knowledge based. So it makes sure that the knowledge that is necessary to make a transition to nature inclusive farmers gets to the farmers. And this living lab is still working. We have also done some political things. We also have a real collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture with a plan. And at the moment you can still visit that we have an exposition in Liwarden. Where, yeah, we are collecting knowledge. To give everyone that's involved inspiration about how can we, in our province, make more room for natural processes and for diverse landscapes. But of course this is the most important thing why we are all here. We also started an ecosystem restoration camp and we actually did that after 2018. We had done all these projects and then we thought okay what are we going to do now and yeah we asked our community what do you think is necessary and one of the things that came out of that was that there was really a need to work together with each other in the landscape and really to learn by doing. And we had organized Awakening Landscape before so that was a way to really discover the beautiful places of the landscape. And then I met John Liu at a conference in the Netherlands and he told me about ecosystem restoration camps and I thought well that's actually exactly what we need, what our association needs at the moment. So we wrote a plan and the thing is we don't have our own lands so we don't own lands but we do have a large community so we do have a lot of people in our community that do have lands. So we decided to start up a mobile camp camp Kings Garden which means that we visit places that belong to people in our community that want to work on ecosystem restoration and we pick a theme each time and we organize a camp around it. We only started last year so we are still a new camp but we already had some really nice experiences and I just want to show you a little bit about the things that that we have done so far. So one of the themes that we are working on in Kings Garden is Herbridge Meadowlands. Well I've just told you about the importance of Herbridge Meadowlands and we organized a camp last year in which we actually started with the history. So how how did that develop these Herbridge Meadowlands? How were people working on the lands before the bigger machines came and one of the things they did is that they were working with this instrument which is I hope I pronounce it right. I think it should be pronounced as a site if I'm not saying it right and someone knows just tell me. But a long time ago people from Germany would walk all the way through the Netherlands to work on our fields and to work with this instrument on the fields for weeks in a row. But I mean you can imagine what a different situation that was. I mean now we have all these machines and we can mow the land just you know in one day but this would really take a long time and also at that time we were not able to control the water as we are doing it right now. So it meant that large parts of the lands were completely covered with water in the winter time and that water would slowly disappear and actually when there was so much water we couldn't work on the land so we had to wait until it was dry enough to work on it and in that time the birds that were living there they could actually later eggs their chicks could grow up because there was no human that's coming there. So this I mean I'm not saying we have to go back into the history but it does tell us about how the way that landscape was functioning and the way we were interacting with it and a large change that we have now. So how can we recreate that situation and recreate the wealth of that landscape in our current modern times? That's the question we are asking in this camp and here you see that well first we practiced and here we were actually mowing the grass in this way which is I can tell you it's quite difficult and we also learned about the different species of plants that were living there and what we did in this camp is that we collected hay that was still carrying the seeds of the different species that are the floral species that are living there so we collected the hay. As you can see we used John Lu already talked about freesion horses these are freesion horses and we used several methods we also used modern methods but we also used the ancient methods to transport the hay with the seeds and then we would spread out the hay with the seeds at a location that could use more diversity of plants and the advantage of doing that instead of buying seeds is that you really use the seeds that are native to that area and you also use the DNA that belongs to that area and the insects that are living there they are completely adapted to those species so if you want to help biodiversity it's really important to as much as possible use the seeds that belong to the area and we are trying to do that in this way and also when you use the hay you also bring for example fungi you bring it along and we all know that it's about the whole web of life so these fungi also play an important role and another project we are doing at the moment so on the one hand we have the herb which meadowlands which is an open landscape but if you look in the same area if you look at the farms and and the yards around the farms actually at those places there there's room for trees and one of the things that used to be quite common in that area were fruit fruit courts so that those were courts with fruit trees I'm not sure if this is the right English translation but if you select fruit trees you can choose between different kinds of fruit trees and there's a fruit tree that's a high trunk fruit tree so the trunk becomes quite high becomes much older than the more commercial trees that don't become that high and because of the height there's also different mosses growing growing on it and because it becomes a lot older than the commercial fruit trees in the end the tree will become hollow so different kind of birds can can live in it and usually when people are starting a fruit court they're also protecting it against the wind so they are planting other trees and shrubs around it to protect the fruit trees from the wind and by doing that they are actually kind of creating a biotope that you can compare to the the edge of a forest and in that biotope that you are creating around the farm you're also creating the biodiversity that belongs to it and one of the birds that loves to live there is the ichterine warbler it's it's a beautiful little yellow bird that imitates a lot of other birds it's also a migratory bird and yeah with that project we try to recreate those those those fruit courts and also we we had an explanation about it about what's the best way to plant it and to take care of it and then the the people of the project would do it at their own farm so this is yeah the two main projects that we are doing at the moment and in 2022 we have some new activities planned um this sunday we have uh yeah a little excursion we are uh going with a guide we are going into the area and we uh we are going to look look up birds that are are living around the farm or around your house and try to recognize them by by their sounds and we also want to organize a concert in in one of the food courts so it will be a human singing with the birds that are singing and in the summer we are going to do another meadow camp it's mostly going to be a knowledge camp so learning