 Hello, everyone. Is anyone there? Yeah, we're here. How are you? Hi. Well, I'm in Wyoming on a road trip. Right. Just off, I stopped at a rest stop to do this. Here I am. So are we underway, Kath or Erin? Shall I just? Yes, please. Go ahead. So everyone who's here, welcome to the fireside chat. And I'm John Liu. Today we're going to be taking you to Bolivia to look at the developments in a beautiful camp there. It's very interesting. I'm sure you're going to find this fascinating. And I'm going to say a few words because I think we're in a very important moment in history. I think it's the ecosystem restoration camps movement has a chance to have a significant impact on the situation that we see ourselves in now as they're more and more disruptions from the pandemic from economic issues from influence in different places, refugee situations. And so I just wanted to say that the more I think about this, the more I realized that the camps have a huge possibility and opportunity to serve their communities to make sure that no one suffers necessarily if we put together central kitchens and we put together ways to train people who are marginalized or are disaffected from the society to do ecosystem restoration. It will have an enormous impact on those individuals and make their communities and their landscapes more resilient. And I have to consider that what we're seeing is with widespread drought, multi year droughts, multi decade droughts, wildfires, extreme weather events, and so on, our ecological systems suffering. So regardless of what the economic or social systems are we really need to focus on water and soil and plants and biodiversity. So this is what all the camps are working on. The more people we train, then the less sort of depressed people have to be because you can actually see improvements in the hydrological cycle and soil fertility in the numeric numbers of plants and in the first. So this is this is all extremely important for people and and gives them purpose. And one more thing that I've been working on, and I want you to know eco flicks. Can people mute now. Those who are muted. There's a, there's a new streaming service called eco flicks, and it's at eco flicks.com so ecoflix.com and we have the ability to bring together all of the camps will have the opportunity to share their, their information through eco flicks. Other organizations like the global eco village network like permaculture training will be able to to share their materials their organizations like the society for ecological restoration can also join us and others. So, we'll be able to curate an area that is being called Earth restoration, the great work of our time. And there we can celebrate all the camps, we can tell people about which are the most effective and show people which are the most effective methods for infiltrating and and retaining moisture. And propagating and planting out and there's some very interesting areas that that I've noticed. One is, we're working with prisons in the United States to create the tannical sanctuaries. So this is a huge comfort for the inmates and it's very satisfying also for the guards. It is of enormous value for the society and gives great satisfaction to everyone who's participating in it, and it also gives skill sets that allow inmates when they get out of prison to have meaningful lives and work forever. So these are the kinds of things that I'm interested in and if anybody is interested in those please contact me. My email is john D Liu at iCloud.com. And you can reach me at any time through that. So, I'm going to turn it over to Aaron, who's going to share some camp information from the movement. And then we're going to hear from. Meadow about the camp in Bolivia. So thank you very much for listening and and welcome again to the fireside chat. Thanks so much john and welcome everybody who's here it's so lovely to see some familiar faces and some folks here returning as well as some some new people in this group. Our event will be about an hour and a half with a bit longer for you to engage in discussion afterwards we have a very special speaker for you. And I'll just share a little bit about the way that we will organize today's chat. Let me just make sure that I'm not covering the slides. Can I get a thumbs up if it looks okay. Awesome. So today we have menno starring from Camp Tokai in Bolivia. Menno will be giving a presentation and we'll ask you to hold your questions until after the presentation, and you can do that either by raising your hand and turning on your video and raising your hand. You can ask a question in the chat and we'll try to make sure that that gets covered, or you can digitally raise your hand using the zoom raise hand feature. As I mentioned that our session is about an hour and we'll have open discussion at the end. A couple of updates from what's going on at ecosystem restoration camp sites partners around the world. Upcoming experiences include Camp Coyote in California they're having their spring camp week from the May 13 to the 15. So if you are in northern California, and would like to join them. They would love to have your participation to do some restoration activities that they have on site. Our coom also in the UK will be doing their spring rewilding in person experience from May 26 until the 31st so if you're looking for an opportunity in that region. I'll look at our website for more details and information. And then finally camp dry land solutions in Somalia is organizing their permaculture design course with Sam Parker Davies from September 19 until the second. Other updates from our camps as well in camp contour