>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in the early 1990s in Indonesia.

A young aspiring doctor named Kinari Webb was in awe of what she was seeing.

Trees 220ft tall, an ecosystem teeming with beautiful creatures including orangutans swinging across the canopies, a forest that provides oxygen and life for so much of the planet.

But then, in the distance, a different sound.

The sound of chainsaws firing up to take these majestic trees down.

Kinari Webb confesses that it was easy in the moment to hate the loggers, but she did something that most people don't do.

She took the time to get to know them, and as it turns out, the people cutting the trees down were locals who were often poor and desperate and in need of money.

Fast.

A massive tree could bring tens of thousands of dollars in return, but a logger might only see a tiny fraction of that.

And yet, if you are a man whose pregnant wife needs a C-section, you will find a way to pay for it.

You will find a way to feed your family.

Dr.

web has spent years since that first mission trying to change this pattern, and she founded the global organization health and Harmony with a hunch that we were thinking too much in silos.

We would ask, how can we save the forests separately?

We would say, how can we improve the health of villages around those forests?

Her idea was to prove that human well-being everywhere leads to thriving ecosystems.

The Seneca Park Zoo Society has selected Dr.

Kinari Webb for its 2025 Conservation Warrior Award.

Her work has now touched multiple continents, and her ideas have reached professionals in multiple fields, including here in Rochester.

And she's here to discuss her work and career and what we all can learn from that doctor web, founder of health and Harmony.

It's an honor to have you.

Thank you for making time for the program.

>> Oh my gosh, it's an honor to be here.

And also, thank you for that beautiful description of our work.

>> Well, I hope it was accurate enough, but the guy next to you certainly knows I. We've known Dr.

Jeff Wyatt for a while.

I did not know this part of your background that you were a former board member of health and Harmony, that you've been to Borneo.

It's great to have you back here, Jeff.

>> Thank you.

It's transformed the way I practice veterinary medicine.

>> We're going to talk about that this hour, too.

And Pamela Reed Sanchez, president and CEO of the Seneca Park Zoo Society.

Welcome back to you as well.

>> Thank you for having me.

>> Whenever Pamela reaches out about this, she's just so excited.

And I know that this is a big one for you.

there's an event tomorrow that people can still attend in various ways.

It's called Planetary Health in Action.

How stethoscopes can also heal the lungs of the Earth.

What's going on?

>> Well, Henry is going to be giving a talk tomorrow at 2:00.

It is free and open to the public.

We would encourage people to register, and that way they'll get parking.

They can also zoom it.

They can screen online.

And I think they can get the link right from the Connections website or through the Seneca Park Zoo Society website.

but they have an opportunity.

They'll be able to see the tribute video that we've created for Dr.

Web, which we're going to unveil tonight.

There's a private ceremony tonight where she'll actually receive the award itself, which is a beautiful glass object made by the Corning Museum of Glass in her honor.

And the opportunity to bring her to the Seneca Park Zoo and to share her with Rochester is really.

I'm sort of walking on air because I get to meet my heroes, and I get to meet people and share people who are truly moving the needle and making a difference and showing us all how it can be done.

And that one person can truly make such a big difference.

>> Well, Dr.

Wyatt, for people who don't know the person next to you, how big a figure in this field is?

Dr.

Webb.

>> She's really changed.

She's she's impacted, especially orangutan conservation in a novel, sustainable way.

Orangutans, you know, working at the zoo.

We know orangutans are critically endangered.

60% of their population has disappeared since the 1950s.

And we predict extinction within the next 50 years.

If something doesn't change and Health In Harmony through Henry's vision has flipped.

That narrative.

>> 50 years, we could actually see extinction.

>> We could see that.

And the work in Madagascar, we could see within 20 years lemurs disappearing.

>> I mean, I think for so many of us who only engage with these animals, perhaps at a zoo or perhaps you know, from a distance that those are that's not a category of animal.

Even the lemurs, let alone the orangutans that we thought within our own lifetimes could be gone.

I think that is a wake up call.

>> And it's especially when we see the world's fastest rate of deforestation in both areas.

You know, Borneo being the third largest island in the world, has lost 30% of its forest since 1970.

>> Can you take me back to that first trip there?

And what brought you there in the first place?

And set the scene a little bit for us?

>> Yeah.

So I went to Indonesia to study orangutans.

I sometimes say understanding the interconnection between all things began for me with poop.

Orangutan poop.

That is, following the orangutans and seeing how they were essential for many of the tree species, actually, to, to themselves have babies.

Right.

So that the seed they were dispersing the seeds and then the seedlings and there were many trees that could only be dispersed by orangutans.

So that was, you know, it was beautiful.

It was amazing.

I was in love with the forest.

It was also very intense.

It was like a a year long silent retreat, which will teach you a lot of humility.

and but then, like you said, the chainsaws in the distance.

And I thought I wanted to study orangutans for my life, but it just felt like there's not going to be any forest left.

There's not going to be any orangutans left.

And what do we.

Why is this happening?

And it was so easy to blame the loggers.

And this must be greed.

They.

I mean, what's wrong with them?

These people aren't thinking.

They're not know.