about the history of grasslands about the flora and fauna that live there i say live there because i think we are um actually living together with all these all these plants and and uh and animals and in autumn and winter we are continuing with the fruit tree project and we are also going to pick up some new projects in the southeast of fristland which is a completely different landscape and i think i would like to end my story with this if if there's one thing that's um that i've learned in the last years that i'm working on uh this these projects is that before you start with ecosystem restoration it's really important to be aware of where you are because each landscape has different opportunities um it it has a different soil it there's there's differences in height um and all those things of the surroundings tell you what what the possibilities and what the opportunities are and if we if we do that in a different way if we go somewhere and we only project our own ideas on that location and we're not looking at where are we exactly then i'm not sure if we are making the situation any better so i think for ecosystem restoration it's really important to have a sense of place where am i and what would nature give me if if if i'm if i'm giving it the space at this moment and what's what's the existing cultural landscape that is actually open for a lot of biodiversity and i mean open figuratively in this way that will invite a lot of biodiversity and i think that's that's really important in ecosystem restoration as you can see here in the middle you see the godwits but in other landscapes in frisland there you would choose other species to call them the king of of their landscape um yeah this was the story for so far so if there are any questions then i will hear it thank you for listening thank you so much mercier it was a wonderful presentation and obviously because i'm dutch from brent a close to frisland it really relates to me so thank you so much for all this knowledge sharing you're welcome yeah thank you for listening is there any any first question for mercier i know that it's it's a little later but all all this information that we got so far is so interesting so yeah maybe i wasn't in the 20 minutes i'm sorry no worries at all is there any first question for mercier i think you explained it very well i hope so john i want i wonder um martin lund casters yeah um garden of adans is is is there are you able to to connect with the the long time i mean he he began the first vegetarian restaurant in amsterdam he started the biodynamic association and yeah so i mean it's decades and decades of experience and he's he's been awarded the the a medal the king's medal why goodness so yeah and that was the real king i mean i mean depending on what you think of the real but that wasn't the bird king that gave him the medal that was the human king gave him the medal the medal yeah i think the bird king appreciates him too definitely yeah so your question i think was i mean i'm not sure if that was your question but we we uh we know martin very well as as i said i met my boyfriend in his garden of eden um and he's also in the same area of where we are um mostly working and actually the fruit court that i was talking about he has a really beautiful one um so he's definitely one of the examples of how you can create this this biodiversity also around your your your farm um and he has some some lands um which is quite her bridge as well um so definitely there's there's some inspiration to be found at at his place and uh uh yeah he's he's he's he's part of our community thanks very much co yeah i would just like to firstly to thank marcia for the amazing presentation i just every time i listen to you i learn more about about what you're doing in frisland and i'm just so inspired so thank you i also want to just say for um for those of you who are lucky enough to be in the netherlands and um keen to attend the speaking perhaps you'd like to share your contact details in the chat so that people can can get in touch with you and then in terms of the other the upcoming camps in in august we're able to share those details close to time in our socials and and our newsletter thank you so i just shared my email address and of course you can also find find us on the ecosystem restoration website and yeah when the dates are are are set then then i will contact you like that um i the i do see a question coming up from uh digital and stone did you digital stone are you happy to to ask in person or shall i read it out loud sure i can ask in person my name's actually caroline james but um my company is digital and stone i'm uh thanks very much for the talk that was super inspiring especially the way um you talked about culture and the integration of the human spirit with nature and the environment um specifically obviously with with eco restoration in mind um and uh i had a question it may be more for john but i mean maybe marcia knows as well and it's more to do with the human body and if the human body can create um an eco struct an eco and support an ecosystem um specifically with green burials and i'm just thinking about how we can give back to the land and i wondered if you knew anything about that or whether obviously food and dead bodies don't go together but um i would imagine that a body breaking down naturally would support an ecosystem in a natural environment and anyway i just wondered if i could ask about that i i find that i mean maybe john can but i just wanted to say that um so it's it's about us as humans decomposing right that's that's that's what your question is referring to yeah well i i'm i'm actually thinking about that as well because i i think it's important that that's when we um are ready to be decomposed i'd say like that that that we can actually you know get back in into nature and uh yeah it's it's one of one of the points where we are cutting the cycle at the moment um but i know it's it's forbidden to to do it uh you know to bury your relatives in your in your own garden um so yeah there's a lot of rules that are not making the possible and actually referring to that it's it's not only with us decomposing it's also with our um shit i don't know what's the proper word for it but it's also with with with everything that comes out of is when we are still alive that's also a really important part of of the cycle and actually we are losing um a lot of important nutrients that that we are now burning um and these nutrients they they they we cannot get them back so yeah i think uh us human bodies needs to need to be part of the cycle again yeah yeah but i also feel that there's a very similar to what you come up against with the eco restoration and the eco restoration camps and everything that john's been working on for all these years is there's a system in place that doesn't support it and you've kind of got to go through that first and the reason why it doesn't necessarily support it is because it's the big you know the big farm or the big cemetery or the big farmland or what have you so there's a lot to take on but anyway john i i know i i think one of the things that's happened in in in discussions in china because the awareness that the for instance the the forest lands were relatively you know reduced massively reduced and and now they're coming back they're the chinese have been planting trees like crazy for decades now but uh one of the things that that i saw and it