lines in Guatemala local farmers and community members are producing regenerative food products and some of those products will be available internationally so stay tuned for more information about about those lines. Camp Tanganyika in Tanzania has been using a holistic approach for conservation and ecosystem restoration. They includes local farmers in food gardens. Excuse me in forest gardens. This is a conservation approach that is protecting primates and pangolins. So if you are a pangolin fan like I am we should definitely learn a little bit more about their project. Camp Salta Troy in Ireland is partnering with a housing estate to train residents to do ecosystem restoration and increase biodiversity in their backyards. So if you can join us to learn a little bit more about what's going on at Camp Kings Garden and another list. So without further ado, I would like to introduce Menno as the camp manager for Camp Chukaya in Cochabamba. Menno would you like to kick it off or should I open with the video. Just open the video that's fine. Hi my name is Ben. I'm here in Chukaya at what will be the agroforestry site. So this is a big project on five hectares of land behind me. We'll be planting around 3,000 fruit trees around 6,000 association trees that's native trees with the fruit trees. So yeah, there's great potential in this site. The main incentive for this project is a dual purpose thing of helping combatting climate change to execute a design which works and sets an example. The other aim of this is to make it productive for the people. Yeah, thank you, Erin. Thank you everyone listening, watching. My name is Menno and I'm originally from Holland and I'm working in Bolivia most of the time. One of the things is this Camp Chukaya, Eco Camp Chukaya. Basically we arranged it with the ERC, the Foundation Samay and the local partners here in Bolivia. Next slide please. So this is the latest one we produced in the Chukaya camp, the water reservoir which will basically water all the agroforestry we are making on the hillside. Next one. Well, for the people who are not very clear about Bolivia, it's in the center of South America. It's about 11 million people, mostly indigenous. And it's among the poorest in South America. And then there is both the part of the Andes and the part of the lowlands, which is mostly Amazon. We work mostly in the Andes, between 2,000 meter and 4,000 meter. Next please. Yeah, this is just to give an impression of a country. Next one. The general themes in Bolivia, or some of the general themes in Bolivia which we see is first of all poverty. Mostly the people on the countryside, most of them are poor. Then there is climate change. There is erosion and soil degradation. So it means the soil is getting poorer and poorer and poorer due to wrong use of the grounds. Next one. The part of the climate change in Bolivia. There are two examples here. You can see on the right side, you can see the Czechotaja mountain with the ski jump. And the Czechotaja mountain did have a beautiful glacier, which has melted by now completely. So the ski jump is not working anymore either. And on the left side, you see the Lake Popo, Laguna Popo. And the lake has largely disappeared. Well, different factors from mining to climate change. But climate change is a part in the story. Next one please. So in the themes we are doing in the Chokaja eco-camp are acroforestry of course. Water reservoirs, reforestation and water infiltration and fire prevention. Next one. So the acroforestry. We do a mix of fruit trees, native trees and vegetables. And these are really small pieces of land, you know. It could be like a hundred fruit trees, mostly apple trees. Apple trees are the cash crop. The native trees, they are the green fertilizers. The organic material of the native trees comes underground and in the ground. And that's making the soil better. And the vegetables are in between basically. So you can see some nets to protect the apples from the birds. Next one please. The water reservoirs. In order to have the acroforestry to have the fruit trees. Well, they need water both in the dry season and in the wet season. So the dry season of course is the problem here. So we make this kind of water reservoirs. From concrete, they're quite cheap. But mostly, well, the work is done by the local people. The local communities do the work. And they do pay part of the money as well. And by having water access, you can harvest vegetables more time a year. Instead of one time a year. Next one. The water infiltration and the reforestation. Water infiltration is a very interesting subject and it's a little bit new for us. Basically the water, most water enters on the top of the mountains into the ground. And it comes in the valleys, it comes out as a spring. It has been like that forever. But nowadays the spring water is getting less and less. Because the infiltration of the water on the mountain tops is getting less and less. This is partly because a lot of the original forest is disappearing. And well partly it's because of wrong use of agricultural ground again. So indeed the things you can do there is like water channels you see underneath. A lot of water channels will take care that water sinks into the ground. And planting native trees or at least protecting the native trees that are there is important as well. The native trees, the trees will as well take care that the water enters into the ground. Actually we have some examples now where we have done this. And we have some results as well. Because the springs underneath in the valley, they increase the volume of water again. Yes, fire prevention. There's