100% Humboldt
Humboldt County CA USA is the home of some of the most iconoclastic, genuine, and interesting folks in the world.
We are getting curious about the movers, shakers, and difference makers in Humboldt County CA-Home of the giant redwoods, 6 Rivers, and the vast Pacific Ocean.
We will discover what makes people live/evolve in the beautiful, diverse, isolated, and ever-changing Northcoast of California 100%!
Listen in and learn what it is to be 100% Humboldt!
100% Humboldt
#73. Griff Griffith's Journey: How One Man’s Journey is Saving Our Forests
Griff Griffith's Journey: How One Man’s Journey is Saving Our Forests
"Why did he go to jail? What shocking discovery did he make while cleaning up an illegal pot grow? And who is his best friend?
Griff Griffith is a dynamic environmental educator, host of the Jumpstart Nature podcast, and the creative force behind Redwoods Rising’s social media. Once a troubled youth, Griff has transformed his past challenges into a powerful force for conservation.
In this episode, we dive into his journey—how he went from navigating personal struggles to advocating for and educating about one of the largest ecological restoration efforts in the U.S. Griff shares the importance of planting native species, not just for beauty, but for restoring ecosystems and supporting wildlife. With engaging stories and real-world takeaways, he inspires listeners to take action, whether in their own backyards or through larger conservation efforts.
Curious about how you can make a difference? Tune in for an insightful, lively conversation that just might change the way you see the natural world. Follow Griff and his work at GriffGriffith.info.
About 100% Humboldt with Scott Hammond
Humboldt County CA USA is the home of some of the most iconoclastic, genuine, and interesting folks in the world.
We are getting curious about the movers, shakers, and difference makers in Humboldt County CA-Home of the giant redwoods, 6 Rivers, and the vast Pacific Ocean.
We will discover what makes people live/evolve in the beautiful, diverse, isolated, and ever-changing North Coast of California 100%!
Listen in and learn what it is to be 100% Humboldt!
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Griff Griffith
Site: https://griffgriffith.info/
Email: NorCalGriffith@gmail.com
Podcast: https://jumpstartnature.com/
Meta: https://www.facebook.com/GriffWild
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@griffWild
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GriffGriffith
Redwoods Rising TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@redwoodsrising
Redwoods Rising Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RedwoodsRising
About 100% Humboldt with Scott Hammond
Humboldt County CA USA is the home of some of the most iconoclastic, genuine, and interesting folks in the world.
We are getting curious about the movers, shakers, and difference makers in Humboldt County CA-Home of the giant redwoods, 6 Rivers, and the vast Pacific Ocean.
We will discover what makes people live/evolve in the beautiful, diverse, isolated, and ever-changing North Coast of California 100%!
Listen in and learn what it is to be 100% Humboldt!
Find us on You Tube, Linked In, Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok!
Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, scott Hammond, with 100% Humboldt with my new best friend, griff Griffith. Hi, griff, hi. Okay, I'm going to look at that one. You can look at me, you can look at me.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:We can look at Nick, and Nick, our producer, what's your last name? Again, I forget. Anyway, hey, glad to have you, glad to be here. Tell us your role, your pedigree, your job. What do you do? What's the griff?
Speaker 2:story, the griff story. So right now I'm doing Redwoods Rising. So that is, redwoods Rising is a project. It's probably one of the coolest projects. It's like the third biggest ecological restoration project in the United States. Probably we've been saying that Maybe the biggest forest restoration project ever, ever.
Speaker 2:So what we do is we take out roads, we recontour slopes, we daylight streams, because a lot of the streams are buried back in the day because it was a path least resistance. They would just pull the logs down a buried creek. So it was weird because most of those guys were fishermen. So I don't know, they didn't make the. Uh, I don't know if they connected the dots between this is where our baby salmon come from and now we're burying it. I don't know, but they buried a lot of streams, wow, um, and so we're daylighting those, taking out roads.
Speaker 2:And then also, after they clear cut, they helicopter seeded with rodenticide covered seeds, huh, so they kind of like to clear cut the forest and they rained like poisonous seeds down, wow, and everything and everything grew back really, really thick. And so that's the point where we bought it. Well, say, the Redwoods League bought it and then gave it to Redwood National Park between the 60s and even up to 2004. So we got all this land that has like thousands of trees per acre, whereas in a normal forest you'd have like 10 to 200 coastal forest. But we have thousands of trees per acre so like they block the sun. There's hardly any undergrowth growing so therefore there's not as many birds and bees and cool things and it's like more like a pseudo forest. It's not even a real forest. Yeah, so, uh, I do social media around content creation around that story nice.
Speaker 1:Tell us where you were, uh, where you're born, where'd you go to school?
Speaker 2:Uh, my dad was a cop, a highway patrolman, so we moved around all the time. So, like I mostly grew up in Fairfield, california, until I was 18. Wow, and then I joined the CCC, california Conservation Corps, which you should too, if you're 18 and 25, cause it's a super good program. That'd be cool, and um, that's where I started doing my conservation work.
Speaker 1:Well, I volunteered at wildlife care centers, but that's when I started doing the hands-on cool stuff, so where were you? Do you call it station when you're in the company?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was stationed in Ukiah, which was a good thing Because that's from the Bay Area and I was a high school dropout and I was a bad kid. I was one of those really bad teenagers. No way, not you. Oh, my goodness, really, what did you do? Drugs, drugs, stealing, dropping out of high school, fighting, name it. So you were that guy. Yeah, I was an unhappy teenager. Yeah, ran away from home.
Speaker 1:Who wasn't. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2:Teenagers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, are there generally. Are your teenagers unhappy? Yeah, yes.
Speaker 2:You know I think there's, if you think about it, for hundreds of thousands of years we were all in really small family units and you had to get away from your family unit. You had to get away from your village, otherwise you're just going to inbreed, inbreed, inbreed, sure. So I feel like once you're a teenager, you just really wanted to be away from your dad, oh man. And so you'd go to the next village. You'd meet a girl that wasn't your first cousin or half-sister and that was better for the gene pool. So I almost think that it's like a built-in thing, almost where you want to get away from your family.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I went to San Diego, to Humboldt. Yeah, 825 miles had to get out. Yeah, you're like bye, dad, I'm out of here, break away. Yeah, life's good. So did you do any college after?
Speaker 2:that, or just I did. I went to college for 11 years who didn't? Well, when you drop out of high school, I got my GED in the CCC, california Conservation Corps, and got a little college scholarship and so, and then, because of the job skills I learned in the CCC, I was able to get a job at the forest service and so I had the coolest, coolest, coolest job. That doesn't exist anymore, but I did salmon and fish surveys and then, when there was a fire, I went on fire. Back then, in the nineties, there was way less fires, Right, so you went on like two or three fires, right, um, uh, you know a season, instead of like being on fire the whole entire season, like they are now.
Speaker 1:We should talk about that a little later in the show. Yeah, so where did you go to college? Then I went to seven different colleges, okay, 11 years, okay, 11 years and seven.
Speaker 2:I graduated from Chico State and then I went to HSU, back when it was HSU. Right For interpretation.
Speaker 1:No, you mean HSU is what you meant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I went back there for interpretation under Caroline Widener and learned a little bit about talking about nature. After I got my degree, my degree, I created my bachelor's degree. It was International Crop Production, latin American Studies. Say again International Crop Production, latin American Studies. I'm the only one in the world that has that degree.
