Stories Sustain Us #30 – Conservation and Community: The Tweed Forum’s Mission

Summary
In this conversation, Derek Robeson, a conservation manager at the Tweed Forum, talks about his life, the River Tweed, and the environmental initiatives in the region. Derek shares his journey from childhood experiences in nature to his academic pursuits in geology and conservation. He discusses the history of the Tweed catchment, the role of the Tweed Forum in promoting environmental projects, and the challenges posed by climate change. The conversation highlights the importance of community engagement and the collaborative efforts to restore and protect the natural landscape. Derek discusses the various projects undertaken by the Tweed Forum, focusing on environmental conservation, community engagement, and the integration of farming, forestry, and conservation efforts. He emphasizes the importance of educating younger generations about the environment and the challenges posed by invasive species and climate change. The conversation also highlights the significance of collaborative efforts in addressing these issues and the rewarding nature of seeing positive changes in the landscape.

About the Guest
Dr. Derek Robeson is a conservation leader with 30 years of experience in environmental land management in Scotland’s Border Country. As Conservation Manager at Tweed Forum, he helps farmers and land managers implement nature conservation projects. Specializing in Whole Farm Nature Conservation Planning and Integrated Catchment Management, Derek focuses on habitat restoration, including woodlands, wetlands, and peatlands. He also leads educational outreach and the creation of the 100-mile River Tweed Trail. 

Show Notes
Tweed Forum: tweedforum.org

Takeaways
•Derek Robeson grew up in the Tweed catchment, which has a rich human history.
•Conservation efforts are focused on balancing agricultural needs with environmental health.
•The Tweed Forum operates on a bottom-up approach, responding to local needs.
•Community engagement is crucial for successful conservation initiatives.
•Derek's background in geology informs his conservation work.
•The Tweed Trail project aims to enhance access along the river.
•Climate change is causing more extreme weather patterns in Scotland.
•Farmers are often passionate conservationists despite negative perceptions. Encouraging people to visit the borders generates enjoyment and revenue.
•Engaging children in environmental education fosters enthusiasm for conservation.
•The project involves a mix of private and public land ownership.
•The aim is to create a multi-use trail for various activities.
•Ecotourism can benefit local economies and the environment.
•Invasive species management is a long-term commitment.
•Restoration efforts must consider the balance of native and invasive species.
•Collaboration among farmers, foresters, and conservationists is essential.
•Historic landscapes can be restored through community involvement.
•The Borders Tree Grant Scheme has inspired similar initiatives

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Transcript

Steven 
Welcome to Stories Sustain Us, the podcast where we explore the power of storytelling to inspire action and create a more sustainable future. I'm your host, Steven Schauer, and today we're taking a journey to Scotland's borders to explore one of the most historically rich and ecologically significant river systems in the world, the River Tweed. For thousands of years, the Tweed has shaped both the landscape and the lives of those who call this region home.

Today, the challenge lies in balancing the needs of agriculture, conservation, and recreation while adapting to the impacts of climate change. That's where passionate leaders like Derek Robeson come in. Derek is at the heart of the efforts to restore and protect the River Tweed. As a conservation manager at the Tweed Forum, he works alongside farmers, landowners, and communities to implement sustainable conservation projects. From whole farm nature conservation planning,

to managing invasive species, Derek's expertise in soil, water, and wildlife conservation is helping to shape a healthier future for the Tweed catchment. One of his most ambitious projects, the River Tweed Trail, a 100-mile footpath designed to enhance public access and foster ecotourism in the region. Beyond his professional work, Derek has a deep passion for environmental education,

inspiring the next generation to connect with nature and understand the importance of conservation. Whether he's restoring historic landscapes, planting heritage trees, or mapping out Scotland's historic milestones, Derek's dedication to integrated farming, forestry, and conservation is truly remarkable. Now I first learned about the incredible work happening on the River Tweed back in 2017 when I attended the International River Foundation's annual conference.

That year, the Tweed was a finalist for the International River Prize, and I had the honor of meeting some of Derek's colleagues. It's an absolute pleasure to now sit down with Derek himself and dive deeper into the story of the River Tweed, its past, its future, and the people who are working tirelessly to protect it. So join me as we explore the fascinating journey of Derek Robeson and the vital conservation work being done along the River Tweed. Let's jump into this episode here on Stories Sustain Us.

where we are inspiring action through the power of storytelling.

Steven 
Hello, Dr. Robeson, Derek, how are you? I guess it's this afternoon for you over in Scotland. I think you're in Scotland? Is that correct? Yeah, I don't know if you're on the Scotland side or the England side of the border there along the River Tweed.

Derek Robeson 
Well we're just on the border Steven so we're about five miles from the English border here so yeah we're right in the of the border country of Scotland, bit hard up against the border with England and it's about half past three in the afternoon with us so a bit later in the day.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, it's 7, 7.30 in the morning for me here in Seattle. So thank you so much for, for joining me today. I'm looking forward to learning about you and learning more about the River Tweed. So appreciate your time.

Derek Robeson 
very welcome thanks very much for asking me it's a real honor thank you

Steven 
Yeah, and I gotta tell you, I feel like I've been on a bit of a multi-year journey to get to this conversation. Going back to 2016, my wife and I took a vacation and we were over in England and Scotland and we took the train from Edinburgh to London and trained over the River Tweed on that amazing, I think it's the Royal Border Bridge. Yeah, so beautiful. I remember...

Derek Robeson 
Barrett. Yeah.

Steven 
Telling my wife as we were going over the rivers like we got it. We got to come back here this Why didn't we stop here? This is so beautiful. So Yeah, so from 2016 I met a few of your colleagues in 2017 in Brisbane Australia when the river Tweed was a finalist for the International River Prize So again kind of getting closer to you then

Derek Robeson 
Yes, yeah that's right

I remember that well we were over the year before because I think you've come into contact with a colleague of mine Tom Alex in over New South Wales in Tweedshire Council so we went over to see Tom in 2016 and of course our director Luke and Chris went over in 2017 so yeah it's a small world as they say it's amazing the people you meet and Tom was a wonderful hostess he really was we'll be touching that later he really was a wonderful hostess.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and

I met Tom through the International River Foundation and I interviewed him a few last fall. He was episode 16 and yeah, he was kind enough to put us together. So it's been this long, small world journey, like you said, to get to this conversation. well, Derek, tell me a bit about you. Where did you grow up? What's your story? And then we'll jump into the River Tweed together.

Derek Robeson 
Yeah, yeah, very kind, very, very grateful to him.

Well,

Yeah,

well I was sitting here in Kelce, so Kelce is in the heart of the Tweed catchment, about 18 miles west of Berwick, that bridge you talked about, so right in the heart of the valley. I was born here in the early 60s, so I haven't got that far. I've been away when I was studying, but came back and the draw of home was quite strong. just to put the geographic context of the Tweed catchment, we're hard up against the English border.

on our south side in Northumberland. To the east we've got the North Sea in Berwick. To the north we've got Edinburgh and to the west we've got Dumfries and Galloway. So that's the kind of geographical context upon which we sit.

I've been fortunate to live here most of my life and work here for the Tweed Forum. I'm now conservation manager. we've got 18 staff doing variety of projects right across the catchment. The catchment is really interesting, know, geographically. It's the most amazing place. It's just like a horseshoe of hills. The southern hills of the Cheviots, the western hills of the Moorfoots, the northern hills of the Lammermoors. Open end of this kind of horseshoe to the North Sea and some of the most beautiful agricultural landscape.

and that's the landscape in which we grew up. I went to school here, I went off to university, but I'm really interested in history, in local history and conservation is what I've ended up doing, but we thank our parents, I've got two brothers.