happened when my father was actually buried so there the the problem is that in many countries in china and elsewhere that there's this kind of movement to create a monument to to the to the person who has passed and what we were we began to discuss we had actually quite large meeting together with the authorities the government authorities the party authorities and the scientific organizations and we talked about the idea of memorial forests the idea that actually we need to protect forests in perpetuity and one of the big problems with forests is that they they get turned into plantations and they're harvested and everything and so if we if we never actually have any forests that reach climates equilibrium then you know we're not we're not interrupting the solar radiation at the highest level and creating the the the most effective way of holding moisture near the earth and one of the ideas that came up was like well these memorials these these stone things actually they're just ruins you know we're creating ruins for for the future generations to look at and what we really want is to restore the ecological function so that future generations will will enjoy that and that this led to the concept of memorial forests and if we could so many of the people who die are quite wealthy you know they've spent their lives accumulating material things and wealth and if they were to endow the forests and maintain these memorial forests so that they were held in perpetuity and all their descendants would honor this because if they're remembering their ancestors and you know in a in a country like China where they basically worship they have ancestor worship literally this is this is quite possible so I think if once we start thinking about culture what does it mean to have a global culture is a global culture the the the conquistadors who conquered people is that the history or is the history the history of people who are learning that all cultures have over internal time studied what is the meaning of life and there are different understandings so if if if we look now we have a global culture and we have to make sure that that global culture reaches its highest potential rather than holds on to the lowest common denominator so hopefully we can do that but I think I think the burial has something to do with this and we just don't have room for these huge stone cemeteries and all this waste from that and it doesn't really help us in healing and what what the when people walk through a memorial forest and they feel the moisture and hear the birdsong and there's you know this is absolutely the best way to to memorialize people so let's we I think as this movement grows this movement has the interesting phenomenon to focus a collective intelligence around the world and I notice that we're not just in one country we're all over the world so if this becomes like normal to discuss this around the world and the rest of the media the media seems to be slightly schizophrenic or maybe insane and motivated by other purposes like materialism or you know selfishness then if we can communicate this way in a conscious compassionate and egalitarian way then this this is so appealing to the majority of people compared to the type of insanity that we've been all been watching for the last few years especially but it's been growing for a long time but but now we have a chance to change that and we don't we can't do that alone we can only do that when we're all together so the more camps we have the more this is shown to be rational and and make a lot of sense and it's good for the community it's good for our children it's good for future generations it's good for the earth and it's good for ourselves this is really what we need to do so i'm i'm pretty chuffed that we've gotten to this point thank you john um surely i believe that you have a question for marcia are you willing to ask her in person surely thompson from camp kitty guy hi such a wonderful um presentation thank you so much and it was really inspiring what's possible now i wondered about the model of using individual species instead of using ecosystems or or food chains because i know that's the model that our ecologists use who study and approve that the tar sands is actually good for different birds right um that well um well heads are better than solar panels like you can really come up with those kind of findings quite easily using one species and one area yeah well actually um i think it's a really good good question and and actually uh i'm i'm also happy that you're asking it because it means i have to change something in my story because actually what we are doing is we we are looking at the system as a whole um it's just that we are using individual species to help us tell the story because these species they they need something from the landscape so they tell us stories about what they need but of course these species are are part of a whole ecosystem that's completely interdependent and if if you only take one example like the the godwith that that that's that's kind of like our icon of of this association the godwith lives in the meadowlands but another bird the lapwing which lives in the same meadowland needs completely different some things need they're similar but there are also things that are completely different in their needs um and it's actually very risky i mean if you are working on on ecosystem restorations recent restoration um it's very risky to focus on only one species because then then you know you will create um situations that are not good for the other species so actually when we are doing the ecosystem restoration we are not focusing on one species but we are really focusing on the system um and i think we are focusing on the biotope to to create a biotope that's that's healthy and and when you do that the species will come but to bring this the story to the to the public and to make it more colorful the species help um but yeah i'm i'm very happy that you're asking it because if if you get this out of out of my story then i and then i have to make some changes in the story actually thank you and no i think you you try for both but it is the model i can't hear you anymore focusing on this it's species right and we kind of lose the understanding of everything else but also it's it's the model of ecologists where they look at one species at a time and you know are used very well by the oil and gas industry to support their claims so yeah it's a big in ecology it's a big discussion i mean are we focusing on species protection or are we focusing on biotope protection it's it's between ecologists it's it's it's it's it's it's a huge discussion um and um what's what's difficult is i mean the godwits um is quite well known but if i look at it from a freesian perspective there are also certain species that really have really specific demands of their biotope and if we don't know these specific demands i mean we are already working with such tiny areas where we can protect them we have to know their demands otherwise there will be gone um really soon so the most ideal situation is that you don't have to know it you just you just have to live with the law of nature you know don't pollute nature don't destroy nature and embrace natural systems and then the species will come but we are not living in in in such a way so some species need unfortunately need that protection but we want to go to a world where we can focus much more on on