well nowadays everywhere on earth almost, there's fire problems. And here in Bolivia, close to Quarchibamba, there's a lot of fire problems as well. And there to prevent it, there's different things you can do. Well first of all, if you have a pine forest, for example, you have to cut the lower branches. And take care that not all the branches, not all the organic materials laying on the ground there. Because your forest will just disappear with fire, you know. Then there are the things like fire barriers. So we use cactuses, tuna cactuses as fire barriers. Three layers of this tuna cactus. And if they're grown up in about five years, it should be enough to stop most fires. Then there is a lot of important work to be done with the community people. Well, first of all, they shouldn't use their fire to burn it clean. To burn their area clean, that's what they still do here. So on communal level, we should make kind of agreements about not using fire for clean burning. And you can make local fire fighters. So we give courses to the community people to fight fires. And we give them the fire clothes and some equipment as well. And in some communities, this works very well. In other communities, it doesn't work that well. Next one, please. Yeah, this is just a general impression. We make some greenhouses. We do some plastic recycling. And the square meter garden. Next one. That's the movie already. Yeah, go for it, I would say. Yeah, that's fine. Maybe some last words. And then it's open for questions. So the foundation works from Holland, Netherlands. Most of the morning from Netherlands and we are spending the morning here in Bolivia. And that's in that way of that's the way of working you can do in most from most European countries. Most rich countries do have funds for this kind of work in poor countries. Thank you very much for your attention and I leave it open for comments or questions or whatever. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your attention. I'm really interested to see what's going on in a different type of ecosystem and really looking also kind of at these mountain based projects where you're working on high slopes and in different types of soils. So I think it's really interesting combinations of or I think really useful combinations of productive plants for sale as well as in native plants. I think we'll open for questions. And then I also wanted to mention that if you guys would like to support projects like minnows, as well as other ecosystem restoration camps. If you're based in the US, you can look at the link here under ecosystem restoration camps.org slash USA to make a contribution or find ways to engage with us directly at some of our in person events. And with that, I will take the first question I see here from Diana. The floor is yours and go ahead and unmute yourself. Hi. So interesting. I wanted you to go into a lot more detail about your water reservoir. For instance, how did you get the water into it. And how do you get the water out of it you know do you have pumps or just using gravity, you know how is it tied into how do you irrigate. How do you build it. Can you give a lot more detail about your water reservoir and how it works. Yeah, I will try. So the water reservoirs. Yeah, they, they work on gravity to get the water out. The water in it's it's mostly it's springs. There are springs on the mountain sites, which give a little bit of water. And you only if you collect the water you can use it effectively if you just let the spring drip drip away. It will not have very much effect. So, so, yeah, so there's, so there are some tubes connected to the water reservoir. There are some tubes going out of the water reservoir. And then there are sprinklers who who sprinkled the water around, basically, if you're really interested into how to build it. You can send me an email and I could probably send you instructions. Oh, okay. Is it grab, is it gravity then that are do you use pumps. No, it's gravity indeed. Okay. I see we have a question in the chat and then I also see Andrew Langford has raised his hand. The chat question from Planet Healers is what soil are you working with. It looks dry. So how do you increase the moisture holding. And indeed the soil in in general to start with is poor and in the dry season very dry as well. So, so we need that's why we need this combination of water reservoirs and organic material organic material to get into the ground and to organic material to cover the ground. And, and, and beside that we use some before we start to use some combinations of. I'm not even sure all that's in it but I think there's some rock powder and some for kind of natural fertilizers, but I'm not exactly sure what it always so. Yes, the, the, indeed the organic material is the most important part of it, the green fertilizers. Thank you men. Please go ahead, Andrew. Hi there men. We've had a bit of an email correspondence about Alan's very pleased to be thinking about that with you. I would like to know a little bit more about the climate. Do you have frost and I hear you have a dry season and I know, and therefore presumably a rainy season. So when's your dry season and when's your rainy season. Yeah, so the rainy season from December till March more or less it and and well from May till till kind of October it's really dry season and and and we work on different altitudes but Chokaya camp itself doesn't really have frost. But it does have it. Sometimes it could have hail, hail stones. Okay, okay. But in general, the temperature would be. Not too cold basically. Okay, okay, great. Okay, that sounds sounds quite like a lot like