One lives in the Borders, one lives in Edinburgh and we're all really interested in environment. But we do thank our parents for that. My mother was an accountant, my father was, after he came out of the Navy, was a mink farmer of all things. In the days when mink coats were, real mink coats were popular but obviously they became less popular in the 60s and 70s so...

Steven 
mink farmer, all right.

Yeah. Sure.

Derek Robeson 
The market dropped out of that and he became a bowyer of all things. He made archer equipment, old English longbows and target archery bows and field archery bows. But in his spare time he took us out into the countryside so we spent a lot of time down on the coast, the Northumberland coast, Bamburgh Castle, lots of castles on the border, Bamburgh Castle. He loved his birds, you know, we saw lots and lots of birds. He took us down to the Herschelie state in Colestream a lot to see the birds. You're up into the hills, hell walking. So we kind of got into conservation all of us that way.

Steven 
Yeah, that was.

Derek Robeson 
He loved guiding, taking people out. I remember one time he took us to the Hirsley estate down at Coldstream. Beautiful estate, big country house, lots of parkland and lakes. My brother was with me. We went down to the river. It was a group from the American Audubon Society in the mid-70s. I was probably my early teenager, I'd be about 12 probably.

Steven 
Yeah.

So you were an early teenager at this time?

Yeah,

yeah.

Derek Robeson 
and

he went down and all these Americans stood on the bridge with massive lenses like this, we've never seen lenses like them, know. They were a great crowd and this bird took off, like a woodcock took off and flew up over the bridge and landed behind a tree and he shouted that it was carrying a chick and nobody really believed him, you because these birds are supposed to carry chicks under legs when they take flight but nobody actually filmed it or photographed it and all. These folks were standing with lenses this size and nobody got to photograph it. Well this bird came back again

picked up another chick and flew off with this chick and you saw these four legs dangling underneath it was really quite spectacular these kind of things you remember you don't forget these things they're quite interesting yeah it was

Steven 
Wow. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, what a great experience. yeah, I

feel like I was there kind of imagining it happen. So what a great experience.

Derek Robeson 
And another time we're down at the Hirsall House and we used to ring the swifts. These swifts used to fly off, you know, from, well they used come down from Africa to Britain and fly back. this bird would do, this one single bird that we ringed was doing about three and a half million miles over its 25 year lifespan. And the owner of the house had ringed it over a period of 25 years. And you reckon they'd done that kind of mileage, was incredible. It was actually monogamous, they only had three mates in that time. But I was the smallest in the group, so I had to lean out the windows, lean over,

the windowsill, pick up the nest box top and then find these little chicks in the box and bring them out and ring them. And this one time I stuck my hand in the box and I thought this is not quite right and it was full of wasps nest in it. So you can imagine I quickly pulled back and came back in the windowsill but yeah you're a bit weary after that but it was a great experience but you don't forget these days. Yes absolutely yes yeah very very sharp entry back into the window by the way.

Steven 
Oh no. Oh no.

no, escape unharmed or did you get... Yeah.

Yeah,

Derek Robeson 
It was interesting. No, it

Steven 
Never moved so quick, I'm sure.

Derek Robeson 
wasn't so fast. But that's it all stems from, all these interesting experiences as a child, you know.

Steven 
Yeah, and I imagine that love of history with all the old castles and all of the old stories, everything just kind of intertwines there. Your love of conservation and love of history just, you were absorbing it like every moment of your childhood it sounds like.

Derek Robeson 
Yeah.

It

is, well it is, because the catchment, know, it is an interesting catchment because it has, human history goes back at least 5,000 years, maybe 6,000 years, and one day when I was walking across the farm, I if you can see this, but I picked up this little neolithic axe. I probably should have handed it in, but I think the museum drawers are full of these kind of things. And it's most beautiful thing, you know, and that's probably 6,000 years old. Is that kind of thing, well, if that's 6,000 years old, that's, worked it out.

Steven 
Nice. Yeah, yeah. Wow.

We won't tell anybody. Yeah, your secret's safe.

Derek Robeson 
if a generation is about 30 years, that's 180 generations of people have lived between the last period to pick it up and mean it's that kind of thing that really inspires you, it? And then through the catchment you've got the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, Iron Age and of course the Romans, the Romans came here, they were here for a long time, for 400 years, built a massive hill fort north of Hadrian's Wall here and the natives wouldn't be friendly then. The Vikings came, the Medieval, the Normans came.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sure, sure.

Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
built their abbeys here, Kelsa, Jedbra, Drymbra. A great medieval kingdom here and then five kings lived just across the river here. David the first of Scotland, Malcolm the fourth, William the first, Alexander the second, Alexander the third. They all lived here you know and it was a really quite a lawless period in Scottish and English history and of course you've got the English border runs right through the middle of the catchment which is probably the oldest land border or one of them in the world. It's over a thousand years old so you've got all that history coming together.

Steven 
That's amazing.

Sure. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
They just add on the environment to that, it's quite a spectacular place.

Steven 
Yeah,

well, I'm already booking my trip in my brain. A few weeks ago, I talked with Jenny Barlow and she's from the Terrace Valley Nature Reserve, kind of a neighbor of yours and different catchment, but a nearby neighbor of yours. she was a great interview. And I already mentioned to her that I'll come work for her. So if you got work for me over there, I'll make a work trip out of it. And because it just sounds so...

Derek Robeson 
yeah, yeah and Dumfries and Galloway.

It's lovely.

Steven 
beautiful and appealing and I love history as well as nature and so everything you just talked about, my wheels are like, when can I get there and see all of this in person? Because it just sounds spectacular.

Derek Robeson 
It is.

Well, I think too that it's not just a landscape that inspires us, it's conservation advisors to farmers. It's inspired people over the years. I this is the landscape that Walter Scott grew up in, John Buchan, of 39 Steps fame and Governor General Canada. He came from here, Lord Tweedchmure, James Hogg, Nettric Shepherd, Walter Scott I've mentioned.

Steven 
Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
Yeah, lots and lots of poets that took inspiration from this landscape and Abbotsford is just along the road below the Ealdon house, we'll try and monitor him, the Roman fort was, so lots and lots of people have just been inspired by this landscape and the history of it.

Steven 
Yeah. So tell me a bit more about your history then. you're a young child, a teenager, you're exploring this area with your family, you're seeing all of these things firsthand. You eventually, imagine, go off to university or what's kind of next in your life journey?

Derek Robeson 
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I was never very academically minded at school. think my report card would always say, could try harder, we managed to through school just to sixth year and I enjoyed biology, enjoyed geography, enjoyed history and the sciences. So anyway, I ended up going to Sheffield University. You had to go to an English university in these days rather than a Scottish one. If you didn't have a language, I didn't have...

Steven 
Hahaha

Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
I failed German badly so I ended up in an English University in Yorkshire in Sheffield. was wonderful, a great experience. I ended up doing Geology and Zoology in Botany, Environmental Sciences and then majored in final year in Honours year doing Geology. Then I ended up doing a Masters there in Sheffield in Micro-Paleontology and then went over to Dublin, to Trinity College in Dublin in Ireland.

Steven 
Geology, okay.

Okay.

Nice.