They fully, fully, fully understood that they were essentially like cutting off their future, destroying their future in order to get their present.

And you can understand it when one medical emergency, even including in the United States, can cost an entire year's income, right?

We all get it.

It can be utterly devastating.

And if you have a way to get that money, even if you're borrowing it from your future and honestly, the world's future, that's the thing.

Rainforests are only 2% of the surface of the Earth, but they are essential for the life of the whole world.

We really should think about them as the heart and lungs of the planet.

And we all know, you know you can't survive without a heart.

You can't survive without lungs.

These these forests, they pump life giving water all over the planet.

They draw water up from the soil.

They create clouds and rain, and they send it out to us.

Everywhere in the world.

And without them, you have a higher risk of droughts, and you have a higher risk of wildfires, which many of us have experienced.

>> My first job out of school was in West Virginia, and I had to cover the coal industry as a young reporter, and I got to know a lot of the miners and their families.

And then as the years went on, I often heard, and I don't mean to overgeneralize, but I often hear, for example, the environmental movement talk about coal mining in ways that really maligns the people doing it.

And I thought of that when I heard you describe the loggers and the way that people think, well, that's just immoral.

Only in a moral person would do that.

When you actually see that when people don't have alternatives, they will figure out how to work, how to get paid, how to feed their family, how to feed their kids.

And it is not an immoral choice if your family is on the line.

>> No, that's right.

>> so that's part of the humility, I think, that I learned as a young reporter.

I thought your points with loggers was so important.

So can you.

We can't do the whole hour on just all the work that you've done.

But can you start to sum up for our audience what you've learned about how to address the health and the opportunity for these, for these communities, that when you give them the choice, you've surveyed them.

And almost all of them said, I'd rather not be logging.

I'd rather be doing something else.

I'd rather find a way to, you know, earn a living or have different careers.

But they didn't have opportunities like that.

So tell me some of the things that you've been able to do that maybe start small and then we'll scale it up and we'll talk about how people like Jeff got to know you and get involved and what we can learn here.

>> Yeah.

So I really think about it as like, what is the solution to heal our planet?

On the one hand, it's the solutions that communities already know so that they can live in balance with the earth.

And then it's the global reciprocity to make those solutions possible.

So it's that partnering together that creates magic, really.

And so how do you know what the solutions are?

You really just have to talk to communities and ask them.

And we call it we call it radical listening.

It's a process of sitting in circles and listening to people.

>> And literally.

>> Asking them what the solutions are, right?

Yeah.

And the amazing thing to me over the years has been to discover that people.

You know, like any random group of people, will come to the same conclusions in a given ecosystem.

So if we have 30 meetings, all 30 of them will come to the same conclusions.

And that was stunning to me.

I didn't expect that in the beginning.

And so now and then it gives you real good confidence that those are the right solutions.

And then you execute those solutions with global gratitude from the world.

The funding that makes it possible.

And then, I mean, we at our first site where I studied orangutans, we had a 90% drop in logging households in the first ten years of the program.

I mean, that's stunning.

They all they became organic farmers and put down their chainsaws and became small business owners.

Many of them.

We had a 67% drop in infant mortality.

This is all data from Stanford.

University and and their Indonesian colleagues that studied this question.

And when you looked at the human thriving, which was just like malaria almost disappeared from the region, there's just across the board improvements in health and and well-being.

Widows got goats.

They went from being some of the poorest people in the community to some of the richest.

Thanks also to Jeff and to many other people who helped, and our local team on the ground.

And then that flourishing flowed to the forest.

We had 70% less forest loss in that national park compared to other national parks in Indonesia.

This is critical for orangutans.

There's about 3000 orangutans there, and it's a very important population because they have babies every four years as opposed to every eight years.

And then we had 52,000 acres of rainforest.

Grow back.

>> Grow back.

So reforestation.

>> And that doesn't even include the corridors and stuff that we planted.

People can pay for their health care with seedlings there so that everyone can always ask access, care.

This is all designed by the communities.

It's brilliant.

>> And there's this beautiful moment when you're telling this story, as you often do, where you get to this question of, well, if we're going to have better health care in these communities that are more remote, you need local physicians, you need people trained locally, and that takes some time.

And and how we how are we going to do that?

And it turns out that there were more American physicians who wanted to go volunteer their services to do this than you could even accommodate.

Yeah.

I mean, that was I really enjoyed hearing that.

I really appreciated that.

Did that surprise you?

>> It did surprise me.

And also, you know, I would say another thing that surprised me was that they learned much more than they taught.

You know, they learned about planetary health.

They learned about tropical medicine, but they learned about really how to do medicine in a place with few resources, but to do it with love and respect and understanding the interconnection between human wellbeing and environmental well-being.

And and they, you know, some of those people, it changed the course of their life.

And we had people from Rochester Medical School to come.

>> And you trained some obviously very skilled doctors.

One of the reasons that even in the first five years, you said you started to see all these drops in these negative indicators in health is not just because the American volunteers were there, but because you were training people who were within a year, within 24 months, becoming pretty skilled physicians themselves.

Right?

>> Oh, yeah.

I mean, our Indonesian docs are amazing.

They and they not only that, but they you have to really think when when someone learns some new skills.