some parts of California in the USA. Wet winter and but I should summer isn't it. Southern hemisphere wet summer you have a wet summer and a dry winter. That's it. Yes, yes. Yes. Okay, great. Good. Thanks. That's very helpful. Yeah. Thanks for the communication going on. Even if it's slow. Are there hands raised as anyone else have a question, John, please go ahead. I just, I've been to Bolivia a few times, and I noticed that there was an attempt to connect the upstream water. Yes, protectors with the downstream water users. Because the, you know, if the people upstream were taking too much water, the people downstream wouldn't have any water. And or if they were, they're cutting the trees, then you'd have a lot of runoff, but you wouldn't have a lot of base flow. And there was an attempt to use payments for ecosystem services to try to improve that. Do you see that happening? Are you using that kind of thing? Are you working with other organizations who do that? Well, the one you're talking about, I'm not really sure which it is. But but we try to do it on a very local level. So, so our, our partner organizations work on the very local levels. That would be one local government. And, and one local government could be a mountain site and a valley. And so we, we try to get the communities together to cooperate. And this can be a real difficult process. For example, in the water infiltration song, there can be, for example, nine different owners. And some owners want to cooperate and others don't want to cooperate. So it can be a process of years before they agree to, to do the replanting of the trees and to do the infiltration channels. So to be short, we work on a very local level, and we try to multiply it to other local governments. John. So how many people are you serving? How many people are working in your projects? Well, if we by now we have been planting almost one and a half million trees. But not all of it is agroforestry. Some, some of it is native trees. Some, some of it is pine trees as well. Non-native pine trees. So the agroforestry is the most effective and useful way. Both to get economic interest and environmental interest together. And I think we have had about in total a kind of six, 700 farmers, small farmers by now. Thank you. Great. For folks who are just joining us, we are in the question and answer section for Meno, who's leading the work in Camp Tokaya. If anyone has any questions, please either raise your hand with your video on or you can write us a question in the chat, or you can raise your hand using the Zoom feature. Meno, I have a question for you. If I can jump ahead of Kat, if that's okay. I was curious about what are some of the, the biggest challenges that you have in establishing new vegetative cover in some of these areas. Is it finding the right combination of plants? Is it the water component? Is it the soil? Is it the maintenance? What are some of the biggest challenges and how have you been organizing around those? Well, actually, difficult can be working with the local people. If there is an economic interest for the local people, they will work together with us and they will join into the projects. Basically, this means agroforestry is an economic interest for them because of the fruit trees, of course. If you get to any other project, it's getting more difficult. If you want to plant native trees on the mountains for the water infiltration or for the erosion, for example, it gets difficult. And you might have to do an exchange on some other level. For example, if you say, yeah, we work together with you on the lower hillside with agroforestry and with water reservoirs, then on the higher hillside, we want to have native trees. And this is our exchange. In this way, it can work. But if you just want to plant native trees for the environmental thing, not so much chance. Great. Thank you. We have another question from Kat Richie. Please go ahead, Kat. Thank you. I'm particularly fascinated with what you're doing with planting the cacti. I can't remember the name of the species that you mentioned specifically. I was just keen to know whether is this a species that has been tried and tested in terms of effectiveness for combating or as a natural fire barrier before? And is it specifically this species of cactus or is that the one you're planting because it's native or easily available or it grows quickly? Yeah, I'd like to know why this species and has it got proven effectiveness? And how many years does it take to reach a point where it could provide an effective fire barrier? Thank you. Yeah, I guess it takes about four or five years to get effective barrier. How scientific is it? Not completely. It has not really been proven by universities or something. But now we work together with the university to both grow the cactuses and to plant them out. So you could say that it's more or less on an experimental level. But on the other hand, it's kind of logic as well. Like if you want to have fire barriers for fires which are not enormous but fires which are kind of in between or middle. Anyway, any barrier you can think of, it can be a road, it can be a waterway, it can be a hilltop. Anything can be effective. Of course, the situation is different than in California here. Thank you, Meno. I think we also in some regions refer to this species of cactuses, no fun in Mexico and in other areas. And, Cass, since I know you, I will forward a conversation so we can keep talking further. That particular plant has a lot of really great applications for dry land restoration. It stores a lot of water. It produces an edible fruit. The leaves are edible and they're