Speaker 1:You wrote your own ticket. I did. That's cool about Humboldt.
Speaker 2:I almost did that. No, that wasn't Humboldt, that was at Chico State.
Speaker 1:Okay, Chico, I'll let you write yours too. Yeah yeah, Humboldt, the back of the day, you had to propose it and sell it and give good reasons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's pretty cool, I did too.
Speaker 1:You're the only guy that's got that degree.
Speaker 2:I'm the only one on the planet thing I got a job with Wildlife Conservation Society because of that, Like they hired me to do bird surveys just because I created my own degree and they admired that.
Speaker 1:It's creative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but then I wasn't the best bird surveyor in the world, so they might have been like we'll never do that again. I'm too hyper to sit there for hours waiting for a bird. I'm like, oh man.
Speaker 1:You look good on paper.
Speaker 2:I know, Until he started watching. I love bird watching and everything like that, but it's got to be. Like you know, I just can't sit there.
Speaker 1:No, man the ADD, I'm leaning in hard because that's my gift, that's my superpower. Add, yeah, my boss goes. Hey, you know, on the Zoom calls and everything. It's really obvious. You, another state farm agent, and I said do you know what he said? She goes, duh. I brought it home. I go, joni. My boss said I had ADD, she goes you got ADD L-M-N-O-P Duh. So you can mitigate.
Speaker 2:That's my problem too. I'm too hyper for a lot of things.
Speaker 1:I think it's a lot of. If you did a successful survey of success people, you'd see probably a lot of tendencies Some OCD, some LSD, some ADD, some LSD and some ADD and some LMNOP. Yeah, that's what I have. So 11 years.
Speaker 2:So Humboldt and Chico State yeah, and College of the Siskiyous and Mendocino College and College of the Redwoods and Butte College. So a lot of JC work. A lot of JC work, yeah, because high school dropouts Where's?
Speaker 1:Siskiyous, is that in Weed?
Speaker 2:Uh-huh, that was my first one.
Speaker 1:We should talk about Weed later too, when it's done to the forest of growers. Can we do that? Yeah, all right, cool. So your role today then you were a park ranger.
Speaker 2:So you graduated there. What did you do with that? All right, so when I was in college, I was a seasonal for 13 years and so mostly for the Forest Service. I did four seasons of the Forest Service, doing fish surveys mostly, and then in firefighting. And then let's see Forest Service, wildlife Conservation Society, the Nature Conservancy. I planted trees for the Nature Conservancy and did yellow bill cuckoo surveys along the Sacramento River. What else did I do? I farmed, so I grew the seed for the seedless watermelon for a couple seasons. Who am I leaving out? There was a lot. You've got a killer resume. Yeah, I had an adventurous life. You know I wanted that. You know I had my grandpa, who was still do, by the way, I still do. Yeah, no, it's you only live once. You know you got to make it interesting. That's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I've. I've been trying to. My grandfather told me that when I was really young, he him and I were very similar, except for he was like the super hardcore version of me because he was in World War II and Korea War. He was a wilderness survival instructor for the military for decades. That's pretty rare. Until he got too blown up and was permanently disabled. But he had such an adventurous life that I tried to keep up. I loved his stories. I wanted the same kind of stories.
Speaker 1:My dad was a P-51 pilot World War II. Oh nice, yeah, total badass oh yeah, they were.
Speaker 2:That was a different group of dudes.
Speaker 1:God he would come to McKinleyville and just tell stories at a big table. In Hiroshima he saw the mushroom cloud. They didn't know what it was, oh dang.
Speaker 2:Baton Death March and all these rescue ops and they would just kind of race hell with the Japanese in every opportunity. Yeah, my grandpa was one of the occupiers. After I learned how to speak Japanese oh, how about that? Loved Japanese people Ended up having Japanese foreign exchange students. That rubbed off on me. My best friend growing up was Japanese and then well, he was half. His mom was from Okinawa and then when I went to college at College of Siskiyos, there was a ton of Japanese students there so they had their own dorm. So I asked to be in the Japanese dorm so I had Japanese roommates for a couple years. That's cool, poor guys. Thank you, oh my gosh, I had you to deal with. I'm all hippied out and like drinking beer and smoking pot all the time and they're studying and I'm coming in at 12 o'clock at night how come you weren't Still going.
Speaker 2:They're pretty diligent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, material's like.
Speaker 2:No, johnson, please.
Speaker 1:No, I have to study Good, A cultural cross Grief son. Yeah, that's cool man, that's great. So tell us about the fire experience as a firefighter.
Speaker 2:So I got fire trained in the CCC.
Speaker 1:This is all. Norcal when I was 18.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all NorCal. And so then I fought fires with the Forest Service. Mostly did like I said. There wasn't a lot of fires back then, so mostly I was doing fish surveys, which was the best job in the world because I was just snorkeling, Right. So I snorkeled and then there was a fire. I went on fire and made it.
Speaker 1:Rivers or streams or both Rivers and streams.
Speaker 2:Salmon River Cool Did a lot of surveys in the Salmon River.
Speaker 1:You wetsuited up on those you wetsuited it up Because it's cold right.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, no, wetsuited it up. How about the Smith? A little bit in the Smith, but not too much. Mostly Salmon River, mostly Klamath National Forest, especially eastern Klamath. So a lot of desert creeks, so really remote stuff, yeah, really remote stuff, and then a lot of like salmon bearing streams and stuff in the climate.
Speaker 1:So you live on the land camp.
Speaker 2:Do you have a camper? I spiked out a lot, so most of my life has been spikes, which is where you go out for like eight days at a time. Then you have six days off. So that's what I did in the CCC. That's what I did in the Forest Service a lot. We had barracks. I was at the Grass Lake Barracks, which is an amazing place.
Speaker 1:Where's?
Speaker 2:that? What highway is that? It's a Highway 97 towards MacDole. That's way out there. Oh, it's so beautiful, it's crazy by Sheep, rock and stuff there's all these lava tubes Up that way. Oh, yeah, way farther east, so more by, like Mount Shasta. Oh, you're way over there Up on the way to Klamath Falls, okay, oh well, did that spider fall off me? I don't know.
Speaker 1:I hope so. That'd be cool, oh cool. There he goes. I love spiders.
Speaker 2:Hey, there's a spider.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was up by a sumig today, so hopefully that's not a sumig spider because he's going to be totally out of his element. Maybe we should capture him. So yeah, throw me off my game. If you're just joining us, my new best friend, griff Griffith, here talking about nature and conservancy and all kinds of cool stuff, so you're a frontline fire guy. I was for a while, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's pretty brutal work it was, but I thought I was tough. Oh, I forgot one of my seasonal jobs. I also worked on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska and the reason why I remembered it now is because I thought I was bad-ass when I was a firefighter when I was young twenties and I was all buffed out and stuff and so I thought I was really tough. They throw you on the boat and they put me on the boat and I realized I wasn't that tough and it wasn't that badass. And that's tough work. Goodness, I kicked my butt. That's the only job I've ever had that like. I only did once and I would never do it again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was beautiful. There was orca all around us. We were never far out the ocean, we're always around these islands. It was incredible optically, but the work was long and the dude whose boat I was a two-man troller and he was way tougher than me. I thought I was tough, but he knew he was tough. Yeah, and just trying to keep up with that dude, I like crawled home. I was gonna go backpacking in Alaska when the season was over but I got on quietly, got on the plane, you know, just like smelling like fish, kids move. Where's my?