the bigger picture if i could add a word or two to this i i think that um we really um need to understand that there are eight billion people on the planet now and we're we're adding a billion people every 12 years so we will most likely go to nine and ten and maybe there are some demographic considerations that will slow and and and uh and what we what we see in many parts of the world is that human beings in highly developed areas of the world and in places where women have equal rights and there's access to contraception and family planning then the population rates go flat and actually decline so the future's changing and human beings are now recognizing how much impact humans have had and what i think we we can look at and again you know i i sort of noticed this and it's also been part of the thought about why we need to have ecosystem restoration camps is that we have so many different points of view so much differences in our cultures and in our and in our education and in our opportunity and so ecosystem restoration camps makes it possible for people to go together and learn together and have different types of people and i love the fact that the king's king of the meadows is bringing poets and musicians and theater and scientists and farmers all together to talk about this because this is the way we can use collaborative inquiry for collective intelligence and if we reach this sort of goal where we sort of all know well okay the hydrological cycle is a real thing and there's moisture near the near the surface of the earth and there's moisture high in the atmosphere and which do we want well kind of if it's high in the atmosphere artificially we're creating a more of a greenhouse effect and if it's close to the earth we're cooling the earth and it's available for us to breathe if we're in relative humidity it's completely different than if we're in a hyper arid area and we're being desiccated and so if we have this collective understanding then it has to be the central intention of human civilization to protect it and there are there's infinite nuance in ecology so once you start studying this you can forget about graduation because you're never going to know it all but what you will learn if you continue to study it is you'll have a lot of knowledge and it leads to a lot of inferences and that's a very good thing so the more people who who are following this path and also when you start I've kind of noticed that you cannot unlearn things so if you learn things which are fundamental truths it's it's kind of hard to go back to ignorance you know if you say well I you know there's too much evidence this is true and so you can't unknow that so when you know certain things then you must you know you can like say well I'll just ignore it and go the other way but I don't that's not very easy to do and uh if you have any kind of um predilection to morality or to integrity then you can't you just can't do that so um I think I think we're on the right path and there are nuances and there are differences and certainly you know like I I've been worrying about cloning a little bit but actually I think cloning we may need cloning to to maintain certain species that will be lost and if they have unique properties and you know we need them so we may need to use advanced science for some reasons but we we need to be careful with it so for instance I was noticing in the Netherlands that the clones are often the same I I mean identical they're planting the same individual out and this is very dangerous because if there's an influence which damages that that individual the whole thing will be gone and if that's a forest with with the thousand five thousand trees that all the same individual and it's attacked and it all dies and once you're going to lose 30 40 50 years of biomass and you know don't do that so understanding these things and the public needs to understand these things everybody needs to understand these things so if we if we work together to study this and then to take that even further it's really touching on the question of value because now we have a massively corrupt and unsustainable materialistic society well that's not going to work it's not working now and it won't work in the future so something has to change and when when we don't consider these issues we don't get to the conclusion like well we better share you know everybody is equal that's where we need to get to everybody needs to eat you can't like go past the street and somebody's lying there and goes okay sorry buddy you're going to die in the street I'm just going off we can't do that so we need to look and and we can't even just wait for them to be lying in the street next to us we have to realize that there are millions of people who are wandering the earth now as refugees at the edges of huge degraded landscapes so whatever privileges we have if we have the privileges if we have food and we have time and we have education we have a responsibility to address those if you're wandering virtually naked at the edge of a you know fleeing violence at the edge of a degraded landscape you know save yourself you know but but if you're if you're in a privileged position with with knowledge and access to to time and money you have more responsibility to deal with this so I wouldn't I wouldn't worry too much about the details because we really don't have it's not I'm I'm not saying don't study them I'm just saying it's going to be infinitely complex it's hard it's going to take generations of human civilization to undo the mess that we're in but nature is resilient nature is beautiful it comes back faster than you imagine and that's where the joy and satisfaction is so if we follow this direction we can deal with all of the nuances and it's not a theoretical issue it's a physical issue so we have to do it physically and in physically doing it we answer the theoretical issues we learn more so that's why I think about that. Thank you John for sharing your thoughts um I do want to go but maybe we can follow up this discussion after but I think there is one more last question for for Marcia specifically um and if there are more let me know but I think that digital stone I I'm sorry I forgot your name you mentioned it earlier but you were asking one more question for for Marcia I believe it's actually three questions in one I think but yeah so yeah my name is Caroline Caroline Jones Caroline yeah so the question was um the migration routes that you were talking about and the habitat corridors are they protected um and um is that land conserved or is it conservation and restoration being two separate things I was kind of asking if if you know the migration routes are protected and is it protected because you're restoring the land and that's under some kind of legislation or is it protected because they're under conservation or they're not necessarily protected um it's it's it's quite a difficult question actually I mean I don't think but maybe I'm wrong but I don't think that the migration routes in itself are protected because for example with the the godwits um the godwits it's very often when it leaves the Netherlands it passes via Portugal and Spain and then goes to Africa and a while ago they were making plans um in Portugal for a new large airport and it was actually at a at a place where there was now a nature reserve and a lot of the godwits are resting before before they continue to to Africa and also on the way back