also often used for forage for animals. So, and fire barriers, there are a lot of really interesting uses for that particular plant. It's really exciting that you guys are using that in your project as well. I will pass the microphone to Michael Polarski, who has his hand raised for a question. Hi there. Just a quick note on that cactus. Look at kawaii they have huge I mean gigantic 20 foot tall giant tuning cactus, I mean pad cactuses. And one thing to do with them once you have a lot of them is you can cut part of them down and bury them in trenches for garden areas and you can make a really good garden area by turning some of the cactus, which grow in some of the most inhospitable dry situations imaginable on kawaii probably like a five inch rainfall zone. Anyway, check that out. So I had actually two questions. One is a little bit has a little prelude in that recently I've been reading international literature that's in saying that agroforestry is one of the best ways you can get people to plant trees, and that it's tried and true and all these countries and so people really believe in it. And so your experience there is that agroforestry once again is what the selling ticket is. And the question is, although million and a half trees you planted, how many are still alive, or how many were destined for a quick death anyway because they be their pioneer species but I'm just curious, because everybody plants trees and some have a really high success rate some have a really low success rate. And it's a success rate is really, of course, more important than the numbers I'm just curious. Everybody loses some I mean you never get 100% but I'm curious how you're doing. Yes, so how many of the percentage of the trees died. Basically, yeah, yeah this this is differs like if it's fruit trees. Quite a high survival of the fruit trees, because because of the same reason they're economical benefits. And so I think that's about 10%, 10, 15% dice of the fruit trees of the native trees. This is much higher this will be at least 30% of it. And sometimes it's even worse than that. So the names, for example, a lot of native trees which plan they they have to survive on the rainbow. And if there's one year without rain problems and high mortality. Did you have another question as well. Just really quickly, if the people had the local governments the local people have a say in how the land is used around here can they make a decision to save or take care of land, or is the decision out of their hands do they have control over their own of the land there I guess it's at all private. Most of it is private, some of it is communal. So the private land, they have their own say in it and the communal land, they have to decide communal of course with the village. So, so mo that's why most people on the communal land want to have pine trees for productive reasons to cut it down in 14 and 22 years to have woods to construct something. Yeah. And, and, whereas we try to push the native trees with limited success. Well, see. Well, we need native trees that give them production. And, you know, so yeah production and native, but I must go but thank you for your great work. Hello to everybody. Bye bye. Michael, if you are able to stay for one more second. I'm hoping you could maybe share the information about your upcoming course. Okay, sure. I'm putting on a ecosystem restoration course in Washington State to USA. And of course, all of you are really busy in the far away, probably, but if you know anybody in our region, or somebody that would want to take an ecosystem restoration course. We're doing one. And I guess I would just say global earth repair foundation.org. I'll be back. I'm going to do this annually and some. So I'm going to invite all your friends. You hang on. Great. Thank you so much. Okay, bye bye. Do you have any other questions for no. I also have one, one follow up question for you, no. So you've worked mainly in an area that that's pretty close to a major city in Bolivia. Do you have you guys considered projects in other sites. Or are you really happy to focus on the particular place where you've been doing your work. There's a lot of agriculture in those valley regions, as well as deforestation and degradation issues in other ecosystems in the country. Are you looking into some of those areas or are you focusing primarily on this site. Well, Aaron, actually we work in the, both in the departments of La Paz, North Potosi and Corchabamba. So it's not only the Chacotaya eco camp. It's a lot wider than that, but it's all in the Andes Mountains. All in, well, situations which are recognizable. And then there, of course, there is the part of Bolivia, which is the lowland and among it's the Amazon part. And there are the really big problems. And there the forest is disappearing very quickly. But it's such a different ecosystem. It deserves to have its projects. And sometimes we consider to go there, but it didn't really take off until now. Well, as you expand those projects, we'll be really happy to keep collaborating with you and supporting as that works growth. I just, I just wanted to ask, do the, do you have some way of creating the local people in decision making besides just participating in agroforestry? Do they become part of the management or are they empowered in other ways? Yeah, John, to a certain degree. But it might be done even to a larger degree. Well, of course, we give them the knowledge of agroforestry, how to maintain the ground and stuff like that. And of course they have their local decision making in the villages, like do they want to restore a mountain site or not? Or till