Speaker 2:mom, I want to shower it kicked my butt, but it was beautiful, it was amazing my dad said go to alaska you had to go.
Speaker 1:It's supposed to be magic land.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did two summers in alaska, because it was so magical. Do you ever work in a cannery? No, no, always on a boat. Remember, always on a boat. And then also I was inland one time, so I didn't work on salmon yeah, hubble state.
Speaker 1:A lot of guys back in the day would work at a cannery for eight weeks and make bank Live on the cooler inside and I'm going. What it's like prison? It's like slave labor and he goes. No, I put together 20 grand.
Speaker 2:It got me through another year of school and some young men need to be isolated for portions of their lives so they don't ruin it. You know a lot of a lot of the guys a lot of the guys who worked on commercial fishing boats were like me. They're wild and it was good that they were stuck on the boat and made a bunch of money for the summer instead of being in the bars, getting in fights and getting thrown in jail Right, which happened to me once and I wouldn't recommend it.
Speaker 1:My 21st birthday. Tell us that story that's worth telling, oh god, this is a stupid story.
Speaker 2:So I was in weed, california, and, um, it was my 21st birthday and someone said they had homemade whiskey. I don't know what that means. I didn't know what it meant at the time, but I didn't ask too many questions back then. I was like, oh cool, so I uh drank a bunch and then, um, I got in a fight over the spotted owl really this was during the spotted owl time, right With some local.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just talked, talking crap, talking crap, and you were talking homemade whiskey and I was talking to homemade whiskey, I bet you were, and so when the cops came, I was on top.
Speaker 2:And when the cops came and they grabbed me from behind and I thought I was getting jumped, so I responded accordingly Oops and um. But this is back in the day. Things are different in the eighties and nineties than they are today. You could get forgiven for a lot more. Yeah, you know so, especially when you're a big white guy in weed. You know it's like I looked like I belonged there and stuff. You know it was. They're like a training. It was like a training police kind of things. There was young guys and so they like were probably glad that I fought back. Probably most interesting thing that happened all night yeah, didn't get charged for it. Wow, um walked away. Uh no, I got thrown in jail, but I didn't get charged for resisting or anything like that oh good, yeah, they chart.
Speaker 2:Did they charge you for a drunken public? Yeah, but not for fighting, not for resisting arrest, nothing, thank you. Siskiyou county yeah and um, but I they me in jail in a jail cell with one other guy and him and I fought for a little while and they watched Huh, isn't that interesting, wow.
Speaker 2:The early King fighting, yeah, because there wasn't the internet and stuff like that. So you had to get live entertainment. So this guy was just as drunk as I was, so we boxed a little bit and then we became best friends and hugged and I think he cried and we talked about his girlfriend and then I passed out and that was my jail experience.
Speaker 1:And a little hug and kiss goodnight there you go. Hopefully not a kiss, but yeah, yeah, I like that. It's funny how some resolution goes that way.
Speaker 2:Drunken fights usually go that way, yeah, especially when you're trapped in a cell together, I guess rugby's that way.
Speaker 1:Somebody I talked to that played rugby was that the last guest? He said rugby, everybody gets there's a kegger. Afterwards, everybody drinks a keg of beer and is all bloody. And the guy that just beat the crap out of you, he's having a beer and he's your new best friend.
Speaker 2:I think that's a Gen X thing too, like my best one of my other best friends that I met growing up. We met fighting fishing. We were fishing and we got into a fight while we were fishing.
Speaker 1:Still friends, we became best friends after that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're still friends. That's pretty cool, yeah, since we were 12. That says a lot about you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If you ever want to be my best friend, let's fight. Let's get in a fight.
Speaker 1:Nick and I fight all the time. I wouldn't want to fight.
Speaker 2:I would not fight him at 54. Kick our butts Probably kick both of our butts. We better be on our best behavior, might hurt me, man.
Speaker 1:So if you're just joining us again this is my friend Griff Griffith and tell us more about this so you have this Ranger career Kind of yeah, yeah, you did Tell us about that. How many years were you with the state of California?
Speaker 2:So I, after I got done with my 13 years of being a crazy seasonal, I finally grew up, got mature.
Speaker 1:So how old was I?
Speaker 2:when I finally was growing up, 31. And I became a supervisor for the California Conservation Corps and I had an amazing career at CCC. I don't know why everybody doesn't want to be a CCC supervisor. I'm so confused about that. Everybody's like. I was in college with all these people who were like I want to work outside forever, I want to save the earth, I want to become a CCC supervisor. Then you're always outside. You're camping all the time. You're like fighting fires. You're like planting trees, you're doing salmon habitat restoration, you're pulling invasive plants. You're doing really cool projects. You, you're doing really cool projects. You're doing trails, all every single, everywhere, right yeah, all over the place with young people. It's super fun. I don't know why everybody doesn't want to be a CCC supervisor. I would still be a CCC supervisor if I could get a body transplant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you've got to be young, if you know of anybody who's given body transplants.
Speaker 1:I don't. You know it's a medical desert out there Especially here Good Lord Poor.
Speaker 2:Humboldt Can't even get a hair transplant. Tell me about it.
Speaker 1:At least I haven't been able to get one. Yeah, I really voted most beautiful hair in San Diego. Were you In high school? Yeah, oh, I was going to say it was Sweetwater High School. It was recent yeah.
Speaker 2:Unless they were talking about the hair on your back or something.
Speaker 1:There's that, it's funny Times change. My kids go you were really cool, huh. I go yeah, and then you guys came along and messed me up.
Speaker 2:I was until you were born. Yeah, that's what I would have said.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's pretty much the answer. So, working with the state, how did that change your perspective?
Speaker 2:Working for the California Conservation Corps was kind of like a dream when I look back on it now. I stopped in 2020. I just I've had neck surgery, I've had three hernias, I've had all kinds of stuff, like this carpal tunnel, oh, your joints.
Speaker 1:You have all your original joints.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, smoked a lot of joints when I was younger, but I still have my original ones here, so we're gonna do.
Speaker 1:You brought the guns, yeah, yeah, so uh, we do have to come back to weed. By the way, I do, I'm kind of curious about the joint comment reminded you about weed california well, weed in california, oh weed, so let's just go there.
Speaker 1:So marijuana has been a um, an interesting, uh phenomena, and now it's the boom and bust, the green bust, the green gold rush, the green rush. But as a conservationist, as a guy who loves the earth, you can't help but see the damage that everybody yeah, In the California Conservation Corps we did pot cleanups. Yeah, we did pot cleanups, so there's trash, there's insecticide and Chemicals you can't buy in the United States and so you can only get in Mexico.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these are felons that are destroying the earth. These were illegal grows. Yeah, these were all illegal grows. This was before it was legalized. And I would go up with, take my crew up the BLM Rangers and fascinating, because they had guns. Right, they had guns. It was after they already scared everybody away. We just wanted to go get all the irrigation tubing and stuff like that. But it was weird because a lot of people like in my experience and I don't want to speak for all illegal gross but in my experience in Southern Humboldt and Northern Mendocino County I think it was mostly Northern Mendnesotano County with these cleanups and I was with the Rangers that did a lot of the busts, you know the BLM Rangers and stuff and the law enforcement and they said sometimes they'd get these guys that were from Mexico who had no idea where they were, no way. So they didn't even know they were like in California, Air dropping man.