Derek Robeson 
to do a PhD in petroleum exploration geology, looking at soil shock potential for oil and gas off the Celtic Sea Basin, the Donegal Basin off the West Coast of Ireland. But you know, I was going through that process in my life and it was very much exploitative, very much exploration geology, very much production, very much. And my heart really wasn't in it, I to say. It was much more about conservation and wildlife and try to conserve things rather than try to exploit things. So I was never that comfortable with it, to be honest.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
I left Ireland in probably 89, came over to Edinburgh, did some post-doc work at Edinburgh University and yeah, and from there decided that what I really wanted to do was get into conservation. So we volunteered then with the Scottish Wildlife Trust, who had a conservation team in the Borders and myself and my colleague who ended up working with Hugh Chalmers. We both started on the same day as Farm Conservation Advisors way back in 1995 at the local agricultural college, so we're very lucky.

And we spent our life just walking farms, making suggestions for conservation, you plant some native trees, where you put hedges, where you put ponds. It's privilege to be invited onto people's land holdings and farms. It is a real honour then to try and help them, help the farmers deliver conservation projects on the ground.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Sure, helping them stay productive with their land, but also

trying to do it in a way that's healthier for the surrounding environment is what I'm imagining you were doing. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
Absolutely. And

we have such a diverse range of habitats here. I think if took the borders, the Tweed Valley would be about 5,000 square kilometres. About 86 % that's in Scotland, 14 % is in England. In land use wise it's about 20 % commercial conifer in the west side of the catchment. It's about 20 % Heather Moorland, which is interesting because Heather, you'll be aware of Heather Moorland, but I think Scotland or the UK at least has

75 % of the world's heather so we're honour bound to look after it, maintain it and manage it for perpetuity if you like. About 20 % of the catchment is arable and 40 % is grass whether it's pastoral, know, in by improved grass or hill grass. So these are the kind of habitats we're looking at really. Shear, big sheep farming country, lots of mixed units with cows as well, Aberdeen Angus beef cattle.

Steven 
Is it?

Sheep and cows on the grassland.

Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
In the

hills we might have more traditional breeds like lynx, some one of three dexter's, some galloways that are outwintered but a lot of them will be on the lower better land, the cattle but the top of the hills will be very much sheep farming and they'll have a thousand years of sheep right back to the days of the abbeys we mentioned the medieval monks were big big pastoralists you know just a long history yeah.

Steven 
Yeah, that makes sense.

Sure, Yeah.

So how long then did you spend? started in 95 with the Scottish Wildlife Fund?

Derek Robeson 
Yeah, well

I was there sort of 93 to 95, the Scottish Wildlife Trust, doing voluntary work and then we got in, and I, about late 95 into the farming wildlife advisory group which were the conservation advisors based at the local agricultural college and I spent, oh probably spent the next 15 or so years there going on to farms. So it really was a wonderful experience and then moved on after that to the Scottish agricultural college.

Steven 
Trust. Yeah.

Okay.

Derek Robeson 
They had a consultancy wing in the same office and they took me on as an environmental consultant and that was very much about environmental appraisals, whole farm planning, that kind of thing, pulling it all together. And then about 12 years ago I moved over to Tweed Forum where I am now. I was invited over by our director to look at helping them with stakeholder engagement on a land use strategy pilot. The government wanted to look at a mapping tool that might help farmers.

Steven 
Sure, Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
Look at opportunity mapping, not just for farming but for forestry and conservation. Where's opportunities for diffuse pollution control? Where's opportunities for more native woodland planting? Where's opportunities for habitat linkages and corridors and all that? So it's very much about integrating using mapping-based tools, which is really exciting. yeah, yeah, all of that stuff. Yeah, so, and that's kind of where we're at now. An organization's grown from when I joined it.

Steven 
Sure, sure.

Yeah, GIS tools to do overlays and everything. yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, yeah.

Derek Robeson 
12 years ago, 4 or 5 staff to about 18, 19 staff now doing a variety of things from peatland restoration to peat bogs, you'll be familiar with them but there quite a lot peat bogs in Scotland but they're great carbon sinks, they're just made up of spag and moss and we're very much about getting them wetter, basically blocking the hale drains and re-profiling the peat hogs so the moss doesn't blow away basically and dry out stores of carbon, things like neat.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I'm assuming over the

years were they being intentionally water diverted to dry them out to help expand agricultural land or just climate change is drying them out or what's...

Derek Robeson 
Well, I think,

yeah, they're at such a high elevation, Steve and Usel, they're quite high up in the hills, it's quite wet, so you've got the natural elements that eroding them, but then you've got grazing pressures as well, mostly from sheep rather than deer and things like that, so it's this kind of combination of grazing pressure and altitude, yeah, and some drainage work as well, there was a lot of hill drains went in 200 years ago.

Steven 
Okay.

Yeah. Sure, sure.

Yeah, so it's again balancing the agricultural needs and the environmental needs. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
time with enclosure acts Victorian days there was lots of grants for drainage so they went in then yeah and they were trying to undo some of that now put it back to nature yeah

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's part

of the joy of this show that I get to do is talk with folks like you around the world who are undoing the best thinking of previous generations because now we know better. We have better ways of thinking. We can balance these different pressures instead of just trying to dominate nature. We can work with nature and it's always great to hear stories like yours about, yeah, we're...

Derek Robeson 
Where are we?

Exactly.

Steven 
We're undoing something from 200 years ago.

Derek Robeson 
Yeah,

and we're doing things like, you know, re-meandering rivers as well. So my colleagues and it's very much a partnership that we're working and I'm just, you know, I'm just a messenger here today, but we're such a team, that close-knit team that really, you know, they're really incredible, driven and gifted people, all of them. So we have two or three that do river restoration and they concentrate on, know, rivers that were canalized, you 200 years ago. They are busy putting the re-meanders back and taking down the flood banks and reconnecting them with the flood.

Steven 
Sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
planes and that kind of thing so it's really quite exciting. Lots and of ponds are going in, we've put in 300 ponds over last 10 years. Wetlands as well. yeah the driver for these is very much natural flood management. We have a big problem with, as you probably do, you see it on the news, I some of these storms that we're getting over recent years are biblically.

horrendous, you can't believe what you're seeing. Well we're getting these extremes as well so we're trying hard to work with farmers just above the towns that flood in the borders, above Peoples and Selkirk and Galashield and work with the farmers to try and slow it down by various means.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Are you experiencing

kind of the same that I'm familiar with here in many parts of the states that I've had personal work experience in the changes of longer periods of dryness punctuated by shorter periods of intense rain? Is that kind of what's happening in your area as well, similar changing weather patterns? Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
Yeah.

Yeah

Very much. mean

the seasonality seems to have kind of gone from it, you know. And when we get rain, we get a lot of rain. And you don't imagine droughts being associated with Scotland, but in actual fact, not so much last year. Last year was a wet year for us. But a couple years before that, the springs were incredibly dry. know, I both springs, the two years before that, were so dry we didn't see any much rain for the first three months of the spring. And they were getting concerned about water levels, reservoir levels. And that's kind of unheard of.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
people were actually experiencing wildfires on the Scottish moors and further north and you think well that in Scotland is that really a problem but well yes it potentially could be yeah yeah

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're

here in the Pacific Northwest. It's similar to, you know, Scotland temperature wise and climate wise. People don't, I don't think they would assume droughts and those kind of problems here in the Seattle area and Pacific Northwest. But yeah, we're still, some parts of the area here are still in drought conditions. So we're hopeful that the La Nina that's changing weather pattern will actually bring us some.

Derek Robeson 
Yeah.