and um as it looks now the plans are going through so so it means that this specific part is is definitely not protected um people from the Netherlands that are working to preserve this this species they they are of course protesting and another example is um I know that sustainable energy is is a large topic but they are also placing large windmills on migration routes and we are losing a lot of birds that are actually flying into this windmills and you know just die so that that answer to your question is actually no the migration routes are not protected but of course in each country there are uh nature conservation laws that are actually obliging us to to protect our biodiversity and protect our nature but if you look at the practice and and how we can um actually maintain that law and what belongs under it and what doesn't belong under it it's it's it's quite complicated and I don't think it's I don't think it's well organized enough I think I think in general we could say that nature needs a lot more rights and needs a lot more protection than it's than it's getting now um so yeah I mean on the whole routes uh in in Africa for not another example the godwits they are uh breeding in the Netherlands and when um they don't succeed so when their offspring dies before it can fly um the adult birds they leave our country earlier and so they arrive in Africa earlier and in Africa they're actually living most of the time on the rice fields of the farmers there and when they leave uh uh in the Netherlands earlier they're actually arriving in Africa on the rice fields when the farmers have just started to um sow their their rice so they're actually eating the seeds of the farmers there and so a lot of the farmers there they really hate these godwits because the godwits they are they are eating their their produce um and and I think it's it's a really good example of how everything is connected and and one researcher said it was about another another bird but also migratory bird if we do all the effort in protecting the habitats of the birds in our country but we are not doing it along the entire route we're not doing it together and and we don't create because these farmers in in in Africa um I mean they they have to earn a living as well of course so so we understand their frustration as well and it's but we have to work all together to really um yeah protect these these uh these migration routes and yeah it's not well it's not well enough arranged definitely not. Garcia can you clarify where in Africa these birds go to? Well actually you can actually there's um a website where you can follow them it's it's also on our website uh they go to uh different places but mostly on the um west coast uh and a little bit yeah they're kind of spread on the west coast but they don't go all the way down I will one second I will show I will uh share the link where you can follow them I mean some of them they have a tracker one second and do you do you have connections in Africa? Um well not me personally but people in in our community they are working together with Africa a lot yeah so the the whole research around these birds uh it it has a lot of international collaboration and here is the link where you can follow them actually there are already some uh godwits in Africa uh yeah so they would go to Senegal and Mauritania and Mali um Guinea-Bissau is also a place where where they where they go to but if you um you follow this link you can follow them through uh the year nice is it in the in the chat? It's in the chat oh one second there you go thank you thank you all right well considering the time I don't know if there any questions um for Marcia but I think um it would be maybe nice to round it up for Marcia and I mean if you're you're more than welcome to stay longer for an open discussion maybe some topic really related to you and you want to discuss it further with with either John or Marcia or with other people from the ERC please please stay but if you are occupied thank you so much for for joining us and um thank you also Marcia for your presentation by the way um yes thank thank you everyone for for your time and being there it's always lovely to connect although it's digitally it still feels like we are connected um so thank you everyone for being here and Marcia um particularly thank you so much for giving this very good explanation of the situation in Friesland and the work that you are doing and I'm excited about the new camps that are coming up I have I have one question off the off the thing do you have one of those polls that you can jump over the canal with is that a question to me yes well I don't have them but I do have friends that can do it really well in all different kind of ages so um I mean they're I know old farmers who can still do it and uh yeah I will I want to learn it yeah but I I don't I don't I'm I'm I'm actually not a original Friesian I come from a different part of the Netherlands so um I learned to speak the language but I have to still have to learn that yeah John next John next time you're here Marcia you and I will do one of these but do prepare to get wet I've done it once it's horrible you really have to overcome fears can you go rent the rent the things or do you actually actually a place where you can train you have a dry spot where you can train yeah and they actually made I mean so this is they use these sticks uh back in the days as a means of transportation when what I said is uh these meadowlands they used to be um really wet and and you needed to jump over water to get from one place to the other so it used to be really a means of transportation but now they made it into a sport as well and it's actually they go even further they have a much a higher stick and they climb in in it all the way to the top and then they try to jump as as far as possible and it's it's it became a freezing sport yeah it's very difficult I also tried it once but I'm I'm I'm willing to try it again especially if John and Peter are joining all right we will organize it no worries and uh fiddly happen ecosystem restoration yeah that can be a cultural thing we can we can do a tree planting with a side of jumping over canals yeah or or um collecting seeds and uh yeah I see so yeah go ahead you know I see one more last question from Eva van Strien are you using eco toilets on site well when I organize something that needs toilets I always um rent eco toilets so I've never ever rented the chemical toilets in my life and otherwise I just use a toilet from the farmer what what what are eco toilets um so that that is legal in the Netherlands and so are they are they methane digests we we we have different ones but uh the one that I use is it's with um sawdust so you basically cover it with sawdust and you and you you compost it um and uh yeah for as far as I know it's it's legal I I think in the United States they they kind of still haven't understood this but I think you can get around it by having one chemical toilet which you don't use I mean just tape it shut and then use the they call them here luggable loose they use these five gallon bakery buckets and they have a toilet seat that fits right on top of it and you can and then you can use sawdust but actually at the hotland camp we were using biochar biochar works very well because it has actually no smell it it absorbs what are tremendous amounts of everything somehow I'm amazed by by the sawdust I I find it's very clean as