Speaker 2:No, so these were like and the way they described them to me, these were like if you took guys from the Appalachia in 1920, like they didn't know where they were, dropped them in somewhere and the Rangers were under the impression that a lot of these guys not all of them, you know, there was like people who knew where they were and blah, blah, blah, but like there was some the grows that we were going to were these cases where the guys were like these were like Hicks, like Mexico's version of Hicks. Yeah, you know, these are like Appalachia dudes, mexico's version of Appalachia dudes. Sure, who had, you know, little education, six-time, you know education, didn't know where they were and were afraid that if they didn't bring in a crop, that their family was going to get hurt back home. Whoa. So when I heard that story and we're going up there it was like an emotional thing for me because I felt really sorry for them.
Speaker 2:Now, it's not a paid gig, yeah. I was like man, we're prisoners, yeah. And so then we went up to these and it was just, you know, I don't know how widespread this was, it was just the cleanups that we went to and, um, and we got up there and they had these beautiful like they took branches and weaved them and put mary in the middle and had beads. Like they had altars. They carved into trees, these beautiful altars like beautiful religious altars and um, and I've been bothered by that experience ever since, that's a good, that's a good paradox.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a trip. So there's like when people think about illegal pot grows and stuff. You know, I've been up in Northern California my whole entire life, just you know, except for a little bit in my childhood. But and that's not who we usually think about when we think about illegal pot grows, but I think that was a lot more common than most people realize.
Speaker 1:So when you were in Sohum, was Northern Manasino was? Is that area that's east of, say, laytonville pretty? That's like no man's land, I've heard that's really like the dark, the dark 40 out there. There's no, it's a lawless place.
Speaker 2:That's where we did a lot of our cleanups was around Laytonville Okay. East and west.
Speaker 1:I've heard that it's a pretty scary place, yeah, especially back then my friend Mark taught and was a principal at Kovalo and he said you know, it's just a real diverse mess. You know a lot of trouble.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a weird Kovalo story too. Go for it. So when I was 18, I got involved with, or 19, 18, 19,. I got involved with Redwood Summer. Do you know what that is? It was like the big protest against the logging and stuff. Yeah, with Daryl Cherney and everybody. Daryl Cherney, Judy Berry, before she was bombed Right and during. Was that before Julia Butterfly? Long before Julia Butterfly? Julia Butterfly was probably still in elementary school. Yeah, we lived up here. Redwood Summer, yeah, so Redwood Summer 1990.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of acts of defiance and equipment. Yeah, shit was broke.
Speaker 2:And I was in Ukiah at the time the CCC and went to the Mendocino Environmental Center and met Betty Ball. Betty Ball is kind of this legendary conservationist environmentalist. She was running Mendocino Environmental Center at the time and she was like and I told her I was like, yeah, we planted trees, this one spot was clear, cut blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she's like do you want us to come talk to you? So she sent some earth first over and this is funny because it's a state facility we had these earth first speakers, which would never happen today.
Speaker 2:So, um, and they recruited a bunch of us and we were all game for it and except for one of my, one of the fellow core members, there was like my dad's logger and he told some other people. He didn't tell me that but he wanted me to go home with him the weekend. So we went to Covolo and his dad was a logger in Covolo and I walked into the house and there was this poster on the wall and it was this hippie, crucified to this redwood tree with a spotted owl shoved up his ass Whoa. And it said the proper way to spike a tree Whoa. And I spent the whole weekend there and praying that my friend wouldn't tell his family that I was an Earth-first-er and I had all these shirts and stuff that I couldn't wear, so I had to wear T-shirts and stuff.
Speaker 1:I thought something might happen.
Speaker 2:And it was a really interesting experience because I was I might get.
Speaker 1:I might, something might happen, and it was a really interesting experience, and that's and so I had to stay around his logging.
Speaker 2:It's like hardcore anti-earth first logging family for the whole weekend. Wow, and he wanted that for me. He wanted me to have that experience oh, how was it he? Didn't tell me I got ambushed, besides being scared super eye opening yeah yeah, it de-. It helped me understand the human stories on all sides. That's why I liked Judy Berry, because Judy Berry was more into, like you know, unionizing loggers and stuff like that, and that's kind of the route that I went after that experience.
Speaker 1:And she died a long time ago, right, yeah? And is Daryl still alive? Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's alive. He just did something in Arcata recently. How about Julia?
Speaker 1:Julia's still alive too. She's not from here, though, right? She just spoke in Scotia a little while ago. Oh yeah, that's kind of rad actually.
Speaker 2:I know I wish I could have saw it.
Speaker 1:Oh, how long did she live up in a? A little over a year, over a year, yeah. That's kind of rad and never came down that we know of. No, never came down that we know of.
Speaker 2:Huh, yeah, that'd be rad in a hard wind and a storm, except for the part where you have to poop in jars and lower that down and have someone carry it out for you. I would be uncomfortable with that. Yeah, that'd be. I actually helped some tree sits and that's what happened. The the bucket brigade.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, there's that. But Remember she walked in. I worked for a newspaper. She walked in a place classified ad one day. I think that's her, it's Julia, it's kind of different.
Speaker 2:I hope that she was good looking and female yeah she was To get the press on there. I mean, unfortunately, this is the world, the way the world is. If it would have been me up in the tree, they probably would have cut it down while I was still in there. Yeah, you're done. Yeah, they're like screw this big animal man, Get rid of it. He'll survive the drop. Look at him.
Speaker 1:You're not going to cut a beautiful young woman out of a tree. No, yeah, no.
Speaker 2:And she was great and I'm grateful for her bringing attention. And it's really sad because during that time, when she was up in the tree, there was a logging Maybe it was right after she came down there was this logging show and I went there and it showed all this automation and logging automation and I was like Julia, butterfly Hill is not the threat to your jobs, this automation is the threat, and so now, if you look at how they log today, it's completely different than how they log in the 80s and 90s.
Speaker 1:You ever go to a logging conference here? Not for years. They rotate it between here and Ukiah. Yeah, you're right, it's equipment laden, it's heavy hardcore.
Speaker 2:I got on one of what's it called a Ponzi Ponzi Harvester, I think it's called. But we use them in Redwoods Rising because we thin the forest. In Redwoods Rising because there's way too many trees. After we clerica we planted way too thick and so you're never going to have a forest, because forest isn't trees, forest is a bunch of things. Okay, the trees are just like the main backdrop of a forest and but when you have 8 million trees, you have a tree plantation. That's mostly what we have up here in the North Coast now, because we logged all but 4.6% of the original forest. So we have to go in there and we have to thin it out, have to thin it out, and so when we do we use a ponzi, and it's amazing because three dudes or three people can log a forest. You know they can do they can it out with that equipment.
Speaker 2:They can thin it out that equipment it's. It's amazing. I sit on a big track like a tank and with that yeah and then it cuts it and it grabs in it. It sizes, it sizes, it cuts it to size. It is amazing to watch. Amazing to watch, but it got rid of a lot of jobs. Automation killed a lot of jobs and you all own one. Do we own it? I think our contractors own it.