what, till what degrees do they want to restore a mountain site? So they have a large say in that. But maybe you're even thinking of having them to design area. And that's not something we're, we don't do that yet. So there, maybe there's more possible than what we do. Thanks. Thank you. I see also that we have a question in the chat that is more general. It's about a particular type of practice called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration, which is a type of coppicing tree management system. And Robert Hayes asks, can anyone speak about the success of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration for forestry management and tree survival? This is a little bit more of a general question about that type of practice. I don't know if anyone in the group would like to talk about it generally. Anyone who is here is welcome to make a comment about that and Kath, go ahead. I can't personally speak to it, but I do know that Camp Green Pop, who operates out of South Africa, but also have projects in Zambia, have been quite involved in doing training at their project site near Livingston in Zambia, with the community to show them that way of managing the land. And in fact, in our newsletter about three months ago, we included a brief overview of how they're doing this. If anyone would like to reach out to Camp Manager Misha Teesdale via their webpage on the ERC website, I'm sure that Misha would be happy to speak at length about the successes or not that they have had with implementing that technique. So it's another continent, I appreciate that, but I think the concept behind it is probably the same. I have a film on my YouTube on farmer based natural regeneration that follows the work of, what's his name from World Vision in Australia, he got a major prize because of that, several prizes actually. It's quite an excellent thing. Anyway, it's on the, I'll see if I can find it and put it up into the chat. Thank you so much, John. Right. Tony Rinaldo's work with World Vision and he won the Land for Life Award, many, many years ago, I don't know how many years ago, 10 or 15. Yeah, I'm really familiar with farmer managed natural regeneration being used in the African region. In Central and South America, I have not seen that as a technique used as frequently, and I'm not as aware of as many examples. I have another question for Meno from Joey. How does your ecosystem, your eco restoration camp affect local livelihoods so you talked a little bit about fruit production. Are there other local livelihoods that are connected with the project that you're developing. Local livelihoods meaning animals and stuff. Local livelihoods usually refers to economic opportunities that might come out of the project. So job opportunities, other types of productive chains that might be part of this system. I understood that. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah. This is positive, actually, that mostly with the agro forestry, the income will will increase and it some in some cases it can increase actually quite a lot like two or three times as much as normal food production. So say they are growing potatoes or once a year or mice once a year. And you replace it with agro forestry, including the water reservoir. And then you can produce the whole year round. And the apples have they they sell good. So, so, yeah, the income can increase to three times in this way. Great, thank you. So I think we've finished the Q&A section I don't see any more questions coming in. I think we should use the rest of this time. If people have projects that they want to share more general questions that they want to discuss about restoration strategies so that the folks on the line can participate in that conversation. And it will be open to everyone who's here on the call. So I think with that we will anyone who wants to jump off the call at this point. Please feel free to do so and we will leave the conversation open for everybody to chat, share discuss for about the next half hour. So thank you guys for those who do have to leave thank you for joining us. And please go ahead. I see Phoenix. Please make sure to unmute yourself. Let me just get situated here. Can you hear me. Yes. Yes. You hear me. Yes, we can hear you go ahead. Yes. Okay, great. Sorry. Well, thank you so much, John, for inviting me. John and I have been talking quite a bit about a project that I've been working on with the Navajo Nation, which is the largest landowner in the United States. And we're really excited to bring these techniques to them. And really doing the groundwork initially laying the foundation to really bring the education and inspire them to want to take this on and lead it themselves. And so we're working on developing that strategy as a written proposal. And so anything that I can use to present to them that can clearly outline, you know what what ecosystem restoration camps can do as far as support. I know there's some videos that are really great. But there's actually there's also funding through the US Department of Interior. And so it's pre development funding, which I think this would qualify for. And so we're connected directly with the main decision maker because they really want to expedite the funding process because there's been a lot of bottlenecks in the past. And the current administration really wants to push this through to hang their hat on before the reelection. And so they're, they're actually wanting to build 50,000 homes, which is quite the feat. And they're starting with pre development so this would be part of that and so anything that we can present to them I know john thinks, and