well actually and actually at one at the festival that we had in at the camp in Spain they they had two or three or four like straw bales and so these were for the men the the pissware the the urinals were like these these straw straw bales and they worked very well and I think that would make excellent compost after the festival users have you know kind of moistened it up we have a we have a project going on right now and it's actually called the hole in the loop the human hole in the loop and it's about our human hole and about how what's coming out of it is actually a very important loop in the whole circular agriculture thing yeah and the I mean obviously from a technical perspective what they're discussing now in the United States is that we have to all give up our gas ranges because it's all connected to to fossil fuels but I think if we just get the toilets right we can have methane production easily from human waste as long as you don't put anything into it and kill the bacteria so you have this methogenic bacteria and also you have the possibility of vacuum collection so like if you think about sewage gravity flow sewage and pumping stations to pump sewage vacuum is a way better way you know like you just create a vacuum and then you open the vacuum and then everything is compelled to leave and I think that you know you you could design very carefully the piping systems and have vacuum stations instead of pumping stations and you could move it to a central location where you could make tremendous amounts of methane and you could probably even have a smaller diameter pipes and they would fit in the existing pipes so you wouldn't have to make all new infrastructure so from a yeah I mean if we and I was I was just thinking like hmm if we have an ecosystem restoration camp with a central kitchen and we're what would we cook with and if we if we set up and I know Camp Coyote is doing this with an Israeli system it's pretty simplistic because it's tank is a giant balloon but but if you if you're able to do this you get enough you get enough gas to run your to run your gas range and I must say it's it's quite good to cook on gas you know electricity doesn't really do the same thing as far as I can see but anyway just a thought a lot of opportunities for sure I think people we can still leave this room open for for discussion I also saw Athef on stream that she is doing more research about this topic so maybe she's excited to tell more but also feel free yeah to leave if you have to go just want to mention that again but I see a question from Nancy Lee Wootz thank you and thank you so much for the wonderful presentation today I just wanted to mention I had put it in the chat I just learned of a forthcoming book called the psychology of totalitarianism by an author from Belgium and I read through the the description of the book earlier today and it made me think very much John about the presentation that you did earlier with the film and how disconnected people are from nature and it creates the circumstances the underlying circumstances where people become disconnected from themselves disconnected from others disconnected from nature and you know I'm living in a country I live in the United States I'm living in a country that's going through an enormous amount of violence I mean it is just teeth rattling the kind of violence that's going on and it's it's one more indication of how disconnected my society has become from natural processes and what you were showing John in that film is when people begin to start connecting with nature they begin connecting with each other and with themselves in a much deeper and holistic way so thank you for that earlier today well thank you and I'm just I put it in to the but there it is again that is a link to watch that film if you want to watch it it's about the Mendocino jail and unconditional freedom project which is starting a botanical sanctuary in the prison and it's interesting because the unconditional freedom has another thing called the art of soul making which is communicating and I think they're they started in that 40 40 institutions around the United States but it's up to I think 90 now so this is a kind of I mean there you have this cohort and the number of incarcerated people in the United States is also unbelievable and it's also heavily skewed toward young black males and Latinos and a huge population of Native Americans so in Mendocino County it's very high incidence of Native Americans in prison so you know they they are seeking and they need they need to you know I think it you know I'm not a psychologist but I think the concept of all these pathologies that this you know that's what you're you're seeing and they go down this path and then the path widens and they get into into really a lot of muck there but if we create a flourishing path that by the way is the name of my new my new podcast I hope you'll all be coming to visit we're going to have conversations with lots of interesting people around the world and we'll also show all the different camps that are going on and and all the different possibilities but the flourishing path if we if we take people and we we look and we see that we can determine what what the path looks like we can go on choose the path that we want to take rather than just kind of go go randomly so that's kind of but thanks me that's great to see you by the way thank you likewise yeah who's that Inga yeah with me there are still so many people in the room so I guess there's enough room for more discussion everyone is I'm going to say goodbye so bye bye thanks Marcia thank you see you there bye thank you I have to go too so see you all another time thank you bye bye now does anyone have something to say because we're here well I I wanted to say I wanted to say that I find it very special that there there are so many people that are are listening to this to this chat and honestly I'm really done with all everything that's online but I really I really enjoyed tonight and and of course for the ecosystem restoration movement it's it's it's a huge opportunity to be able to communicate with each other in this way instead of flying everywhere so yeah I'm I'm I really I really enjoyed it and I really enjoyed interacting with with all of you so that's what I wanted to say thank you Marcia I'm glad that you do I I see that Jay Johnson is raising his hand and I see also Jeff Jeff your second I saw you Jay hi hi first thanks for having this this presentation I really appreciate all the different hearing all the different things what I wanted to ask is maybe not really conventional related to this do you have there was some there was mention of some in the beginning of some how do I say it some restoration camps and I think Africa and first I wanted to ask I had a couple questions one how are those connected to Africa and for me personally I'm trying to transition from I work for the Bureau of Land Management and oil and gas permitting and reclamation of those lands working with the operators so I'm working to wanting to transition from from that to restoration ecology and I'm a late career employee so it's quite challenging how to transition to go from a someone that's done something their whole career to transitioning something new and to be accepted for the different reasons that into a new job it's quite challenging so one thing I'm considering is transit applying to the Peace Corps the volunteer and try to trans