Steven 
some good rain and and snowpack this this winter cuz we have were were were down we need it

Derek Robeson 
Really, and it seems to be the story of the world over, it? That things

are becoming much more extreme. And I guess a lot of what we're doing for natural flood management will help in times of drought as well. It'll store water. It'll allow the farmers places where they can get access for water for their animals. Because what we found a few years ago in one of the droughts was that the only place that the farmers could get feed for their animals was to open up the woodland plots, if you like, and let their animals graze under the trees. Because that's the only place the grass really was.

Steven 
Right.

Go in there, yeah.

Derek Robeson 
all the grass has been burned off and again in Scottish shells that's pretty much unheard of so it's just a sign of the times yeah

Steven 
Yeah, yeah. It is,

sadly. So there's work to do. We've got things to do and people to inspire to join us. So yeah. So tell me, I've got one more question about your past real quick. Actually, I'm gonna take two questions about your past real quick before we transition into the Tweet Forum. But first question about growing up, and this has, it's just.

Derek Robeson 
There is work to do, Steven, and there's lots of... Exactly.

Steven 
Uh, my curiosity, was it football or rugby or something else? Rugby was yours? Yeah. Yeah. What? Yeah, exactly. I don't know why I was assuming rugby, but I'm, I'm a football guy. Yeah. European, like the right kind of football guy. Yeah. Yeah. So the soccer over here, but yeah, I follow.

Derek Robeson 
Rugby, rugby, this is a home rugby. Yeah.

yeah.

Yeah.

Steven 
big English Premier League and all the European top leagues. But I figured you were a rugby guy, but I wanted to just for the fun of it clarify, were you a football or rugby?

Derek Robeson 
Yeah,

now rugby's under our blood. My grandfather was a professional rugby player. was one of the early professional... and he played rugby league. He played for Kelsa and Jedbro, before the first one wore out, believe it or not. And then he went professional in about 1912, 1913. He played for Oldham down in Lancashire. Of course, he was blackballed by the local clubs because they were amateurs here, but then he turned professional. He was making a wage out of that and he didn't like it. But he did really well and then he went off, you know...

Steven 
right on.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
First World War broke out and then it went off to war after that, which is different story altogether. Yeah, so rugby. Rugby's canny under blood. Yeah, very much.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, well,

thank you. just had to, I had to know, I had to know. Well, the other kind of more career oriented question I was pondering as you were telling me your story, when you were at the agricultural college for that 15 years, helping farmers and landowners, were you also teaching at that time or was it mostly just working with the landowners and helping educate them, if you will, help them?

Derek Robeson 
And yeah.

Mmm.

It was

quite a varied job, Steven. We did mostly advisory provisions, but we held workshops for farmers. We did a lot of talks in the evening. We went out into the local communities and we talked about the work we were doing and the good work the farmers were doing to help with conservation. So it wasn't formal teaching as such, but was all part of a remit. So we did a heck of a lot of community engagement. And we still do.

Steven 
Yeah, it's a community education. Yeah.

Perfect.

Derek Robeson 
It's a really rewarding part of it isn't

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah, that's so important. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
it? Meeting with the public and just showing them because they're so amazed about what they just don't know what's happening a lot of the time and they're quite in admiration of what is actually happening, farmers are doing because they do get quite a lot of negativity flung their way but in actual fact a lot of them really want to do the right thing you know they're really interesting people with families to feed and you know they're producing food certainly but they're also wanting to produce

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Of course.

Derek Robeson 
a nice healthy landscape to live in and bring their children up and their next generation up in. exactly.

Steven 
Yeah, legacy to pass on to future generations. yeah, yeah, I've found farmers

and ranchers are often some of the most ardent and passionate conservationists, even though, like you said, they don't always get that reputation, but they really are.

Derek Robeson 
Yeah, yeah, they don't.

And I wonder here whether it's, you know, it's not so much the farmers that are the problem with conservation as much as the policies. would say their policies are not always the right ones. know, it's the farmers, you know, will follow the policies. But if the policies are not maybe in balance, then you can't really blame them. The policies need to looked at more properly, yeah.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah. That makes sense.

Yeah,

100%, that's a great insight. So let's transition into the Tweed Forum. You mentioned, briefly touched on, but tell everybody what exactly is the Tweed Forum, and then maybe we can jump into some of the good work that you've been doing there for the last dozen years or so. So what is the Tweed Forum?

Derek Robeson 
Mm. Mm.

Mmm.

Ahem.

Yeah.

The Tweet Forum is an environmental charitable trust that was established about 30 years ago, just over 30 years ago, to help farmers basically deliver environmental projects on the ground. our director, Cummins, he started it way back in the mid-90s and he still leads the organisation. So yeah, it's really grown organically over that time. So it started very much in response to the local bottom-up approach and demand for advice.

in river works essentially, people going into the river and extracting gravel, kind of thing. People maybe not really doing the right thing at the right time perhaps, but it kind of stemmed from that and then the idea was to try and build a project round river type works and conservation on the river. So Luke then put together a big nature restoration bid through the heritage lot refund at the time and that was successful. So it allowed people to be taken on and to deliver environmental projects.

on the ground at that time, but it grew very organically, you know, from the bottom up rather than from the top down. So I think that's what's given us the success over the years is that we've just responded to the demand that's been there. Because other folks in other parts of the country have kind of tried to do similar things to Tweed Forum, but we seem to almost be unique. Probably because we've been around for so long and it's grown organically slowly that it's been stable and successful and quite effective really at delivering.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
and it's not top down, it's very much bottom up, it's what the locals want, it's what the farmers want, it's what the communities want, and you go where the funding streams are, so you tend to be steered and driven by, well, you know, if some government agency wants to do something in this catchment, we know, you know, we know the farmers will be interested, we know, if we have a pot of money, we know who we can to spend it, how we can spend it, who will be interested in doing this, so we're well connected with the farming community that way, so we just, we're quite...

Steven 
That's so important.

Derek Robeson 
Yeah, we're welcome. So therefore we can spend the monies as they become available for whatever the driver is. Yeah.

Steven 
Yeah.

And are you finding those funding streams from both the Scottish government and the English government, given the catchment does have, you I think you said 14 % or so of it was in England. Are you getting funding from both governments? yeah, good.

Derek Robeson 
Yeah

Yeah, it's in England.

Absolutely.

We have got, let's say, 18 odd staff. it's a right melting pot of funding streams. It's Scottish Government money, it's English Government money, it's heritage lottery fund money, it's wind farm mitigation fund money, it's Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Scottish Natural Heritage, or NatureScot as it is now, the local authorities, the local councils, Northumberland County Council, Scottish Borders Council. So it's a real mix. And one of our biggest projects of late...

Again, we've taken on quite a few staff for this one, led by Luke Fisher who's the manager of it. It's a Tweet Trail. We're trying to put a Tweet Trail all the way down. Yeah? Yeah?

Steven 
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. It's a hundred mile trail that you're,

yeah, tell me more about that. That was one of the projects I wanted to dig deeper into. I'm glad you kind of transitioned into that. That was one of my questions. Like, tell me about this hundred mile trail. It sounds fantastic.