And I understand this as well as a physician.

Right.

I needed senior docs to help me learn when I was real young.

But then those things I learned were useful for every patient I would care for.

For the rest of my entire life.

Right?

And that's how it is for our Indonesian docs.

They are brilliant doctors.

And, you know, we have actually now had two people from our program come and also do a master's in public health at Harvard.

And one of them, Monica Nirmala.

She's now the second in command of the Ministry of Health in Indonesia.

She's incredible.

And Dr.

Tika, who is actually going to probably help us scale across all of Indonesia.

So we're we're in the final stages of trying to hire her to do that.

So.

>> Stay tuned.

Perhaps so the larger connection that you see is that you can't look at this in a silo, that if you want to address in in Indonesia, reforestation or the, the deforestation problem, you had to address human health and need.

>> That's right.

>> And is that true, in your view, for environmental questions around the world?

>> Yes.

Without question.

>> Human human need and health has to be intertwined with that.

>> I have heard this story over and over and over again from everywhere in the world, and I've seen it myself like fishermen who live on coral reefs bombing the coral reef that they know supplies their food for the rest of their life and their children's lives so that they can get enough money for one medical emergency.

Right?

I mean, it's just it's devastating.

You hear the story of poachers, right?

Again, it's like the trees in Borneo.

Eventually, those things are worth lots of money on the market.

But for the person who does the poaching or the cutting, it's like very small amount of money and they do it for the health care.

Even though or the like, you know, they don't have enough money to eat.

Right.

Very basic needs.

And they don't want to.

That's the thing we have found in surveys across the whole world.

They tell you this and they say this, and what I find is over 90% of people want to protect the forest, as they have done for millennia, or they want to protect their ecosystem.

They just can't always.

But if we partner together, it doesn't take very much money to solve these problems.

And we should have the gratitude to these people who are protecting the health and well-being of the whole planet.

>> in a moment, I'm going to ask Dr.

Wyatt how he got involved.

Before we do that, let me grab a phone call from Keith, who has a question.

Hi, Keith.

Go ahead.

>> Have an interesting show.

I'd like to ask your guest.

could for forest deforestation.

That's worthy.

be replaced with ecotourism.

the reason why I'm asking is my wife's a scuba diver, and has been to Belize a couple times to go dive the reefs, but they also have a large amount of things to do where guests are immersed into the landscape.

to visit caves and stuff like that.

Is there enough?

interest or could it be swapped out where you have tourists coming instead of chopping the trees down?

the other thing, is there a way to restrain the market for the rare hardwoods that the rainforest produce?

So ultimately it becomes no market for it?

>> Mm.

Keith, thank you for the phone call.

Two questions there.

So on the first one, an ecotourism.

>> I think that there is certainly a role for ecotourism.

But my experience is that most communities are not asking for that.

What they are asking for is something in Indonesia you would say the word Mandiri to be independent, to be self-sustaining, to be individually strong and not dependent on solutions that can be variable.

Right?

So, so one of the great things about ecotourism is that it it brings in money from the outside.

That's great.

There's a value to the intact environment that's also fabulous.

but not everywhere is easily accessible.

Right.

So that can be a problem.

And then sometimes there's something like a pandemic, and then suddenly you are in trouble.

Right?

So those so being dependent on outsiders.

But there's also the benefit that when people go they often, you know, there's a phrase in Indonesian we say, sayang, if you don't know it, you can't love it.

So that's a benefit, right?

>> This is where I, you know, I've gotten into some argument is too strong of a word, disagree with conversations about the cost of travel, and certainly the environmental cost of travel, but also the value in travel and getting new experiences that might light you on fire about a subject, an issue.

Or a goal.

So it's a balance.

I mean, it's tough.

Yeah.

But I, I wouldn't want to foreclose on the idea of, of travel altogether.

And so I think it sounds like your response to Keith on question one is there's a, there's a component for ecotourism.

It is not the be all end all in some communities, frankly wouldn't want it very much.

So.

That's right.

So there's a balance to be struck there then.

on his second point, which already I forgotten.

Oh, hardwoods.

And like trying to trying to really affect the market for, for that kind of wood possible.

>> Yeah.

So this is a big issue particularly in Madagascar because rosewood comes from there.

which is used for a lot of instruments and things like that.

but it's an endangered species now.

yes.

It's important to work on both sides of the the question.

I think there's no question that that helps.

But my experience is that people are very creative and if they have to get money for something, they will get it.

If that solution, if that problem is not solved, like in Madagascar where we work, we work in around one of the places we work.

and it's, it's a it's the last lowland rainforest in Madagascar.

Incredibly important for lemurs and, and as well as unbelievable other biodiversity.

There's a, there's a glow in the dark chameleon there.

I mean, like, totally amazing.

Wow.

Amazing creatures.

And but the community there is, like, literally they I could say they had gone over the edge, right?

Like they were starving every year.

There was not enough food to eat each year.

They called it the Hunger season.

Right?

Like, if it doesn't matter if there's a market, they will cut down the last of the forest that keeps them alive to just try to get something right.

Like, I mean, it's without a solution that actually helps the community flourish.