transition that way and I I think a lot of the openings are in Africa or a lot of the and so that's why I'm asking that question about those restoration camps in Africa so maybe I could get some experience there jay yes I put my contact information into the chat if you write to me I'll connect you with Chris Gates who runs the Tanzania it's called the permaculture Institute of Tanzania I can also connect you with Kentucky which is not Africa but in Kentucky there's a camp forming and has formed and it's got 7,000 acres and it's working on mountain top on restoring mountain top removal of fossil fuels so if you want to deal with the karma of that that might be wonderful and there's a tremendous tremendous guy running this who's who's just great and they they have it's challenging the impact from mountain top removal means that the forest and the rivers are damaged and that there's toxicity and that there's disruptions and then on the other side of that you have the social situation which is not good either so you have the highest incidence of opioid addiction you have extreme poverty illiteracy or you know limited literacy and it's it's a rough it's a rough thing but you have some really great music with with with nice bluegrass and stuff and and those are beautiful areas if you if you if you know about Appalachia it's just unbelievably beautiful nature if it isn't disturbed but obviously if it gets the mountains tops removed it's not there's a lot of work to do but this all could be that's what i've been recommending is having these camps and setting up central kitchens creator spaces and and cultural stages so that the community comes together to learn what they have to do and that ultimately this is much more much more valuable so bluegrass i'm told is not native according to linda so i mean where did it come from i think it must be indigenous somewhere i must be indigenous someone yeah i understood that too like poor pretenses it's a non-native grass species maybe that's what they're referring to oh bluegrass oh i was talking about bluegrass music all right mark thank you mark hi john um great to see you i had a question for marcia um i was wondering uh yeah to have a mobile ecosystem restoration camp or to organize stuff in the area is it is your region um uh frisland or is it a certain part around one of the frisian cities or do you have to think about this well we have said that uh we can also travel to other places okay we are mostly based in in frisland because i mean our association and and the largest part of our community is is in frisland and then mostly in the middle of frisland but this year we are already going to southeast frisland and in our community we also have um we have a national and international community so you never know what's what's going to happen um but yeah like i said the main focus is frisland but if you if you want to explore with us to do a camp on another spot in the Netherlands we can always talk about it okay that's good to know yeah we just started two months ago um the food forest near Arnhem in the middle part of the Netherlands nice it's the thing with with the camps is we have to plan in in in advance um i mean we we just started last year we are still learning but if we plan it well in advance then then it would be lovely to do a camp uh somewhere else okay good to know thank you you're welcome thank you mark and before for before we go to Andrew i just want to go back to Jeff Lawhead because he raised his hand earlier so Jeff hi thank you so much um yeah i'm in Denver Colorado so but it was great to learn a little bit more about what's happening in your part of the world um i uh have a one-acre site here in urban Denver that's a permaculture site and we're just kind of getting started so i mean it's not a it's actually you know for an urban area it's a pretty good size um because it's not it's not easy to get but you know it's not obviously you know the scale of what you're talking about but i'm just curious about you know um any suggestions in terms of trying to get started and and i find that um you know as much as anything it's least in the states it's it's a cultural sort of change you know i mean in other words you think about sort of the the aesthetics right people sort of think about you know landscape aesthetics right so landscape architecture right it's all about you know green lawns and you know yada yada yada so you know we've got this like site and you know people sort of look at it and they're like it's weeds right oh my god it's like it's crazy you know so i'm just we don't we're sort of trying to struggle i think as much as anything else is sort of the education piece to it to be like no this is habitat this isn't you know what you guys have uh is is not right green lawns that you know no pollinators so i'm just sort of thinking about you know these sort of transitional issues of because i think it's it's much a it's an educational piece as much as anything else and how do you sort of start to you know roll that process out is it a question to me or or well anybody i mean you guys are doing it so i mean whoever wants to take it on i mean it's open but i i mean i could respond because um actually my my partner um he uh started a project many years ago in Rotterdam in the city of Rotterdam um the it's called the new garden and what they did is they invited natural processes to that spot and combined it also with elements from the landscapes in in the surrounding and i don't know what the original landscape is of where you are based and an urban landscape is also um a landscape on its own but it's it's very interesting to find inspiration in more natural areas in your surroundings and um to kind of have like a vision board like what are what are the things that you could create on on on that uh on that place and um it's very nice to to make such a vision board with someone who is an ecologist or who is an ecological gardener in the beginning to have that knowledge um i'm not sure how much knowledge do you you ecological knowledge you have yourself of course well i i took a permaculture class so you know yeah enough to be dangerous but not enough to really know a lot well it would help to find someone who knows about the ecological possibilities and the ecological challenges in your in your area and to make a vision board with with uh and to find people in your community that are just like you are are interested in re-greening their area and um yeah that wants to want to help out i mean that would already be a start i think sure um yeah thank you mrs jeff i hope it it answered your question but um we are also oh kath i see you raising your hand no sorry to interrupt you inga but um jeff i just also wanted to alert you to um camp the birdhouse in hollywood they're actually the very first urban ecosystem restoration camp in the world and they're they have a wonderful way of engaging the local community in the work they are doing in this very early urban environment i mean it's literally under the hollywood sign in hollywood and they run a lot of local workshops with the community on a whole range of things both from um bringing biodiversity back to the area to um song um workshops and lots of different ways that people can get involved so it really has been an excellent example of how a very small scale ecosystem restoration is possible in an urban environment and so we've got two contacts there we've got john allen and also