Derek Robeson 
It

is amazing. came out of an idea a few years ago. Someone at a local council and a local MP were walking down the river. They found it quite difficult getting along the river because it wasn't that easy, frankly. So they had this great idea of setting a footpath in place.

encouraging people to come to the borders is a money generating thing as much as anything but just for people's enjoyment it's a walking destination as much as anything else. So anyway, they were looking around for agencies to lead on this and they approached Tweed Forum and Tweed Forum was more than happy to help with that. So it's taken a number of years to get it going but now we're up and running. It's a multi-million pound project over 25 million pounds now. So what we're trying to do is link up all the existing path networks along the river.

by creating new ones between. And then in the back of that, delivering environmental projects all the way along the river. So it's more of kind of what we do. It's more native woodland. It's more, well, there's new ones in there like pollinators along the trade. It's looking at welfare areas and welfare grasslands. We've got an education officer now that goes into schools and talks to the children about farming, forestry, and conservation, how important it all is.

Steven 
Yeah.

Derek Robeson
that we get these in balance and Jenny's very very good at talking about that, especially to primary school children. But we do a lot of university led courses as well. They come into the classroom from Edinburgh, both at the degree level and the masters level and sometimes PhD level for topics. And now we're getting into secondary schools as well. They're coming to visit us at our office at Old Melrose.

to do geographic studies, higher geography and higher biology, looking at the river and the species in the river. So we're hitting quite a lot of different age groups, which is great. That's really rewarding, that particular side of it. And I think the younger you can speak to the children, more chance you have of really engaging with them in the environment and really instilling some enthusiasm in them. think, yeah.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah. And I've

learned over the years too, if you can get the kids engaged, the kids can also then in turn get their parents engaged. So that's another way into the adult population is by making, inspiring the children to go home and talk about what they learned and everything. Yeah. So along this a hundred miles of the river, is it?

Derek Robeson 
Yeah, very much.

Mmm.

Steven 
privately owned and you're dealing with a patchwork of agreements with private owners or is it makes of public private?

Derek Robeson 
Yeah, yeah, it's a kind

of mix, Steve. a lot of it is in private land, but the bulk of the landowners are really very enthusiastic, very helpful. What we're trying to do is use as much of the existing path network as possible, but some of it veers away from the river naturally because of issues. Some of it uses the old railway. There used to be an old railway ran along the river, and it makes sense just to...

Steven 
Good.

Sure, the rails to trails. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
to use infrastructure that's there. And this will be able to use paths. It'll take not just walkers, but cyclists, horse riders, motorbillies scooters even. It'll take everyone and everything. yeah, it's quite an undertaking. Some of the sections have to be surfaced, you know, to take these different access routes, if you like. So some of it's a bit more tarmacadam than you'd like, perhaps, and others a bit more natural. But it's just to take the footfall, really.

Steven 
Yeah, sorry.

Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
I think nature is a great way of reclaiming that land so very quickly after it's been done, nature takes over and it looks a lot less raw as it were. So now we're really excited about this and I think we started in 2022, we're hoping to finish in 2027, which is not that long away, and then there'll be an official opening hopefully around 2028 or something. So yeah, we're hoping to become one of the great trails in Britain, you know, we've got the Pennine Way which comes up the stem of England to

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

They're far away. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
Yetham just about 10 miles south, we've got the Southern Upwind Way, we've got St Cathbert's Way. mean none of these has been quite as popular as the West Highland Way and things like that. The West Coast of Scotland has been really popular. We're hoping with the history and if we promote it well that we might get some added value there because it's a very rural area, very rural and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, we're bringing some ecotourism and other things that might come along with that. Exactly, finding those

multi-benefit, you're helping the environment, you're helping local economies, you're helping landowners. mean, all of these things all packaged into one project. So every dollar spent on that project is going to have multiple returns in different areas. So yeah, those are the types of projects that are just so exciting to be a part of and to learn about.

Derek Robeson 
yet absolutely

Yeah they really are. They really are. So yeah, it's a challenge but it's a good one and everyone's up for the task so yeah.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I'll be following it in the years to come and hopefully, get a chance to, to set foot on it. one of these days as myself, like I'm serious. The wheels are still turning. Like I gotta get there. So, yeah. So I know I looked at the, the tweet forums, website and it's, and it's tweet forum.org and I'll make sure to include that in the show notes so people can, can find you as well.

Derek Robeson 
Hello, you'll be very welcome.

Steven 
Really nice website, a lot of great information available. And I think you've got, in addition to this 100 mile footpath that you're working on, there's I think 13 or 14 other projects that you're working on. So that's a considerable amount of work for 18 staff members across an entire catchment. are there any other projects that stand out to you as something that you wanna highlight or brag about?

Derek Robeson 
it

Yeah, I mean we mentioned the Meadows project, that's a really interesting one. We've got an archaeological project where we're trying to promote the history of the area in there. We've got an invasive species project which is looking at controlling things like Himalayan balsam, Japanese knotweed, American skunk cabbage, that kind of thing. And we've been pretty effective over

Steven 
Nice. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
last 30 years it's taken over maybe a million and half pounds to do it and a full-time officer for that time to do it but it really has been a very very effective and the trade catchment is you know it's just kind of leader in that kind of field really because you go up into the Lothians up towards Edinburgh and there's much more of these weeds around so they're not really controlling it and what we're finding now it's that law of intended consequences you do one thing somewhere and it has an impact somewhere else but what they've done is they've put a new railway line in between Waverley and Edinburgh.

Steven 
Yeah.

Sure.

Derek Robeson 
right down to Gala Shales and because it's fenced off it's kind of brought down the invasive species down back in the Gala watercush and back in the Tweed that we saw. You know it's a constant battle. Invasives are a real thing and I know Tom Alexin was talking about and Australia was talking about invasive species and we can talk about Tom and that encounter but yeah it is real challenge and you've got to keep on top of it. It's not something you can turn your back on if you grasp the nettle as it were. You've got to keep

Steven 
Sure. Yep.

It is. Invasives are never ending. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
grasping it because once you let go the seeds are just going come back and you know they're just going to be there and you have to kind invest for the long term like a lot of conservation you have to invest for the long term.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely, and when you're doing that conservation work and doing the replanting as of native species as you're rustling up the soil and the land that also then becomes the perfect, you know, opportunity for those invasives to get in. So it's really that challenge when you're doing the trying to replant the natives and, you know, rewild a place.

Derek Robeson 
it

Steven 
fighting off those invasive species who are just as eager to get to that, you know, freshly tilled land and freshly fertilized ground and nicely watered and everything you're doing to do the restoration. It's a, it is a constant fight, so.

Derek Robeson 
Absolutely hasn't.

is a challenge.

I do take my hat off to Emily. Emily leads our invasive species project and you know she's really good at it and good at getting people on board because we can't do it ourselves obviously there's so few of us. You have to work with farmers, you have to work with the river bee owners, know and the guillies the ones that take the fishers out, salmon fishers because it's a big salmon fishing river obviously between and you know you will see swathes of things like hemoly and balsam just

Steven 
Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that.

Derek Robeson 
covering the bank side and of course if that gets a grip then it chokes out all the native plants. So what Emily's been doing under license is she's got a little rust fungus that she can release onto the plants and it's a sort of natural biological control. So doesn't actually kill it but it'll suppress the growth so it doesn't flower and seed and slow it down. It'll let some of the native plants come up between. So we do that, we do lot of that and we're monitoring it and it's proving effective as a natural biological control. The worry of course it would be that it jump plants but it hasn't.

Steven 
everything, right?

Just slow it down.

Sure.

Derek Robeson 
it hasn't and we're fairly optimistic that it won't. The trials have shown in England that it hasn't. But you know people are wary of that kind thing. But then alternative to that is chemical. Do you want to use a lot of chemical by the river? Probably not.