You're going to lose these forests and you're going to lose them on a local basis, regardless of what's happening on a global basis.

Right.

And so but with their solutions implemented, doesn't take very much money.

They're no longer afraid of the hunger season.

They went from one crop of rice a year to three crops of rice a year.

They're we're now having black soldier flies for extra protein.

They eat the larvae.

It's sounds strange, but it's apparently delicious.

and healthcare is dramatically improved.

And with all Malagasy physicians, I mean, it's just the solutions that communities design are very precise, incredibly genius.

And they work amazingly.

And you go from a downward spiral to an upward spiral where everything's getting better, hot off the press data to shows that that forest is losing less forest compared to controls.

every year.

So that's very exciting.

>> You know, the magic.

To what?

To what?

Health.

And what Kinnaree does is that they don't assume that they know.

They go in.

Truly listening and and not knowing and and being very open to the fact that they don't know what the solution is, that to come in with a somewhat colonialistic attitude of we know how how to fix this just doesn't work.

The the NGOs that you were there in after the tsunami relief, like completely disconnected from the communities, not listening to what the real needs were.

We don't know.

We don't live their lives.

And one of the things that I'm caught with is, is how are caught by is the connection that people have to the forest to nature.

They understand the wealth that it brings them, that they when the when the forest is doing better, they feel better.

Their health is better.

this country, we don't have that so much.

We don't have that same connection to nature.

>> You know, I met someone once at a talk that I gave that I thought was really brilliant.

So, you know, there's this thing these conservation easements, I think they're called.

You can take your land and you can say that you can actually decrease the value of it a little bit, but say that that forest will always remain right.

And you sign some kind of special contract to make that possible.

He said that you know, these are people who are coming to them, want to do this, are so excited about this.

But the number one reason that people then went, turned and logged their forests was because they needed access to health care.

It's actually true in this country as well.

It's the number one cause of bankruptcy as well.

And I my experience is that people do care about the environment here.

And I think people do also recognize that without healthy water, without healthy air, without stable weather, we're all in trouble.

>> We're talking to Dr.

Kinari Webb, the founder of health and and the 2025 recipient of the Conservation Warrior Award from the Seneca Park Zoo Society.

They are very proud to present that the president and CEO of the Seneca Park Zoo Society Pamela Reed Sanchez is here.

Dr.

Jeff Wyatt is here, and we are talking about not only the visit that Dr.

Web is on right here that you can be a part of tomorrow with an event in the afternoon tomorrow, which we'll tell you more about coming up.

But we're talking about the impact around the world of the work that Dr.

Web has now been doing for decades.

When we come back from this only break, I want to hear from Dr.

White about how he struck up this relationship and maybe some of the impact that this kind of approach to problem solving can have.

An even in places like Rochester, we'll come right back on Connections.

>> I'm Evan Dawson Wednesday on the next Connections.

By some measures, Rochester has the highest percentage of fatherless homes in the country.

We'll talk to an organization providing mentors, and we'll talk about the impact they are seeing in our second hour.

A number of folks who work in clean energy policy in New York State are upset with Governor Hochul.

They say that Governor Hochul is pulling back on clean energy to try to drive costs down.

But they say that's against the facts, and they'll make the case Wednesday.

>> Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Ortolani Services, an insurance brokerage firm working to help individuals and small businesses navigate health insurance benefits.

Planning from contract workers to retirees to sole proprietors.

More at our services.

>> Com this is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson so doctor Jeff Wyatt, when did you meet Dr.

Webb for the first time.

>> So a funny thing is, it was a few years after I started working in Indonesia.

And that's the magic in health and harmony that, you know, it's a wonderful program that that is, is growing all on its own to its community led solutions.

And really, my, my agenda initially was to save orangutans, you know, being so critically endangered.

We're the only zoo in New York State that at that time exhibited orangutans.

When we bring them back, that'll still be true.

And so they were a priority keystone species for me.

So but I heard about this program in Borneo, where orangutans live.

That is working, that it's making a difference.

And I learned about it through our zoo, our volunteer zoo, educators that came to me and said, Jeff, we've got to support this.

so I learned a bit about it, learned where it was, and I did my first visit in 2011, and I asked the leadership there, the community there how can I help?

I'm a veterinarian.

You know, oftentimes we see conservationists parachute into a place with their own ideas, and they're not sustainable.

They fail.

And so guess what?

I was never handling orangutans.

Of course.

no, I was working with goats.

And one of the big one of the big angles on community solutions is to reverse poverty.

And if you can reverse poverty, you have made the first step towards many other options for choice and control in a community.

So.

So guess what?

It was about goats and it was about rearing goats, and especially within marginalized members of our community.

Widows.

And so we had goats that were there.

They weren't in the best of shape.

we listened, we listened.

We had farmers groups and widows groups.

What do you think about your goats?

And we already did kind of a walk through and saw that some of them need a little help and and, but listening to them, you know, maybe they've, they've got overgrown hooves, they've got worms, you know one of the top considerations was they're lazy.

They just don't move around much.

They were anemic.

They had all kinds of things.

And so lovely, lovely listening.

And then we we empowered Setiawati.

She is a widow in the community.

Julie, who is an ex-lawyer from a family.

