Music This is how nature works!

Theme Music Music What’s garbage for me and you, is food for the things that live in this bin.

There are microbes, fungi, worms, insects, and other small animals that live in here.

They turn this stuff into food for plants and other animals.

Music When they're done with it, we put it back in our gardens.

It's a kind of recycling, and it goes on all around the world.

Creatures that live together in a community are connected.

They provide each other with food, shelter, help with reproduction, just about everything.

We call those connections interrelationships.

One of the most important interrelationships is the recycling in nutrients from dead organisms back to living, like what happens in the compost pile.

The organisms that do the recycling decompose material from things that were alive, called organic matter, into forms that living things can use.

They're decomposers.

Decomposers are important because the community only has a limited amount of nutrients.

If the nutrients weren't reused, they'd run out.

Large and small organisms often work together to break down organic materials.

While a crow is eating carrion, microbes are decomposing the carcass and are also at work in the crow’s stomach.

The waste the crow produces is broken down further by tiny animals.

Finally, plants use the nutrients to start the cycle all over again.

Sow bugs, earthworms, and millipedes also eat organic matter.

Their digestive systems help break down rotting plants into tiny pieces.

Once the bits and pieces pass through these small animals, fungi and bacteria can easily break them down to chemical nutrients for plants.

Sometimes it's important for things to decompose rapidly.

Dead things that are still intact, such as garbage or recently dead plant or animal, decompose much faster when animals tear them apart and consume them.

The animals that take this role are called scavengers or reducers.

Music Cockroaches are scavengers that eat garbage, carrion, and plants.

Their flat bodies let them crawl into small spaces to reach organic waste.

Predators like foxes and coyotes are also scavengers because they sometimes eat things they don't kill but find already dead.

Opossums and crows eat a large variety of things.

They get a lot of their diet by scavenging.

There are lots of scavengers in the ocean.

Crabs and lobsters wait for scraps of food to drift by and then grab them.

I know decomposers and scavengers are important for keeping the environment healthy.

And yeah, my composter wouldn't work without them.

But I still think they're gross.

Speaking of gross, Dave and I started an experiment at the Nature Center.

Let's see how it's going along.

Music Hey, Patrice.

Hi.

So we're going to take a look at some decomposers today, huh?

Well, let's take a look at that dead gray squirrel that we set out last week.

Okay.

Bet we're going to find some pretty interesting things.

Oh I think so.

Well the cage is still here, but I can't say the same for the squirrel.

Those decomposers have sure done a good job.

So why are we putting the squirrel in the cage?

Well, that's a good question, because this was a roadkill gray squirrel, and it certainly wasn't going to go anywhere.

But if we didn't have the cage, chances are one of the bigger scavengers would have came and polished it off before we had a chance to check out to see if there were any carrion beetles in it.

Do they choose any kind of animal to go towards to eat?

Well, of course they have to find dead things and the dead flesh on these animals is what, of course, they eat.

And, and the fact that there's an odor to it, you can't help it but smell that.

The bacteria break down the animal first and that begins the odor process which attracts some of these other scavengers.

We've got some fly larva here.

And of course the carrion beetles found it okay too.

If you look really closely, they have great antenna.

And those antennas’ what they smell with.

Guides them right to the dead carcass.

So that's how they find animals?

That's right.

That's right.

Now do they eat all the animal, including the bones?

Boy, they wouldn't eat the bones.

But if you look at, at it, they're cleaning off the bones pretty well.

And the bones will disappear, they get recycled.

The thing that recycles them, ironically, is actually small rodents.

But the beetles don't have the ability to break down the bones and the fly larva don't either.

But everything gets recycled for sure.

And the decomposers do a very, very good job.

Do decomposers and scavengers get sick from eating the dead animal?

No, they actually don't get sick.

But you’d think, with all this rotting flesh that they might, they actually have an adaptation which helps them to overcome any of the nasties that are in there that might, might hurt them.

We certainly wouldn't want to eat this, but they play a real important job, just like the turkey vulture does.

Music One common scavenger that can be found over much of North America is the turkey vulture.

Turkey vultures are adapted for eating carrion.

They have featherless red heads and necks, and because they have no feathers there, any decomposing material that sticks to their head dries up and falls off.

Turkey vultures have a special immune system and strong digestive juices that keeps them from getting sick from eating dead animals.

Most of the water they need they get from carrion.

Their digestive systems are so strong that deadly diseases like anthrax, botulism and cholera don't affect turkey vultures.

Much of the turkey vulture’s time is spent soaring over the land in search of food.

In flight, the turkey vulture rocks from side to side.

It holds its wings at a v-angle and rarely flaps them when it flies.

Turkey vultures can't always find the carrion they need.

Sometimes they go days between meals.

Turkey vultures save energy in several ways.

At night, their body temperatures drop.

In the morning, they turn their bodies towards the sun to absorb the heat.

They also wait until the sun has warmed the earth.

Rising warm air currents make it easier for turkey vultures to soar.