Speaker 1:Let's finish up the state park duty and then go into your current duty. Can we do that? So what did you, were you stationed up here?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So in 2020, I got a job at Humboldt, robenstay Park and I lived out at Bull Creek in that house that has no neighbors for five miles. I absolutely loved it and it was cool oh man, bull Creek is magic.
Speaker 1:Is that apple groves out there?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, I could stay out there for the rest of my life. Is there a bear? A bear, is there a bear in general? Oh yeah, I was going to say there's way more than a bear. There is bears, there's multi-bears. All those trees are bear pruned. If you look at all the trees, they're all, and that's because bears pruned got up in there and ate all the apple. I call them bear pruned, uh-huh, but it's also across the. The one I learned on happens to be the one that's in the best. So my first one, this is bragging right now. Um, so if I'm going to, if I'm going to brag, I might as well do it. Yeah, the brag voice and the brag face and everything. Um, so the first one that I did that I supervised. Doing great Is the only one that's doing great. Wow, I'm just going to. I'm just going to say that the only one that's doing great, yeah, the only one that's doing great, wow, I'm just going to say that. The only one that's doing great, yeah, the only one out of like 30.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's doing great, really, that's got salmon?
Speaker 2:Oh man, yeah, because when I was there, because all that area landslid and it buried the creek, so the creek was under the gravel for a while and then it just barely above the gravel it was all algae and I was like fish are never going to come here. And they're like well, we got to keep doing this. Rocco, the famous geofluvial morphologist geofluvial morphologist yes, he was actually the equipment operator. I didn't really talk to him at the time that someone just told me that was Rocco that was doing it. So he placed the rocks and me and my crew like put them together and there's, and I didn, and I wasn't sure what it was going to do.
Speaker 2:I'd done salmon surveys and I'd done salmon in the classroom when I was a student. I did salmon in the classroom, so I'd take salmon to different classrooms in Chico. So this was at the time hard for me to fathom how this was going to turn out. But what happened is those rocks constricted the water the way when you put your thumb over the hose, so it goes from like just coming out, so that's what these rock weirs we put in, and so it created this pool and now and it became us. So 20 years later, 30 years later, I moved out there and I went swimming in this pool that I created with my crew and it was full of salmon. So I jumped in the water and I'd be like I am your creator and it was awesome. I loved it, you're welcome, yeah. So I swam out there and I felt like everybody's grandpa. That was really cool.
Speaker 1:All the fishes. Swimming with the fishes has a different meaning in this case. Oh yeah, so you retired then from the Park Service. I keep saying Park Service that's federal, yeah.
Speaker 2:State Parks. So, yeah, I retired from State Parks a little bit too early and became a private contractor for Red Bridge Rising. So I'm doing the same job, but now I'm just doing it as a private contractor and I love it. I love the project. The project's amazing. And I love the project. The project's amazing. Like I'm so happy that I get to introduce people to it, because it's the kind of solutionary project that I think is going to become the norm. You're talking about Jumpstart Redwood Rising. We can talk about Jumpstart nature, if you want.
Speaker 1:And social media here just a sec, got it all lined up. Okay, we're not talking about social media, that's always fun. Okay, we're not talking about social media, that's always fun, okay. So I see on LinkedIn I'm sure you're on other platforms, but LinkedIn is an interesting choice, because I don't do a lot of video and you were an early adopter, so I see your video a lot on LinkedIn, which is fun. So tell us about your social media journey.
Speaker 2:So I was a Luddite. I didn't want anything to do. My last semester in college they made us get an email, or last year and I was so mad because I never wanted to email. I prided myself on not having one. I didn't want to ever have a computer. You have a cell phone. I didn't want a cell phone, I didn't want anything. I've heard yours you have one now. I have one now. I have like you would be amazed what I have now. But I didn't want anything to do with social media nothing. I wanted nothing to do with it. But I worked with all these 18 25 year olds and I did take pictures of our projects for the sponsors you know, like fish and wildlife or ccc or whoever I was working with. You know whoever we were doing projects for at the time. Ccc does projects for everybody and they're like we want our moms to see those pictures.
Speaker 2:You can't just be like, oh, your moms are going to have to use their imagination. You know, like you can't do that, you got to let people's moms see stuff. So I was like, well, what do you want me to do? And they're like we created a MySpace, a Facebook and a YouTube for you and here's your passwords, Good luck.
Speaker 2:And I was like all right, I did it for you, they did it for me and our fifth or sixth video went super viral. This has been 2013, when you know now 50,000 things go viral every day, but back then there was like 10 to 20 viral videos a year and we were one of them. That's cool, and it was a dance video and we were one of them. That's cool, and it was a dance video, really Mm-hmm. Yeah, you couldn't tell by looking at me that I was a dancer.
Speaker 1:I could guess.
Speaker 2:Okay, so no one ever does.
Speaker 1:Did you want to do a quick dance? I could yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, maybe a little bit, I'll just do an arm wave for you. That's pretty good, that's pretty good, that's pretty good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do a little bit of mime.
Speaker 2:Oh, do you? Yeah, I was a breakdancer in the 80s.
Speaker 1:I was a white boy, fresh, I was a mime at Humboldt. Were you really Recreation major? Oh, dang.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow. We could take this act on the road Two older bald guys dancing.
Speaker 1:I think we'd go viral again, again and again go viral again, again and again, and again and again, so, anyways. So you went viral with this dance. Yeah, what's that about?
Speaker 2:It's called the Boss Dances Like a Boss, and we were cleaning up a remote facility. So I worked with 18, 25-year-olds you gotta, you know, and I'm this big white dude. And so imagine being a young urban black guy and urban black guy and you are never been like outside of la or oakland, you know, for any long period of time, sure? And then you join the ccc and right away they tell you you're going to go camping for eight days. That'd be cool and you've never been camping before. Terrifying, probably, yeah, yeah. And then you look at who's taking you, this big, giant, hairy white dude, and you're like I don't really. I don't even know if I'd feel safe with this dude, let alone the in the middle of the woods with him Looks like you know, jason Freddie, you know all those guys All the guys All in one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, with a little bit of Grizzly Adams. So the older folks got that, that's aging yourself big time, grizzly Adams.
Speaker 1:That was my man who loved Grizzly Adams. It was a good show.
Speaker 2:And Good show and Ben is in there, but so we. So I always try to like help people feel comfortable with me, you know, to be able to relate to me and stuff. And I grew up in the Bay Area and I used to be a break dancer, so I'm like not a stranger to hip hop culture or urban stuff. You know, I just seem like it but I'm I get it, I get it Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we were in a remote facility down in Leggett and by the Cal Fire station and we were cleaning up breakfast. We had some music on and one of them said get in there and dance. And I did, and later on that day and had this little recorder because this is what you know I was using to so their moms could see the videos, sure. And so I looked at it and I was like man, I was like I look stupid, like I look like an idiot.
Speaker 2:Perfect, big old, fat white guy dancing with these athletic young, we were big dancing kind of and um, you might call it that and so I was going to delete it. I was like, check it out before I delete it. And antoine mccoy, who's still a good friend of mine, he was, he's also on the video and he's like no, I want my mom to see it Because, you know, at the time everybody was trying to hook me up with their mom.