I think also that it would be really important to start with a creative space and a maker space along with central kitchen and a central event space. We don't want to blur it too much but we're really close to getting funded for a holistic wellness center that would be working with different evidence based healing practices and potentially also working with public therapies. And so that's how I got into this initially and then by being connected with john who's the main decision maker on this project. He's kind of asked me to help him with some of the pre development so that's why I reached out to John L to to see how we could work together so if anybody feels inspired by this project and wants to help. I'll go ahead and drop my email into the chat. I think Aaron might be a good person to talk with she's in charge of the she's directing the foundation so Aaron is probably the right person. Okay. Thanks, yeah Phoenix that sounds like a really amazing initiative that you're working on. And it sounds like maybe there might be some other people in the call who are interested in and what that might look like so we can certainly get in touch and I can give you whatever information you need to help you understand and and share more about what ecosystem restoration camps does and can support as a as a type of coordinating and networking entity. So, we can definitely continue that discussion. And it sounds like some other folks are interested in hearing a little bit more about your project so we have one question for you about whether you're looking at prairie restoration. And if you're looking at grazing animals like, like a person. Yeah, it's it's really right at the beginning stages and it's depending on, you know, which part of the world that we're in. It could be within the high desert of Arizona, potentially and Saunders Arizona. And so, you know, I'm not an expert on any of this and so if anybody has experience with working with that kind of climate and I think with what John was saying, you know, really starting with a focus on economic development. And so if, you know, doing more fruit trees and food forest would be a good place to start. But yeah, definitely with livestock also. I think that would also play into the economic growth. Yeah, I think that would be great. Very cool. We have some folks who have been involved directly with camps on this call. One of the things I think that is really special about ecosystem restoration camps is the network approach we take and really finding solidarity and support through the connections with projects who are doing restoration activities on the ground. So that your project doesn't, you know, it doesn't feel like you're kind of taking on these activities on your own, and that there really is this community of folks who have the technical knowledge who have access to the financial resources, to the volunteer support to take on a project like that. So, yeah, getting you connected with other partners who are doing that work, as well as some of the networks of knowledge and other types of resources that are available. And that's something that we look to support. And I see that Andrew has his hand raised so please go ahead. Yeah, this, this relates both to the whole of ecosystem restoration network, but also specifically the memo with his work in Bolivia because we've been having this conversation about men as desire from for some species of almond, which he was about from Spain, which makes me suspicious that they might be hard shell rather than the soft shell almonds which have grown in California. Okay. And it raises the question. Well, there are all kind of all manner of useful species around the world. And it would be great if we could move them around a bit. But I know that there are all these phytosanitary barriers to, you know, like to importing germ plant germ plasm from one country to another and so on. And I know there are some ways that you can, you know, you can, you can take cuttings and put it in test tubes of decidedly poisoned toxic pesticides and get it through that way because nothing else other than the plant material could survive that kind of treatment. So what I'm looking for I need help. Well, I need help to find out what are the roots and the methods for us to be able to relatively informally move plant germ plasm around so that we can increase the range of valuable species. That for example, men who could be using for planting in his systems, but other people could be also using because I what I noticed is that having recently spent a few years in California. I noticed that there's dozens of different root stocks and fruiting top parts of plants available there. And then you go to someone like Mexico. And it's like, you can find maybe one or two varieties of something so there's a sort of like a variety, paucity in many parts of the world, which the first world could pay some attention to, you know, gifting useful varieties that are, you know, more drought or hard shell and therefore don't get all of the diseases which soft shell almonds do just as an example for anybody who's got experience of moving plant material around the world. I'd love to have your emails and to start a conversation about how we might do that as an organized process check. Indeed, indeed. Thank you for taking it up. Indeed, how to find the correct far far kind of species said the fire fire, how do you say that in English the fire I a T and how to transport it actually that's the second thing. And I know there's lots of useful tree species, which we could use in Bolivia, but I'm not sure how to get them here, and the exact correct species. Someone