If the weather gets too hot, they cool off by defecating on their legs.

Music Turkey vultures, like most birds, have good eyesight, but finding carrion can be difficult.

Carrion doesn't move and give away its location like live prey, and tree cover often hides it.

It's their highly developed sense of smell that helps them locate dead animals.

Turkey vultures have black or brown bodies with wingspans of about six feet.

They can often be seen soaring over open fields by day, and at night, groups of them roost in trees in the forest.

Turkey vultures mate in the spring.

Males strut around and spread their wings to attract mates.

They don't build nests.

Females lay 1 or 2 eggs on the ground under ledges or logs, sometimes in caves.

Turkey vultures have a really unique defense system.

They throw up on whatever threatens them.

Turkey vultures may not be the most glamorous animals.

In fact, some might call them downright disgusting.

But they play an important role in their communities.

Without the turkey vulture, deadly diseases could have a horrible impact on human and animal communities.

Scavengers like the turkey vultures play an important role in the natural world.

Along with the decomposers, they help clean up the environment and are a critical part of the nutrient cycle.

Humans also have a role in keeping our world healthy.

We all need to take part and do our share in the recycling.

Hawk Mathany and Chris Thayer of the Appalachian Mountain Club are going to show Laura and Marshall just how and what they recycle in the wilderness.

Music Here we are.

The Mizpah Springs Hut.

Hey, Chris.

Hey, Marshall.

Hey, Laura.

How are you?

Good.

How are you?

How's your hike up?

Tough.

Difficult.

Well, you picked a good day.

Let's go on in, get you settled in the bunks, and then we'll talk a little bit about recycling and composting here in the backcountry.

Well, we got our bucket there, and we're going down to systems land, what we call systems land, to do some composting.

Looks just like a a barrel of garbage.

Well, that garbage is going to turn into topsoil eventually.

So we got onions in there, bread, coffee grounds.

Sometimes we even compost tea bags and napkins.

That's cool.

And vegetables.

We got it all in that bucket.

The key to this process is, is mixing it well so that the bacteria can, can eat it and, and move along in the process.

And you can only do that by having small chunks of food, first off, you can notice everything's, finely chopped up.

What do decomposers do?

Well, decomposers are the key to the whole process.

They're the little communities of bacteria in that bin there that are doing all the work.

They're munching and grinding and, and basically, eating all that food so that at the end, we just have the byproduct of the soil and the chips.

And you can see, here's the real top soil.

You can still see a couple of chips.

But this is really the nice stuff that you're going to spread.

Do you guys do any more composting?

Actually we do.

Let's go walk over and we'll visit a friend of mine named Hawk who's going to show you guys about human waste composting.

Oh.

Music Here’s Hawk.

Hi, Hawk.

Howdy, folks.

How are you?

Great.

I hear you’re going to help me compost today?

Yep.

Just in time.

I was about to empty out the collector.

And then we tug on this and pull out the tub.

It smells terrible.

Yeah.

Has it started to decompose yet?

Actually, it has to a slight degree, but most of the decomposition occurs in the bin that we're going to look at in a minute here.

As much air as we can get in there, the better.

Okay.

Trying to break those up.

Music Okay, great.

Now we're transferring into our compost bin, which is the most exciting part of this whole process.

It's fascinating what's going on in here.

This this pile is going to be colonized by bacteria, which are called thermal filling, okay?

They like to thrive in a warm environment.

Warm to hot.

And what we're trying to do here is, is kill off the parasites and pathogens that are in that human waste.

Okay.

So the bacteria come in, they generate heat through their metabolic process.

Just their life process introduces heat into the pile.

Temperature gets up to about 160 degrees.

Just just in a couple of days, this material is going to rise by itself up to 160 and is going to make an environment which those other bacteria can't survive in.

And here, friends, is what was once human waste.

That's the final end product right there.

Time and time again after our testing, it's it's met the standards that we need to meet.

So, that's what's exciting about this.

We take something that's very hard to deal with in the backcountry and produce this, which is relatively benign, put it on the forest floor, and actually helps for plants to grow and reforestation.

How long do you think this process could be continued?

Well, I think it can go on well into the future.

We've been doing it for over 20 years here in the Whites, and it's a great solution to a problem that could be implemented in other backcountry areas, particularly as more people start to visit them and leave their waste behind.

Oh, hey, someone's going to use the system.

We gotta slide this back in!

That was a close one!

What have we learned today?

Everything in the natural world is connected and has an important role to play.

Some organisms are recyclers or decomposers.

They help decompose dead and decaying matter and change it back into nutrients.

Large and small organisms often work together to break down organic materials.

Now you know how nature works!

Theme Music Major funding for Nature works was provided by American Honda Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by Alice Freeman Muchnic, Alice J. Reen Charitable Trust, Cogswell Benevolent Trust, the Finisterre Fund, Greater Piscataqua Community Foundation, Morgridge Family Trust, the Natural Areas Wildlife Fund, Rawson L. Wood.

(animal sounds)