Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Our EcoJustice Radio guest, Deborah Small, along with Rose Ramirez and the California Native Plant Society, have made the award-winning documentary Saging the World to raise awareness and call for action around the protection of white sage.
EcoJustice Radio considers how to foster deeper connections with the chaparral ecosystem and how public education can protect this important biodiversity hotspot and lead to minimizing wildfire dangers with Rick Halsey of the California Chaparral Institute.
As California continues with massive wind-driven, high-intensity wildfires that often turn deadly, the governmental and institutional response has been to thin forests and “grind up vegetation” to fight fires. Naomi Pitcairn points to a movement by plant community and wildfire experts led by the Richard Halsey of the Chaparral Institute to focus on protecting vulnerable communities rather than trying to control nature, which now faces extreme heatwaves and droughts from an unpredictable greenhouse-gas-warmed climate.
Following the footsteps of Willis E. Pequegnat, a biologist from the 1930s who explored the wild Santa Ana Mountains in Orange, Riverside, and San Diego Counties, this video field journal logs the wonders and threats to this thriving resource.