And we empowered them.

We trained them.

We mentored them on the best practices for goat herd health.

We did a longitudinal health study on how we can help goats in in areas with constrained resources, how we can help them be a source of revenue for the community.

And guess what?

It worked.

And we have now widows that are making choices, putting a roof on their house, sending their children to school.

And even though they're marginalized now, they have so much more choice and control over their life.

And it was all about goats and listening to the community.

>> So for that widow that you're describing, how does the goat help?

>> So what they do is we have a, you know, half the goats are boys, half the goats are girls.

And throughout the season guess what?

Most of the boys disappear.

and it's for banquets.

It's for meat.

It's for selling to families.

And the biggest, best goat brings the best amount of money.

So the goats were kind of scrawny before.

Now they are the biggest, largest goats.

And these widows, they have big smiles.

They love the goats like children.

But, you know, fact of life, they're a source of meat, a source of protein.

Now, all the female goats are their job is making babies, and they're now way better at doing that.

So we have this thriving community of widows that are the poverty is reversed and they're moving forward, and it helps the whole community have alternative livelihoods to logging.

>> What a story.

>> Literally these many of these women went from the poorest people in their community to the wealthiest.

>> And they're entrepreneurs.

They're selling their ideas to neighboring villages.

You know, they have this salt shaker that they made, which is out of a coconut with holes drilled in it.

They used to add salt to the water.

You know, we have salt lakes in farms.

So they we stopped adding salt to the water because that's not easy to easily controlled.

So they would hang these salt shakers over the brows and the goats would hit it and salt their food to taste.

And it it solved all the problems for water access and controlled access of salt.

>> Jeff.

to the idea that you've got to be a good listener when you're trying to solve problems like this, that you don't want to parachute in and be the savior.

I mean, everybody who not everybody, most people who work in these kind of efforts have heard the cautionary tales of the Savior, the white saviors, and for you, how much did this set of, solutions surprise you?

Did you go there thinking this was going to be the the likely course of action here?

>> I'm surprised every time I practice radical listening, I'm surprised every time.

So in Borneo, yes, indeed, it was about goats and it was about for sure not judging anybody with what they do.

When we went to Madagascar, which is, you know, and it's a very problem place, they you know, were good with goats and they, Bush meets a problem there.

They're eating the lemurs.

And we were there last time I was there.

We were actually looking for RNA viruses with pandemic potential because of the bushmeat.

They were eating bats.

I mean, it's they're starving to death.

And, you know you know, sitting on my hands and asking what would you like, you know, as far as maybe a protein source?

I mean, I'm thinking in my head, we're good with goats.

We're good with goats.

Say goats, say goats.

Nope, nope.

I said, all right, we're good with chickens.

Probably say chickens.

Nope, nope.

No.

What?

They're a rice culture.

They wanted better ways to grow rice in extreme weather conditions, in dry or wet.

And so working with botanists and the government, looking at ways to help with the rice culture.

>> So can you also describe what it has been like watching Dr.

Webb do this kind of work and, and what you make of the impact of this kind of work, Jeff.

>> So I'll tell you, I first, I first met Henry when I was on the board.

It's a nonprofit out of Oregon, and I was in awe, I was starstruck, I really was.

And so mostly because of the methodology that works, that works.

And so I've learned so much from being on their board.

And also just that methodology and bringing it back to Rochester in a very different sort of way.

>> So now in Rochester, whether you're in Rochester, wherever you are, I mean, these kind of the applications and solutions, these ideas have are on multiple continents.

Now, what can be the application for a community like ours going forward?

What can we learn?

>> So for me, I've had 20 years of experience repatriating lake sturgeon.

It's an indigenous fish.

It's an endangered species.

It's in very many ways like the orangutan.

And what is the threat of sturgeon survival?

One of it is ecosystem, the river health.

It's like the forest.

And so we've repatriated the sturgeon.

They're doing well.

But as we were, monitoring our sturgeon, we saw some nontraditional anglers, you know, catching fish and sturgeon.

And they happen to be from our refugee community.

And we've built a relationship with our refugee community for the last ten years, learning about the fish they consume and about sturgeon being special in their culture, but also listening about healthy choices, eating local fish.

So we have $300,000 worth of environmental justice grants.

Working with the refugee community for their solutions to heighten awareness about healthy choices, eating local fish.

And they had so many ideas that were very different than what I thought.

>> So you're practicing radical listening everywhere you go, Jeff.

>> It's the best.

I mean, it's the best.

Even working through the University of Rochester in our in our in our medical school program, you know, listen to people first.

People want to be listened to, even if they have a problem.

and then and then give them feedback about what you heard and then come up with a solution.

>> So would you recommend there's this book called the Art of Radical Listening, Revealing Collective Wisdom for change.

>> Top on the list.

>> Top on the list here.

When did that book come out, Dr.

Webb?

>> Just this last year.

Yeah.

>> Oh, hot off the press.

>> Hot off the press.

>> What are we going to learn when we pick up your book?

>> Well, you're going to learn that we are all interconnected, that there is no way to just think about my well-being as some kind of individual, separate from the well-being of the environment and the well-being of other people.