Speaker 2:Like everybody's trying to hook me up with their mom. So I was like all right, tell your mom she's got two weeks because I'm not leaving that up there. And at the time I was working with Rue Mapp from Outdoor Afro and Akeema Price, who worked on the like urban community. We were working with the National Association for Environmental Education on a project and they saw this Akeema and Rue saw this and they're like do not take that down, it shows cultural competency. I was like cultural competency, what is that? They like that. And um, they're like you're a big, fat, old white dude and you can relate to young black men. You know, this is not. People are having a good time together. Yeah, this is, this is perfect, leave it up there. And so I was like okay and this is on Facebook.
Speaker 1:It was on YouTube.
Speaker 2:YouTube and so, and then one day my boss meets me at work. This is a hardcore dude. His name was Mark. What's his last name? He was like a CCC legend, but he was a hardcore dude and he looks frazzled and he's like it's about time you're here. I'm like I'm 15 minutes early, bro, and he's like headline news is on the phone. Good Morning America is on the phone. Today's show is on the phone. They're all waiting for you.
Speaker 2:Your video is going viral, really. And I was like heck, yeah. And the night before Rue Mapp called me and told me it was going viral, but I didn't know what viral meant. You're a Luddite. And yeah. And so Rue Mapp from Outdoor Afro she's also a state park commissioner, she's the founder of Outdoor Afro, she she like coached me the night before and she's like you're going to be on. You know they're going to want to interview you and they're going to want to take you aside and it's this race thing and so like they're going to bring up the race thing and like I just want to make sure that you, you're ready for this. And so she walked me through, like what to say, and I was like man, rue's awesome, like Ukiah Daily Journal.
Speaker 1:I'm sure I could have handled that Like that's what I'm thinking, Right? And then I got to work and my boss is like good morning, America Today show Headline news is on the phone, so these cats are interviewing on the phone, yeah.
Speaker 2:So all of a sudden I'm like it was oh, comrade, oh man, everybody saw like it was on, it was on tv, it was on mtv, it was on everything, and, um, it led to me and so that, so I should have known I was going to tell the story and thought about it before I got in front of the microphone, but the director of the CCC called me and I thought he's either going to fire me for dancing in uniform or he is going to be cool. And he was totally cool. He's in Sac, sacramento.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he was like you, re you, you increased the CCC recruitment by a thousand percent with that video. Thank you very much, cause we were having a recruitment crisis at the time. Wow, and so I went. Wow, social media. I wonder if I talked about conservation issues. I wonder if I. I wonder if I told people to plant native plants. I wonder if I told people to keep their cats inside as much as they possibly can. I wonder if I told people, you know, plant these native plants in these areas to attract these things. I wonder if that would get out there. Plant these native plants in these areas to attract these things. I wonder if that would get out there. And so I started having my core members do videos and those videos all did really well. And I've been doing social media ever since. Wow, never looked back, no, and now I get paid to do it. Now it's my, my job.
Speaker 1:That's cool. Yeah, you have a producer and a guy that films you in the whole nine. Yeah, our name's Griff, so it's you're a one man team, so you had to set up your own lighting and do the whole nine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I do it like redneck style, I just. I don't think too Rough is better sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm just like a, I'm not like fancy like some of the people are Do you have a stick?
Speaker 2:Do you do the stick Sometimes? Sometimes I put I have a tripod too. Sometimes I stick the tripod, but I'm really really basic so let's call out your all your channels real quick.
Speaker 1:So if we wanted to find you, how do we find your stuff?
Speaker 2:so redwood rising on tiktok, facebook, instagram, youtube, my own stuff at griff wilds. You've been at griff wild on facebook, instagram, youtube, tiktok, linkedin, linkedin um, and then Jumpstart Nature is my podcast.
Speaker 2:So I host a podcast called Jumpstart Nature talk about that it's in Radiolab style, so it's not me interviewing like what we're doing right here. So you're just talking, it's a script and so we interview. So we have my partner. Michael Hawk was a global Google engineering manager. Wow, and isn't that an impressive title. He's like the most humble dude to never even got a college degree. He did that job and he never had a college degree. No way, isn't that crazy. Once you assume he had a PhD or something. He's a Google dude, though he was like the Google dude yeah.
Speaker 2:So then he retired and now he's going back to Google. But he retired to get Jumpstart Nature jumpstarted so, and he's got Nature's Archive, another podcast, which is like a deep dive into ecological topics. But Jumpstart Nature is kind of less like more action oriented action inspiring Like. So here's what you as a normal person could do, so you don't have to be biologists to understand it. We don't use any fancy jargon. We have like experts on because of his title. A lot of people say yes when we ask him. So we've had doug tolomey, we've had ben goldfarb, we've had like authors of books. We have like major scientists on because you know they're like wow, can't be too bad if it's a dude from you know yeah so what knows who's got going?
Speaker 2:yeah and so, um, is that up here or was it elsewhere? The podcast yeah, uh, I do my part up here. Gotcha, yeah so, and then it's like a story and it's love, and so the idea is basically to inspire action for conservation, to like, get people like, because there's little things you can do that can uh translate into major help for wildlife. Top three takeaways what are they? To expound on little things you can do? Yeah, maybe you got 10. I don't know, I got a million if we sat here. So the most important to me is planting native plants. Okay, because the reason why? Here's why Because people are like native plants. Who cares?
Speaker 2:All plants are poisonous to something. Okay, because if you're stuck in the ground and you can't get away from something that has a bunch of teeth, what are you going to do? Get poisonous. You better get poisonous. Better get some thorns. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, so almost all plants are poisonous. So our insects and insects are also specialists. So 95% of our insects are specializing on a certain family of plants because they've evolved or recreated, however you want to think about it to be able to eat this plant. Okay, so think monarch and milkweed. If you want monarchs, you have to plant milkweed, a poisonous plant? Okay, because it's not poisonous to the monarch, because they evolved or were created to deal with this poison. That is not a exceptional story. That's like the rule.
Speaker 2:Most plants have things that specialize on them host plants. And when people think about pollinator gardens like I want to attract beautiful little bees and butterflies to my yard and they plant a bunch of flowers, that's like building a town and like just the only things you build are fast food restaurants, yeah, like you got to have houses, you know Schools, yeah, and that's your host plants. That's the milk weeds, that's the oak trees. Oak trees are the best host plant, so you need those plants and that's what attracts the insects to lay their eggs and then they make caterpillars. Now people are like I want birds, I want a bird feeder. Most birds don't want to do bird feeders and hardly any birds feed seeds to their babies. I mean, imagine your little baby and your mom throwing up like crushed up seeds in your mouth. That's not cool, unless you're a pigeon or a dove. But most of them want to feed their babies insects, but not just any insects, because you don't need to keep giving your baby spiny, stingy roaches or something. So you want to give them caterpillars, and so butterflies and moths lay their caterpillars on their host plants. So if you plant the host plant, you are planting your bird feeder.
Speaker 2:That's episode two in Jumpstart. Nature is planting your bird feeder. So native plants Native plants by far are the number one best thing that everybody can do. All you need is a balcony or a porch. You can plant them at your church, your workplace, wherever. You can plant native plants and make a huge difference for migratory species, because our native plants bury at the right time. So that's what you want to do you want to plant native plants.
Speaker 1:Number one. Yes, I go to Miller Farms. I can go to Pearson's get some native plants.
Speaker 2:You can go to CMPS, the California Native Plant Society.
Speaker 1:Oh, where's that?