Steven 
Yeah, those

are the same challenges. previous job, I spent 15 years working on one of the ecosystem restoration projects along a river in an urban part of the United States. And yeah, that constant battle between, obviously chemicals can be very effective, but they also have, as you said, unintended consequences. And then certainly the runoff that...

is going to happen when it rains to get into the river and the damage that it can do to aquatic plant life and aquatic species. it's a lot of manual labor. It's a lot of mechanical manual labor to battle these invasive species. I kudos to you all for having one person lead this big fight. And it sounds like recruiting and educating citizens, landowners, interested parties in educating them on how to help.

Derek Robeson 
it

Yeah

Yeah.

Steven 
contain and maybe remove it because it is a very labor-intensive job.

Derek Robeson 
It really is, I think. Yeah, is. And as I say, once you've grasped a nettle, you've just got to keep hold of it and just keep going. But I think it's worth it because a lot of the catchment management groups have taken the view that we're just going have to live with these plants. And maybe that's the right way. But we feel we don't want to give up the fight just yet. We just want to keep going.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah, you may

never get rid of them all. So in one sense, living with them is reality, but still containing them and minimizing the spread is critically important because living with them in a small way is one thing, living with them where they dominate everything and choke out the natives and harm the rest of the ecological area. Because like you said, there's domino effects.

Derek Robeson 
It is reality.

And it is. It really is.

Steven 
If the native vegetation

along the shoreline is getting damaged, then that's going to have impacts on the salmon, undoubtedly, as they're trying to, you know, those native vegetation and trees and shade and everything is so important for their spawning and their life cycle. So all these things are connected. So we can't let...

Derek Robeson 
Exactly.

Exactly.

and essentially you mentioned near the salmon steam because it's such a big economic driver for us you know I think someone did some statistics recently something like it's worth about 25 million pounds to the borders economy every year 400 people are probably employed in the back of it but what they find what the Tweed Foundation the Fisheries Trust here are finding is that the water temperatures are increasing radically so up in the headwaters you know 26 27 yeah same thing of course salmon are cold water

Steven 
Sure, sure.

Yeah, yeah, we're finding the same thing here.

Derek Robeson 
loving fish and they don't like warm water so you know they're really suffering so what we're doing is planting lots of riparian woodland along the river and buffer zones just to try to shade the river so we're seeing a big increase in that so we're planting you know aspen and willow and alder and bird cherry along the river to try and tackle that so you just need to be doing more of it and quicker and at the larger scale that's it's a scale thing you know and you know

Steven 
Yeah. Shade that is shade off your shade. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
Next up we talk about the biggest challenges of our time are biodiversity and loss and global warming and they probably are. But it's the scale at which we need to work to address this is scary frankly. We're doing it very piecemeal. We're doing it just for opportunities to exist but we need a much more, especially in Scotland, don't know if like in America, but in Scotland we need that much more coordinated approach to this. Like the farmers working with the foresters, working with the conservationists because they are a little bit in silos still.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
here at the minute. We need them to be working in partnership and understanding each other's issues and challenges. So that's where we come in actually. We try and bridge these gaps as much as possible. But yeah, it's a scale thing. And another project you mentioned about the River Tweed Trail, another one we're doing is, it's a really lovely one actually, I'm leaning on that one, it's really, really enjoyable, is a design landscapes project. we've got lots of country houses down the river.

Steven 
Sure. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, tell me more about that.

Mm-hmm.

Derek Robeson 
with

these parkland settings and you can imagine places like Abbotsford where Waterscot lived or Trocuaire House. Trocuaire House at the top of the catchment around Pebbles. It's the oldest inhabited house in Scotland probably. It's welcomed something like 27 kings through its door since the 1100s but it's still there and people live there and it's the most amazing place. You can imagine these landscapes around about a house like that with it. It probably built up around a of tower house in the early

12th, 13th, 14th, 15th centuries and then into the medieval times and it's just kind of grown and grown and grown. It has all the hallmarks of a really really old property and see it with a tree lined avenue going up and you know it's got bare gates at the top and these gates were shut in 1745 when Bonnie Prince Charlie, because they were Jacobites, the family of Jacobites basically, and he said these gates will open when another Jacobite king is on the Scottish throne. So these gates as he went to the state have been closed since 1745. These people have long memories you know we're not going to open these

Steven 
Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
So

it's that kind of history. So they build another avenue down, another entrance down to the house because the gates aren't open. So it's all that kind of history that is fantastic. But I digress slightly. But these wonderful estates, they really are amazing. And they have the most amazing old trees, know, beech trees, sycamore trees, lime trees. There's one in Hirsley State. It's over 500 years old, this tree. And it's in perfectly good condition. withstood all the storms of recent years.

Steven 
That's awesome.

Yeah, yeah, that's amazing.

Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
It's amazing. So what we're trying to do with these is to just put the trees back basically, put them into protective tree boxes. And they're not cheap, know, these will be a couple of hundred pounds per box. The tree is the cheapest part of it. Usually the tree is just a few pounds, but the posts are real fancy to go around it, it's another couple of hundred pounds. But if you put 10, 20, 30 or 40 of these through a parkland situation, it looks fantastic. And people love to see these and they're highly visual and they'll be there for, you know,

hundreds of years hopefully if they can live to that age. So we're hoping to plant at least 5,000 trees along the river. There's I think 45 design landscapes, we're working with about 25 landowners and it's my job to go round and try and encourage them to participate and they have been really quite good at it. It's just wonderful to go back and see all these trees planted a year later so you can advise on it and then they go off and do the work and you come back and it's all done. It's just great, it's really rewarding.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah,

it sounds, it sounds, that's what I was thinking. was like, that sounds like a great experience and a rewarding job. So in, in, in addition to this tree planting effort, did I see on the website, you're also, you offer grants to, for, for others to plant trees or is that part of the same program? Yeah. Borders tree grant. That's what I saw. Yeah. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
Yeah, yeah, no, that's another one. It's called the Borders Tree Grant Scheme. I'm glad you asked about that. yeah.

And that's an interesting one because that, its various guises, we change it. It's been going for the best part of 30 years, but we have to keep changing its name every three years to get the funding. As you can imagine, it's not always, funders don't always like the same thing. So they have to keep rolling with a different idea, but it's the same thing really underneath.

Steven 
Yeah.

Sure, yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

I understand how that goes. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
It's so popular you wouldn't believe. It was first one in Scotland really. So we started devising. It wasn't a huge amount of money to be honest at the time. It's still not a huge amount of It's only £1000 per hectare. But we get 50, 60, 70, sometimes up to 100 applications a year. And it's just for that very thing. for hedgerow trees, it's for parkland trees, it's for trees along the river, it's for copsees, it's for orchards.

little things that are below forestry commission type funding to me, the bigger plantations, the commercial plantations. And it's so popular, the farmers will apply for it, communities will apply for it, schools will apply for it. So they into school grounds, they go into communities, they go into big estates, small estates, small farms, big farms. It gets you out and about and you don't have to see some lovely places. really popular. And on the back of this project that we set up all these years ago, they've got a similar scheme running now in Dumfries and Galloway. That spawned a scheme over there.

They've got one in south and east Ayrshire, now a very similar one, and now Aberdeenshire is looking at a similar one. So that's four different regions in Scotland that have come on the back of ours. Now we're just really proud of that. It's great to see people doing it and getting a lot of pleasure from it. And over the years, there must be, I don't know how many trees will have planted under that project, but it'll be probably hundreds of thousands now over the years. Yeah.

Steven 
following yeah

Yeah, that's amazing.