cameron who's the our main contact there i'll actually pop his details into um you can pop onto their page on the ecosystem restoration camps website it's the birdhouse in california um but i'll also pop cameron's email address here in the chat so that you can reach out to him maybe he's got some some other perspectives he can share with you thank you great very helpful kath thank you um andrew hasen yes hello there i'm going to stay on audio because my video is a little unstable but i just wanted to thank you thank you for the presentation and thank everybody for for all the great questions and just tons of food for thought um my specific question is about the mobile camps um and i'm curious what what does that look like what kind of infrastructure are you bringing around how many people um it just sounds like such an opportunity to bring the camp to the place that um that needs the restoration um so i'm curious if you could just say a little more about the the practical part of the mobile camps yeah of course um well we started when uh there was covid so um we were actually uh also really inventing those things ourselves i do have um experience from organizing awakening landscape before and with awakening landscape um we had um around 40 tents that we would pitch before everyone would come we had a compost compost toilet um and we would have the dinner at the farm um but what we are thinking about doing uh and we did it in small scale already um with camp kings garden is yeah you create a a place a mobile kitchen and and and the kitchen follows you where you are going you need to have yeah you need to have a kitchen you need to have a toilet you need to have water to wash yourself you need to have like a central spot and then you can choose either to to have the tents ready or to or ask the people that are coming to bring their own tent another possibility is that you are sleeping in a stable of a farm or uh maybe another place where where you where you that's close to the area that you are restoring where you can sleep at so there's really a lot of uh yeah different possibilities to to organize it and we are lucky that we have such a big network so we can always ask for the facilities we need at the people we know um we are also cooperating with uh an organization that has tools they have a lot of tools for for volunteer volunteers that are working in the landscape and so each time we are organizing some something we can borrow their tools um but yeah as I said we are also developing it and and we are um yeah discussing whether we should have everything ourselves so that we can always be um yeah kind of independent or that we are doing it like this when when we are using the facilities of people we know so there's there's a lot of different possibilities and of course you need to find spots where the people that own the land are open for ecosystem restoration and yeah I think ecosystem restoration also is I mean if it's about knowledge sharing you can go somewhere once but if you really want to restore an area you have to be there more often so it's really building a long-term relationship with the place that you are restoring does that answer your question yeah thank you and that last comment that you made is really interesting about building the relationship with the place as well as being kind of mobile and moving around so that's very interesting yeah that's also like balancing of course um there's there's advantages of being mobile and there's also advantages of having a having a fake spot so we are also already thinking ourselves that maybe we should have one smaller spot that's that's really like our headquarters um and then we do and then also we do projects at different places so we are we are thinking about that if I would add something Andrew um I've noticed that there are quite a lot of sort of older conservation organizations and they they uh they have many accomplishments in the past and so on but the situation is somewhat overwhelming and the membership gets older and older and it may not be so attractive to young people and one of the things that you can do is you can go and and talk to them and very possibly they need younger people and they need active things and they have a lot to share and so by joining together you get kind of the best of all possible worlds because you get people who are very knowledgeable but you also have the opportunity to introduce some new energy and a new perspective so so try to work with with everybody I completely agree that's actually John that's actually how it works for us because we are working with these organizations that are doing restoration projects for many years and they they say oh we are so happy that you are doing this because you are doing it in a different way and and yeah like the people that are helping us they are becoming older and older and and and as you said very knowledgeable but we also need to have the younger generation and I think ecosystem restoration camps movement is also helping us to find these these younger people to do the projects and if you combine it with with culture and music and yeah things like that and then you you give it a different vibe and that attracts different people so I in in our experience it's exactly as you said John I would add one more thing to that like the concept of central kitchens and cultural spaces and cultural stages and creator spaces this may be really necessary at this particular time so you can see what happened when Russia invaded Ukraine and you can see how many refugees there were flooding into Europe so imagine now now that response was rapid and and people did things to to make it better but if you consider how many people there are all over the world who are refugees and nobody's doing much for them so I'm sorry John I think you got muted somehow yes the host muted me oh it's it but anyway yeah I think I you know I I I know I talk too much so I should just I should just accept it I give up let's be quiet no John I didn't mute you on purpose at least I didn't John John it was me it was Cath I'm so sorry I was completely in error I had to come clean and own up sorry I'm I'm old enough to accept it but I get told that all the time so but anyway I think that it's really a good idea to create the infrastructure necessary like central kitchens for instance this allows us to deal with crises so like if we're just playing and we're like going out to restore ecological function and we're having a good time great but what happens if there's a disaster if we have everything in place with tools and food and central kitchens we're ready and this is going to save lives and and keep people productive and functional in in the crisis moment that's the critical moment and if you if you get to the critical moment and you haven't prepared for it you're you're going to be in another you're going to be reactive instead of proactive so we could be proactive with this and so we have our our reason for doing this is long term ecological restoration it's the right thing to do but it's also the right thing to do if things go south and everything is messed up so get your get your central kitchens and your creator spaces and your cultural stages ready because it's coming and keep smiling thanks john um um i think that marcia needs to leave um myself i need to leave as well um john if you want to keep the room open i'm happy to do so but i think it's also really nicely just to round it up