Speaker 2:It's freshwater, yes, so right up there they have their nursery and then you can go to Lost Foods on the fairgrounds and they sell native plants too. Oh really it, they sell native plants too. Oh really, it's called Lost Foods and Nursery. Oh, and if you want to know exactly, you can go to cowscapeorg and you can put in your zip code. And if you live outside of California you can go to National Wildlife Federation. Just put a native plant finder in your zip code and it will tell you and you can pick the butterflies you want. So if you're like just one of those people and you're feeling dandy and you just want to have like beautiful butterflies in your backyard, you can look up the butterfly and it will tell you the native plants to plant to attract the butterfly. So that's the number one thing you could do. I like to feel dandy Every once in a while. Yeah, I just I've been reading Bret Hart and Bret Hart was a dandy. He was a dandy. Yeah, I've been saying dandy a lot he's a Humboldt County Commissioner.
Speaker 2:He's on the board and stuff and active with Humboldt Historical Society. Lazar, yeah, and he's as nerdy as I am, but he's a history nerd where I'm more ecological nerd. He told you some Bret Hart stories. He gave me this book with a Bret Hart story which is about roaring.
Speaker 1:I think roaring camp or something like that's fascinating. But brett hart was. He got in a big fight at obara, did he? He got his ass, he kicked some ass and I think he got in the hospital for a couple days too. Oh, oh. And then, uh, the old brucey which is now the uh basement, uh in jacobic storehouse in arcata, was called brett hearts oh, dang, having to do with brett hart.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna take take a deep dive on Bret Hart here in the next year.
Speaker 1:He's a famous writer, right, came up here and spent some time, yeah, and became friends with Mark Twain and Jack London was down somewhere. He was a Sonoma Glen Ellen. Yeah, there were some cool writers. Yeah, some real interesting cats came through, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Some, some real interesting cats came through. Yeah, so I'm, I'm studying.
Speaker 2:Jed.
Speaker 1:Smith, yeah, my great, great great grandfather, jedediah Hammond, hammond Lumber.
Speaker 2:Oh whoa.
Speaker 1:Yeah, You're buying that, so you got well sure why not.
Speaker 2:You're saying it Might be true.
Speaker 1:I'm going to believe everything right now because you're on camera Hammond, hammond Trail, named after us. If Joni was here, she'd just be giving you like. She'd be like this dude.
Speaker 2:Not.
Speaker 1:Stink Eye. He's from San Diego.
Speaker 2:He's from Iowa.
Speaker 1:Those Iowa guys. They're trying to get away with stuff. They got a cornfield named after them. That's it the Corn Palace out of Iowa. It's a thing actually, Is it? The Corn Palace is like a whole like Trees of Mystery. Oh, oh, it's the corn of mystery. Yeah, I'm kind of scared to go there already. You should be. I've never. I don't think I'd go. So tell me more about Jumpstart Nature. Actually, you're on number two, so we're going to plant native plants. What's number two?
Speaker 2:Well, the last episode of Jumpstart Nature was about cats oh the cat thing. Cats, oh the cat thing. And I'm a cat lover. But cats kill billions of songbirds a year. They're like people don't realize how destructive cats are and I love cats, cats from like my best friend is cat, like I love cats what if you didn't like cats and you were still telling the truth, about which I believe you are it I?
Speaker 1:I don't really care for our cat, your own cat. I don't really want Ricky inside either, so I'm kind of in a dilemma here. Does your wife like the cat, loves the cat? Oh, we better watch it. All right, johnny, you heard it here first.
Speaker 2:Because one of you might end up outside Going after songbirds.
Speaker 1:What's Scott doing? He's after the songbirds again I love cats.
Speaker 2:Dogs are too busy for me, they want too much attention. I have like commitment issues but, um, cats, you gotta really work. I like that hard to get thing. Cats have you gotta work for their love. You gotta work for their love. Yeah, yeah, my cats are like whatever until it's like until they're hungry. So keep kitty inside because he or she's gonna be out there killing stuff, yeah, and a lot, and a lot of cats are like whatever, until it's like until they're hungry.
Speaker 1:So keep kitty inside, because he or she is going to be out there killing stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and a lot of people are like but that's natural survival. If it is, no, it's not natural and it's not survival. If it is, it's not. I know that's easy to say. How about gophers and?
Speaker 1:moles and voles. Is that what you think? There's a role there, because they seem, because they should be out of control in McKinleyville.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, when you remove all the predators and you provide perfect habitat for rats and mice, you know, like food and trash and all that kind of stuff, you're going to get those things. There's other ways to manage.
Speaker 1:I mean gophers digging up the yard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Do cats help with that a lot.
Speaker 1:Some Not enough.
Speaker 2:My mom's got weasels in her house to handle the gophers.
Speaker 1:Wow, weasels.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she lives right next to Woodrow White Creek so they come in there and she has foxes, too, that take care of the gophers A lot of fox in McKinleyville, yeah. Yeah, there's other ways to handle gophers, but the cats are going to kill 10 birds for every gopher and usually when they're migrating through, and also when your cat kills a bird and it was a mama bird there's three babies that are slowly starving on the you know oh, look at, she brought me a gift and then there's three babies that are like up in the bushes, you know, starving to death because mom's dead. Um, so I have catio and I understand a lot of people already have outdoor cats and it's too late, and so what I'd say to them is just make a pledge that your next cat will be indoors. That's good, yeah. If you can't keep this cat, yeah, because I'm like it's hard to take an outdoor cat, put it in. I understand, I had outdoor cats before. Um, so I get it. Just make a pledge that your next cat is gonna be an indoor.
Speaker 2:Episode 10 is about cats, and everybody on our team is a cat lover, like. We all have cats. We all are pro cat. Cats are from northern africa. They're desert animals. They had big territories, okay, and we took them and we put them in a city block, so you have, like you know, you could have 10 to 100 cats per city block. There's not that many terrestrial predators per that space anywhere. That's natural. That's why, when people say it's natural no, it's not. And also they're subsidized with food, so they're super healthy. No, it's not. And also they're subsidized with food, so they're super healthy they can just keep killing, and killing, and killing. There's nothing natural about it. Killing for fun yeah, there's nothing natural about it. It's not natural.
Speaker 2:And it's not survival of the fittest either. Survival of the fittest is an evolutionary concept that takes hundreds, if not thousands of years to be realized. It's a slow. When you take a species and you fly it 3,000 miles that's not survival and then let it out and it doesn't have any predators and competitors yeah, okay, it doesn't have. You didn't bring any of its natural diseases, you didn't bring any of its natural. It ain't survival. It ain't survival of the fittest. This is invasive species. This is an invasion. This is unnatural, human induced. This is an anthropocentric invasion. It's not survival of the fittest and cats. They're a desert animal that we brought over here and we have them in such huge like. Where are predators that? Where can you find that many predators per block? Yeah, like piranha on the.
Speaker 1:Amazon, maybe. And who's killing the cats? Nobody, no, except for cars. Occasional car dog. Yeah, I saw a big mountain lion at Beaupre Golf Course. Maybe they had some cats for dinner. That was a big cat. Probably ate cats yeah, they usually do. God, that's a big dude man, he was big. So talk to me more about other. So number three, and then I'm going to wrap it up by talking to you about just the rest of the projects and what you're up to coming up down the road.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So cats indoors.