And that when we approach listening with love and respect and some skills, you know, we got some nice hard skills in there.

magic, you know, it really happens.

>> The skeptics are going to say this is just too woo.

>> Woo.

What can I say?

It is woo.

>> But you've seen it.

You've seen it work.

>> I we got the hard data to prove it works.

Yeah, yeah.

I'll give you an interesting example from.

So as we're thinking about scaling, it's hard to think about having nonprofits on the ground everywhere and meeting all solutions is kind of sounds like that's not going to work, especially in sort of the time frame of the way that we're losing rainforest.

so one of the solutions is to partner with an indigenous organization called Pawankar that can basically access any indigenous community in the world through associations and through Connections.

And they're just quite amazing.

So we partnered with them and they helped us reach out to a territory in Brazil that has the fastest rate of deforestation of any indigenous territory in Brazil, called the Apyterewa territory.

So the Parakana people live there.

They had first contact with outsiders 40 years ago.

First contact.

Now we reached out to them, put through a pawankar.

We had $50,000.

It was not that much.

Definitely not enough money to do an entire program on the ground and hire staff, et cetera.

but so we had $50,000.

We reached out to them.

What would you like to have this money for, or would you like it as a as a solution?

And what what do you see as the solutions?

They said, thank you very much for the 50.

We don't really need that much.

We'll take 30. and we want to be trained in monitoring satellite imagery and in GPS units so that we can stop the call in the authorities and stop the invaders in real time.

>> Wow.

>> Wow, they did it.

>> That is not what I thought that you were gonna say.

>> That is not what I thought they were going to say either.

And that is one of the things about radical listening.

Whoa.

Boy, should you just shut up and listen, right?

>> Did they get what they needed?

>> They they figured it out in six months.

And they also using that $30,000 sent people from their territory all the way to the capital, got got buy in that whenever they called, they could get the authorities to come in and help them stop the deforestation.

I mean, it was genius.

This year.

They asked for money to help reoccupy invaded territories, partnering elders and youth to, like, sustain their culture.

I mean, it's just like beautiful solutions.

And again, like this year we are going to give them $50,000, but or we already have and but next year we'll fund them again if they can reduce deforestation by just 10%, which is extremely conservative that they will I mean, it's very likely they're going to reduce it more.

At our first site, 70% reduction.

Right.

So if they did that, it would be equivalent to 4200 New York to London round trip flights not happening in terms of carbon emissions.

Right.

These forests are so important for the health of the planet, and there's only 420 Parakana people.

The population, they are some of the most important people on the planet.

And it's so important that we send them gratitude and look what they could do with it.

It's just genius.

>> So, let me now ask you, when we talk about scale, you have these examples of of how this approach, you say not only is it anecdotally working the there's data.

Yeah.

What's the biggest problem to scaling up this kind of approach?

I mean, is there a place in the world where you say that is an intractable problem?

I don't know how to solve that.

>> We haven't met it yet.

>> Really?

You think with with time and with this kind of approach, you can tackle just about anything?

>> I mean, you know, so there's there is, there's, there's the problem of like large scale agriculture, right?

There's the problem of massive logging.

There's the problem of fires.

Right.

But local communities can really address those if they are strong enough.

So it takes global work as well.

And it's good to have consumers, you know, really conscious of what they're buying.

And that's all very important as well.

But I really think if we can strengthen local communities, that's the biggest solution.

It really is.

>> One of the things that worries me is just how you replace.

So I I'm again, if I'm thinking about the West Virginia example, I mean, certainly coal mining has a has a cost in human health that we see.

There's obviously a risk of disaster, but there's long term health effects.

>> Yes.

>> these families and these individuals have been through a lot, and some are very proud, understandably so, of their legacy of working in the mines.

>> Yes.

>> And yet and yet they're often shamed, not not by everybody, but by people in the movement who think that that it's a good thing to call out harm.

And then, by extension, you get shamed.

So not only do you feel sort of othered by a movement that would probably want to include you if you if you're so inclined.

Yeah, but then you think about your own future.

And in West Virginia, in the communities I covered, they'll tell you like it's the mines are nothing like what what replaces this?

So where you were, you worked with communities where people said, I don't want to log anymore.

I would I would like not to.

And a lot of them became farmers, people who work on crafts, entrepreneurs.

Some became doctors.

It was a range.

Yeah.

I don't know if it was 1 to 1, but you've done really well with that.

Yeah, I can't force you to try to come up with a policy prescription for Appalachian America, but for those communities that say, if not the mines, then what?

>> Well, that's what I'd like to ask them.

>> Because you want to talk.

>> To them.

They are the experts.

Yeah.

What are the solutions?

I don't know, but they do.

And how many policy makers are out there asking them what the solutions are instead of assuming from outside.

Right.

Like, well, we got to keep the coal mines going because that's the only way to keep them a job.

Well, maybe, but probably not.

>> I'm worried for people who feel like they can't see a future aside from the status quo.

>> So my experience has been that many people are disillusioned and scared and terrified and feel like there's no future.

And, you know, I mean, I can't tell you in Madagascar where people were literally dying every year from not having enough food to eat right?

And they are like looking at us like you're actually literally asking us what the solutions are.

And it took them a while.