Well, Derek, I want to be respectful of time before we transition into your call to action and our talk to hope. there anything else about the Tweed Forum or any other projects that we haven't touched on that are near and dear to you or important that you want to make sure you share about today before we kind of transition into your call to action?

Derek Robeson 
Well, think, know, just one thing really, and you mentioned Tom, Tom Alex in there in Australia when we met up a few years ago, yeah, I know we're passionate about living and working in this environment, but all of us in our office have traveled quite a bit. I we have been to lots of places in Australia, America, mean, most places in Europe. And every time you go to conferences, events, you meet lots and lots of really interesting people. And it was so funny, you know, how we met up with Tom because...

We were doing a sort of land use strategy pilot way back in 2013, 14, 15 and we were calling it the Tweed River Tweed Land Use Strategy Pilot. I thought, well, there must be somebody in the world doing something that we're, something similar. So we Googled it and up came the River Tweed Land Use Strategy Pilot. Wait a minute, that's not right. And it was in Australia and we weren't aware, you know, there was a River Tweed in Australia. And so we got in touch with, you know, with Australia and up came Tom and...

Steven
Wait a second.

Derek Robeson (46:33)
today you must come over and see us, know, we've got so much to show you. And so we went out of course, as you do to Australia, we spent a month in there and Tom took a week off, well a week through work, showed us around the catchment. was so generous of his time, but what struck us was that we met his family and his children, it was just a wonderful experience, and the council was fantastic, but they showed us all around the catchment and all the things they were showing us, we were having the same issues and challenges, diffuse pollution, flooding.

Steven 
Yeah, yep.

Derek Robeson 
I know his sea

level rise, had invasive species, loss of wildlife, loss of forests, species conservation, koala bears, we don't know them obviously, but it's amazing, the other side of the world, exactly the same problem. And it was really really interesting, we still share knowledge and information, it's great. And that happens the world over doesn't it? You must have been in contact, you meet these people and they're just, well you know all on such a small planet, we've got to look after it, we've really got to pull together.

Steven 
It does.

Yeah, yeah, I share your experience about having traveled and going to different conferences and it is, there's a sense of this global connection when you're at these conferences and you realize that, certainly particularly in more affluent communities, right? mean, what you may be experiencing there in Scotland and Tom and Australia and me over here and...

Derek Robeson 
to make it work, yeah.

Yeah.

Steven 
you know, the Pacific Northwest, we're all gonna have something similar, recognizing maybe challenges in a developing nation might be a bit more extreme or a little bit different, but there's threads of similarity running through all of our problems and all of our solutions. There's threads and connections through those too. And you talked about scalability a short time ago and that's such an important

point you made, wanted to draw attention back to it, that we kind of know in many ways we humanity kind of, we kind of know how to fix what we broke. You know, we have the ideas and we have the knowledge to make things better. Now we just need to scale it up. We need the support of the governments. We need the funding support. We need the private sector to come along and change their ways. So it's, you know, the hope.

Derek Robeson 
be due.

Steven 
you know, for the future as bleak as it can look sometimes with climate change and you know, we're doing this recording right now and Los Angeles is on fire, right? I mean, there's horrible things happening around the world, but we know how to fix it. We just need people to come together and join us in this journey to do it. So I really applaud you and appreciate you and all your colleagues at the Tweed Forum for helping to lead your community.

Derek Robeson 
well it is since we do

Steven 
help lead the world towards a better place. So thank you for all that you do.

Derek Robeson 
No,

it's very kind of you to say that, Steven. you know, it's funny you mentioned the West Coast of America where you are in California. But our daughters just came back last week from San Francisco on a holiday out there after Christmas and they were quite surprised to see the beautiful country, magnificent. But the wildfires really shook them. You know, it really did. It really did. So it's crazy. And then you mentioned also there about, you know, private money. You touched on your private money and we were trying hard.

Steven 
Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
to bring more private money into the system because there's just not enough public money at all to go there so you know we've got

Steven 
Right, absolutely.

Derek Robeson 
things like carbon markets for forestry they are quite well versed and we're trying to get you know there is well versed markets in peatland restoration peatland carbon as well but what we're lacking I think is the the biodiversity credit market where it's just not there and once they crack that and I think you'll get more private money coming in but it's just how the big businesses can make a return on it and and is that clean money that's coming in you know you have to be very careful is it clean money where the money coming from so there's a lot of

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, no.

Derek Robeson 
There's a lot of challenges, but we have to crack them and I think we will. We're optimists, I think we will manage it eventually. It might take a crisis or two like we're having, but I think they will rally eventually to this, the governments, hopefully, and things will be better.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah.

Well, we'll keep pushing and doing our part, I'm sure. So, Derek, thank you so much for all this conversation. It's been just a joy and I always give guests an opportunity to do a call to action and I'm sure the folks listening to this or watching it are as inspired as I am by your story. So what do you want them to do? What's your call to action now that we've got people, you know,

energized and ready to go do something. What should they go do?

Derek Robeson 
I think from our perspective it's just to try and encourage people to be more aware of the environment, whether they're farmers or whether they're school kids or whether they're university students or whether they're visitors there. Just try and engage as much as possible with the environment because we feel that engaging with the environment, that will bring the enthusiasm and that sense of wonder that it really needs because people we find tend not to do things

because they're told to do it or incentivized to something. They need to have that inner feeling and inspiration to do it. need to that connection to nature and it's only that connection to nature that will really, really change the mindset and it is a mindset change that we can see coming. They have to want to do it from within.

So yes, just engage, expose the children as much as possible to the environment when they're young and get them enthused and just engage with nature, get out there and engage, get away from the computer a bit and engage with nature as much as possible and we think that'd be good thing.

Steven 
Yeah,

love it. Love that answer. Thank you. So we talk about hope on this show. We talk about hard things like Los Angeles burning and Pete Lund's wetlands drying up and all the challenges that we have and that we're facing. So I'd like to try to leave the show with that bit of hope to keep people inspired to go do the hard things that we have to go do.

And hope is this idea, it's not an emotion. It's those who study these types of things have made clear hope is not just a fluffy pink cloud kind of emotion. It's an actual necessity to move people forward into action. And it's this idea that you can have a vision for a better future. You have some steps to help you get there. You may not know all the steps, but you have a direction to walk in.

and you feel like you have sense of agency, like there's something you can do to help make this vision come to pass. So I ask a guest these same three questions every time because I love being inspired by the answers and I hope the audience does too. So I'm gonna ask you three questions about hope. Just give me your first instinctual answer. You don't have to think about it too long. So, all right, Derek. So the first question is, what is your vision?

Derek Robeson 
Okay, otherwise.

Steven 
for a better future? could be for you personally, professionally, or for the world. What's your vision for a better future?

Derek Robeson 
I think professionally, could answer that in two ways, guess one professionally and then personally, think professionally, because we work with farmers and environments and the sphere, think for us the biggest challenge is just getting the authorities to link farming and forestry and conservation. If we can get society to link these three together in a really meaningful way and for everybody to pull together.

then that would be professionally our greatest hope that we could integrate farming. Integration is probably the key word. If we can all integrate farming, forestry and conservation, that would be a really good thing. So the hope is that that would happen one day because it's not happening so well at the moment. So that would be the hope. Yeah, and the reason, I guess, for that.

Steven 
Yeah, that's my next

question. Why? Why is that important?