has accidentally shared their screen. Well, just to, you know, take a stab at that question that Andrew and men are interested in. This is a really kind of serious area because there's quite a lot of international relations surrounding moving. There are agricultural quarantines and this sort of thing. I highly recommend working with the botanical gardens. There's two gardens and then there's an association of all the botanical gardens around the world. And they know pretty much what's what what you need to do in order to move these, these species around. And you have to be very careful with this, because, like California, they want to search your vehicle and everything when you come in because you might be bringing in some fruit or something you're not supposed to do that. So you have to be very, very careful with that. And, you know, of course, Darwin went around the world and just collected everything and know, you know there was a regulation at that time. So that's how a lot of material went around the world. But I would say that that's something that we should we should study carefully and find a true person who's devoted their lives to this and and get them together on a podcast or on a presentation and find out exactly what what's with that. I'll look into that a little bit. I'm interested too. I like your suggestion that we would perhaps see whether we can ally with botanical gardens. That's a very good motion, John. I appreciate that. They will have of course all of the necessary wariness about avoiding bringing in plants that have a possibility of being invasive. So yeah, maybe quite a lot of legacy genome in somewhere, you know, there it may be kept somewhere carefully and if we can. One of the things we're talking about and added to California right now with this work with prisons to create botanical sanctuaries in the prisons. So this could be quite interesting to see to see if that is is at all possible. I think that is that variety in both productive species so species like that we use for agriculture and for food production. It is something that is really well. Let's say regulated and that they're already really strong international processes for which countries can import productive species for use. For that reason, we have pink lady apples in Mexico and and we have prickly pear cacti cacti and some grocery stores in Pennsylvania. So I think you're you're right that using those institutions that are available, especially in the Western Hemisphere for for cooperation on these types of productive species is really useful. I see we have Leo with his hand raised. Hello. Good to see everyone and meet some new folks calling in from what they call California eco camp Cody. And in this kind of open time of the talk I would like to pitch our event. We're having an event this weekend it's a fire mimicry event and it. It's a traditional ecological knowledge event. And the mobile kitchen is going to be there we're going to have a this giant solar oven and mobile Cobb pizza oven and bio gas, and we're going to be cooking with solar power and biodiesel power and bicycle power. And I'm excited about all those things and that's not even what the course is about but how we can return some of the California landscapes back to a place where fires wouldn't be so catastrophic and how we can leverage our agency and hopefully be informed by the indigenous folks and their wisdom of how we can do that in a good way. So it's looking like maybe something like 50 people will be there and if you're in the area. Come by and I'll put the link in the chat. Oh, looks like Kath is on it. Thank you, Kath. Yay, good to see everyone. We're working in three short days so we're sure you're doing a lot of coordination. Yeah. Bye for. Yeah, love what you guys are working on that eco camp priority. Anyone else want to jump in. Well it's great to see that we have all of these cool projects coming up. All of these independent efforts where people are really understanding the context of where they're working with the communities that they're working in. What the priorities are for working with diverse types of species of plants and really understanding how those plants and the ecosystem functions on the landscape can work together. So John, it looks like you are driving. If you would like to have the last word. Okay, great. In that case, I think we'll, we'll conclude our conversation for today. I'll just say, thanks to everybody. I've got another 15 hours to go so I better get on the road. Great. I think we have a really interesting comment in the chat by Marielle Bueno Cordero, talking a little bit more about, you know, these questions around native species and how we integrate those and prioritize as native species and productive species in a different landscape that's resilient for some of the climate changes that we're seeing that for the people and the communities that are part of those landscapes and as well as the biodiversity. So I just wanted to thank everyone for joining us and particularly thank you Meno for taking time from your project to share what you're doing. I'm excited to see this work grow and to support more diverse agricultural and conservation landscapes in Bolivia. And we hope to have you back here again soon. And thank you everybody. Thank you again and thank you everyone who has been there. It was nice to be talking and to listening as well. And thanks for all your efforts into the ERC. Thank you so much. You guys have a wonderful day and we will see you next month with the ecosystem restoration camp in the Netherlands. Be well. Bye. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you.