Speaker 2:Native species plants Support wildlife crossings. What's that? So they're like overpasses or underpasses that the animals can cross our roads. And so another thing that I hear a lot is like, well, survival of the fittest. They're so stupid they can't cross the road. So nothing evolved for hollow rock speeding across the ground at 65 miles per hour here. Nothing evolved for that. Okay.
Speaker 2:And the way that a lot of species defend themselves against predators is not by running away porcupines. Have you ever caught a porcupine before? I used to do it all the time. I could chase them down and put them in a trash, can look at them, let them go. I used to do that. Don't do that, folks. But they have quills. They're not trying to run. Skunk doesn't run, it lifts its tail and sprays. So when a car comes, they try to spray the car. That's what they know how to do. So these animals quickly out of something's way. They get hit a lot. Yeah, that's not their trip. The reason why you're seeing skunks right now all over the road is because in February the males are all looking for females and they have a Pepe Le Pew type motivation. Pepe Le Pew is not allowed to be shown on TV anymore. Did you know that?
Speaker 1:I did not know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because he was a sexual harasser. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is that?
Speaker 2:true, yeah, and.
Speaker 1:Is that true?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's also, and that's how skunks really are too. They're not great fathers, they just like find their, they're like like Pepe Le Pew was, and then they impregnate a female and they don't help at all and they're gone. No, nothing like the worst baby daddy you've ever heard.
Speaker 1:Aren't elk like that? Do elk hang out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh yeah, they hang out a yeah, huh, not really though. No, no, never mind, I take that back. Elk, don't really hang out, they don't care either. Almost forgot a key part of the show here Mint animals are just awful.
Speaker 1:Before we go any further, here's the quiz show Ready. Yeah, this is for all the bucks. Thanks, dutch Brothers, for coffee and you answer correctly.
Speaker 2:Oh no.
Speaker 1:Question number one oh, I'm the player. Okay, yeah, yeah, you're the contestant. Okay, okay, I'll be the game show host, all right, all right. Question number one you get to hike any trail you got all day. We pay you money to do it. We got food, you got a companion. What trail?
Speaker 2:And Humboldt God that was the hardest question you could have possibly asked me. Really, that's good. I feel good about my question. I built trails here. I was on the state park trail crew. That's one of the seasonal jobs I forgot to tell you In 1997. James Irvine or Bull Creek Trail, bull Creek, my favorite grove is the Mahan Platte Grove, but mostly because Laura Mahan is my number one conservation hero.
Speaker 1:Where's?
Speaker 2:that Humboldt Rapids Day Park? Is it off the? It's right by Founders Grove. So if you go to Founders Grove you can walk to the Plaque Grove. Oh, it's right there, mahan Plaque Grove, yeah, where Laura Mahan stopped the logging because that, because the women's federation was buying that growth oh right, right, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, laura's awesome been there, and then bull creek has its own trail system. Yep, so to go to grasshopper, that's the other way uh, grasshopper, you could.
Speaker 2:You could hike up to grasshopper from there right, it's kind of connected I was. I was on a spike. I was camping out on the top of grasshopper doing uh, metal restoration, which means cutting down douglas fir trees. When I found out my grandmother had a stroke and was going to die and I was like 40 years old and I cried all the way down the trail. It was like one of the few times I've cried in my life. I just had to share that with everybody for some reason. Thanks.
Speaker 1:It's okay to cry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not going to. I'm in case you're waiting for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fuck, can you cry for us? Funny how crying is joyful and sad. You can have the combo. I know.
Speaker 2:But does that mean that I get a free coffee?
Speaker 1:See, I see, how much you cry.
Speaker 2:Oh God.
Speaker 1:So why coffee? That bad Question number two Okay, when do you go for coffee? You're a coffee dude.
Speaker 2:I'm a major coffee dude Songbird Coffee oh yes, smithsonian label Songbird dude you? I mean, I'm a major coffee dude. Songbird coffee oh yes, smithsonian label songbird coffee. They have it in eureka natural foods. That's the coffee I drink. That's the coffee you should drink, because, wow, coffee like it cracks me up, because, like, all right, let me, let me start over. I don't want to sound like an elitist. I almost, I almost sounded, you almost went, I caught myself. Yeah, thanks. So everybody loves coffee and a lot of people who love coffee also love the environment. Coffee is one of the worst things you can drink for the environment, right, and when they say shade-grown, that doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 2:So when you go to all the little fancy hippie stores and they're like we got shade-grown coffee, it means nothing. It doesn't mean anything. You can plant eucalyptus between those rows. You can plant palm oil, and that's what they usually plant. It's palm oil trees, so it's just like a doubling plantation. There's nothing for birds there, right? Songbird coffee has the smithsonian bird safe label on it. It's the only coffee that I'm aware of this time. If one of your listeners know of another coffee, I'd be happy, happy to hear about it, but it's the only one that I've been able to find. Songbird Songbird coffee Is it good With the Smithsonian label? It's excellent.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:And it's the only one that's monitored and they have to plant a certain amount of native plants. I think it's like 25%, oh, it might be 15, 25%. So there has to be habitat for birds and that's where our birds go. So our birds are in the redwoods, like the wilson's warbler, which is a beautiful yellow bird with a black cap. They fly down california, through san francisco, through your yard, and you don't have any native plants. They can't eat there. Um, they have to go to your friend's house, has the native plants they can eat there, and then they fly through la. Again, they're looking for the people who plant native plants. They're eating. They there flying at night, landing during the day, eating, and then they end up in coffee plantations. If there's nothing to eat there, our birds aren't coming back. So if you love birds, you have to do the whole migration, because a lot of our birds are like most of our birds are migratory songbird. So, um, songbird coffee for sale at eureka natural foods located in eureka and mckinleyville.
Speaker 1:Yeah, open today, from eight to nine eight, eight to eight and it is expensive, you know.
Speaker 2:So it's like, you know, if I was broke most of my whole entire life and so I wouldn't, you know, be hard for me to drink something like that. So if you know somebody who's broke and loves the environment, buy that's your gift for them, as you buy them songbird coffee and you stoke them with that.
Speaker 1:That's cool. Okay, love it. Parting shots how do we get a hold of you if we want to say hi, support your causes?
Speaker 2:My personal. I have two Facebook pages that are both Griff Griffith, but if you go to at Griff Wild, that's my Facebook page where I'm usually the most personal at.
Speaker 2:Okay, and that's my Facebook page where I'm usually the most personal at, okay, and then if you put in Redwoods Rising, you can find me on all the platforms talking about this amazing project and you can go to redwoodsrisingorg. It's a solutionary project. It's something that people are going to copy all over the planet, hopefully, because we're fixing our forest and we're bringing our fish back. So the model is here. Oh yeah, of course Cool, bringing our fish back. So the model is here. Oh yeah, of course Cool, you know how we are here. It's how we roll in Humboldt, it's how we roll, we innovate, and so it's this is the guy Brett McFarlane.
Speaker 1:That's how. That's how we do it in Humboldt. Is that who it is? Hey, Brett, we should have you on the show. Have you your prize here in a minute? Hey, thanks for listening. Look for us on Facebook, on YouTube, on TikTok. I'm. We're on a lot on YouTube. We're on Access, Humboldt and all the podcast platforms and like us and enter to win a Dutch Brothers card with a positive review. I'm going to do a drawing once a month and when you're there, ask them if they carry Songbird coffee. No-transcript. Take care, Cool Thanks.