Derek Robeson 
Well I think it's important for the next generation frankly for you know we have three children we have a son and two daughters and they're all grown up and away from home now but we're not grandparents yet but hopefully we'll be blessed with that in time but you know it's to them that you're thinking about you know what's going to what kind of world are they're facing so if we can get people to work together then they will have a better future because you know everybody loves the environment everybody wants to see wildlife about it's really important.

not just for their own mental and physical well-being, that there's a healthy environment there, it's really important for the economy. mean, they really do need to have really good sustainable environment because farming depends on having that and the economy depends on having that, business depends on that. People think it's the other way around. The economy is just something you can treat when the business is doing well. no, the economy has to be dependent entirely on the environment being in a really healthy place.

I think for our children's sake and our grandchildren's sake, need to get this to work quickly.

Steven 
Nice.

You had a personal hope as well? Is that tied in differently from your professional?

Derek Robeson 
Well, I think

the personal one would be for family, know, for your children. you know, yeah, just the stage in my life that I'm at, you know, you've done what you can, but it's a very small beer. hopefully in a small way, you know, our group of people that we're wonderful people to work with and that we see and like yourselves that we visit.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
and communicate with and share knowledge with you know that it's a smallish community but it's growing and it's just wonderful it's really inspiring to hear everybody's stories it really and I think what you're doing is just tremendous because I've been looking at one or two of the past videos and they really are all inspiring they really really really are all inspiring so and it's amazing what people do and what drives them and what you know the outcomes it's quite incredible how positive

Steven 
Thank you.

Derek Robeson 
they all are. That's the real bonus, know, that they do see a hope, they do see a future and that's really important to bring out all these things because we can do this, we can do it.

Steven 
Yeah, we can. And thank you for that compliment. I'm inspired by you and all the guests I've had on. I'm so grateful to have this opportunity that people like you say yes to speak with me, because it leaves me just filled with energy and hope for the future.

Derek Robeson 
I

think it's really important what you do to him because at the end of day I was thinking about us when you first approached us about story sustainers and it wasn't until this moment in time when you came to us and said, that's what we're effectively doing, we? We're all telling stories, although we didn't really appreciate it, that's kind of what we're all doing. We're telling stories and that's how we're communicating and that's really a good way of looking at it.

Steven 
Yeah,

yeah, people, as you were saying, they respond with their hearts from the inside and what motivates someone is not necessarily facts and figures, because you can argue about facts and figures, but if you tell a story that touches someone on the inside, they're going to be with you. They're going to walk with you. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
Mmm.

It's...

it's got to come from the heart and you know

compassion and it's all about compassion being and being sensitive to other people's feelings and taking people with you and be understanding of their situation so it's all about that isn't it and then the world needs a bit more of that so yeah

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes, it does. Yes, it does. So Derek, the third question, I

want to make sure I get you on this last question about hope. So you've painted a vibrant, beautiful picture of a future where we're integrating our farming and our conservation and our land management and our economics and people are compassionate and they're caring for one another and caring for the environment.

Derek Robeson 
Mmm. Mmm.

Steven 
The last question is, imagine that's the world we're actually living in right now. How does that make you feel?

Derek Robeson 
Well, once I've picked myself up off the floor. No, I think we will get there. We will get there, Steven. But yeah, I think, no, it would make me feel great. I'll tell you why. Because I think in a very small way in organizations like ourselves, it is a challenge. It's a struggle to just to get through the days sometimes, the weeks, because there's so much pressure on you. And the team, just to find the money, to deal with contractors, to get the work done in time for the money goes, it's a lot of pressure.

Steven 
Hahaha

Yeah. Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
And I always admire my colleagues because despite the challenges they always manage to do it and it's just great. So yeah, I think they would feel rewarded if this all came together in an integrated way. Then I think the very small part that we were playing in this very small corner of the world, you'd feel well, we have ultimately left our mark. And that's what I see driving around the countryside. You can see the woodlands that you planted 10, 20, 30 years ago. You can see the ponds that put in. You can see...

Steven 
It is.

Yeah.

Derek Robeson 
the hedgehogs you can see, the landscape has changed because of you being there and you can take your children along and show them and you see the wildlife associated with them and that is so rewarding. so rewarding. You can't put a value in that, know. There's no price to be put in that. It's just joy.

Steven 
All right. Yep.

Yeah, that is beautiful. Derek, thank you so much for sharing your vision for a better future. And I'm going to do my part to help you get there, because that joy is something that I want to see and feel and experience too. So thank you for that.

Derek Robeson 
it.

Well, thank you very much

for asking me, Steven, and Luke after this. And if you're ever on this neck of the woods again, do drop in and see us.

Steven 
Will let you know I'm planning I figured out but yeah, my wife and I want to get there So it may be a few years, but I'll look you up All right Derek, thank you. Take care All right

Derek Robeson 
Good.

Anytime, anytime Steven, good to speak to you. You're very welcome. Bye bye. Bye bye.

Steven 
What an incredible conversation with Derek Robeson. His work with the Tweed Forum highlights just how essential collaboration is when it comes to conservation. From balancing the needs of agriculture with environmental restoration, to tackling climate change challenges, to creating opportunities for ecotourism and education, Derek and his colleagues are proving when communities come together, real progress happens.

Hearing about efforts to restore native habitats, manage invasive species, and engage the next generation in conservation is both inspiring and reassuring to me. The River Tweed is a perfect example of how history, culture, and nature are deeply intertwined, and how protecting our natural spaces isn't just about preserving landscapes. It's about preserving livelihoods, heritage, and a sustainable future for all. Now this conversation brought back some powerful memories for me.

In 2017, I had the privilege of being in Brisbane, when the San Antonio River, River Tweed, and Pasig River were all finalists for the International River Prize. It was one of the greatest honors of my career to accept the award on behalf of the San Antonio River and all those who dedicated their time, energy, and expertise to restoring and protecting the San Antonio River system. But as I said in my acceptance speech that night, I wouldn't have wanted to be a judge deciding the winner.

The work being done on the River Tweed and the Pasig River was equally impressive and critically important. Now, to me that memory serves as a powerful reminder. Despite the never-ending stream of bad news, there are incredible people like Derek doing amazing work every day to right the wrongs of the past and build a more sustainable future for all. This isn't about ignoring the ugliness in the world or promoting toxic positivity.

It's about honestly facing the challenges we see and refusing to give in to cynicism. There are massive success stories happening all around us. They just don't always make the headlines like the dumpster fires do. And that's one of the reasons why I do this show. Because I get to speak to inspiring people like Derek Robeson. And I hope their stories inspire you too. Now I want to thank Derek once again for joining me today.

and for his dedication to conservation, environmental education, and community engagement. The work he's doing along the River Tweed is making a real difference. If you've been inspired by today's episode, I encourage you to take action in your own community. Get involved in local conservation projects, support farmers and landowners who are implementing sustainable practices, educate yourself and others about the impact of climate change on waterways. And if you have the opportunity,

get outside and explore a river near you. You might just find a deeper connection to the natural world. So thank you for being a part of Story Sustain Us. If you enjoyed this conversation, please share this episode with your friends and family, follow the show, and leave me a comment. I'd love to hear from you. And don't forget to join me for the next episode, releasing on February 25th, where we'll explore the work of a national nonprofit that's empowering communities across the United States.

I'll be diving into a fascinating conversation about the profound impact of storytelling on community building and individual identity. You're not gonna wanna miss it. So you can check the next episode of Stories Sustain Us out on February 25th at storiessustainus.com, wherever you listen to podcasts and on YouTube. Thanks for joining me today. Until next time, I'm Steven Schauer. Please take care of yourself and each other. Take care.