Sometimes it would take an hour where people are kind of like.

>> They weren't used to being heard.

>> They were not used to being heard.

It was the first time they had ever been heard.

And then eventually they start like wrestling with different things.

And, well, if we had this and if we had that and, then then they start.

And it's not like any one given individual has a solution.

It's a collective decision making process.

And you hear someone throw out some idea and it just like falls flat, right?

But then someone else throws out something and then, oh, they start wrestling with that and they get really excited about that.

And well, if we just had this, you know, at one point, one guy in one of those meetings said, look, the only solution is for us to just cut down the rest of the forest.

There's just nothing else.

And then I'm like, well, what are you going to do then?

And he's like, I know, I know, right?

And then the chief goes, well, but what if, what if we had like an irrigation system right over here?

And then we could that's outside the forest and we could actually have rice fields over there, and then suddenly everyone in the group, like chattering and talking and, blah, blah, blah, you know, and like, whoa, wow, that would be amazing.

And you know what?

That irrigation system now stands.

And again, like I said, they went from one crop of rice if they were lucky per year to three.

It worked amazingly.

So what I could I have thought of that.

Never in a million years could any of our team know.

Could even one of the Malagasy staff members from outside have thought of it?

No.

>> The implication you're giving is that American politicians don't always listen.

Now, that is hard to believe.

Are you sure?

>> Okay, maybe I'll just keep my mouth shut right now.

Okay?

>> Okay.

if you want to attend the event tomorrow, it starts at 2:00.

It's in the class 62 auditorium, 601 Elmwood Avenue.

Jeff.

Pamela, what do you want people to know about tomorrow?

>> Starts at 2:00.

You can hybrid.

You can zoom in, you can show up in person.

please be sure to attend.

We're going to have a 200 seat capacity, so don't feel like we don't have space.

Come on over.

>> Okay.

2:00 tomorrow afternoon.

we'll have links.

As Jeff mentioned, on our various sites here.

every time, as I said, when I talked Pamela about stuff like this, I know you are so excited for people to get to know someone the way that you do, because a lot of what you introduce this community to are people like Dr.

Webb, who, you know, you know well, and it's like you have this gift that you want to give.

Like you should know this person.

What are you most excited about with this week?

>> That's such a great question.

I and know that I am actually meeting her in person for the first time this week as well.

We've had a lot of zoom calls.

We did a book review together of Guardians of the trees, which is an extraordinary memoir that I highly recommend to people.

so for me to be able to get a chance to know her and also to have her look at the preliminary plans for the tropics complex, for bringing back orangutans to sit with zoo director Bob Lee this morning and kind of give her a sneak peek at what we're dreaming of and hear her say, this is fantastic.

The orangutans will really love this.

to be able to get people excited about bringing orangutans back to Rochester because there's a future for orangutans in this world because of Kinari Webb.

And she will be she look, the look she's giving me right now.

>> And because of the zoo.

>> Well.

>> I mean, we're doing it together.

>> You're kind and one of the one of the things I have great respect for is she is incredibly humble.

Her humility is something that everybody who knows her comments about the great respect she has for people and listening to people, that is unusual, I think, for people.

And it is to me what makes her a conservation warrior worthy of this award.

So I'm just thrilled to be able to spend time with her and hear these stories.

And, partner even more deeply with Health In Harmony.

It is a program we have been supporting in one way or another for 15 years.

we will continue that support.

It is doing meaningful work not only in Borneo, which is a place we care deeply about, but in Madagascar as well.

And you'll remember our first winner, Patricia Wright.

Our inaugural Conservation Warrior Award.

could not be more thrilled to be passing the baton to Kinnaree.

>> the new tropics complex.

What's the timeline for that?

>> we are deep in design right now and hoping to close out schematics in another few months.

It's a it's it then goes out to bid.

It's there's a long process with the county to make sure that everything is done correctly.

I'm hopeful that we would be open in 29.

>> And 29.

>> Which is not that far away.

>> And here's a question I suspect we might get.

Pamela's heard this kind of question before.

I'm very keen to get all of our guests to respond.

Alex writes to say, appreciate your guest's work, Evan, but why are we bringing new animals into captivity, not less?

he says, why are we bringing more animals into captivity?

Not less, not fewer.

So thank you, Alex.

Dr.

Webb, how do you feel about that?

That question of should there be zoos?

Should there be animals in captivity?

>> Yeah, I actually do think zoos have a really important role in conservation.

And I've experienced that firsthand.

I mean, we have had many zoos across the country support us.

And it is this if you don't know them, you can't love them.

I don't believe in bringing wild animals into zoos, but neither do zoos, right.

Zoos don't do that.

They they have babies in captivity.

And then a lot of those animals who would not actually be able to go back into the wild are then, you know, they're mascots for their species to help bring support and love for their for their wild neighbors.

>> What do you think, Dr.

Wyatt?

>> And connecting connecting our public to the orangutans at Seneca Park Zoo has in the end, being able to tell the health, the health and story.

The community saved 3500 orangutans in Gunung Palung National Park, 3500 orangutans.

We connect that to.

We connected that back to our family of orangutans at the zoo.

That's that's about 5% of the remaining population.

So our 4 or 5 orangutans at the zoo, connected to saving 3500 orangutans in the wild.

and so it gives them so much more purpose and gives our zoo so much more relevance.

>> What do you think, Pamela?

>> You as as Kenny said, you can't if you don't know something, you can't care for it.

And our our animals serve a higher purpose.

They really do.

And once you lock eyes with a rhino or a snow leopard, and you learn that there's only about 2700 snow leopards left on the planet, that's a real finite number.

And you can't help but think, what can I do to be to make that number be different?

And that's what zoos are about, is inspiring people to fall in love with nature to the point where they want to do something, to act, to make sure that there are always orangutans, that there are always snow leopards, that Amur tigers have a future.

And without zoos, we couldn't do that.

We can't all trek to Churchill to see polar bears, and we shouldn't.

We can't all go on safari and we shouldn't.

But we can fall in love with nature at a zoo.

We can fall in love with sturgeon and river otters, both of which were extinct in in western New York.

And through the work of a lot of people, including the Seneca Park Zoo.

Those species are back thriving.

So without zoos, we wouldn't have been able to do that.

>> Let me get Joel's question, he says.

How would your guest address the planned destruction of Oak Flat, a sacred and ecologically unique landscape with old oak trees and Arizona that will be turned into a crater more than 1000ft deep and two miles across.

So the mining giant Rio Tinto and BHP get their way.

Rates of poverty and unemployment and health issues among Apaches in Arizona, in the United States are staggering.

The Apaches have the solutions, yet they are battling the U.S.

government and multinational corporations and courts, including the Supreme Court, that do not, in fact, think little of native beliefs and the rights and indigenous sacred places.

>> God, thank you for bringing up Oak.

Oak flat.

I've been working hard on that, actually, and it's exactly one of the examples of why you need to listen to indigenous people who are desperately working with everything they can to protect ecosystems and lands that are important for all of us.

It is heartbreaking.

It's heartbreaking, and it doesn't have to be that way.

>> I don't think I accept the binary that I hear sometimes, which is I people who get cynical.

We had some guests recently from Ganondagan, from the Haudenosaunee community who are not big fans of land acknowledgments because they feel like it's kind of like the people are like, well, I drive a Prius, so I'm doing my part to save the world, and they do nothing else.

You know, it's like, okay well, I did a land acknowledgment.

So, you know, my hands aren't dirty anymore.

they don't love it.

They would love to see action, but they don't.

The action they have is not like we get all the land back and, like, you know, it's a whole redrawing of maps.

It's more like how how many treaties have actually been broken.

Do you actually care?

Do you listen to us when it comes to environmental stewardship?

What value can we bring to conversations and certain communities?

Have you guaranteed U.S.

rights and representation in Congress?

Can that be honored?

And and so I think that the conversations about indigenous communities gets, gets muddied, probably intentionally so.

But most of the time, I think Joel's probably right.

Multinationals don't care.

A lot of elected leaders don't care.

And they think their solutions are probably or ideas are more important.

So do you want to make a prediction there, or do you think that you can actually win that one in Oak Flat?

I mean, do you feel despair right now about that?

>> I do feel some despair about it.

But at the same time, I wouldn't I wouldn't bet against indigenous communities who have not stopped fighting for hundreds of years.

And I would say that slowly we are beginning to realize that if we do not learn some lessons.

Right?

I mean, the Shoshone community, I mean, that federation, 2000 years of peace, right?

Like what?

Genius.

And we like European settlers who came to the United States or came to this land, not the United States.

At the time, it was not until we were here that we learned the words freedom and liberty.

Those are indigenous concepts.

And the indigenous concept of living in balance with the earth is one that it is time the whole world learns, and I believe we can learn it from indigenous communities.

>> Right?

As the music plays.

Linda just said, what can people do to help?

Use less, donate funds?

And so real quick, what what can we do?

Dr.

Wyatt, what would you say?

>> Just remember, we're all connected.

We're interconnected with that healthy people and healthy environment.

Neither can be.

>> And send some money.

>> And also you can send some money.

Is that what you're saying?

Money doesn't hurt.

>> Money doesn't hurt.

>> Where do you want them to send.

>> Money to?

Health In Harmony.

And we will get it to indigenous and local communities all over the world.

>> Do you have a website you want to share with people?

>> Yep.

WW Health In Harmony.

>> Org and tomorrow.

That's something people can do.

At 2:00.

They can come out.

>> They can come out at 2:00 and you can find that info at the Connections website or at Seneca Park Zoo Society.

>> Pamela Reed Sanchez.

Nice to see you.

>> Nice to see you too.

>> Thank you for being here.

>> My pleasure.

>> Dr.

Jeff Wyatt, it is always a pleasure.

Thank you sir.

>> Thank you so much.

>> And I just want to thank Dr.

Kinari Webb, the founder of Health In Harmony, for sharing this story.

And congratulations on the award this week.

Thank you for being here in Rochester.

>> Thank you.

But it's not for me.

It's for all the amazing people I get to work with.

>> We appreciate your time here and from all of us at Connections.

Thanks for watching.

Thanks for listening.

We're back with you tomorrow on member supported public media.

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